Analysis: Critical Art Ensemble, Intro to "Digital Resistance"

Tactical media practitioners rely highly on experimental techniques because every day that passes challenges them to come up with something new and exciting; something no one has ever seen before. They depend on social and knowledge systems to serve as the materials for their works, yet these are things which can shift on a daily basis. In order to keep up with the rapidly changing times, experimenting is absolutely necessary.

While tactical media practitioners are some of the most innovative thinkers of our time, they don’t often get the recognition they deserve. They are the people who are going out on limbs, taking chances, and trying new things yet their lack of title and absence of complete expertise in any one area keeps them from falling into a category with all the great artists.

If you were to ask the average person about the great, well-known artists we typically study, they would probably say something like, “Picasso was a painter” and “Ansel Adams was a photographer”. What they may not know is that Picasso has also put out multiple sculptures and Ansel Adams was an accomplished pianist. They may not realize that even the fine artists dabble in and experiment with alternate forms of expression. If this is so, why can’t the tactical media practitioners be part of their group?

Perhaps it is due to the fact that the groups comprised of tactical media practitioners are starting to be labeled and therefore being surrounded by boundaries and restrictions. The resulting structure will only make experimentation more difficult which is the foundation of this practice in the first place.

The photograph of the man holding the sign reading “By Any Media Necessary” cleverly conveys the point made throughout the article that in order to clearly get the point of any work across to viewers, the most communicative media (different for every piece) should be utilized. To determine this, experimentation is often needed. At this point, I stopped to think about my own artistic practices: Although I am strictly a photography major, I should not rule out painting as the conveyor of my message if it is the medium which would most clearly do so.

I also took into consideration for my own practices how “differentiated skill bases are developed through collaboration and collective efforts.” At this point in my artistic career, I have not yet done a collective project. After reading this, I am positive that I can only benefit from taking part in a collaboration and I hope to do so before I graduate.

Something else about this article which I found interesting was how the author referred to tactical media as, like Andy Goldsworthy’s work, ephemeral. I suppose I always thought of digital media as permanent, but it really does not last forever. Take television commercials for example; they are only aired for a short time and then are never seen again. In today’s society, almost any commercial can be re-accessed through YouTube, but even then the work does not exist in its original form.