As the Web2 walls closed in, I left the platform to become a digital nomad. In turn, YouTube began to resemble low-production broadcast television while my unusual style led to my being buried by the algorithm. As a result, its prospects as a playground for experimental art quickly became a thing of the past - net neutrality had faded away. Originally devised as a “biennial,” mysteriously, the event never happened again.Īt the time, YouTube’s algorithm was evolving, with large corporations moving onto the platform. Together, the museum curators had gone through 23,000 video submissions, and mine had made it to the shortlist.
At the time, YouTube was a place for car crash videos and irascible toddlers - it hadn’t occurred to me that art could live there too.Ī couple million views later, one of my early experiments ended up being shown at the Guggenheim Museum as part of YouTube Play. WAAMBAT: I uploaded my first video to YouTube in 2008 after a room full of fellow art students suggested I put my videos on the platform. Courtesy of the artistĬody Edison: How have our expectations of the Internet changed in the years since Y2K and, especially, since the loss of net neutrality? Is Web3 changing those expectations? Gretchen Andrew, Vision Boards - Cover of Artforum, 2020.
