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Speech and the faculty of meta-reflection about one's language are inherent characteristics of human beings. Since the beginning of the 20th century, language—written, spoken, or performed—has become more and more part of the Visual Arts in form of various artistic practices and theoretical approaches and has finally turned into one of the constitutive elements and "source" code of Digital Arts. All projects shown in the exhibition YOU OWN ME NOW UNTIL YOU FORGET ABOUT ME. are originally Internet-based artworks. The main common ground is their starting point in the exploration of our language with its arbitrary systems and rules, its corresponding functions within society, as well as with its absurdities and restrictions for the individual. Open processes are inherent to digital artworks, within their production as well as within mnemonic activities emerging during their reception. Rather than to focus on the isolated—literary/literally—artwork, the exhibition highlights more general artistic tendencies leading once again to a discursive process, which originates from the Internet and finds its way back to the "virtualities of our real life".

According to Ferdinand de Saussure (1), human language can be divided into three fundamental aspects: the biological preconditions for speaking (langage); the arbitrary but fixed system of rules and signs (langue) based on collective convention; and the act of speaking itself (parole), ephemeral and individual statements and utterances. Following Saussure's assumption that language can only be considered properly within the system of langue and not parole, this division between social collectiveness and individuality, between the general and the special, does not hold for the field of Internet-based Art and its mechanisms. Quite the contrary, art on the Internet rather focuses on the many interrelated practices of the artist as well as of the user and traces back individual experiences and questions to a larger system, to society. Based on the supposition that the language system—thought as a collective institution of norms—and the speech act—thought as an individual, coherent and meaningful utterance—are linked reciprocally and that there is no backflow into the system without speaking, it can be concluded that human language withdraws itself from an immediate observation. Language can only be examined in the course of the reconstruction of the process of its appearance, that is, its articulation. Considering this point of view of our communication system, the question arises if, accordingly, language is an exclusively virtual product, the existence of which begins and ends with its realisation.

In parallel to these given linguistic conditions, digital artworks are predetermined by the binary (linguistic) code, but do not become "real" (commonly comprehensible) until the code is transformed into text, image, and/or sound (by opening the data file and executing the commands). Both language and digital artworks are based on processes, transformations, and a continuous fluidity. In the digital realm, language—the binary code—acts like hidden stage directions or commands about "how to do things with words" (2). It can be considered as a speech act which is realised in form of various media and which is part of an "infinite chain of acts of repetition, which cannot be grasped or controlled (...) Their peculiar, strange character is constituted by the fact that they refer to contexts that are not present in the moment they are actualised." (3)

The creation of digital artworks is built upon the active participation of the user just like the existence of language is built upon a speaking person. Text and image are considered to be the oldest mnemonic techniques to preserve orality for a longer period of time and to support memory. In the digital realm, the processuality of text and image and therefore their own "orality" renders mnemonic functions obsolete. Furthermore, text and image are not only equally constitutive elements, but they are interlinked irreversibly: on the one hand, text and image are based on text, on the other, the binary code must be visualised to be comprehensible and disembogues in a kind of equalisation of the formula "language to be looked at and/or things to be read" (4). The transformation of text into image and vice versa is not reduction, but translation, and the question is not what is lost in translation, but what is gained in translation?

In conclusion, returning to Saussure's theses, in Digital Arts, words, images and sounds are no longer integer parts of the artwork; langue and langage are no longer part of parole. The individual elements of both systems are entangled in a performative act which renders interpretation obsolete. The "Open Work" (5) manifests itself by intermediation and is created individually through every new reception. But what happens if the user closes the data file, or if the speaking person stops talking? "In the end there is nothing of an object here, just a process, a set of rules that leads you to the point of questioning unicity, ownership, and the object-like nature of digital art works and what you can own is nothing more than the memory of it." (6)

Birgit Rinagl / Franz Thalmair