The Framework of Networked Art
Framework of Networked Art, version one - whiteboard drawing.
Framework of Networked Art, version one - whiteboard drawing (modified).
Framework of Networked Art, version two - digital drawing.
Framework of Networked Art, version three - digital drawing.
Framework of Networked Art, version four - screen-based online drawing.
Framework of Networked Art, version five - three-dimensional drawing.
Framework of Networked Art, version five - three-dimensional drawing, 'real' view.
Framework of Networked Art, version five - three-dimensional drawing, VR view.
Above: The Framework of Networked Art – versions 1 to 5. Navigate with the icons at the bottom, click to view larger images.
The Framework of Networked Art is a framework for artistic practice that employs network as spaces between artist, artworks and audience as a means, site and context for artistic initiation. It is all at once an image, map and plan in the Deleuzian sense, as well as a space. The framework was developed diagrammatically during my doctorate from versions one to four that moved from a drawn image to a screen-based interactive diagram.
Version one was originally presented as part of a performance/presentation, The Art of Networks and Networks as Art, given at the 12th Annual Subtle Technologies Festival on the theme of Networks. Version four, the culmination of my thesis, is a screen-based interactive diagram that can be viewed online here. Version five of the framework extends the research that was undertaken in my thesis by transforming the diagram into a three-dimensional drawing that provides an immersive VR experience to improve the spatial aspects of the diagram. It is discussed in a chapter titled A Framework of Networked Art as a Diagram that is an Image as a Map that is a Plan and that is a Space as a Territory in Creating Digitally – Shifting Boundaries: Arts and Technologies—Contemporary Applications and Concepts by Anthony L. Brooks (ed.). An extract of the chapter is included below.
The latest version of the diagram, version five, is very much an experiment undertaken at the time of writing this chapter. This version continues to incorporate three-dimensional space and time, however, is an attempt to increase how the diagram is experienced by also being immersive for an artist and observer–user. It achieves this by moving the diagram beyond version four’s screen-based mode of use, ultimately an improvement over the diagram as image yet still very much a flattened experience, to instead employ a virtual reality (VR) headset and wireless hand-held controllers. The diagram is hand-drawn in VR. It is a return to the immediacy of version one of the diagram, itself a whiteboard drawing, and is perhaps, therefore, suggestive of version one’s pedagogical context or application. An artist and observer–user can now move not just their eye but their whole body by walking through and around the diagram. They can manipulate their view of the diagram by tilting their head in various ways to observe it at different angles and, by moving their body around it, observe it from different sides and at different scales. The diagram can also be directly manipulated through natural gestures of their hands, such as lifting the diagram by raising a hand and rotating the diagram by rotating their wrist. Version five of the diagram, therefore, yields an even better experience of being within it and a networked artwork.
Many thanks to Zhonghao Chen for photographic assistance with version five of the framework.