Art After Artists

Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies through Art and Technology by Ashley Lee Wong is available from MIT Press in print, e-book, and open access. 

Alex Estorick: Your work is situated between multiple fields, including contemporary art and technology, while your interests range between sound, time-based, and community-oriented art as well as the sustainability of the arts. What do you see as being the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship surrounding developments in digital culture?

Ashley Lee Wong: I think we need a broader view of the economies and ecologies we work in and between. Today, we are seeing a convergence between different sectors and disciplines. At the same time, certain practices remain siloed and more resistant to change, which leads to blind spots. A case in point is the limited perspective of the art market.

When we think through art and technology and how artists work today across a variety of industries and contexts, we can start to develop a more expanded view of artistic practices. I think a broader and more holistic view would initiate structural change in ways that can better serve artistic developments.

‍AE: Your new book Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies through Art and Technology is published next week by MIT Press. Would you mind outlining your principal thesis?

‍ALW: The primary thesis aims to rethink cultural economies less around a market of buying and selling material objects, and more around sustaining artistic practices as shared and collaborative processes. I argue that the art market of objects blinds us from taking seriously the more intangible economies of art. I am also resistant to notions of ownership either of objects or of financial assets (including NFTs), but I also acknowledge that there is a role for everything in wider economies, where private capital accumulation is not an end in itself but a means to continue and extend a creative process.

I try to support the dimension of time when thinking about art, where art only exists in the processes of making, circulating, and restaging artworks in the future. I also suggest a more collaborative and relational view of artistic practices (rather than artworks as objects), where art needs to be practiced as a process of experiencing, sharing and developing knowledge and ideas with technology. 

I support a more process-oriented view of culture that needs to be sustained in time by iterating from the past, beyond notions of authorship and the original.  

‍AE: In your view, how can cultural producers who intersect art with tech negotiate a different relationship with market economics?

‍ALW: On the one hand, I am quite critical of the art and NFT markets, but I also acknowledge that it is not about what the economy is but how it is practiced. There is a need to be less dichotomous in our thinking, which I’ve also had to shift in my own relationship to market economies. To address the how is to take a more holistic view to understand how commercial markets also feed into and necessarily support non-commercial and experimental practices. It also takes into consideration how commercial markets can be leveraged and act as a conduit to support alternative groups and practices. 

In an age of virtue signaling and artwashing, we must also acknowledge that not all seemingly non-commercial projects are inherently “good.” To take a more balanced approach is to understand when and how practices become meaningful for the self and others. An embodied perspective requires intimate knowledge of the situation and social and cultural contexts that we work in. 

My intention with the book is not to provide best practices, but to open up a way of thinking and doing that is ethical and situated in specific contexts and communities. 

‍AE: In the book, you emphasize the importance of collaborative production in generating new ecologies of practice. What have you learned from the relationships you’ve built through your own studio, MetaObjects, about the links between creator ecologies and economies?

‍ALW: I discuss the work of MetaObjects toward the end of the book, where the research and writing allowed me to reflect on our own work and practice in the field. We are a studio that facilitates digital production with artists and cultural institutions. We do not necessarily call ourselves “artists” though I view the work we do as necessarily feeding into and enabling creative processes. 

Our work often goes underacknowledged as we often work behind the scenes, but I also challenge the notion that artistic practices are reserved only for those who call themselves “artists.” 

The paradigm of the art market centres on the profile of the artist, but these practices are a collaboration of all those involved in the project including curators, technicians, producers, researchers, and audience members. There is a need to think more fluidly about our own roles and identities and to be open to new collaborative arrangements. Taking an ecological approach is more about being responsive to the environments we work in, where we do not define our role and identity a priori but rather discover what we can be and do in the process of engaging in the field. This self-reflexive process is expressed by our name MetaObjects, which we chose well before Facebook created Meta, to call attention to the emergent structures found in nature. Our logo consists of rhombic dodecahedrons, which are created by bees when they make honeycombs. 

In the book, I propose practices that nurture the grounds for possibilities to emerge, which is also about creating shared environments for artistic practices to thrive. This process of thinking-doing is outlined in greater detail in a paper on speculative (thinking) pragmatism (doing) in the journal Artnodes. We view our practice as extending creative processes by actualizing possibilities emerging in the moment and responding to the needs of communities. 

AE: In what ways do you see the future of cultural production as a more-than-human conversation? 

ALW: A more-than-human perspective is ultimately a posthumanist view of the world, which treats objects including technologies, plants, and animals on equal grounds, and where humans are no longer at the center. Rather than thinking of humans as separate from the environment, we are always already embedded within it. When I talk about “ecologies” in the book, it is less about the natural environment and more a way of relating in the world. Our environment is now also artificial as we live in cities and with technology, while humans are inherently technological beings. As a result, it is less a question of machine versus man than machines being part of what makes us human. 

We are always already entangled with machines, and it is only through processes of engagement that we co-define our roles. 

Technologies also include the legal and economic instruments, such as contracts and agreements, with which we govern and manage our relationships. We must work with these tools to find ways to make them work for us as a society. 

AE: I’m conscious that a number of developments in both AI and Web3 were taking place while you were preparing your book. What do you see as the problems as well as the potential benefits of theorizing in flux? 

