Bio
Ramón Reichert, 2009–2013 Professor of New Media Studies and Digital Media Culture at the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Since 2014, he is the head of the post-graduate master’s course Data Studies at the Danube University Krems. His research interests include the historiography of media and technology, the impact of new media and communication technologies such as the Internet, social media, visual culture and identity politics.
Since 2014, he has been a chief publisher and an editor of the magazine Digital Culture & Society (a peer-reviewed journal). As the initiator and lead editor of the peer-to-peer researcher network Social Media Studies, which currently boasts more than 1,100 members, he has established an international forum for exploring digital methods of social media research. He is author of Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften: Studien zur Medialisierung wissenschaftlichen Wissens (2007), Amateure im Netz. Selbstmanagement und Wissenstechnik im Web 2.0 (2008), Das Wissen der Börse. Medien und Praktiken des Finanzmarktes (2009), Die Macht der Vielen. Über den neuen Kultur der digitalen Vernetzung (2013), Big Data. Analysen zum digitalen Wandel von Wissen, Macht und Ökonomie (2014), Selfies. Eine Kulturtheorie der digitalen Bildkommunikation (2017).
Abstract
Crowd Art. Processing Image, Algorithmic Programming and Web as Context
Crowd Art. Processing Image, Algorithmic Programming and Web as Context The crowd art of collective production of meaning has recently gained momentum in the social web. By dissecting it, we are able to learn a lot about the cultural transformation of creative content. Crowd art refers to the new omnipotence of interactive communication spaces, providing users with low-threshold applications to represent their everyday observations in hypermedial spaces for representation and observation based on spatial and space-related information and to use them for creation, distribution, and analysis. Collaborative art production that is based on social networking sites and Internet portals is highly influenced by production and reception contingencies, and forms a diffuse state of aggregation of free play for cultural interpretation within dynamic meaning and negotiation processes. In this sense, crowd-sourced and crowd-based art production can be understood as a technology of social activity that allows users to develop, in peer-to-peer networks, concrete forms of usage of habitualized telling that include forms of social communication and novel procedures for narrative participation and co-determination. In dealing with the video content generated by users on the video sharing websites YouTube and Vimeo, it is a question of which performative role the initiators of video uploads play. The pronounced tendency in the Internet culture toward resignification and reiteration of already existing content (mash-up, remix) refers to an aspect of the performative, which connects seamlessly to collective and collaborative framing processes. This questioning should open up critical questions about the scope of participation culture and transforming creativity enabling in technical environments.
