IRC-Galleria

Art as we know it has existed for a few hundred years and gone through various socio-historical changes -- now, we are often talking about the end of history in various contexts, art included. During the past few decades contemporary art has undoubtedly experienced certain ideological and formal changes, which have a direct connection to technology and the above-discussed concept of representation. About hundred years ago, modernism famously aimed to make art less elitist and more accessible for anyone by proto-conceptualizing art through manifestos and movements, attacking towards the classical, back then traditionalized understanding of art. Exhibition of art shifted from bourgeois salons to the white cube, which has remained as the dominant form of exhibition space until the contemporary times -- elitism was not wiped out, but it took a different disguise. Also postmodernists were concerned about somewhat similar topics, but whereas the US became the centre of art, art became more complex and less accessible to the general public partially because of the risen importance of art theory. At the latest then, concepts such as representation (simulation), originality and connectivity have been under constant discussion and argumentation.
As the internet has become a part of the ‘real’, online artworks and exhibitions have become significant parts of fine art, challenging its historical and institutional tradition in a completely unseen manner. Domenico Quaranta writes, similarly to the views of Hito Steyerl (see chapter 2): “Art takes place in a playground where the internet exists as a component part, as is the case on any other level of our lives. Simply put, the relationship between reality and its online mirror has changed to the point where the real and the digital have merged into a single thing.” (Cornell & Hartel, 425) Boris Groys compares the effect emergence of the internet has had in arts to the invention (and popularization) of photography roughly a century ago: ”Instead of reproducing and representing images of nature, art came to dissolve, deconstruct, and transform these images. The attention thus shifted from the image itself to the analysis of image production and presentation. Similarly, the internet made the museum’s function of representing art history obsolete. Of course, in the case of the internet, spectators lose direct access to the original artworks—and thus the aura of authenticity gets lost. ” (Groys, 2013; pg. 18)
Whereas the so-called ‘flatness’ was once a popular and celebrated quality in early postmodern art and especially painting, (in)famously pushed forward by Clement Greenberg and his followers (Dix, pg. 4), the term has now made its return into the core of contemporary art. “The digital image is supplanting the art object. All works, regardless of their material constituents, are flattened, scaled down to several hundred pixels. Consequently, the digital photographic image can be understood as the homogenizing, ubiquitous medium of our era.” (Abrams, pg. 1) At the same time, the function of the gallery space (white cube) is transforming: it is no more the dominant space for viewers to see the exhibition, but it provides a necessary, institutionalized context and a “photographic backdrop” for the online deliverance of the exhibition. (ibid, pg. 2-3) Natalya Serkova, the co-founder of Tzvetnik, a popular internet platform for exhibiting art, refers to Abrams’ findings about contemporary art and poses certain questions regarding the ‘actual existence’ and documentation of physical, white-cube exhibitions, which we encounter daily in social media, with a reference to the development of photo editing programs: “... are you sure that were you to step by the gallery at any given moment, you would be able to see the show in its actual physical form and in exactly the form and the shaper in which you beheld it on your computer screen?” (Serkova, pg. 1) She finds that the virtual spaces used to (re)present the art objects are becoming more real than the physical ones, but as well generalizes them to be less informative and more unreliable. (ibid, pg. 5) Ultimately and perhaps not surprisingly, she states that “The best of these images join the class of Internet memes, and their reproduction is enhanced and prolonged in time.“ (ibid, pg. 6)
In the past few years, websites such as Serkova’s Tzvetnik (http://tzvetnik.online), promoting experimental artistic practice, as for instance the so-called off-site shows, has become an important internet platform especially for the younger generation of artists, who do not necessarily have much experience, contacts or recognition in the art world. The featured exhibitions are often held outside of the traditional white cube-spaces and other institutional sites, making site-specificity a central part of the integrities of the exhibitions. In Tzvetnik’s case, exhibition documentation is the most important matter regarding the accessibility of the featured art pieces; some of the featured exhibitions were not necessarily open to the public or easily approachable, but the representations of them are made approachable on the internet. Because the platform is easily accessible and trendy in the post-internet artistic sphere, getting featured on Tzvetnik can be even considered as more valuable than having an exhibition in a traditional gallery space.
