Speech and the ability for meta-reflection on one’s own language are inherent characteristics of human beings. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, language—whether written, spoken, or performed—has become more and more a part of the visual arts in various artistic practices and theoretical approaches, ultimately becoming a constitutive element and the "source" code of digital art. All the projects presented in the exhibition YOU OWN ME NOW UNTIL YOU FORGET ABOUT ME were originally Internet-based artworks. But the main thing they have in common is that they take as their starting point an exploration of language, with its arbitrary structures and rules, its various functions within society, its absurdities and constraints on the individual. Open processes are inherent to digital artworks, both in their production and in the mnemonic activities that emerge in their reception. Rather than focusing on the isolated—literary/literal—artwork, the exhibition highlights general artistic tendencies toward a discursive process that originates on the Internet and finds its way back to the "virtualities of real life".

As the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1) explained, human language can be described under three fundamental aspects: the biological preconditions for speaking (langage); the fixed system of rules and signs based on collective convention (langue); and the act of speaking itself, as ephemeral and individual statements and utterances (parole). Saussure assumed that language can only be properly considered within the system of langue, not through parole, but such a division between social collectivity and individuality, between the general and the specific, does not hold when it comes to Internet-based art and its mechanisms. Quite the contrary, art on the Internet focuses on many interrelated practices of both the artist and the user, tracing individual experiences and questions back to a larger system, to society itself. Given the supposition that the language system—conceived as a collective institution of norms—and the speech act—conceived as an individual, coherent and meaningful utterance—are reciprocally linked and that there can be no backflow into the system without speaking, it becomes clear that human language eludes immediate observation. Language can be examined only by reconstructing the process of its appearance, its articulation. Viewing our system of communication from this angle, we must ask if language is, then, an exclusively virtual product whose existence begins and ends with its realisation.

By the same token, digital artworks, although predetermined by the binary (linguistic) code, do not become "real" (generally comprehensible) until the code is transformed into text, image, or sound (when the data file is opened and the commands executed). Both language and digital artworks are based on processes, transformations and continuous fluidity. In the digital realm, language (the binary code) acts like a set of hidden stage directions or commands about "how to do things with words". (2) It can be thought of as a speech act that is realised through various media and that 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 founded on the active participation of a user, just as the existence of language is founded on the person who speaks. Text and image are considered to be humanity’s oldest mnemonic methods for preserving orality longer and bolstering memory. In the digital realm, the processual aspect 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 also irreversibly interlinked: on the one hand, text and image are both based on text; on the other, the binary code must be visualised in order to be comprehensible and so disembogues in a kind of equalising formula: "language to be looked at and/or things to be read". (4) The transformation of text into image, and vice versa, is not a reduction but a translation, and the question is not what is lost in translation, but what is gained.

In conclusion, to return to Saussure’s thesis, the words, images and sounds in digital art are no longer discrete parts of the artwork, and the langue and langage are no longer part of the parole. The individual elements of both systems are entangled in a performative act that renders interpretation obsolete. The "open work" (5) manifests itself through mediation and is created individually with each new reception of it. But what happens when the user closes the data file, when 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