HSOC-365: Is Art Possible After Google?

How should we gauge the impact of the Internet on contemporary art? Does the advent of Web-based image aggregators and curatorial platforms (e.g. Pinterest, Contemporary Art Daily, thejogging.tumblr.com, #ArtSelfie) spell doom for the art profession, or at least, for its traditional institutions and markets? Or, to adopt a more optimistic perspective, have the databases, online archives, and retail networks of Web 2.0 revitalized the methods and materials available to contemporary artists, enabling universal access to supply chains and data flows? In this class, we will seek to understand the practical challenges posed to artists (and also critics, curators, spectators) by the omnipresent Web; we will also consider the "post-internet" condition in terms of the larger historical trajectory of modernism and its antecedents.