Open Art

If, as Hussey would seem to suggest, Open Art is about giving coders access to institutional or other forms of data for the purposes of data visualisation, then we have a new digital divide on our hands.

The percentage of the public who can participate is limited to those with the knowledge and skills to process the data. We should also ask if algorithmically visualised data is in fact more open, allowing for bottom up engagement in the way in which the database is structured, or if is it just another cultural artifact to consume.

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In this country, art institutions, as any public institution, must take seriously their role in shaping, critiquing and facilitating experiences in this realm. To consider how art might engage with the internet as a living space and the material impact of database culture is not as simple as crowdsourcing 'Likes', opening up the marketing data of an arts institution to coders or "injecting culture straight into people's lives" with realtime data feeds, as Hussey suggests.

If we want Open Art to be more than a passing fad, we need to think about New Curation as a form of structuring the interface between the labour of participation, or aesthetic and experiential labour, and the ubiquitous mediascapes of our time.

Boo Chapple: Open Art: why and how should the public participate?