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Digital Leftovers | Art is a process > 'CRUFT'

Politically, there is something interesting about distancing the artist from all but the creation of the original algorithm, allowing the CRUFT process to automatically run on its own. The artist sets the process in motion, which then produces the new media objects (CRUFT images). The cruft process becomes a form of theater: the actors follow the same script each night, always creating a unique nuanced performance.

The algorithm is the conceptual art, and the digital images a byproduct. What is the role of the artist within this new process? Much like Walter Benjamin predicted in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, "Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice -- politics" (Benjamin 224). There is also a very democratic component to these images. There is no longer an original object to be bought and sold in the marketplace.

So how can anyone "control" this work? I license all the CRUFT images with a Creative Commons Share Alike restriction. So anyone can use these images for any purpose, including commercial, as long as they use an identical license. This then changes the relationship of the collector to the images. The notion of "owner" is called into question.

I was recently at Inwood Park, the northern-most part of Manhattan that is supposedly the location that the Dutch carried out the financial transaction to purchase the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans. The CRUFT images raise similar issues within the Museum/Gallery complex. How can one buy land from Native Americans when they did not have the same concept of ownership that we have. How can someone "own" a tree if the tree is everyones? If my images can be shared and "owned" by everyone, that fact then changes our relationship to all the art in museums that we can not "own." My art does not belong to the "art market of scarcity" artificially pushing up the value of art objects. By not being tied to that market, my art gains something else instead. It gains the democratic power of potentially being available to everyone and "owned" by no one.

works cited
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books 1969. 224.

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Robert Spahr
December 2005
New York City