the art of curating art on social media

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Introduction

Mobilities
This dissertation takes as its starting point some of the literature on the 
‘Mobilities Turn’ which considers the processes that are involved with large-scale and local movements of people, objects, capital and information across the world through public and private space, as well as the travel of material objects in everyday life (CeMoRe website).

Social media apps available on smartphone and other portable devices feature the characteristic of the ‘complex, tangled, mosaic like, super-imposed and interpenetrating nodes, levels, scales that are fundamental to the emergence of complex mobility systems and their restructuring of both space and time’ (Hannam et al,  2006, p 3).


At the heart of such mediating activity lies the concept of ‘assemblage’, defined as the outcome of the physical, machine, human and computer interactions (Cresswell 2011, Poster 2001 and 2006, Sheller and Urry, 2006 a b). This research project considers examples of social media assemblage, and the curating within online spaces in which this takes place, with examples taken from the art world and graffiti. The focus is not on art historic considerations, but on the affordances of these online platforms and the visual and temporary performances these platforms generate.

With regards to the emergence of social media art spaces I initially consider Sheller and Urry’s suggestion of a ‘mobilities paradigm’. This paradigm argues:


against 'an ontology of distinct "places" and "people". Rather, there is a complex relationality of places and persons connected through performances. (…) Places are indeed dynamic - "places of movement" (…) Places are about relationships, about the placing of peoples, materials, images, and the systems of difference that they perform. Not only does a mobility perspective lead us to discard our usual notions of spatiality and scale, but it also undermines existing linear assumptions about temporality and timing.' (Sheller and Urry, 2006a, p 215)

Gathering artworks occurs whilst on the move, and being on the move can involve sets of 'occasioned’ activities (Sheller and Urry, 2006a). These activities are the result of what can be described as ‘tuning [which] connects to the lived experience of the temporal and the spatial' (Coyne, 2010, xvi) for in these situated spaces the network can be considered a place of experience. Art viewers joining social media sites are offered the potential for a dynamic exchange with viewers navigating the digitally assembled spaces.

Method
My interest in Mobilities research serves a dual purpose. First of all looking through the mobility lens offers an alignment of the interdisciplinary approaches relating to mobility experiences in the context of the digital assemblage. This involves the increased hybridisation of the visual, based on the re-mix of the material (the artworks) and the immaterial representations (e.g. through digital photography, Wi-Fi, social networks or virtual mobility).
Secondly, it allows me to identify the mobile methods in the various disciplines that are capable of capturing social life ‘on the move’ (e.g. through smartphones or using screen capture software). The rich but dense interdisciplinary perspective offers a very broad base for my research.

In this dissertation, I address the question ‘What can Mobilities research contribute to our understanding of ‘digital assemblages’ in online art spaces?' This main question is framed by three further questions:
  1. What exactly can be understood as an ‘assemblage’ in the context of the Mobilities literature?
  2. What are the mobility tools contributing to the emergence of digital assemblage in social media art spaces?
  3. To what extent can experiencing social media art spaces be considered as a practice of creating assemblages? 

Much of my personal activity whilst conducting this research is driven by my role of ‘flâneuse’ (Featherstone, 1998), characterised by a strolling of both physical and cyber space geographies, appropriating and gathering up the visual imagery in a rhizomatic style. A personal curation of paintings and graffiti artworks illustrates the literature findings.

Initially a virtual ethnography was carried out of three social media applications, allowing me to gather specialist insight and authority of the ethnographic field (Hine 2000, Kozinet 2011 and Robson 2001). This visual ethnography contributed towards the development of a theoretical framework, conceptually aligning with the literature and research questions, centralising around the digital assemblage. 


This virtual ethnography was followed by a visual analysis, based on an interpretation of social semiotics in a social media context. This I considered relevant since social semiotics ‘deals with meaning in all its appearances, in all social occasions and in all cultural sites’ (Kress, 2011, p 2).


Outcome
The combined ethnography and visual analysis allowed me to refine the methodological model,  identifying a number of emerging mobility features, which I consider 'mobility tools' and which can be described as conditions of the 'temporal', 'situated' and 'shadowed'.

The empirical research offered two main findings: firstly I observed that the mobility/mooring dialectic is the main impetus for social media art curating. Secondly social media curating can be seen as a performance informed by 'touch', whereby the resulting assemblages are the outcome of the intricate material and immaterial co-interactions of the mobility tools.

In addition, the combination of the ethnography and visual analysis offered further insights in reinterpreting the concept of flânerie in an online environment.