TL;DR - Memetics as the instigator of a new artistic movement
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Descripción: Royal Academy of the Arts Bachelor thesis on the influence of internet memes on the art world and vice vers...
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TL;DR
Memetics as1 the instigator of a new artistic movement
Mikhel Maes AS 4 Bachelor thesis
Table of Contents Contents Glossary Foreword Introduction to Memetics Slenderman; a case study Internet Art Memetics as Art Meme Artworks Ecce Homo Grass Mud Horse Art memes Meme art
Conclusion Sources
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Glossary 4chan: An English-language imageboard website. Users generally post anonymously, with the most recent posts appearing above the rest. 4chan is split into various boards with their own specic content and guidelines. 9Gag: An image-based social media website which centres around user user-uploaded, -uploaded, comical images. The website is mainly known for recurring use of internet memes. Advice Animal: A type of image macro series featuring animals of some kind (including humans) that are accompanied by captioned text to represent a character trait or an archetype that ts the role of a “stock character” Creepypasta: Urban legends or scary stories circulating on the Internet. ‘Digital campre stories’ Emoji: The Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese electronic messages and webpages. Although typically only available in Japan, the characters and code required to use emo ji are, thanks to the nature of software compatibility, often present in many phones’ software. Image Macro: An image superimposed with text for humorous eect. Internet Meme: An image, hyperlink, video, picture, website, or hashtag that rapidly spreads from person to person via the Internet. Lolcat: An image combining a photograph of a cat with text. The text is often idiosyncratic and grammatically incorrect, and its use in this way is known as “lolspeak.” Millennial: The generation following Generation X. Born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. Rage Comics: A series of web comics with characters, sometimes referred to as “rage faces”, that are often created with simple drawing software such as MS Paint. Remix culture: A society that allows and encourages derivative works by combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product
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Reddit: A social news and entertainment website where rusers submit content in the form of either a link or a text. Other users then vote the submission ‘up’ or ‘down’, which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site’s pages and front page. Slenderman: A creepypasta meme and urban-legend tale created on June 8, 2009 by user Victor Surge on the Something Awful Awful forums. Something Awful: A comedy website including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and media reviews. Tl;dr: “T “Too oo long; didn’t read.”, meaning a post, arti arti-cle, or anything with words was too long, and whoever used the phrase didn’t read it for that reason. Also used by someone who wrote a large posts or article/to show a brief summary of their post as it might be too long.
Foreword During my time as both an art school student and a member of the Teletekst is dood collective, the internet has been a big inuence in my research and work. Especially the exchange between physical and virtual is something that I really enjoy studying. The shift from consumer to ‘prosumer’ is one that I nd extremely interesting. The internet oers both accessible tools and an open platform for creativity. This makes it not only easy to get work out there, but also oers incredible ease for collaboration. Probably one of the most noticeable outcomes of the internet as a creative platform are the so called ‘memes’. Easily shareable images, videos or stories that grow, mutate and evolve. Small pieces of culture that trigger people to add, change and remix in order to communicate their own message. Memetics are strongly interconnected with my graduation work about the ‘Creepypasta ‘Creepypasta’’ communicommunity. A community of (often anonymous) short horror writers and creators of internet legends. Or modern day campre stories, as they sometimes describe it. Often, these stories become memes by themselves, such as for instance the Slenderman, the Rake and Lavender Town Syndrome. The memetic theory has oered me excellent inin sights in how and why these stories spread and grow the way that they do, helping me not only with collecting and analyzing the stories, but also in writing a few of my own. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz on the internet about the artistic value of memetics. (setup.nl, hu ington post, the verge et al) Since most memes are denitely about creative expression, this is a very interesting discussion. The new possibilities for collaborative work and the ease of sharing and editing gives us a whole new dimension of creative output. As both a researcher and an artist, I am extremely interested in this new wave of internet artists. Therefore, the main question I ask myself in this thesis is: What is the inuence of memetics on the world of
art and what are it’s possibilities possibilities of shaping the art world in the future?
