One of the things we have discussed this semester is how the internet and web 2.0 in particular is based a lot on participation. The first two of the art pieces that I clicked on that sounded interesting and enticing to me, such as Qubo Gas’s Watercouleur Park and Martin Wattenberg’s IdeaLine where examples of how different people’s participation has led to one product. However for me they were both too cluttered for me – When I clicked on Liliana Porter’s Rehearsal piece, I liked it – and settled on that.
The first thing that stood out to me in this piece was the “Chick Solo” aspect of it. While my first instinct for Porter’s very simple assembly of chicken figurines was that it was just that – a few chicken figures put together because she happened to have them around. But looking at symbolism and applying Porter’s piece to Web 2.0 made me think that in a sense these chicks represented Web 2.0 – together they produced this musical piece but once you clicked on them separately they each sang their own tune; Web 2.0 is created from the participation or ‘solos’ from many people to create a finished product.
The introduction mentioned Porter’s focus on “questioning the boundary between reality and its representation,” but that “Porter sensed that after a certain degree of social evolution of technology, the idea that there is something real and something virtual, the surprise and magic of producing connections between these planes, would cease to be meaningful." This brought back a connection to one of the earlier readings we had this semester, discussing virtual reality, and then different realities there are. Porter’s idea that eventually it won’t be an issue, and that people will not be so excited over connecting the two, is certainly an interesting one, as everyday there seems to be a new announcement of how something has been made easier by now being available online instead of offline.
Another way that I found Porter’s piece interesting was that it used old art to create new art. In the text introduction to the piece it says the song is from an old opera and that the chicken figurines themselves are ones that Porter collected over the years, so also older than the actual art piece on the webpage. By using a simple digital medium like this, where there are not a million things going on at once, and while being interactive it is not overly so having you click on 500 objects etc, it is a good way to open up more art to people. I had never heard of the opera Rigoletto, and yet by reading the introduction and hearing the music, I learned about the opera. Overall I felt that Porter’s piece was a good example of how sometimes the simpler ways, and less flashy ways, are a better approach than trying to put out all the stops and overwhelm the audience.