Contemporary artists such as Tilmann Hornig and Paul Barsch are inspiring and as well vanguarding examples of the ‘off-site phenomena’; they often hold exhibitions in spontaneous spaces, as for example in a moving limousine (ATPDiary, pg. 2) and then circulate the documentation photographs on the internet. The artists created a web-based platform called New Scenario, which exhibits artworks in the same manner; the documentation becomes the new original. In their words: “The online exhibition can practically last forever. The New Scenario platform is more like an archive where one can always go back to and watch a show. [...] The physical installation, that what used to be the exhibition becomes the production site and what used to be the documentation becomes some sort of exhibition. It’s far more complex than that, but in easy terms there is this shift. The production lasts half a day, the exhibition can be on forever.” (ibid, pg. 4)
Somewhat similarly to the ideas of Tilman Hornig and Paul Barsch, a notable artist creating works based in the virtual environment is Martin Kohout. However, some of his early projects, such as “Watching”, consisting of hundreds of webcam videos, uses Youtube as its exhibition platform and as a point of reference instead of websites specifically designed for showcasing art. In all of the videos, the viewer sees Kohout staring at his computer, watching different videos on Youtube and reacting to them. The titles of the videos give the viewers direct information about what Kohout is watching and the sounds in the background come from the videos he watches, giving the viewers an index and proof of his action. Whereas he uses a nickname ‘martin0kohout’ and reveals his ‘real’, offline identity, he gives the viewers a certain kind of image of himself virtually, and at the same time puts himself into a vulnerable position -- anyone can comment on them behind a nickname, without revealing their identity. The project plays with Youtube’s algorithm: Kohout’s videos pop up when the Youtube users are searching for the original videos he watches in his videos; not surprisingly, some of his videos have thousands of views and dozens of hateful comments. However, because his Youtube profile has a link to his website, it becomes clear that the profile is an art project, which keeps on going through constant deterritorialization through the actions made by other Youtube users. Nonetheless there would be no more new content added by Kohout to the profile, the social media as an exhibition platform attracts other users to give the videos new meanings.

The word ‘meme’ today usually refers directly to internet memes, especially in every-day language, which at its part demonstrates the power of the internet in terms of language. Because internet phenomena are relatively new, also internet memes “still miss out on the rich interpretative and critical work being done if the lure of their name is to be followed.” (Goriunova, 57) The original meaning of a ‘meme’, created by biologist Richard Dawkins, refers to genes especially in the context of culture, and their “structure, mechanisms of distribution and survival, productivity and fecundity” are alike. (Denisova, 6) However, Denisova states that the theory of Dawkins lacks a clear explanation of the function and characteristics of memes, consequently being under constant, interdisciplinary critique today. (ibid, 6-7) Viral images or videos are often falsely treated as memes by the general public, even though the only transformation they went through in the virtual space was contextual, for example used as reaction images on image boards or as shared content on social media platforms, leading to their virilization. In 2013 Dawkins himself referred to his work The Selfish Gene in the context of internet memes, pointing out that the original meaning is not that far from today’s understanding: “...when anybody talks about something going viral on the Internet, that is exactly what a meme is” (quoted in Milner, 21) Logically, internet memes are often compared to biological viruses because of their similar, transformative and contagious qualities. Even though similarities to the ‘classical’ memetics, especially with matters such as genes and reproduction are visible, internet memes cannot be straightforwardly put in the box of memetics. Olga Goriunova considers internet memes as singular, “technoaesthetic methods of becoming, whether of subjective, political, technical or social phenomena.”, stating that this kind of becoming is not only about collective copying, but also has qualities connected to “novelty, aesthetic work and diversity.” (Goriunova, 57)
The contradictory relationship between myths and logic have been an important topic of discussion and debate since the ancient times. As for Groys, the death of God marked the rise of design, neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty notes that religion and science have enjoyed a state of quasi divinity: in the 17th century we tried to substitute the love of truth with the love of God and in the 18th century we attempted to substitute the love of ourselves with the love of scientific truth. (Rorty, 21) As the world is increasingly connected to the internet, the world also speaks about the return of myths. (Lucero-Montaño, 1) “The extraordinary developing and differentiation of the cultural spheres (science and technology, economics and politics, etc.) has exhausted and collapsed a substantive reason.” (ibid) Internet memes are perhaps the most notorious examples of contemporary myths and they as well touch upon the ancient concept of mimesis to the extent of the fact that memes are often based on the ‘reality’ outside the virtual realm, and into which they also have a counter effect.
Plato’s allegory of the cave is one of his most famous examples and certainly a central metaphor of Western philosophy (Rorty, 2000; pg. 5) In simple words, by creating a myth of the cave, Plato wants to point out “how the use of reason can free us from the shackles that keep us in the dark cave of the world of appearance, a cave in which we can only watch shadows pass along a screen, and can lead us out into the true world, where objects are seen as they really are, irradiated by the light that streams from what Plato called the Good.” (ibid) Even though Plato hails for reason in his allegory, the cave itself operates as a myth. By communicating through myths, Plato uses it as a metaphorical tool, making abstract terms easier for people to understand. Internet memes operate likewise, however, the internet’s non-linearity and non-materiality make them more effective; they can as well be used to educate, but their creators do not necessarily need to undermine their credibility. Fundamentally, the sensation of anonymity that the internet provides makes it easier for people to share more. (Bargh & McKenna, 2004) “The reason why it is now possible for Darryl from Accounting who hates “social justice warriors” to have the same communicative power as a television network is down to the DNA of the medium: speed and lack of gatekeepers. Memes thrive on a lack of information – the faster you can grasp the point, the higher the chance it will spread.” (Haddow, pg. 10)
Again, for the reason that the internet can be considered as real as the physical, it is evident that viral memes have a strong ability to have an effect on the offline world, especially through language. If perceived through the neo-pragmatist glasses of Richard Rorty, it can be said that the internet has now become a prominent part of nature, which “does not offer us a universal language to speak”: it functions as an additional space of (re)creation of language, without the restrictions of physicality. Rorty famously considered poets as the most important users of language, since they are aware of its imperfection and especially the role of contingency; only the act of making metaphorical redescriptions corresponds with remarkable intellectual growth. (Rorty, 28) Inspired by Nietzsche, who suspected that only poets can appreciate contingency, he declared that the rest of us are “doomed to remain philosophers, to insist that there is really only one true lading-list, one true description of the human situation, one universal context of our lives. We are doomed to spend our conscious lives trying to escape from contingency rather than, like the strong poet, acknowledging and appropriating contingency.” (ibid) In the case of internet memes, also correspondingly to Groys’ statements on social media and self-design, the internet allows these metaphorical redescriptions to be created and spread by anyone, which are then gradually popularized -- perhaps somewhat similarly the old adages in different parts of the world in the times of offline. The original poets remain unknown and the gaze of others takes care of the delivery and circulation.
