I borrow Guernica to start a conversation about the “single moment” on the ‘net.

I hope that Guernica, pt. I & II brings attention to the schism between the “singular object” and the “distributed object”.

The painting or sculpture, as it rests in an institutional setting, is typically not suggestive of being part of a larger narrative arc. The distributed object, as it rests on the Internet, necessarily exists as part of a grander narrative flow, reminding you of where you’ve been, and more importantly where you’re going. This sense of progressing “forward” is key.

Youtube is a good case study. The experience of Youtube is that of forward progression. Youtube flanks the work with other “related” work, both in the user interface and embedded within the media itself. This happens immediately and without user input.

This begs the question: in light of the distributed object, in what sense can one image be arresting?

“Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested.”
- Walter Benjamin

Benjamin (pictured having an epic think at left) asserts that the film cannot arrest a viewer with a single image. Perhaps the power in a film is being able to lose oneself in the sum of its parts. And perhaps then, on the web, the distributed object’s ability to arrest lies in the arc of the surf.

Given all this, how can I begin to measure a single moment on the net? Does it even exist? This is an unresolved question that bothers me, especially in the face of images such as Guernica that contain so much time in and of themselves.

Tags: art, Cubism, Guernica, Network Theory, Picasso, youtube