TL;DR: I’m an artist that likes the internet and memes and I write about this because it gives me a chance to look at funny pictures on the internet and call it ‘research’
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Introduction to Memetics
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Wikipedia oers us the following explanation of the memetic theory: “Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selsh Gene. It purports to be an approach to evoluevolutionary models of cultural information transfer. The meme, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a “unit of culture” (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is “hosted” in one or more individual minds, and which can reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual inuencing another to adopt a belief is seen—when adopting the intentional stance—as an idea-replicator reproducing itself in a new host. As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian inter pretation, a meme’s success may be due to its contribution to the eectiveness of its host. (...) ‘Condescending Wonka’, Wonka’, a typical t ypical internet meme.
Susan Blackmore (2002) re-stated the denition of meme as: whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators in the sense as de ned by Dawkins. That is, they are information that is copied. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods. The copies are not perfect: memes are copied with variation; moreover, they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Only some of the variants can survive. The combination of these three elements (copies; variation; competition for survival) forms precisely the concon dition for Darwinian evolution, and so memes (and hence human cultures) evolve.” The focus on memetics this thesis however lays on the way the internet and it’s ‘remix culture’ are crecre ating an ideal environment for memes to spread and grow:
‘Lolcats’ , one of the biggest an longest running memes on the internet
“Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends. (…) Recently remix has been expanded to ininclude music and sound, as well as moving and static images take from lms, television, the Internet, per sonal archives and elsewhere.” (Knobel and LanksLankshear - Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization)
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What we see here is a very important shift in not only observing creativity, but also in the creating process. Where Where at rst, a work was usually simply ‘done’ when it was ready to go to out in the world, what we see now are a lot of creative expressions that are either unnished and dependent on the community or works that are meant to be open source and added to, changed, remixed or otherwise tampered with. This last bit is especially true for memes. “Like genes, memes undergo variation, selection and retention. However only memes suited to their sociocultural environment will spread successfully; the others will become extinct.” (Limor Shifman - Anatomy of a Youtube Youtube Meme)
‘Mr T. T. ate my balls’ , one of the rst internet memes, dating back to 1996
Due to it’s open source character, most memes are heavily dependent on quality control by the community. While this is on the one hand one of the strengths of memes, it’s also contradictory enough it’s greatest weakness. A good example of how a meme can devolve as well as evolve is oered in the following chapter.
TL;DR: Memes are the ‘genes’ of culture and often pictures of funny cats.
‘Meme expert’ meme
Slenderman
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a case study On June 8th, 2009, a photoshop contest was launched on the Something Awful Forums.The contest required participants to turn ordinary photographs into creepy-looking images through digital manipulation and then pass them on as authentic photographss on a number of paranormal forums. photograph On June 10th, SA user Victor Surge Surge posted two black and white photographs of unnamed children accompanied by two messages, one of which mentions the Slenderman: “We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horried and comforted us at the same time…” – 1983, photogphotographer unknown, presumed dead. One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is re ferred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as lm defects by ocials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph conscated as evi dence. – 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing One of the rst two original Slenderman pictures. Slenderman since June 13th, 1986. can be seen in the background between two buildings.