Roland Barthes describes myth as a type of speech and a semiological system; the mythical speech can appear in any verbal or visual medium, which delivers a meaning. (Barthes, 108-110) Similarly to Rorty’s accounts on poetry, Barthes states that myths spring straightforwardly from contingency and historical context (ibid, 123), however “Whereas myth aims at an ultra-signification, at the amplification of a first system, poetry, on the contrary, attempts to regain an infra-signification, a pre-semiological state of language; in short, it tries to transform the sign back into meaning: its ideal, ultimately, would be to reach not the meaning of words, but the meaning of things themselves.” (ibid, 132-133) For him, myth is depoliticized speech; it is never natural and is created by people -- therefore it always carries an ideology and can be transformed easily. Myths, likewise memes, simplify and attempt to show things as obvious or factual: “...simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact.” (ibid, 143), making them as well very suitable for political interests, as seen in the recent history.
Apart from the concept of mythos, as a social gestalt, internet memes resemble ancient philosophical ideas regarding art and storytelling in their broad frameworks. For Plato, all the works of art are based on representation and he saw artists as mere imitators (Plato, 335). In this point of view, art functions on emotional levels and therefore distracts us from rationality. Plato’s student Aristotle for his part saw mimesis (representation) as an entirely natural, instinctive human operation and a way of learning, which as well produces pleasure. (Aristotle, 15, 13) According to him, art is based on representation of human actions, which never actually happened in reality. (ibid, 85) Susan Blackmore shares similar views about the creation of memes; she argues that creating memes is a natural, but very complex process, which we constantly do. The process is based on imitation: “I am reassured by simply reminding myself that human life really is like this. We do copy each other all the time and we underestimate what is involved because imitation comes so easily to us. When we copy each other, something, however intangible, is passed on. That something is the meme. And taking a meme’s eye viewer is the foundation of memetics.” (Blackmore, 52)
Even though internet memes exist in the sphere of the internet's virtual and are unavoidable, they are often rooted in the every-day material reality; likewise art is classically said to be/do. Being based on copying, representation and transformation, extremely easy for everyone to create, share and perceive, internet memes have become sort of crafts of the internet, which some could as well ignorantly consider as art. Referring to the ancient philosophical ideas compared above, forthrightly talking about contemporary art and memes in the same breath is highly problematic, because memes as a viral phenomenon lack the context of the art world and therefore by themselves cannot be straightforwardly considered as art. Milner, who considers internet memes as “examples of vernacular creativity” (Milner, 96), supports the ideas of Jean Burgess, who proposes that “... we avoid equating vernacular with practices that are more “authentic” or “pure” than the manufactured hegemonic literacies of “high culture.”” (ibid) but as well highlights that the “vernacular is nonetheless more connected to the folk than the formal, more to the amateur than the professional, and more to the bricoleur than the craftsperson.” (ibid)
However, due to the popularity and high affectivity of internet memes, they are constantly being applied to both contemporary art and popular culture, which then physically, through representation, integrate them (as copies) into the sphere of ‘analog’ reality, for example inside gallery spaces and public advertisements. At the very foundation, the classical look of internet memes, consisting of simple texts accompanied with an image, resemble street advertisements. (Denisova, 9) At turn, a piece of art can become a viral meme and gain multiple new lives on the internet. Paintings from the Middle Ages and Renaissance are popular examples of such phenomenon: recontextualizing already known and perhaps surprising images by connecting them to contemporary vernacular makes the joke. (Milner, 98)

“After Nietzsche famously announced “God is dead”, he continued, “We have lost the spectator.” The emergence of internet means the return of the universal spectator. So it seems that we are back in paradise and, like saints do the immaterial work of pure existence under the divine gaze. In fact, the life of a saint can be described as a blog that is read by God and remains uninterrupted even upon the saint’s death. So why do we need secrets anymore” (Cornell & Hartel, 361)

An individual cannot control the continuum regarding the melding of the physical and the virtual, but is likely to be forced to follow, because the society itself seeks to develop in this matter. Various postmodernist writers perplexed by the concept of representation would today have various things to say about technological and societal development; indeed, the end of postmodern condition happened only in theory, allowing thinkers to discuss the topic from a certain distance. (Lee, 73) The schizophrenia, as it was called decades ago, has remained, but is becoming more severe and schizophrenic in itself due to the ever-increasing speed of technological development. Whereas we say that the digital has become as real as the analog, it is engrossing to examine an individual's relation to the surrounding, digitalized society. Boris Groys notes: “If the Internet is participatory, it is so in the same sense that literary space is. Here and there, anything that enters these spaces is noticed by other participants, provoking reactions from them, which in turn provoke further reactions, and so forth. However, this active participation takes place solely within the user’s imagination, leaving his or her body unmoved.” (Groys, 2009; pg. 27)
