<chapter>
<title>net.art</title>
<desc>...</desc>
<mails>
<mail>
<nbr>0.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; art in the nettimes etc.</subject>
<from>Calin Dan</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Tue, 29 Apr 1997 23:31:21 +0200 (MET DST)</date>
<content>
art in the nettimes. some mess-media common places. statement for a flat
interactivity

"Net-art", a default concept that could be seen coming on the floor since
the advent of www, is an indicator for some other, more resistant topics.

1. {The ghetto of appropriation.} In a simplified overview, the art of the
last 2 decades spanned from (video-; to video installation-; to computer-;
to CD ROM-; to internet-) ART. Whatever new media tool gets public is not
only immediately assimilated as procedure and path for artistic activities
but becomes protocol and compulsory label for the (state of the) art
discourses and the aural events connected to them.
This restlessness can be speculated upon as representing either an increase
of integration dynamic, or a symptom of content neurosis. Anyway, it gives
a sense of isolation that became retrospectively quite obvious. After the
euphoria of the schism between (old- and new-) media arts, a long process
of failed integration is consistent with the history of the art events in
the last decades. The slow convergence between institutions, initiatives
and artists coming from both sides of the imagined fall are not
compensating for a crisis which is so simple that it can hide under that
little absurd sentence: there is *new* art and there is *old* art. Isn't
it?

2. {The seek for legitimacy.} a) From the part of the new media themselves,
in a &gt;natural&lt; translation of the technological experiment towards
consumerism. (In that case we approach new media as immanent entities with
a logic of their own; or, more likely, as corporate initiatives highly
controlled in the process of development/dissemination.)
b) From that segment of the art generators/moderators
(artists/curators/theoreticians) looking for a promotional niche where
rules have not been imposed (yet).
c) From the art system itself, in a period when all systems (politics,
economy, communication, social security, job policies, capital,
environment, family, name it) are confronted with the issue of image
improvement.
d) From those entrepreneurs who still believe that business is helped by a
well moderated art commitment.

3. {Revitalization through compromise.} The mechanism of historical change,
labeled until recently as progress, is assimilating the innovations through
compromise, fact which annoys the innovative spirits. For that reason maybe
every new item in the stream of modern escalation has, beyond inventors
(initiators) and developers, its own prophets: for keeping pure the flame
of the new.

Unfortunately, as soon as the *new* becomes public property it is used
precisely in order to revitalize the *old*, and not necessarily in order to
displace it. A compromise which can bring change if it is negotiated
properly. Or bring just some more frustrated prophets pointing at another
failure of the pure in front of the rich.
This is, I guess, the level on which we can contemplate &gt;net art&lt; at this
moment.

4. {Social currency and moral token.} From those who are not satisfied by
the assimilation of commodities or by the criticism of commodification, a
new type of activism was born, not to be found before the raise of media as
a template of art production.

Mixing media criticism, social skepticism, technological skill and
aesthetic will, this activism is structured on the image of its favorite
tool - the computer - whose interfaces and connectivity are replicated in a
mixture of speed, presence, designed language and behavior, in a
convergence of entertaining and calculation, in programmed discontinuity,
and in a pragmatic perception of the modern mythologies. An activism
consistent with the idea of aesthetic coherence, which brings back the
decadent image of the &gt;dandy&lt;, so well married with the &gt;data&lt;, as we know.
(Bilwet)

5. *Net is not art.* What could be dangerous in this mixture is precisely
the way it addresses both issues of art and social responsibility. When a
tactical (media) activist says that *net is art*, my memory jumps back to a
previous experience we had in the 70s' and 80s' communist Europe.

&gt;Resistance through art&lt; was then a slogan legitimating a special position
&gt;of artists who were truly believing that isolation into a specific medium
&gt;was vouching for political dissidence. The complementary trend was to
&gt;force the acceptance of active cultural dissidents as artistic authorities
&gt;(in the "inner" circles of the art world). The two situations are
&gt;interchangeable in the sense that they both consider political engagement
&gt;and artistic status as bonuses.

When everything has political implications and/or artistic value, the
initial sense of both commitments becomes diluted and therefore vulnerable
to manipulations.

I am not trying here to level a historical experience that many
cannot check upon with developments just occurring under our eyes. But the
recent past has to be used because it offers ready made commonplaces to
contemplate and avoid, if necessary. Or not.

Denying publicly the art &gt;system&lt; in favor of media activism is trendy and
it confirms the fascination that art keeps radiating in those times of
mess-media. Otherwise, why make public issues (therefore conceptual
objects) from decisions which belong to the private ("I am no more an
artist/curator, etc."), if not for teasing (via negative
self-advertisement) the curiosity of a field which seems to have lost any?

6. {Looped rejection.} There is an interesting compression of meanings in
the attitudes of those who reject the art &gt;system&lt;, respectively the art
("art is dead"), and those - quite many - who claim "artistry" for other
domains, extraneous to the art as sensed historically.

a) Art and art system become one entity, with interchangeable weaknesses.
Perceiving art's future only within the prospective of its promotional
infrastructure is an abuse which speaks about the failure of art to
redesign its public beyond consumerism and the failure of consumerism to
socialize art beyond commercial integration.

b) The identification between domain and system opens the door for confused
attitudes of reclamation in the key "art is (design/media/media design)",
which prove for the effective contamination of the general mentalities - so
far that consumerism is denied from a consumerist point of view. Which
could be interesting if not just hypocrite.

The reason for this loop rejection-lust stays in the schizophrenic relation
that society at large (still) seems to have with money. Although belonging
to a system, art is somehow a gratuitous activity, a noble trade, with no
apparent relation to currency. By claiming artistry, other domains try to
achieve qualities that art itself is denied lately: responsibility,
disinterest, social efficiency. The profit should be there also, for the
complete satisfaction, but coming somehow spontaneously, as a reward for
the understanding of what art really means, and for &gt;extending&lt; its
borders.

7. {Loss of legitimacy.} &gt;Net art&lt; speaks (again) for the expectations
risen by the new tools in an era when technology plays the role of
ideology. And of the weakness of ideologies themselves in fulfilling one of
the most basic needs - legitimacy.

After religion, art seemed to loose its quality to legitimate human
activities beyond the range of the aesthetic. But still, like religion
itself, art became an instrument for organizing the dynamic of closed
communities who stay as referential for more extended (and therefore more
discrete) games of power.

&gt;Art is dead&lt; and &gt;net is art&lt; are two symmetric attitudes whose polemic
&gt;values have to be appreciated "cum grano salis". But the development of
&gt;internet is not a fresh issue, and basically new media are not necessarily
&gt;new. Therefore maybe the euphoric statements, the holistic visions and the
&gt;pessimistic evaluations are corners that could be cut more drastically on
&gt;the base of historic experience, for getting into more matter-of-factly
&gt;estimates of the usefulness and dangers confronting the art in the
&gt;nettimes.

8. {The parenthesis of the &gt;new&lt;.} There is a danger shadowing all topics
starting with the domain name *new*: If there is any hope for the new media
arts to get long term confirmation, it might come precisely from the fact
that new media themselves deal with old issues. The trouble is that since
novelty is something that keeps the momentum, there must be something wrong
with getting old. At least that is the rule of social contract at the
moment.

In the mean time, an increasing eagerness to seek for legitimacy in the
history of media, or even further in the history of culture and religions
is an operation which might help defining some areas of reflection for the
newest art - the net one.

i. #From video out.# Compared to recent experiences, net art is less
instrumental in displaying big amounts of data and less able to sustain
visual environments beyond the user-to-screen relation.
(Comment: Video art launched the costly adventure of v.-installation
precisely - among other reasons - because the user-to-screen paradigm
seemed to be not enough competitive in the mess-media ambient.)
It has potentially higher rates of distribution, on the horizontal vectors
of the web. It also involves a higher risk of dissipation, due to the
specificity of the same medium.

(Comment: video art aimed to enter the vertical hierarchy of museums, and
succeeded; only to realize how meager an audience they bring, despite the
acquisition of status symbol. Remain the video festivals and distribution
initiatives, something of the dimension of a large news group.)

The capacity of the machines is paramount in displaying the information,
and the lack of consistency in their systems, power etc. make the net an
unpredictable medium, from the hosting server on.

ii. #Learning to be old.# Net art might be a domain assuming as a program
some techniques of nomadism. Random appearances, tactical disappearance,
low resolution, ubiquity, distrust of historic values (posterity,
stability, economic growth), data pessimism (bury the information, save
your discourse for a rainy day), strategies of destruction (symbolic
viruses), etc.

Question: If the &gt;web&lt; is a floating graveyard, what is the format of the
funeral monuments? ASCII? QTVR?

iii. #Fighting the mess-media.# Net art might put at work the frugal side
of net tools for countering the excesses of today's visual environment.
Therefore, to be non-visual (or with a diminished visual emphasize), remote
(limited audience), private (relying on personal narratives, local
imperatives, communal mythologies).

(Comment: The bad news come when we remember the modest impact of
conceptual art, community TV etc.)

Mainstream media shouldn't be competed on a lesser ground. The problem with
art (*any* art) is that it has no proper means to define a ground out of
reach for the mainstream media. The position of media arts (*any*, net art
included, I'm sorry) is worsened in that sense by the vicious shareware
situation (same tools, different goals).

Question: How many &gt;surfers&lt; and how many readers are using the www
interfaces? This in the prospective of a content based net art.

iiii. #Net quality.# Being able to replace the zapping of the 80s with
something different than the &gt;surfing&lt; of the 90s; maybe with a
reinstallation of the minimal intensity of contemplation which in lesser
times was named revelation or religious feeling.

9. *Statement for a flat interactivity*. The (new-) screen mentality
developing in the track of the www adds some extra confirmation to evidence
accumulated during the short but by now tormented history of the moving
image. Precisely to the facts that: a) cinema was not a plug in for the
Renaissance optical cube; and b) the moving images did not increase the
meaning of tri-dimensionality. From film to TV to computer, the visual
language didn't mark an "evolution", but spiraled back towards a
(meta/pre)historic flatness.

The shocking window opened by the Lumičre brothers' first movie projection
in the wall of a cabaret theater was already containing the prophecy of
flatness: light, movement and prospective cannot change a steaming engine
or a traveling happy bourgeois family into something different. What
maintained active for decades the hypnotic force of cinema is the revival
of an old theatrical recipe: how to install a ritual atmosphere by working
the illusion of depth with the help of controlled light and multi-layered
flatness. That was actually how the medieval "misterium mysticum"
performances were staged; that is the way theaters were build from the
baroque times until the 19 century - with layers of flat decorum propelled
with invisible cranes, wheels and ropes, in a scenario of interactivity
where the button could be a word, a gesture, the sound of an instrument.
All under the supreme rule of light control.

What ruined the hypnosis and revealed the flatness of the procedure was the
interference of uncontrolled light. (Dominant light is actually one of the
embarrassments of modernism, introduced by Copernicus with his perception
of the universe. The ecumenism of electricity, defined otherwise as &gt;the
4th dimension&lt;, is another one.) The installation of more casual moving
image devices in our domestic decorum abolished the miracle of light
effects, but enhanced flatness as an obvious quality of information.

TV broadcast, video games, web pages with hyper-text structures prove
precisely the opposite of what is commonly assumed at this moment. We are
definitely not in the way to capture the 3d in the box of our display
monitors, or to build an electronic/digital equivalent of the theatrical
vision (from light cube to light tube, if I may; here has to be mentioned
another embarrassing heresy of modernism - the optical prospective as
settled in the 15 century by L. B. Alberti). But we might be close to
achieve the goal underlining the image making process for millennia: a
synthesis of the meaningful flatness of representation with the symbolic
depth of movement.

We might also have an opportunity to finally acknowledge a consistent
although remote fascination for the flatness of the images, even when
animated.

Flatness is a dangerous component of reality, as far as it is not assumed
as such. Art history can be red as a history of failures due to the
oppression of flatness. Let's say.

The Magdalenian hunters scribbling the walls of the European caves, or the
nomads painting the rocks at Tassili have an understanding for the
emergencies of mental perception and a knowledge of the ways to fulfill
them. In times of magic relation with the environment, a flattened
representation is both an instrument of control and a carrier of superior
powers. By flattening the essential aspects of his surrounding (animals to
hunt, enemies to defeat), the "pre-historic" painter doesn't operate a
reduction, since by that way he can capture a spiritual dynamic via a
frozen movement.

The eye does not perceive the movement of the buffalo. The drawing does.
And by that it makes obvious another level of the real, the hidden faces of
a world otherwise perceived boldly, like a container filled with hostile
events. Mapping that container pushes in view the movements and the vectors
which give sense to this world. In other words, the world is eventually
flat, and dynamic. And therefore meaningful.

3d is predictable, therefore oppressive and limiting. 3d is like
censorship. While flatness is comprehensive in a way which gives room to
the imagination for building other dimensions too.

Later on in time, the refinement of representation still keeps for a while
the dialectic approach to flatness. Where the Egyptian painting gives a
prospective, it does so precisely in order to capture the movement, to
suggest the vibration of the monumental form, and not in order to play with
illusions of volume and masses. In those times, human and animal are still
homologue categories - floating shapes in a shamanic flux which unifies the
energies of cosmos.

Flatness was magic - 3d is ideology. When sculpture became a public
entertainment, allowing the pedestrians to turn around carved figures, the
bond to the domain of magic understanding was displaced by the veil of
misunderstandings, instrumental for the political power to keep a grip on
reality. This process begun roughly in the Roman times, and it had a simple
mechanics: making the real look unreal if compared to the powerful illusion
of prospective. Before that, the sculptures were confined to the
architecture of the temple, altar, mountain. Sometimes they were even
impossible to be viewed. They were concepts. And concepts move in the thin
air of flatness.

The taking off point for any good interactive situation is to assume the
flatness of the screen as an evidence that cannot be transcended just by
illusionist procedures; like the flatness of the Earth cannot be denied
just by satellite photography technologies. As far as our daily trade
proves, we live on a flat planet and we look at flat surfaces where flat
shapes happen to move. Interactivity cannot and does not have to go further
than the flatness of data which allows information to achieve beyond-the-3d
performances. Two dimensions + movement = Multi-dimensional content. The
formal aspects of such a process are undefinable, but the requirements are
there - on the net: the poverty of the tools, the emphasize on
transmission, the fluidity of the connections. A return to older visions
might be possible via net art. Or not.

The true virtual reality is the one which goes further than the third
dimension, keeping at the same time a flat vision, which is the vision of
(f)light . The VR we know now is just the cyber equivalent of the bourgeois
realism, a fascinating kitsch defined by basic similarities, effective and
addictive because it cuts down any chance for the uncontrolled to burst in
our hyper controlled environments. VR and 3d are the sedatives who keep the
undisturbed life consumers from becoming life critics.

Therefore, we must be cautious with a theoretical heritage who states that
"escaping [...] flatland is the essential task of envisioning
information"[1], and look into more obsolete experiences like the history
of the collage [2], or the stage writings of Schlemmer [3]. Envisioning
information means precisely capturing its essence - which is flat speed.

10. The image of the modern artist was forged during the Italian
Renaissance through a dispute which engaged for about one hundred years
some of the most outstanding personalities of the Quattro- and Cinquecento.
It was the dispute between the Liberal Arts (Ars Liberalis) and Mechanic
Arts (Ars Mechanicae).

The division, based on statements of the antique philosophy (mainly Plato)
was quantified in the Middle Age, when human activities have been
classified into superior and inferior "arts". The superior arts, emanating
*only* from the spirit, and therefore "Liberal" were: Grammar, Rhetoric,
Logic (the so called Trivium), respectively Geometry, Arithmetic, Music,
Astronomy (Quadrivium). The "inferior" ones were all activities involving
the mechanics of the body or of the machines, no matter what the purpose of
the application was. That is how architecture, painting and sculpture, the
main domains of the visual creativity were nevertheless - mechanic arts.
All this was encoding an old prejudice about the superiority of theory over
practice, intellectual over physical (work), invention over execution,
illusion over representation, concepts over objects etc. etc. And mirrors
eventually top to bottom social structures, divided in masters and serfs,
noblemen and artisans, gods and mortals.

The Renaissance succeeded in changing the status quo by including the
visual arts among the other "liberal" activities, and therefore giving a
chance to an integrated model of creativity, where the sensorial and
theoretical levels could become convergent. [4] The failure of this model
came precisely through the institutions meant to promote it, who enhanced
the economic aspect of the mutation at the disadvantage of the spiritual
ones. The liberation from the manufacturing circuit of
production-gratification never occurred, in fact. It was just hidden behind
the screen of academic institutions who enhanced the gap between manual
work and intellectual satisfaction, instead of erasing it. Socially
speaking, the artists remained what they were before - artisans, but
loosing in their new ambition schemes the niche reserved to them
previously, for a floating situation where individualism prevailed, without
being necessarily a solution.

What we experience in the nettimes is another attempt to integrate visual
and conceptual (iconic and discursive) models in a unique flow of data.
Another attempt to modify the status quo of creativity by going beyond the
"mechanics" of expression. And the danger remains the same - that the
institutions which have to work out this change will fail the expectations
invested in them. That the social needs are again to far to be reached via
theoretic restlessness. That the digital priests will remain artisans, this
time &gt;digital artisans&lt; (the concept of Richard Barbrook).

The internet is seen now in many ways: as a social model, a
psycho-metaphor, a religious interface, a cult, a communal tool etc., etc.
It is also, more and more, a play field for cloning the real world in a
flattened un-reality. But this time a *truly flat* one, with no metaphysics
whatsoever. Therefore the idea of net art comes on a ground virtually
polluted by all the failures and prejudices which make
art-of-the-real-world so outdated. If this can be changed is a suspended
question, but a challenging one, no doubt about it.
Happy Doomsday!
                                                                Călin Dan

NOTES:

[1] Edward R. Tufte - "Envisioning Information", Cheshire, Connecticut,
1990, p.12; an otherwise excellent book about quantifying information in
visual contexts.
[2] A fresh approach to the subject in Dorothea Dietrich, "The Collages of
Kurt Schwitters. Tradition and Innovation", Cambridge University Press,
1993.
[3] For instance, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Farkas Molnar, "The
Theater of the Bauhaus" (editor Walter Gropius), London, 1979.
[4] More about this anachronistic topic in Anthony Blunt, "Artistic Theory
in Italy 1450-1600", Oxford, 1940.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.0</nbr>
<subject>Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Charlotte Frost</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Thu, 3 Oct 2013 15:01:52 +0800</date>
<content>
Is this post one of the most iconic pieces of net art history?
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9703/msg00094.html

Certainly Rhizome's Rachel Greene believed the story and made it 'art
history' in an article written for Artforum in 2000 she put: 'The term
Œnet.art¹ is less a coinage than an accident, the result of a software
glitch that occurred in December 1995, when Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic
opened an anonymous e-mail only to find it had been mangled in transmission.
Amid a morass of alphanumeric gibberish, Cosic could make out just one
legible term ­ Œnet.art¹ ­ which he began using to talk about online art and
communications'. Greene, R. (2000) ŒWeb Work: a history of internet art¹,
Artforum, v.38 (no.9): 162

But as other writers like Josephine Bosma have argued, the term 'net.art'
wasn't born this way at allŠ see her book Nettitudes:
http://www.amazon.com/Nettitudes-Lets-Studies-Network-Cultures/dp/9056628003

So was it a stunt? A work of net.art itself? And if it is a fusion of
artwork and a tongue-in-cheek jibe at the discipline of art history
(creating a kind of 'ism' to bait the art historians) what do we describe it
as? A kind of new media new art history?  Perhaps Rachel Greene didn't
believe the story, but was also invested in crafting this red herring of a
narrative? And whatever it was, how do we work with a post like this when
studying the history of Internet art forms? How easy is it to misinterpret
an list-based archive (or any social media-based archive)? To what extent do
we have the license to interpret a list post or should we hunt down it's
author and verify we've understood?</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Nicholas O'Brien</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Thu, 3 Oct 2013 22:54:40 -0400</date>
<content>
I can't exactly say anything specifically about the labeling of net.art -
whether it was a joke, a tongue-in-cheek gesture/label or not - but I do
feel like the "art historical bait" that was suggested is very relevant to
contemporary so-called netart discussions/curation/classifications. Perhaps
this is due in part by the continued problematics that net.art as a
classification poses to historians that makes me feel a sense of warm
affinity when thinking about contemporary netart definitions  Although the
term was certainly more closely tied to the technical execution of a work
then any current netart definite, I think the ambiguity and the playfulness
of such a term still resonates with myself - a self-identified contemporary
netart academic/maker.

The difficulty of this classification is that it is unclear if the identity
of this art has to do with material or culture. For instance, Painting is a
classification of medium, whereas AbEx is a classification of culture. The
one is based on material plasticity, the other is based on contextual
analysis. However, with net.art, historians can approach this work through
both methodological avenues. This is even more so with more recent netart -
particularly as a newer generation becomes less concerned with technical
execution and more preoccupied with social distribution.

So the ruse seems healthy afoot! Or so I'd argue. The ease of this
misinterpretation is perhaps a strength of the medium. I think in being
able to be fluid and hard to define creates an intrigue both from a
material and cultural perspective that other mediums rarely approach (or
only approach through gimmicky redefinition: "Painting as memorial,
photography as documentary, etc.")

In some ways the aftermath of net.art is more interesting to me as a
micro-art history then it's own moment. Afterwards artists themselves
struggled/strived for new terms and new definitions to distinguish their
work as unique or separate from something that might've been considered a
jibe. Terms like "New Media" "Digital Art" "Transmedia" "post-internet"
"net-based" "interactive design" starting cropping up all over the place -
almost as if these classification were apologetically compensating for the
ambiguity and openness of net.art. These efforts could be seen as measure
taken by artists to be more easily identifiable within a contemporary
canon, but also could be seen as efforts to carve out space/distance from a
previous generation/moment.

I want to say more, I guess, but maybe I'll wait for other topics this
month,
Looking fwd + very best</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>mez breeze</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Fri, 4 Oct 2013 20:49:20 +1000</date>
<content>
On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Charlotte Frost &lt;[log in to unmask]
&gt; wrote:

&gt; Is this post one of the most iconic pieces of net art history?
&gt; http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9703/msg00094.html
&gt;

How about:

From: "Vuk Cosic" &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt;
Organization: KUD France Preseren
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 12:12:23 CET
Subject: Re: [7-11] backbone
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]

ho
&gt; whats a net.art backbone?
good one,
i suppose it's a providers idea of 7-11
sorta

v

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and:

X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 07:14:01 -0700
To: [log in to unmask]
From: nov 97 &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt;
Subject: [7-11] net art homework
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]

http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~bookchin/finalProject.html



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&gt; &gt; Thank you for participating in 7-11 MAILING LIST &gt; SUBSCRIBER
SATISFACTION SURVEY. &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt;
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\/ /_/ |_|_| \/ /_/ |_|_| # &gt; # # &gt; # # &gt; #1.7.100(today="7-11.00
071101010 07110101 0711.00100# &gt; ########### http://www.ljudmila.org/7-11/
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&gt; -



[that link waybackmachined:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070206180348/http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~bookchin/finalProject.html
]

Also:



Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 20:42:36 +0100
To: [log in to unmask]
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [7-11] Majordomo results: A word from the hostess.
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]

--

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; who 7-11 [log in to unmask]
Members of list '7-11':

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24 subscribers


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&gt; &gt; Thank you for participating in 7-11 MAILING LIST &gt; SUBSCRIBER
SATISFACTION SURVEY. &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt;
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&gt; -


and:

Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 10:59:39 -0800 (PST)
To: [log in to unmask]
From: [log in to unmask] (Natalie Bookchin)
Subject: Re: [7-11] A word from the hostess.
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]

Interview
Natalie: Do you want to know why there is no net art in california?

Natalie: Um.. there isn't? Yes do tell me why?

Natalie: I think its because we dont have time to waste on things that we
cant hang in our beach condos.

Natalie And of course we're also buzy walking on the beach, looking at the
ocean, napping under the palm trees, eating the best of pacific rim cooking

Natalie: also we dont have the net yet hooked up in our cars yet

Natalie: thats not true

Natalie: yes it is.


_________                          _________
|  _____  |                        |  _____  |
| [_____] |                        | [_____] |
|         |                        |         |
|         |========================|         |
|         |              [][][][][]|         |
|   __    |_____________ [][][][][]|    __   |
|  (__)   | FM 7-11 ****|  ========|   (__)  |
|  _____  |_____________|  **VOL{} |  _____  |
| /     \ |                        | /     \ |
||  ( )  ||________________________||  ( )  ||
| \_____/ | CD | TAPE | TAPE | AUX | \_____/ |
|_________|____|___1__|___2__|_____|_________|

LET'S CRANK THE SOUND WAY UP
LET'S DANCE AROUND THE GLOBE
NO ONE STOP UNTIL WE ALL DROP

[+ Make no mistake, "net.art" as a discussion topic has been oscillating
constantly since 97]:

From: dd &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt;
To: "[log in to unmask]" &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt;,


"[log in to unmask]" &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt;
Subject: RE: [7-11] the meaning of the inner circle
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 00:51:19 +0200
X-Ms-Attachment: WINMAIL.DAT 0 00-00-1980 00:00
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]

Essential to art is the work of art.
Essential to work of art are the spectators and the artist.
Essential to both is what could be art produced by  works today.

The form of every artwork could not full of meaning, but full of new
artistic and dynamic values.

We can still talk/meet where it is possible to make an effort for another
work.
where, spectators and artists are the essential faces who charges a living
form. The more dispersed of the circle of both, generates the more concrete
of the form,  in its classical fond.

Net by itself is not enough, it needs the art form, generated by what could
be the work.
The materials for the work could be everything. The  form's life between
people, generates the materials,  not the opposite.


the inner circle is an interesting phenomenon
I have been contemplating on its meaning
just today I found in some old nettime posting
a possible insight into what meaning is in general
which seems very useful for the question:
what is the meaning of an inner circle?

"The line of the argument, as it
was developed by Ernesto Laclau, goes as follows: He starts from the
Saussurian assumption that meaning arises only within a system of
differences. The possibility of a system of differences, however, depends
on the possibility of its limits - and these limits cannot belong to the
side of the system, since in that case the limit was just another
difference and, hence, no limit. It is only as far as we perceive the
outside of the system as a radical outside (and the limit therefore as an
exclusionary limit) that we can speak of systematicity or meaning at all.
As a consequence the limits cannot be signified themselves, they can only
'show themselves as the interruption or breakdown of the process of
signification' (Laclau 1996:37). The radicality of the radical outside
(non-meaning) is not only the condition of possibility for the
establishment of a structure (meaning) it is at the same time the condition
of impossibility of the establishment of a structure as closed totality
(full meaning). The effect of the exclusionary limit, in other words, 'is
that it introduces an essential ambivalence within the system of
differences constituted by those limits' (Laclau 1996:38)."

What is essential to net.art?
Where can we still talk/meet and where not?
Who decides on what thinking who to prank?
Are pranked inner circle?


happy days


J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Fri, 4 Oct 2013 13:33:17 +0200</date>
<content>
Wow. That is amazing. I hope my English and my work have improved a bit over time.

This gives me an idea though. My own archive of 7-11 has vanished, as do my other mail archives of that time. Mez reminds me however that there are people who still have theirs. 

Would it be something to initiate a project, on online archive of mailing list archives? I for one really miss the early years of the Rhizome archives, from before it was called 'raw' (1997-2001). In fact, all of the Rhizome mailing list archives seem to have disappeared from their website. People who have (parts of) these could maybe be persuaded to share them. 

It would be great if this would also include earlier art 'lists' or mailboxes, including those on the early net and in BBS times. In Tilman Baumgärtel's first book on net.art is an interview with Rena Tangens and Padeluun, for example. They ran a 'mailbox' named 'Bionic'. It would also be great to have the Artex 'list' content in there, run by Robert Adrian.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/artex/



Best wishes,


J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Simon Biggs</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Fri, 4 Oct 2013 12:58:47 +0100</date>
<content>
I have Rhizome posts going back to April 6, 1996 and Raw to October 3, 1999. Other lists I have posts for from the 1990's include A-Life, artnetweb, ASCII, Avatars, Consciousness Reframed, CU-SeeMe, DigiDance, DXR, Fine Art Forum, Infowar, ISEA-Forum, NetArtTrade, Nettime, Shock of the View, Thingist, Voti (which has a new book out documenting that discussion) and WebWalker. These are far from complete records, some are quite patchy - most are from extinct mail clients but I have simple text files of the posts. I'm happy to put them into a repository of some kind (doubt I want to go back through them though).

best

Simon</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>mez breeze</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Fri, 4 Oct 2013 22:28:54 +1000</date>
<content>
On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Josephine Bosma &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt; wrote:

&gt; Wow. That is amazing. I hope my English and my work have improved a bit
&gt; over time.
&gt;

I hope mine has as well, J! [Actually reading through the archives is an
extremely interesting process - like watching the beginnings of the net art
scene unfurl, close up in small spurts, then unfurl again - almost like a
pulse].


&gt;
&gt; This gives me an idea though. My own archive of 7-11 has vanished, as do
&gt; my other mail archives of that time. Mez reminds me however that there are
&gt; people who still have theirs.
&gt;

I'm actually going through most of the output of early net art history
[archives, documentation, catalogues] as part of an invitation from Duke
University to develop a comprehensive career archive of my works,
associated documents/referential material, correspondence and papers to be
housed there at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book &amp; Manuscript Library.
Makes for fascinating reading.


&gt; Would it be something to initiate a project, on online archive of mailing
&gt; list archives? I for one really miss the early years of the Rhizome
&gt; archives, from before it was called 'raw' (1997-2001). In fact, all of the
&gt; Rhizome mailing list archives seem to have disappeared from their website.
&gt; People who have (parts of) these could maybe be persuaded to share them.
&gt;

I'd be more than happy to contribute. I've kept as much archival material
as possible [even then I realised how crucial our contributions would
become in terms of a historicising process]. I actually intend to collate
them all in book form at some stage, perhaps with an accompanying
"commentary" of sorts...


&gt; It would be great if this would also include earlier art 'lists' or
&gt; mailboxes, including those on the early net and in BBS times. In Tilman
&gt; Baumgärtel's first book on net.art is an interview with Rena Tangens and
&gt; Padeluun, for example. They ran a 'mailbox' named 'Bionic'. It would also
&gt; be great to have the Artex 'list' content in there, run by Robert Adrian.
&gt;

There's a great set of emails of a Vuk Cosic interview by jodi that I came
across when trawling my archives. I'll see if I can ferret it out again and
post it here.

Chunks,
Mez</content></mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Michael Connor</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Fri, 4 Oct 2013 08:56:40 -0400</date>
<content>
Hi Simon and everyone,

The Rhizome website currently has Rhizome mailing list posts back to
1996 in digest format (under discuss, go to the last page of threads).
The addresses are unfortunately stripped, thanks to a poorly
thought-out data migration a number of years ago. It's on our
conservation to-do list to restore this properly, and of course it
would be fantastic to see a crowd-sourced version of this, too.

As part of our conservation program, Rhizome has also preserved a few
notable art BBSes, blogs and surf clubs. Several of these will be made
public as part of our forthcoming Artbase relaunch. From a technical
standpoint, the preservation process of the blogs and surf clubs was
fairly straightforward (although the discussions with participants
were not necessarily so). The real technical problems arose with The
Thing - this article provides a bit of context.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/15/4104494/the-thing-reloaded-bringing-bbs-networks-back-from-the-dead

Also, Charlotte, did you see the Art in America article in Sept about
Rhizome? Apologies if you've already covered that.

On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Simon Biggs &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt; wrote:
&gt; I have Rhizome posts going back to April 6, 1996 and Raw to October 3, 1999. Other lists I have posts for from the 1990's include A-Life, artnetweb, ASCII, Avatars, Consciousness Reframed, CU-SeeMe, DigiDance, DXR, Fine Art Forum, Infowar, ISEA-Forum, NetArtTrade, Nettime, Shock of the View, Thingist, Voti (which has a new book out documenting that discussion) and WebWalker. These are far from complete records, some are quite patchy - most are from extinct mail clients but I have simple text files of the posts. I'm happy to put them into a repository of some kind (doubt I want to go back through them though).</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.6</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Rob Myers</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Fri, 4 Oct 2013 15:46:49 -0700</date>
<content>
On 04/10/13 05:56 AM, Michael Connor wrote:
&gt; 
&gt; As part of our conservation program, Rhizome has also preserved a few
&gt; notable art BBSes, blogs and surf clubs.

