新美术馆旗下Rhizome艺术总监Michael Connor写苗颖
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[楼主] 小白小白 2016-06-03 21:05:55

来源:没顶画廊


内容觉醒:

“超级素人”时代的“半屁股美学”


文/麦克·康纳


“Photoshop会分析你的图片,然后为你决定最适合填充到图片中的内容,有时候结果相当令人惊艳。”网络上一则自制视频教程如此介绍Photoshop软件中的“内容觉醒”(Content-Aware)功能。


苗颖本次个展“内容觉醒”得名自同名技术功能,并试图借此作为跳转点,探索一类正处于发展过程中的视觉文化——其中,大批图像被迅速而匆忙地生产出来;图像生产者们置传统意义上的品味与质量于不顾,只为满足各式即时性需求。

2009年,评论家Ed Halter曾在一篇发表于Rhizome.org的文章中,以“超级素人”描述以上草率炮制、即时性的图片生产风格。他表示,真正的“素人”(业余爱好者)通常都是“真正热爱”某种艺术形式,并对真正探索它怀有热情。而“超级素人”,在Halter看来,仅仅以“即时、纯粹的功能性”视角看待艺术工具;他们只是想最简单快速地制作一张能满足需求的图片。

这一类型的图像生产可以说在快照时代就存在了,但它在网络注意力经济时代才开始变得日益瞩目。对此,苗颖曾表示:“用户需要快速回应社交网站上的最新潮流,但是他们的技术有限,因此他们需要最有效率的方法,并且只要能产生效果就行。”人们通常会认为这类用户的追求太过质朴,但其实他们懂得如何在一个速度比质量和美感更为重要的注意力经济时代中生存。

事实上,质量和美感甚至会成为一种阻碍。粗制滥造的图片通常会使人感到上传者只是在网络上消磨时间,不太可能有其他目的——不会有人去用这样的图片来宣传自己的产品或美貌。正因如此,超级素人的手段变成了真实的代名词,并得以融入到主流媒体和消费文化中。这样看来,Halter在2009年对“超级素人”现象的观察在当下便显得不再那么恰当,他当时认为:“这种潮流源自审美的绝对缺失,在于图像的纯粹实用性。”但如今,审美性的缺乏恰恰成为了一类美学。

本次展览将超级素人主义融入主流文化的种种形式进行戏剧化的表现。展览的呈现与粗制滥造的广告或展销会形式有所相似,各式来源自网络的图片以拼贴的形式充斥在展厅内的幕布和屏幕上。所有的装置都是歪七扭八的——横幅在空中高低不平地挂着,灯箱上的图片总在尴尬的位置定格,荧幕上的数字图片文件也无法载入,一种幽默同时略带忧郁的氛围在展厅中弥漫。


苗颖此次个展亦对近年来世界各地展览与艺博会对“后网络艺术”所展现的巨大热情有所回应。尽管时下对于“后网络艺术”的定义还颇具争议,但对此具有共性的特征在于:许多活跃于美国和欧洲的“后网络”艺术家们乐于对网络饱和化所带来的社会与文化影响进行讨论与回应。在“后网络艺术”已经变成了商业美学趣味代名词和一种(艺术家)对作品的干净熟练的拍摄记录以供在网上循环传播的现象之际,苗颖的展览提出“超级素人主义”来取代后网络这种固有的光洁和未来感;与其对“超级素人”现象视而不见,不如将其理解为一种新兴的,正在发展进化中的美学准则。



Content-Aware:

Half-Assed Aesthetics

in the Age of the Sub-Amateur


by Michael Connor


"Photoshop is going to look at your photo, and it's going to decide what it thinks should be in the area that you're filling," explains the narrator of a homemade tutorial for the content-aware tool. "And the results are sometimes pretty surprising!"


Ying Miao's exhibition 'Content-Aware: Half-Assed Aesthetics in the Age of the Sub-Amateur' takes the eponymous technology as the jumping-off point for an exploration of a visual culture in which images are produced hastily, without much regard for traditional ideas of taste or quality, in order to serve some immediate, temporary purpose.


In a 2009 essay for Rhizome.org, critic Ed Halter described this style of hasty, expedient image production as "sub-amateur." He argued that true amateurs are usually "true 'lovers'" of an art form, who practice it for passion. The sub-amateur, for Halter, sees artistic tools "in terms of pure and immediate functionality." They want to make an image as quickly and easily as possible.


This type of image production has existed in some way since the first photographic snapshots, but it has become increasingly visible in the online attention economy. Users "need to respond to what is trending fast on social media," as Miao observes, "but their skills are limited, therefore they have to use whatever is most efficient; whatever works." It might be tempting to see these users as naïve, but this isn't the case—they know that survival in the attention economy depends on speed more than quality or taste.


In fact, quality and taste even get in the way. By editing an image in a clumsy, sloppy way, you show that you're just a person with an idea and a few minutes to kill online. You couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive—you would never be so careless if you were trying to sell a product, or convince someone of your beauty. Because of this, the sub-amateur approach became a marker of authenticity—and then was incorporated into mainstream media and commercial culture. Thus, what Halter observed of the sub-amateur in 2009 no longer holds: "The fascination comes from the absolute lack of aesthetic property, in the pure use-value of the image." The lack of aesthetic property is now an aesthetics.