‍ALW: When writing about technology, it becomes difficult to keep up with trends, since research quickly becomes outdated or case studies no longer exist by the time of publication. Hopefully, theorizing takes a broader view that extends beyond hype cycles and particular technologies or techniques, and reaches toward something more universal. While it is possible to extend discussion of AI and Web3 in the book, it likely wouldn’t add that much to the ultimate thesis. 

‍AE: You introduce your book with reference to the artist Samson Young. Do artists whose practices hybridize traditional and digital media also necessitate a rethinking of art’s critical frameworks?

‍ALW: I start the book with our collaboration with Samson Young, a contemporary artist who works across media but has a background in sound art and music composition. Contemporary artists are often interdisciplinary and do not define their practices according to particular media. Their works focus more on concepts and ideas in the post-media condition. In the book, I explain that because contemporary artists work across diverse media, they are no longer necessarily masters of specific media but depend on collaboration with others to create their works. Our role with MetaObjects acknowledges this collaborative process by extending the possibilities for artists through the use of different technologies. Tools such as 3D printers are one part of that community-driven assemblage. 

If art is now less about an artist’s individual skill in a medium, then it is about acknowledging the collective endeavor of artistic creation to enable as many people as possible to engage creatively with these tools. 

AE: This magazine was originally established to document the moment digital art went mainstream, which followed the NFT boom of 2021. At the time, crypto artists from around the world were establishing careers for themselves without needing to be routed through, or barred from, traditional galleries. Following a lengthy bear market, it feels like a digital art scene that once celebrated the decentralization of the blockchain has now fully absorbed the centralizing tendencies of the legacy art world while wiring itself into traditional patronage networks. In 2025, do you see hope for a more inclusive, horizontal, and affordable art world? What is your projection?

‍ALW: In editing the book, I spent time updating sections to incorporate aspects of the NFT boom and its subsequent bust. I did find that digital art as an ownable asset had been somewhat legitimized in the traditional art market. At the same time, there has been a return to valuing material objects and physical experiences after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Artists continue to engage with both digital and physical materials in order to participate in different markets for their work. 

I would not say that the art market has become more inclusive, horizontal, or affordable, and perhaps the cultural economy has become more dire with the Trump administration disrupting the world order. But there are still possibilities to work in-between practices that rely on an expanded view of what it means to be an artist today. If we follow Joseph Beuys, everyone can be an artist. I think we need to let go of identities and be open to operating in different ways and in different contexts, but ultimately with the same values and intentions that underlie our work. 

AE: If you see the NFT explosion as puncturing the autonomy of art from collectibles as well as the meme economy, what do you see as the future of an expanded art world that incorporates practices that have historically gone under the radar?

‍ALW: The notion of NFTs as collectible images constitutes only one type of art. As is evident from many contemporary practices, art is not only about generating an image but about the concept and context in which works are presented. 

I’m more interested in the process than in the output, and there is a much longer history of automation in art beyond the recent AI and NFT booms. Fundamentally, not much has changed in our work with technology to create art.

Memes are interesting because they allow for the subversion of shared understandings of popular digital culture. However, they only become interesting when you see the diversity of images together. With a lot of generative art produced as NFTs there is a lack of meaning beyond the formal qualities of the image. But memes and images require engagement with humans, who interpret and contextualize the work — and call it “art” — to become more than simply poor images. There is potential to create interesting generative art, but the bulk of NFT collectibles lack meaning.

AE: One of the genuinely disruptive features of digital practices is the lack of a fixed materiality. How do you see this altering the role of artists and the circulation of art?

‍ALW: The lack of a fixed materiality suggests that artworks can take different material forms every time they are staged. But it remains necessary to think of site-specificity and the specific equipment and displays available to show the work. If the work is interactive, then it is also important to understand the social context in which people are responding. Works of digital art can take on different forms and circulate online and offline in different contexts beyond the gallery setting — from public screens to social media. These are very different forms of experience that engage different audiences and produce different meanings and values in the process. As a consequence, it is important to understand the totality of how digital art circulates in all its different forms and instantiations. 

Artworks are not finite objects but necessarily exist and evolve over time, while digital tools and formats quickly become obsolete. There is therefore an urgent need to adapt works to new formats in order to preserve them, but that also means letting go of our fixation on originality in order to allow for ideas, concepts, and techniques to be adapted and iterated by others in the future.

Art does not belong to individual artists as authors but represents a shared collective engagement with embodied knowledge.

AE: Are artists still capable of sustaining radical practices in a context where art, especially digital art, has been financialized? In what ways do the artists you reference in your book rupture the seamless flow of capital? 

‍ALW: Artists are still capable of sustaining radical practices so long as they are willing to take a more expanded view of what it means to be an artist and engage in diverse roles and arenas for their practice. 

I think we need to let go of the notion of the “artist” as a career professional who functions in a discrete “art world.” 

Artistic practice is something that should belong to everyone regardless of their field or background. Of course, it is difficult to get away from the established “art world” and its mechanisms for validating what counts as “art”. Many artists do not call themselves “artists,” yet they still maintain an engagement and dedication to creative practices throughout their daily lives.