Ian Buchanan points out that the internet has absorbed all the before existing medias into itself: “Internet has simplified what media means and in the process set off a massive expansion of media operations into virtually every corner of existence. It is having the same effect on retail” (Buchanan, 12) Whereas photography is usually referred to as a time-based medium, or metaphorically as a “footprint or a deathmask” (Sontag, 120), or simply as a ‘memory’, today’s virtually shared photographs have become even more permanent and immortal due to the interactive qualities of the internet. (Jurgenson, 45) However, on the other hand the immateriality of today’s social photography “offers an alternative to recording and collecting life into database museums, encouraging appreciation for the experience of the present for its own sake.” (ibid, 49)
According to Boris Groys, the ideology of modernity in all of its aspects “was directed against contemplation, against spectatorship, against the passivity of the masses paralyzed by the spectacle of modern life.” (Groys, 2009; pg. 21), which ultimately celebrated vita activa over vita contemplativa. (ibid, pg. 19) “But already by the end of the nineteenth century, the vita contemplativa was thoroughly discredited and the vita activa was elevated to the true task of humankind. At least since Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, design has been accused of seducing people into weakening their activity, vitality, and energy—of making them passive consumers who lack will, who are manipulated by omnipresent advertising to become victims of capital.” (Axel, et al., 15) “The apparent cure for this trance was a shock-like encounter with the “real” capable of rescuing people from their contemplative passivity and moving them to action, to the only thing that promises an experience of truth as living intensity. The only debate that remained was over the question of whether such an encounter with the real was still possible, or whether the real has definitively disappeared behind its designed surface.” (ibid) Similarly to Jurgenson, he responds to this statement by adding that the increasingly easy access to digital medias combined with the internet as a platform, has as well transformed our relationship concerning images; we are increasingly interested in image production, rather than image contemplation. (Groys, 2010; 14-15) He discusses the interconnectivity of the internet in relation to human sociality, using the above-mentioned concept ‘gaze of others’ in its Sartrean sense, to illustrate his point: “The virtual space of the internet is primarily an arena in which my website on Facebook is permanently designed and redesigned to be presented to YouTube— and vice versa. But likewise in the real or, let’s say, analog world, one is expected to be responsible for the image that he or she presents to the gaze of others. It could even be said that self-design is a practice that unites artist and audience alike in the most radical way: though not everyone produces artworks, everyone is an artwork. At the same time, everyone is expected to be his or her own author.” (ibid, 41) In other words, social media platforms are directly connected to the notion of self-design and that is what makes them popular: individuals are able to present a certain kind of picture of themselves virtually, as a desired image-repertoire of self, in a non-physical and non-linear discourse with others. Very similarly to the Sartrean gaze discussed by Groys, also Jurgenson points out that “there is no “self” without other people—no intrinsic, essential, or natural authenticity to our own identity without a mirror or camera to reflect it.” (Jurgenson, 55)
Although the virtual versions of individuals operate on the basis of representation and often through the so-called perfect draughtsmanship of photography or other medium (which connect the physical qualities of the original subject to the digital representation), the virtual copy is allowed to be imperfect and unfaithful in contrast to its material, offline original. As the virtual representation is identified by others, it then as well gains an ability to strongly alter the original in the gaze of others, outside the virtual realm. Perhaps the most evident example of such social media platform is Facebook, where most the users are using their real names, accompanied with pictures of themselves, and therefore tend to share information, which they view as socially preferred (Grasmuck, Martin & Zhao, 163) and in turn “hide or de-emphasize the part of their selves they regard as socially undesirable, such as shyness, overweight, or stuttering. Inso doing, Facebook users project a self that is typically highly socially desirable;‘‘being popular among friends’’ was a claim that underlined many identity projects on Facebook.“ (ibid) However, whereas people often share photos primarily aimed for their close friends, they might expose more than they think to others as well; the “sense of audience” is less immediate on the internet than in the customary, in-person interaction. (ibid)
Steven Aishman connects useful terms introduced by Deleuze and Guattari to illustrate the unpredictable qualities of social networks; an individual is never fully in control. For him, posts on social media platforms are always contingent and in time their meaning is deterritorialized, which means that they can be understood as assemblages. (Aishman, 1) The deterritorialization taking place in the internet can happen very rapidly, since even basic virtual interaction intertwines with the original and therefore recreates a new assemblage. (ibid) For Aishman, the deterritorializing actions into which I referred as virtual interactions are Deleuzian lines-of-flight, and hints that by posting for example on Facebook, people seek for deterritorialization in order to feel less anxious about themselves. (ibid) Obviously, this effect operates backwards as well, if a post does not receive a certain amount of wanted virtual interaction, such as likes or positive reactions.