Dramatizing the incorporation of sub-amateurism into the mainstream, the exhibition resembles a badly produced commercial convention or retail display, with collaged, internet-sourced images displayed on assemblages of signage and screens. Nothing works properly. Banners are crumpled, rotating displays stop in the wrong place, and digital files to fail to load, evoking an air of humor and melancholy.


Miao's exhibition comes in the wake of an enormous wave of interest in "postinternet" art in exhibitions and fairs around the world. Though the term's definition is contested, postinternet artists often responded to and narrated the cultural and societal effects of internet saturation, particularly in the US and Europe. Postinternet art became associated with commercial aesthetics and slick photographic documentation circulated online. In place of this slickness and futurity, Miao's exhibition offers a sub-amateurism, and demands that it be understood as a set of new and evolving aesthetic conventions rather than their absence.



麦克·康纳是纽约新美术馆(The New Museum)旗下成立于1996年的非营利数字艺术平台Rhizome的艺术总监,主要负责平台的项目策划执行、期刊出版、在线展览、艺术家项目委任以及策划Rhizome数字艺术文献库等。康纳同时作为客座助理教授在纽约大学Tisch艺术学院摄影与图像部门授课。他主要围绕数字艺术及科技的审美意涵相关的一系列广泛课题进行教学与写作。


他曾为众多机构策划展览,其中包括Yarat(巴库)、Cornerhouse(曼彻斯特)、The Museum of Moving Image(纽约)、ACMI(墨尔本)、Bell Lightbox (多伦多)、FACT(利物浦)以及 BFI Southbank(伦敦)等。他的近期写作包括一篇由MBCBFTW约稿的文章(Christoph Merion Verlag, 2016)、一篇讨论艺术家吉姆·坎贝尔(Jim  Campbell)的文章、一篇收录于《Abstract Video》(与Johanna Gosse,加州大学出版社,2016),讨论杰米·布莱克(JeremyBlake)的文章等。2014年,他的写作亦被奥马尔·哈利夫(Omar Kholeif)编辑的文选集《You Are Here: Art After theInternet》(Cornerhouse出版,2014)收录。


Michael Connor is Artistic Director of Rhizome at the New Museum, a digital art non-profit founded in 1996. He leads Rhizome's events program, journal, online exhibitions, and artists' commissions, and curates its digital art archive. Connor is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He lectures and writes widely on topics in digital art and the aesthetic implications of technology.

He has curated exhibitions and projects for Yarat (Baku), Cornerhouse (Manchester), the  Museum of Moving Image (New York), ACMI (Melbourne), Bell Lightbox (Toronto), FACT (Liverpool), and BFI (London), etc. His recent writing includes an essay for MBCBFTW (Christoph Merion Verlag, 2016), an article on artist Jim Campbell, and a text on Jeremy Blake for the anthology Abstract Video (with Johanna Gosse, University of California Press, 2016). In 2014, his writing appeared in the anthology You Are Here: Art After the Internet, edited by Omar Kholeif.



苗颖是一位居住在因特网、局域网和她的智能手机上的艺术家。她的作品对主流科技和意识以及它们如何改变我们的日常生活和时代有着强烈警觉。2007年,苗颖学士毕业于中国美术学院新媒体系,2009年硕士毕业于纽约州立大学阿尔弗莱德艺术设计学院电子综合艺术专业。

她的作品曾在柏林KW当代艺术中心(2016)、第56届威尼斯双年展中国馆(2015)、OCAT上海馆(2015)、广州时代美术馆(2015)、北京中央美术学院美术馆(2015)、网络(“错位—新电子艺术双年展”,2015)、北京尤伦斯当代艺术中心(2014)、奥地利林芝国家美术馆(2011)、台北当代艺术馆(2008)和上海美术馆(2007)中展出。2016年苗颖获得“艺术8青年艺术家奖”提名,2015年获“艺术新闻亚洲艺术贡献奖”提名,并于同年入围“第三届华宇青年奖”。


Miao Ying is an artist who currently resides on The Internet, the Chinese Internet (the Great Fire Wall) and her smartphone. Her works have a strong awareness of mainstream technology and consciousness and its impact on our daily lives. She received her BFA from the China Academy of Fine Art’s New Media Arts department in 2007, and her MFA from the School of Art and Design at SUNY Alfred University, with a focus in Electronic Integrated Arts in 2009.

Miao Ying’s works have been exhibited at KW institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin 2016), the Chinese Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (Italy 2015), OCAT Shanghai (Shanghai 2015), Times Art Museum (Guangzhou 2015), CAFA Art Museum (Beijing 2015), Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (Beijing 2014), State Gallery Linz (Linz 2011), Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei 2008), Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai 2007) and The Wrong—New Digital Art Biennale (online 2015). In 2016, she has been nominated for Prix YISHU 8 Chine2016. In 2015, she was nominated for the TANC Asia Prize and the 3rd Huayu Youth Award.

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