#contemporary_art #network_society

Contemporary art gives almost endless possibilities for creative expression. It is super flexible and experimentation-friendly, what I really like. There is a lot of freedom both in the choice of technical possibilities and in concern to expression of your ideas. What is particular about current time is the influence of network models of social interaction. Nowadays art might be getting much more 'pop' than ever before. This is due to the fact that the tools and knowledge became very accessible. People have an ability to explore art without even leaving their home. Online visual tours, multiple sources and communication made it extremely easy to relate to the art sphere and take part in creative process. It becomes even more easy with the fact that the devices become more portable and geographical boundaries - less solid. 

Living in such era looks very exciting and promising for a young artist. However, at the same time there are some bothering tendencies. The first one is that the idea of art standards is blurring. Since everyone have easy access to the process of creation and it's demonstration, it gets harder to preserve some valuable aesthetic quality. That's what Benjamin called the disappearance of aura or authenticity in art. When something becomes too accessible or easily-re-/producible it will be most likely, taken for granted. And this is the time when anyone can e a photographer and anyone can learn how to paint or how to create music with the help of certain software. Such phenomenon is bothering because it can either lead to a universal decrease in the quality of art or considerably inflate the standards for people who actually decided to devote their life to art, let's call them professional artists. 

Such ambiguous tendencies in art are mostly a response to the social changes and the communication patterns that we experience since the social networks era began. We are getting used to live fast and connect with others in one click. The lifestyle may increase our demand for the short surface types of information, without leaving much time for thinking and deeper analysis. Fast and easy becomes normal for us. In concern to art and culture, the masses want some digestible messages and visual images. It is rather a requirement, as there is so much information that surrounds us and it is impossible to waste too much time on thinking about every incoming piece of it.

So far, I have touched the topic of social networks and technologies for a couple of times. What particularly interests me is how social networks altered our identities and our communication style. I see it as a very controversial issue. For example, in my audio- visual installation I have touched upon the theme of hashtags and how they can mislead the customers of Instagram. The installation demonstrated two videos - with positive and with negative hashtags. The one with negative had a more cheerful soundtrack, whereas the one with positive - more disturbing. That contradictory effect of visual and audio parts demonstrates how vague the social network truth can be and how important it is to learn to filter the information more precisely.