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11/2012

Venus in Google: Classical Art in Internet

Meritxell Martí's dissertation, read in the Department of Art and Musicology at the UAB, has studied how Classical art appears on the Internet, the discourses that are used in this occurrence and what cultural practices take place around Art in the net. Martí's thesis concludes by highlighting the importance of art in shaping the ideology of the society in the new forms of culture that emerged with new media such as the Internet.

Exploring the discourses about Classical Art in Internet this thesis show the inner tensions of the occidental culture as well as the paradoxes caused by the generalization of the use of new technologies which, at  the same time, democratize the access to the information. In conclusion, this research study the contradictions concerning to the authority and legitimacy of knowledge. The inclusion of a Venus in the cyberspace is a communicational act that sum up the essence of a new conscience: the affirmation and empowerment of the individual are proportional to its capacity of sharing information.

By means of the analysis of the discourse, the new cultural practices are interpreted in order to understand how they transfer part of the academic debates to the periphery, culminating the process of the structural collapse of power initiated by Postmodernism. The discourses about art in Internet manifest a phenomenon that go beyond the postmodern anomic world, overcoming the crisis of values and giving answer to the supposed collapse of the culture.

During the analysis of these cultural practices carry out on the net, we realize how important is the artistic field and how many different discourses are built around it, discourses that mainly configure the socio-ideological context of the emergent culture such as the emancipation of the subject –specially in women–; the reduction of Classical Art as a logo in the consumer society; the digital narcissism; what concerns the intellectual property or the questioning of academic authority, these are some of the characteristics of that new culture.

Meritxell Martí
 
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