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for the author-trio embodied by the machine, the artist and
the computer specialist. In this manner, this retrospective
loop institutes a fully symmetrical distribution of roles for its
three partners: the artist (who initiates and reacts to the
process), the visitor (who actualizes the different versions of
the dispositiv), and finally the work of art itself (which unfurls
and manifests itself when in contact with the multiple “handles”,
intentional or automatic). The dispositivs of Net Art
contribute in this way to erasing the barrier which separated
in two distinct entities the producer and consumer of artwork.
Neither truly rational, nor prohibitively determined, the
viewer actively develops possible “handles” into the image
and the work of art which he/she will be able to undo
(Duguet, 1988) or redo. Potential, this is therefore only visible
when actualized or, to use the language of the initiated:
“performed”. And in the course of this symmetrical process,
the work of art, jointly activated by the program (the
machine) and the actors of the interactive process, find
themselves raised to new functionalities. This type of artwork
embodies, at the same time, the medium, the source
of information and the environment where the “interactivities”
and the “interactions” spread and weave the relationships
between the “agents” involved in the creative process.
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1. Regarding the organization of Des Frags, which can
be found on the server of the Centre International de
Création Vidéo (CICV) http://desfrags.cicv.fr, where
it was created in cooperation with computer specialst
Sébastien Courvoisier in 2000.
2. This project was the object of an ethnographic study
seeking to understand the processes of artistic conception
shared between artist and computer specialist.
The main results of this work were presented in
the article: Fourmentraux, J.P. L’œuvre Net Art,
l’Artiste et l’Informaticien: le partage du processus
créatif. “Archée”, 2002. http://archee.qc.ca
3. This word is “dispositif” in the original French text
meaning, literally, “mechanism” or “device”. Long
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The Escape of Artwork
mistranslated as “apparatus” in the field of Film
Theory, this term would be better defined as the
situation made up of both the cinematic apparatus,
or mechanism, and the subject implicated in its
functioning. The question of this mistranslating is
explored in Melita Zajc’s essay, The Concept of
Dispositiv: Studying Technology in Terms of its Use.
Because of the All Yet-To-Be-Written User Manuals
(which can be found at the IWM website:
http://www.iwm.at/p-jvfcon.htm) who chooses to
invent the term Dispositiv to avoid this very problem.
In this text, this term will also be translated as
dispositiv in order to avoid confusion. (TN)
4. Barthes, Roland. (1975). En sortant du cinéma.
Here we encounter a paradox, constituent of the state of systematic
instability created by this type of artistic dispositiv. On
the one hand, the obligatory nature of the interactivity that is
present here multiplies the public’s opportunities to appropriate
these dispositivs: who activate the artwork only to the
degree to which it activates them. This ideal of symmetry raises
the collective participants to the level of “co-authors of the
process.” However, on the other hand, this procedural and
evolutionary attribute plunges the work into a contradictory
state of symptomatic incompletion, which neutralizes every
idea of enunciative property. And, as could be imagined, the
incessant participation implements consecutive layers of
data which, in mixing, blend and become anonymous, the
“work’s content” escaping from its initiator as it escapes it’s
secondary participants. In this sense, the inaugural act of delegation
“autonomises” a dispositiv which must “live its own
life” freed from all forms of influence in order to become a
work of art. In the end, it is truly this apparent paradox of
expending the possible “handles” and the non-appropriation
of the result which constitutes the mecanism of Des Frags.
This impossibility of control over the work and, jointly, “closure”
of the creative process, compose the sine qua non condition
of its development and, by extension, its existence as a
work of art.
Communications. Reprinted in Le bruissement de la
langue: Essais critiques IV, Paris, Le Seuil, 1984,
p. 407-412.
5. Continuing the research of experimental cinema or
of video art in this respect, the experiments of Net
Art question what constitutes the work of art and
violently shakes the roles and functions attached to
them.
6. The experience of Net Art is shared by a double
logic of “constraint” and “randomness” deployed by
the ‘dispos’: (1) writing/code/machine being often
opposed by, (2) unpredictability/appearance/distortion
by the public.
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Timescape, 2002