An Introduction to LiveWire
Cheap, powerful computers capable of manipulating high quality digital
images threaten to supersede traditional chemical based photography much in
the same way that photography itself sounded the death knell of painting in
the mid 19th century. With the rapid growth of the global information
network known as the Internet, it becomes clear that the new technologies
represent a potential paradigm shift for the production, dissemination,
distribution and consumption of artworks.
LiveWire was conceived as an attempt to engage with this shift, inviting
electronic artists world-wide to submit artworks via the internet or on
computer disk to form a show that exists simultaneously on the internet
and in a physical space. What is striking about LiveWire is how readily and
intuitively artists are now using the new technologies to make coherent
artworks which fly in the face of traditional modernist notions of
knowledge, purity of technique, originality and even post-renaissance
vision.
Electronic imaging has a focus, indeed an emphasis on process: an open
intervention by means of electronic tools for combining, altering, and
scaling that are as essential for the digital artist now as the paintbrush
and easel were for the oil painter. Conversely, the fragility of chemical
photography meant that the alternatives explored by the likes of John
Heartfield and Jerry Uelsmann would always be the exception to the rule.
With digital imaging it becomes the norm, images which seek to maintain a
homogeneous photographic realism are still based upon a transformation of
digits, removed from any link to indexical reality, effectively destroying
all that remained of photographic authenticity.
The production of digital works which has a non-object status is becoming
common for an increasing numbers of artists. Audio, graphics, images and
moving images converge into the hybrid known as multi-media, breaking the
traditional purity of disciplines, created to be seen in a transient
electronic form. What then for notions of originality when every digital
file copied is an exact replica of the first? The internet is providing an
arena for artists wishing to step out of the confines of the gallery system
to produce artworks that can be consumed simultaneously round the world
while the artist maintains control over its dissemination. What now for
issues of copyright?
Clearly new methods of production engender new methods of consumption,
making former cultural values seem outdated and irrelevant. LiveWire
scratches the surface of an art practice where the rules may be profoundly
different, and demonstrates the potential of artists combining the computer
with information technology.
