"The Newest New Media"

As I have been going through old(er) issues of art magazines that I seem to hoard like a hamster with too many grapes in its' cheeks, it is interesting to view articles, even from only the past couple years, and see how perspectives have changed. Change, of course, is inevitable. The factors of everyday life weigh down upon the "Art World" whether they like it or not, and the greatest factor in recent days has been the recession. As per one of my classes this semester, I went through some old issues and found an issue of Art News from February 2008, the title piece shouting "The Newest New Media" over an avatar from artists Eva and Franco Mattes. Being a new media artist myself, I am often in an awkward position with the medium. On one hand I find it to be incredibly freeing - there are possibilities with New Media that older artists simply couldn't fathom. However, I also often feel like some New Media artists are sometimes quick to disregard Art History - there is somewhat of a disconnect I see between a "canonical" view of art making versus a "low art" view - that somehow because artists are free from the constraints of the physicality of traditional art-making, that this then allows them to be free from the Art World in general. In my view, this does not always make for good art, regardless of a high or low view upon it.

For example, the Art News article starts with Eva and Franco Mattes's pieces entitled Synthetic Performances, in which the duo create avatars of themselves and re-perform (in)famous art performances from throughout the past few decades, in the online world of Second Life. The main question I have with this is why? It's all been done before? Granted, yes, performing the pieces within this "synthetic" environment is new, but I am very hesitant to give an environment like Second Life any validity. It is also unclear as to whether or not the artists want to do the same.

I will also be the first to admit that my main problem with this piece stems from the fact that I do not view Second Life as any kind of life at all. There has to be lines drawn between what is real and what is not, regardless as to how much that aesthetic plays into how one wants their life to be. Going further, it is because of this disconnect that some have with actual reality that leads what is the "real world" into many of the problems we have today - it is because of the fact that people cannot relate to each other that we have conflict; it is because of the fact that people cannot, to put it bluntly and tritely, deal with the happenings of this real world that they then try to seek solace in one in which they create themselves. But my question is what makes this world immune from the same diseases that plague the one we are in? What happens then, we create Third Life? Where is the line drawn?

Besides the fact that creating other realms of reality is some serious psychological shit. If one did that in "real" life and chose to live in it, one would question one's mental health. Does that mean we need to redefine "reality" according to what one person thinks it should be? But I digress . . .

However, adding on to this illusion of what is real and what is not is the simple look of Eva and Frano's avatars. The artists themselves are quite normal looking, especially for artists. They are both somewhat skinny, no real big distinguishing characteristics.

Their avatars on the other hand are a different story. I encourage you to google their avatars. Eva is a fairly busty, tall woman with long blonde hair. Frano is a dark-haired muscle boy, complete with six-pack. This, I find, is the real reason why most people go online. It's not to really create a new circumstance, it's to escape from the one they are currently in. It is the same thing with online dating personals. The internet is the only place where one can exist as different personalities within the same body and not be labeled as schizophrenic.

My other main problem with this piece is that it is very hard to believe that Eva and Franco had to go through the same emotional or physical barriers that the previous artists had to go through for their pieces. Not to mention the fact that the Mattes's didn't have to conceptualize it either. Neither one of them had to stand naked in a door way like Marina Abramovic and Ulay. Neither one of them had to be shot like Chris Burden. Franco didn't actually have to masturbate under the floor of gallery goers like Vito Acconci. Because of the veil that separates the physical world from the cyber, the artists didn't have to endure the physicality that much of the original work was meant to portray. And being that I don't buy Second Life as a viable reality in which to exist, it totally undermines the purpose of the original pieces.

Now it could also be that the artists are doing these pieces to prove just that. However, that wasn't the gist that I was getting from the article. In fact Franco goes on to say that "The very act of calling it a virtual world is wrong. It's synthetic, but it's an actual world that is no less real than the phone conversation we're having right now." He goes on to say that he has known people who have married and divorced because of happenings in Second Life. Really? It would seem to me that if they worked on their marriage in First Life they might not have these problems in Second Life.

Besides the fact that I can't help but associate a religious undertone to all of it.

However, The Mattes's have gotten support from other artists, including Marina Abramovic herself. She says in the article, "It's very interesting, all this separation between our body and mind. It's another world, but sometimes it's more real than the real one." I wrote in the margins of the article "No! No! No!" Yes, the separation between our bodies and minds is highly interesting, but our mind does not exist on a server somewhere to solely engage in cyber-encounters. And at the risk of sounding like one of those people who wants to do away with anything technological and return to a state of feral play in the forests, there has to be some distinction between what is mechanical and what is mental. Yes, I realize that this now bridges over into a whole other realm within this debate. Yet I am very hesitant to allow any state of which makes us uniquely human to exist within a realm that does not require human initiative to operate it.

For the online version of this article: http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2443