In this book, Goriunova offers a critical analysis of the processes that produce digital culture. Digital cultures thrive on creativity, developing new forces of organization to overcome repetition and reach brilliance. In order to understand the processes that produce culture, the author introduces the concept of the art platform, a specific configuration of creative passions, codes, events, individuals and works that are propelled by cultural currents and maintained through digitally native means. Art platforms can occur in numerous contexts bringing about genuinely new cultural production, that, given enough force, come together to sustain an open mechanism while negotiating social, technical and political modes of power.
Software art, digital forms of literature, 8-bit music, 3D art forms, pro-surfers, and networks of geeks are test beds for enquiry into what brings and holds art platforms together. Goriunova provides a new means of understanding the development of cultural forms on the Internet, placing the phenomenon of participatory and social networks in a conceptual and historical perspective, and offering powerful tools for researching cultural phenomena overlooked by other approaches.
Contents Introduction: Departing from an Art Platform 1: Organizing Free-range Creativity 2: Aesthetic Brilliance and Repetition 3: Organizational Aesthetics, Digital Folklore and Software 4: Geeky Publics, Amateurs and the Potency of Art Afterword Notes Bibliography Index
Biography
Olga Goriunova is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick, UK.
‘This book is extremely important. From a theoretical point of view it shows how can we discuss and analyse new digital phenomenon from a material and aesthetical point of view. From a practical point of view, Goriunova provides us with a wonderful and thick description of the current usage of the web. Although she is leaving it open to where these new tendencies may lead, she provides users, audiences and theoreticians with workable tools and methods with which to analyse current movements.' - Annet Dekker, SKOR