The inclusion of "surf clubs" in that list is another illustration of
the contingent and contested nature of much online art history. Their
baking in to it through institutional capture is a product of Rhizome's HR.

I can't disagree with Curt, or myself, here, however much I loved the
other work of some involved:

http://rhizome.org/discuss/37549/

["pampas grass" refers to a then-current urgent legend about swingers'
parties.]</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.7</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Sat, 5 Oct 2013 11:26:05 +0200</date>
<content>
&gt; 
&gt; The inclusion of "surf clubs" in that list is another illustration of
&gt; the contingent and contested nature of much online art history. Their
&gt; baking in to it through institutional capture is a product of Rhizome's HR.

I have looked at your link, and find a discussion in one artist community about whether what happens in another online artist community is interesting or not. To understand how artists have used the Internet, especially for discussion, communication, sharing, and collaboration one should not be picky when collecting data imo. 

I think it is especially interesting to include more recent examples in this thread, because they give us an idea of how online artist networks have developed. Besides that, one cannot really understand certain offline art practices (round and about Post-Internet Art) without looking at surf clubs.


best,



J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.8</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Jan Robert Leegte</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Sat, 5 Oct 2013 18:16:15 +0200</date>
<content>
Hi Michael and all,

I also was always wondering why the list archives had been pulled. Why is it that the digest is archived, but the RAW isn't? The RAW list contains essential experiments and discussions and is such a miss!

best,

Jan Robert</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.9</nbr>
<subject>Re: Net.art.history?</subject>
<from>Trond Lossius</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Sun, 6 Oct 2013 08:57:16 +0200</date>
<content>
Hi,

On Oct 4, 2013, at 2:56 PM, Michael Connor &lt;[log in to unmask]&gt; wrote:

&gt; Hi Simon and everyone,
&gt; 
&gt; The Rhizome website currently has Rhizome mailing list posts back to
&gt; 1996 in digest format (under discuss, go to the last page of threads).

In a somewhat similar vein, the 55 mailing list, used for exchanges relating to the real-time video software Nato.0+55 for Max/MSP is still online, including it's archive. Looking at it this morning, I see that a few mails seems to have gotten erroneously dated during a migration, as the list was first set up in the summer 2000 for a worksop at BEK, and then repurposed January 2001 when NN was kicked of the mailing list runner by Cycling'74. The archive is available here:

https://mail.bek.no/mailman/listinfo/55

Cheers,
Trond</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.0</nbr>
<subject>nettime: Art on Net</subject>
<from>davidg.</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Wed, 12 Mar 1997 19:08:17 +0100</date>
<content>
Art on the Net not Net-Art

After a long  absensence (since the late eighties) it is once again a 
normal experience to go into galleries and museums and find works in 
which exciting artists use video. Significantly what neither the 
artists, nor the critics have reverted to is the term "video art". 
Artists such as Georgina Starr or Matthew Barney may be geographically 
apart but share a certain sensibility, they are also shrewd enough to 
avoid of the trap of being confined within the metaphor of given medium. 
Much of this new work is in fact revisiting the strategies of a much 
earlier generation Aconci, Abromovich/Uly etc, whose approach to video 
was also quick and dirty. Unlike those who came next there was no 
mystification of the medium, no "video art" as such. It was a tool, not 
an ideology. The same is true for the recent generation who grew up with 
the camcorder as just another household appliance, part of a continuum 
of media possibilities and almost as easy as picking up a pencil. It 
feels very natural, and the art is better for it.

This new generation may not have been around, but they are probably 
prevented from taking the wrong direction by some residual folk memory 
of the theoretical somersaults and tedious technological formalism that 
accompanied debates about what might or might not be *real* "video art". 

Is there a lesson for us to learn from this history? Yes, I believe that 
those of us who love the net and love art, and want to work in both 
should learn from the past and avoid the simplistic device of marrying 
these two terms. The term net-art (as opposed to art that happens to 
appear on the net) should be quietly ditched.

David Garcia
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: nettime: Art on Net</subject>
<from>carey young</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 13 Mar 1997 03:47:49 +0000</date>
<content>
Net Art is Not Art???

by Carey Young

(A response to 'Art on the Net not Net-Art,' by David Garcia)

David Garcia raises some useful and interesting  issues in his essay, but
may be a little too hasty in damning Net art with an 'ideology.' Of course,
the Net offers a "tool" for artists, but there is precious little art on
the Net which has any sense of the rich context in which it is situated. It
is too early to see any sort of artistic 'ideology' appearing, let alone
congealing around  Net artworks. It seems to me that there is at present a
distict lack of art activity which  actually  exposes and explores the
Net's possibilities, rather than employing it as a glorified catalogue, a
function which may of course be categorised as useful, but hardly
scintillating.

Here and there (as I said, they are a rare species) can be found the
occasional project which makes an active use of its location on the Net,
without losing any engagement with contemporary critical debates which this
'formalist' position might suggest. I am thinking of work which
specifically involves and incorporates hypertext, hyperlinks, Web-cams and
other Web-specific devices. Not that this is overtly formal work, just work
which makes an intelligent commentary on its Web-sitedness, as well as
having its own artistic meanings. After all, each Net artwork is
constituted from an electronic and analogue fabric, a spatialised
hypertextual 'environment,' which will always contextualise the
viewer's/users experience of it.  To ignore this, when making a Net art
piece, could never be defined as 'wrong', of course. It would just mean a
lack of possible depth.

This is not, however, a call for a move back to the formal values of
modernism! I agree with Garcia's point that Net art could, at this early
stage in its development, be dragged down with " the theoretical
somersaults and tedious technological formalism that accompanied debates
about what might or might not be *real* "video art". "  But what I feel  is
missing from this argument is the fact that Net art has  a very particular
location which, we might say, offers a new location for art experience.
Artists working with the Net have a vital role to play, in the sense of
offering interventions into the usual experiences, expectations or
possibilities afforded by the Net. These are still new experiences for most
people, and thus some definition of what 'happens' on or in the Net can be
an engaging and meaningful aspect of contemporary Net art (and perhaps its
future incarnations: in a medium which develops so fast, who is to say that
this condition will diminish?) In this sense, Net artworks which make
particular, and perhaps I should say 'conceptual' use of their Net location
are not merely bogged down in formalist dogma, but may perhaps be
commenting on and engaging with their environment in a way we already
understand, primed by  more traditional artforms.

The most resonant  Net artworks thus have a sensitivity to space and to
location, albeit its own electronic variety,  which is traceable through
that grand linear sweep of 'Art History.' While it is not vital to compare
Net art with other artforms, since it has its own powerful voice (even if
Garcia is perhaps suggesting we do not concentrate on this) it is
interesting to do so in order to speculate upon what its possibilities
might be.  I personally feel that with many of the most interesting sites
there are strong links to  sculpture (1), to telematic art of the last
twenty years, and to land art. The most useful comparison I have found is,
however,  with installation.  Michael Archer, in an recent edition of the
British art magazine Art Monthly, states that "there are grounds for saying
that installation is the current condition of art... (the term's)
widespread use demonstrates... the widespread assumption of a certain
spatial sensibility. It is an index of how we might inhabit a space which
is always multiple -always spaces - and of how we interact with the bodies
and objects, both near and far, around us." (2)  Give or take a few word
changes, this could be seen to describe Net art works which inhabit the Net
in a provocative way. Perhaps Net art as a 'genre' could operate on one
level as an index of how we might inhabit and interact with electronic
space. And for this to work, I believe Net artworks must first have a
strong sense of their own electronic identity.

Although some sites do work well as homes for an artist's non-digital work,
we are perhaps talking more of a Net art which explores the potential of
the medium in terms of of defining and then utilising a language in a
sophisticated way.  Georgina Starr, for example, as Garcia states, is
making compelling video work. But if her work appears "natural,"  it is
surely because she is employing the  specific 'language' of the camcorder.
It implies a rejection of aesthetics which may be seen as 'traditional' to
both video art and to television production, to name but two. A
sophisticated strategy, which works so well precisely because it seems so
natural. It is like this, too, with the most resonant Net artworks. They
often make use of strategies inherent to the Net's fabric, hyperlinks,
web-cams etc, and do so effectively because they understand that particular
language. Understanding (and perhaps defining) does not necessarily mean a
crass and closed statement of technological and technical possibilities. I
doubt many people would be interested in sites which do no more than
announce their own web-location. Rigor Mortis would soon set in to both
brain and modem.

Art which 'happens to appear on the net,' as Garcia wants it, is not the
only way art should appear on the Net. We can keep the freshness and
apparent accessibility of Georgina Starr's work, to continue with this
example. It just takes sensitive, and dare I say it, intelligent use of Net
'language' to make work which has the depth to operate illuminatingly in
its own space.  A  sense of the Net's own fabric may perhaps not, in this
light, be Garcia's "wrong direction." It may in fact be an essential tool
for the artist  to deploy: we are talking about effective commnunication,
and for that, one must learn the lingo.

-----------------------------------------------------------


(1) An interesting and related essay, for example, is 'Sculpture in the
Expanded Field,' Rosalind Krauss (in Hal Foster, ed., 'The Anti-Aesthetic,'
Bay Press, Seattle 1983.) Krauss' writes on the changes which sculpture, as
a genre, has undergone in the transition from pre-modernity through to
postmodernity.  Her comments on the spatial placement of an artwork
(sculpture in this case) in relation to its immediate surroundings can
easily be related to Net artworks if they are seen as art 'objects' with a
hypertxtual or spatial placement.

(2) M. Archer, 'Accomodating Art,' in Art Monthly, Sept 96

c.young {AT} rca.ac.uk</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: nettime: Art on Net</subject>
<from>Alexei Shulgin</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 13 Mar 1997 13:47:53 +0300</date>
<content>
&gt; The term net-art (as opposed to art that happens to 
&gt; appear on the net) should be quietly ditched.
&gt; 

no, david, it's not time yet.
we have to wait until:

- big international net art stars (whose works and behaviour meet art
institutions demands) will emerge;
- living legends of net art will appear (poor, but accepting no
compromises);
- some names will be forgotten (to be discovered in the future by net
art historians as key figures of the beginning of the movement);
- net art galleries, magazines, associations and museums will be
established;
- as well as net art departments at universities;
- few net art histories (contradictory, each describing completely
different picture) will be written;
(i think everyone can easily continue this list)

only then those few net artists who survive will be able to proudly say:
"yes, i am a real artist!", denying their low roots in sake of
prosperous present.

alexei shulgin</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.2</nbr>
<subject>RE: nettime: Art on Net</subject>
<from>Olia Lialina</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 13 Mar 1997 16:25:39 +-300</date>
<content>
I.
David,
What means word "ditched"? i found several translations in english-russian dictionary, but they all explain nothing to me. i'm not very good in english and since i didnt get all sentences of  your statement i'm not ready to answer.

II. 
Carye, Alexey
I hate it. For how long time we are going to participate in destructive  discussions. 


III.
David, Alexei
No i dont want to  know what "ditched" means. i dont like to argue with all these "should -shouldn't" directives-forecasts.

IV.
God, Mammy, Michael ( all not nettime subscribers)
I'm a net artists. I'm famous net artists. I'm very good net artist. 
i can use the net to express myself, to sell my soul or to save humankind.
my works are net art masterpieces


V.
Does anybody like the level of statement [IV]?
 i'm afraid not, but i'll send this message everytime somebody will write about net art, without analyzing works of mine or my friends, existing net artists (not all nettime subscribers).
What for to offer sense and context to people who have already created it or are in the process of creation?
Its obvious, if we want to develop the situation and understand smth the best thing we could do is to turn to personalities and their way of using net.
after these words i feel responsibility to do it myself first, but i still dont know exact meaning of some english words.

:)
olia</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: nettime: Art on Net</subject>
<from>Robert Adrian</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Fri, 14 Mar 1997 19:29:09 +0200</date>
<content>
David Garcia wrote (in respect to artists' use of Video):

&gt;Much of this new work is in fact revisiting the strategies of a much
&gt;earlier generation Aconci, Abromovich/Uly etc, whose approach to
&gt;video was also quick and dirty. Unlike those who came next there was
&gt;no mystification of the medium, no "video art" as such.

Well that's not altogether true ... the earliest work (Acconci, Fox,
Campus etc.) was shot using a Portapak with limited (zero) editing
capability - which made it, a priori, "quick and dirty". The "q &amp; d"
aesthetic was built right into the technology. When better systems
came along they scaled their work up accordingly ... or, more often,
 dropped the video medium altogether.

It should also be remembered that the introduction of video tape
coincided with the beginnings of the movement by artists away from
object/product-oriented work in the direction of performance, action
and installation. Much of the work David is thinking of is actually
documentation of performances - as in the case of Marina Abramovic
or Gina Pane, although there are some remarkable unedited, "pure"
video tapes from the period (providing they have been saved to better
tape).(1)

It was only with the introduction of the Umatic system and (relatively)
low-priced editing equipment that something called "Video Art" could
become possible -- at least in the institutions and "artist-run centers"
that could afford to buy and maintain the gear.

And here is where the "theoretical/ideological" problems, that David
mentions, begin (and also where the problems of so-called "Video Art"
touch on the problems of so-called "Net-Art"). The questions of identity
and definition - what is "Video Art"? Is it like painting and belongs in
a museum ? or like TV and should be broadcast? or like a book and
should be viewed privately? all or none or some permuation of these?
And then there is the argument about the actual "Thing" video:
is it an object ="The Tape"? or the idea ="The Content"?  or the
image ="The Screen"?

These arguments may sound silly now (except that they are re-
surfacing in discussions about "Net-Art" -- or "Art-in-the-Net" if
you prefer) but they were arguments that caused broken marriages
and the collapse of artists' collectives not so long ago. In the meantime
"Video-Art" has virtually vanished, having found no niche in the "Art
Market" - and having been overtaken by several waves of newer
(digital) technology.

Artists now (as David says) simply treat video as just another
medium from the palette of available imaging systems. It can be
made to represent itself, or the TV screen or be used just as an imaging
"tool" - and  can be sneaked into the sacred enclosure of the museum
(thru the back door so to speak) in the guise of "installation".

When video-art was young and full of energy there were all kinds of
strategies proposed, and tried, to make video artists into "real artists"
and video art into "real art". What most of them failed (or refused)
to take into account was that video did not fit into the art traditions of
industrial culture - it is impermanent, has no physical object, no
handwork (in the traditional sense), and has more in common with
dance, literature, theater or music than with traditional painting
or sculpture.

What makes "Video-Art" so important ("mystification of the medium"
or not) is its role in the development of the new art tradition growing
out of the recording technologies. For instance, with video tape,
anything on a screen can be recorded and recycled (collaged) -
copyright on a video tape is as absurd the copyright on a web page.
The "video-artists" had to struggle with this fact in the same way
that "net-artists" are doing now - and the "net" is actually a just
huge dispersed recording machine.

Alexei's ironical polemic, in which he appears to accuse "net-artists"
of dreaming of becoming (as General Idea put it in File Magazine 20
years ago) "Rich, Famous, Glamourous Artists" on the pattern of the art
tradition of industrial (W)Europe and (N)America, has it just about
right. If there is going to be something like "Art-In-The-Net" then
it should be about connections and communication and not about objects
and products - or art museums and galleries (and especially not
virtual art museums and galleries).

Why should we, as artists struggling to find ways to survive on the
tricky edge of a new digital communications environment, be trying to
breath new life into the corpse of the traditional art institutions?
For the money, fame and glamour?


-----
(1) There was also the phenomenon of the "video performance" or
"video-installation" in which live images from a video camera were
included (recycled) in a kind of feedback loop into the piece via a monitor.
(Jochen Gertz, Richard Kriesche, Dan Graham, Keith Sonnier etc.) -
very "q &amp; d".

====================================================================
*Art should concern itself as much with behavior as it does with
appearance* - Norman T. White
====================================================================
Robert Adrian
&lt;http://netbase.t0.or.at/~radrian/&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: nettime: Art on Net</subject>
<from>rachel baker</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Mar 1997 01:34:01 +0100</date>
<content>

&gt;&gt;The term net-art (as opposed to art that happens to
&gt;&gt;appear on the net) should be quietly ditched.
&gt;
&gt;impossible after the definitive introduction by grandmasters Cosic and
&gt;Shulgin in Trieste last May
&gt;
&gt;this term is a heuristic device used with a lot of irony by the operators
&gt;
&gt;the first truly machinic art form
&gt;
&gt;-a

So imagine the grandmaster Shulgin at a retrospective of his net.artworks
after the term has been consigned to history (say two months from now),
taking us through his career in an interview reminiscent of the precursor
to truly machinic art forms - grandmaster Duchamp. See the how theissues of
old modernist grandmasters conflate with the new.


"Regions which are not ruled by time and space...."*


Edited version of "A Conversation with Alexei Shulgin," interview conducted
by Rachel Baker, Riga, Art + Communication, November



 RB So here you are, Alexei, looking at the Moscow wwwarts gold medal
award site

 AS Yes, and the more I look at it the more I like it. I like the links,
 the way they fall. You remember how it happened in 1996, we put the two
 concepts of found web pages and found criticism together not knowing what they
 were carrying, and bounced suggestions around for suitable sites deserving
an
 award and that's the result! But the more I look at it the more I like the
 links:  They  have a shape. There is a symmetry in the linking, there
 is an intention there, a curious intention that I am not responsible
 for, a ready-made intention, in other words, that I respect and love.

 RB This was one of your most ambitious undertakings, wasn't it?

 AS By far the most ambitious. I worked eight months on it, and it is far
 from finished. I do not even know if it will ever be finished; Moscow
 wwwart site is always unfinished.

RB There are several versions of the Entry Page to Moscow WWWarts, aren't
there?

AS Yes, eight; these
were shown at the Metaforums 3 Conference in Budapest 1996

RB The  critics called us an explosion in a shingle factory

AS Yes. That was really a great line they put out. Now this is the BlaBla
site.
 As you see the design is completely arbitrary because that was the period
 when I changed completely from exhibiting art photography to exhibiting
 'non-art' sites, with no relation to arty handiwork.


RB Alexei, these are not the earliest works.

 AS No, no, no. The earliest
is this one here - Hot Pictures, That  was done before Moscow wwwarts
centre in 1994.

RB It is rather gallery-like, isn't it? That was the vogue.

 AS Yes; well, it was not just the vogue, it was the only thing
we knew about. It was a little advanced at the time, but when you look
at these two sites (Bla Bla, Gold Medal) which are later, you can see photo
- galleries were already a thing of the past.

 RB They are less static.
 The Moscow wwwarts Centre was for net.artists. How were you funded?

AS My funder, Ars. E. Lectronica, was  very nice about it. In fact, it was
very difficult then, as it is now, to  become a net.artist on your own. How
can you expect to live? He was  a good man. He used to give all of us a
small allowance, just enough for us   to live on. He was always very
understanding and always helped us  out of scrapes, for a long time even
after we were established. And he   had  very odd ideas. He told us "All
right, I'm going to  give you what you
want, but listen: there  are 12 of you. Anything   I give you while
I'm alive I will deduct from your inheritance."  So  he kept a careful
account of all the amounts, and when he died   these amounts had been
deducted from our inheritance. Not so   stupid, actually, that idea: it
helped us all manage,

 RB Well, there seems to be quite a step between Hot Pictures and the
gold Medal award site.

 AS Yes, Gold Medal was two weeks later,   and it was after these that
I decided to get away from all the influences I had been   under before.
I wanted to live in the present, and the present then was computer
communication. You see, in May 1996 net.art was new: the approach was so
different   from the previous movements that I was very much attracted
toward it. I became a  Net.artist and gradually came up with  Refresh.

 RB The Site has plenty of movement in it, net.art seemed to  be interested
in movement.

AS Yes. But don t forget there was also techno culture
at the same time. Croatian Rave... though I didn't know about it. I was
in my studio the Moscow wwwarts centre. I didn't  even know of the
ravers existence although at exactly the time I was designing this
Site. Was that a coincidence or was it in the air? I don't know. But I
did this site with  the idea of using movement as one of the elements in
it. The next year, I entered the  site in an exhibition.

 RB That was an event in the history of Net.art?

AS Yes, but we only know it now, 2 months later. At the time it
could have been just an explosion in a shingle factory: a successful week
or two, and    then nothing. But that was not enough for me. I went on with
the
idea that, all right, I had done what I could with
photo-galleries but now it     was time to change. It was always the idea
of changing, not repeating myself. I could have done ten other Hot
Pictures at that time if I had     wanted to. But the fact is I did not
want to. But I went on immediately to art  formula, the formula of the
Found Art site.    I used to surf around the pages of the World Wide Web
looking at the countless  homepages people had constructed. They fascinated
me so  much that I took it as a point of departure

 RB Well, what was different in your point of view of homepages than in
any  normal view of a homepage? Was it a mechanical interest, is that
it?

AS Yes. The mechanical aspect of it influenced me then, or at least
that  was also the point of departure of a new form of technique. I
 couldn't go into the designing of new material I wanted to go back   to
a completely dry conception of art. I was beginning to appreciate  the
value of accident, the importance of chance. The result was that my work
was  more popular with amateurs, and   among those who liked net. Art.
The linking, threading and self-selection was for me  the best form for
that dry conception of art.

 RB And that was the real beginning for the Refresh site. At the time
 you did this, did you have a precise idea of what was coming?

AS I was already beginning to make an indefinite plan,  The WWWarts
gold medal site was one point of departure,   and then came the BLa BLA
site on the side. All this was conceived, networked, and  on screen in
1996. It was based on a dispersed, multi-dimensional chaotic view,
meaning incomplete knowledge of the arrangement of the  parts. It could be
haphazardly done or changed afterwards. It  did not have to go through
according to plan, so to speak.

 RB Well, l imagine you feel that Refresh heralded some-  thing in your
work, something of that break you have often told me  about.

AS Yes, it
was really a very important moment in my life. I had   to make big
decisions then. The hardest was when I told myself  "Alexei no more
Internet conferences, go get a job."

 RB I looked for a job in order to get enough time to make projects for
myself.  I got a job as a technician in  London atthe Institute Of
Electrical Engineers. It was a wonderful job be-   cause I had so many
hours to myself.

AS You mean to make projects for yourself, not merely to please other
people?  You know you are either a professional or not. There are two kinds
of artists:  the artist that is integrated into society; and the other
artist, the completely
freelance artist, who has no obligations.
 The artist in society has to make certain compromises to   please it;
is that why you took the job?

 RB Exactly, exactly, I didn't want to depend on my art projects for a
living.    But, Alexei, if you speak of a disregard for the broad public
    and say you are doing art for yourself, wouldn't you accept that as
 making art for an 'ideal' public, for a public which would appreciate  you
if they would only make the effort?

 AS Yes, indeed. It is only a way of putting myself in the right
position  for that ideal public. The challenge is in pleasing an
immediate  public;You should not wait for   fifty years or a hundred years
for your true
public. The immediately present public is   the only public that
interests me.

 RB That is a rather elitist point of view. I don't think you ever felt
that a person was justified in living in an ivory tower and disregarding
the intelligent and sympathetic public.

 AS No, no, no ivory tower in my idea at all.

 RB I remember a line in an interview with Vuk Cosic in which you said
that there was more possibility with the Internet to find art that
doesn't realise itself as art - non-conceived, intuitive, spontaneous
and naive.

 AS You see the danger is to "lead yourself' into a form of taste, even
 the taste of the Moscow wwwart site

 RB Taste then for you is repetition of anything that has been accepted;
is that what you mean'?


 AS Exactly; it is a habit. Repeat the same thing long enough and it be-
comes taste. If you interrupt your work, I mean after you have done  it,
then it becomes, it stays a thing in itself; but if it is repeated a
number of times it becomes taste.

RB And good taste is repetition that is approved by society and bad
taste is the same repetition which is not approved; is that what you
mean?


 AS Yes, good or bad is of no importance because it is always good for
some people and bad for others. Quality is not important, it is al-
ways taste.

RB Well, how did you find the way to get away from good or bad taste
in your personal expression?

AS By using found art techniques. A found art site has no taste in it

RB Because it is divorced from conventional art institutional expression
of   taste?

AS Exactly, at least I thought so at that time, and I think the same
today.

RB Then does this divorce from conventional art institutions in net.art
have   a relationship to the interest you had in found art sites?

AS It was naturally, in trying to draw a conclusion or consequence from
  the de-institutionalisation of the work of art, that I came to the
idea of     Gold Medal Award sites which in effect are already
completely made. Let me     show you: this is a  website with
innocent non-art intentions,  it is a ready-made.   Now it is a Ready-made
in which shit is
changed to gold, metaphorically speaking. It is a sort of a mythological
effect produced by art awards and art criticism.

RB You didn't know me before you came to Holland


AS No. I came to Amsterdam in January. I met you at the Next Five
Minutes  conference it was the beginning of a long email friend- ship.
We devised the Gold  Medal Award and discussed infiltration of Nettime


RB The Nettime group was associated with several other groups, wasn't
it?

AS Yes, there was Vuk Cosic and Heath Bunting for example, who was also
a   patron of net.art, and he started a museum called CERN. And there &gt;was
V2    whose purpose was to promote net.artists from the east to get
a sort of communication between east and west, and it was quite
successful then. It was from then on  that the West was absolutely
net.art conscious, which it had never been before.

RB I see. Well, Vuk Cosic also owned your Refresh page which    we were
looking at a little while ago.

 AS Yes, it was in the Moscow WWWarts collection in 1996, at the    time
of its near-completion-. But no-one could own it because  it was too
fragile to transport, given its size.

RB Alexei, from what you say the Refresh page was never really finished.

 AS No. No. The last time somebody worked on it was this morning .

 RB So it remains a sort of unfinished epic. And also for me it seems to
indicate that you were never really dedicated to conventional
communication   in the ordinary sense of the word. I imagine that there
is something broader in your concept of what art is than just
communication.

 AS Yes. I considered art as a means of expressing the present,  not an
end in itself. One means of expression among others, and not a complete
end for life at all; in the same way I consider that color is only a
means of expression in painting and not an end. In other words,
communication should not be exclusively retinal or visual; it should
have to do with the concept, with our urge for understanding. This is
generally what I love. I didn't want to pin myself down and I tried at
least to be as universal as I could. That is why I took up Internet.
Internet initself is a hobby, is a game, everybody can play Internet.
It's like chess.   Actually when you play a game of chess it is like
designing something or constructing a mechanism of some kind by which
you win or lose. The competitive side of it has no importance, but the
thing itself is very, very strategic, and that is probably what
attracted me to   the Internet game.

RB Do you mean by that another form of communication?

AS Yes, at least it was another facet of the same kind of mental
expression, intellectual expression, one small facet if you want, but it
differed enough to make it distinct, and it added something to my life.


RB Do you regard Moscow WWWarts page as a distinct expression of  your
personality '?

AS Yes. Absolutely. It was a new form of expression for me. Instead of
merely photographing something for gallery exhibition the idea was to
reproduce the  work that l loved so much in miniature. I didn't know how
to do it. I thought  of a book, but I didn't like that idea. Then I
thought of the idea of  the box in which all my works would be mounted
like in a small museum, a portable museum, so to speak, and here it is
in this  Internet valise.

RB It is a sort, of ready-made catalogue, isn't it.

AS There was a whole art system, which I thought up to win at roulette at
Monte Carlo. Of  course I never broke the bank with it. But I thought I
found a system.

 RB Did you win anything?

 AS No, I never won anything. But at any rate as you know, I am
interested in the intellectual side, although I don't like the word
"intellect." For me "intellect" is too dry a word, too inexpressive. I
like  the word "belief." I think in general that when people say "I
know," they don't know, they believe. I believe that art is the only
form of activity in which man as man shows himself to be a true
individual. Only in art is he capable of going beyond the animal  state,
because art is an outlet toward regions which are not ruled by   time
and space. To live is to believe; that's my belief, at any rate.




*"A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp," television ionterview conducted by
James Johnson Sweeny, NBC, January 1956, Philadelphia Museum of Art
...............................
.....moscow wwwart centre......
http://sunsite.cs.msu.su/wwwart
...............................




london&lt;+&gt;isle of wight&lt;=&gt;liverpool&lt;if&gt;lusanne&lt;then&gt;vienna&lt;go to&gt;budapest&lt;&amp;&gt;

ljublana&lt;re:&gt;barcelone&lt;go to&gt;bahamas</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Rachel O' Dwyer</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 27 Jun 2019 11:27:13 +0100</date>
<content>What characterises media art interventions in the context of ‘surveillance capitalism’, platforms and the gig economy? Are these practices still meaningful or, as F.A.T. Lab claimed in 2015, 

have they lost political significance in the face of global platforms?



Can we still speak about ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’, and if not is this because

a) network activism has transformed so that these older descriptions no longer accurately describe net art and ‘hacktivist’ practices, or

b) these art practices have stayed much the same, but they are no longer effective in the current political and economic context?

I’m wondering if anyone knows of any writing that attempts to theorise/frame media art activist work post 2012? Perhaps to speak about it as a set of practices discrete from theories of ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’ that go before? Perhaps something on post-internet art and activism?Or is it a case of looking at writing about activism in the face of defeat and what seems like a hopeless cause?If you've read or written anything that you think might be interesting I'd love to hear about it,Best,Rachel

A bit more detail about why I'm asking this question:

I’m currently writing about various tactical and activist practices in the wireless space, including artistic interventions, software-defined radio communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking, sniffing and jamming signals, communities and activists who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks and artists making work in or about the politics of the wireless spectrum – who owns it, how it’s controlled and so on.

But I’m feeling a bit paralysed.

I love these works; I love their inventive materiality and the ways that they exploit and reverse-engineer existing systems, but I don’t know what claims I can make for their political impact. And yet I feel that this work is still very worthwhile.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Gary Hall</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 27 Jun 2019 13:26:26 +0100</date>
<content>
    Hi Rachel,
    I'm not sure it's exactly what you have in mind. But just in case
      it helps, you could take a look at some of the artists and art
      activist projects that made up the second day of the Pirate Care
      conference last week:
    https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/about-us/research-events/2019/pirate-care-conference/
    
    Hopefully, we should be able to make some recordings available in
      the not too distant future.

 
    
    Best, Gary
    
    
    
    On 27/06/2019 11:27, Rachel O' Dwyer
      wrote:
    
    
      
      
        
          
            What
              characterises media art interventions in the context of
              ‘surveillance capitalism’, platforms and the gig economy?
              Are these practices still meaningful or, as F.A.T. Lab
              claimed in 2015, 

have they lost political significance in
              the face of global platforms?
            
            


            

Can we still speak about ‘tactical media’
                or ‘the exploit’, and if not is this because


            a) network activism has transformed so that
                these older descriptions no longer accurately describe
                net art and ‘hacktivist’ practices, or


            b) these art practices have stayed much the
                same, but they are no longer effective in the current
                political and economic context?
            


            I’m wondering if anyone knows of any
                writing that attempts to theorise/frame media art
                activist work post 2012? Perhaps to speak about it as a
                set of practices discrete from theories of ‘tactical
                media’ or ‘the exploit’ that go before? Perhaps
                something on post-internet art and activism?
              
            Or is it a case of looking at writing about
                activism in the face of defeat and what seems like a
                hopeless cause?
            
              
            If you've read or written anything that you
                think might be interesting I'd love to hear about it,
            
              
            Best,
            
              
            Rachel
            


            A bit more detail about why I'm asking this
                question:


            I’m currently writing about various
                tactical and activist practices in the wireless space,
                including artistic interventions, software-defined radio
                communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking,
                sniffing and jamming signals, communities and activists
                who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks
                and artists making work in or about the politics of the
                wireless spectrum – who owns it, how it’s controlled and
                so on.


            But I’m feeling a bit paralysed.


