Social networks and the national art gallery (Dublin|...|Sofia)

To publish is to make public. And one sense of being public is surely to be accessible? Today it is not only the writing and the images that are published formally, that is to say through official channels, but also the casual human artefacts, the chat, the blog, the quick pic, the self-made music and dance and film, and all of the latter through the medium of the social network. In the World-Wide Web (WWW), to be published is to have a unique resource identifier (URI) and usually a unique resource locator (URL). But to be visibly published on the WWW one needs to be found (much in the same way that one might be found say, 200 years ago, through the library catalogue). Hence at the very core of electronic publishing is to be found the metadata nucleus. In olden times the scholar/reader would have to travel to that place, the Library, if it were accessible, to read/study the work. Today, (s)he travels electronically to those places which are accessible. E-publication does not necessarily entail accessibility. For example, many scholarly works are behind pay walls, costs are borne by institutions of would-be accessors; someone has to pay for maintenance, security, and accessibility. Works of art are in a peculiar and particular category. A work of art is considered to be unique, by which one understands that there is no other copy, properly understood. There may be thousands of prints of the unique piece authorised. But the digitization of an artwork forces a categorical change. The digital artwork is, by nature different. It can be seen, not by reflected light but by transmitted see-through light! In this specific regard it is completely other vis-a-vis the book qua text. In this paper we consider the typical state of the “digital art” as e-publication and explore the extent to which such art is freely accessible to the public, whether on social network or otherwise, with respect to four chosen “National Art Galleries” on the circumference of the European Union.