World Wide Art

Some people must think that 6 episodes isn't enough for Star Wars. That would explain why a few George Lucas fans started the Star Wars: Uncut project. These guys cut up episode 4 into hundreds of 15-second clips, then asked people to chose their favourite scenes and to reshoot them anyway they wanted, until an entire new film was born. The point I'm trying to make here isn't that there is a cult of the movie out there, but that the internet has become a common tool for the creation of art today.

Aabid Dhamani, a young 3D animator from Pakistan, is the proud creator of one of the home-made clips selected for the final cut. For him, participating in the project was a way to get his work out there without having to step out of his house in Karachi. "Internet has finished the discrimination and has established great ways to communicate with the rest of the world easily," he said. "It brings all the artists closer and the collaborations more productive."

American dad Ben Hallert also worked on the project. With no previous experience in animation, and mostly doing it to spend some quality time with his kids, he said he knows this project "is something huge."




"The internet can bring people together based on a common interest, not just geographical closeness. Twenty years ago, an amateur film project like this would be limited to a much smaller audience who were physically near to the organizer. Star Wars:Uncut, on the other hand, had contributors from almost every continent, age bracket, income level, and more."

Collin David, another huge Star Wars fan, made the "Luke at the bar" scene in 3D animation. In his version, Chubbakah looks more like a shoe box than the furry monster we've all imitated at least once in our lives. "The internet's been an amazing networking tool when it comes to art," he said. "It's enabled collaborations and the spread of ideas at an incredible speed and breadth. Artists are fielding influences from everywhere now, from the most well-known art guy to really talented, innovative people that just haven't been discovered yet."

Making the art scene more open. This is one of the many ways the internet can change art as we know it, and what websites like Rhizome.org hope to achieve. The project started in 1996 as a mailing list for artists to discuss the use of the internet in their creative practices, as well as the general impact of the web on culture. Today, Rhizome is an established organisation which supports the creation of art that engages in technology. It recently paired up with the New Museum in New York to serve as their digital art department. Their website features a database of thousands of web art pieces from all over the world.

"I think the internet impacts almost every aspect of contemporary art, whether it's researching art history, ordering supplies, facilitating communication, publicising or distributing artwork, finding other artists to collaborate with," explains Nick Hasty, the director of technology for Rhizome.

"We support this type of art by providing a venue of exposure for artists working outside an largely entrenched art world, and thus broadening people's expectations of art, and hopefully bring broader attention to the important and culturally pertinent issues and ideas surrounding this field."

Many others have taken a shot at this. Like the Aether9 project, which goes further than cataloging web art and actually produces it. Their objective, according to team member Manuel Schmalstieg, is to achieve new types of art, by mixing existing forms of audiovisual art with current technical tools. "There are many one-to-one audiovisual communication tools, also a few one-to-many tools, but it's very difficult to achieve many-to-many communication. So our project is a practical and artistic attempt to solve this problem."

Through its website, the project explores the field of realtime video transmissions to tell stories from different parts of the world.

"What is most significant to me," explains Manuel, "is that Tim Berners-Lee originally conceived the internet as a read and write medium, where every user would have the ability to write, therefore to create. This philosophy was quickly dropped by the main browser producers. Fortunately it's been returning with the rise of wikis and content management systems."

One obstacle for artists, he says, is that wikis and the like are often text-based. Audiovisual artists still struggle to incorporate a fully collaborative approach to their creations.

For Christiaan Cruz, another member of the Aether9 project, their best production remains their 7-7-7 video, an online audiovisual performance recorded on July 7th 2007 by eight musicians in different parts of the world. "The project seems to function best as a global interactive jamming forum. Much like jazz functioned in post-bee-bop Europe when all the great masters migrated there and shared a musical dialogue with collectives of musicians."

This brings us to music and the internet. Obviously Myspace has revolutionized things in terms of putting your stuff out there and exchanging tracks, advice or contacts. The internet has fathered huge success stories like the rise of the French electrorock band Phoenix, who posted their first tracks free of charge on their website. In a recent interview with VBS TV, Vice Magazine's online television channel, they admitted they thought nobody would care and the songs would go unnoticed. "Actually, people cared, which was a very, very nice surprise." As their first album started to takeoff on the international scene, a school choir in New York recorded a version of their track "Lisztomania" and put it on YouTube. The video spread and has now been watched over 400,000 times. "When we saw that, we cried," the band said.

But it goes much further. Band members of the rock band Bright Spark Destroyer actually met via the internet, after bassist Joseph Rowan and drummer David Adams had each put up an add on Drowned in Sound, a popular alternative music website. "On the internet, you've got a much larger pool of people," explains band member James, "so it's easier to find people on the same page musically. Maybe at first you don't have the same personal chemistry that you might have with bands formed between close friends, that takes time to develop."

David and James started exchanging e-mails and demos in November 2009, and didn't meet in person until February 2010."I was putting online videos of myself playing along as I knew I wanted to get a visual aspect across too," says David. "I think that sold it to James. I know a couple of bands who have recently grabbed great new drummers judging by their performance on an online video to one of their songs. It’s an odd way to do it but I think you learn a lot about someone from watching them tape their own drum faces."

Without the internet, James says Bright Spark Destroyer simply would not have existed. A point to which they all agree. "I would have still been playing in the same band in my home town, very depressed," says David. "The internet broke down the walls of physical distance. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to build on our initial relationships so quickly, or work on our music in such meticulous detail."

From their admin to their tour dates, everything is done via the internet. They get to know their audience with web stats, and then connect with those fans through Facebook and twitter. "We have used it from privately sharing music between us, commenting and rewriting songs, sending stems to producers, servicing music to journalists, as well as a bunch of front end stuff such as distributing and marketing our music across our social platforms."

Some websites have made it easy to jam live with perfect strangers or remix other people's songs. eJamming connects two to four musicians in live sessions where they can create new music, arrange it and record it. "These are musicians who may have never met before much less created music together" explain co-founders Alan Glueckman and Gail Kantor. "And they can come together from four different continents and collaborate in real time."

"Bands who find it hard to schedule rehearsal or creative time can log into eJamming to write, arrange and rehearse together without having to hire a rehearsal studio, lug their gear somewhere, or find a convenient time to gather together."

Last year, more than 900 people participated to the making of an opera solely by tweeting on Twitter. Users were asked to tweet in lyrics using the hashtag code #youropera, and Twitterdammerung was born. The Royal Opera House performed it in September 2009. You can make your own opinion about this by clicking here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQZQvs4qSpo&feature=PlayList&p=1EDBA755A0F6C308&playnext=1&index=45) , but just know that a guy at The Telegraph actually said it was "watchable, listenable and rather funny".