day 78: Inspiration by moirabot (flickr)
This project is really interesting in terms of its efforts to diffuse some of the 'power', prestige and authority a curator has in terms of selecting artworks for shows and exhibitions, across a diverse social network. The works that make up ‘imaginary exhibitions’ found on The Hack-Able Curator Project website are chosen from flickr. flickr is a network that literally makes millions of artworks, (photographs primarily, although people often scan illustration, collage and other media) from both professional and non-professional artists (labels that, during my recent internet art searches, are proving to be futile), available to the public, like day 78: inspiration pictured above.
This idea of the artwork selection process as a random one is polyvalent. Works for The Hack-Able Curator Project 'imaginary exhibitions' are not selected as they typically would be for a normative art show or exhibition, based on conceptual or aesthetic merit, for example. The selection is computer generated, and then controlled by users who vote on the curator’s choices, and therefore influence the subsequent choices the curator will make. Users also have the opportunity to upload their own images into the pool, and can therefore also influence the curating process in a more direct manner.
The images are chosen by means of a robot arm controlled by simple algorithm, based on the full set of tags associated with the images.
Aleatory procedures are at play in The Hack-Able Curator, and even though we may think this project is reversing art world hierarchies, that exist between the curator and the artist, I also think that it obliges us to consider whether the premises of normative curatorial practices, are anything other than this, anything other than, random. Sometimes works appear to be randomly selected for shows, random in the sense that they are chosen just because they are considered to be "good" or "important". To me, this "goodness" or "importantness" in relation to establishing a show is often arbitrary and the reason for selecting a particular work therefore seems random. The “importantness” or “goodness” of a work is decided prior to the assessment of its appropriateness for the show's main concept or goal it is chosen for. Shows may be "randomly" created because a group of works has been selected to be in a show, for one reason or another, they are considered important to a particular movement, or to be definitive of an artist’s career, not for "a show" in itself.
The Hack-Able Curator project illuminates our assumptions about role of curators - their position and worth, within our art institutions, and the purposes of art exhibitions, which in itself, all judgments, for better or for worse aside, is particularly interesting.
4 comments:
sounds like an good project, this curator bot. though they lost me on the users getting to vote.
the idea of random people voting on combinations would be okay depending on the audience/voters.
worse case senario: have you ever seen this website?
hotornot.com
where "Visitors can vote for the attractiveness of ordinary people on a scale of 1 to 10 - or submit their own picture to be judged."
maybe a little off the point, but online judging has got an awful history!
good write up emma.
you have been posting away like made and now I have fallen far behind!
I guess getting users to vote is the way in which they seek to "democratise" curatorial decisions. But like I said in my writing, I think this just illuminates the nature of actual curatorial practice as a random selection process, anyway, nothing different to, and this relates to your critique of, users arbitrarily or randomly voting to make aesthetic judgments. I mean how can curatorial practice ever be democratic, in fact you could go far as to say, it is anti-democratic, by definition. And I guess this project is both an attempt to break from and resist this, trying to subvert normative curatorial practice, as well as pointing out the fact that it is impossible for curatorship to ever be fully democratic.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment Kimberlee! X
"To me, this "goodness" or "importantness" in relation to establishing a show is often arbitrary and the reason for selecting a particular work therefore seems random".
I tend to agree... we are dealing largely with contingent circumstances more than we are with conscious intentions in large parts of our everyday lives so it would be foolish to assume anything different in the world of curating and art. The assembly of something, a show, a performance, a story, a life, uses this flux, this BwO as its raw material.
I like this: "contingent circumstances rather than conscious intentions". I think it is closer to what I mean to say when I articulated "arbitrary, therefore seems random". Thanks! X
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