Oral History of Digital Art

Last week, I called my dad and asked if he still remembered telling me, many years ago, about the time he killed a chicken as a little boy. “Yes,” he said. “Could you tell me again how you kill a chicken?” I asked. “Mum has probably told you I’m writing a novel.” By then he’d put me on speakerphone, and I heard Mum call out “yes” in the background. He told me the story again. I thanked him and promised to send him the chapter so he could check whether I’d got all the details right. The next day, he texted back: “I think you’ve handled it very well.” Mum may now genuinely believe I’m writing a thriller in which animals get killed.

My sister, meanwhile, knows what it’s actually about. She got to read part one yesterday, and we talked about it this morning. Her partner was apparently listening in from the background. I heard him comment, “Looks like this is turning into group therapy.” Fair enough, I thought. So are Taylor Swift concerts. In fact, as I was trying to make sense of what had happened, I kept wondering: What would Taylor Swift do? Write it down. At least my family is having more fun with me this summer than they did last summer. Back then I was apartment hunting in Berlin, which was considerably less joyful to talk to me about than the making of a novel.

Speaking of talking to people: I spend a lot of my working life doing exactly that. At some point, during conversations with artists, I noticed that there seemed to be surprisingly little overlap between the remnants of the net.art and post-internet art scenes and the people who now call themselves the digital art community, aka the NFT space. Sure, it’s true that NFTs are often just content made on the internet for asset managers IRL who call themselves collectors but trade it like penny stocks. But that’s not the whole story. So I thought, before I simply write down what has happened over the last, let’s say, ten years, why don’t we do it together?

I've turned it into a conversation series, published by SLEEK online, with some conversations also making their way into print. Which, I'm only just realizing, sounds a bit like group therapy. It's not called Oral History of Digital Art, of course. That's the bigger idea behind it all. Actually, I probably wouldn’t call it Oral History of Digital Art anyway. I’d call it Oral History of Post-Post-Post-Internet Art. Joke. That’s a title for (my friend) Shumon Basar. I’ll have to think about it a bit more.

So far, a little over ten conversations have been published. I actually started with an essay: Why Is Beeple So Successful? Then I thought, no, I can’t do that. If I turned it into an essay series, it would just be read as my personal opinion. Bad faith argument, of course, but still. So instead, I continued with a conversation with SHL0MS, who is also interested in the circulation of images online. Ever since, I’ve been jumping between the 1990s and the 2020s, then back to someone from the 2010s. By the way, they’re all artists who have worked consistently with emergent technologies throughout their careers, not people who were active for a while and then switched to painting, or who now make films, like Amalia Ulman.

Among the things I’ve talked about with artists so far: With Vuk Ćosić, I talked about how artists in the 1990s also believed the internet could democratize the art world, only to realize almost immediately, almost the very same day, that you can’t write art history on your own. We also talked about how a community, if you want to take a more cynical view, quickly became a career springboard for a select few, and how that happened.

With Kevin McCoy, I discussed what became of NFTs, because the original idea—a paid Tumblr, so artists wouldn’t have to keep sharing their work online for free—was actually a good one.

UBERMORGEN talked about how conceptual hacks were still possible back then, whereas today artists have to compete for attention somewhere between rage bait and AI slop.

With 0xDEAFBEEF, I talked about how NFTs made it possible for artists like him to use digital conceptual art—or perhaps what we might now call protocol art—as a way into the legacy art world.

Mat Dryhurst explained why he sees himself as a creator rather than an artist, and what all of that has to do with AI and protocols.

With Trevor Paglen, I talked about how he defines digital art and everything he includes under that term. (Sorry, but no. I disagree.)

With Jonas Lund, we went back to the 2010s and talked about value in art and how it's created.

And with Anan Fries, I opened the AI chapter from an artistic perspective. We asked ourselves: Why is AI fueling a return to spirituality?

Next up is Constant Dullaart, with whom I've covered the widest time span in detail so far, stretching from the 2010s to the 2020s: from bought followers (High Retention, Slow Delivery) and fake Facebook profiles (The Possibility of an Army) to the brainrot pipeline for artists.

Who else is coming up over the next few weeks? Kevin Esherick, Maya Man, Sarah Friend, Simon Denny, Auriea Harvey, and Kevin Abosch.

Thanks for reading.

Take care,
Anika