What happens when you take a handful of naked Barbie dolls, figurines from a pop-culture movie, and an artistic French guy that has a computer and a dream? You get popular Evan Mather's "Les Pantless Menance", a graphic 3-D mash-up that spoofs George Lucas's Star Wars: Phantom Menace. In today's society, what makes art...art? Certainly there is a debate over the originality factor of the new wave of web artists, who often "borrow" main ideas (and even characters) from other already popular works to push their way to Internet fame. According to Wikipedia (what better way to define art and understand Internet art than to look it up via an electronic encyclopedia?), art is as follows:
"...is made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind and/or spirit. There is no general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining the boundaries of "art" is subjective, but the impetus for art is often called human creativity."
Wikipedia goes on to say that art often creates similar characteristics, including but not limited to skill, judgment of value, communicating emotion, creative impulse, and symbols. If one were to take this into account, then yes, web movies like "Les Pantless Menance" definitely belong in the art category. I suppose the old school artists ( you know, the ones who created masterpieces and etched their name in history forever) will have to move over to make space on the wall as a HD television plays modern day art displaying naked children toys and their heads exploding for thrills.
My only guess for the new turn of art would be the society we live in. With older art, artists chose their to use their paintbrush to tell a story about the times they lived in, which happened to be social issues (politics, crime, gender issues, etc.). Today, we do the same thing, but our interests have undoubtedly took a change from what filmmaker Scott Stark suggested in his letter to Jane Fonda, "...a certain kind of selfless idealism, replacing it with a more self-centered view".
Perhaps we are running away from the problems of today's society, with crime, lack of morals, and a sense of helplessness to change anything. Instead of turning to art to remind us of our problems, maybe we're turning to art to help us forget, and submerge us into a roller coaster ride of images and sound juxtaposed together to create a "film" that will satiate our senses. Is this necessarily wrong? It certainly is interesting. Now, instead of art being held by an elite group of society, the average-Joe can become an Internet Michelangelo with the help of technology and an imagination.
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