The Medium is the Massage: Online Exhibitions
You’ve probably heard of Marshall McLuhan. Perhaps even on this blog. He was the forward thinking media theorist whose ideas critiqued the embodying effects of technology. How devices like the radio, television and telephone each contain their own perceptual properties which define the experience of the user.
These ideas have translated over the following fifty years of technological innovation. Through the repetitive swipe of the finger on a smartphone which in turn, changes the brain’s sensory-processing area (1). Through the promise attached to the alluring notification stimuli that continuously chime into the patchwork of one’s daily routine. As a consequence of Covid, many areas of daily societal practices are now experienced through the medium of the screen, changing the conditions of how we view culture.
Over the past week, I’ve been scouring the internet for different methods and approaches in presenting online exhibitions. I was pretty excited to see that Art in Flux had designed a virtual exhibition Art in Flux: Media Arts Now (2020) (2). Throughout lockdown they’ve curated some fantastic multidisciplinary events, giving me the unusual advantage of attending London based art experiences from my home in Northern England. As media artists themselves I expected an exciting design and concept.
Unfortunately I thought the exhibition was a little flat. It took the form of a simple simulated white walled gallery, devoid of personality or intrigue. As a design, the artworks and accompanying information were pretty accessible through their orientation and presentation. Perhaps even the most successful I’ve experienced in comparison to many of the other virtual exhibitions where you end up frozen in space, lost or unable to return to the ‘gallery’.
My issue with the format was that it mimicked the form of a physical gallery, presenting the artworks through ‘pure’ uninterrupted experience, a form common in real life space. But is this what we want when accessing art online? A flat screen is a very different entrypoint and window into an exhibition experience, and will always fail to create a reproduction of physical space. If we orientate the internet differently from how we walk around a room, then perhaps it would be more fitting to explore and capitalize upon the simulation of digital experience.
One virtual exhibition which I found achieved this commentary was the 2020 Pixsel Festival exhibition, The Future Narrow Pixsel (3). Instead of replicating a museum space, the exhibition draws upon the aesthetics of the web. Before entering the space you create an avatar, which quite cleverly begins your transition from a person sitting at a computer to a character entering a virtual setting. The simulated environment is like nothing from real life. It references the digital landscape of gaming, virtual worlds such as Second Life, the DIY nature of Minecraft. It’s clunky, dystopian, chaotic and alluring.
Accessing artworks was less smooth than in Art in Flux: Media Arts Now, but the journey and immersion in this imaginary world was enticing enough to inspire visitors to stay. It felt reminiscent of the moment where you first pick up the console for a new game. At the beginning your movements are jagged and uneven. Your first attempts to engage with other characters or objects are often failures. But the little wins and the unknown territories waiting to be explored are what make this experience inviting.
Another example of an online exhibition which I felt to encapsulate the behaviour and experience of the internet is Real-Time Constraints (4) by arebyte. The exhibition is accessed by downloading a Google Chrome plugin, enabling the artworks to appear randomly on your screen when you least expect it. The overall effect is that the artists are hijacking your online activity, taking on the attention grabbing form of the medium it critiques.
I often ask myself; what makes an online artwork memorable, and not just another digital image amongst the hundreds that you have consumed that day? This exhibition design did exactly this, as it took your focus through surprise. I must admit that it meant my engagement with the artworks wasn’t particularly deep as they often caught me when I was engrossed in a task, and on one occasion whilst in a meeting. But this was the point that the exhibition was making. How often does an unwanted notification or advertisement pop up and distract you? Perhaps art can hijack your attention too.
Upon reflection of these three exhibition experiences, it is obvious how an exhibition medium is essential in telling its story. In some cases this was deliberate, and in others it was ignored. Either way, it is the integral component which connects audience member to artwork, and it sets the condition of viewing which either retains or loses one’s attention. In this era of technologically centric cultural experiences, we must remember that the medium is truly the massage.