Slenderman quickly became a hugely successful meme, spawning dozens of stories, fan art, Youtube channels and video games. The popularity of the legend and it’s clear origin make this meme very traceable, giving us insights in how the story spread:
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Because of it’s widespread interest and popularity, the Slenderman became somewhat of a Creepypasta (short internet interne t horror stories) posterboy. poster boy. When we look at the search interest for Slenderman and that for Creepypasta Creepypasta we see that there is a signicant rise in interest for the latter after the Slenderman hype took o. We might be able to conclude that the story of Slenderman actually kickstarted the Creepypasta community into what it is now:
Blue: Search interest for ‘Slenderman’ Red: Search interest for ‘Creepypasta’
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The following fragment from an interview with the creator of Slenderman Slenderman oers some interesting interesting statements: ‘It was amazing to see people create their own little part of Slender Man in order to perpetuate his existence. I didn’t expect it to move beyond the SA forums. And when it did, I found it interesting to watch as sort of an accelerated version of an urban legend. It diers from the prior concept of the urban legend in that it is on the Internet, and this both helps and harms the status of the Slender Man as one. In my personal opinion, an urban legend requires an audience ignorant of the ori gin of the legend. legend. It needs unveriable third and fourth hand (or more) accounts to perpetuate the myth. On the Internet, anyone is privy to its origins as evidenced by the very public SomethingAwful thread. But what is funny is that despite this, it still spreads. Internet memes are nicky things and by making something at the right place and time it can swell into an “Internet Urban Legend”.’ -Victor Surge
Slenderman is often connected to the German myths of der Ritter and der Großmann.
As stated, with online content it is easy to follow the acceleration of a myth. And even though everybody can nd out through a thourough Google search where the myth originated, people are still accepting it as an urban legend and willing to believe. But why did Slenderman become so immensely popular, besides him being created ‘at the right place and time’? Why are people willing to let themselves get scared by something obviously ctional? One of the reasons is that the strong archetypical and ambigious nature of the original legend perfectly lends itself to speculation and imagination. Since it’s form and mystique draws upon a form that we’ve considered threatening since before written history,it history ,it is no big surprise that a vague story like this got picked up and grew into something much bigger. Robin Swope, a.k.a ‘the Paranormal Pastor’, author author,, acclaimed excorcist and practicing Christian minister oers us a rather sinister explanation for the above in his book ‘Slenderman, ‘Slenderman, From Fiction to Fact ’: ’: Some say the Slenderman myth is inspired by archaic archetypes of folklore, like death stalking the plague riddled inhabitants of Medieval Europe as depicted in Hans Holbein’s 16th century woodcuts of the Dance of Death. But recently the mythos and folklore has bebe gun to manifest itself itself into real life.
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(..) Is Slenderman nothing but a mythos made up on a website on June 10, 2009? Or is it an archetypical vi sion of death which stalks us all, and only a few can perceive it? Or is it a real demonic presence taking on the mythic form or formed by the mass conscience of internet readers? In his book, Pastor Swope oers us a series of perpersonal experiences and written accounts of real world Slenderman sightings and keeps elaborating on the possibility of Slenderman actually being a demonic entity brought to life by our collective fears. While I am not a believer of this theory per se (if at all) it does illustrate the power of our collective beliefs. Even though I do not believe in a real Slenderman, I do believe without a doubt that other people do, and actually believe so strongly that they envision him. The ambiguity of the Slenderman myth also leaves enough space for own interpretations and continuation of the mythology. Another reason for it’s popupopu larity, but also a reason for the possible downfall of Slenderman as a harbringer of fear. For there ever was a case of ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee’ it’s Slenderman. Within four years, the mythos has been degraded from a strong, fear instilling short story to whole sites dedicated to badly written fanction and amateuristic fan-art. This overkill of Slenderman stories threatens to neuTypical cal Slenderman fan art. ter what was once one of the most iconic stories out Typi there, leaving an overly descriptive cardboard parody of itself. Because the Slenderman fanction community is so big and so vocal, it has managed to actually put the quality works to the background, proving that memes can not only evolve, but also devolve, and illustrating how how collective quality control control is easily surpassed. This is of the biggest aws of memetics, the momoment when group selection fails and only mediocre content surfaces.
Tl;dr Slenderman was scary then the fancommunity killed him with crappy spino stories. Also, maybe actually a real demon.
