social networking sites are developed by the very users who inhabit and utilize them on a daily basis. in many ways, their shape and size is determined principally by the amount and content that is “posted” by its users. form defined by use. a convenient parallel in the world of art for WEB 2.0 and its golden child, social networking sites, is the prop/lean piece. Richard Serra, who began making prop and lean pieces after his molten lead throwing experiments, illuminated the idea that material could very easily define form. unlike the cubist sculptures Picasso made of hand and tooled clay and bronze, Serra’s prop/lean pieces got their form from how they internally interacted. This of course is not to say there was a glaring element of unintentional chance in his works, they did. sure his 3d works had the very real potential to topple over, if acted on by an outside force, but they relied on something much more (pardon the pun) concrete, gravity, for their stability.
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2/13/11