            I love these works; I love their inventive
                materiality and the ways that they exploit and
                reverse-engineer existing systems, but I don’t know what
                claims I can make for their political impact. And yet I
                feel that this work is still very worthwhile.


            
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Molly Hankwitz</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 27 Jun 2019 15:28:58 -0700</date>
<content>Hi Rachel,

snip -

I’m currently writing about various tactical and activist practices in the wireless space, including artistic interventions, software-defined radio communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking, sniffing and jamming signals, communities and activists who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks and artists making work in or about the politics of the wireless spectrum – who owns it, how it’s controlled and so onsnipGreat. So needed. I wrote a dissertation on WiFi practices - a bit earlier history than what you are looking for. I write about “warchalking” and other kinds of social media based information spaces, hacks. From that experience I’d bet you will be best off in the arts. If there is writing being done it would be from groups like the then - headman - Knowbotics Research, etc. But the best project - utilizing mobile tools and being both tactical and poetry and human rights - Transborder Tool b.a.n.g. Lab. Ricardo Dominguez’s and Brett Stalbaum from virtual sit-in days behind it as well as Micha Cardenas. We programmed this into our project - City Centered: Locative Media and Wireless Festival - 2010. I think TBT is having a re-release. (Smile)

Molly

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 3:40 AM Rachel O' Dwyer &lt;rachel.odwyer@gmail.com&gt; wrote:What characterises media art interventions in the context of ‘surveillance capitalism’, platforms and the gig economy? Are these practices still meaningful or, as F.A.T. Lab claimed in 2015, 

have they lost political significance in the face of global platforms?



Can we still speak about ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’, and if not is this because

a) network activism has transformed so that these older descriptions no longer accurately describe net art and ‘hacktivist’ practices, or

b) these art practices have stayed much the same, but they are no longer effective in the current political and economic context?

I’m wondering if anyone knows of any writing that attempts to theorise/frame media art activist work post 2012? Perhaps to speak about it as a set of practices discrete from theories of ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’ that go before? Perhaps something on post-internet art and activism?Or is it a case of looking at writing about activism in the face of defeat and what seems like a hopeless cause?If you've read or written anything that you think might be interesting I'd love to hear about it,Best,Rachel

A bit more detail about why I'm asking this question:

I’m currently writing about various tactical and activist practices in the wireless space, including artistic interventions, software-defined radio communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking, sniffing and jamming signals, communities and activists who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks and artists making work in or about the politics of the wireless spectrum – who owns it, how it’s controlled and so on.

But I’m feeling a bit paralysed.

I love these works; I love their inventive materiality and the ways that they exploit and reverse-engineer existing systems, but I don’t know what claims I can make for their political impact. And yet I feel that this work is still very worthwhile.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>voyd</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Fri, 28 Jun 2019 04:35:45 -0400</date>
<content>So interesting.


I also find this so interesting because in the light of fakeness, Tactical Media is harder, in the sense of the intervention/provocation to response that was done

 with RTMark/YesMen back in the time I was active. I think that the new Washington Post, after the Times and NY Post ones that were done in the late 2000's, was powerful because I heard about it in the UAE.

However, in the Eastern hemisphere, I have been working with AR as a "local" discourse (meaning that anyone can get the app, but the message is pretty limited to them), as well as working with artists in Kazakhstan about messages AR as tactical media, such as overlaying messages over works in the National Mueum (based on the Manifest.AR We AR MoMA intervention I was part of around 2010) and the "Modernization of Consciousness" (Ruhani Zhangru) posters in 2018.

 These are some interestign ways in which one can laterally engage networks for critical discourse.

In addition, I am working with David Guillo with his independent web router galleries as a sort of TAZ in regions that employ firewalls and net.filtering. This follows from my setting up occupy.here routers as wifi "islands" for collaboration without using VPN, and therefore staying technically within local regulations.

While not so much "Tactical" media, I consider that in the era of increasing firewalling, and in the case of threatened net.separation in Russia and Iran, I feel hang autonomous server art is a critical space for exploration of these topics as well.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Tom Keene</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Fri, 28 Jun 2019 09:57:54 +0100</date>
<content>Hi Rachel, I've written a contribution to an upcoming Critical Makers Reader for the Institute of Network Cultures that may be of interest. It relates to my PhD artist and activist led research (in final year of write-up) of local authority databases, processes of urban regeneration, and an ongoing fight to prevent the demolition of 306 homes, including my own. I employ art as a method of enquiry where the space between art, activism, academia, theory, programming, and my personal life is frequently blurred.

 Its not a treatise on early media art, though

 Its definitely a different approach to tactical media etc. so may be of interest? I've a live 'sketchbook' of this work that can be viewed at http://db-estate.co.uk Its filled with images, video, notes, code, and lots of half-formed text and errors! I wrote some code to automatically (and periodically) generate the website from a project/activist folder on my laptop that I work from - hence the live and error prone aspect that imparts a sense of an unfolding process and attempts to show the mess of this kind of work that is frequently hidden from view. There's a 'hidden menu' within a light grey box to the top right of the website that shows the directory structure and links to even more mess.... Though it feels slightly scary to mention this on Netime!!Tom On Thu, 27 Jun 2019, at 11:40 AM, Rachel O' Dwyer wrote:What characterises media art interventions in the context of ‘surveillance capitalism’, platforms and the gig economy? Are these practices still meaningful or, as F.A.T. Lab claimed in 2015, 

have they lost political significance in the face of global platforms?



Can we still speak about ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’, and if not is this because

a) network activism has transformed so that these older descriptions no longer accurately describe net art and ‘hacktivist’ practices, or

b) these art practices have stayed much the same, but they are no longer effective in the current political and economic context?

I’m wondering if anyone knows of any writing that attempts to theorise/frame media art activist work post 2012? Perhaps to speak about it as a set of practices discrete from theories of ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’ that go before? Perhaps something on post-internet art and activism?Or is it a case of looking at writing about activism in the face of defeat and what seems like a hopeless cause?If you've read or written anything that you think might be interesting I'd love to hear about it,Best,Rachel

A bit more detail about why I'm asking this question:

I’m currently writing about various tactical and activist practices in the wireless space, including artistic interventions, software-defined radio communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking, sniffing and jamming signals, communities and activists who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks and artists making work in or about the politics of the wireless spectrum – who owns it, how it’s controlled and so on.

But I’m feeling a bit paralysed.

I love these works; I love their inventive materiality and the ways that they exploit and reverse-engineer existing systems, but I don’t know what claims I can make for their political impact. And yet I feel that this work is still very worthwhile.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Minka Stoyanova</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sun, 30 Jun 2019 17:04:57 +0300</date>
<content>Hello Rachel,

I love your questions. Personally, I just submitted my PhD thesis which had some similar research goals. While I love the construct of "the network" and "the exploit" -- I feel they are dated/need revision in today's landscape of platform politics. In addition I think the flat hierarchy of the network is a bit utopian and doesn't recognize the power of some individuals in the overall structure. Moreover, I feel the discourse around tactical works needs to be expanded to include works that engage technology (broadly) in a critical way as, for me, technology and the internet are (at this point) part of a single continuum. The idea that we can talk about work 'on the web' singularly and separate from work that is about the web, that is of the web, or that is simply of our current techno-social condition is stifling, I believe.

I think you can apply whatever theoretical model you want; the discourse (as your research question recognizes) is ripe for new frameworks. Personally, I used my own kind of cyborg theory (a blend of Heidegger, McLuhan, Latour, Haraway, Bratton, and Terranova... among others) to discuss these types of works in terms of challenging our relationship to technology as both a global system we are embedded in and distributed across and as something which has embedded itself in us. Maybe that will help you with your approach.

Certainly, there are artists making work that is interesting, important, and political in this landscape. Many are mentioned in other responses. Goodness, what the alt-right did was straight out of the handbook of Tactical Media, very effective, and not not art -- although it might terrify some of us. That has been discussed here, in fact -- and I was again discussing it last week at a conference.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.9</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Rachel O' Dwyer</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Mon, 1 Jul 2019 17:38:30 +0100</date>
<content>Hi everyone,I really appreciate all the replies both on and off
the list.

I
hadn't made a connection between this post and the very popular discussion of
net-time and I’m very interested to hear that Transmediale is exploring the
persistence of networks.





One
of the most inspiring books I've read in the past few years was Anna Tsing's A Mushroom at
the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins.

It might seem odd that an
anthropological text on supply chains and Matsutake mushrooms changed how I thought
about the politics of networks, but the book also explores the limits and
possibilities of political agency from a position of ecological ruin,
hopelessness and precarity. A brilliant chapter ‘some problems with scale’ also
helped me to articulate criticisms I had of a lot of peer-to-peer and network
activist projects. I’m also re-reading some work from people like the late Mark Fisher and Rebecca
Solnit on politics and hope. 





A
few things have come up in conversations over the past few weeks (I’ve mostly
been talking to and emailing people instead of writing).





1.
There also seems to be a shift towards a feminist politics of
networks. Maybe I’m using the term ‘feminist’ incorrectly here because I don’t
mean work that’s particularly concerned with identity politics. But if we say
that people like Butler
and Haraway
and Barad
disrupt binary thinking around gender and materiality, this kind of
transdisciplinary, non-binary thinking coupled with an ethics of care (i.e.
someone like Maria
Puig de la BellaCasa) provides us with a set of tools for thinking through new kinds of resistance as well as new ways of relating to ourselves with and through networked communications infrastructure. There
seems to be more of an emphasis on localized and situated interventions for
example rather than things that scale. There seems to be a greater emphasis on
pedagogical practices than on technical implementation. If anything is starting to
emerge as a kind of pattern for me, this is it. I think that’s also reflected
in the sensibilities of projects like Platform
Cooperativism and the Decode
Project. 





2.
Techniques that can be identified as part of first and second wave ‘tactical
media’ such as reverse-engineering/ circuit bending/ hacking; the exploit; commoning/DIY;
obfuscation; visualization/mapping; and speculative imagining are still used
and are still necessary.

 And I think some of these, particularly reverse-engineering and obfuscation, seem to be
particularly significant in the context of platforms. Not to mention being able
to imagine alternatives in the face of overwhelming odds.


These are some of my own thoughts coming
out of returning to the book I’m writing on the politics of wireless networks
and the EM spectrum, from students while teaching an undergraduate elective on
network politics and art with undergraduate students in NCAD and recent conversations
mostly over networks with Rosa Menkman, Geert Lovink, Jussi Parikka, Surya
Mattu, Patrick Bresnihan, Brian Holmes, Nate Tkacz, Nora O Murchu and Sarah
Grant, the OMG collective in Dublin and C-Node (Paul O’Brien) in the past few
weeks.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.10</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Francis Hunger</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Mon, 1 Jul 2019 20:45:54 +0200</date>
<content>
  
  
    Hi Rachel,
    
    
      
        
          
            
              
                
                  
                    
                      
                        
                          
                            A bit more
                                  detail about why I'm asking this
                                  question:


                              
                                I’m
                                      currently writing about various
                                      tactical and activist practices in
                                      the wireless space, including
                                      artistic interventions,
                                      software-defined radio communities
                                      who are reverse-engineering,
                                      hacking, sniffing and jamming
                                      signals, communities and activists
                                      who are building communal Wi-Fi
                                      and cellular networks and artists
                                      making work in or about the
                                      politics of the wireless spectrum
                                      – who owns it, how it’s controlled
                                      and so on. 
                                    
                              
                            
                          
                        
                      
                    
                  
                
              
            
          
        
      
    
    I think exceptional work in the early 2000s was
        done in the Acoustic Ecologies and Acoustic Space series by
        rixc.org and Rasa and Raitis http://rixc.org/en/acousticspace/all/.
        HMKV Dortmund saw the Waves exhibition 
      https://www.hmkv.de/programm/programmpunkte/2008/Ausstellungen/Waves.php
    
      
        
          
            
              
                
                  
                    
                      
                        
                          
                            
                              
                                But I’m
                                      feeling a bit paralysed.


                                I love
                                      these works; I love their
                                      inventive materiality and the ways
                                      that they exploit and
                                      reverse-engineer existing systems,
                                      but I don’t know what claims I can
                                      make for their political impact.
                                      And yet I feel that this work is
                                      still very worthwhile. 
                                    
                              
                            
                          
                        
                      
                    
                  
                
              
            
          
        
      
    
    It may simply be the case that artists have
        notoriously overstated the possible impact of their
        works/research. Which makes sense against the historical
        context: During the late 1990s and early 2000s "Internet" was
        still something new and not part of overall discourse and
        academic discourse, so it was relatively easy for artists
        tapping in or creating a certain discursive field that appeared
        to be "avant-garde" at that time. This possibility to create and
        direct discourse slowly evaporated with capital on the one hand
        and academia on the other joining in, and re-shaping the
        discoursive field towards "the digital" as we know it today.
    Claims of impact may also have been made to simply
        get funding, since one of the tactics of tactical media was
        getting public or private funding, since the works were not
        being sold on the art market. So no income from Basel.
      
    Already early on there has been internal critique
        against certain claims that (some) media art made. Personally
        for me the most important intervention was Alexei Shulgins 1997
        proposal against "interactive art".
        https://twitter.com/databaseculture/status/1136256115652603904
        and I wonder, if similar critique of tactical media was around
        at that time. I think so.
    All in all it never has been an undisputed field,
        and you feeling paralysed may be just worth to follow. One of
        the results of this kind of critical inquiry may be to look more
        precisely into the claims that AI based art makes today.
    best
    Francis</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.11</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>tacira</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Tue, 02 Jul 2019 05:38:15 -0700</date>
<content>tredi digitofagico~ estao capturados pela ubiquidade das ferramentas,
estao cada vez mais nas ruas, estao de maos dadas com o software livre
chorando pitombas, estao germinando apos digeridas :)</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.12</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Has net-art lost political significance?</subject>
<from>Future Tense</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 04 Jul 2019 18:55:03 +0000</date>
<content>+1I wanted to contribute that the

recent scholarly work

of HCI

researchers such as Os Keyes et

al’s “A Mulching Proposal” and



AI researcher

Joy Buolamwini et al’s “Gender Shades,”

etc.,

exist

in the space of serious research and savvy presentation that contains inherent critiques of their subjects in a way that is reminiscent of some of the art projects mentioned in various threads.

What is interesting there is that these projects are

also very

specific to

a highly-engaged community that already prizes knowledge sharing and gets a lot of press attention,

so I’d argue that

these researchers

 are well-positioned to

affect

the fields that they critique. I’m not sure how engaged net-artists are by comparison, as I am woefully ignorant of the current state of things there. :)Maybe artists can also

carve out more

space for themselves

in academic/industry networks

so they can

radicalize- I mean

reach-

more people?</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>snafu</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 09 Nov 1999 02:23:14 +0100</date>
<content>
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; OL: Are you really familiar with net art or net in general? if yes you
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; should know that copying is not a big deal. You can make hundreds of
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; Art.Teleportacia galleries, but next day they will be only hundreds of
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; outdated pages with not actual information and broken links, because I
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; will update only http://art.teleportacia.org .. The same with all on
line
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; art and not art works. What is done on the net is not a book or cd
or tape
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; kind of product. It is not complete, not frosen, but can be changed
every
&gt;&gt; &gt; &gt; moment. And this moment is a difference between copies and originals.
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; in another interview that you gave, you were affirming that what makes the
&gt;&gt; difference between the original and the copy on the net is given by the
&gt;&gt; domain:  an original net artwork would be recognizable, according to you,
&gt;&gt; from the name of the server on which the project was uploaded for the
&gt;&gt; first time.
&gt;
&gt;not nessessary the first time, it is more complicated, but in general you
&gt;understood me right
&gt;
&gt;also look at http://art.teleportacia.org/Location_Yes
&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; Next time we will hear you saying that the originality of the net is based
&gt;&gt; on interactivity so that all the origninal artworks are the ones based on
&gt;&gt; streaming and real time interaction...
&gt;
&gt;hmm, this i never said, sorry
&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; i don't understand why you are so obsessed in defending this concept,
&gt;
&gt;i dont think that i defend a concept, i deal with nowadays reality and
primitive
&gt;perception of copyright subject on the net
&gt;
&gt;&gt; that
&gt;&gt; after all, exist only since the advent of borghesy, but it was unknown to
&gt;&gt; the Romans for istance, for which a copy was identical to the original...
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; originality is the concept on the base of which has been possible over the
&gt;&gt; last 200 years steal and extrapolate artworks from their native context to
&gt;&gt; transfer them in the western museum and galleries: the genius of the
&gt;&gt; creator is always there, trapped in the artwork... you buy the artwork,
&gt;&gt; you get a piece of geniality, right?
&gt;
&gt;right
&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; after all, why the universities continue to teach hystory of art -- that
&gt;&gt; has been almost entirely revolutionary over the last century?
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; beacuse they need critics that are able to draw a line between original
&gt;&gt; and fake, real art and unsellable trash...  they need critics that
&gt;&gt; establish, directly or inderectly, a prize for a form of commodity that
&gt;&gt; has always been difficult to categorize and, therefore, to quantify...
&gt;&gt;
&gt;
&gt;sounds convincing, but i never studied at art academy, i dont know their
&gt;motivations

it's not a subjective motivation, art academy, universities, galleries are
such a deep part of this system... 

since art has always been a peculiar kind of commodity, impossible to
categorize, like other products, in terms of social time necessary to
produce it -- capitalistic system had to create a character, a technician
able to 
establish this value...

this technician, the critic, absolves to multiple functions: it
commercializes the artwork, reassure the buyer -- guaranting the
originality of the artwork -- explain to the pubblic, legitimate the artist
discovering h/er...

that's what you are basically doing with art.teleportacia which is, from my
point of view, a conservative project because it doesn't change of a comma
in this discourse... 

i don't think that you establish the price of what you sell on the base of
time necessary to produce the artwork... it seems  that this price is much
more based on notoriety of artists, on social time necessary to produce an
artist... 

an artist mirrored or linked from several web-sites, invited to several
conferences, is surely more worth than an unkwon one... in this way we go
back the origin of this discourse, the function of the gallery and museum:
yesterday we had exihibition, catalogues, conferences, auctions, all parts
of a  system that was selecting artists and assigning them a different
level of a stairway, the money's stairway...   

today we have art websites, net galleries, mailing lists, web auctions and
so on... i don't see any innovation if we consider 
these circuits -- more or less indipendent -- as the new institutions of
net.art... under this perspective, teleportacia is surely one of the first
to show the naked king...       


&gt;&gt; if these are the premises, i think that we have to find the potential
&gt;&gt; differences that the net introduce, in the production of communication and
&gt;&gt; art...
&gt;
&gt;sure
&gt;
&gt;&gt; we have to
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; go for a non mimetic process and to push on mutation, not to reintroduce
&gt;&gt; from the window what we could trash from the main door.
&gt;
&gt;dont trash anything, dont announce anything to be trash. it is not
constructive.

i destroy the eXistent not for debris love but to let the life passing
through this debris... i definitely believe in the creative power of
destruction...  

&gt;it is loosers ideology

 
sorry, but /~loosers ideology wasn't found on this server


&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; plagiarism don't aim necessary to destruction, but it shows how it's easy
&gt;&gt; to replicate... great plagiarist always had to learn the techniques of the
&gt;&gt; masters before replicating them at an accetable level...
&gt;
&gt;true
&gt;
&gt;&gt; now we can
&gt;&gt; replicate complex system in few minutes, just using a software...
&gt;
&gt;but it is not a big deal and this is what i say in the paragraph u qouted
above
&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; it means that the machines and the codes had accumulated such a quantity
&gt;&gt; of human kwnoledge that, sharing it, we can progress much faster on a
&gt;&gt; collective level than we did in the past...
&gt;
&gt;faster is only faster, nothing more


nothing more! going faster is not only a matter of quantity, but of
multiple elaborations, synthesis of time... all the development of
photography, cinema, video, informatic technologies is the development of
an engine that accumulates and produces duration and time... new
technologies basically works like our memory, zipping and unzipping,
folding and unfolding different crystals of time (text, sound, images)...   

any of these crystals can be trapped by the work chain and finalised to
profit or liberated to create new pleasureable, non finalised associations
and connections...     

... any applet, script, game that we playfully create, it's a powerful
means of mutation, because it keeps the aware signs of  of a
multiple/singular concatenation of body/minds, where the limits between me
and the collective you are more and more blurred...

but when you start to sell, you necessarly end up limitating circulation
and access 
(why someone should pay for a pubblic artwork, if you don't guarantee to
the potential buyer an exclusive access?) and suggesting weird ideas to
those that can't really stand the existence of this gift economy... 

look at the etoys vs etoy case, it tells us clearly what is the real
attitude of the companies towards small actors... etoy created its domain
at least 3 years before etoys: if now it's sued is because corporations
finally obtained laws to do it... 
 
can you imagine what will happen as soon as they make laws to protect
original artworks on the net? 
defending the originality of the DNS as a certificate of autenticity, you
move in the same conceptual framework of Microsoft... 

Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it.
Copyright protects the rich. I'd rather give it away. That way I never feel
ripped off.

the only original server is the dead server
dead servers tell no lies
      
  
&gt;&gt; any time that i look at the
&gt;&gt; source code of an html page i learn something that i could never get from
&gt;&gt; a manual...and copy and paste it, it's the easiest way to understand how
&gt;&gt; it works for my pourposes...
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; but we have to fight to keep this openess, and not to continue to defend
&gt;&gt; the same old impossible castles...
&gt;
&gt;i personally dont defend "old impossible castles", you do idealising Romans

even if i'm roman, i prefer to leave the idealisation of the roman empire
to nostalgic fascists...

&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; there's nothing wrong if you get paid to make art, but this is not the
&gt;&gt; best way to do it...
&gt;
&gt;:) it is

i'm glad for you :)

&gt;olia
&gt;

snafu

ps none of the words written in this message are mine -- language is a
virus -- i feel original only when i'm silent...

for any copyright fee snafu is at disposition of Karl Marx, Maurizio
Lazzarato, Walter Benjamin, Gash Girl, Barbie Liberation Organisation,
Antonio Rocca, I/O/D, William Burroughs, Tiziano Scarpa and all the other
authors that will be so kind to sue me not to have quoted the original
source. </content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 15 Nov 1999 03:49:55 +0100</date>
<content>
&gt; OL: Are you really familiar with net art or net in general? if yes you
&gt; should know that copying is not a big deal. You can make hundreds of
&gt; Art.Teleportacia galleries, but next day they will be only hundreds of
&gt; outdated pages with not actual information and broken links, because I
&gt; will update only http://art.teleportacia.org .. The same with all on line
&gt; art and not art works. What is done on the net is not a book or cd or tape
&gt; kind of product. It is not complete, not frosen, but can be changed every

Counter-question: Are you really familiar with the net in general and net
servers in particular? On any Unix-like server, it's quite easy to set up
a cron job that mirrors http://art.teleportacia.org every one hour or even
every five minutes if you like. 

To do so would be easy at least for the time being, given that most net
art, in its focus on surfaces and user interfaces, runs entirely inside
the client (browser) and rarely relies on server-side programmation or
database backends. 

I propose to use this technical observation for a critique of net art in
its current state. 

Florian

-- 
Florian Cramer, PGP public key ID 6440BA05
Permutations/Permutationen - poetry automata from 330 A.D. to
present: &lt;http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 15 Nov 1999 15:44:48 +0100</date>
<content>
Am Mon, 15.Nov.1999 um 18:47:24 -0800 schrieb Craig Brozefsky:

&gt; I fail to see how this technical observation, that we can copy bits
&gt; from one place to another and that most net.art is independent of the
&gt; server, would be the impetus for a critique.  Could you elaborate
&gt; please?  Are you taling about a critique of conceptions of
&gt; Intellectual Property, as emodied in various works of net.art?

No, I wanted to suggest something else. If most "Net Art" merely consists of
static files on servers, it interfaces so superficially with the Internet
that it should be more properly named "Netscape Art". Thanks for mailing me,
I will have to clarify this point on Nettime.

Florian</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>olia lialina</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 15 Nov 1999 23:40:28 +0300</date>
<content>
Florian Cramer wrote:

&gt; &gt; OL: Are you really familiar with net art or net in general? if yes you
&gt; &gt; should know that copying is not a big deal. You can make hundreds of
&gt; &gt; Art.Teleportacia galleries, but next day they will be only hundreds of
&gt; &gt; outdated pages with not actual information and broken links, because I
&gt; &gt; will update only http://art.teleportacia.org .. The same with all on line
&gt; &gt; art and not art works. What is done on the net is not a book or cd or tape
&gt; &gt; kind of product. It is not complete, not frosen, but can be changed every
&gt;
&gt; Counter-question: Are you really familiar with the net in general and net
&gt; servers in particular? On any Unix-like server, it's quite easy to set up
&gt; a cron job that mirrors http://art.teleportacia.org every one hour or even
&gt; every five minutes if you like.

:)

of course it is possible but what sense do you see in it? what for will you
waste your time making  mirrors of my gallery. you want to have it? u want to
simulate that you have it? can i ask you why? why possession or immitation of
possessing smth is so important for you?

"This website ¿Florian Cramer, 1996-1999
The sourcecode of this website - including all Perl CGIs - is Free Software and
copylefted according to the GNU General
Public License "   --- this i found on your website, looks very romantic in the
context of your COUNTER-QUESTION



or you mean that you want to help me to promote the gallery making mirrors?

olia</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 20 Nov 1999 03:26:00 +0100</date>
<content>
Dear Craig,

you wrote:

&gt; Florian Cramer &lt;paragram {AT} gmx.net&gt; writes:
&gt; 
&gt; &gt; No, I wanted to suggest something else. If most "Net Art" merely consists of
&gt; &gt; static files on servers, it interfaces so superficially with the Internet
&gt; &gt; that it should be more properly named "Netscape Art". Thanks for mailing me,
&gt; &gt; I will have to clarify this point on Nettime.
&gt; 
&gt; What if I don't look at it in Netscape?

I agree with your critique - I was, seduced by the terminological pun,
over-simplifying things. So I would like to correct my statement as
follows:  Although a lot of Net Art can't be seen without Netscape or IE
(Olia's own works, www.jodi.org, Alexej Shulgin's "form art" and even Vuk
Cosic's "ASCII history of moving images" which despite its name doesn't
display in lynx), this is not the point of my critique. The point is that
much if not most of what's called Net Art - as, for example, the works
currently on display at ZKM's "net.condition" - can just as well be
experienced _without the net_. 

When I fetched the contents of www.0100101110101101.org and the
net.condition web site onto my own harddrive, I realized to my own
surprise that the bulk of what is commonly referred to as Net Art does not
actually use and technically rely upon the Internet, but turns out to be a
bunch of files which can be viewed offline without loosing anything
(besides the domain name in the URL display). 

In other words, it doesn't matter whether one views it over the Internet
or from a CD-ROM, except that - as olia pointed out - the Internet gives
the creators more flexibility to update their work. Yet many and
particularly the 'classic' pieces of Net Art (a) are not conceived as
works to be experienced in continuous change, if they are still changing
at all, and (b)  do as technical systems not rely on the net, i.e. they do
not alter any of their components or parameters according to information
which they _have to_ receive over the net. 

So shouldn't the term "net art" be used more cautiously and not be mixed
up with "browser-based media art"? Isn't mixing up the net and the browser
display the most basic mistake to be made in any net (art) criticism?[1]
If one would instead argue that "Net Art" qualifies for its name not on
technical grounds, but because it's being created for and out of networked
contexts, then "Net Art" wouldn't signify anything, because all art is and
has always been created out of networked contexts. 

In my view, an example of a "Net Art" intertwined in its very structure -
technically and conceptually - with the Internet is Mongrel's manipulated
search engine &lt;www.mongrel.org.uk&gt;. I personally would like to see more
Net Art investigating (and subverting) what's underneath the browser.[2]

Florian


[1] Certainly, the technical distinction between "net art" and
"browser-based media art" has its own potential quirks and traps. 
www.jodi.org, for example, might be read as a fun and sophisticated
simulation of how the Internet is experienced through contemporary browser
and user interface paradigms; and the fact that its interfacing with the
Internet is mocked-up by local, static files - i.e. is networking
simulated with browser tricks - adds just another ironic twist to its
play. With this irony however, www.jodi.org seems to me the only Net Art
project which can convincingly declare its technically network-independent
art as "Net Art". 

[2] This critique also affects most of my own works on the World Wide Web,
although they are not Net Art.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>robert adrian</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 20 Nov 1999 16:29:18 +0100</date>
<content>
The problem is that a few years ago someone (can't remember
who) coined the catchy name net.art - it was the little dot that
did it and the name has been with us ever since. But what was
really meant was web art - or "web.art" if you like - which Florian
would prefer to rename as "browser art" (no dot). Web Art is stuff
that relies on the WWW for distribution and has existed only since
the introduction of the first reliable graphic-capable browsers.
Net Art is a bit broader and existed in one form or other long
before the WWW ... and while the internet was still little more
than a gleam in the eye of a few U.S. academics.

Net Art, Network Art, Telecommunications Art, Telematic Art - or
whatever - is about artists working within the electronic space of
communication networks. Prior to the (more or less) universal
availability of the internet this usually meant the telephone network.
Communication itself was the main content of most of this work -
a visible product (art-commodity) was never a serious consideration.

So its not really a matter of "viewing" a net.work, its a matter of
experiencing it in the context of the network ... in the knowledge
that you are experiencing a version - dependant on your browser,
bandwidth, CPU, monitor resolution etc. - of a work for the internet.
The artist can't control any of these factors so that every viewing
is a new experience - unless you materialise the work as a recording
captured on your hard drive or CD burner - and even then its just
YOUR version.

The exciting - and frustrating - thing about working or viewing on
the web is that you can't control the final appearance of the work.
(In fact there is NO final version of the work.) Thats been a part of
net.working since the beginning - and its the revolutionary aspect.

Lots of artists and all museums don't like the loss of control ... so
there's still painting!



The problems being encountered by collectors and museums - and
artists who wish to profit from the traditional marketing strategies
of the past - is that network art is transient and freely accessible
to all. What is missing is tha aura of the original</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>Simon Biggs</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sun, 21 Nov 1999 12:11:16 +0100</date>
<content>
Florian wrote:
&gt;When I fetched the contents of www.0100101110101101.org and the
&gt;net.condition web site onto my own harddrive, I realized to my own
&gt;surprise that the bulk of what is commonly referred to as Net Art does not
&gt;actually use and technically rely upon the Internet, but turns out to be a
&gt;bunch of files which can be viewed offline without loosing anything
&gt;(besides the domain name in the URL display).
&gt;
&gt;In other words, it doesn't matter whether one views it over the Internet
&gt;or from a CD-ROM, except that - as olia pointed out - the Internet gives
&gt;the creators more flexibility to update their work. Yet many and
&gt;particularly the 'classic' pieces of Net Art (a) are not conceived as
&gt;works to be experienced in continuous change, if they are still changing
&gt;at all, and (b)  do as technical systems not rely on the net, i.e. they do
&gt;not alter any of their components or parameters according to information
&gt;which they _have to_ receive over the net.
-----
I think here you are touching on a good reason for why the term Net Art
should not be used, or only used for a very small number of works. What
"links" a lot of what is called Net Art is not actually the Net but the
computer. This is true of much work produced for viewing in a browser, or
on CD-ROM, or even a lot of installation based work. Often the only
differences between these works are the means of distribution...and whilst
distribution is an important contextual component of any medium or work at
the same time it might be hard to use it to define a medium per se. Usually
the more important differentiation of such work lies not in its mode of
distribution but in how it engages with its primary media platform, the
computer (eg: is the work autonomous, procedural, dynamic databased or
static navigable, etc).

The Net is formed from the convergence of telecommunications and computing.
Thus one would expect that work that can be called Net Art would also be
the direct product of or response to that same convergence of media. When
regarded from this perspective it becomes clear that there really is only a
small number of works out there that are definitively of the Net, and that
these works are those that either engage the Net's capacity for creating
communities and connections between people (as one would expect from a
telecommunications technology) and/or those that engage with the abstract
space created with the notion of hyperlinking. Here I think of an early
work like Ping (1993/4), where users were invited to upload their own
material into a web database, which was represented as an object in a 3D
space. Objects would then sort themselves generically, and you could either
plot a flythrough of the resulting space or ask the system to auto-pilot
you through it. A more recent work such as Web Stalker (which maps
web-space itself) is also exemplary in the same fashion, as is TerraVision
(which relates webspace to real geo-space, and then visualises it in 3D in
realtime - rarely seen as it is only viewable via ultra-highband
connections).

