Copy and Paste in Art

Art conception is subordinated to the network culture. It is conceived as multiple morphogenesis based on common network denominations such as copy and paste, link reference, hyperlink, blogging, etc. Federico Soriano always talked about how the new communication systems have changed the way we collect information in everyday life. The process, for him is comparable to a person with an empty backpack gathering data as the trip goes on. It represents very well a time-collective process. This metaphor is relatively out of shape nowadays. Instead of a backpack suggesting a walk around the world it is more accurate if we call it a virtual “growing blobmesh” placed everywhere and every time. It absorbs information that may or may not be interesting at the moment but since time is irrelevant, and it doesn’t care about possible future implications, it tends to absorb more than what is optimal for human capacities. It affects the way we create. Ortega y Gasset’s phrase “I’m I and my circumstances” has an interesting second reading today. Our “circumstances” are now affecting space and time structures as they never did before. “The Artist is supposed to be a free thinker and therefore with own untransferable ideas to the collective”. Within the network culture this dogma is being misplaced with an opposite insight: the individual Artist is the same as the collective Artist since they can’t be separated anymore. Terminologies such as “untranferable” or “own” disappear from the common digital language.

We not only collect information under new complex structures but we are also modifying the way we embrace art creation. “We all collect therefore we all create” Here is a new logic within the network culture depicting another golden trophy from the Network Dream. Broad access to new communication systems connects us with an overwhelming collective package within the network. This allows new subseeds to accommodate artistic knowledge in the web for others to interpret.

Until this point contemporary art conception in the net is still made of “leftover cultures”. But on the other hand the Network Dream will give coherent data that will generate extremely powerful and optimized mixing trends. A creation process will not be recognizable if it wasn’t originated from the collective culture ruling the way information is shear. Copy and paste is a technique that exemplifies the power of digital assimilation. Good ideas exist still!! Yes. But they are shuffle immediately with disrespect to past organization strategies and deal out immediately according to inspiring strategies. In the Network Dream good ideas are for everyone to take and use (to copy and paste).