Memetics as art
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Returning focus to the main question how memes are already inuencing the art world, and somesome times even becoming works of art themselves. This chapter and it’s subchapters deal with the inuence memes and art are having on eachother. In an online video from PBS’s Idea Channel (Are LolLolcats and Memes Art?) host Mike Rugnetta states the following: ‘Creating images and sharing them with strangers for the purpose of communicating personal experiences? That, my friends, is art.’ After which he proceeds to explain how Russian writer Leo Tolstoy Tolstoy wrote something similar in his essay ‘What Is Art’:
Conspiracy Keanu, a ‘reaction face’ meme, often used to mock online conspiracy theorists
“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.” What we’ve got here is a very clear defence of memetics as a form of art. Logically, statements like this cause reaction. It’s no surprise that a discussion is happening about the legitimity of memetics as art form. Internet user ‘Mikes_phone_and_tab’ oers us the following rebuke: ‘Saying a meme is a work of art is like saying whatever is trending on Twitter is a work of art. Most memes stem from what’s popular in society at the time, not from any aesthetic, aural, or any other sensory type of enjoyment.’ To which internet user ‘bmputz’ replies: ‘Memes are in fact art, they are ways to allow for dif ferent thoughts and expressions expressions to be conveyed conveyed in difdif ferent ways. The internet has merely accelerated the rate at which this style of art is created.’
‘y u no’ (why don’t you) guy, a popular ‘Rage comic’ character.
Now there is an interesting statement. ‘The internet has merely accelerated the rate at which this style of art is created.’ In the video ‘Are Lolcats and Memes Art?’ Rugnetta also states that we could describe the meme community as ‘Andy Warhol’s Factory in Overdrive’
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The current way we create and share images could indeed be the start of a new artistic movement. A movement where quantity, speed and community judgement are key factors. A movement freed from galleries, curated by blogs, tumblrs and other online social media users. Hennessey Youngman, from the popular Youtube series ‘Art Thoughtz’ gives us the following example: ‘Millennials don't want to come to a museum to just look at shit, they want to actively sculpt their experience. Maybe a static ass oil painting was something for older generations generations to gawk at (..) but but that shit don't mean nothing to millennials. The new canvas is the lcd atscreen, the new paintbrush is a smartphone. Millennials is a culture that's used to perpetual commentary. Millennials Millennials live knowing that their input has value. Perhaps a museum could create audio tours that aren't composed of art historians or curators talking about the work, but maybe these audio tours could be composed of viewer responses, removing the expert and allowing the people's voice to shine unhindered.’ Interesting point is how he uses the example of a static oil painting to illustrate the ‘old ways´, just like internet culture experts like Clay Shirky like to use examples of the printing press versus ebooks and how the newspaper industry underestimated the digital age. Acknowledging often amateuristic user generated content as ´art´ might be a scary thing for the established art world. But so was Duchamp´s Fountain. It´s easy to dismiss something if it threatens to break a status quo that is protable for a large group of people. But the freedom and autonomy the internet gives its users to create, share and even get successful without needing the conventional systems might have just as much impact impact on the art world as it has on other established industries such as the music business. I will speak more of the debate about whether memes are art in the nal chapter. Tl;dr: Memetics are art. No, memetics are not art. But maybe they are.
HENNESSY YOUNGMAN, AKA MR. AKA’s, AKA THE PHARAOH HENNESSY, AKA HENROCK THE MONARCH AKA MR MUSEUMS.
Internet Art
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When we talk about the possibility of memetics as an art form, or at least as an inuence on the art world, we do need to take a quick look at Internet art in general.
The Sheep Market - Aaron A aron Coblin A collection of 10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Workers Workers were paid 0.02 ($USD) to “draw a sheep facing to the left.” Animations of each sheep’s creation are archived on thesheepmarket.com
Untitled
by totti.toni99 God has been good to me in my afiction, and sent me a blessed comforter. with others. with others.