As to what to call all that art that people often refer to now as Net Art,
but which is only cosmetically of the Net?, that is another problem...?



Simon Biggs</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.6</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>Tilman Baumgaertel</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sun, 21 Nov 1999 23:16:53 +0100</date>
<content>
Hi!

It seems that we had this discussion a couple of times already on this
list, didn't we? 

I find it a little narrow-minded and most of the arguments, that were put
forward, simplistic and with little regard to specific works. Plus, I
think it is a bit early to get fundamentalistic about what qualifies as
net art and what doesn't. Most of the projects that are being put down
here were mere experiments, and as such they are legitimate.

If net art is supposed to be specific to the net, than why is what was
called "browser art" not net-specific? After all, there would be no
"browsers" and not HTML to mess around with, if it wasn't for the net, to
begin with.

Also, one can't generalize that all web-based art would work in any other
computer-based format. A lot of sites that work with perl change everytime
they are accessed by different people, and every copy cat would have a
hard time downloading a piece like www.irational.org/x. 

Even a piece like the original "Agatha appears" by Olia, where Agatha
hopped from server to server, wouldn't make very much sense on a CD-Rom
(even though it was released in this format). Also, in Olias "Great
Gatsby"  the internet-download-time of certain files mattered, that also
goes for most of what has been created by Jodi. 

Of course, these web pieces don't take full advantage of all of the
capacities of the net, and there are probably a million other art-things
to do with the internet than creating web sites. Then again, net art is a
very young genre, and these experiments were necessary before moving on to
other, more challenging projects. I also don't want to justify evey boring
art website, and as far as I am concerned, my need for HTML-/Browser-Art
is completely fullfilled by Jodi.

I think the best thing about the whole net art thing might have been, that
it encouraged artists to work on computers and programming. Not on huge,
ZKM-style "interactive" installations, that make eveybody yawn, but on
actual software that deals with the specifics of the computer, instead of
hiding it liek 99 percent of the interactive art of the 90ies. 

The "WebStalker" is one example for this kind of artist's software, Jodis
"OSS"-CD-Rom is another, Mongrels "Heritage" and "Linker" are yet another
one, and "Earshot" might be another one if I only would ever get it to
work.

Something similar happened in Video art, by the way, when people started
to build their own hardware, "videosynthesizer", effect boxes etc.

So creating actual applications could be an interesting direction the
whole thing might take. After all, software is the ultimative multiple...
;-) 

Yours, 
Tilman 

PS: Of course, if that really happens, somebody has to come up with
another name than net art.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.7</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>olia lialina</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 22 Nov 1999 02:54:40 +0300</date>
<content>
&gt; Cramer:

&gt; So I would like to correct my statement as
&gt; follows:  Although a lot of Net Art can't be seen without Netscape or IE
&gt; (Olia's own works, www.jodi.org, Alexej Shulgin's "form art" and even Vuk
&gt; Cosic's "ASCII history of moving images" which despite its name doesn't
&gt; display in lynx), this is not the point of my critique. The point is that
&gt; much if not most of what's called Net Art - as, for example, the works
&gt; currently on display at ZKM's "net.condition" - can just as well be
&gt; experienced _without the net_.

this statement is simply amasing, especially because ZKM is the best
example of the opposite. and i hope a bitter lesson for over curators. 

btw, ZKM intended to make this show offline, but because of two reasons
they could not manage it:  
- some artists refuse to move their projects to zkm mashines 
- a lot of projects are based on cgi scripts. 

 this is just an information, in the end they have an internet connection
there. 


But anyway Weibel ( with support of Weil and dramatic input of Show -
http://www.cinefantom.org/show.jpg ) managed to take the works of artist
from the context and their natural environment. 

The princip is One computer - One work.  Browser inwindow equels screen
size, no navigation bar, no location field.  So u are obliged to see thit
particular work only at this particular mashine -even visually complete
illusion that cd projects are presented.  The result is you cant type
another address, you cant check your email, cant go to http://www.bahn.de
to look for the next train, cant chat.  nothing else but the work of
artist whos name is written on the mous pad.  How you can expirience this
way?  nothing to expirience

There is complete incompetence behind strong media art curators' desire to
solve a problem of presenting net art in the gallery space this way.  and
the punishment is very flat show, exhibition which is less spectacular
than its small green booklet, booklet u can bring home or to the office
and to type the urls in your browser and to enjoy the works or at least to
see them. 

Net_Condition itself does not give this chance at all. 

 Because curator does not know that net is not equel to the internet
connection as well as net projects are not equel to their browser inwindow
visualisation.  and that what we are doing can not " just as well be
experienced _without the net_" ,


&gt; &gt; &gt; When I fetched the contents of www.0100101110101101.org and the &gt;
net.condition web site onto my own harddrive, I realized to my own &gt;
surprise that the bulk of what is commonly referred to as Net Art does not
&gt; actually use and technically rely upon the Internet, but turns out to be
a &gt; bunch of files which can be viewed offline without loosing anything &gt;
(besides the domain name in the URL display). 

but this is already a big lost


http://art.teleportacia.org/Location_Yes</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.0</nbr>
<subject>olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism</subject>
<from>nettime maillist</from>
<to>mettime-l-temp@material.net</to>
<date>Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:25:04 +0200 (CEST)</date>
<content>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
&lt;nettime-l-temp {AT} material.net&gt; is the temporary home of the nettime-l list
while desk.nl rebuilds its list-serving machine.  please continue to send
messages to &lt;nettime-l {AT} desk.nl&gt; and your commands to &lt;majordomo {AT} desk.nl&gt;.
nettime-l-temp should be active for approximately 2 weeks (11-28 Jun 99).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 



Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 12:50:57 +0400
From: olia lialina &lt;olialia {AT} teleportacia.org&gt;
To: nettime-l-temp {AT} material.net
Subject: Re:art.hacktivism

Subject: 
             Re:art.hacktivism
        Date: 
             Fri, 09 Jul 1999 11:10:54 +0400
       From: 
             olia lialina &lt;olialia {AT} teleportacia.org&gt;
 Organization: 
             Teleportacia
         To: 
             nettime-l {AT} Desk.nl, list {AT} rhizome.org, Luther Blissett
&lt;12345 {AT} net27.it&gt;



LB: [...] Net.art, born just some years ago, is becoming *the* new art
form, the ultimate one, and the most absurd thing is that net.artists
themselves seem to expect nothing else.  Everyone with his own site,
everyone with his own domain, everyone with his own gallery, they are
throwing themselves into the trammels of traditional art, completely
ignoring what net.art could/should be and misunderstanding the real power
of the web. OL: 1.Wrong argument. Registration of domain name sais about
understanding of the real power of the web. 2.0100101110101101.ORG is a
domain name registrated at the same company and for the same money as
others.

LB: The point under discussion is always the same: how to sell a net.art
work. In other words: how to make net.art regress to the status of
traditional art. OL: Not "in other words" but "in LB words".

LB: All of it dictated by one and only ideal: the circled "C". Result?
Within two years net.art will be in all museums and art history handbooks,
with the names of the "protagonists of the heroic period", dates,
movements, influences, generations and so on, tons of the same shit we
have been eating all the times. But this is not what we expected. We hoped
that something else would come out, at least in the web. The web is the
paradise of no-copyright, plagiarism, confusion and exchange, why the hell
are those people trying, by any means, to create a copy of the real world?
OL: In general net is an analog of "real world" and part of it. What I and
others who take Internet seriously are doing is modeling situations,
relations, structures.

LB: The difference between net.art and every other form of art seems to be
"interactivity", at least this is what we got used to hear. OL: Bozhe moj.
who told it to you? whom you talked with and when? try to recall. May be
it was about compact disks or computer installations? any way, dont say it
again. If you need a keyword for net art its a "connectivity".

LB:But recently something's changed.
OL: What exactly has changed?

LB:We're talking about 0100101110101101.ORG, come into the limelight for
having hacked hell.com. In fact, 0100101110101101.ORG is trying to show
that art in the web can really become "interactive ": the public must use
it interactively, we must use an artwork in an unpredictable way, one that
the author didn't foresee, to rescue it from its normal routine
(studio/gallery/museum or homepage/hell.com/Moma) and re-use it in a
different and novel way.

OL: What you've described is an art method known long before the Internet.
(Soviet conceptual culture is based on it, or found footage in film can be
an example). Internet really gave a new life to "re-use" and it is one of
the most important skills if you work with the net.

LB: The first files appeared in 0100101110101101.ORG are what we'll call
"hybrids", in absence of other names: pages by other net.artists all mixed
in a random way. This section of the site is centered around a random
concept, so that the interface changes every time you visit it. OL: Yes, I
remember we made it two years ago at http://remote.aec.at. Random is a
nice idea.

LB: The toolbar becomes useless, the "back" command loses its logical
function: OL: its a fault..

LB: every page is set in the unpredictable sequence of chance.  
0100101110101101.ORG downloads the websites of the most popular
net.artists and then s/he/it/them manipulates them as "it" wants, using
them in an interactive way. OL: what you call interaction i still cant
understand.


LB: The night of 9th june, it was the turn of "Art.Teleportacia"'s.
"Art.Teleportacia" is the first net.art gallery to have appeared in the
web, and also the first attempt to sell works of net.art. The exhibition
we're talking about was "Miniatures of the heroic period ", and consisted
of some pages by five of the most known net.artists in the world - Jodi,
Vuk, Irational, Easylife and Lialina - for sale at 2000 $ each.
0100101110101101.ORG cloned the gallery. OL: as it seems you are an expert
not only in interactivity. What is made on 0100101110101101.ORG is a
parody, clone means complite identity.

LB: manipulated the contents and uploaded it in a new "anticopyright"
version, obviously without asking permission to anyone and violating the
copyright of the original site. The exhibition changed its name into
"Hybrids of the heroic period ", and the five "original" works were
replaced with as many "hybrids", files obtained mixing pages by
net.artists with some trash of the web. OL: Good. this is actually what I
like in 0100101110101101.ORG. Right attitude - to be a spider. And not
only to make a web, but to make it on purpose: to catch flys. Not only to
make links but to be able to work and play with things which are already
created in the net.

LB: The theoretical pillars that hold Art.Teleportacia are mainly three: -
1 A work of net.art can be sold as well as any other work of art OL: Right

LB: 2 Each net.art work must be covered by copyright and nobody, except
the artist, can download it or even link to it without the permission of
the author. OL: Not true

LB: 3 The "sign" of a net.art work is in the "Location bar", so the url is
the only guarantee of originality. OL: Not the only, but the most
effective.

LB: Cloninig Art.Teleportacia 0100101110101101.ORG brought down all the
presuppositions of the gallery, the contradictions which this way of
thinking runs into became evident. OL: Making a parody on Art.Teleportacia
0100101110101101.ORG brought new clients to the gallery and good publicity
for itself.

LB: Technically, whoever visits a site downloads automatically, in the
cache, all the files he sees. In fact s/he already owns them, therefore it
is nonsense to sell pages already being in the hard disks of millions of
people. OL: This I already heard from media curators who wanted to have my
works for nothing and to earn money on them. But its an illusion.


LB: - it would be more useful to tell the public the fastest way to
download the whole website. We must keep in mind that net.art is digital,
it is binary code, everything is reproducible to infinity without losing
quality... just numbers! - finally, we entered the "age of its technical
reproducibility" - and every copy is identical to the "original" one. The
concept itself of an "original" is now meaningless OL: no, now it is
meaningful as never before. will explain in the end why.

LB: and even the concepts of false and plagiarism don't exist any longer.
If it's obsolete to talk about "originals" in the real world, it becomes
absolutely paradoxical in the web. OL: Im not very much involved in real
world business, but if this issue would be obsolete you, Luther, wont be
able to get money from your publishing house.

LB: We wish to see hundreds of 0100101110101101.ORG repeating sites of
net.artists endlessly, so that nobody realizes which was the "original"
one, we would like to see hundreds of Jodi and hell.com, all different,
all original, and nobody filing lawsuits for copyright infringement, there
would be no more originals to preserve.

OL: Are you really familiar with net art or net in general? if yes you
should know that copying is not a big deal. You can make hundreds of
Art.Teleportacia galleries, but next day they will be only hundreds of
outdated pages with not actual information and broken links, because I
will update only http://art.teleportacia.org . The same with all on line
art and not art works. What is done on the net is not a book or cd or tape
kind of product. It is not complete, not frosen, but can be changed every
moment. And this moment is a difference between copies and originals.


LB: Art.Teleportacia: clone:
http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/Art.Teleportacia "original":
http://art.teleportacia.org/art-mac.html OL: Art.Teleportacia URL is
http://art.teleportacia.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>6.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: net.art situation</subject>
<from>- G a r r e t t -</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Sat, 15 Feb 2003 21:04:42 +0000</date>
<content>
Hi everyone, seem to have missed a few emails as my account put them
in a bulk folder thinking they were spam, so i'll try and get to each
of them here now....


&gt;I have to say that I=B9m offended by this whole thread on Rhizome and this is
&gt;likely the first time I have posted to this listserve. I=B9m offended because
&gt;I feel Rhizome and any online net art institutions/orgs like it are
&gt;essential to the community of artists and researchers that have developed
&gt;around it.=20

hi Camille, first i'd like to say its great you joined the list and i
hope you stay on to participate as i know your involved in a very
good festival (far from being just a poor grad student) so you have a
lot to add here!

i can't stress this enough i did say in the first postings about
this, that this was'nt about rhizome as such but that the recent
changes in rhizome and one or two other occurances in the net.art
'world' caused me to initiate the discussion.  one of the people who
responded picked up on the rhizome element and continued conversation
about that.  its a big thing and is unavoidable at the moment but the
discussion was on what we as net.artists can do to develop and
further the situation of net.art, how we can make approaches to
institutions so that we have more input on how our work is shown and
archived, how to generate solutions to showing net.art in physical
spaces, issues to do with funding, how we could develop new formats
to share information accross communities and generally make net.art
more visible.

please anyone on the list who is following this discussion don't feel
any animosity about this or feel alienated from the discussion, have
your say!!, what i am hoping we will achieve is some open critical
discussion where we might come up with some ideas and solutions!


&gt;So far, The mercantile solutions aren't doing the trick, although the Thing
&gt;seems to be holding it together,  even though they have the yearly crisis.

what are the Thing doing these days? its been a while since i saw
anything involving them, their net.presence seems to have diminished!


&gt;Sure, the Whitney has the Artport, but my point is talking about integration
&gt;within the gallery, which is a bit antithetical to the genre, but I think
&gt;that it's necessary as a form of bridge.

i was reading something somewhere (perhaps it was here, not sure)
from a curator giving suggestions as how to tackle this fundamental
problem.  they suggested two approches. the first being that you
create something unique in terms of the way the work is presented /
interfaced with in a public space such as a gallery.  this was
interesting but i think would fail for a high majority of net.art
projects because by adding this 'unique' location based experience,
well the work is no longer really a piece of net.art but more a
combination of net.art and installation to some degree.

the second seemed when i read it sort of obvious and banal, but on
reflection quite clever, they suggested net.art that was to be shown
in a gallery or indeed any location should be created in some way
that it was site specific, now this seems quite fixed and
immediatlely you think the work has to be some sort of response to
the physical space and so would influence both content and
presentation, but seeing as a lot of net.art plays on elements to do
with key themes such as location (or more absence here), identity
(until now tied to the physical but here using the new concept of
avatars), the body (elements of both the previous) and the network
(the new location?) it gives much wider and flexible elbow room!!
not perfection by any means but one of the best approaches i've heard
so far.


&gt;Good point.  My mentor in grad school (whom, I feel, taught me so well that
&gt;I left before finishing - I think it had something to do with snatching that
&gt;pebble out of his hand) once said that the most honest art he had ever seen
&gt;was made by a 2-year old.  I would argue that in the case of net art, this
&gt;would be possible, but unlikely.  There is too much cultural baggage tied up
&gt;with it; such as proficiency, access, etc.

yes i agree it is unlikely, but the possibility is there and
especially within net.art identity and age become meaningless as this
is played upon / created to such a great extent within this medium
(or bricolage of mediums!).


&gt;This is a great approach, but the question remains: Which institutions are
&gt;willing to work with the artists, and which artists are willing to work
&gt;hand-in-hand with an institution? I'd love to give it a try.

and here's the stumbling block!  certainly i'd love to have some
access to an art institution here in England where i could start have
some input but it does seem to be incredible hard to break into them.
up till now i've worked voluntarily with one media community based
festival for new media for a year here and put in quite a bit of work
to keep their website ticking over and attempt to get them to widen
their vision. only to find recently the festival taken away from us,
handed over to another group who bought a new domain name for the
festival (we owned the original), started a new website which for the
moment has only a splash screen even though the event itself will be
happening in less than 15 days, plans to not allow any of the former
community (mailing list of over 100 at one stage) participate in
ether the website (its all in flash, no database used, no structure
so impossible to update easily) or the mailing list (they are now
using none) and never communicated any information to us about what
was happening even though we had worked for free and intented to
continue doing so!  so what do you do in a situation like this where
you can't even give your services away?

the reason i posted here as opposed to say "_arc.hive_ ", "nettime",
"spectre", "rhizome" whatever...  was because this list is
specifically on curating and i know there are people in institutions
on this list, who unfortunity for the most part have stayed silent
for the moment, i second your "i'd love to give it a try" so why
does'nt some institution take us up on the offer?


&gt;I am working in funding body.  It does funded new media work and there is
&gt;certain institutions receive funding, and a lot of interesting project going
&gt;on. However, I do agree the structure not there, e.g. network, education,
&gt;promotion...   In the recent selection of Award for Artists (one of the
&gt;funding scheme) the quality of applications that we received in the new
&gt;media arts section is so bad (not being critical, but really is true) I
&gt;wonder why the sector keep shouting there is no funding while we only
&gt;receive poor application? I understand there is frustration there to deal
&gt;with the funder, but the situation should be changed, both the attitude and
&gt;communication of both the funded and funding bodies.

perhaps your not shouting loud enough?  what is the name of the
funding body because from what you have said here it does'nt ring any
bells with me?  i can't comment too much from the organisers side as
i don't have direct experience of artists submissions so i don't know
whether they are generally good or bad but i will say if the awards
are open to me (nationality, location etc) then i would apply so...
please tell us more!


&gt;I would, however, like
&gt;to throw out the idea that net art is a critical stance rather than an art
&gt;form, much the same way as "conceptual art" now is. Can a painting be net
&gt;art? Sure, why not?

mmmm interesting stance, i'm not a purist by any means and certainly
don't hold with ideas that net.art is only ascii based etc but i need
to think on this one, you've made me hesitate, so i think i'm in
agreement with you!


&gt;So where is the net art discourse? Not with Lev Manovich, heaven forbid

slap your hand for going against the tides of popularism!!!  :)


&gt;I've decided we may have came up with an answer. Not THE answer but
&gt;certainly &gt;a response to this particular call.
&gt;
&gt;More over the weekend.

waiting anxiously!

a+
gar

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+-----------------------------------------------------------+

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http://www.asquare.org/
http://www.bannerart.org/
http://www.zendco.com/

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</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: net.art situation</subject>
<from>Murphy</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Feb 2003 19:09:15 -0500</date>
<content>
I don't want to hijack Crumb for my own topic since I actually like the idea
of structured moderation for a list like this. But I see there isn't a theme
this month so perhaps we can take some of these questions and give them some
form for a future monthly theme.

Rob

on 2/15/03 4:04 PM, - G a r r e t t - at [log in to unmask] wrote:

&gt; what are the Thing doing these days? its been a while since i saw
&gt; anything involving them, their net.presence seems to have diminished!

You may have noticed recently The Thing was involved in a controversy over a
Dow Chemical parody, which resulted in their Internet provider, Verio,
deciding to cut their access for good. I don't know whether Wolfgang has
found another one yet, most likely in Europe, that won't give in to DMCA
threats.

TT has been around since 1991 and has never, itself, had much of a
net.presence. It's more of a generator or "animator", if you will.



Since March's theme is "Curatorial Models" that may be a more proper time
to go into the various online curatorial (or anti-curatorial, depending on
your POV) projects based in NYC that I was involved with over the past ten+
years -- TT, ada'web, Plexus, artnetweb, Rhizome, etc. and the problems they
encountered.

&gt;&gt; I would, however, like
&gt;&gt; to throw out the idea that net art is a critical stance rather than an art
&gt;&gt; form, much the same way as "conceptual art" now is. Can a painting be net
&gt;&gt; art? Sure, why not?
&gt;
&gt; mmmm interesting stance, i'm not a purist by any means and certainly
&gt; don't hold with ideas that net.art is only ascii based etc but i need
&gt; to think on this one, you've made me hesitate, so i think i'm in
&gt; agreement with you!

Since it's been raining here today I've hunkered down and read through parts
of "Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology" edited by Alexander Alberro and
Blake Stimson (MIT Press, 2000). Only rain could force me to read through
old Art &amp; Language texts but, having done so, I'm convinced that history
does repeat itself, especially art history. So much of net art discourse,
such as it is, is conceptual art discourse. Net.art (with the dot), as
formulated by Vuk and, more so, Alexi Shulgin and others on nettime was
based in this belief of already been there, done that but now we have
computers and modems.

Of course, conceptual art was a big influence on many of us of a certain age
in NYC who got involved with the early '90s (including Wolfgang Staehle, GH
Hovagimyan, Remo Campopiano, Stephen Pusey, Benjamin Weil, Adrianne Wortzel,
Jordan Crandal, myself and many others). Most of us had art careers before
the net and I think we all thought of it as an continuation of our existing
art practice not changing careers. For me, I thought I finally had the tools
to, in Joseph Kosuth's terms, "manifest my intent" in a way I couldn't with
paint and canvas or, for that matter, critical theory.

So, you see, from my POV, it doesn't make sense to view net art as an art
form but, at most, a tool (like theory more than a brush). It makes even
less sense to squeeze net art into an institutional, curatorial category.
But then we get back to questions asked by conceptual art...


Best,

Rob
offshore|online</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: net.art situation</subject>
<from>Zoe Li</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Feb 2003 22:57:47 -0800</date>
<content>
Dear All,
I think I should response to this email while I am the only one mention
about funding bodies, perhaps I should make it clear.

I join the South West Arts (one of the regional office of Arts Council of
England) 6 months ago, I still have a lots of question of why the quality of
the funding application is so poor. I am not sure it is about the promotion
of the arts council itself or there is generally a frustration building up
towards the funding body.  If you are an artist, and you want some funding
support, where are you go to? Obviously the arts council will be one of the
option.

SWA funded couple good projects and some of the people in the list will know
that.  But I still don't understand why the respond on the award is not so
ideal. Maybe some of you should tell me why, I am actually posted a question
here, and will hope to open up a discussion.  I think the voice of funder
always very small, and funding officers always feel they are in the
responsive position. Perhaps we should go out more often.

Regards,
Zoe</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: net.art situation</subject>
<from>- G a r r e t t -</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Mon, 17 Feb 2003 15:21:34 +0000</date>
<content>
&gt;I don't want to hijack Crumb for my own topic since I actually like the idea
&gt;of structured moderation for a list like this.

me too but what i don't understand is that i never see discussion on
the themes coming through the list, just the messages from beryll at
the start of the month announcing the theme and i'm thinking this is
due to that 'reply' quirk that this list is using (ie not responding
to the list but someone in the list) that was picked up on last week.
at first glance that seems to be fixed now so hopefully....

i was a bit nervious about posting through the list initially as
well, but nobody has said anything, if required and there is interest
we could always start a temporary list on something like yahoo to
take this further, let me know what you think because it might be
seen that we're trying to ciphen off members to a different list!


&gt;But I see there isn't a theme
&gt;this month so perhaps we can take some of these questions and give
&gt;them some form for a future monthly theme.

it would be welcome, its a HUGH topic with so many possible threads
of discussion it will be difficult to do, but someone's got to!


&gt;So, you see, from my POV, it doesn't make sense to view net art as an art
&gt;form but, at most, a tool (like theory more than a brush).

i see your point, but at present due to my age i don't have the
experience of passing through a few art 'forms' or tools as you
prefer, to be able to take the stance that the end defines the means,
ie i want to create art and will use whatever necessary to do it
regardless of how that will classify the work once its finished, if
i've used video it must be video art, if i've used html it must be
net.art etc.

genuinely this is'nt trying to be sarcastic, but i guess with a few
more years behind me i will take the same point of view.  i certainly
was'nt around at the start of net.art and am the first to admit that
but feel i have plenty to bring it.  for the moment i guess i have
been pigeon-holed as a net.artist and in a way thats bad but feel the
sacrifice is necessary if i want to excel at any one tool, a trade up
if you will for the present.


&gt;  It makes even less sense to squeeze net art into an institutional,
&gt;curatorial category. But then we get back to questions asked by
&gt;conceptual art...

its the curating that needs to change more than the arts, thats very
obvious here, so i don't think it will ever be squeezing net.art into
an institution as such.  whats needed though for curators to
understand how to start to form structures that can cope with art in
all its new 'forms' (art does'nt have a form as such so this takes in
everything from my 'net.art form' to your 'tool' without any
problems) is that artists, and increasingly technical people, are
working with them.

a+
gar

--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

[log in to unmask]
http://www.asquare.org/
http://www.bannerart.org/
http://www.zendco.com/

+-----------------------------------------------------------+</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: net.art situation</subject>
<from>Murphy</from>
<to>&lt;new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk&gt;</to>
<date>Mon, 17 Feb 2003 17:09:39 -0500</date>
<content>
on 2/17/03 10:21 AM, - G a r r e t t - at [log in to unmask]
wrote:

&gt; me too but what i don't understand is that i never see discussion on
&gt; the themes coming through the list, just the messages from beryll at
&gt; the start of the month announcing the theme and i'm thinking this is
&gt; due to that 'reply' quirk that this list is using (ie not responding
&gt; to the list but someone in the list) that was picked up on last week.
&gt; at first glance that seems to be fixed now so hopefully....

The mailinglist program is set to "reply goes to sender" rather than "reply
goes to list" or something like that. I've adjusted. Why there is no
discussion on the themes is another matter. Lists with specific themes need
moderators who are anal compulsive and have lots of time to screen posts and
write summaries (I know, I've done it). I suspect neither Beryl nor Sarah
fit this discription.

So it's up to us to make interesting posts on topic. Since there is no topic
this month we have a bit of leeway.

&gt; i was a bit nervious about posting through the list initially as
&gt; well, but nobody has said anything, if required and there is interest
&gt; we could always start a temporary list on something like yahoo to
&gt; take this further, let me know what you think because it might be
&gt; seen that we're trying to ciphen off members to a different list!

Oh, god, not another list. There was already a month with a net art theme
with the contributors to Cream (of which I'm a backslider). jodi.org scared
a lot of people away. So, maybe we can smuggle net art into the "curatorial
models" theme next month. I have no problem with seeing net art as a
curatorial model.

&gt; i see your point, but at present due to my age i don't have the
&gt; experience of passing through a few art 'forms' or tools as you
&gt; prefer, to be able to take the stance that the end defines the means,
&gt; ie i want to create art and will use whatever necessary to do it
&gt; regardless of how that will classify the work once its finished, if
&gt; i've used video it must be video art, if i've used html it must be
&gt; net.art etc.

I see from your links you're in an MFA program (or whatever it's called
there). I take it you're in Dublin but you write about applying for English
funds so I assume your home is in England (or is it the other way around?) I
now live in exile on an island in the Gulf of Mexico but I spent the first
half of my life in Idaho and the second half in New York City with a stop in
Indiana for Graduate School in painting, which I never finished.

I give some of my background so people will have a better idea of why I see
certain things the way I do and why I'm using certain references. I don't
expect you to have had the same experiences or to follow in my footsteps.

I certainly don't take the stance that "the end defines the means". More the
other way around, that the end may be one manifestation of the means. But we
can get into this at another time.

&gt; genuinely this is'nt trying to be sarcastic, but i guess with a few
&gt; more years behind me i will take the same point of view.  i certainly
&gt; was'nt around at the start of net.art and am the first to admit that
&gt; but feel i have plenty to bring it.  for the moment i guess i have
&gt; been pigeon-holed as a net.artist and in a way thats bad but feel the
&gt; sacrifice is necessary if i want to excel at any one tool, a trade up
&gt; if you will for the present.

You seem to be making of net.art what you need to. Don't worry about Vuk's
retirement.

&gt; its the curating that needs to change more than the arts, thats very
&gt; obvious here, so i don't think it will ever be squeezing net.art into
&gt; an institution as such.  whats needed though for curators to
&gt; understand how to start to form structures that can cope with art in
&gt; all its new 'forms' (art does'nt have a form as such so this takes in
&gt; everything from my 'net.art form' to your 'tool' without any
&gt; problems) is that artists, and increasingly technical people, are
&gt; working with them.

Don't be too hard on curators. The role has changed dramatically for a
variety of reasons over the past twenty years. Institutionally they've had
to take on more and more work they probably shouldn't have to do and that
has made the role seem more important. In the 'seventies it was critics and
art historians artists attacked. Curators, except for a few, mostly European
superstars connected with Documenta, the Venice Bienale etc, then were
rather kindred spirits of artists. How and why this has changed is a topic
for next month.

Best,

Rob

offshore|online</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: [Nettime-bold] Josephine Berry's net art history</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 10 Feb 2001 10:33:37 +0100</date>
<content>
Even if I have respect for the amount of work Josephine Berry has put in
her thesis, I feel like I have to make a comment about what I see as a
few basic mistakes in her analyses. The basis of Berry's way of thinking
seems to be that net art started in 1996 with net.art. There is no or
hardly any mentioning of network art before that time, and even of net
art made by others during the time net.art started to be discussed. Then
there is the insistent hammering on the alledged political aims of this
first net.art 'group'. Even if the works and attitude of -some- members
of this group have been very influential in the way net art has been
approached in especially the nettime community ( and also in the way it
inspired some artists of a younger generation) it would be wrong to make
an analyses of net art depend on these few and the spin around them.
What I read (and have read in the past) from Josephine Berry view on net
art is a strong focus on this political aspect of early net.art which
then turns into an analyses of its failure every time she writes about
it. And of course, what else could it be. The revolutionary potential of
'political' art (for lack of a better term) has always been very small.
This art is always part of a larger cultural change or tendency. I hope
it is clear in her thesis that this particular analyses concerns a small
but influential part of net art and that there will be many more up to
date chapters on other artworks and trends in her thesis. 





best


J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: [Nettime-bold] Josephine Berry's net art history</subject>
<from>Josephine Berry</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 12 Feb 2001 11:06:24 +0000</date>
<content>Dear Josephine,

I could not have expected you to realise this (since I didn't explain), but the subject of my thesis *is* the group of artists that are loosely defined by the term 'net.art', and so the lack of a broader description is, to quite a large extent, intentional. Although it is impossible to discuss any art movement or group in a historical vacuum, it is however equally impossible to include every single related instance of practice. I made the decision to use conceptual art of the 60s and 70s as the main genealogical thread rather than early network artists because I see these conceptual artists as crucial historical precedents to *both* later moments. Having said that I do make mention of mail artists who are a strong precursor to net art not only because of the coincidence of dematerialisation and the network but also because the mail art movement included many non-artists - or at least people who didn't understand themselves precisely in these terms. This leads me to your other !

criticism which is my tendency to see net.artists as having 'failed' in their own terms. In this chapter my argument is that it is the net.artists insistance on defending their art practice from dissolution in the wider network which collapses it back into the market-institutional framework from which they precisely tried to escape. In this respect it is the fact that they were hostile (in contrast to mail artists) to their work being adopted, manipulated, dissected, plagiarised etc. etc. by the *wider community* that, in my reading, amounts to a failure - and, ironically, in their own terms. So you are right when you touch on an important lack in the chapter - of a multitude of other network-based creativity - but I think you misunderstand me if you think that this absence relates purely to my own lack of interest. At the end, I talk about the 01001etc.etc.org group as a hopeful instance of a practice which attacks intellectual art-property and opens up art to the massive creative potential inherent in the social field. I think this is a fa optimistic reading than any more limited celebration of specific artists.

