#Online Public Spaces

[alcrego]

Digital walls, but walls

I encourage you to have a seat and read this little 'essay' I wrote back in 2014 if you really want to understand what I'm doing today. I would be really grateful and I'm sure you'll have a much better understanding of my whole work.

Digital walls, but walls

On the way to space and public art | came across the digital walls. They can be "painted" but they also have the function of limiting, of delimiting, of separating...

A change of paradigm has been happening for some years now with the arrival of the internet, which has completely changed some aspects and concepts that have to do with the world of art and more specifically with urban art or public art. From the beginning, this type of art has been carried out in public places with the aim of being observed by anyone on the street and thus making it free, accessible and free from any premise or institution when it is created. (not considering the "warlike coexistence” with the advertising).

The appearance of the Internet has changed it. A vast majority of the art is seen online on a screen, what questions that the street is the natural canvas of this art discipline. While it is for the one who creates the piece, it is almost never for the one who looks at it. Public spaces are no longer just physical, in the same way that the plastic arts are no longer just plastic.

Due to the access to technology and its cheapness, nowadays it is inconceivable to think of art without considering the whole digital sphere, whether as a tool, a method of creation or of dissemination. But at the same time, all these centuries of art history condition the understanding of art, sometimes acting as a burden in terms of understanding what art is.

The dragging of already preconceived ideas and the weight of the genetic inheritance makes us repeat concepts about what art is and was. In the face of such a rapid change of paradigm, it seems that we find it difficult to understand that this whole new digital world is still the world. Both virtual and augmented reality are also reality, but the fact that it is appreciated through a screen sometimes causes it not to be considered as something artistic or even real. Thinking that way we could say that looking at a piece of art on the Internet does not have its complete experience, since we are not seeing it in the place for which it was devised, and neither are we perceiving it in a direct way, but with a screen as an intermediary. But at the same time, I think about all the content that we consume today with these devices - movies, series, photographs, news, and even art, current and classic - and not because of that we think or say that they are unreal.

At this point, where the analog space merges with the digital space, a new artistic expression is born that is entirely digital, where the final piece is born and ends up in the digital realm. Conceived through digital tools and deposited in the public digital space. These pieces of art suggest skipping the step of "existing" first in the ‘real reality’ to reach directly the virtual reality, which is also reality, and once from there, to have an impact on the analog reality.

It would also be curious to reflect on the parallelism between urban art and digital art, since, being in public places, both are susceptible to being stolen, altered or appropriated by other people for different purposes. And also, on the idea of anonymity, always used by urban artists to be able to work in the street without risk of infringement, and now also used in the digital environment. Either by often using copyrighted content that we find on the web (street 2.0) for an artistic purpose or by the "erosion of sharing” in which at some point someone does not credit the work, but it is still shared. In this case there should be a new word to define those people that everybody knows, but nobody knows who they are. “Famonimous" characters or the concept of "famonimity"; people or artists who are known precisely because they are anonymous.

Since the beginnings of urban art, the idea was to use public space to express oneself freely, but we must bear in mind that public space is nothing more than the remainder of the space divided by the private, the "leftovers" after the developers pass, the worthless places left open to the common people by institutions, etc., etc..... With the change of social, technological and artistic paradigm, urban art has been normalized and is now used as a method of decoration of places in poor condition, as a complement to a public road or simply as a means of open artistic expression as it has always been. Because if the initial objective was to make art accessible, direct and open to everyone, that idea has moved to the internet and, in some ways, the radical idea of urban art would no longer have that sense.

Therefore, if we understand urban or public art as a type of art accessible to everyone, free of charge and without any kind of condition, | believe that digital art fulfils this role today, since it inhabits all public places, whether analog or digital. Urban art needs this digital sphere to be able to expand and be visible. Because nowadays most urban art is seen through screens, not in the place where the piece has been created, which makes all these works more accessible to everyone at any time. And so, the ’paradox of the graffiti artist’ is born, the one who expresses his freedom in the walls that imprison him. These walls generate private spaces and what is outside them is considered public space by the mere fact of being spaces where people pass through. But it does not mean that this public space is open to intervention. Every public space is under the supervision of a privative entity, whether it is a municipality, a company or simply, the property of an individual. Public space does not exist, neither in the ‘real reality’, nor in the virtual one. It is always subject to something superior that manages it.