Spam Poetry Institute An organization dedicated to collecting and preserving the most poetic email spam messages, or, as they call them: Gems of imaginative composition
‘Internet art (often referred to as net art) is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the view er is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work of art. Artists working in this manner are sometimes referred to as net artists. Internet art can happen outside the technical structure of the Internet, such as when artists use specic social or cultural Internet traditions in a project outside of it. Internet art is often—but not always—interactive, participatory,, and multimedia-based. Internet art can participatory be used to spread a message, either political or social, using human interactions. The term Internet art typically does not refer to art that has been simply digitized and uploaded to be viewable over the Internet. This can be done through a web browser, such as images of paintings uploaded for viewing in an online gallery. Rather, this genre relies intrinsically on the Internet to exist, taking advantage of such aspects as an interactive interface and connectivity to multiple social and economic cultures and micro-cultures.. It refers to the Internet as a whole, not micro-cultures only to web-based works.’ -Wikipedia on internet art. Internet art is a relatively new movement, and more importantly,, the internet is a relatively new medium importantly so it still needs to nd it’s place and establish itself. But I still think it is odd that we use a medium as an art form. form. It would be equally absurd to simply consider both Picasso and Van Gogh as ‘canvas art’ ininstead of cubist or impressionist art. This confusion is understandable though, because the internet is often both the medium as well as the location of the work at the same time. Since we are dealing with the actual birth of a medium, it’s very interesting to see genres or styles evolve. The internet art movement has given us some great artworks already, dealing with collective eort, virtual sculptures, user generated art and the use of data to create visual or interactive experiences. For now though, these are all led under the same nomenclature. Hopefully in the future, the internet and virtual environments will be just as accepted as marble or canvas.
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If we consider memetics a genre by itself, a part of the internet art movement but with it´s separate characteristics, we need to dene these charactercharacteristics. What separates Meme art from internet art as a whole are a few key features. Firstly, meme art is strongly reliant on rapid sharing and evolving. When a meme is created, it won’t launch o until people start making their own variations on the theme. This involvement from the community is extremely important. Memes are also all about quantity. The more the better. The more popular a meme gets, the more opportunity it has to enter the collective mind, up to a point where some image macros don’t even need text anymore for people to understand what they are meaning to communicate. It’s all about quick messages and emotions. Lastly, since memes are made to be shared, their curation is done by everybody that uses memes. Their exhibition exhibition is on social network sites. So, we could say meme art is dened by: • Internet as a medium • Sharing • Remixing • User generated content • Speed • Quantity • Social Network as a gallery • Collective memory/conscienc memory/conscience e
Avatar DNA, a data sculpture in Second Life - Annabeth Robinson Using the Key (UUID) of the Avatar, a unique hex based number representing assests on Second Life’s servers, the numbers are translated to virtual virt ual base pairs of a dna molecule and constructed live in front f ront of the user.
Tl;dr: Internet is a medium. We call a medium an art form which is stupid. I dene the characteristics of meme art.
A Tool Tool to Deceive and Slaughter - Caleb Larsen A sculpture that sells itself via EBay. The cube has a cord that connects it to the internet, and comes with a a contract stating that the person (listed as “The Collector”) who purchases it must keep it plugged p lugged in at all times – and sell it whenever the th e cube is won at auction.
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Meme Artworks For their eight year anniversary anniversary,, Gallery 1988 is honoring their favorite works with "Memes," an art exhibition opening today which features over 100 artists devoting artworks to the internet phenomenons that made them LOL, ROLF or LMFAO. While they may not be the most high-brow relics of contemporary culture, memes are fascinating, and because of their powerful imagery and impact on the collective consciousness, consciousness, they have recently started to receive recognition as an art form. And now Gal lery 1988 is out to show that just because memes are not serious does not mean we shouldn't take their powers seriously! seriously! -Hungton Post - 05/04/2012 As the above announcement for a Meme artshow at gallery 1888 illustrates, the art world and memetics are already intertwined. Art inuences memes, memes inuence art.