Whereas identity-centered behavior is central in all the social media platforms, since they rely more or less on representation of material subjects, the behavior can vary depending on the underlying concepts and the operating principles of these platforms. Naturally, the platforms are constantly developing and therefore changing their users’ behavior. Early social media platforms such as the Finnish IRC-Galleria were clearly closer to blogs than their superseidors Facebook and Twitter; the uploaded content was often less self-monitored and not meant for everyone to see. Obviously, during the first decade of the millennium, the internet felt smaller, people were less informed of social photography’s possible permanency and perhaps blinded by the sensation of freedom; innumerable amounts of these images still circulate on the internet, gaining new lives in comprehensively new contexts. Together with the evolution of the social platforms, also the people’s internet behavior has evidently changed during the past decade. Jodi Dean discusses the development of the user-generated, social side of the internet in his oeuvre Blog Theory (2010), explaining how the big social media platforms superseded blogging, which before that supposedly killed the mainstream media. (Dean, 39) “Rather than oriented around daily or even weekly posts on a regular set of themes or from a particular perspective, these large social network sites rely on brief, frequent updates to user profiles, lots of photos, and ever-growing lists of friends.” (ibid, 35) These short, irregular entries posted in one’s profile are also seemingly more authentic, “... in part because they are only glimpses, fragments, and indications rather than fully formed and composed reflections and in part because we witness them being seen by others.” (ibid, 36) As Grasmuck, Martin & Zhao as well found, he highlights that the friends and followers matter more in today’s popular platforms than the image of the blogger or her posted content-- especially because the users are allowed to see each other's friends and connections. (ibid, 35) “It’s like friendship lite or friendship without friendship (in other words, it’s in the overall series of objects or practices deprived of their harmful features that Slavoj Žižek associates with contemporary culture: beer without alcohol, sugar-free candy, coffee without caffeine, etc.). Even better: social network sites let us see ourselves being seen.” (ibid, 35-36)
Groys correspondingly reflected the position of an individual to the ‘others’ in relation to the social networks. He states that the practice of self-design is essential in order to become liked in contemporary society, which in itself has become “an exhibition space in which individuals appear as both artists and self-produced works of art”; (Axel, et al., 15) ”Even those whose activities are limited to taking selfies must still actively distribute them to get the “likes” they want. But self-design does not stop here. We also produce aesthetically relevant things and/or surround ourselves with things we believe to be impressive and seductive. And we act publicly—even sacrificing oneself in the name of a public good—in order to be admired by others” (ibid, 14) The latter example, concerning ‘aesthetically relevant things’ is present especially in the newer social media services and functions, which are programmed to delete the uploaded content from the public after certain amount of time. This kind of content is often considered as less relevant, but it still strongly contributes to the gaze, giving the viewers short, designed glimpses into one’s persona. At the end, everything an individual shares on her online profile can have a strong effect in this sense, since a certain idea is always shared simultaneously.
Among the years, the discussed platforms have made communication to others rapid and effortless, for its part leading to the formation of today’s popular concept, hyperconnectivity. Dean, with a reference to Michel Foucault, considers writing itself as an action affecting an individual's character: “... a way of making present one who is not there, of summoning a companion in the imagination in order to feel the pressure of the other’s gaze.” (Dean, 50) Apparently, the transformative powers of writing have been recognized very early in human history: “With the suppositions of an other and of shame before this other, first- and second-century Romans, Foucault argues, construe writing as a technique for changing the self, not simply for recording its thoughts or for reflecting on these thoughts.” (ibid) As noted, whereas talking about social media, the gaze, receiving the digital ‘letters’, for example as posts on Facebook or private messages, becomes more visible and immediate -- the companion is summoned in real time.
