The Emerging Web of Art

 

(The Internet in graph form, image source: http://pigeonsandplanes.com/2010/12/thoughts-on-net-neutrality/)

Big Data. You've probably heard the term thrown around a bit, perhaps more and more often in the last year or two. Big Data refers to collections of data which are so large that they cannot be processed by using traditional hands-on, human-operated database tools. Instead, algorithmic analysis of the data and advanced adaptive neural networks provide a means of allowing the automation of this immense dilemma of data processing. According to an article in The Economist magazine, data analysis techniques such as these are being used to reveal bits of useful information from these mountains of Big Data, using correlations in order to do things such as "spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions."

A visualization of Wikipedia edits, (source: IBM)

If you haven't yet read my blog post from a few weeks ago which began to discuss the merits of a data vs. art, I encourage you to go back and take a look at it now. But if you're too lazy to do that, I'll give you the gist of that post. When ideas are allowed to influence ideas indefinitely, an illness will occur in which the Data enforces itself upon the people: this is, of course, not natural.

So back to Big Data. Once again, I have no issues with the idea of trying to analyze and define and quantify every little thing in this world, which is really the goal of Big Data. But that word, "thing" is all that big data can ever hope to organize. But there is more to life than things, is there not? What about sensations, perceptions, impulses, consciousness? These are not "things." Market data, scientific research journals and statistics, legal citations, traffic records: these are all things. There are enough names already. One must know when to stop.

Big data is great. It takes all these words and numbers collected on this world wide web and uses it to create visualizations and other, almost "artful" depictions of the database graphs and charts which one is accustomed to seeing. This is a good thing. 

But the true meaning of this global network is not words and numbers, rather, it is about the people behind the information. Who made this data? Why did they make it? What did they make it for? When and where was this information created? These are the true answers we should be searching for. What feelings, perceptions, and impulses lead millions of users to a website such as, say, Facebook every day, while there are hundreds of websites out there which get nearly no traffic at all?

It is also interesting to note the effect this global network has on contemporary art. Everyone knows that art influences art, and one will often hear people note that "no art is original." How much more so is this now true! Every day, artists can wake up in the morning, get on their computer, and see hundreds of new works of art which have never seen the light of day before, using sites such as tumblr.com and deviantart.com. This is a global collaboration of art on a major scale. New styles, techniques, and genres are being developed at a rate which was previously unheard of. In sculpture, in fabric, in drawing, in painting: every work from every medium is being brought into this global database of feelings and sensations. My contemporary art professor frequently professes to the wonders of the "connected classroom," and it is only getting more and more connected by the day.

So, how shall we refer to this self-recursive organism of art influencing art on a global basis? For lack of a better term, I will refer to this phenomenon as "Big Art." In a sense, the job of connecting all this art from Big Art into a cohesive understanding is accomplished by each individual artist, in their own way, in their own mind, on a frequent basis. But every mind has its limits. Could this task be supplemented by algorithmical analysis similar to the methods used in the processing of "Big Data"? I do believe it is possible.

The main task is this: the underlying paradigm of computing needs to be revised. In order to deal with "Big Art" on a massive scale, one must focus on relationships. This shift is already occurring in some ways with the advent of relational databases. Pandora internet radio is already putting into use much of the philosophy I've covered in this entry. Pandora is an individualized radio station, which plays songs that it thinks you will like based on the songs you have already enjoyed. For instance, if you tell Pandora that you enjoy listening to music by The Beatles, it may play a song for you by the Beach Boys, since both of these songs are from the same musical genre and era. The more you use the service, the more it finds out what you like: anything from, say, the "minor-key tonality" or "upbeat inspirational songs." This relational attitude toward human sense-data is a concept which needs to be further explored. It is truly an exciting topic, because this has not existed on a immediate, global scale before.

 

Snapshot of the Million Masterpiece Project

(Source: MillionMasterpiece.com)

Large-scale collaborative art projects are also being taken on in this new frontier. Websites such as www.millionmasterpiece.com are bringing together many, many different artists from all over the world in order to create a singular masterpiece. Once again, this is only one of the many new and exciting possibilities being opened up by this Emerging Web of Art. It's all about a global paradigm shift from an attitude of facts and figures toward an attitude of relational data.

I'll close with the rough sketch I drew that inspired me to write this piece. It represents my attempt to explore the connection between those natural, universal laws(expressed here in the "Aum" symbol, traditionally representing the beginning, duration, and dissolution of the universe in Hindu philosophical texts) and the advent of electricity, and all that is associated with it, such as the global interconnected network of computers(represented here by the Ohm symbol, referring to Ohm's law, a foundational formula which is used when calculating the flow of electrical current between two points.)