“THIS ISN'T A PICASSO, IT'S A FERRARI”: PRESENTISM, PRECARITY AND DEPENDENCE IN NEW MEDIA ART PRACTICES

New media artists—and, more broadly, those who consider themselves tobe “creative” technologists—increasingly find themselves questioning whether or not to usetools that are owned or administered by companies that engage in activity that they considerto be problematic, such as surveillance, cooperation with discriminatory law enforcementpractices, or toxic work cultures. However, it is difficult to conceive of a tech-based artpractice that functions without utilizing $2 of the dominant technologies that we findourselves surrounded by on a regular basis. As a result, artists who work with technologyare inevitably thrust into perpetually shifting situations or environments, controlled bythe tech industry, which then directly impact the creation of their work; its longevity;and, often, their own perceptions of it. This paper represents the beginnings of aninvestigation into the relationships between new media artists, the tools they use for theirwork (including data sources and APIs, hardware and software, operating systems, and projectstorage), and those who control these technologies. I seek to portray this creativecommunity as one that exists in a state of constant uncertainty, and that finds itself inthis position at the behest of the interests of the tech industry—which both uses artists’work as a way of positioning itself as cutting-edge and original, and as a means of locatingpotential sites of intentional misuse and subversion. Artists are thus forced to constantlyadapt their processes to the demands of those who control the technology, ultimatelyreinforcing the authority of these dominant systems.