Flyer for a Meme art show in Gallery 1988, based on the ‘PTSD Clarinet Boy’ meme.
This inuence can also be seen in Memes that comcommunicate about art, as well as actual artworks based on popular memes. Two of these meme artworks are described in detail in the next two pages. Following are a selection of other examples where the world of art and memetics come together.
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Ecce Homo 80-year-old Cecilia Jiménez wished to restore a damaged fresco created by Spanish painter Elías García Martínez named Ecce Homo, which was donated to the Santuario de Misericordia Church in the Spanish town of Borja. Having no previous experience in restoration of any kind, she unknowingly and unwillingly created one of the most inuential works of art of 2012 according to online art magazine Artinfo: By far the biggest art meme of the year, and quite possibly the greatest meme of all 2012, was triggered by an admittedly very unfortunate accident: Amateur Spanish art restorer Cecilia Gímenez’s attempt to x a damaged 19th-century “Ecce Homo” fresco at her local church in Boria spawned “Beast Jesus,” an incomprehensibly comprehensib ly cartoonish, childlike, monkey-ish, terrifying, and vaguely vegetable-shaped likeness of the Christian savior. The ensuing propagation of “Beast Jesus” images, videos, merchandise, and pop cultural crossovers quickly made Gímenez’s accidental masmas terpiece one of the single most iconic artworks of the recent past.
From the original to the ‘restored’ Ecce Homo.
On August 22nd, a Change.org petition was created, urging ocials not to remove Jiménez’s restoration, restoration, calling the botched painting “daring” and looking at it as an example of the Expressionism art movement. As the image’s popularity grew, helped by this online petition in support of Giménez’s Giménez’s work, thousands of visiters have been to the church to see ‘Beast Jesus’ for themselves, nancially supporting the church by doing so. Budget airline Ryanair even got in on the act, laying on a special ight to Zaragoza airport:
‘Dolan’ is an MS Paint web comic series featuring a variety of poorly drawn Disney cartoon characters
El responsable del departamento de Marketing y Ventas para España de Ryanair, Luis Fernández Mellado, asegura que la compañía está “encantada” de lanzar una oferta especial Eccehomo para viajar a Zaragoza a partir de 12 euros en los meses de octubre y noviembre. - La Vanguardia
Tl;dr: Old Spanish woman messes up Jesus paining. Internet proclaims it art. Happy Bob Ross meme featuring the Ecce Homo
Grass Mud Horse
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‘Gangnam Style’ is a hit single by Korean pop artist Psy which became a hugely popular meme, up to the extent where the original video was the rst one ever to get over a billion views on Youtube, inspiring thousands of parody videos. One of the Gangnam Style parodists is notable Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who made a Youtube video dancing to the song and renaming the work ‘Grass Mud Horse.’
The combined sign for ‘Grass Mud Horse’
The term ‘Grass Mud Horse’ is ‘a Chinese Internet meme widely used as a form of symbolic deance of the widespread Internet censorship in China. It is a play on the Mandarin language words cào ni mā, literally, "fuck your mother"’ (Wikipedia) mother"’ (Wikipedia) When we look at Weiwei’s earlier works, also often having something with Grass Mud Horse in the title, it is easy to consider his parody as another protest to Chinese censorship. However, However, Beijing based author Anthony Tao Tao oers us the following critique: One might be tempted to argue that Ai Weiwei, meta genius that he is, is, is giving the middle middle nger to Chi nese authorities who desperately want to push soft power. By not creating creating substance, even even though he is in a prime position to do so, he is telling viewers that creativity cannot be forced, and certainly cannot be pushed by the government. government.