The final thing to say on the issue of failure is the idea, expressed by the likes of Adorno and Debord, that the history of modern art is the history of its own endlessly deferred end. The autonomy which art gained from older forms of social service confronted it increasingly with the unfreedom of the world - a contradiction which precipitates its continued crisis. The 'failure' of the net artits is, in this sense, entirely in keeping with the wider movement of modern/post-modern art.


-&gt;- www.metamute.com -&lt;- coming back soon

* -&gt;- www.ouimadame.org -&lt;- * to follow</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:31:37 +0100</date>
<content>Josephine Berry wrote:

&gt; I could not have expected you to realise this (since I didn't explain), but the subject of my thesis *is* the group of artists that are loosely defined by the term 'net.art', and so the lack of a broader description is, to quite a large extent, intentional. 

I am very glad I reacted to it then, because it was totally unclear. I
think it is very important you add this piece of knowledge to your
thesis and every part of it that you publish, as it now looks as if you
are covering net art history in general. With all the confusion we have
already seen around the subject on various lists and considering the
hunger for these kind of general insights and clarifications it is very
likely a text like yours could accidentally be used and spread as study
material representing the -entire- history of net art. Which it does
not. I must say that your clarification has made the text a lot more
sympathetic to me, even if I have criticism still. It is also quite
clear we need a lot of more specific or specialised researches of
different area's of net art. 

&gt; which brings me to your criticism which is my tendency to see net.artists as having 'failed' in their own terms. In this chapter my argument is that it is the net.artists insistance on defending their art practice from dissolution in the wider network which collapses it back into the market-institutional framework from which they precisely tried to escape. In this respect it is the fact that they were hostile (in contrast to mail artists) to their work being adopted, manipulated, dissected, plagiarised etc. etc. by the *wider community* that, in my reading, amounts to a failure - and, ironically, in their own terms. 

The 'net.artists' were absolutely not hostile to their work being
manipulated, dissected or plagiarised. On the contrary I would say, they
are rather strongely influenced by the copy left ideas. The only thing
they initially found problematic was becoming institutionalised. Each of
them has dealt with this in a very different way in the end. As you may
know some of them simply proclaim net art is dead, to have some kind of
excuse for continuing their work on an institutional level or maybe just
to have a way out of difficult media political and art institutional
issues they became entangled in. These are individual strategies of a
small group of artists though and they fit in their work. With all the
pranks and subversion of discourse we have dealt with coming from some
net.artists one should be careful with taking their words literally
sometimes. When for instance Vuk Cosic goes to New York and says to art
professionals that there have really only been five net.artists (to just
give an example of something that happened) it is quite ignorant to take
that as a fact and not see it in the light of his work. 
What I find and have found problematic in your writing about net.art is
that you tend to blow up the political aspect out of proportion instead
of approaching this work mostly as art. This work has not failed as art,
is what I am saying. I find it highly problematic to attach a label of
political failure on this work in the context of nettime especially,
where there has been so much ideological pressure on and hostility
towards net art practice.

&gt;I talk about the 01001etc.etc.org group as a hopeful instance of a practice which attacks intellectual art-property and opens up art to the massive creative potential inherent in the social field. I think this is a far more optimistic reading than any more limited celebration of specific artists.

Again, this is coming from a purely ideological approach of net art.
First of all, 01001etc.etc.org seem just as much hot air as the
net.artists were in the political sense (I would underline 'in the
political sense' if I could), secondly celebrating specific artists is
not at all what I am interested in and it should be clear from my work.
(Maybe I am reading your comment as a criticism when it is not, then
ignore my remark.) It is important to explore and document the variety
of artworks out there and the context they are made in. 

&gt; The final thing to say on the issue of failure is the idea, expressed by the likes of Adorno and Debord, that the history of modern art is the history of its own endlessly deferred end. The autonomy which art gained from older forms of social service confronted it increasingly with the unfreedom of the world - a contradiction which precipitates its continued crisis. The 'failure' of the net artits is, in this sense, entirely in keeping with the wider movement of modern/post-modern art.

Well, there is a lot that can be said about this. It seems to me this
way of thinking could easily be replaced by another basic view of the
world, like any philosophy has its counter philosophy. I personally have
a lot of problems with terms like 'the end of' in relation to an
abstraction like 'art' or 'modern art'. So even an endlessly deferred
end is only a strategy to approach something. Not a very interesting one
imho.



best



J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: [Nettime-bold] Josephine Berry's net art history</subject>
<from>Tilman Baumgaertel</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 13 Feb 2001 18:22:02 +0100</date>
<content>
Hello Josephine!

Just some brief remarks on the chapter of your dissertation that you send. 

I think it is very good in general, and the theory around net art needed
some boost. Too bad that nobody produces any net art anymore... ;-) 

Two things: first of all there are hints throughout the text that net art
has become accepted by the so-called art world, is assimilated in the art
market etc. I have heard that claim a couple of times recently, but I don't
see much proove for that. There was a handful of sales of net art piece, OK
- but that was widely acknowledged by everybody, because it was so
spectacular, that somebody would pay money for some HTML pages. But apart
from that there is no market there - at all! (I am writing that not,
because I care very much if there is a market for net art or not, but to
counter these recent claims that net art has been "established".) And at
least in Germany there is no "normal" museum or gallery that pays any
attention to this stuff; only specialized institutions like the ZKM who
were founded for just that purpose. If a show like the Whitney Biennale
shows net pieces it is still pointed out as unusual, and I don't think any
net stuff will be included in the next documenta. So I think in terms of
recogniation of the "real" art world it is much earlier than we think, and
maybe it will never happen.

The other thing that bothered me as well as Josephine Bosma was the
limitation on the artists you discuss extensively, but you explained that.
I don't know if you point out elsewhere that you are limiting yourself to
these people because you can't discuss everything that happens on the net
in terms of art. I think especially in the context of this chapter it might
be interesting to focus on the very strategy they employed to get
recognition. You know, form a little group, give yourself some interesting
name, create a myth around yourself and start to write manifestos. On the
one hand this is a well-known artist's strategy, on the other hand - if you
look at it now - it was done kind of sloppy and tongue in cheek (the famous
story about the term net.art etc). I mean, only so few manifestos? Maybe
this can also be read as an example of the use of an art strategy that
turns into something else, that you describe in some of the examples...

As far as the Biopower-stuff is concerned... well, I haven't read "Empire",
but to me it sounds a little bit like "bio compost", for which we have a
special garbage can here in Germany... ;-) I totally agree with you that
the net artists used (and still use) well-established art (and
anti-establishment) attitudes, that somehow transcend the art realm, when
they are applied on the net. I have a hard time finding the right
terminology to describe this, but I am not sure if the "Empire"-terminology
puts it so well, either. 

Well, so much for now. There is a lot to be said about this topic, but
since this discussion was stifled on nettime at one point, nobody did
continue it. Maybe over some pasta with chicken, again, Josephine? ;-) 

Yours, 
Tilman 

PS: Of course I don't agree with you that I. Graw plays such an role in
your essay, but never mind. I wrote a furious reply on this piece, when it
came out, that Jospehine Bosma was kind enough to translate: 



At 11:06 12.02.01 +0000, you wrote:
&gt;
&gt;Dear Josephine,
&gt;
&gt;I could not have expected you to realise this (since I didn't explain),
but the subject of my thesis *is* the group of artists that are loosely
defined by the term 'net.art', and so the lack of a broader description is,
 &lt;...&gt;
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.3</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>trip dixon</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 14 Feb 2001 22:26:17 -0500</date>
<content>
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;ALso, I am sure this has been part of your consideration,,

but as an art exists, so must a viewer...  I have not read much myself on 
how this   contemporary net.art viewer is being defined&gt;&gt;&gt;  ...but i have 
Defined it myself as the user-viewer.

       this user-viewer is the critical observer of the events that occur 
within the interface of the technology in question: in our case,   the 
increasingly middle-class technologies of the internet:   the Cyborg 
extensions of our bodies that allow us to communicate with each other via 
electronic machine technology:::::::::::


     The user-viewer is one who critically observes and participate swithin 
an artwork that requires both technological user interactivity, and viewer 
interpretation. The typical user is a sender-receiver, but the user-viewer 
is simply the critical, observational, sender-receiver&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;-----


but maybe I'm just talking bollocks.

}}}}}}}}}Any input?
{screen.print())()){{{{&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;
}

&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;trip



((&amp;cultural appropriation in sound:::  http://www.mp3.com/tripDixon  ))</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.4</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Thu, 15 Feb 2001 12:39:30 +0100</date>
<content>

robert adrian wrote:

&gt; All of the artists
&gt; you mention treat the Internet as public space
&gt; and, no matter what their other agendas may be,
&gt; an important political element of their work is
&gt; to claim that space as a place for art.

Exactly. And this is the part where politics -do- come into view: with
the tools or space for art or culture in general to develop with or in.
The fact that politics are undeniably a part of art in media does not
mean that a potential of an art practice to make a difference in the
politics of either the artworld itself or in that of a broader world of
industrial and political power struggles mean that such a potential
should be judged seperately from the other aspects of such artworks. To
do that gives a crooked image of an enterprise that fails at reaching
some goal. As Josephine Berry did say, and she uses the example of
00100etc.org for this, is that the -potential- for political change in
some net art obviously has -not- 'failed' or died yet. I think it is
exactly that which was and is its strength and also its burden. Art in
media are and will be always controversial. The controversy around it is
not easy to give words to always though. Sometimes it is just something
simple like 'it is useless'.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>OVER EXPOSURE</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Thu, 15 Feb 2001 12:20:04 -0500</date>
<content>

a disclaimer:
i think of my artwork as research and so when i reference my work please 
consider it as a textual response or rather my attempt at "meaningful" 
addition to this and other threads.  probably most people on this list 
realize this approach and value of an artist's contributions in this way.  i 
only make this disclaimer because so often (possibly via my american status) 
i feel that self-references to work on this and other lists are read as 
self-promotion or spam and while it is true that i do stand to gain from the 
thin thread of "future monetary capital" so do all artists, intellectuals 
involved in the "creative process".  those who know my work well know this 
"future profitability" is not my motivation behind the work otherwise i 
would simply become an investment banker and no longer "enjoy" living in an 
illegal warehouse space in harlem.

a response
now may i suggest that yes the simple gesture in the acquisition of  "space" 
anywhere for the purposes of art is a radical political gesture at this 
point in time.  "a contemporary american artwork in progress 
(http://www.restlessculture.net/americanart ) as well as most of my current 
work deals directly with recombinate modes that re-access the concept of  
"resistance" and attempt an offset of reactionary politics and the creation 
of mere binaries.  these  binary situations are the over-simplified reversal 
and as i see it easily located and less than restless simplistic reversal of 
concepts for the purposes of the now standardized "political" criteria well 
adapted and used as latent carriers for our american political/economic 
system  i.e., political correctness.

to not consider the efforts of  many artists performing this simple gesture 
of art-occupation at the fringes of ALL networks and nodes within and off of 
the obvious and profitably singular tag of "the internet within itself" is 
really disappointing.  to berry or anyone attempting an understanding of art 
at this time i would say please consider the "nternet within itself" as the 
least important aspect of this moment and consider instead the metaphoric 
use of the internet: a model for the acceleration of time and decrease of 
space that is occurring all around us.  true, wolfgang net.art is dead as 
are all texts approached with such a singular in narrow reading.

-cpv59</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.6</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>josephine starrs</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri, 16 Feb 2001 04:57:13 +1100</date>
<content>
another josephine on the subject to confuse you all

we in 'vns matrix' (cyberfeminist artist group) were making interactive
artworks and text based performances on the internet pre web days.... as
were others.......so i always thought the term net.art should have been
web.art as this genre of art only came about with the introduction of the
world wide web to the internet.

i was recently at an event where some of these artists were calling
themselves 'the fathers of net.art'
....i guess the 'father's of web.art' doesn't sound quite as sexy, but i
think you art historians should maybe point out the difference in your
texts as you assign male authorship in your art discourses as you have
throughout history.

j.

http://starrs.design.nepean.uws.edu.au/
http://starrs.banff.org
http://www.anat.org.au/resistant-media/Bio-Tek</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.7</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>G.H. HOVAGIMYAN</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri, 16 Feb 2001 08:20:19 -0500 (EST)</date>
<content>

OVEREXPOSURE WRITES:


now may i suggest that yes the simple gesture in the acquisition of  "space"
anywhere for the purposes of art is a radical political gesture at this
point in time.

GH Comments:

For most net  artists/ artists working in digital media, especially in the
USA it's all about resisting the push to institutionalize, commodify and
package creativity.  It's also about the positive notion of creating a free
area where the artist can make work. Or as Cary says acquisition of space
for the purpose of art. I would like to note that this acqusition of space
for the purpose of art is radical when it is accomplished by an individual
or group of artists.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.8</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>anne-marie</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 17 Feb 2001 16:25:47 -0800</date>
<content>
&gt;
&gt;
&gt;we in 'vns matrix' (cyberfeminist artist group) were making interactive
&gt;artworks and text based performances on the internet pre web days.... as
&gt;
&gt;
&gt;i was recently at an event where some of these artists were calling
&gt;themselves 'the fathers of net.art'
&gt;....i guess the 'father's of web.art' doesn't sound quite as sexy, but i
&gt;think you art historians should maybe point out the difference in your
&gt;texts as you assign male authorship in your art discourses as you have
&gt;throughout history.
&gt;
&gt;j.
&gt;

yes, same canon making pattern.

but vns matrix is a big impressive mama of net.art not soon to be
forgotten I hope.

and about the offspring of net.artists--the net.art?

watching this thread it seemed to focus on writing net.art history based
on the authors/artists, their relations to institutions, resistance or
compliance, avant-garde maneuvers, individual personalities, interviews...

i would like to see histories of net.art take into consideration the
oppositions within the art itself, differentiations and tendencies within
what is not a unified field, ways that net.art proposed new ways and
means, how it adapted strategies from past offline art (josephine berry
made some correlations between mail art and conceptual art, etc.) also i
would like to see histories of net.art look at strategies net.art shares
outside the art world with digital folk art and other forms of networked
authorship like software, writing, music making, gaming, online otaku,
etc.

we made a taxonomy back in 97 (seems long in the web time) when i was a
grad student at cadre. we would voluntarilly meet every week as part of
Switch http://switch.sjsu.edu and search around. it was a collective
effort to map tendencies of what was not yet so fixedly labeled net.art.
people involved were Lisa Jevbratt,(1:1), Jan Ekenberg, Ben Eakins, Geri
Wittig(C5), Brett Stalbaum, (EDT and other hacktivisms), and others. we
made icons for each category and for many later switch issues Brett posted
net.art link collections with these icons attached.

our taxonomy catagories back then were:

-Not Web Art (our response to what led to the net.art term)

-Documentational

-Collaborative

-Narrative

-Unintentional

-Contextual

-Poetic

-Formalist

-Participatory

-Telepresence

-Information Mapping

-Web Event

-Contextual

Perhaps this may be useful to someone.

anne-marie
http://opensorcery.net/</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.9</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt;net.art-history</subject>
<from>Pit Schultz</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 19 Feb 2001 01:00:27 +0100</date>
<content>
maybe someone of you read erik davis' last book, in which he names the
great antagonist of our times "hermes", the trickster, god of trade
and thiefs, and god of communication. michel serres, also a
kind of half-god in the academic sense, made him the hero of his studies.
this figure, maybe a data dandy, parasite and prankster,
maybe a guy formally called an artist, but certainly out to make fun
and profit of all of you who try to get him, was probably the god
of net.art too.

let's assume that the 'failure of net.art' was some kind of
auto-destructive program inbuilt from the beginning for the purpose
of vanishing in the moment of capture. this makes the difficulty
more explainable interpretators seem to have, as well as
the institutional system or even the art market in making profits
with net.art.

the love for crap (the bla project), the somewhat cynical game about
the end beeing near (time to remain to go crazy). the utterly sad
sound of a computer who is brought to try to sing (386dx), or the
formalistic absurdities of artful html-form art, just taking one of
them, alexei as an example, is *playing tricks* with the context which
constructs these works. you could say very similar things for jodi,
vuk, heath, olia and many others.

i think we are completly underestimating the complex value of these
works, that they were partially constructed by the way they were
viewed by 'the community'. their fine intercommunication with their
fans and interpretors, replying to texts and ideas, or surfers who
randomly came by, curators who were more than clever to call this a kind of
self-promotion, a community of friends of the international conference
circus before the rather dull dot.com phase, made net.art a more than
lucky coincidence of some people doing art which hasn't to be called
art anymore. walking through the institutions it revealed often
insights in the way these institutions work.

remaining is not an autonomous art form, but a complex but as well
precise body of works which represent a certain social time of the
net, viewed from a specific angle. net.art therefore could be
explained in a second, third, or n-th order, but is itself a kind of
thick description of what happened in that time. and the more this
time vanishes it becomes clear that net.art reveals and critiques very
well the all too human pathos of the radical new, the vanities,
desires and dreams of a cyberspace which only happend in our
imagniations, but nevertheless happened.

back then in the early nineties, at the same time when other artists
diappeared from the field of institutional critique or the so called
context art, to start clubs, or record labels, bakeries, do book
projects or movies.. when the web took off these loose groups were
just ready to use it for their own purposes. it was more then a way to
become famous. from the beginning a sense of satyrist critique and
scepticism towards technology drove net.art combined with the
existential experience that utopia is possible insofar that very
unlikly changes can happen. the east-west dialogue is maybe one of the
substantial geographical elements of net.art. plus a disrespect for
authority and the old and new orders of knowledge, artistic interest
to bring the matter of the medium, the code, to its limits within a
larger sense then just programming, playing with the echoes of the
avant-garde net.art only simulated the existence of a group, it was
rather an open aliance, and even today one can continue to work in the
spirit of this practise.

laughing about ideologies, the grand ideas, and a calculated
anarchic fun of expanding and augmenting vision not just by
the means of technology but by manipulating the expextations
of people using them, highlighting the limits and errors of
the internet myths makes net.art 'human' in a post-humanistic
sense.- it describes the complexity of the net.condition exactly
without canonizing it but in an open ended narrative. a rather
first-hand and therefore rare knowledge about contemporary art
and its history *) helped and just gave a explosive package to
merge with the nettimers for a little while and along other
stations and splittings.

to demand now, why not more artists are put into the heaven of
net-dot-art is understandable but neverteless futile. we speak already
about the past. of course one can try to overwrite history, by inventing
a genre of 'artistic software' and neglect that groups like jodi or iod
for example started a whole "do it yourself - school" of understanding
code and the visual layers plus its social context as one thing,
tactically including bits of programming language. an approach now
very viral on the microsound levels of electronic music.

of course you can say net.art is dead, and do your books and
catalogues, but chances are high that these efforts are useless
and are just feeding a even more vivid zombie. somewhere
someone else might understand something, and use the label
to do another post-post avant-garde hack, temporary of course,
but nevertheless a source of many very constructive
misunderstandings. sometimes, one can still hear the laughter.


*)
for the history net.art provided its own interpretation,
the 'classics of net.art'. the historification was a
constant theme, so many of the works are beeing done
in the sense of "it will have been seen as" (futur II)</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.10</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>olia lialina</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:35:36 +0300</date>
<content>

INTRODUCTION

I check my mail, look at my bank balance, I see myself in
the mirror - and I still don't know what you mean by
failures and deaths?


PART I

Net art failed, in some critics and researchers opinion,
because it didn't take over institutions as was expected.
Curators, museums and magazines didn't disappear (sorry).
But don't you see that net art and net artists changed the
landscape of contemporary art? Now, art institutions have to
learn to act as nodes (not as a center). And they do. Those
who are really open become part of complex networking
projects. Those who can't get rid of traditional standards
of beauty and interactivity entertain their audience by
making links to funny web pages.

And Art.Teleportacia --my miserable, small, pale
Art.Teleportacia gallery-- did a great job. It moved
curators of big museums to open their eyes and continue
their work on a new level; with understanding and respect
for works that are not objects, works that are not completed
products.

Institutions correct their positions, collecting policies,
exhibition practices. I would say it's a victory. And a
funny process. It's fun to participate. Fun to observe . And
fun to completely ignore.


PART II

Last September I wrote an article, quite a long one, about
my experiences with the "First Real Net Art Gallery" and the
"Last Real Net Art Museum". About Famous Net Artists, Real
Net Artists, Conferences, Objects and ZOOs. But it's in
Russian &lt;http://www.russ.ru/netcult/20001114_olialia.html&gt;
and German &lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/du.html&gt;. I'd be
happy and grateful if someone would translate it into English.
Title "A Link is Enough"


PART III

"A Link is Enough" was published last November in DU
magazine. On the next page there was another essay on net
art, written by Boris Groys. He writes about his vision.
He's brilliant. His ideas and comparisons are fresh and
unexpected, but after a few paragraphs you see that he has
no understanding of net art and networks. He saw the net art
at ZKM in the autumn of '99 and thought that net art was a
lot of connected computers, blinking screens and
projections. I have a small quotation with me:
&lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/gr.jpg&gt;. I can imagine
there are a lot of good and influential writers who still
think the same.

It's a pity.

And it's a pity that net art critics who have been working
in the field since the heroic days have reduced their
activity to interviews. Or hurrying and competing to be the
first to announce death and failure. ASCII Paparazzi.

Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very
different from saying it's dead.


PART IV

My students came back from Transmediale in Berlin and said
there was a speaker, Mark America, who was announcing that
net art is dead.

from Mark Amerika's CV:

"Amerika was recently appointed to the Fine Arts faculty at
the University of Colorado in Boulder where he is developing
an innovative curriculum in Digital Art."

I can already see the development, innovation and result.
We'll get a bunch of experts from Colorado writing
necrologues.


PART V 

Discussions about terminology may seem endless and useless.
But I like them and find they create perspective; like a
tool -a magnifying glass- to look at the present and recent
past. Recently, during WRO KULTURA, I planned to make a
tremendous contribution; analysing the development of the
terms web art, net art, net.art - general terminological
issues. But I failed because the previous speakers'
statements made me change the subject of my talk. These
sketches are all that's left:

&lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/1.jpg&gt; 
&lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/2.jpg&gt; 
&lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/3.jpg&gt; 
&lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/4.jpg&gt; 
&lt;http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/5.jpg&gt;


forever yours

olia</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.11</nbr>
<subject>Re: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:24:01 +0100</date>
<content>

I think the way to approach net art is very much the way Steve Dietz has
approached the question (that is one of a number of questions that keep
coming up): "Why have there been no great net artists?" with an essay by
the same title.
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/webwalker/ww_042300_main.html  So not
approach it from one particular angle (politics or art history or
technological excellence) but from many angles at once to get a new
picture of not just net art but of art as a whole. Individual artpieces
can be compared to older works of course, but to compare net art as a
whole with, say, mail art or performance or whatever will always be
lacking/failing somewhere. 

olia lialina wrote:

&gt; "A Link is Enough" was published last November in DU
&gt; magazine. On the next page there was another essay on net
&gt; art, written by Boris Groys. He writes about his vision.
&gt; He's brilliant. His ideas and comparisons are fresh and
&gt; unexpected, but after a few paragraphs you see that he has
&gt; no understanding of net art and networks.

So true. That does not mean his work is not interesting to reflect
certain issues. Like for instance there is also a text on interactivity
in which another theorist, Dieter Daniels, gives a lot of interesting
thoughts on media art.
http://www.hgb-leipzig.de/~mareio/daniels/daniels_e.html  One should
simply read between the lines and project a lot of ones own experiences
on it. What is wrong in this Daniels quote?: "Bill Clinton's
superhighway electoral campaign in 1992, however, already heralded a
radical turnabout. In a record period of time, the idea of free network
communications hatched somewhere between hackers, ex-hippies, and a
small avant-garde in art and politics, became the central message of the
media industry. This is why, finally, people forgot what media-assisted
interaction and communication was supposed to overcome: nothing other
than the hegemony of the media industry as the cause of cultural
consumerism." It seems as if the biggest problem with theorists and
academics is that they know a great deal but they work too little from
the situation at hand. What central message of the media industry? And
then: were 'media-assisted interaction and communication' supposed to
overcome anything of the media industry in the first place? Such a small
difference of thought can have great implications, like for instance it
could legalise (taking the thought further into media art theory) the
neglectance of media art which is simply beautiful. I am not saying we
should not be media critical anymore, just net art theory should be
multi-facetted. Groys seems to be leaning towards beauty in the
traditional sense too much (symbolical objects), Daniels leans towards
media art as political tool. 
 
&gt; And it's a pity that net art critics who have been working
&gt; in the field since the heroic days have reduced their
&gt; activity to interviews. Or hurrying and competing to be the
&gt; first to announce death and failure. ASCII Paparazzi.

err.... ascii paparazzi? Sorry dear Olia, this is too insulting to come
from you. Anyway, the biggest problem net art journalists and observers
have is that we are too few with too much to do. Plus not all the work
that is done makes it to the 'central online discourse' but remains
hidden in local paper press or books. As for the interviews that I
publish: there are two reasons to publish them. First of all one
interview often can give a view of a certain area or field at a specific
time that is far more precise then I would be able to describe it in a
general text. Secondly do I think it is more important to show the
variety of works and practices out there right now then it is to write
analytical texts about them. If you have little time that is, relatively
little time with the speed of developments now, the explosion of calls
for net art works, net art exhibitions and conferences worldwide. Get
stuff out, that matters! Make curators etc see what goes on, who is out
there doing what, give ideas, provoke different angles maybe! The
problem with interviews is that one has to transcribe them, which is a
lot of work. Remember this type of work does not get paid for either,
which is the last thing I would want to complain about, but well... A
problem connected to this is that e-terviews are not working as good as
f2f interviews, whereas combinations of the two are great. So one also
has to have the opportunity to meet artists in person (which makes some
people feel shut out)

&gt; Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very
&gt; different from saying it's dead.

That is a very strange thing to say, and I would say highly subjective.
I remember your words not so long ago, where you said in a conversation
that was published online that you were waiting for the next generation,
for those that would say your work is old news! We are now at a time
where we are at a crucial point where net art is about to really break
through, and I mean -understanding- net art is about to break through.
When I look around me at conferences and so forth the questions of both
the audiences and the moderators of panels have developed greatly. Is it
wrong to say this will develop further and that we should be ready for
it, help with it even? Would you prefer institutions to develop the
theory around net art themselves, on their terms, from their point of
view? 

&gt; My students came back from Transmediale in Berlin and said
&gt; there was a speaker, Mark America, who was announcing that
&gt; net art is dead.
&gt; 
&gt; from Mark Amerika's CV:
&gt; 
&gt; "Amerika was recently appointed to the Fine Arts faculty at
&gt; the University of Colorado in Boulder where he is developing
&gt; an innovative curriculum in Digital Art."

Sometimes one sees great mistakes in who gets appointed to teach or
judge art. Mark Amerika is first of all a writer, an experimental
writer. He should teach hypertext or something, not digital arts in
general. His presentation at Transmediale should have been
contextualised by his hosts. He knows very little really about net art,
and he will be used by traditional art professionals to justify
conservatism.



best



J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.12</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: art history n</subject>
<from>integer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:43:47 +0100 (CET)</date>
<content>
josephine bosma [u!l ador d!sz ja] re: olia lialina kommentari 


&gt;&gt; And it's a pity that net art critics who have been working
&gt;&gt; in the field since the heroic days have reduced their
&gt;&gt; activity to interviews. Or hurrying and competing to be the
&gt;&gt; first to announce death and failure. ASCII Paparazzi.
&gt;
&gt;err.... ascii paparazzi? Sorry dear Olia, this is too insulting to come
&gt;from you. Anyway, the biggest problem net art journalists and observers
&gt;have is that we are too few with too much to do. 

firstly - you are all u l t r a u l t r a inkompetent.
secondly - you are all merely regurgitating each others ascii paparazzi 
kontaminazie.


&gt;&gt; Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very
&gt;&gt; different from saying it's dead.
&gt;
&gt;That is a very strange thing to say,

nn opinie it = the most intelligent + interessant data outputted by olia 
lialina [second being ascii paparazzi]

vr!!endl!.nn</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.13</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>murphy</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 19 Feb 2001 20:23:48 -0500 (EST)</date>
<content>
On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, olia lialina wrote:

&gt; But don't you see that net art and net artists changed the
&gt; landscape of contemporary art? Now, art institutions have to
&gt; learn to act as nodes (not as a center). And they do. 

Can't see that has happened much from my perch here in NYC. Maybe in
Europe that's true. Certainly the Guggenheim is becomming more nodal, but
that doesn't have much to do with net art. More like global conquest. 

Funny, though, just before your message came through on nettime I'd sent a
proposal off to the director of an art center suggesting he think of his
institution as a node in a global network. I assumed he'd know what I
meant so maybe there has been some change.

The ZKM net_condition catalogue hit all the bookstores here this weekend,
piles of them at each so MIT Press must expect it to be a big seller. Too
bad the text is so hard to read. It looks like all the other "web design"
books that have come out the past few years. Still, it does make "art and
global media" a topic people pay attention to.

 
&gt; And it's a pity that net art critics who have been working
&gt; in the field since the heroic days have reduced their
&gt; activity to interviews. Or hurrying and competing to be the
&gt; first to announce death and failure. ASCII Paparazzi.

There's been interest in the "archaic days" lately, the period pre-1994
stretching back to the dawn of humankind. Carl Leoffler's death the other
day reminded me that his ArtCon newsgroup was one of my first contacts
with other artists on the net. I think both Heath Bunting and Brad Brace
were there.
 
&gt; I can already see the development, innovation and result.
&gt; We'll get a bunch of experts from Colorado writing
&gt; necrologues.

I think John Hopkins teaches at Boulder off and on. Universities are
looking for ways to cash in on digital art. Amerika's use of the phrase
"innovative ciriculum" is a dead giveaway. That's biz talk, not art talk.
Art students all want to make Jurrasic Park these days.

Rob</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.14</nbr>
<subject>Re: [Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt;net.art-history</subject>
<from>{ brad brace }</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 20 Feb 2001 01:54:16 -0800 (PST)</date>
<content>

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Pit Schultz wrote:

&gt; [...]
&gt;
&gt; for the history net.art provided its own interpretation,
&gt; the 'classics of net.art'. the historification was a
&gt; constant theme, so many of the works are beeing done
&gt; in the sense of "it will have been seen as" (futur II)

Quite accurate... The vast majority of 'creatives' online then and now,
were indeed gleefully side-stepping the oldartworld's incestuous,
oppressive institutions and its parasitical 'critical careerists' (I liked
"ascii paparazzi!" =)). The "classic net-artists" were merely a few of the
first to (regressively) behave online like our regular
"make-art-for-museums artists," and sure enough, the whole ol' tired
insidious art-institutional entourage was quick to swallow the bait. But
how interesting is that? 

/:b</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.15</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Simon Biggs</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:59:40 +0000</date>
<content>

&gt;On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, olia lialina wrote:
&gt;&gt; But don't you see that net art and net artists changed the
&gt;&gt; landscape of contemporary art? Now, art institutions have to
&gt;&gt; learn to act as nodes (not as a center). And they do.
Murph wrote:
&gt;Can't see that has happened much from my perch here in NYC. Maybe in
&gt;Europe that's true. Certainly the Guggenheim is becomming more nodal, but
&gt;that doesn't have much to do with net art. More like global conquest.
-----
The net has certainly changed the world to some degree but I can't see that
net artists have changed anything significant (not that museums are
particularly significant anyway, when compared to other global institutions
or issues). I can't think of many artists that have changed things in the
bigger picture. I was not aware that this was the role of the artist. Even
if looking at so-called "revolutionary art", whether Russian, Mexican or
whatever, where the artists have believed that they were a key component in
cultural change it is retrospectively apparent that they were deluding
themselves.