Within this dilemma, augmented reality becomes another alternative to the path of public art. It gives the possibility of creating art in public spaces, only seen on digital devices, and using the ‘real reality’ as the piece’s canvas. Until recently, photography and/or video were methods of capturing reality. Now, with this change of prism, these disciplines moved from being the purpose itself, to becoming raw material for the creation of other new artistic expressions. In this direction, | want to focus on the gif format. This format is strictly digital, so it gives us the option to edit, to add movement to pieces that, before, condemned to live still. We can spread in on the Internet and make it accessible to everyone at any time. When adding augmented reality, the two concepts intertwine, urban/public art and digital art, what gives rise to new artistic expressions that call into question deep rooted concepts such as museum, art and reality.

There are already many centuries researching, testing and creating the same type of art, whether sculpture, painting.... Except for the birth of new "isms" within these disciplines, it gives the impression that they are exhausted. At this point it would be convenient to think about the idea of unique work, copy, forgery, recreation... Thinking about the evolution of art we must consider that all new progress is born of the technological options that occur in each era. Nowadays, the difference is that progress happens every day, very fast, and it seems that it is difficult (or unwilling) to understand this change because of the speed of it. This cultural and genetic heritage blurs our vision and sometimes prevents us from conceiving new artistic expressions as such, since there are no previous references to support them.

But, at the end of the day, every new artistic expression, in its beginnings, was not art. "Science develops ideas that come from art that is inspired by science.” The world of classical art enjoys an aura of untouchable deity because when we are born it has always been there, but we cannot forget to think for a moment with perspective that all this classical art was created mainly by the entities of power of each era: kings, church, political powers...

This is why today (without underestimating the technique and the work of the artists) these types of classical art enjoy an invulnerability as, in the end, it was created by and for the power itself.

Then, this type of art collides with the urban and/or public art, along with digital art. In the public and digital space those who decide what is "art" are the people.

I am sure that the first Cro-Magnon who used a tuft of horse hairs instead of his own hands to paint was seen as an art/magic/belief apath.

Now we live in a new paradigm shift, but in this case it is not local or national, it is global and immediate.

A. L. Crego, 2014.

[sonknuxadow]

theres absolutely nothing wrong with being an adult who enjoys childrens media i would be the biggest hypocrite in the world if i said that there was. but i think some adult sonic fans need to be humbled. please look at the age ratings on anything sonic related. go to the kids clothing sections at target and see all the sonic stuff. if you have little cousins or nieces and nephews ask them what they think about sonic. please. because the way you think the sonic fandom is for adults only and get mad when you run into minors there is so embarrassing. the way you get mad over certain sonic media being too childish even though kids are the target audience is so embarrassing

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

it's annoying as hell to have my disability blog blocked by like 75% of radical disability tumblr because i don't believe in the anti-scientific concept of mind-body dualism, specifically because my specific disability outright disproves it entirely as my "mental" and "physical" symptoms are one and the same (and make me almost entirely incapable of existing in public, and therefore broadly unable to build friendships and support networks offline). good job building community for isolated housebound disabled people who need it, y'all. 10/10.

[necrotic-nephilim]

i’m feeling messy. for the new ask game, 5 :)

for the choose violence ask game!

5. worst discord server and why

of COURSE you would choose to be this messy, you lil rat. <3 i will be kind enough to not name the server, it's a general Batfamily server i found on Disboard. most Bafam discord servers tend to be... anti leaning so it's something i sort of expect, but this one has a "ship advisory list", including ships you're not allowed to share media of (like fanfic or fanart) and if you discuss the ship you can be told to stop talking about it. and there were the typical ships you'd expect like Joker/Harley, BatJokes, and ofc a "no proships" umbrella ban. but some of the ships fucking baffled me. like canon ships were on this list. ships i to this day can't figure out why they'd be banned. the top ships of the list that just *got me* in terms of "... what is bad about this ship???" were

DickBabs

DonnaDick

Barry/Diana

Barry/Dinah

JayRose

Catwoman/Penguin

Talia/Bane

some of these i didn't know were shipped in the *first place* but even if they are, i can't fathom what's wrong with them. some of them are canon, normal ships? like what did JayRose do wrong. it's one of Jason's healthier relationships. and DonnaDick somehow gets me the most. my only guess is that antis heard them referred to as the Wonder Twins and thus decided the ship was incestual. bc otherwise how. why. i laugh everytime i think about DonnaDick being problematic.

on one hand i do think it's fucking hilarious of a list and it always makes me laugh bc i cannot fathom the mentality. but on the other hand it is sort of depressing that so many public social platforms for discussing the Batfam are becoming *so* anti-leaning that ships can be banned simply bc the mods of the server decided they were problematic for some unforeseen reason. it was the biggest depiction of "i don't like this ship so it's problematic" i've ever seen. like where does the goalpost stop moving? when does it somehow become problematic to ship things in general? it was wild even for anti stuff. truly the most baffling server i've been in.