A still from the th e original Gangnam Style movie
But then why is it only on YouT YouTube, ube, broadcast to everyone except those in China? No, Ai Weiwei Weiwei is not say ing F-U to Chinese authorities, or censors, or anyone here. He’s merely relling his cache of cool with the Western world, reminding his Western fans and Western journalists that he’s a good guy who “gets it.” He gets it because he knows how to dance on an invisible invisible horse, and hey, that’s something you like, right? Hereby illustrating another issue encountered in meme-art. Can Can a silly joke, even if performed by a well known artist, be considered art?
A still from fr om Weiwei’s Weiwei’s version of Gangnam Style.
Tl;dr: Meaningful parody or just Weiwei having fun? Also, Chinese censorship.
Art Memes ´Art School Owl´ A Meme functioning as a platform for art school students to share experiences about life on the academy
‘2deep4u’ Used to indicate that the content in question may be too profound or obscure in nature for its audience to appreciate. It is often used as an indictment of arrogance and pretension in the hipster subculture, or as a sarcastic defense of a particular genre in music or visual art
‘Junior Art Director’ A meme originally created by designer Jamie Gurnell, making fun of ‘social media strategists’
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#EmojiArtHistory This meme (..) launched after Brooklyn-based artist Man Bartlett saw a Tumblr post of texts recreating the work of famous artists out of emoji. Inspired, he posted his own emoji emoji version of artist artist Chris Burden’s Shoot (..) on Twitter Twitter on Monday (the 11th of Februari 2013) night, adding the hashtag and sparking a new art-geek meme. Soon serious art-world types like the J. Paul Getty Museum , the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Tate were getting in on the action, sending their own emoji-lled tweets. (..) The instant popularity denitely surprised Bartlett, but he adds that the speedy nature of Twitter — as opposed to Tumblr — mixed with the new(ish) art form of emoji storytelling storytelling created a lightning-in-alightning-in-abottle moment. -Angela Watercutter - Wired Wired Magazine
Meme Art Jim McKenzie - Willy Visual artist Jim McKenzie in front of his painting ‘Willy’, in which ‘Condescending Wonka’ makes fun of the painting he is in. This sort of ‘meta-humor’ is popular in well established memes.
Bud Caddell - Keyboard Cat Acrylic painting of Charly Schmid’s ‘Keybo ‘Keyboard ard Cat’, a video uploaded to YouTube in 2007, 2007, which to this date has nearly 30 million views and spawned numerous memes.
Ryan O’Sullivan - Nyan Cat Acrylic painting of the ‘Nyan Cat’ meme by Ameri can painter Ryan O’Sullivan. Nyan Cat is another cat oriented YouTuve video with over 30 million views.
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Joanna Zhou - ‘Ecce Homo KidRobot’ Kidrobot is a designer toys company that sells vinyl gurines. Often notable artists, mainly from the grati/street art scene (such as Shepherd Fairy and Jamie Hewlett) contribute paint-jobs for these gg ures, making them well sought after collectibles. This one depicts the Ecce Homo in it’s restored form.
Aled Lewis - “First World Problems” In this canvas artist Aled Lewis combines the ‘First World Problems’ meme with the well known visual style of Roy Lichtenstein.
RagePaints - ‘Socially Awkward Penguin’ Etsy user ‘RagePaints’ does commissioned paintings of memes, such as this Socially Awkward Penguin.
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Conclusion In this thesis I’ve tried to give a clear picture of the inin uence of memes outside of the internet. But we still need to answer the question whether memes could be considered a legitimate form of art. Of course, it is not up to me to answer this question, but during my research I did come upon quite a few cases for, and against, memes being an artform. For now, some of the most valuable points against memes being art are it’s lack of quality control, the lack of artistic vision in most of it’s creators (since communication is the focal point instead of artistic expression) and a strong lack of exclusivity and tactile feedback. A meme, even if it’s really clever, is still accessible for everybody. Nobody owns it. You can print a copy of your favorite Lolcat and frame it, but that does not make you the sole owner, or even the owner of a limited edition of the work. But is limitation a denition of art? Especially in this time, where more more and more goods are are virtual, how important is having a physical copy of something you like? When I purchase works of art (mostly pho tography) I do it because I like to support the artist. Because I want that person to make more beautiful works. And of course I immensely enjoy having these works on my wall. But being the only one that owns it? I couldn’t care less. For me, owning a good book, a great record or a beautiful painting are the same things. I like to look at those possessions I own which are manifestations of creative output and enjoy the feeling that by buying something I really enjoy I’ve also supported the maker.
