imaginariel goldberger, commenting on a Kyle Chayka post about younger artists' work, says he teaches them in school and believes
This generation is not about being "Blank" [it's] about being "Instant." Most artistic products I see are about ephemerality, about "recycollage/recyclage" (collage made with recycling media) and about creating and re-creating art that references this generation's fascination with social connections in cyber-space. Yes, it looks trite or over intellectualized at a superficial level if I look at it with my generational filter, but if i exercise curiosity, invite the artists in a dialogue with me as equals and ask them what they are doing and why, I find that the art I see is a decoy. It is basically an instantaneous and calculated obsolete contribution to a continuously obsolescing sea of social networking blips. The "art" itself is worth nothing, since it is no longer the medium. The social millieu is now the medium, as performance, presence and discourse. The "art" is but another excuse for creating and re-creating personages, stories, glimmers of presence, and possibilities, meant to last only until the next spark. Galleries and institutions are slowly trying to figure out how to monetize this, until then, critics are not going to get it.
This recalls the recent argument on AFC about whether or not Graphics trump Interchange in a certain much-discussed Format. Goldberger's description inspires but the work we see on the (ageless) internet is too complex, hypnotic, and emotionally charged to be just a decoy. More is happening than the Beuysian social sculpture new media professors were heralding before their students came along and embodied it. This page of Duncan Alexander's, for example, is no decoy, although the simplicity of the abstract forms might be deceptive. These aren't just ovals clinging to a great circle, struggling to align themselves with the common perspective as the (w)hole slowly turns; it's a collective Sisyphean struggle to maintain discipline within the elastic gyres of constantly dating technology, symbolized by the shaky GIF anchoring the illusion. Whether this interpretation is too overbearing, the content is in the piece and my response to it and not somewhere off in the Cloud.
(continuing minor edits)