Crowd and Art - Kunst und Partizipation im Internet

Abstract

What can be contributed to a networked reality by art resulting from involvement by “others,” and what does this have to do with knowledge or non-knowledge? Working at the nexus of art theory, cultural studies, media studies and the history of technology, Manuela Naveau scrutinizes the nature of participatory art on the internet. In going about this, she provides an introduction to the world of computer-aided participation models and elaborates on terminology such as the masses and the crowd, the audience and “the other.” She examines in especially great detail the various forms of unconscious and involuntary participation and urges a much-needed discussion about developing effective design options in a time of rapidly progressing digitization & transformation processes. As the internet not only makes it necessary for us to redefine terms such as the masses and the individual, we have to investigate the subject of participation in a way that is grounded in our networked reality: and as a means of navigating a course between, on one hand, romanticized conceptions such as emancipation and empowerment, and, on the other hand, dystopian connotations like surveillance, control and appropriation. By going into detail of six artworks as case studies, the author focuses attention on forms of participation that occur involuntarily and unconsciously at the same value as they are consciously intended by the artists and in the very end are then consciously perceived by an audience. She argues that participation (if willingly or unvoluntarily/ if consciously or unconsciously) has nothing to do with part-taking for the part-taking´s sake, but rather with an agenda behind it and a knowledge that wants to be set free.