Artists do not transform the world. They transform how they personally see
the world and this gradually rubs off little by little on others...but only
when they are ready for it. Art is not politics...although it might be
political.

&gt;There's been interest in the "archaic days" lately, the period pre-1994
&gt;stretching back to the dawn of humankind. Carl Leoffler's death the other
&gt;day reminded me that his ArtCon newsgroup was one of my first contacts
&gt;with other artists on the net. I think both Heath Bunting and Brad Brace
&gt;were there.
-----
I wasn't aware of Carl's death. That is a more significant cultural event
than the death of Balthus that everyone is talking about...at least for
me...

&gt;I think John Hopkins teaches at Boulder off and on. Universities are
&gt;looking for ways to cash in on digital art. Amerika's use of the phrase
&gt;"innovative ciriculum" is a dead giveaway. That's biz talk, not art talk.
&gt;Art students all want to make Jurrasic Park these days.
-----
Universities want active research profiles. The current interest in all
things digital and net-based means that artists working in that area can
bring to the institution their research points. Ultimately this translates
into funding and PR.

Some universities even expect such artists to teach ;)</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.16</nbr>
<subject>RE: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Ivan Redi</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 20 Feb 2001 12:01:44 +0100</date>
<content>For me, there is a certain connection between net-art-history and cyberspace
discussion.
In both cases there are some incompatibility between the description (or
definition), and the visualization of the phenomena. Or maybe we just dont
have the answer yet (or we do not need it). As an architect I see the world
mostly in a visual description of some strategical concept of the spatial
parameters (real and virtual at the same time). One of the major questions
is about the media one use (and also understanding) to achieve this.

Net.art: is this art in net, or art about net, or hypertext description of
art, or rhetorical dilemma what art in general should be presented in net.
Does it go beyond ugly designed web pages, pure presentation of the canvases
done in atelier, boring pages of ASCII dogmas of something, technological
experiments of things never worked and never will (or if working then
simple: 2 web cams and a video beam  with a load of textual explanations),
or it has more aesthetical demands than flash opening intro for nike.com
(although this is a hard topic, therefore I would rather use German word
kontrolliertes Gestalten)?

Cyberspace is term coming for the textual description and therefore it is
almost impossible to answer: if there is a space in cyberspace, at least
for our brain to translate it to an image so we can really understand it as
space (except for spoiled Hollywood audience in digital SFX sequences in
some movies). That is also a main difference between audience and public
(the audience expects a certain image, and for the public image not present
and so not really relevant). But, 10 years ago, by showing the artists how
surf the Internet, the writers how to use Microsoft Word, and explaining the
architects the possibilities of the 3d software and the computer technology
in general, has been produced a perfect confusion. If you read the work
manifestos of some high profile architectural offices (especially in USA),
you can find them very funny, because they sound like a bad written (or
translated) user manuals of some programs (for example Maya, 3d Studio,
etc.).

Robbin Murphy writes in a previous posting: Art students all want to make
Jurrasic Park these days. Not only art students, but also architectural
students on the first place. Well, the answer is: because it is easy.  It is
nice and sophisticated to swim in a virtuallity (building on the principles
of old Rome), because of its endless patience. Endless freedom of creativity
in a known context.

As for the architecture as so for the art (net art), the time has come, to
produce relevant artistic and cultural content for the future environments.
With one, and crucial, difference that we relay on media theory (und
understanding), and not theory of the reinforced concrete (I hear my
colleges laughing behind my back). This is not a formal issue.


best regards

ivan redi
ortlos.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.17</nbr>
<subject>Re: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Station Rose</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:16:10 +0100</date>
<content>
This discussion is going on for so long now and is really interesting!
Although I am not as precise with words as I am with visuals, I post here,
too.
IMHO this is a problem with lists anyway- there are only few postings by
artists-on their topics.

I am doing netart projects since 92, when we started our first online club
projects, in Frankfurt. I remember well that back then there was not one
art critic who understood what we did there. Dealing with online projects
became a focus much later. So finally when it was a theme for the (net)art
critics ca. 95/96, one has to see here clearly that there has been half a
decade of net projects already.

Now it is a theme, and I see the next point coming up, which is
including/excluding positions. This not by artists but by critics. It is
much too soon to let something so young die. and who would have the right
to decide that anyway? Nobody needs an "inquisition" here, which decides
what may stay alive and what not. There are enough financial &amp; technical
points that have to be solved. An inquisition would kill the new netscene.
the capitalistic system comes up with enough obligations, that one can
fear, sooner or later artists leave the field.

An example on streaming art in the net: the GEMA (german company who takes
care of money musicians get when having air-play on the radio,..) right now
tries to figure out how much money they can take from webcasters when they
play in the net It is not clear if net artists like us have to pay in the
future - not only for  computers and streaming software, but also to GEMA.
it is absurd. I think, one has to look at these developments.  If we dont
want to have only stupid TVprogramms, talkshows and mainstream stuff in the
net in another 5 years.
It would be unimaginable, when later on one would have to say - forget the
net, nothing is happening there anymore. it became cooperate.

I hope that critics find enough time in the realtime environment called
cyberspace "to find more great net artists", go forward and backwards to
try to get an overview of 10years and more of net projects.
And artists find enough time and budget to develop many different projects.

And I dont see the point that netart is entering the museums. Where is the
problem? if the net scene would be powerful enough to let artists live on
netart that would be a point, for sure. As long as it is as it is now,
much critizism and not enough money involved, the museums use the time to
make their collections.



Josefine Bosma:
I think the way to approach net art is very much the way Steve Dietz has
&gt;approached the question (that is one of a number of questions that keep
&gt;coming up): "Why have there been no great net artists?

olia lialina :
&gt;&gt; My students came back from Transmediale in Berlin and said
&gt;&gt; there was a speaker, Mark America, who was announcing that
&gt;&gt; net art is dead.
&gt;&gt;
I was at Transmediale, too. The festival was not always stimulating.
Conferences instead of art installations is often too  dry for me. I would
prefer to see and hear projects, not only get words/descriptions of
something. i hope this will happen more next year. And here again" net art
is dead" as a slogan is problematic.


Elisa Rose</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.18</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Amy Alexander</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 21 Feb 2001 03:28:52 -0800</date>
<content>A couple of thoughts on this popular net.art.thread:

As has been already been mentioned a couple times in the thread: focusing
on net.art seems to imply it's *the* history of net art, a seemingly
unbreakable modernist habit. Though I understand it wasn't Josephine's
intention to imply this, focus on net.art history over the years causes
humans reflexively to have such a reaction. Also, it doesn't help that the
name of the movement is one punctuation mark away from the name of the
generic form: "net.art and net art." If a movement sprang up called
"sculp.ture" people could probably keep it straight, because the term
"sculpture" has been in active use for quite some time - but "net.art"
sprang up when "net art" was fairly new, and so the two have become
confused to a large extent. (I'm not sure myself where one ends and the
other begins; blurring boundaries having been a goal of net.art, perhaps
thats a good thing.)

So there are clearly other net art histories than net.art: we have heard
from the mail art mothers of net art, Elisa Rose, and for example, a
number of us in the US were actively doing net art when I started in 1996:
Victoria Vesna, Shu Lea Chang, Ken Feingold, SITO, Brad Brace, Electronic
Cafe, as a few (but not the only) examples, some of whom go back much
farther than 96. Brad Brace, of course was working largely on Usenet,
Electronic Cafe was working with video/audio networked performance as an
extension of telecommunication art; most of the rest of us were working on
the web. I think, overall, we were more focused here on the idea of
exploring/exploiting the network and of communal, networked production (of
intangible objects) than the European net.art folks. (But that's a rough
generalization - for example, projects like "Refresh" would have fit right
in - and in fact I remember that project being very popular here.) On the
other hand, we found ourselves dealing with some of the same issues as the
folks in Europe: museums and galleries wanting to show the work, but
wanting the file on their system so they could somehow have an "object"
that the rest of the world on the Internet didn't have.... though somehow,
when I told them this was impossible and defeated the purpose of the
Recycler, they always seemed to show it anyway, sans file - evidence of
Olia's node theory. I made the Gallery section of the Multi-Cultural
Recycler as a joke on gallery net art objects, but this didn't seem to
dissuade them - they printed out the Recycler Gallery images to hang on
the walls for shows.  Go figure. Well, enough of the shameless personal
plugs...

What I think we lacked in the US was a "movement" the way net.art was a
movement. (That doesn't speak for other net art histories, such as mail
art, only for the particular movement that I was not involved in at the
time. :-) Please feel free to correct me if you were, in fact, involved in
a net art movement - would be nice to get all these net art histories
better documented somewhow... ) But anyway, net.art had a movement, at the
very least it had coherence, and although it aimed to subvert the art
world, eventually its own sort of art world formed around it. It developed
a culture, hype and mystique through lists and texts; it had a center,
insiders, outsiders, even nodes.  This is of course not a failure; this is
unavoidable:  groups form; even anarchism is an institution. Then
histories of the anti-institutional institutions begin to be written, and
the fun begins. (Look how long this thread has been going... ) With all
that baggage, how can a postmodern modernist institution possibly survive
the critical eye of History?

So, did net.art fail? I don't think so - look at all this extra-galleric
history it's generating... It wanted to divert production/attention from
the Art World - here we all are arguing about it, people are writing their
theses about it, etc.  I'd say it succeeded in its aim pretty well. Did
the museums and galleries absorb some of it anyway? Sure, what's to stop
them. Is that a failure? No. I think Olia hits it right on the head with
the node theory. Whether a museum or gallery acknowledges it or not, it
can be no more than a node with regards to net art. But then, this is the
nature of net art, as well as of net.art. Moreover, the absorption and
commodification of both net.art and net art is limited, partial, and
optional to the artists. Neither has been consumed by galleries, and they
have not developed a dependence on them.

Is net.art dead? Where did the net.artists go? They are still making
net.art, or at least net art... they are also making political statements,
music, love, babies; this is life, not death. Net.art is not about the Art
Police forcing people to do the same thing constantly to prove commitment
to it; no art really is. The crux is still there. Whether the production
is the same as it was 5 years ago or not is not really the point: it is
what it is, it left what it left, and the frenzy of discussion about it
here is itself evidence of its success in what it set out to do. The
layers may peel on and off, but the center is still there - think of it as
toilet paper. BTW, don't try to flush the tube; it just keeps bobbing back
up.

(Note to people who take things literally: toilet paper is a good thing;
just think of the mess you'd have trying to wipe up with the Art Journal.)

 
ciao,
- {AT} </content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.19</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: net art history</subject>
<from>nullpointer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:48:22 -0000</date>
<content>&gt;&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; the party's nearly over..
Some think net.art is dead...
whether it is or not is of course a question of perception and semantics.
However I feel that there is no doubt that the "golden age" of reveling in
the creative freedom of a new media is over. No longer can we hold up the
medium as the sole validifying factor of an art work. The many modes of
pratice that have been explored since net.art was born will become just part
of a more general syntax with which we value,critique,record and enjoy. Like
any new medium it carries its own intrinsic forms and aesthetic, and like
any medium it is in flux, it's own boundaries redefined with each new
refrain or impact.
However too much grey change from one form to the next and too many shouts
from a swelling crowd is not good for history or for theorists.Critique and
theory needs reliable subjects and consistency of source material.
Unfortuanately this need for definable boundaries increases in inverse
proportion to the knowlege of those documenting them.
&gt;&gt;
ASCII Paparazzi.
. Anyway, the biggest problem net art journalists and observers
have is that we are too few with too much to do.
&gt;&gt;
In a sense I agree, yet I feel that often the (ASCII Paparazzi as olia puts
it) are the majority,
writers and theorists who are caught up in the tide of
net.art/newmedia/convergence
because it is "new" ,"fashionable","looks good". The newmedia/net world
implies progression and forwardthinking intelligence, evolution and
transgression even before you begin.
I have been to countless seminars and conferences where the conversation is
all too backslapping and uninformed, demystification and real dissection
often takes a back seat to eulogy.
Interviewers ask artists about themes or subject matter that the journo has
written about and therefore insists lies within the peice even if the artist
denies it outright (yes there is a discussion of author/viewer e.t.c. but it
doesn't make a very interesting conversation.)

Don't even get me started about institutions, 2 years at the Tate, managing
a healthy portion of their online arts projects again brought me to many
unexpected and sad/happy conclusions about the state of play in the
net.art.world

so soon it will be time to leaf through the litter
&gt;&gt; and pick up the bits that are worth keeping for the next party,

I am hoping that the crossover will do the weeding...We can already see how
some "classics" were never classics an the first place. Perhaps the harsher
scrutiny of the institutions and of the history makers will, in it's own
way, refine the qualities that make some net.art real contenders.
I'm not being negative, I really think that this is a good thing, because
I've seen too much weak work trophied, work that in any other medium would
never have made it out of the box. It will also make greater demmands on the
documenters, the journalists, not to be ASCII paparazzi, but to help form a
more thought-out history, from more than emails, screens and macromedia
festivals.

________________________________________________________
C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
C:\REM [Header]
C:\&gt;
C:\&gt;PATH=C:\PERL\BIN;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;\C:jdk1.2.2\bin
________________________________________________________

http://www.nullpointer.co.uk
(all suffixes enabled)</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.20</nbr>
<subject>Re: Re: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Re: net art history</subject>
<from>Cornelia Sollfrank</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:25:07 +0000</date>
<content>
hi all,

it is interesting to see what issues trigger response and create a
discussion on this mailing list. i have to say that i am very pleased to
see that it is art. (that the discussion mainly refers to /net.art resp.
it's /death is very limited und little productive.) some years ago nettime
was accused of being a hostile environment for artists/art discussions.
this was the reason why most of them/us left at a certain point and opened
their own list/network/environment. 

now it has become an issue to reflect upon what actually has happenend in
this field in the last years. and this discussion takes place on, amongst
other venues, (verified) nettime, again. obviuosly, this is still/again a
platform where enough people gather who did not give up, resign, and stop
thinking and acting, although we all have learned the lesson meanwhile: the
net would not change the world in the way we had wanted to, in the
opposite! and, of minor relevance, the net would not change the
fundamentally profit-driven and corrupt art system.   

i am not sure if net art(ists) ever had 'promised' such a thing, or if it
more had been a wishful projection. anyway, there was/is an enormous
subversive potential in the net which untermined/s art-system-parameters as
(identifieable)(individual) authorship, (finalised) piece of work, white
cube-ism, purchaseability etc. there are/have been various
(serious/playful) ways to handle this potential. 

but even these individuals who have connected to the art system with their
names, pieces of work, museum/gallery presentations and sales (very few)
are confronted with the fact that, so far, no adequate ways of presentation
could have been developed for the white cube, and that the selling of pure
data (what 'net art pieces' mostly are) leaves the art market quite
helpless. this gives evidence for the subbornness which lies in the
artistic use of the medium. the fact that some high-end works have been
commissioned by museums, or that serious efforts are being made to collect
net based works does not mean at all, that net art per se could have been
integerated into the system. 

but this is also the reason why net based art has been developed further,
in more art system adequate formats, as there are various kinds of
installations, starting with sculptural "browers", going to
pleasing/colorful data projections, and a range of re-materialisations of
data. this is probably the most promising (and, of course, a very boring)
way to become a professional 'net artist'.

i also agree with pit's elaborations in many points. i.e that we generally
underestimate the value of the net-based works, and that their relevance
has to be seen within their historical framework. 

now is now, and not net.art. but even if it has no name what is happening,
and even if the general implementation of 'a new art form' did not take
place, there is endless ways to go on with resistant and subborn, political
and aestehtic practices. the informational sphere is still quite
unprotected, and we have powerful tools. ..."continue working in the
spirit..." 

best, c.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.21</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; net art history (digest)</subject>
<from>olia lialina</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri, 23 Feb 2001 22:21:32 +0300</date>
<content>
Josephine Bosma wrote:

&gt; err.... ascii paparazzi? Sorry dear Olia, this is too insulting to come
&gt; from you. Anyway, the biggest problem net art journalists and observers
&gt; have is that we are too few with too much to do.

Josephine, I don't underestimate your work. The paragraph you refer to is
full of love and respect. And I do enjoy interviews as a genre (I love
dialogues).

But it is a pity that interviews dominate the critics' output.

The interview approach cultivates stars, not ideas. And stars, especially
superstars, can be very lovely targets. You can pronounce them dead
whenever you like. Ideas live longer.

Interviews are easy to read. They catch a moment. They let future readers
touch the past. A picture develops. History's created. But it's a history
of artists' arrogance, self promotion, mood changes.

---

One interview provokes another. Critique is reduced to updates and data
collection.  I get mail from people writing their PhD, MA, BA in net art
or net culture. They ask questions like this:

- "Mrs. Lialina, In 1997, in your interview with J.Bosma you said: "...",
do you still think the same?"

or

-"Mrs. Lialina, In 1998, in an interview with T.Baumgaertel you mentioned
that "..." Why did you say that?"

or just

-"What's "Agatha Appears" about?"

It reminds me of an old net artists' statement: "Net artists are their own
museums, curators, CRITICS."

&gt; &gt; Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very
&gt; &gt; different from saying it's dead.
&gt;
&gt; That is a very strange thing to say, and I would say highly subjective.
&gt; I remember your words not so long ago, where you said in a conversation
&gt; that was published online that you were waiting for the next generation,
&gt; for those that would say your work is old news!


I've a new theory about 3 generations in net art. Will write it soon. (Or
we can have an interview. ha-ha-ha).

------------------------------

integer {AT} www.god-emil.dk wrote:

&gt; nn opinie it = the most intelligent + interessant data outputted by olia
&gt; lialina [second being ascii paparazzi]

natalja, ti stanovish'sa sentimental'noj. ja ne uznaju tebia

-------------------------------


murphy {AT} thing.net wrote:

&gt; &gt; But don't you see that net art and net artists changed the
&gt; &gt; landscape of contemporary art? Now, art institutions have to
&gt; &gt; learn to act as nodes (not as a center). And they do.
&gt;
&gt; Can't see that has happened much from my perch here in NYC.

One day it too will come to NYC.

-------------------------------

Pit Schultz:


&gt; to demand now, why not more artists are put into the heaven of
&gt; net-dot-art is understandable but neverteless futile. we speak already
&gt; about the past. of course one can try to overwrite history, by inventing
&gt; a genre of 'artistic software' and neglect that groups like jodi or iod
&gt; for example started a whole "do it yourself - school" of understanding
&gt; code and the visual layers plus its social context as one thing,
&gt; tactically including bits of programming language. an approach now
&gt; very viral on the microsound levels of electronic music.

Yes, very true.

-----------------------------------------------------------

brad brace wrote:

&gt; "ascii paparazzi!" =)). The "classic net-artists" were merely a few of the
&gt; first to (regressively) behave online like our regular
&gt; "make-art-for-museums artists," and sure enough, the whole ol' tired
&gt; insidious art-institutional entourage was quick to swallow the bait. But
&gt; how interesting is that?

That's very interesting! Thank you for pointing that out! I guess we're
witness to a real crash in the institutional art system. Some "regular
artists" developed outside the regular system. It's more significant than
the Dolly the sheep phenomenon. And more interesting than the crop of
"irregular artists" raised by galleries.

------------------------------


Ivan Redi wrote:

&gt; Net.art: is this art in net?
Yes
&gt; or art about net?
Yes
&gt; or hypertext description of art?
No
&gt; or rhetorical dilemma what art in general should be presented in net?
No
&gt; Does it go beyond ugly designed web pages...
No
&gt;... pure presentation of the canvases done in atelier...
Yes
&gt;... boring pages of ASCII dogmas of? something...
Yes
&gt;... technological
&gt; experiments of things never worked and never will (or if working then
&gt; simple: 2 web cams and a video beam v with a load of textual
explanations)?
Yes
&gt; or it has more aesthetical demands than flash opening intro for nike.com?
Yes!


You've got 6 out of a possible 9 points! It's the highest score of the
day.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.22</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; net art history (!ngezt)</subject>
<from>integer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 24 Feb 2001 11:17:47 +0100 (CET)</date>
<content>

olia lialina &lt;olialia {AT} televisie.org&gt;

&gt;Pit Schultz:
&gt;
&gt;
&gt;&gt; to demand now, why not more artists are put into the heaven of
&gt;&gt; net-dot-art is understandable but neverteless futile. we speak already
&gt;&gt; about the past. of course one can try to overwrite history, by inventing
&gt;&gt; a genre of 'artistic software' and neglect that groups like jodi or iod
&gt;&gt; for example started a whole "do it yourself - school" of understanding
&gt;&gt; code and the visual layers plus its social context as one thing,
&gt;&gt; tactically including bits of programming language. an approach now
&gt;&gt; very viral on the microsound levels of electronic music.
&gt;
&gt;
&gt;Yes, very true.


Pit Schultz is likely the quintessential example of an inkompetent
pop.tart male imbecile.

jodi [inkompetent pop.tartz++] copy pasted most =cw4t7abs data. =cw4t7abs
kode = existed prior to british gov sponsored iod which lacks in any case.

Pit Schultz like imbeciles e.g. `critics` comme geert lovink, tilman
baumgaertel etc whose m9nd aktivity resembles that of a housefly - only
understand the trivial hence the state of things - 01 amalgam of
financially + .bio destitute house flies following refuse - i.e. each
other.


&gt;integer {AT} www.god-emil.dk wrote:
&gt;
&gt;&gt; nn opinie it = the most intelligent + interessant data outputted by olia
&gt;&gt; lialina [second being ascii paparazzi]
&gt;
&gt;natalja, ti stanovish'sa sentimental'noj. ja ne uznaju tebia


konzum&gt;zntmntl.g!glb!tz. du != d!fr ver!.







Tilman Baumgaertel &lt;tilman_baumgaertel {AT} csi.com&gt; - lo.tekk kr!ket begd

&gt;hallo
&gt;
&gt;thanks for all the info. Very interesting. I've been thinking for years
&gt;that somebody should do something like that, The screenshots look great. 
&gt;
&gt;Unfortunately all doesn't replace personal experience of the
&gt;piece/workofart/programm. I need to know that it works, unlike projects
&gt;like "earshot", 


earshot - another excellent example of occident males in flight. permit
someone to smile at the aerodynamics + aesthetics.

not to mention the imbeciles stole my copyright information. + 1 abs must
peruse their vocab - ist .uk 01 immense pub oder quoi +? drunken
illiterate plebeians.



&gt;and what the effect is on the user. 

opinie = we already know. + your dilettantish observations arent desired.
ne + ne.

http://www.eusocial.com/nato.0+55+3d/242.nn.html



&gt;So I need a copy of the
&gt;thing. I don't have a mac, but could arrange for one. 


desire != okupaz!on. please insert addtl koins kriket. just 1 klik your
flight - http://www.eusocial.com



&gt;Btw, did you consider to open source the whole thing?

unsanitary open sore +? smile++ _


&gt;Or are you trying to
&gt;sell it? 


am not attempting to. i am.
+ you cannot afford it. financially nor intellectually.

kompassionat smile 2 01 amalgam of financially + .bio destitute fruit flies.

nn



                      nn.o1 - op!n!e zvp +?
                      nn.o2 - its good + violent. transmit - yes.
                      nn.o1 - kl!!!!!!!!k





                                                        -



                                          pre.konssept!Řn  
                                                meeTz ver!f1kat!Řn.     




Netochka Nezvanova
0f0003.MASCHIN3NKUNST
 {AT} www.eusocial.com
17.hzV.tRL.478
                                                    e
                                                    |
                                                     |  +----------
                                                    |  |     &lt;   
                                   \\----------------+  |  n2t0      
                                                       |       &gt;
                                                       e
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.23</nbr>
<subject>software art vs. net art, was: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; net art history (digest)</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 24 Feb 2001 12:00:32 +0100</date>
<content>

&gt; Pit Schultz:
&gt; 
&gt; &gt; about the past. of course one can try to overwrite history, by inventing
&gt; &gt; a genre of 'artistic software' and neglect that groups like jodi or iod
&gt; &gt; for example started a whole "do it yourself - school" of understanding
&gt; &gt; code and the visual layers plus its social context as one thing,
&gt; &gt; tactically including bits of programming language. an approach now
&gt; &gt; very viral on the microsound levels of electronic music.

Hi Pit,

in my opinion, it's the other way round - that the genre 'artistic
software'/'software art' was invented to _honor_ the code art of
Jodi, I/O/D and others. 'Software art' does not overwrite the history of
net.art, it just adds one more perspective from which digital art can be
seen. 

When we describe jodi.org or I/O/D's Web Stalker as net.art, we put it in a
particular context of a networked discourse we all know very well (and which
includes this mailing list). To say that they are also great pieces of
software art doesn't rule this out, but allows to draw new connections _in
addition_ to the previously mentioned; connections to, say, 2600-style
computer hacking, 1950/60s computer-generated concrete poetry, to artistic
computer viruses like the 1988 MacMag virus, sourcecode poetry (which
started as early as 1974), to pre-Web experimental HyperCard stacks, or to
Ade Ward's "Signwave Illustrator" &lt;http://www.signwave.co.uk&gt; (which, as an
offline standalone user application, clearly is not a piece of net art).

The category "software art" was created for transmediale.01 to embrace a
whole range of digital art which simply doesn't fit into "net art", although
both terms are not mutually exclusive. Please think of it as an extension,
not as revisionism.

Florian


(member of the transmediale.01 artistic software jury)</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.24</nbr>
<subject>re: &lt;nettime&gt; net art history</subject>
<from>Robert Atkins</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 24 Feb 2001 11:50:39 -0500</date>
<content>
Olia Lialiana's comments about interviews seem really off the mark to me. Do
interviews dominate critics' output? I don't think so, certainly not based
on the huge pile of anthologies about online and digital art that are piled
up in my office.  Personally, I do both and think there's a place for both.
But it's ironic hearing that  there are too many interviews, after decades
of artists complaining they never get to put their views forth in a direct
way.

You should also bear in mind, Olia, that there's not that much of a market
out there for criticism remunerative enough that it helps pay the bills.
Interviews are far less labor-intensive, and often research for later, more
in-depth responses. So it's not an either/or situation. More often it's
publishing an interview or nothing at all.

Cheers,
Robert Atkis</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.25</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re:  net art history - Interview Yourself!</subject>
<from>Amy Alexander</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:16:12 -0800</date>
<content>
Olia's right! Josephine's right! The critics are short on time, and 
having them spend it doing interviews just creates a bunch of Art Stars 
- it's essentially a whole new Art World created in the process of 
trying to flee the old one... and look what we've got; overworked 
critics, unhappy net artists... this won't do....

I propose a new approach, as part of the Plagiarist "New Millenium 
Disorder" project: The Interview Yourself Project. Since it will 
hopefully generate lots of interviews, the acronym will be the
"IY-IY-IY-IY-IY" Project. Everyone, please interview yourself, and post 
your interview to the usual mailing lists; heck, I'll even make a whole 
website for the archives if people submit them.

Think of the benefits... it subverts the Net Art World Institution, and 
makes everyone a star.... or, uh, makes nobody a star, depending on how 
you want to look at it... it finally gives the interviewees a chance to 
answer the kinds of questions they *wish* they'd be asked about their 
work... it gives us shy people who sometimes clam up with real 
interviewers the chance to finally open up in an interview...  and, it 
saves wear and tear on critics and journalists! Concerned that the tough 
questions won't get asked? Not to worry; IY-IY-IY-IY-IY doesn't preclude 
critics from doing interviews, just sort of er, open sources the 
interview process. (I just love working "open source" in anywhere I can... )

So, hop to it everybody! (you too, critics!) you've got an interview to 
prepare - History Awaits!

- {AT} 


olia lialina wrote:


Josephine Bosma wrote:

&gt;err.... ascii paparazzi? Sorry dear Olia, this is too insulting to come
&gt;from you. Anyway, the biggest problem net art journalists and observers
&gt;have is that we are too few with too much to do.

Josephine, I don't underestimate your work. The paragraph you refer to is
full of love and respect. And I do enjoy interviews as a genre (I love
dialogues).

But it is a pity that interviews dominate the critics' output.

The interview approach cultivates stars, not ideas. And stars, especially
superstars, can be very lovely targets. You can pronounce them dead
whenever you like. Ideas live longer.

Interviews are easy to read. They catch a moment. They let future readers
touch the past. A picture develops. History's created. But it's a history
of artists' arrogance, self promotion, mood changes.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.26</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re:  net art history - Interview Yourself!</subject>
<from>Josephine Bosma</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 26 Feb 2001 17:18:15 +0100</date>
<content>
Amy Alexander wrote:

&gt; I propose a new approach, as part of the Plagiarist "New Millenium
&gt; Disorder" project: The Interview Yourself Project. 

I like that. Let me think what I'ld like to talk to myself about... 

But something else. Why not an 'artists for artists' kind of project
(like we have a 'mothers for mothers' support group in Holland in which
pregnant women donate urine to make other women get pregnant easier, a
kind of furtiliser. Do you like the comparison?), whereby artists also
write criticisms of artworks of other artists? It might be a nice
variation of criticizing critics and how badly they do their job. Also
it might produce some damn good new critics! 


best



J
*</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Josephine Bosma: Between moderation and extremes.</subject>
<from>text warez</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri, 22 Sep 2000 13:08:07 +0200 (MEST)</date>
<content>
Text for Moscow: Between moderation and extremes.
the tensions between net art theory and popular art discourse. 

~ Josephine Bosma
   
    &lt;&lt;back   
    
Between moderation and extremes
the tensions between net art theory and popular art discourse 

Society on the Internet is hardly different from that off-line. The few
differences in cultural, social, and political structures up to now, should
mostly be credited to the specifics of its technology and to the inexperience
of people working with it. So far - nothing really new. Because we are
dealing with a medium that is still under development there is however an ongoing
feeling of play and novelty about the net, which evokes and has evoked
smaller and larger dreams of a Better World. In the initial excitement about
(and exploration of) the new medium we witnessed a strong tendency towards
cross- or multidisciplinary work and collaboration in a still relatively small
group of online cultural 'developers'. With the effects of excitement slowly
fading away, disciplines and discourses appear to separate from each other
again, succumbing largely to age-old off-line structures. Do we need to
interfere in this development? To what extent have there ever been alternative
structures, and are they necessary at all? Is it possible to move beyond the
limitations of both technology and 'traditional' social structures? I want to
show firstly in a short analysis of the mailing list nettime, that
neglecting a critical attitude towards the fundamental structure and outside
perception (from different viewpoints at the same time) of one's project, produces
negative and even destructive effects in the end. Cross-disciplinary
investigations and theory are vital to countering a development of a narrowing down
of the possibilities to have influence on the continuing construction of a
mediated society, in which art, in my point of view, still plays a
significant role. When looking more specifically at net art, we can find this
narrowing development in the separation of critical media discourse and net art as
it is strongly represented by nettime. In the much broader field outside
this list we see another danger for art on the net in the rather strong
tendency towards simplification of the net art discourse through a curious focus on
web art (as opposed to the broader field of net art). No matter how good
some web art is, web art in general should not replace net art through pure
lack of knowledge and awareness. 

The connection between (net) art and theory is vital. The two should
develop together, in order to make sure the institutional reception and handling
of this art is as close to the art practice as possible. Art education and
presentation are basic elements for a flourishing art practice. Even if art
education and presentation are now replaced by self education, exploration
and self representation on the net, institutional practices will still be of
crucial importance. 


