The Paradox of Digital Participation in Postdigital Participatory Art

In a hyper-connected environment that facilitates participation and collaborative creation, participatory artists have recently embraced network-based participation through online crowdsourcing and social networking in a postdigital environment characterised by a blurring of the boundaries between online and offline. This study proceeds from an acknowledgment of the contradictions inherent in digital participation and the need for a critical perspective to assess postdigital participatory art (PPA). The goal is to reveal how participatory networks and platforms developed under cognitive capitalism have proletarianised the labour of artists and participants and the impact that this situation will have on the production, appreciation, and evaluation of PPA. Ultimately, I seek to elucidate the necessity to elaborate an alternative concept to connote such creative activities.