# Platform Art: A Modular Approach

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/platform-art-a-modular-approach
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-03-20

## Summary

In this 2024 note, Jeanyoon Choi distinguishes platform art from an art platform for selling art: platform art is a practice whose form is itself a platform. A web-based work that anyone can enter and interact with is remade by participants in every encounter, so its definitive form is the platform and the connections between devices, while any gallery installation is one temporary manifestation. This suggests a modular approach to exhibiting, in which an artist or curator selects suitable modules for a space, giving leaner installations and more possible forms.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤의 짧은 글로, 예술을 파는 '아트 플랫폼'과 달리 작품 자체가 누구나 접속해 참여하는 플랫폼인 '플랫폼 아트'를 정의하고, 전시에서는 그 일부 모듈만 선택해 보여주는 모듈식 접근을 제안한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Platform Art (modular approach)**: Web-based art whose definitive form is an accessible, participatory platform rather than an installation, so that exhibitions present selected modules of it as temporary physical manifestations.

## Questions this answers

### What is the difference between platform art and an art platform?

In Jeanyoon Choi's note, an art platform is a place to sell art, while platform art is an artistic practice whose form is itself a platform, such as a web artwork that anyone can enter and interact with.

### How can a web-based artwork be exhibited modularly?

Jeanyoon Choi suggests that because the work's definitive form is the platform, an artist or curator can select only some of its input, output and interconnection modules for a given space, producing a leaner installation.

Topics: platform art, web art, modular exhibition, participatory art, multi-device web artwork

References: [TouchDesigner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TouchDesigner)

## Full text

A modular approach to platform art. First, a distinction: platform art is not an art platform. An art platform might be a place to sell art. By platform art, I mean an artistic practice whose very form is a platform.

Consider a work that is not fixed as an installation or a prerecorded moving image, and does not depend on a specialist software setup inaccessible to the public. If it exists on the web, anyone can enter and interact with it. The artwork itself becomes a platform.

Participants contribute to it together. Each interaction makes and remakes the work, so no two encounters need be identical. Its definitive form is no longer a particular arrangement of screens in a gallery. That arrangement is one physical manifestation of a platform that can take others.

How the work is installed still matters, but the platform and the intangible connections between its devices come first. An installation gives those relations a temporary physical form.

This also suggests a modular approach to exhibiting. A platform may contain multiple forms of input, generative output and interconnection. An artist or curator does not have to present every feature at once. They can select a set of modules appropriate to a particular space while preserving the relations that make the work coherent.

The result is a leaner installation with more possible forms of existence. For me, that possibility points towards a future for web-based artistic practice.

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Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.