Wikipedia Art update (and updated)

Lots of cool edits to the page – see the history as well.

Huge debate roaring as well. My favorite quote here (followed by mini argument) is by Wikipedia user “shmeck,” aka contemporary artist Shane Mecklenburger:

KEEP The Wikipedia Art page is a self-aware example of Wikipedia’s mission of collective epistemology. It enacts and exposes Wikipedia’s own strengths, weaknesses, potential, and limits as a system of understanding and as a contemplative object of beauty. The page is also a self-aware example of the strengths, weaknesses, potential, and limits of new media art as a an object of contemplation. New media art is an example of how the boundaries between art and every other discipline from epistemology to microbiology disintegrated (see interdisciplinarity) in the 21st Century. This page is an example of how a Wikipedia page can go beyond simply existing as a Wikipedia page, while retaining its basic utilitarian Wikipedia function. Those who care most about Wikipedia’s mission would probably agree that Wikipedia already is a collaborative art form. If you feel that Wikipedia is a beautiful thing, then at some level (whether or not you admit it) you consider Wikipedia an art form, with its own codes and conventions. This is an example of something that explains art, explores art, and is art all at the same time. Deleting this page would be a statement that the exegesis of conceptual art and/or new media art has no place in Wikipedia, except on the tired, lifeless, and opaque conceptual art and new media art pages. Why shouldn’t a tiny, obscure corner of Wikipedia-brand collective epistemology be preserved for an instructive, self-referential, and ever-changing living example of what an art object can be in the 21st Century? Should this page be judged invalid only because it refers to itself? This artwork can only exist as a Wikipedia page that refers to itself. Therefore, deleting would not only send the message “this is not Wikipedia”; it would also be saying “this is not art.” comment added by Shmeck (talk • contribs) 00:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

++++ The above is a wonderful commentary, but Wikipedia is not your web page to wax eloquently about what you think ought to exist. Bus stop (talk) 00:34, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: Thanks, but isn’t that what everyone is doing here? Talking about what ought to exist on Wikipedia? You haven’t addressed a single one of my points.

—- UPDATED, more nice stuff

• This sort of artwork already has strong precedents in history – the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse, Debord’s idea of Situationist detournement, and although I am not part of this collective, I fully intend to include it as part of my chapter for the upcoming book of distributed writing commissioned by Turbulence.org, and it will be mentioned as part of my talk on new art practices at a guest lecture at Denver University on 2/16/09, and I have already written on it on my critical blog in London. Therefore, the reference is to the emergence of the concept, which now exists outside Wikipedia, and is paradoxical but not solipsistic. I think that the person suggesting the idea of letting the idea grow is well-reasoned, and a time for review (say, 90 days) could be set for re-evaluation.–24.14.54.88 (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)–TS

• Comment: Please note that, transgressive though they were, the Surrealists played “exquisite corpses” using their own notepaper. They did not try to scrawl it the margins of a library book. This is the problem. Nobody objects to a Wiki based artwork. The problem is that it can’t be inserted into Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not just a Wiki. It is an encyclopedia. It is no more appropriate to add non-encyclopaedic content here than it is to write stuff in library books. I have refrained from using the term “vandalism” because I think this is all a big misunderstanding rather than a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia. None the less, that is the effect it is having. —DanielRigal (talk) 22:24, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: I would very much beg to differ on the point of the Surrealists. Dali would lay in traffic, Artaud organized a riot aginst Dulac’s first screening of the Clergyman and the Seashell. If the Surrealists would have found it “appropriate” for the message, I am absolutely sure they would have done Corpses in the library. The way I see it, if it gets pulled, it will become by definition a case for reinsertion as an “event” in New Media art history. However, I know the project is being watched by a number of curators with great interest.–Patlichty (talk) 23:36, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

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