Acrylic paintings of poplular advice animals
A 3D print of the highly popular p opular ‘Nyan Cat’ meme.
There is also the aspect of objects being conversation piece. It pleases me greatly to talk with guests about my collection of photography, books and records. But I also enjoy talking with people about the things I virtually ‘curate’ on social media such as Facebook and Tumblr. The dierence between these things that the latter is a eeting collection. But that’s typical of the world wide web, everything goes fast, you blink and you miss it. However, with 3D printing on the rise, a whole new level of collaborative and customized customized creativity creativity is accessible. In just a few years, it will be possible to download and print sculptures at home for example. With the likes of Je Koons paving the way for reprorepro ductions of objects as an art form, it is easy to envision consumer 3D printers becoming a big inuence on the art world.
A 3D print of ‘Forever Alone Guy’
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‘Business Cat’, an ‘Advi ‘Advice ce Animal’
I am sure there are still a lot of people who get great satisfaction from owning a strongly limited item. But I can’t help but think that the Millennial generageneration, and especially the generation after it, will pay less attention to exclusivity and more to actual appreciation. The generations generations that not only grew up in the physical world, but also in the virtual world. That world where everything is accessible. Where you own everything yet nothing. So, are memes a new art form? In their current form, perhaps not. However, the whole concept is based on making it easy for people to express themselves in a creative manner. Training people to read and express emotions with as little words possible. ‘The medium is the message’ never was any more true, the same goes for ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. A whole generation is being rewired into a state where collaboration, collective eort, editing, addadding, reimagining and remixing is a second nature. I would be surprised if this state of mind would not be the birth of at least one new art form, with current memes as it’s raw rst sketches. And as is the case with the birth of most new art forms, the discussion is already happening. There are people agreeing and disagreeing. Some people are revolted by the idea, others embrace it. This factor alone gives me high hope for the next step in memetics. Hope for an artform that uses internet as a medium instead of a tool. Curated by the masses, yet keeping it’s artistic value, even if that artistic valval ue is a rewritten one. I for one will keep a close eye on the world of internet memes and where it might lead us. Tl;dr: Memes are not an established artform yet, but might be. The internet is awesome and is redening the way we percieve things, including art.
The ‘Batman slapping Robin’ meme, perfectly illustratillustrating that we’ve come to the end of this thesis.
Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics Richard Dawkin - The Selsh Gene Michele Knobel & Colin Lankshear. Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization Limor Shifman Shifm an - An Anatomy of a YouTube YouTube Meme Kate Miltner - SRSLY PHENOMENAL: An Investigation Into The Appeal Of LOL LOLCATS CATS http://knowyourmeme.com/ http://www.somethingawful.com Pastor Robin Swope - Slenderman, From Fiction to Fact PBS’s Idea Channel - Are Lolcats and Memes Art? (video) Hennessey Youngman Youngman - Art Thoughtz, How To To Catch a Millennial (Video) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I http://en.w ikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_art nternet_art Art Info - YEAR IN REVIEW: 2012’s Best Art Memes, From “Beast Jesus” to #ArtBaselProblems La Vanguarida Vanguarida - Ryanair oferta vuelos a partir de 12 euros para visitar el eccehomo de Borja Anthony Tao - Ai Weiwei’s Gangnam Style Video Is Called “Grass Mud Horse Style,” And And It’s Just As Bad As China’s Other Parodies Max Fisher - Explaining Ai Weiwei’s ‘grass mud horse’ obsession (Washington Post)
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