When I worked in Chicago I would joke that Cubism, born of Picasso and Braque circa 1907, used to be an artistic avant-garde movement but is now the corporate way of life. Life moves on though, my engagement with corporatism a fading memory, spending far more time engaged with nature than submerged in Cyberspace, just some light blogging and even lighter traipses through Facebook these days … yet am evermore possessed by an eerie sense that Cubism has been resurrected … its apotheosis is … Facebook! And this time I am not joking.
The following exploration of the above thesis will say nothing new about Cubism per se and nothing new about Facebook per se. What is new is the metaphor of Facebook as a Cubist apotheosis, which then suggests “Cyber-Cubism” as an historically informed foundation for the artistic exploration of Facebook and Cyberspace.
After developing these themes, we will conclude by outlining a feasible computer-art installation which would present an accessible, fascinating, and profound exploration of Facebook renderings within various social strata: What does the Cyber-social space look like to people who are very different from me?
Given the millions of hours devoted to social media each day, these and other such explorations might someday inform a very important body of art.
Cubism
Cubism presented an entirely new way of “seeing,” its ultimate premise being that perception involves “more than the eye can see.” Consider looking at a woman. There are the “raw visuals,” yes, but how you process that visual information, hence what you really perceive, is very much shaped and colored by all sorts of additional influences and information such as:
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| Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon |
· Your own lifetime experience of seeing, encountering, and interacting with women.
· Cultural expectations and norms of feminine beauty, roles, behavior, etc.
· Your lifetime personal and cultural awareness of all other things feminine.
· The context in which the woman appears: what is she doing, where is she doing it, who else is or isn’t playing what role in the scene, etc.
By representing its subjects per multiple intersecting and overlapping facets, Cubism was “constructive” in rendering a perceptual complex rather than the oversimplified raw visual.
Facebook
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Pablo Picasso: Portrait of Ambroise Vollard |
A typical Facebook account contains a multitude of “subject” [the account holder] “slices” within an Information page and a personal Wall: a list of interests, attitudes, photos, a gallery of “friends,” several Wall posts written by the subject or by various friends. Each post reflects by the author’s “icon,” generally a photo or some kind of graphic. These “slices” function similarly to the Cubist painters’ various facets in projecting various aspects of a perceptual complex. As everything said here pertains to the rendering of any given subject, call it Cyber-Subject-Cubism.
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Small slice of Stephen Rowe’s Facebook Stream at a moment in time – many more posts below |
Then stepping further into Cyberspace, beyond his own rendering, each subject encounters a stream … actually a torrent of posts made by or to his friends or friends of friends: status updates, comments, inquiries, declarations, “Likes,” cloned content, links to web sites, new friend suggestions and invitations, reports on friends’ new friend formations, social games, etc. This Cyber-stream is managed by Facebook algorithms based on friend network architecture, expressed interests, recent subject behavior, etc. Beyond this managed Cyber-stream, a subject may often choose to peruse the data and graphics within various friends’ and friends’ of friends Wall and Information pages. Viewing each such information packet as a representational facet of the external world, we again see the parallel with Cubism. As this Cyber-Cubist rendering pertains to what the subject [account holder] sees looking out into Cyberspace, call it Cyber-Object-Cubism.
To summarize, Facebook offers a Cyber-Cubist rendering of each subject [account holder] which we call Cyber-Subject-Cubism, and a Cyber-Cubist rendering of each subject’s view of the external world which we call Cyber-Object-Cubism.
Implications for Artistic Exploration
The foregoing discussion has been metaphorical, but clearly suggests artists might explore Facebook [and more generally Cyberspace] through a Cyber-Cubist lens. What might that mean in practice? It is easiest to imagine two opposing viewpoints:
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Georges Braque: The Candlestick |
1) Whereas Cubism was constructive in augmenting its painted subjects’ renderings, the Cubist aspect of Facebook is destructive, its renderings tending to diminish one’s experience of the underlying human and social content. Facebook’s superficial Cyber-friendship interactions utterly pale beside “real life” social intercourse. Young people in particular are apt to know less and less of the difference, while excessive Cyber-social activity consumes time and energy otherwise available to more edifying human interaction and experience.
In this case, facets of typical Facebook intercourse might be used as were the Cubist planes, to define subjects and objects, but negatively, in ways that suggest limiting the subject and his social experience.
2) Facebook expands and enriches the subject’s universe. In this case, facets of typical Facebook intercourse might be shown as magnifying and illuminating the subject and his universe.
For (1) and (2) above, the most obvious applications would be in graphic art and sculpture, where most historical Cubist work resides, but one could imagine employing these elements along with other Facebook conventions in performance art and in conventional installations.
A more immediate application is to directly utilize unmediated Facebook renderings. The computer-art installation outlined below would present an accessible, fascinating, and profound exploration of Facebook renderings within various social strata: What does the Cyber-social space look like to people who are very different from me?
a. Set up a bank of five computers, each offering direct access to a different Facebook account with but one limitation [see (f) below].
b. The five Facebook account holders would have been solicited by the computer-artist so as to span demographic cross-sections. For instance, the computer artist might enlist a young urban working-poor mother, a top-tier university student, a middle aged middle class small town representative, a Christian preacher, and a Muslim professional.
c. These five “subjects” do not participate in the installation or viewing in any way whatsoever.
d. Instead, installation visitors sit down at the computers and surf each subject’s Facebook Wall, Information page, Facebook stream, and the subject’s friends’ and friends’ of friends Wall and Information pages.
e. The five computers then constitute a virtual, dynamic gallery of the five Cyber-Subject and five Cyber-Object Cubist renderings: What does the Cyber-social space look like to people who are very different from me?
f. It is absolutely vital that each computer session be engineered so that visitors can navigate and view its “Facebook space,” but cannot execute any change: i.e., cannot add or drop friends, post comments or links, etc.
i. The five volunteer subjects’ accounts must be protected …
ii. as well as the artistic experience: after all, the point is to see someone else per the Facebook lens, and visitor input would denigrate the integrity of the renderings.
In summary, this section suggests some ways in which Cyber-Cubism might manifest as an historically informed foundation for the artistic exploration of Facebook and Cyberspace. Given the millions of hours devoted to social media each day, these and other such explorations might someday inform a very important body of art.
Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com