“We consume. We copy and repeat. We get corrupted and lose our data, only to abandon ourselves until our profiles are reborn. These techno-aesthetic strategies are embedded in the broadband, networked internet culture that today dominates in the developed world. That cell phone you are carrying tells the story.“ (Cornell & Hartel, 50)
Ian Buchanan, one of the leading contemporary Deleuze researchers, writes: “If, today, as Deleuze foresaw with typical acuity in his short paper on what he labelled 'the society of control', our credit card and social security numbers are more significant identity and place markers than the colour of our skin or where we went to school, that isn't because the 'meat' of our bodies has lately been superseded in its cultural significance by our bloodless digital 'profile'.” (Buchanan, 2) and notes, in relation to the earlier mentioned machines (tools) and the rebirth of God: “Whereas mechanical machines are inserted into hierarchically organised social systems, obeying and enhancing this type of structure, the Internet is ruled by no one and is open to expansion or addition at anyone's whim as long as its communication protocols are followed.” (ibid) In his view, Michel Foucault’s ideas in relation to the concept of body (and its duplication) compared to Deleuze and Guattari’s lack a convincing explanation of individual’s drives to become attached to the society and face its demands; simply, one is forced to do so. However, he sees Foucault's description as fruitful, because he considers the concept as social rather than individual: “we all have our own body without organs, but it is plugged into a larger entity that is the body without organs of all body without organs, or the plane of consistency. This larger entity that all our individual bodies without organs is plugged into is society's own body without organs and it is my contention that we can only properly understand this particular concept if we apprehend it at this level.” (ibid, 3)
Importantly, the internet’s gaze is not only limited to other people. Social media has created a virtual doppelganger of the society at large; also companies and institutions have had their virtual profiles created for similar reasons; to become liked and to make profit. However, unlike a decade ago, most of the large social media platforms today are themselves profit-making businesses, ready to put their users into a vulnerable position in order to benefit -- and the users are more or less aware of it -- if we follow Groys and consider the internet as the reborn God, then these large, often interconnected platforms are the bishops delivering his messages. Denisova formulates the setting as follows: “Digital communication is not purely user-generated and user-inhabited, but it constitutes a whirlpool of interactions between users, corporations and platform owners.” (Denisova, 14) Ultimately, the owners of the platforms are capable of manipulating individual expression through advertisements and design, (ibid) and according to Geert Lovink, the users of social media platforms are being taught to become scanning machines “where their speed of feed traversal and their clicks of a Like or Love produce endless potential for future profit that depends on ever increasing amounts of data. (Lovink, pg. 46) Obviously, the whirlpool illustrated by Denisova touches upon the notion of self-design as well, similarly to popular cultural phenomena in the offline world. People are highly affected by their environments both online and offline -- also the internet is today ruled in terms of capitalism. Jack Self even goes further and argues that today the so-called subjectivity of an individual is only a hallucination created by market forces and considers any kind of self expression as an action that “involves the donning of a persona, or even just a costume. There is no meaning to subcultural styles or fads, because they are all united by the same payment methods and social platforms.” (Axel, et.al 253-254)
The gaze of others is interpreted by Groys as an apparatus of objectification, which “negates the possibility of change that defines our subjectivity.” (Cornell & Halter, 361) and continues: “Sartre defined human subjectivity as a “project” directed toward the future -- and this project has an ontologically guaranteed secret because it can never be revealed here and now, but only in the future. In other words, Sartre understood human subjects as struggling against the identity that was given to them by society. That explains why he interpreted the gaze of others as hell: in the gaze of others, we see that we have lost the battle and remain a prisoner of our socially codified identity.” (ibid) Similar, extreme social objectification is present especially regarding internet viralities, such as memes; whereas anything can become a meme, also individuals can become “the heroes” of the memes -- suddenly the issue becomes ethical, since the subjects are “deprived of the basic right to privacy and control over her image and public representation.” (Denisova, 39) Whereas representation of a person becomes a subject to a meme or viral content, the hell described by Sartre becomes very evident. Similarly, in the context of my diploma project, a unique form of the Sartrean hell got constructed around the name, which came to unify hundreds of memes and viral images with similar content, portraying certain behavioral and visual qualities. However, here, the ‘gaze of others’ actively maintains the so-called codified identity by making memes, and the subjectivity of original subjects is drastically weakened; the identity of the original is dominantly constructed and strongly deterritorialized by the (perhaps anonymous) others. The original authors, responsible for sharing photographs of themselves on the internet, then ultimately lost their ability to practice self-design for their own good, and in Sartre’s words, became aware of the lost battle.

“It is not only the smart devices, which strongly affect our state of mind. Apart from internet, also much simplier tools affect to individuals strongly, making them enter a certain state of mind, which can also be understood as virtual:“...when reading a book, you are alone and in a focused state of mind. And in a conventional exhibition, you wander alone from one object to the next, equally focused—separated from the outside reality, in inner isolation.” (quoted in Groys, 2009; pg. 25)

In the 1960’s Jean Baudrillard, among many others, theorized the concept of representation (for which he used a term simulacrum) in the sphere of society, which he saw as the outcome of his contemporary technological innovations and capitalism. Baudrillard’s main question was, if the simulation could replace the real, which had already stopped existing—or if simulation was all there was in the beginning. (Baudrillard, 3) In his point of view, the contemporary consumer society itself is a product of simulations; however, he speaks on a rather metaphorical level and does not in detail point to specific media apart from television, but his statements are fairly connectable to the internet as a virtual platform, which similarly transmits also the replicative abilities of photography. He writes: “A simulation that can last indefinitely, because, as distinct from "true" power—which is, or was, a structure, a strategy, a relation of force, a stake—it is nothing but the object of a social demand, and thus as the object of the law of supply and demand, it is no longer subject to violence and death. Completely purged of a political dimension, it, like any other commodity, is dependent on mass production and consumption. (Baudrillard, 26) Even though the internet functions in a more interactive way than for example television did at the time, by providing its users to have a stronger effect on the content and delivery, it shares similar values, characteristic for capitalism. These qualities are examined more closely in the next chapter.