Nettime and Cross Disciplinary Theory 

The development of net art has been under attack from two sides. On the
one hand we see the long predicted institutionalization of art on the net
through existing artworld structures, and on the other hand the net arts are
being cut off from cross-disciplinary discourse and media theory by key figures
of one of its first influential playgrounds: nettime. Net art was embraced
as an alternative or radical view of net.culture by nettime from 1995 to
1997, when list moderation first started invisibly, and later officially.
Nettime was started in 1995 by a group of about ten 'media theorists' and
'artists'; as an initiative of Pit Schultz and Geert Lovink. Amongst the artists
were Paul Garrin and Heath Bunting. Each list member in the early stages of
nettime seemed equally important, and each member brought along his or her
contacts. The problem with nettime was (and is) that there has never been a
clear explanation or description of its structure, yet it was presented very
much as a community effort. It had live meetings and online discussions where
the direction and purpose of the list were discussed and all members were
asked to perform tasks and develop tools or additions to the list for the
benefit of all. The list was supposed to be a radical counter force against a
so-called 'disneyfication' of the Internet in all its aspects. Critical
approaches of 'political' mechanisms (and those politics could be within
governments, military, commerce, industry/ technology, media, or art: as they were
all entwined) were its basic driving force. Being a member of nettime more or
less equaled joining this battle against commerce, corporate powers,
techno-ignorance and cultural deprivation. When the mailing list (and of course the
group of Internet users in general) grew, and more and more subscribers
joined in order to simply have their daily updates from the by now infamous
list (rather than being actively involved) the desire for consensus became
strong. The list slowly changed from an exchange forum into a platform (see my
interview with Heath Bunting in Telepolis). In this development the balance
between active discourse and individual promotion or presentation of texts
was lost. Art discourse (by which I mean not only art theoretical discourse,
but also experimental representations and exchanges within net art) in this
environment was soon seen as noise, as it did not follow traditional and
harmonic (read: academic) modes of communication. What then happened, artists
were first approached individually, off-list, in order to change their modes
of communication (meaning: they should not send experimental texts to the
list anymore). This resulted in the first and most important separation of
artists from the list. After the nettime meeting in Ljubljana in 1997, Jodi,
Heath Bunting, Alexei Shulgin, Rachel Baker and others left the list. This
unfortunate development caused quite some debate behind closed doors, and was
perceived as unnecessary; the attitude of the artists was seen as provocative.
Paul Garrin, one of the last remaining artists from the foundation of
nettime, never left the list. His project 'namespace' has a strong political
background, and was initiated at a nettime meeting during the tactical art&amp;media
festival n5m2 in Amsterdam. Namespace needs to keep in touch with, and
needs to be represented within, the environment it sprouted from. Not even half
a year after the large list meeting in Ljubljana though, Garrin's posts and
disputes via the list were the reason for the 'list owners' Pit Schultz and
Geert Lovink to switch on the moderation button, and to start filtering the
list. According to them, they had had complaints. A lot of these complaints
probably came from the most dominant moderator of the list today, an enemy
of Garrin: Ted Byfield. This way, without much open discussion or
explanation, there came an end to experimentation and openness on the nettime list.
Nettime has and still does profile itself as being in support of, or in search
of, new modes of development for the media in society. This aspect of it has
however been completely neglected because of the hidden political and
personal agenda of some of its moderators, which does not allow for openness or
experiments. Nettime has turned into a watered down online version of n5m,
with the difference that at n5m art is still, though highly cornered by
politics, part of the discourse. The biggest problem with nettime is 'its'
unwillingness to reflect on 'its' radical change from exchange forum (with input
from many) to moderated platform (with strong influence of a few members
mostly) today. Not only does cultural theory suffer from it directly today, also
the experiments and thoughts about it from a few years back are made to look
suspicious through the consequent denial of their importance and influence.


Nettime was not simply interesting to net art because it brought together
a group of people from mixed backgrounds and disciplines. The Thing had done
so also, and so did The Well. The Thing however first of all had a much
smaller group of members, plus its scope of topics was narrower. It was and is
more an art server, both Thing New York and Thing Europe. The Well was too
American for the taste of many, and starting a critical discourse around the
development of the Internet through a California list probably seemed a
contradiction in terms. What was interesting about nettime, next to its
cross-disciplinary tendencies, was the strong presence of non-American cultural
input on the list (or in other words: the diversity of cultures). Now that
nettime has chosen to mostly close the door to art, the development of net art
has lost a central point for critical cross disciplinary thought from a
multicultural perspective. The development of net art is now largely in the hands
of arts organizations, which not only tend to emphasize art practice as one
separate from other practices, but which also have strong local ties. The
connection to local art environments creates stronger divisions within art
discourse online, resulting unsurprisingly in a dominance of American art
discourse in relation to how net art is being perceived. 


Net Art Discourse and the Artworld 

Although there are interesting, sometimes rather obscure conferences and
festivals on special aspects of net art in Europe and elsewhere, the
perception of net art both online and in the mainstream media is more and more
colored by the state of net art in the United States. The creation of the Webby
by SFMOMA certainly has caused mainstream media to finally wake up, but the
Webby seems to be almost the logical consequence of an opening up of the
traditional artworld to net art from within an American context. Its mailings
don't have the atmosphere of a TV show for no reason. Ironic gestures aside,
the Webby looks like an early step in the direction of a Web TV award. The
loss of a conscious, cross-continent, cross-disciplinary discourse on net art
has brought American art discourse into an advantageous position, due to its
dominance in a few respects. Firstly language (the German speaking
countries have a strong art theoretical discourse and a forerunner position in the
field of net art theory that is obscured because publications are not being
translated into English), and secondly 'the Americans' have a highly dominant
input into the development of the Internet. We now face a net art discourse
that is strongly influenced by American economic traditions and mechanisms.
Especially as the role of web designers, and their connection to soft- and
hardware designers, becomes more influential. Rules of web design slowly
gnaw away at net art practice and theory like acid gnaws at iron. The term net
art gets confused with or replaced by web art as if the two were
interchangeable, without many questions asked. Traditional art practitioners too easily
turn to the structurally (in terms of basic development of net.technology)
and economically important 'group' of web designers for what they think is
the highest form of knowledge of a medium they know little or nothing about.
Art historical analysis is barely applied to net art, and if it is, it
usually happens through the slightly younger tradition of video art. A
historically deeper and therefore more radical analysis of the difference between the
Internet and mass media, like TV and radio, that includes global economic
and political developments as well is rare. Replacing the term 'net art' by
'web art' causes a negligence of art history within a political and economic
environment. The radical implications of net art are replaced by the much
less threatening aspects of web art. It therefore of course also becomes more
compact, easier to grasp and more marketable. 

Net art has shown a conceptual overlap between all art forms through the
variety of its manifestations and the uneasy definition of it as one artistic
'style'. In fact it even shows the potential for questioning popular/common
art history, in which marketability of art has been the primary point of
departure in ranking artworks and artists (and for keeping a stable economic
environment for other art professionals.) One could almost speak of critical
art history or if that sounds too sharp, specialized art history, as a
-secret- history that is almost lost for the next generations. Within this secret
history we can find traces of predecessors of what is now called net art.
When we combine these traces with a cross-disciplinary analysis of the
present situations that surround net art, we might (it almost sounds like an
alchemist recipe, but I have to stress I am -not- referring to a so-called
'spiritual' perception of the arts) arrive at a conceptual, or basic core of, art
practice within a technological society. It could very well be that it is
this mostly unspoken desire to know what the basis of the artistic experience
is, and the -feeling- that disclosing this knowledge is near (when using the
Internet as a medium), what excites and drives many net artists. The
narrower the definition of net art, the more we lose sight of this almost 'secret'
art history. With a narrow definition of net art, we stay in the tunnel of
mass media hyper-reality. 


Unstable 'Objects' 

With the entrance of electricity, of new media in the arts, we entered an
era of instability. Instability is something western society has fought
traditionally. In the arts this tradition (of fighting instability) expressed
itself in a radical commodification of art. It expressed itself almost totally
in a market orientation, in which concept was submitted to business. The
age of new media is the age of the accident, as it was expressed at the Dutch
Electronic Art Festival in 1998, which had "the art of the accident" as its
theme. Have we seen this instability reflected in art history though, in its
full force? Do we need to acknowledge the virtues of instability, or do we
at least need to acknowledge its undeniable part in the state of art and
culture today? 

Tilman Baumgaertel made an attempt about 3 years ago to sum up the pre-
net art history through events and work in 'traditional' art history. You can
find this text online in the archives of (again) Telepolis magazine. He goes
back as far as the early twentieth century. Going back to the beginning of
modernity is important for net art criticism. One can not only see the
struggles of artists with new technologies, or their fascination with them, one
can also see how art develops more and more into the direction of purely
conceptual. Matter does not matter anymore. The mixture of art with other
disciplines, from psychology to science to even war (if one can call that a
discipline), might be represented in all kinds of materials or media; it in the
end has led to a diversion away from the art totem to the meaning of it. Even
if the work is purely visual or aesthetic. Meaning is not stable. To
criticize the construction of art as object we can also look at a famous and much
used art analysis by Greenberg, from around 1940, which can serve net art
theory or Art Theory Today. First of all Greenberg's development of criteria by
which one can distinguish art from kitsch is of course a protection of the
art market from being flooded by mass produced or copied works. The age of
reproduction, the age of new media (in the definition of Lev Manovich) had
matured considerably by 1940. Greenberg serves and protects the art market. On
the other hand, after he has sealed off the artworld from works made in the
new media of his age, he hands us a tool by which we can -now- condemn most
contemporary art as kitsch. One definition of kitsch by Greenberg is
namely: a work that is made to look like art, a work made to at first glance
easily fit within the category of art. True art apparently has to be original: an
original. As nobody would like or would dare to see art this way, as kitsch
(even if a lot of artworks might deserve it), Greenberg's theory can now be
used to put art history into perspective. It is no longer the art object
that has to suffer the most changes, rather it is art -theory- and (popular)
art history. The dominant art object can be seen as a manipulation, a
theoretical construction. 

Net art is an involuntary provocation. Art has been declared dead so many
times that art professionals, whether they come from the popular or near
'secret' approach of the art institutional processes, have come to accept their
work field as a stage for representation (of an image of art shaped through
some 'traditional' use of matter) almost completely. The focus on the art
object seems to only have become stronger throughout the twentieth century,
instead of it losing ground as one might have expected when following the
thoughts or concepts around early modern art. This strange contradiction was of
course often noticed and pointed at, but somehow the victory of the art
object through the art market and subsequently also in popular art history was
taken for granted quite easily. It nearly arrived at the point where we
would have to accept that 'art as object' is 'the way art simply is'. Art forms
that contradicted this definition threatened to be seen as forms of radical
or conceptual performance or theatre, that serve as theoretical experiments
which in the end only inform other artworks, art objects, but are not of the
same importance as those objects. Fortunately this last definition is
somewhat losing its potential firmness in the presently powerful position of
video art within the artworld, which of course has been due to the development
of technology throughout the twentieth century. The unstable, intangible
value of the art object in the age of new media could no longer be denied
importance when more and more artists started to work in new media and multimedia.
Net art however takes the instability of the art product one step further,
namely a further step away from 'art spaces'. At least temporarily the 'art
spaces' (galleries, museums, etc.) are in the position of being an
-addition- to the representation of an artwork, rather then being the most important
means for the presentation of art. This aspect of net art alone is enough
for at least a few controversies. Should for instance small parts of or
additions to net artworks have any value, both for art history and for the art
market? Some artists fight or resist the art market. When listening to them,
the dominant definition of value today might need reevaluation as well. 


The New Art Elite (sic) 

The basics of art selection are also increasingly unclear. The major
difference between 20th and 21st century art could probably be that the
definition of high art is more and more one of 'sampling' individuals or groups which
'compile' an artwork or art environment, opposed to the 20th century dictum
of art as cultural selection by institutional processes. The loss of
tangibility, the loss of the art object, is the aspect of net art that is debated
most, but of much more importance to art 'selection' now is the loss of
-clear boundaries- to an artwork in cyberspace. This results especially in a
change within the role of the art audience. The much sought after
'interactivity' does not reside in well designed interfaces and interesting buttons to
push (or windows to fill), but lies hidden within the presence of the audience
inside the network. Collaborations of variable intensity, exploration of
networked art pieces and the discourse around these are causing the audience
to directly enter the realm of critical and artistic practice simultaneously.
We can draw from the early art performance practices on the Internet to
imagine a 'new' role for art institutions, for galleries and museums. As in the
early twentieth century, art spaces could be places for social spectacle
and events again, in which presentation, selection and exchange of ideas and
norms are the central activity, as opposed to the consumption of preselected
works, which is the dominant activity in museums now. A space like this can
serve as an area of accumulation of communication, an addition to the
individual experience behind the personal computer, an experience that is still
growing in number and importance. The development of art in computer networks
(which is of course part of, or in addition to, a larger electronic culture)
in this sense takes the early 20th century avant-garde idea of art
untouched by the sublimation and selection of an authority and realizes it by
default. The audience that enters into an artwork in order to explore it to the
utmost extreme, or the audience that witnesses an unfolding art project over a
period of time and provides it with some level of 'artistic' value. Whether
this audience does or does not enter into the artistic process itself, is
part of a system of evaluation that informs the new art history. 

  

Art Before and After 'Going Online' 

The word net art was always problematic. It held the risk for both the
artists and the art to be too connected to a limited use of a small, specific
media environment, as David Garcia wrote back in 1997 (on the nettime
mailinglist). Yet artists have mostly tried to escape the word 'art' in it, not the
word 'net'. Most probably this happened because of problems within the art
establishment as I have described earlier. It has been quite clear for many
from the beginning though, that net art was going to be only a -temporary-
'file' in art discourse for putting certain new practices into while they
were developing. Going against the grain, and therefore risking stepping on
some toes, I would say the development of art in computer networks forces us to
ditch the general, popular definition of art entirely. We could speak of a
pre- and post- network situation. 'Post-network' in this context points to
the by now near total internalization of the internet, or computer networks
in general, by our environment, our society. I am of course aware this
process is not complete, or may never be completed, in all parts of society (and
of the world) equally in terms of availability and popular use. What I for
now call post-network art is coming forth from a life and culture that is
saturated by the new media networks, in which a distinction between online
culture and off-line culture is very hard to make. 

I was talking to a friend of mine, Walter van der Cruijsen, a few days
ago. He is founder of the digital city and other important projects in Holland,
and he is currently working at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. He was also part of
net art projects like Refresh in 1996 and the Ascii Art Ensemble in 1998. We
agreed entirely on the reevaluation of art in the present setting, a
reevaluation that has consequences for the popular conception of net art as well as
from the perspective I just described (pre- and post- network art). When I
speak of net art, I always have the broadest possible definition of it in
mind. It does not stand for one specific group of artists, and it is not all
purely self-referential or criticizing the network medium, as some say. It
covers not only browser based art (which should be clear) or the even more
restrictive definition of 'site based' art, but also art that happens in any
other kind of software, any other kind of time frame than the individual
now-ness of site based, site anchored art. It also includes live performance like
dance, music or theatrical enterprises, or performances delayed in time,
which are more like intervention art. What is maybe unexpected though is that
art that at first glance does NOT use the Internet as a medium at all can
fall under this definition. I came to this conclusion two years ago, when I saw
Alexei Shulgin's performance 'Real Cyberknowledge for Real People' in
Vienna. In this piece he handed out newspapers from the mailing list nettime to
the Viennese shopping audience. The newspapers were mainly discarded, Shulgin
was harassed by an extreme technophobe, and a similar performance had been
done before, but that was all unimportant. In his apparent attempt to do the
ultimate lazy act as an artist, in a conscious attempt to do something he
maybe thought nobody would consider net art, he created net art. Worse than
that, he broadened its definition. Here we see post-network art. It is not a
new phase to come; it has been here since artists made work from within a
networked environment. (So not outside of it! The network has to sort of be
'internalized' or integrated into the life and work of the artist)
Post-network art is the state-of-the-art in net art today, even if we use both terms,
they are one really. Just an anecdote: Walter van der Cruijsen is expressing
this phenomenon in an exhibition he will be curating for Mikro in Berlin
next year, an exhibition called Radikale System Malerei (Radical System
Painting). An amazing strategy in a time when painting has approached nearly the
same status that playing the violin has in contemporary arts. 

The unstable media V2 in Rotterdam has placed at the center of their work,
the variable media that Jon Ippolito proposes as a solution for the
transition we experience (from pre- to post- network art); Net artist Cary
Peppermint calls his work 'restless'; the term 'not.art' that came forth as a
reaction to net.art; and my term, post-network art, these are all different words
intended to escape an untenable friction between popular art history and
contemporary art practice. The well-known exhibition net_condition at ZKM,
Karlsruhe, attempted to avoid the problems this friction has been laying in
front of the art world (and which it has done for decades already). They did so
by emphasizing that they were -not- making an art exhibition, but rather
that they wanted to give an overview of some aspects of net -culture-. Even
though I was quite happy to find so many net art works I like gathered and
presented in one space, I found this shying away from making the event an -art-
exhibition somewhat cowardly. Even if the makers were trying to desperately
escape the problematic situation of art between eras. If they were in other
words avoiding dealing with the problematic definition of art, I think it
would have been wiser to in fact show the broad overlaps and blurry boundaries
between art and other cultural phenomena from exactly this thing called
-art- as a central point of departure. I of course say this in the first place
because net art has suffered enough put downs and denials by art
professionals. Secondly a theory from within net art, a discourse from within net art,
has started far too late in the development of the net art practice. I had a
private email exchange with Timothy Druckrey in which he stated that net
art was suffering from too much theoretical discourse. I could not disagree
more! If net art is suffering from theoretical discourse, then not from its
own. Analysis from within the networked field is what we desperately need more
of. I think we can still quite easily sum up the good texts in this area.
Good theory is absolutely necessary to help shape the environment into which
the art is going to be received and represented. It should be, needless to
say, that such a theory has to be in very close communication with the
practical field. 

  
Empowering Art Practice by Emphasizing its Diversity 

I would like make two suggestions for empowering the net art field, to
create an empowerment that allows for diversity and experimentation to have
room within art education and art discourse in an information society. I would
like to plea for an open-minded attitude towards the virtues of
'negativity', and I would like to propose something I like to call 'net art monuments'.
Net art practice has been dominated by two main forces, that have always
created a wonderful mix: web design and anarchy. The extremes of net art are
represented by artists that live by the rules (or the possibilities) of the
technology without being bothered much by moral restrictions. It is this wild,
unpredictable and experimental side of net art that is obscured further by
developments within former social spaces such as nettime or through new
institutions like the Webby awards. It is not easy to convince people it needs
support when the discussions are always pushed towards the edge by, amongst
others, its loudest and probably best known representative: the artist
formerly known as antiorp. Projects like Heath Bunting's 'donate', in which net
art works are given to museums for free (and anyone can submit and donate a
work), criticize and balance the discourse and the economy of art online.
These subversive works and actions are the projects in art practice that are
closest to theory, and they provide connections and moments of reflection in
the chaotic 'space' between pre- and post- network art environments. The
negativity in some works of both Bunting and antiorp lies in their willful
destruction of power structures, power structures that do not obey the structural
anarchy of the Internet. These works are constructive for net art discourse
though, in the sense that they deconstruct art institutional habits and show
the empowerment of outer institutional forces by the net. 

The way network art is entering education, be it traditional education or
self study, (so whether there is the opportunity to access knowledge) has
always been one of my strongest motives to spread texts and interviews
broadly. In order to make sure the diversity of net art remains a given fact and
does not get lost within art education (where in academies etc. making net art
alas almost equals web design completely), I would like to suggest to
simply give certain works the status of monument. A monument is a place for
contemplation of events, behavior and situations of the past, these three then
being both negative and positive in nature. These unstable monuments of art on
the net have been of great importance for net art in some way. I therefore
end my talk with a list of possible net art monuments, which for various
reasons have been influential in the short history of net art. I'm keeping it
brief and do not include forerunners of the net. I invite you to come up with
more suggestions. 

not in order of importance: 

Olia Lialina's My Boyfriend Came Back From the War
(first net art work to be sold) 

Cornelia Sollfrancks Female Extension
(using 288 fake identities to subvert the first institutional net art
contest in 1997) 

Heath Bunting's old cybercafe site: all projects
(the Tokyo project is very impressive yet simple net performance) 

jodi.org
(depth in view at first glance, poetic sense and playful deconstruction of
code) 

the anti NATO protest by 'antiorp' during Kosovo war
(most compact example of this artist's radicality) 

Alexei Shulgin's Viennese performance
(first clear sign of 'net art beyond the net') 

Shulgin's Form Art
(effective simplicity with astounding (unintended?) former eastern block
feel) 

superbad.com
(the first in a seemingly specific genre in web art) 

fakeshop.org
(for their use of software, their use of the web, and their use of sound,
all poetically entwined) 

First page of hell.com
(shows an attempt to obscure and separate work from general net culture) 

RTMark
(for the strategic and at the same time theatrical use of anonymity,
exchange and communication
in the net) 

Finally: 

Net art was never depending on representation in institutions, yet it has
always needed central points for discussion, social exchange or exchange of
knowledge (something announcements also do: sharing with an audience the
where, what and how of a work). Early net artists have developed their networks
in such a way they do not need such central meeting places anymore. Yet
because of the lack of cross-disciplinary discourse platforms (where audience,
'critics' and artists meet in a more open social space with a broad cultural
feel), newcomers in the networked cultural field are caught between
institutional art discourses and obscure lists. 

What is interesting is that one can find all different views and
representatives of various positions on the arts meeting within the same medium, yet
somehow the communication stays limited. It could be important to look at
where exactly the separate disciplines and social structures have come
together and have produced new approaches, and where they on the contrary clash and
divide. The influence of the medium itself in this should not be
underestimated either. </content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>9.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Josephine Bosma: Between moderation and extremes.</subject>
<from>richard barbrook</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri, 22 Sep 2000 19:53:51 -0400</date>
<content>
Hiya,

&gt;the anti NATO protest by 'antiorp' during Kosovo war
&gt;(most compact example of this artist's radicality)

Yes, how very radical of them to support the 'ethnic cleansing' of the
Kosovars. I'm sure that Slobo and Mira were very grateful for their
artistic intervention. What next: a cool 'n' trendy website for the French
National Front or the German neo-nazis?!

Later,

Richard</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>9.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996</subject>
<from>Tilman Baumgaertel</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 11 Dec 1999 18:24:31 +0100</date>
<content>
Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996


Hi!

Here's the outcome of my effort to experiment with collective history
writing:  a time line for the catalogue of the "net_condition" show at the
ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. 

One month ago I mailed out a proposal to inform me about early net art
projects. It resulted in the following list of projects and art works that
happened between 1993 and 1996. Some of them were suggested to me by email,
other came from my own - not very good - memory. After 1996, the whole
field became too big to continue to collect things in such a fashion. I was
surprised how many early projects were there, some of them I had never
heard about, and how many of them are still online. 

It is in German, but it should still be understandable. I listed the works
with 

month of their creation, 

artist, 

title, 

URL 

and sponsor, festival where it was first shown or the institution by which
it was commissioned etc. 

For every year there's a seperate section that lists important conferences,
shows, events, the creation of art servers, context systems etc. 

Any further suggestions, hints are welcome, even though my deadline is
approaching fast. If you want to add something, please do so in the format
described above. It is not a completely open process, and I will filter out
things, that I find irrelevant, but actually so far I included most of the
works that were suggested to me, because there were some really surprising
things that I didn't know about. 

This whole methology obviously leaves open a lot of questions, but I think
it is interesting to put history together in such a fashion. Call it
Open-Source-History, if you will, with me as the maintainer. ;-)

I still have some errands running, but hope to finish this whole, quite
labor-intensive project next week. So speak out now, or be silent forever. 

Yours, 
Tilman Baumgaertel 

------------SCHNAPP!----------------

1993

März 1993
Station Rose mit DJ Dag
Gunafa-Club (Hypermedia-Live-Performances in verschiedenen Clubs in
Deutschland und Österreich)
www.stationrose.com * 

April 1993
David Blair
Waxweb als M-Bone-Multicast 
www.waxweb.org * 

Mai 1993
x-space (Gerfried Stocker, Horst Hörtner, Arnold Fuchs, Anton Maierhofer,
Wolfgang Reinisch, Jutta Schmiederer) 
winke winke
gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/~gerfried/winke

November 1993
Mark Amerika u.a. 
Alt-X als Gopher-Hypertext
www.altx.com *

November 1993
David Lichy
Event Spaces 1
web.raex.com/~voyd/terrain/est1

Dezember 1993
David Blair
Waxweb als Hypertext in MOO
www.waxweb.org *


Ausstellungen, Online-Galerien, Kontextsysteme und andere
Netzkunst-Institutionen

März 1993
Online - Kunst im Netz (Konferenz)
Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Österreich
gewi..kfunigraz.ac.at/~gerfried/online/


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

1994

Januar 1994
Andy Deck
Andyland
www.artcontext.com/andyland/old/1994/ *

März 1994
David Blair
Waxweb mit Web-Interface
www.waxweb.org *

Mai 1994
Antonio Muntadas
The File Room
simr02.si.ehu.es/FileRoom/documents/TofCont.html * 
Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago 

Juli 1994
Mark Amerika u.a.
Alt X eröffnet mit der Ausstellung The Floating Gallery of the Mind
seine Präsenz im WorldWideWeb
www.altx.com *

August 1994
Alexei Shulgin: Hot Pics
redsun.cs.msu.su/wwwart/hotpics/ *

August 1994
Ken Goldberg
The Mercury Project
www.usc.edu/dept/raiders/
University of Southern California, Los Angeles

September 1994
Douglas Davis
The World's First Collaborative Sentence
math240.lehman.cuny.edu/sentence1.html
City University of New York Lehman College, New York

Oktober 1994
Paul Garrin
Fluxus-Online
www.panix.com/~fluxus
Fluxus Festival "Seoul NyMax", Anthology Film Archives, New York

November 1994
Sodomka/Breindl, x-space und Norbert Math
State of Transition
http://thing.at/orfkunstradio/1994B/10_11_94.html
ORF Kunstradio

Dezember 1994
Nina Sobell und Emily Hartzell
Park Bench
www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench
Cemter for Advanced Technology, New York University

Dezember 1994
Brad Brace
The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project
www.teleport.com/~bbrace/12hr.html


Ausstellungen, Online-Galerien, Kontextsysteme und andere
Netzkunst-Institutionen

Januar 1994
Die digitale Staad Amsterdam
www.dds.nl

März 1994
t0 Public Netbase
www.t0.or.at
Bundeskuratorin für Bildende Kunst, Wien, Österreich

September 1994
Adaweb
adaweb.walker.org *
Digital City

September 1994
Susan Farell, Bret Webb u.a.
Artcrimes *
www.artcrimes.com

Oktober 1994
Minima Media
Medienbiennale Leipzig
www.v2.nl/~arns/Archiv/Media/med-94.htm (D)

Oktober 1994
Hotwired
www.hotwired.com
Wired

November 1994
Die Internationale Stadt Berlin
www.icf.de *


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

1995

Februar 1995
Julia Sher
Securityland
adaweb.walkerart.org/project/secure/corridor/sec1.html
Adaweb

März 1995
Tony Oursler, Constance DeJong, Stephen Vitiello
Fantastic Prayers
www.diacenter.org/rooftop/webproj/fprayer/fprayer.html
Dia Center of the Arts

Mai 1995 (Mailbox-Version bei BIONIC seit 1989)
PooL Processing (Heiko Idensen und Matthias Krohn)
Die imaginäre Bibliothek
www.hyperdis.de/pool
Ars Electronica

Mai 1995
Jenny Holzer
Please change belief
adaweb.walkerart.org/project/holzer/cgi/pcb.cgi
Adaweb

Mai 1995
David Blair
Waxweb mit 3-D-Interface
www.waxweb.org *

Sommer 1995
Richard Kriesche
Telematic Sculpture 4
iis.joanneum.ac.at/kriesche/
Venedig Biennale

Juni 1995
Michael Bilecki
Exodus
exodus.avu.cz
Ars Electronica

Juni 1995
Horizontal Radio (Koordination: Heidi Grundmann und Gerfried Stocker, mit
über hundert Künstlern aus der ganzen Welt)
gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/~gerfried/horrad/horrad1.html
Ars Electronica

Juli - November 1995
Victoria Vesna
Virtual Concrete
arts.ucsb.edu/concrete/
Huntington Beach Museum, Los Angeles, USA 

Juli 1995 - Januar 1998
John F. Simon
Alter Stats
www.numeral.com/alterend.html *
Sandra Geringer Gallery, New York/Adaweb, New York

Sommer 1995
Ken Feingold
Telegarden
telegarden.aec.at *
Annenberg Center at the University of Southern
California und Adept Technology, Los Angeles, USA

Sommer 1995
Shu Lea Cheang u.a.
Bowling Alley
bowlingalley.walkerart.org *
Walker Center of the Arts, Minneapolis, USA

August 1995
Joan Heemskerk und Dirk Paesmans 
jodi
www.jodi.org

August - Dezember 1995
Philip Pocock und Felix S. Huber
Arctic Circle
www.icf.de/tcancer
Ausstellung Fotografie nach der Fotografie in München, Deutschland

September 1995
Eva Wohlgemuth &amp; Kathy Rae Huffman
Siberian Deal
www.icf.de/siberian
Hilus, Wien, Östereich

September 1995
Heath Bunting u.a.
Irational Gallery Ltd
www.irational.org

September 1995
Komar und Melamid 
The Most Wanted Painting
www.diacenter.org/km/
Dia Center of the Arts, New York, USA

September 1995 
Vera Frenkel
BodyMissing
www.yorku.ca/BodyMissing
ISEA 95, Montreal, Canada

September 1995
G.H. Hovagimyan: Art Direct (Mailbox-Version bei The Thing seit September
1994)
www.thing.net/~gh/artdirect/
Artnetweb, New York; The Thing, New York

Oktober 1995
Alexei Shulgin, Tania Detkina, Alexander Nikolaev, Rachel Baker
Moscow WWWArt Centre
redsun.cs.msu.su/wwwart * 

Oktober 1995
Floating Point Unit (Jeff Gompertz, Bruno Ricard, Vlasta Volcano)
Extremely Refrigerated (Performance mit CUsee me)
www.location1.org/fpu  (D)
New York, USA

November 1995
mezflesque.exe (Maryanne Breeze): Cutspace
wollongong.starway.net.au/~mezandwalt/cutspace.htm

Dezember 1995 
Eva Grubinger
Computer  {AT} ided curating
www.icf.de/CAC/


Ausstellungen, Online-Galerien, Kontextsysteme und andere
Netzkunst-Institutionen

Januar 1995
Dia Center of the Arts beginnt eigene Netzkunst-Sammlung
www.diacenter.org
Dia Center of the Arts, New York, USA

Februar 1995
Artnetweb (Ezine)
artnetweb.com/philadelphia/artnetweb95 *
New York, USA

März 1995
Konrad Becker, Francisco de Sousa Webber u.a.
Public Netbase t0
www.t0.or.at
Wien, Österreich

Mai 1995
Switch (Ezine)
switch.sjsu.edu
San Jose State University, USA

Juni 1995
Wolfgang Staehle u.a.
The Thing International im WWW
www.thing.net
www.thing.or.at

Juni 1995
Ars Electronica Welcome to the Wired World, bei der zum ersten Mal ein
Prix Ars Electronica in der Kategorie .net verliehen wird
www.aec.at
Linz, Österreich

August 1995
Tool (Gruppenausstellung)
www.screenarts.net.au/tool/tool01 *
Urban Exile Galerie, Syndey 

Oktober 
Channel (Online Galerie)
www.channel.org.uk
ARTEC, London

November 1995
Monstersoup (Gruppenausstellung)
www.chickenfish.cc/subtle/monstersoup *
Chimera Online Gallery, Australien

Dezember 1995
Interfiction (Netzwerker-Treffen)
www.uni-kassel.de/interfiction
Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- &amp; Videofestes, Kassel, Deutschland

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

1996


Januar/Februar 1996
Philip Pocock, Florian Wüst, Felix S. Huber, Christoph Keller
Arctic Circle
www.thing.net/~circle

März 1996
Sensorium
World Ear
www.sensorium.org/worldear/index.html

März  1996 
etoy
Digital Hijack
www.hijack.org

Mai 1996
Masaki Fujihata
Global Clock Project
www.flab.mag.keio.ac.jp/GClock/

Juli 1996
Paul Garrin
name.space
www.autono.net

Oktober 1996
Alexei Shulgin, Vuk Cosic et al
Refresh
sunsite.cs.msu.su/wwwart/fresh.html

November 1996
Sensorium
Web Hopper
www.sensorium.org/webhopper/index.html

Ausstellungen, Online-Galerien, Kontextsysteme und andere
Netzkunst-Institutionen

Januar 1996
G.H. Hovagimyan, Adrienne Wortzel, Robin Murphy
Art Dirt (Kunst-Talkshow im Real-Audio-Format bei pseudo.com)
www.walkerart.org *

Januar 1996
Next five minutes, Amsterdam (Konferenz)
www.dds.nl/~n5m

Februar 1996
nettime  (Mailing-list)
www.nettime.org *

Februar 1996
Rhizome (Mailing-list)
www.rhizome.org *

Februar 1996 
Syndicate (Mailing-list)
www.v2.nl/east

April 1996
Backspace, London (Internet-Cafe)
www.backspace.org

Mai 1996 
Telepolis, München (Ezine)
www.heise.de/tp *

Juni 1996
C3, Budapest (Media Lab)
www.c3.hu

November 1996
Tool20b (Gruppenausstellung)
Urban Exile Galerie, Sydney
www.screenarts.net.au/tool/ * 



...................
I think, 
and then I sink
into the paper 
like I was ink.
Eric B. &amp; Raakim: Paid in full

Dr. Tilman Baumgaertel, email: tilman {AT} thing.de
MY HOMEPAGE HAS MOVED!!! http://www.thing.de/tilman</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996</subject>
<from>Dooley Le Cappellaine</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 11 Dec 1999 22:28:27 -0500</date>
<content>
I responded to Tilman's request for information regarding art on line projects
between 1993-1996.