[crawlingwithmagg0ts]

[groundrunner100]

Don’t forget to reblog your FAVORITE starship!

[clareguilty]

Wanted to make a funney post on Tumblr.com but i dont want to confess to a felony/misdemeanor on my fanfic smut blog the world is so mean to me :c

[shedidntevenswear]

Tis the season where I am once again shocked that grown adults need to be reminded that:

Public transportation, INCLUDING AIRPLANES, are for the public and even though your ticket cost a lot doesn't mean it magically turns into a private space where you are entitled to upmost comfort at the expense of everyone else.

Children are human beings and therefore part of the public and have just as much right to be in public spaces and it's insane to expect parents of young children to just drive cross country or not travel at all to be with family for the holidays because it might annoy some people for a few hours.

If you don't have noise-cancelling headphones in the year 2023, human noises (coughing, crying, talking at a reasonable volume, laughing, etc) from other members of the public that bothers you on public transportation is your own damn fault at this point.

[kaurwreck]

the vast majority of jokes that y'all insist are jokes are evidently jokes. but they're the same joke, scraped from surface impressions and regurgitated iteratively. there's humor beneath the outermost layer, too, and you're allowed to be clever, it's not illegal.

[trans-xianxian]

I think we gotta start recognizing that "things accepted online/in leftist spaces" and "things accepted by the general public in the real world" are two very different things. like no actually gnc men are Not suddenly seen as okay because there are drag queens on tiktok. men are still beaten and harassed and ostracized and Killed for being feminine. in the us. in my very liberal city full of ppl with blue hair and pronouns I am made to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome for being a gnc guy. the tiktok comments on videos of men wearing make up are not indicative of the beliefs of most people

[noodledesk]

new public has a new digital spaces directory - for anyone interested in "a jumping-off-point for further exploration and research for anyone who’s interested in studying, building, stewarding, or simply using digital social platforms" !

[blocksruinedme]

Jimmy may have a bad memory but he is a CLEVER and hardworking boy

who pays very close attention to how other youtubers do things, and takes notes, and works so hard, and now he has 810k subscribers because he knows how to do it.

(well, sometimes clever and always hardworking)

context:

If anyone wants my spreadsheet just lmk. my data mostly came from the youtube wiki and MaxData's visualization of new life smp members' subs numbers. oh, i'll include that!

Jimmy was at 609k when new life started in may 27. he made a (lovely!) pink house.

Twenty one days later he's gained 201,000 subs.

Between cpk and pix now probably, having jumped ahead of oli & pearl.

Y'all when people talk about jimmy being dumb, watch and think how much is an atrocious memory, and how long is not being quick to understand things. If he settles in and works at it! If he's in a group event in mcc and not individual! If he has a strong team captain in mcc who he can listen to! (he's said the last one is how he succeeds).

Jimmy can fucking do it, just in his own way - and he doesn't care to put a lot of effort into learning some things that some viewers want. As I barely care about minecraft, I do have an interesting perspective here! <3

Jimmy can't just get by on his minecraft skills plus his winning smile, comedic timing, charisma, and skill at social rapport and interpersonal... okay I've made it sound like a lot but he has some brains. Those brains just don't know the recipe for... things I also don't care about.

Jimmy Solidarity. You appreciate him. Good.

[beautiful-songbird]

Hey yeah so I'm not usually outspoken on this blog but if you disagree fundamentally with something I reblog or say you are allowed to just unfollow me or ignore the post. You don't need to write a paragraph calling me or the person I reblogged from an idiot just because they disagree with you. In fact, I largely discourage it. I am not online to fight with strangers.

[eternal-reverie]

got the posting anxiety bad tonight

[cosmicvenusnebula]

I just saw an anti-homeschooling post saying all parents who do that are bad parents.

What the fuck is wrong with people. I go to online school, my classroom is my bedroom. My partner is homeschooled, their teacher is their mom.

When I went to public school, I had so much anxiety, I am neurodivergent and got all F's in public school. Now I get all passing grades.

Public school sucks, it doesn't teach your kid how to socialize, in fact right now they are teaching the exact opposite! So many schools right now are teaching kids how to play dead!

Bulletproof sheets are being put in kids backpacks.

Public school is dangerous, and the government ain't doing shit to fix it.

There is definitely parents who keep their kid inside all day, but those kids ending up uninformed isn't an issue of homeschooling. It's an issue of abusive/neglective parents.

Homeschooling saves live's when its done right. It saved me from suicide, and it's saving hundreds of kids from bleeding out in their classroom and making one last call to their parents.