WP4 — Reflection

My work this semester has centered around the same topic: internet art. I have been a part of the online art community ever since I learned how to draw digitally on my mom’s iPad in c.2014 and started posting on the now-dead Drawcast app. I became immersed in the idea that one could have their own online gallery, and have others interact with the artwork. It made something that was relatively difficult to do in real life extremely accessible, even for a 13-year-old whose skills were… poor to say the least. After graduating from the app, I circulated between sites like Tumblr, Instagram, and DeviantArt, but for the most part was mainly posting and viewing art. I had liked drawing before ever taking the interest online but being a part of a community made me passionate for it.

This passion has stayed with me even after taking art more seriously in high school and developing skill and knowledge of traditional art. Flash forward 9 years to now, I have made it my goal to integrate the very distinct communities of online artists and gallery artists. As an art major at USC, I have been educated in art history and contemporary art practice in the traditional sense. My personal history with internet art has given me intimate knowledge of online art spaces and culture. With one foot in both worlds, it has become all the clearer that both spaces rarely cross over. Further, there is a considerable lack of genuine regard towards internet art in a professional and historical sense. Although I do not consider myself specifically an internet artist anymore, the work I have engaged with and thought about more than any comes from internet artists or online communities. This subculture is important, inspiring, and extremely influential even if it’s not recognized as such. That is why I felt a strong urge to write about it.

Writing can be very powerful in shaping people’s perspective. The existence of any essay work automatically makes a topic seem more important, at least from my perspective. When there are hundreds or thousands of books, papers, or even blog posts about a topic, it must be important and that maybe I should care about it as well, or at least respect it. There are entire websites and institutions dedicated to contemporary art, a plethora of writing being produced about artists and new works being made in the 21st century — yet as someone who is up to date in contemporary happenings in art, I have never seen any official written works about internet art (my definition of internet art was outlined in my WP3). If anything, I have seen media like video essays on YouTube or short comments about the online art community and the kind of work found on it, but it is never in the context of a serious discussion or critical approach that other contemporary genres are offered constantly.

I had been wanting to begin writing about internet art to begin the discussion it deserves. If I can shift the perspective of even a few people and made them reconsider the place of online art’s place in the greater art world, I have achieved what I really want out of being a writer.

I am proud of my work for this class. I took my passion for this subject and created well-researched arguments and reflected on my own experiences as well in a way that hopefully resonated with readers. I also struggled a lot to make myself write my thoughts in an organized way. I think a lot of this was due to the fact that I wanted my essays to resemble the kind of theory and critical essays I tend to read and reference. These essays are very “academic” in style, which I have discovered is somewhat how I write naturally but also not really. Academic essays take a lot of effort to perfect, especially with the amount of research and referenced ideas need to be used to come across as credible. I was really after this style because of my goal to legitimize internet art; I wanted to put forth formal work so that my topic can also be perceived as belonging to cultural discussion and history. Maybe it was the fact that I also had other class assignments and work on top of this class, but the writing process with this academic style as my model was extremely difficult. If I had allowed myself to write in a looser style, I think I would have “suffered” a bit less. At the same time, I am happy with the resulting sound of my essays and think I achieved the style I was aiming for. For future ventures into writing, I think I would like to try a more stream-of-consciousness approach and make shorter pieces.

In my WP2, I created a collection of internet art images and contexts. I plan to expand on this project and create an actual website with archived works, essays, and some kind of community aspect. This has been a serious goal of mine for a couple of months even before WRIT340, so I was excited to be able to begin working on the project as a part of the class — this was the most valuable part of the course for me. Although I recognize the importance of writing when trying to invoke a shift of perspective, I also recognize that I may not be the best person to lead this effort, at least not on my own. If my website were to make some kind of change in the art world, I would honestly feel more comfortable if I was able to have other writer’s essays published on it as well. Creatively, I express my ideas much more eloquently visually. That is not to say I am unconfident with my work; I do think it would be stronger alongside other writers due to my struggle with writing and how it doesn’t seem to come naturally to me — I worry this tension comes across when reading.

I am grateful for all the assignments’ freedom. Like I said, it gave me a chance to actually begin creating content for the website idea I have had, and the opportunity to finally write the work I wanted to see in the world. Although writing these essays was not as easy or fun as I thought it would be, the resulting work is valuable, and I am happy I wrote them. Going forward, I will be creating the website project and adding my essays to them, and begin creating a community of other writers that hopefully share my passion for internet art that can contribute to the space so that we can inspire appreciation of the alternative art communities of the virtual world.