User-generated bricolage raises whether networked anonymity dissolves modernist authorship

Evidence

Arcangel’s installation consists of a version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (1741) meticulously constructed from YouTube samples of individual notes played by amateurs. By making the connection between YouTube and Gould, the bricolages invite a comparison between user-generated content and the production methods of the modernist-creator figure. … Does user-generated content make possible a new form of artistry, prefigured in both Gould’s approach to the recording studio and in Wendy Carlos’ synthesizer renditions of Bach? Or are Gould and Carlos being positioned as anticipating the dissolution of the individual artist in an anonymous digital network? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1220

Categorization

• QUESTION: The Gould/YouTube comparison poses whether curation of amateur fragments becomes a legitimate art form — worth chasing into questions about authorship in the networked age.
• SEED: Potential essay: what the Cory Arcangel Gould project reveals about whether modernism’s studio-mastery model survives when art becomes editing others’ uploaded fragments.