Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

Artist Jeff Koons partnered with Snapchat to release an augmented reality platform that allows users to virtually see Koons’s sculptures in locations such as Central Park by using their smartphones. These augmented reality sculptures function as signifiers for works of art that exist in different locations in the real, as opposed to the online, world. One day after the project was launched, artist, Sebastian Errazuriz, virtually “vandalized” Balloon Dog by creating an augmented reality “sculpture” that was identical to Koons’s online sculpture but covered with graffiti. This online intervention disrupted Koons’s visual signifying system as Errazuriz inserted a new signifier in place of the online original. The vandalized Balloon Dog does not exist in actual reality, so its semiotic system of visual signification is closed as the augmented artwork (sign) functions both as signifier and signified. Errazuriz’s online interference demonstrates the arbitrary nature of the sign and problematizes claims regarding the “original” online work of art much as Koons’s own sculptures, which are often closely derived from extant images and are usually not made by Koons himself, complicate questions of originality. Consequently, the lines between binaries such as original—copy and online—actual meaning are blurred and destabilized.