Conference paper, Friday, October 19th, 10:15 a.m.
Peter Weibel: Web 2.0 and the Museum. The Noah’s Ark Principle
Two things are achieved with this work: all visitors have their own artworks, their portraits, in the museum, and all visitors can see themselves in the museum, as the subject of a portrait. Andy Warhol’s silk screens work in the same way as classical painting, showing only the rich and the beautiful. They court the celebrity cult of the yellow press and tabloids. They profit from the masses, but don’t serve the masses. When a museum exhibits Andy Warhol, it clearly states that it likewise places itself at the service of a certain media aristocracy as an expert of the elite. After the political, ecclesiastical, and military aristocracies, the majority of today’s art serves the media aristocracy, that “leisure class” of rich and famous who are made famous via the glossy photo magazines, Illustrierte in German, (famous=illustrious). Today it is a media aristocracy for whom museums do the groundwork. Yet now, through the Internet, the democratic promise of photography can be redeemed by giving all citizens the opportunity to have their own artworks, their portraits, in the museum and at the same time, to appear as artists and portrayed subjects. It is clear that the Internet has cultivated an ideology of participation, of so-called “sharing.” This culture of participation, where all beholders, all users, give their part, is the continuation of that which I called participation. Recipient culture has risen to become a culture of participation, where fair exchange actually occurs, not only symbolically, but in a material way.
That can be intensified even further, of course, when, as already mentioned, ZKM enters into this three-dimensional virtual model that we know from Second Life. Even if Second Life were to disappear in two or three years, what will remain is the model that we have of three-dimensional immersive virtual worlds that can be visited and played with by lots of people around the whole world all at the same time, so-called multi-player worlds. In the past, one stood in front of an artwork—alone—and could simply press on a button. Interactivity was reduced to a singular or individual interactivity. Computer and online games then made it possible for several players to play together at the same time. The Internet is now also the dream of many artists because of its unique quality of being a multi-player medium. Many beholders, many users, can simultaneously create an artwork together there. And in these new, virtual model worlds like Second Life, a lot of people enter into a space where there are already other people, and they can interact. Also in the real museum, it will be possible to enter into a virtual space as an avatar and communicate with other avatars. In the museum, visitors wouldn’t speak to another directly; in the virtual museum they would. When people are at home and want to introduce something into the museum, they will see that other people have also introduced similar content, and then they’ll communicate about it. In that way, the museum will no longer be a locally bound event in space and time for a lone individual who confronts an artwork as a lone individual, but instead, this individual will participate in an act of sharing and communication. He or she will take part, will share something with others. The museum itself will, ideally, become a platform where people speak with one another and discuss the artworks, topics, etc. that interest them.
That is, clearly, a departure from “Heuratischen”, which will not please a lot of people, but it is also a revolution in which the amateur, the “idiots,” the consumers—that is my key word—can emancipate themselves for the first time. That means that consumers attempt to become experts.
Until now, in the competition for the masses’ attention, museums have oriented themselves on the mass media of television and newspapers. They have become vulgar. Museums that have attempted to become mass media have sold out on the masses and not served them. For example, when you see shows like “Germany is looking for a Superstar,” then you are experiencing a worst case scenario in entertainment. It is implied that everyone has the chance to become a star, but in reality, a horrific selection process is carried out similar to the one in the high cultures of the past. In reality, you are simply seeing horrid, practically sado-masochistic mechanisms with which young people are thoroughly tortured, simply in order to say that only one survives, the so-called Star. That is the classical Noah’s Ark principle. No democratization takes place here, but instead, the continued creation of an aura, of the elite. How can we escape this? Museums can become a medium for the masses by entering into an alliance with the Internet, whereby the museums and the Internet act as service providers, as distributors of messages, as providers for the audience’s “content” (Krämer 2001).
In this sense, the actual enemy of the museum, which shares in the Internet, is not only the Feuilleton, the classical German feature article, but the real enemies are the providers. Providers provide us with the technical infrastructure and we are the “content,” the deliverers of content. Online, one is dependent on the provider. However, the provider has no interest in the content, but rather, in the quantity of users/visitors. The number of users is, namely, what determines the platform’s commercial value. When media mogul Rupert Murdoch buys MySpace for 580 million dollars, then it is only because of the many millions of users. That is a peculiar situation in my opinion, actually, an illegal one. In this Internet world, the situation is such that the provider makes the Internet platform available, the factory hall, so to speak. Then the workers show up, the consumers, who go to this website and work on it—but they aren’t paid for that, on the contrary, they pay. When someone communicates on the platform as consumer and is the three millionth user, that is the net product. The infrastructure is not worth anything per se, the online activity comprises the value. Added value online does not have to do with products, the activity of sharing is the added value. That is where classical economy switches to net economy. The user is the beginning of value creation. Only, it can’t be the case that the one who is the added value has to pay for that, and someone else earns monstrous sums of money for that. This means that we have a legal loophole here. We are still a bit in the position of slaves, only this time around it is a consumer dependent on the benevolence of a provider. In many cases, providers are people in the business solely for the purpose of exploiting their consumers. They don’t even understand what these consumers are doing or the cultural contribution that they make through their telecommunication technology. It is difficult to make such people understand that digital culture, as well as the connection of museums and the Internet, should actually be promoted and furthered. The State, too, is naturally not concerned, neither is the EU, since both are driven by the interests behind the providers. And that is one of the museum’s main problems. Digital archiving costs a lot of money and requires a great deal of personnel and up to this point we have not been given a signal from either the state or the economy that they have any interest in this form of digital archiving, in this form of digital platform.
Thus, on the one hand we have the possibility of a little cultural revolution that sets up a new culture of sharing in and with the museum. On the other hand, we have strong, organized powers that see the whole thing as simply accumulation of their profits. If we are not able to clarify this issue in public, then it won’t be possible to make full use of the opportunity for cultural renewal with and through the Internet. And what that amounts to is gambling away a chance for culture and education. Choose your world, choose a museum in the Internet era, choose a museum as a mass media, as multi-player medium.
Literature
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