Brian Massumi, a contemporary theorist, sees simulacra as a schizophrenic symptom of the current society, likewise Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson, but he distances himself from negativity, attempting to give more constructive, Deleuzian views on the matter: “The challenge is to assume this new world of simulation and take it one step farther, to the point of no return, to raise it to a positive simulation of the highest degree by marshaling all our powers of the false toward shattering the grid of representation once and for all.” (Massumi, 7) He refers to Ridley Scott’s famous 1982 film Blade Runner to simply illustrate the concept: “The dominant replicant makes a statement to the man who made his eyes that can be taken as a general formula for simulation: if only you could see what I have seen with your eyes.” (ibid, 3) The major error Massumi finds in Baudrillard’s thesis is that he does not take into account or question the “reality of the model”, which he then approaches with concepts introduced in the works of Deleuze and Guattari: “The alternative is a false one because simulation is a process that produces the real, or, more precisely, more real (a more-than-real) on the basis of the real. [...] Every simulation takes as its point of departure a regularized world comprising apparently stable identities or territories. But these "real" entities are in fact undercover simulacra that have consented to feign being copies” (ibid)
In today’s ‘(post) contemporary condition’, a few decades after Massumi’s statement, when everything from everyday-objects to larger entities are increasingly connected to the internet, it is intrinsically impossible to go against the development and go back to the ‘old reality’, longed by Baudrillard. Medicine for the schizophrenia is now more like a distant, utopian dream, disastrous for the existence of the Western world -- we have not only become dependent on non-material networks and digital tools, but we already have a generation that does not remember the ‘offline ages’ at all. Kenneth Goldsmith writes: “Walking away is not an option. We are not unplugging anytime soon. Digital detoxes last as long as grapefruit diets do; transitional objects are just that.” (Goldsmith, 22) and adds that we should instead begin to explore the opportunities, even celebrate the ‘time wasted’ on the internet. (ibid) Ultimately, for certain contemporary theorists, such as for Hito Steyerl, it is clear that the ‘reality’ itself is postproduced and rendered by the virtual: “Far from being opposites across an unbridgeable chasm, image and world are in many cases just versions of each other.” (Cornel & Hartel, 444)
Susan Sontag closes her iconic 1977 oeuvre ‘On Photography’, written before the era of digitalization, with certainly similar concerns: “We consume images at an ever faster rate and, as Balzac suspected cameras used up layers of the body, images consume reality. Cameras are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and a means of making it obsolete.” and finds that the long-desired magics of photography “have in effect de-Platonized our understanding of reality, making it less and less plausible to reflect upon our experience according to the distinction between images and things, between copies and originals.” (Sontag, 140-141) As the reference to Steyerl hints, Sontag’s verbalizations in today’s era of artificial intelligence, 2pac-holograms and deep fakes could be perceived as outdated or self-evident, but her foundational thesis is up to date. In the digital age, images (not only photographs) could be seen as consuming the ‘real’ much more effectively; ultimately in the case of social media, which in its foundation is based on the concept of representation.
In social media, shared photographs as representations are coequally delivered over the internet by the representations of the original subjects; however, any kind of delivered content can have a certain social effect towards the deliverer, also outside the virtual reality (assuming that the deliverer is somehow identified). The interactive qualities of social media makes evident that the notion of ‘real’ has crystallized, and that the online representation can become realer, or at least more socially relevant, than the physical, offline original. Today, partially because of digitalization and the internet, also the way we look at photographs has changed. Nathan Jurgenson writes: “Everything is informational, always seeing and being seen, seeing as if being seen, being seen as if seeing. The line between what is media and what isn’t is harder to locate.” (Jurgenson, 44) and with a reference to Gilles Deleuze’s earlier accounts on technology, he argues that “Social media is real life partly because real life is always mediated through the logics and technologies of human habit, interest, power, and resistance.” (ibid, 43) Alike Brian Massumi’s optimist viewpoint and the thesis of Hito Steyerl, Jurgenson underlines that it is no longer even important to talk about the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ in the context of social media and digital tools, because the digital world is as ‘real’ as the ‘analog’ world: “We live in a mixed, augmented reality in which materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the offline and the online all intersect. It is incorrect to say “IRL” to mean offline: the Internet is real life. It is the fetish objects of the offline and the disconnected that are not real.” (ibid, 64)

It is often cheesily stated that the purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but “serve the body”. Whereas technological innovations have various effects on individuals and the society, simultaneously giving birth to an increasing amount of issues and concepts, it as well has an effect on our understanding of the so-called human nature. Fundamentally, the industrial revolution gave birth and modified society into the form we acknowledge it today, but it is now being commonly said that the two decades after millennium have shaped the world more than any other period of time ever before in human history. During the past few decades, humanity’s foundational understanding of its own state of being (in space) has transformed towards new directions because of digital tools and the internet -- the body, which technology is supposed to serve, has in itself become an increasingly abstract concept, regarding its relation to terms such as identity and place. (Buchanan, 1) Whereas the bodies of individuals are represented in the virtual space of the internet and connected to others, a strong social effect is created; the meaning of the original is a subject to change. Today, even the simple, manually operated tools are being linked to virtual, immaterial networks, becoming as well prominent parts of the virtual rhizome as social objects filled with information, multi-layering the connection between machines and humans. “As our worlds become smarter and get to know us better and better, it becomes harder and harder to say where the world stops and the person begins.” (Clark, 7)