I was shocked by his innapropriately arrogant and pugnacious response:

Here it is:

Dooley Le Cappellaine responds to Tillman's request:

 I made some trail sites during 1995 and put one up early/mid 1996.


&gt;At 15:12 15.11.99 -0500, you wrote:
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;Hello Tillman,
&gt;&gt;I am an artist and curator.
&gt;&gt;From 1988-94 I ran a gallery of cutting edge contemporary art in SoHo New
&gt;York.
&gt;&gt;During 1994 I got very interested in new media and decided to close my
&gt;&gt;galley in order to focus on my work in this new medium.
&gt;&gt;From late 1994 through September 1996 I worked on a CD Rom and website.
&gt;&gt;The CD Rom was titled "Technophobia" and is an interactive exhibition of
&gt;&gt;artists making artworks in New Media. I thought at the time I would produce
&gt;&gt;CD Rom exhibitions the way I had presented real exhibitions in a gallery.
&gt;&gt;I saw a few really Horrible on-line gallery sites and decided to
&gt;&gt;concentrate on work that used New Media as an Art Medium rather than an
&gt;&gt;archival or electronic catalog.
&gt;&gt;Learning the progammes and buying the hardware that were necessary to
&gt;&gt;realize MY plans and to realize the  artists' projects for CD Rom, was a
&gt;&gt;huge investment of time and money.
&gt;&gt;Also the website had to be totally made from scratch as the material from
&gt;&gt;the CD Rom was far too high in file size to present on the web.
&gt;&gt;So the website: Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery; became an exhibtion site for
&gt;&gt;the artists on "Technophobia".
&gt;&gt;It was the first exhibition on the site and has been remade/upgraded
&gt;&gt;countless times as my skills and the possibilities of the web expanded.
&gt;
&gt;So when did that go online exactly?
&gt;
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;In late 1995 I met Wolfgang Staehle of "The Thing". I knew he'd exhibited a
&gt;&gt;version of "the thing' as an art work at TZ Gallery in New York (through
&gt;&gt;Tom Zollner) and I was intrigued.
&gt;&gt;I think it can accurately be said that Wolfgang was the the first person in
&gt;&gt;the "artworld" in New York at that time to be seriously exploring what for
&gt;&gt;the moment is being called "New Media".
&gt;
&gt;I know all that.
&gt;
&gt;&gt;However at that time it was shockingly primative; just people exchanging
&gt;&gt;typed- out text messages: not much more that a crystal radio set.
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;When I was inviting artists to participate in "Technophobia" I talked to
&gt;&gt;Wolfgang again; "The thing" had really morphed from an artwork into a
&gt;&gt;business.
&gt;&gt;"the Thing" became the ISP for my gallery at http://www.thing.net/dooley.
&gt;
&gt;As I said, i need the date.
&gt;
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My Response: I sent Tillman an approximate date : early 1996.

 Also I telephoned my server: Thing.net to get the exact date my site went
on line and received no reply.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My Response:

I recall the approximate time I put my first announced site up to be early
1996.
and e-mail Tilman, with the information it can be corabborated by records
at Thing .net.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No response from Tilman,
but his posting at nettime eliminating me from his survey, appears on this
list.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I go through my American Express accounts and find I was paying for my
site/space from March 1996.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dooley Le Cappellaine
http:www.thing.net/dooley

http://www.thing.net/dooley</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996</subject>
<from>Armin Medosch</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 13 Dec 1999 11:25:38 +0000</date>
<content>
Telepolis
Exhibition and Conference on the Interactive and Networked City
4.11. - 12.11.1995

In the "Art" section of the exhibition the following works were 
presented:

Electronic Gallery, Kunstlabor, Vienna
Views, Ulrike Gabriel
The Egg of the Internet, netband (Feigl, Hobijn, Solomon, Verdult)
Stone Age Computer, Mathilde MuPe
Urban Exercises, LOT, Sabine Bitter, Helmut Weber
Telepolis in VRML, Nicolas Anatol Baginsky
Labyrinth, Stanislav Miler
Musers Service, Daniela Plewe
Sound Image Crossing, Keigo Yamamoto
Various VRML-projects by EZTH Zurich, Florian Wenz

Additionally to the art section, there was a general purpose cybercafe
which was installed by Media Lab Munich, where, among others, digital
city, Internationale Stadt and other collaborative art projects or
"context systems" were shown. 

Unfortunately this URL is not active any more: 
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/MLM/telepolis.html</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.2</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 14 Dec 1999 00:00:42 +0100</date>
<content>
Am Sat, 11.Dec.1999 um 18:24:31 +0100 schrieb Tilman Baumgaertel:

&gt; One month ago I mailed out a proposal to inform me about early net art
&gt; projects. It resulted in the following list of projects and art works that
&gt; happened between 1993 and 1996. Some of them were suggested to me by email,
&gt; other came from my own - not very good - memory. 

I am quite surprised to see that your timeline starts as late as in 1993.
Again, we can argue whether "net art" (i.e. net art in a broader sense than
the particular school of "Net.Art") is identical with "World Wide Web art".
My opinion obviously differs.

Since you speak of "net art" and not of "Internet art" in particular, I
would certainly include BBSes into this history. 

Even without BBSes, I would clearly root the beginnings of Internet art
activities in such manifestations as the "alt.artcom" newsgroup (established
by the editors of the Canadian "Art Com" journal whose editors also
published the Mail Art source book "Correspondence Art in 1985), the
"Postmodern Culture" e-journal with the "PMC-talk" listserver and
Crackerjack Kid's Networker's Telenet Link around 1991. In my memory of
these days of the Internet - or EARN/Bitnet, respectively -, these were the
_only_ arts-related forums in global computer networks. For net culture, the
discussions in "PMC-Talk" were at least as significant as those in Nettime
became later. 

alt.artcom

Quotations/resources

"In 1991 there were roughly two dozen mail artists with PCs and modems,
mostly Americans, who could access one another through information
superhighways like internet, bitnet, CompuServe and America Online."
Chuck Welch &lt;http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/emma/Gallery/telenetlink.html&gt;)

"Artists are using computer networks, and it is impacting not only their
methods of dialogue and distribution, but their creative process and
aesthetic output. In the cyberspace of computer networks, still so
pervasively ASCII and ANSI, art works are not necessarily about visual
images but instead communications -- many investigate interactivity,
collaboration, interface, connectivity, and the relationship between artist,
art work, and viewer."
Anna Couey, Cyber Art: The Art of Communication Systems, Matrix News, Volume
1, Number 4, (July 1991)

1980
ARTEX
Robert Adrian X
Conferencing system on I. P. Sharp APL Network used for art projects

1986
Artcom forum in The Well BBS
Carl Eugene Loeffler and others
SF Bay Area
routed into the Usenet as alt.artcom (and still existing today), includes
electronic distribution of Art Com journal articles

1987
TAM
Ruud Janssen
Amsterdam
Mail-Art BBS (now in the World Wide Web:
&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/4947/&gt;)  


1990, summer
Panscan Conference on ECHO BBS (later echonyc.com)
Mark Bloch
New York City
production of a collaborative E-Mail poem (text at
&lt;http://www.echonyc.com/~panman/epoem.html&gt;)

1990
Matrix Artists Network BBS
Toronto, Canada

199?
TAM
by Ruud Jansen
Tilburg/Netherlands

1990, June 17
PMC-Talk
launch of "postmodern culture" mailing list in the Internet and on
ERAN/Bitnet
University of Virginia

1990, Fall 
Postmodern Culture 
First issue of the Internet e-journal
University of Virginia

1991, February 6
Le Musée Standard
by La Société de Conservation du Présent
Graphical BBS based on the French-Canadian Minitel standard
Montréal, Québec
(Conceived and programmed by the conceptual art group SCP, this
proto-Website contained - among others - computer-generated poetry and
"Notre Médium: Le Systčme", a sophisticated system of pictograms.)

1991, June
Networker Telenetlink
by Crackerjack Kid (a.k.a. Chuck Welch)
Sao Paolo Biennal

1991
R.A.T. Mail Art Archive
by Charles Francois
Ličge/Belgium
Mail Art BBS

1992
Global Mail
by Ashley Parker-Owens
Information/announcement sheet on Mail Art and related activities, published
on "The Well" via gopher and E-Mail

1994, February
Spoon Lists
by Spoon Collective
Mailing lists on cultural theory

1994
Fast Breeder
London
BBS operated by Matthew Fuller, Graham Harwood et.al.

1994
The Seven by Nine Squares/Neoism Online
Berlin
BBS from March 1994-March 1995
Web Site since March 1995
relaunched as &lt;http://www.neoism.org&gt; in January 1996

...

I am sure there are many more...

Florian


-- 
Florian Cramer, PGP public key ID 6440BA05
Permutations/Permutationen - poetry automata from 330 A.D. to
present: &lt;http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.3</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; [net\.]art(history|definition) [feigl, baumgaertel, future]</subject>
<from>nettime's_synthetic_system</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 14 Dec 1999 00:36:19 -0500 (EST)</date>
<content>
"Franz F. Feigl" &lt;franz {AT} feigl.com&gt;
          Re: &lt;nettime&gt; re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996

Tilman Baumgaertel &lt;tilman_baumgaertel {AT} csi.com&gt;
          Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996

"Dr. Future" &lt;richard {AT} dig-lgu.demon.co.uk&gt;
          Re: &lt;nettime&gt; defining net.art (was: Olia Lialina, was: 
          something or other...)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 02:58:31 +0100
From: "Franz F. Feigl" &lt;franz {AT} feigl.com&gt;
Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996

Don't worry: Tilman's job 'net.art.history' won't be the last attempt 
to rewrite the past.

The first use of the the net (internet - not phones, BBS's,  a.s.o) 
for art's sake I remember  was  Bill Gibson + ? placing something 
like a 'self-destructing poem' on the net in summer 1992.
(the organisation was an art-show  in San Francisco, so there might 
be more to dig up)

Lot's of still familiar names are missing, from Artcom to Williams 
and even more not so familiar ones.

Franz F. Feigl

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 01:51:20 +0100
From: Tilman Baumgaertel &lt;tilman_baumgaertel {AT} csi.com&gt;
Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996

At 00:00 14.12.99 +0100, Florian Cramer wrote:

&gt;Am Sat, 11.Dec.1999 um 18:24:31 +0100 schrieb Tilman Baumgaertel:
&gt;
&gt;&gt; One month ago I mailed out a proposal to inform me about early net art
&gt;&gt; projects. It resulted in the following list of projects and art works that
&gt;&gt; happened between 1993 and 1996. Some of them were suggested to me by email,
&gt;&gt; other came from my own - not very good - memory. 
&gt;
&gt;I am quite surprised to see that your timeline starts as late as in 1993.
&gt;Again, we can argue whether "net art" (i.e. net art in a broader sense than
&gt;the particular school of "Net.Art") is identical with "World Wide Web art".
&gt;My opinion obviously differs.
&gt;

Well, that comes as quite a surprise, doesn't it? 

You will even be more surprised to learn that just putting the overview of
these four years together took one month of work. If I would be at an
university I would take a sabbatical for this kind of effort, but I am not. 

As you of course know, this kind of art is very ephemeral and very
distributed, and it takes a long time to get this kind of stuff together.
For the present purpose, this list is OK, because it is for the catalog of
an exhibtion that was triggered by the art that was created in reaction to
the web, mainly. But it doesn't pretend to be complete, and I put every
imaginable effort in getting as much material as possible. And actually,
the reason why I make this list available to your kind of criticism, is
because I want as much participation from as many people as possible. 

I also don't think that net work art is only on the web, so I have a much
longer list of other things, going back to Mail art and the fifties,
including Television, Satellite, BBS, Fax, what have you events, but it is
yet too incomplete to be published. I will continue to work on this, and
once I feel it is appropriate to this big topic, I will put it on the net. 

Anyway, thanks for your list, it is of great help. 

Yours, 
Tilman 
...................
I think, 
and then I sink
into the paper 
like I was ink.
Eric B. &amp; Raakim: Paid in full

Dr. Tilman Baumgaertel, email: tilman {AT} thing.de
MY HOMEPAGE HAS MOVED!!! http://www.thing.de/tilman

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 18:28:37 +0000
From: "Dr. Future" &lt;richard {AT} dig-lgu.demon.co.uk&gt;
Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; defining net.art (was: Olia Lialina, was: 
         something or other...)

melinda rackham wrote:

&gt; &gt;simon wrote:
&gt;
&gt;  a lot of what is called Net Art is not actually the Net but the
&gt; computer. This is true of much work produced for viewing in a browser, or
&gt; on CD-ROM, or even a lot of installation based work. Often the only
&gt; differences between these works are the means of distribution...

&lt;...&gt;

&gt; if work is intended for flexible delivery over a global network with its
&gt; unique download rthythm its net.art, anything intended for distribution on
&gt; cdrom has a completely different intent, architecture and mode of
&gt; production.  the definition is in the intention and the expereince.  a few
&gt; years ago i remember asking Tiia Johansen from Estonia about why she was
&gt; putting up huge single images as web works, when all i was interrested in
&gt; was making tiny files for fast delivery, and her reply (made even more
&gt; dramatic by her fabulous accent) was " i like to make them wait."
&gt;
&gt; For me it is that wait... the delivery space, - the gap - , the
&gt; possibilities contained within the gap, and the expereience of that gap
&gt; which are the defining characteristics of net.art.

So this suggests that the categorization of the (net.)art work is dependent
upon the intentions of the user, whether they want to exploit the properties
of the net as a communications system or as a distribution system or whatever.
But then their intentions are dependent upon the particular qualities of the
Net that they perceive as important anyway, so we must conclude that all art
that is deliberately put on the net is net.art.

The challenge is then to find some art on the net which isn't net.art (isn't
it?). Perhaps this would be art that was just accidentally put on the net, or
just temporarily while you were thinking of where else it should go (like
leaving things in a pile on the edge of the sofa because your shelves are full
up and the tea's ready). Perhaps this would be called default.art.


 the fun continues...</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; [net\.]art(history|definition)</subject>
<from>Sean Cubitt</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 14 Dec 1999 12:44:07 +0000</date>
<content>
I like Melinda Rackham's quote from Tiia Johnson about 'making them wait'
for download. Download, like the crash, the freeze, upload and boot up,
are temporal modes that are the last vestige of labour time on the web,
giving the lie to the mythology of instantaneous transmission. 

But there is another point to add, a small one: what we have by way of
browsers are not interactiv, or at least not interactive enough. We can
click, we can to some extent navigate, we can publish, but we can't
re-edit someone else's work without downloading it and republishing the
reedited version on a different server. Netscape and IE are both based on
the principle of user-friendly admission to a publishing medium, not to
genuine interactivity. Perhaps this can't be done on the wide open spaces
of the net but only on intra/extranets where some degree of responsibility
and trust can be presumed. Nonetheless, the model of the Amaya browser
seems to me the kind of tool we will need if we are going to get
interactivity of any real sort online. That will mean, as well, some
radical eductaion in democracy: if the authorship of works moves from
authors to users, then the responsibility also shifts in proportion. 

So to add my crumbly bit of old cheese to the definine.net.art flan, a
thing is net.art if the user takes responsibility for the work

sean</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; [net\.]art(history|definition) [feigl, baumgaertel, future]</subject>
<from>Terrence J Kosick</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sat, 18 Dec 1999 22:52:34 -0800</date>
<content>
Terrence writes;

There seems many more people are involved now. That will make it all the more
vital by bringing more minds together. How that will change and evolve remains to
be seen. It will be intriguing to compare and perhaps see some sort of telos of a
shifting to a communication perhaps more theatrical and even timeless in form. I
am looking forward to seeing the links that collapse network time from then to
here and now. The separation of time and distance has been too convenient
controlling and thus disconcerting. History never fixed always evolving taking on
things from the past not to be forgotten whist they shape the future. Ah network
bliss.

T.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>t.whid</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sun, 14 May 2000 14:15:39 -0400</date>
<content>
this was taken from an ongoing discussion between jennifer crowe and 
pat lichty re: history of net art. (taken from the list protocol 
prone http://www.artnetweb.com/protocol


At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote:
&lt;snip&gt;
&gt;
&gt;[let me ammend this: I was specifically refering to .txt files that
&gt;comprise the textbase- plain text (which when it boils down to it the
&gt;Rhizome archive is) it will most likely port better than stuff that is
&gt;specically dependent on hardware, like an artwork that is dependent on a
&gt;certain type of machine (with like you say 5.25 floppies, etc). This is
&gt;never foolproof of course. But for the time being, the texts at Rhizome
&gt;and Nettime etc are what alot of people are going off of. And, yes it's
&gt;true that their server could be wiped out at anytime in a flood or
&gt;something...true, true, true!]
&lt;/snip&gt;

could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their 
long-term plans for archival of the texts? how many back-ups are on 
how many servers? are there foundations with a mission to preserve 
them? if not, perhaps rhizome, thing, nettime could create one, or 
band together to lobby for international funding for one?

or point us to the public policies you have posted.

thanx</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>{ brad brace }</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sun, 14 May 2000 13:48:06 -0700 (PDT)</date>
<content>
On Sun, 14 May 2000, t.whid wrote:
&gt; At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote:
&gt; &lt;snip&gt;

&gt; could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their 
&gt; long-term plans for archival of the texts? how many back-ups are on 
&gt; how many servers? are there foundations with a mission to preserve 
&gt; them? if not, perhaps rhizome, thing, nettime could create one, or 
&gt; band together to lobby for international funding for one?


This would only be worthwhile if the lists were _not moderated, and/or
_all posts were archived. 



The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project    &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;           since 1994   &lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;


+ + +         serial           ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/bbrace
+ + +      eccentric        ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/bb/bbrace
+ + +     continuous       ftp://ftp.teleport.com/users/bbrace
+ + +    hypermodern      ftp://ftp.rdrop.com/pub/users/bbrace
+ + +        imagery   ftp://ftp.pacifier.com/pub/users/bbrace

      News://alt.binaries.pictures.12hr ://a.b.p.fine-art.misc
  Mailing-list: listserv {AT} netcom.com / subscribe 12hr-isbn-jpeg
  Reverse Solidus: http://www.teleport.com/~bbrace/bbrace.html
                   http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net

 { brad brace }</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>t byfield</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 15 May 2000 01:31:54 -0400</date>
<content>
twhid {AT} spacelab.net (Sun 05/14/00 at 02:15 PM -0400):

&gt; could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their 
&gt; long-term plans for archival of the texts? how many back-ups are on 
&gt; how many servers? are there foundations with a mission to preserve 
&gt; them? if not, perhaps rhizome, thing, nettime could create one, or 
&gt; band together to lobby for international funding for one?
&gt; 
&gt; or point us to the public policies you have posted.

interesting questions.

as for nettime: there's a complete archive on nettime.org
(köln); another (i'm not sure how complete) at tao.ca, in
toronto, courtesy of jesse hirsch et al.; and another one,
much less complete, at The Thing (NYC); and, at least for
a while, there was a clone of the complete nettime one at
o-o.lt, in lithuania (?). but these are only the publicly 
available archives (of which there may be more i've never
heard of); there are also private ones--mine goes back to
12/95, and is missing only the first ~30 messages sent to
'nettime-l' (there were earlier channels and ur-correspon-
dence). if for some reason all these public archives were
to vanish, i expect a few people would put some up on the
web, however piecemeal. (an excellent example is the more
or less complete reconstruction of the first 'cypherpunks'
list cobbled together from various partial archives.)

and then there are nettime's paper publications: ZKP 1, 2,
3, 3.2.1, 4, _README!_, and (in part) the NATO/FYU isssue
of arkzin/bastard, some of which included floppy versions
of their content. the impetus behind this series of publi-
cations was to make a 'networked discourse' available off-
line; but one consequence was to make them available in a
form not susceptible to the failures of electronic media.

note that the nettime.org archive includes 'raw' files of 
the traffic going back to 11/95: if you really care about
the long-term viability of the archives feel free to suck
the files down and archive them yourself. once FreeNet is
up and running in a meaningful sense, i'll run a node and
make the files available in that way--as an 'eternity ser-
vice.' i hope others do too, but the essence of these sys-
tems is establishing open and contingent technical setups
and seeing what happens. nettime is a 'collaborative text
filtering project': it may be that the logic that governs
such an arrangement will filter nettime, or subsets of it,
into oblivion.

as to your questions about foundations, and various lists
banding together to start one, my own response is: blecch.

in my experience, nettime functions best, for all my skep-
ticism about this idea, as a 'gift economy.' that was the
basis on which desk.nl supported it; when their technical
problems became too severe i moved it to my own material.-
net; but that wasn't an adequate long-term solution for a
lot of reasons (a cranky server sitting behind a 56k isdn
line that was dedicated only because the ISP didn't care),
so we asked wolfgang staehle if he'd give the list a home
at The Thing for free and he said yes. in that regard the
list's existence is parasitic, much as nettime's meetings
have piggybacked on other conferences--the only exception
being Beauty and the East in ljubljana, which was support-
ed by ljudmila (for those who don't know: LJUbljana Digit-
al Media Lab--vuk cosic, luka frelih, marko peljhan, iren-
a wölle, mitja doma, and more).

to institutionalize nettime in a legal or economic format 
would be fatal. the efforts to produce print publications 
have been increasingly traumatic; and the efforts to push
'top-down' campaigns under the name 'nettime' were a mess.
the fact that certain lists--nettime, rhizome, 7-11, amer-
ican express, syndicate, recode, xchange, rohrpost, inter-
nodium, the list could go on--had and/or have certain com-
monalities doesn't mean that a consortium is desirable or
even possible. the strength of these entities, individual-
ly and collectively, stems from the fact that they're NET-
WORKS: part participants, part technical system, and part
something else about which very little is understood, imo, 
and even this on a heuristic basis. in a way, the network
is a new species, and many if not all of the problems net-
time has seen--abortive efforts to hijack it, the complex-
ities of organizing it in order to move to a 'higher' lev-
el, para/neo/quasi/post-paranoiac fantasies about control
and cabals--are byproducts of the inability to grasp what
networks are and how they function. 

but to get back to your initial questions, they *do* func-
tion through distribution--which (thus far) seems like an
unbeatable archival technique. thus far: we'll see how it
pans out in the long term.

nettime's 'policy' about archiving? DIY. we maintain this
list in the here and now *for free*; if you'd like to pre-
serve it for another time and place, then Be My Guest. my
advice: trust the network. don't try to transform it into
something it isn't.

cheers,
t</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>cisler</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 15 May 2000 06:29:32 -0700</date>
<content>
Thanks to Ted Byfield for the explanation about the server and archive
history of nettime.  On a grander scale there is a service that may just
be around when the sentient robots of Hans Moravec's dreams (and perhaps
Ray Kurzweil's) begin looking for the recorded antics and babbling of the
humans who once ran the Internet--and were allowed to use it. 

www.archive.org is in San Francisco, and as of March 2000, they had
archived a billion web pages, about 14 terabytes. I'm sure that nettime is
in the archive. 

Steve Cisler</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>alex galloway</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 16 May 2000 10:31:13 -0700</date>
<content>

&gt;At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote:
&gt;&lt;snip&gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt;[let me ammend this: I was specifically refering to .txt files that
&gt; &gt;comprise the textbase- plain text (which when it boils down to it the
&gt; &gt;Rhizome archive is) it will most likely port better than stuff that is
&gt; &gt;specically dependent on hardware, like an artwork that is dependent on a
&gt; &gt;certain type of machine (with like you say 5.25 floppies, etc). This is
&gt; &gt;never foolproof of course. But for the time being, the texts at Rhizome
&gt; &gt;and Nettime etc are what alot of people are going off of. And, yes it's
&gt; &gt;true that their server could be wiped out at anytime in a flood or
&gt; &gt;something...true, true, true!]
&gt;&lt;/snip&gt;
&gt;
&gt;could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their
&gt;long-term plans for archival of the texts?

about rhizome...

Rhizome Digest is archived and available at http://rhizome.org/archive. 
Years 2000 and 1999 of the Digest are currently online. Older years will be 
uploaded soon.

The other two email lists, Rhizome Raw and Leonardo {AT} Rhizome.org, are 
currently not archived. However, a filtered selection of Rhizome Raw *is* 
archived in the online contentbase. These emails create the content for 
both Rhizome Digest and the Fresh page (http://rhizome.org/fresh). Today, 
approximately 1 in 10 emails are saved and archived in the contentbase. 
Earlier in our history, when the volume on Raw was lower, the ratio was 
more like 1 in 3. Emails selected for the contentbase are formated into 
plain text, then indexed by keyword, name, place, title, category, type and 
date.

The Rhizome contentbase is backed-up periodically using normal protocols, 
plus a semi-complete archive lives on my home computer and probably in a 
few other places (eat your heart out, 0100101110101101.ORG!). Rhizome is 
dedicated to long term preservation, so this material is not likely to 
disappear any time soon.

Rhizome has produced no print publications to date.

ideas and suggests? post to list {AT} rhizome.org.

best,

-ag</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>Zvonimir Bakotin</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 17 May 2000 04:43:35 +0200 (CEST)</date>
<content>

Dear archeologists,

&gt; 
&gt; &gt;At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote:
&gt; &gt;&lt;snip&gt;
&gt; &gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt; &gt;[let me ammend this: I was specifically refering to .txt files that
&gt; &gt; &gt;comprise the textbase- plain text (which when it boils down to it the
&gt; &gt; &gt;Rhizome archive is) it will most likely port better than stuff that is
&gt; &gt; &gt;specically dependent on hardware, like an artwork that is dependent on a
&gt; &gt; &gt;certain type of machine (with like you say 5.25 floppies, etc). This is
&gt; &gt; &gt;never foolproof of course. But for the time being, the texts at Rhizome
&gt; &gt; &gt;and Nettime etc are what alot of people are going off of. And, yes it's
&gt; &gt; &gt;true that their server could be wiped out at anytime in a flood or
&gt; &gt; &gt;something...true, true, true!]
&gt; &gt;&lt;/snip&gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt;could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their
&gt; &gt;long-term plans for archival of the texts?
&gt; 
&gt; about rhizome...
&gt; 
&gt; Rhizome Digest is archived and available at http://rhizome.org/archive. 
&gt; Years 2000 and 1999 of the Digest are currently online. Older years will be 
&gt; uploaded soon.
&gt; 
&gt; The other two email lists, Rhizome Raw and Leonardo {AT} Rhizome.org, are 
&gt; currently not archived. 

&lt;snip&gt;

I keeping the archive of rhRaw (mixed with rhDigest however) on my
mailserver, this archive goes back till sept'96. contains cca 12,5k
messages, or 63MB of raw ascii bits, in my oppinion *it's complete*.

There is also *complete* Nettime-l which goes back to '96. Furthermore
there are some *smaller* archives (regarding the volume and number of
messages) like documentaX, ars (severeal years of disscusion at AE), 
blast, 7-11, amex, hfh... even some projects and initiatives which were'nt
*real mailing_lists* such refresh (net art project back in 96), etc...

&gt;From the very same source (different folder only) Syndicate mailing list
archive was restored in last year (complete - from very first message). 
The Syndicate archive is avaliable now at http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/,
for your reading pleasure and utermost enlightment.

I agree with Ted on this point this is mainly DIY sport, and gift economy
artefact indeed. I dont see any particular *long time* strategies there.

OK maybe one, let say once when I'll be retired I'll have plenty of time
to print out few *ascii on paper* pages out of some antique printer each
morning (rather noon) while I waking up and have first caffe with some
*blasts from the pasts*... idilic ha? 
Well lets take *worst case* scenario of .com future, assuming that
complete legacy of the digital domain will be commercialized pretty soon,
sometime after use of paper for purpose of printmaking will be forbidden
for most of us, goverment and corporate sector will have then special
permissions to print documents on paper. Rest of us will relay on
(envirinment friendly) e-books(TM) and digitalPaper(TM) cellularZines(TM)
and other widgets for *individual nonimmersive* use, this highly .com
services will be available to anyone and everywhere, charged per bits but
that's however not issue here. Printing on paper will be crimonal act
against the planet...well maybe not so idilic but still good for business.

z</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>Robbin Neal Murphy</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 17 May 2000 02:30:17 -0400 (EDT)</date>
<content>


I got bored and did hotbot search on my name and -- lo and behold --
mr.net.art came up from 1998 on rewired:

http://www.rewired.com/98/0204.html

for the record, I received a 1/2 vote.

Rob</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.6</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Re: (protocol) Re: Histories</subject>
<from>t byfield</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 24 May 2000 17:15:52 -0400</date>
<content>
alex {AT} rhizome.org (Tue 05/16/00 at 10:31 AM -0700):

&gt; The Rhizome contentbase is backed-up periodically using normal protocols, 
&gt; plus a semi-complete archive lives on my home computer and probably in a 
&gt; few other places (eat your heart out, 0100101110101101.ORG!). Rhizome is 
&gt; dedicated to long term preservation, so this material is not likely to 
&gt; disappear any time soon.

i should hope not. after all--and it's a shame you didn't 
mention this aspect--in doing so, rhizome is only protect-
ing its assets:


     &lt;http://rhizome.org/subscribe/sub_agree.html&gt;

...  By posting material to RHIZOME RAW you agree to grant
     Rhizome Communications the non-exclusive, worldwide,
     perpetual, royalty-free right to reproduce, modify,
     edit, publish, sub-license, make derivative works from
     and distribute such material in any form or media,
     including posting such material on RHIZOME DIGEST or the
     RHIZOME Web Site. Rhizome Communications reserves the
     right, in its sole discretion, to edit any subscriber
     posting, and to chose to include or not include such
     posting in RHIZOME DIGEST or on the RHIZOME Web Site. ...


     &lt;http://rhizome.org//artbase/provider_agmt.html&gt;

...  You grant Rhizome.org the non-exclusive, worldwide,
     royalty-free right to reproduce, store, modify,
     distribute in digital form, perform and display your Art
     Project in connection with, or to promote, the ArtBase.
     You also agree that Rhizome.org may use your name on the
     Rhizome.org Web site, or in connection with promoting
     the ArtBase. 
     
     Rhizome.org reserves the right to make changes to your
     Art Project as may be necessary to maintain the ArtBase,
     including for the purpose of adapting it to changing
     technologies. Rhizome.org also reserves the right to
     index your Art Project within the ArtBase, to remove
     your Art Project from the ArtBase at any time or to
     discontinue the ArtBase. Rhizome.org will consider your
     requests to modify or update your Art Project, but will
     not be required to make any such changes. ...
     

&gt; ideas and suggests? post to list {AT} rhizome.org.

what--and grant rhizome the non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, 
royalty-free right to reproduce, store, modify, distribute in 
digital form, publish, sub-license, make derivative works from, 
perform and/or display my ideas and suggests? not on your life.

cheers,
t</content>
</mail>
</mails>
</chapter>