The Movement to Social Media Art
With the growing fascination with social media and being in the now is there any wonder a somewhat new movement of art is emerging? As human beings we are naturally curious, this curiosity to know everything we are one of the driving forces of social media. With social media’s many filters, platforms, and growing popularity, the use of social media as a way to produce and showcase works of art was bound to happen. Social media is having a profound effect on the art world of today, not only can art be produced on social media it is as well a way for today’s artist to get their work out there without going through avenues of the past, such as having to get their work into a museum.
Social media art may be new, but its roots can be traced back to a digital art form started in the 1990’s when the internet kicked off-net art. Some may ask what does social media art, and net art have to do with one another? Like with many movements in the art world the present are movements are based on the ones that came before, and net art with its base in computer programs and it use of the internet would be the parent of social media art. Even today net art looks pretty radical to most critics just as social media art does. “Taking to heart early net artist Heath Bunting‘s credo “do something different,” net artists took advantage of suddenly ubiquitous personal computers and the first user-friendly web browsers to evoke a de-physicalized existence with infinite possibilities.”(Kerr) Net art used the internet as its primary medium with the pieces being created by using search engines, online tools, scripts, web browsing, and developer codes. Social media art does this today, using the internet as its primary medium, creating images with the many filters, tools, and different platforms in which to post on. Many of these pieces have vanished, lost to us due to the technology they used being replaced with the next generation of that technology, yet others have been digitally preserved and/or upgraded to newer technology.
“Hong Kong gallery owner and critic John Batten say: “Andy Warhol demonstrated that anything could be art – the use of the internet is just an extension of that idea.” (Burrows) Art in its rawest form is about expression, be it an idea, emotion, politics, relationships and creating a body of work is the release of those ideas and emotions. Is this not what happens on social media every moment of every day? Individuals connect with those images created just as they would with any artwork. Pilkington said, “Social media is artistic expression because it is expressing your humanity.” Is this not what has been said about art movements such as humanism? Social media is all about self-expression than in that is it not itself art? Asking the question what art is is something that has been asked for as long as we have had art, and it is still not an easy question to answer.
With social media, there are so many questions that may be hard to answer: Who has ownership of what one could consider art once it is posted to say Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumbler, and even deviant art? What defines social media art at its core? Answering the question, what is social media at its core, maybe the easiest of all. Social media art is not art posted on social media, yet work created using social media, this means that the medium (social media) must be integrated with the artwork itself. Artwork posted to social media, including photographs, posting a video on YouTube, paintings, drawings, etc. the list goes on, is not social media art. “A social media artwork can have collective authorship,” says American artist An Xiao Mina” (Burrows), An Xiao Mina made this statement while participating in the Hyperallergic roundtable discussion over social media art. During this discussion three other characteristics where decided upon for social media art; there must be an audience involved in some form or another as it is the what social media is all about, it must remain conceptually rich and accessible outside of what one would consider a “typical” audience for a work of art, and as always, art is about the intent of the artist, thus it must be judged this way. It would seem judging social media art is just as complex as the art itself in that the influence a piece of art has on the audience and alter the work itself. Social media art is shifting in its fluidity and can be tricky to pin down; it can be made up of many artists or only one. Burrows reported that “social media art can have collective authorship,” for example memes. Memes, now known as the street art of the internet, are a growing trend that almost everyone has seen. The image below is one example of a meme, and it represents an incident that occurred when a policeman attacked a seated protester with pepper spray. This meme is but one covering this incident, the policeman here has been photoshopped into Guernica, Picasso’s anti-war painting.
With all that is becoming art in the social media realm of things one must as well consider is there ownership to social media art? Richard Prince is a name that most individuals know when dealing with ownership of social media medium and posts. Prince is a popular visual artist who began selling images he printed out from his Instagram feed, these where not images he himself posted and this is where the controversy began. Images such as the one below are what caused the lawsuits that would follow.
Prince has made so much money off of other individuals posts, one printed image sold for around $90K, all due to something called Fair use. “Fair use requires consideration of the difficult-to-define “purpose” and “nature” of the work, the amount of copyrighted material used, and the effect the appropriation might have on the market value of the original work.”(Plaugic) This has allowed Prince to sell images of other’s works for years; now those works include social media art and images. There are also contracts that every individual had agreed to when they signed up for their social media account, each of which haes their bylaws. There are sites out there that protect an artist’s ownership and allows for the easier sell of their works, Patron being one of them.
There are over 60 different social media platforms in 2018, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr, all proving a platform to socialize and share. All have the niche that draws its users in and allows them to do their thing, and all have their terms of service. One thing is for sure all platforms are being used by an artist to either get their work out there and/or to produce works of art. In the age of selfies and instant sharing the world has grown smaller with social media, creating movements such as FOMO (fear of mission out). Jennifer Sokolowsky, of The Seattle Times, addressed this very thing in an article when she was referring to Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrors” show in Seattle, calling it the FOMO visual-art event of the summer. Individuals seem to find it more compelling at times to see something when their friends are saying this is great you must see it.
Tumblr one of the platforms used for social media art; it is a place for sharing photos, music, quick texts, links, and videos, pretty much anything quickly. Broken down simply, Tumblr is across between say Facebook or Twitter (networking sites) and a blog. On Tumbler there seems to be a community of curator(individual), fans, then followers. It would seem this type of relationship had been built to protect the individual works. The fans support the individual and followers boost the number and popularity while keeping an eye on the reblogging verses reposting of images. Reblogging images and posts seem to be the thing to do, whereas reposting without giving credit to the original is not. Tumblr terms of service under community guidelines addresses reblogging and giving credit, Tumblr. One would wonder if there is a way to watermark/claim one’s social media art.
Social
media art is still in its infancy and such there is not much out there to
define what it is, but it for sure a new art movement of the current
generation. If the explosion of social
media itself has taught the world one thing, it is how fast paced the world of
social media is. One can expect social
media art to run rampant across the screens of every phone, television,
computer, and tablet growing an exponentially over the next few years. Be it
social media art, the sharing of art, or the promotion of art, social media has
and will continue to have a dramatic impact on the art world.
Work Cited
Burrows, Victoria.When it comes to art on social media, the medium needs to be integrated into the work. Style Magazine, 5 April 2013 https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/article/1201034/change-art Accessed 30 October 2018
Kerr, Dylan. The Early Disruptors: 7 Masterpieces of 90’sNet Art Everyone Should know about.
ARTSpace, 2015 https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/art-tech/90s-net-art-52704 Accessed 27 September 2018
Miranda, Carolina. Social Media have become a vital tool for Artist but are they good for art. Los Angeles Times,2016 www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-is-social-media-good-for-art-20160517-snap-htmlstory.html#
Plaugic, Lizzie. The Story of Richard Prince and his $100,000Instagram Art. www.theverge.com/2015/5/30/8691257/richard-prince-instagram-photos-copyright-law-fair-use . Accessed 27 September 2018
Soklowsky, Jennifer. Art in the Instagram age: How Social media is shaping art and how you experience it. The Seattle Times, 16 November 2017. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-in-the-instagram-age-how-social-media-is-shaping-art-and-how-you-experience-it/ Accessed 27 November 2018
Tumblr. Terms of Service. https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/terms-of-service
U.S. Copywright Office Fair Use Index, https://copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html Accessed 30 October 2018