MTAA "exemplifies the processual nature of most Net art." MTAA is most famous what they call art historical "updates" in which they recreate art done in the 1960s and 70s with a modern take on techniques and processes. Famously, they do a digital recreation of Sam Hsheigh's One Year performance (Cage Piece), which originally was a collection of photographs documenting a year that the artist confined himself in a cage. In the update, MTAA artists took videos of themselves in identical 10x10x10 rooms eating, sleeping, reading, and doing other activities. On first look, it would be easy to assume that you were seeing it live, however, because it is an online video, there's no way to know where it comes from. As it turns out, in this project the artists just have the same images on a loop.
The idea of updating previous works of art is interesting to me as an art history student. You wouldn't necessarily think of art works as needing updates even as the techniques with which they were created become obsolete. Art represents more than just its subject; art is also representative of the moment during which it was created. When it comes to MTAA's update of One year performance, it kind of just seems to cheat. And maybe that's the point, but it doesn't really do it for me.
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