The current setting of these ‘parallel realities’, which are in fact rapidly merging, could offer a fruitful base for future outlooks, comparable to well-known, perhaps to some extent ominous theories of the postmodern era, dominantly dealing with the notion of representation -- which is also one of the main features of the internet as a social wholeness. Nonetheless, this thesis does not attempt to predict the future, but by connecting influential accounts dominantly from the fields of media theory and philosophy from the past decades, it ventures to offer an interdisciplinary overview about the relationship of the customary, ‘physical real’ and the newer ‘virtual real’ in the context of social media and internet phenomena, such as internet memes, which operate hand-in-hand. Historically, postmodern figures such as Jean Baudrillard and Susan Sontag (in relation to photography) created a significant base for the discussion regarding the ‘real’ and the concept of representation. In this paper their early accounts are used as a historical standing point, which do not directly connect to the post-internet age, but are useful in order to illustrate a wider picture regarding the concept in question. Whereas the internet was once considered as a representative of freedom on various levels, it has along its popularization and capitalization transformed into an ultimate apparatus of representation, deterritorialization and (in)control, affecting basically all the aspects of Western, capitalist societies.
Whereas the world has become hyperconnected, only lately we have understood the broad significance of the internet’s social side and certain problems it has the ability to create, which resemble Sartrean ideas regarding a widely discussed philosophical concept, ‘the gaze’, which operates between the individuals and the others/society. For Jean-Paul Sartre, the gaze of others signifies hell, since it makes our “socially codified identities” visible, also making us realize that we cannot fight against it. (Cornell & Halter, 361) And in the words of Boris Groys: “... we try to avoid the gaze of others for a while so that we can reveal our “true self” after a certain period of seclusion—to reappear in public in a new shape, in a new form.” (ibid) The internet provides a sensation of possibility to alter this hell, since it functions without the immediate restrictions of space and time -- however, at turn, the same qualities can also strengthen the hell further. It can be said that the virtual representations on the internet are already in an equal position with their physical ‘originals’, especially in terms of social reality. As social media complexicates the foundational concept of an individual, it is today possible to exist only in the internet’s virtual gaze, dependent on one’s virtual communication, maintaining her physical remains as an essential bad -- such as the concept of Japanese origin, hikikomori.
Images and visuality are today evidently more crucial for communication than ever because of the internet; it is mundane to communicate and express oneself through visual content such as emoticons, gifs and memes. In the popular platforms of social media, especially photography as a replicative medium is in a central position and therefore as well an important aspect to include in this paper: it allows an individual to curate herself by letting to choose what to share regarding her analog presence and outlook. However, whereas identification is crucial for creating and/or re-creating networks online, the hell once illustrated by Sartre becomes evident. Nathan Jurgenson offers a significant take on the phenomenon by arguing that today’s social theory “should be, in part, a theory of social media, which should be, in part, a theory of social photography“ (Jurgenson, 16) For him, the so-called social photography is a cultural practice, “a way of seeing, speaking, and learning.”, which develops the skills of sociality and self-expression. (ibid) After all, today predominantly everyone needs to take part in the practice also in the sphere of internet to meet the standards of contemporary society.
The examination of the effect of social media and the perception-related ‘mind-body axis’ are mainly inspired and co-affected by the conceptual framework of my diploma art project, which serves as an elementary example of a wide and complex phenomenon. The project deals with matters such as social media, memes and most importantly representation, which is, as noted above, a conjunctive aspect of the internet as a social, non-linear space. Also human language is central for the project, as it is especially in the sphere of pragmatic philosophy understood as the only tool for us to describe reality. As internet memes have become central and extremely effective means of communication, comparable to the widely discussed concept of mythos, various words originated in such content have become parts of the analogue intercommunication, therefore collectively transforming the way reality is perceived and described: the online is present offline. Apart from my individual artistic practice, this thesis discusses art and its connection to the topic, including a slight comparison to popular culture, which functions on different means, but is likewise affected by the virtual realm. Talking about popular culture as an autonomous gestalt in addition to art makes it possible to create a wider overview of the phenomenon; the internet shakes and intertwines the boundaries of both, interconnected parts of capitalist society. The fifth chapter of this thesis goes through certain important characteristics for internet based/inspired art, including few examples of contemporary artists who are reflecting the current state of art as an institutional, social wholeness to the multidisciplinary power of the internet, dealing with matters examined in the previous chapters.