DOMENICO QUARANTA

I just posted the comment below on Gomp /arts, Will Gompertz’s blog on the BBC website. Three days ago Mr. Gompertz, currently the BBC arts editor, posted an article where he claims that he “can’t find any net-based art of note”. No surprise that this article produced a lot of rumor on new media art magazines and mailing lists…

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Domenico Quaranta, “Critics and enthusiasts”, first published in Spawn of the Surreal, July 27, 2007.

Strange enough, if I always get angry when I find a Second Life enthusiast, I usually disagree with commonplace criticism of Second Life. What am I, in the end? A wannabe critic or a shameful enthusiast?

The fact is that bot enthusiasts and censors always seem to miss the point. Take, for example, the article published by Helen Stoilas in The Art Newspaper on July 04. It is quite a good review, but it fails in applying the same attention – and the same, uncritical enthusiasm – to the galleries which sell traditional – and, usually, artistically irrelevant – artifacts to the residents; to the traditional – and, usually, artistically irrelevant – artists who re-invented themselves as avatar artists; and to those who try to experiment with art in this virtual world in not always convincing, but always interesting ways. That’s how to say that in 1996 the Internet was a great place for art because you could see that little gallery from Michigan, the photos of an insignificant Lithuanian amateur and Vuk Cosic’s CNN Interactive spoof page. Or that TV in the Sixties was enhancing art not only thanks to Gerry Schum’s Video Gallery (1969) or the Spatialist Manifesto for Television (1952), but also to the first TV auctions…
In my opinion, Second Life will become an interesting place for the art market when you’ll sell a piece not just for an handful of Linden $, but for a lot of real $. But it’s already an interesting place for experimenting with art, even if many people don’t seem to know that…
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