... 0.0 <nettime> art in the nettimes etc. Calin Dan nettime-l@desk.nl Tue, 29 Apr 1997 23:31:21 +0200 (MET DST) 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 >natural< 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 >net art< 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 >dandy<, so well married with the >data<, 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. >Resistance through art< was then a slogan legitimating a special position >of artists who were truly believing that isolation into a specific medium >was vouching for political dissidence. The complementary trend was to >force the acceptance of active cultural dissidents as artistic authorities >(in the "inner" circles of the art world). The two situations are >interchangeable in the sense that they both consider political engagement >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 >system< 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 >system<, 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 >extending< its borders. 7. {Loss of legitimacy.} >Net art< 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. >Art is dead< and >net is art< are two symmetric attitudes whose polemic >values have to be appreciated "cum grano salis". But the development of >internet is not a fresh issue, and basically new media are not necessarily >new. Therefore maybe the euphoric statements, the holistic visions and the >pessimistic evaluations are corners that could be cut more drastically on >the base of historic experience, for getting into more matter-of-factly >estimates of the usefulness and dangers confronting the art in the >nettimes. 8. {The parenthesis of the >new<.} 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 >web< 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 >surfers< 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 >surfing< 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 >the 4th dimension<, 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 >digital artisans< (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. 1.0 Net.art.history? Charlotte Frost <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Thu, 3 Oct 2013 15:01:52 +0800 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? 2.0 Re: Net.art.history? Nicholas O'Brien <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Thu, 3 Oct 2013 22:54:40 -0400 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 2.0-p.211 nettime: Art on Net davidg. nettime-l@desk.nl Wed, 12 Mar 1997 19:08:17 +0100 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 2.1 Re: Net.art.history? mez breeze <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Fri, 4 Oct 2013 20:49:20 +1000 On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Charlotte Frost <[log in to unmask] > wrote: > Is this post one of the most iconic pieces of net art history? > http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9703/msg00094.html > How about: From: "Vuk Cosic" <[log in to unmask]> 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 > whats a net.art backbone? good one, i suppose it's a providers idea of 7-11 sorta v ###################################################### #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 071101010 07110101 0711.00100# # # # _____ _ _ _____ _ _ # # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # # \/ /_/ |_|_| \/ /_/ |_|_| # # # # # #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 071101010 07110101 0711.00100# ########### http://www.ljudmila.org/7-11/ ############ and: X-Sender: [log in to unmask] Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 07:14:01 -0700 To: [log in to unmask] From: nov 97 <[log in to unmask]> Subject: [7-11] net art homework Sender: [log in to unmask] Reply-To: [log in to unmask] http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~bookchin/finalProject.html _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| \/ /_/ |_|_| \/ /_/ |_|_| # > # # > # # > #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > > > Thank you for participating in 7-11 MAILING LIST > SUBSCRIBER SATISFACTION SURVEY. > > > > > ###################################################### > #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 071101010 07110101 0711.00100# > # # > # _____ _ _ _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # \/ /_/ |_|_| \/ /_/ |_|_| # > # # > # # > #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 071101010 07110101 0711.00100# > ########### http://www.ljudmila.org/7-11/ _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____|################################################################## >## ############ ########## # ### ### ## ###### > #### ###### #### #### ###### ############## ###### > # #### ##### #### ########## ###### ### ####### > > > - [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] -- >>>> who 7-11 [log in to unmask] Members of list '7-11': [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] 24 subscribers _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| \/ /_/ |_|_| \/ /_/ |_|_| # > # # > # # > #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > > > Thank you for participating in 7-11 MAILING LIST > SUBSCRIBER SATISFACTION SURVEY. > > > > > ###################################################### > #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 071101010 07110101 0711.00100# > # # > # _____ _ _ _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____| | | \ / / /____| | | # > # /_ _\ / /_____| | | /_ _\ / /_____| | | # > # \/ /_/ |_|_| \/ /_/ |_|_| # > # # > # # > #1.7.100(today="7-11.00 071101010 07110101 0711.00100# > ########### http://www.ljudmila.org/7-11/ _____ _ _ # > # __/\__ |___ | / / | __/\__ |___ | / / | # > # \ / / /____|################################################################## >## ############ ########## # ### ### ## ###### > #### ###### #### #### ###### ############## ###### > # #### ##### #### ########## ###### ### ####### > > > - 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 <[log in to unmask]> To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> 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 * 2.2 Re: Net.art.history? Josephine Bosma <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Fri, 4 Oct 2013 13:33:17 +0200 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 * 2.3 Re: Net.art.history? Simon Biggs <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Fri, 4 Oct 2013 12:58:47 +0100 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 2.4 Re: Net.art.history? mez breeze <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Fri, 4 Oct 2013 22:28:54 +1000 On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Josephine Bosma <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Wow. That is amazing. I hope my English and my work have improved a bit > over time. > 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]. > > 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. > 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 & Manuscript Library. Makes for fascinating reading. > 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. > 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... > 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. > 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 2.5 Re: Net.art.history? Michael Connor <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Fri, 4 Oct 2013 08:56:40 -0400 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 <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > 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). 2.6 Re: Net.art.history? Rob Myers <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Fri, 4 Oct 2013 15:46:49 -0700 On 04/10/13 05:56 AM, Michael Connor wrote: > > As part of our conservation program, Rhizome has also preserved a few > 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.] 2.7 Re: Net.art.history? Josephine Bosma <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Sat, 5 Oct 2013 11:26:05 +0200 > > 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 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 * 2.8 Re: Net.art.history? Jan Robert Leegte <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Sat, 5 Oct 2013 18:16:15 +0200 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 2.9 Re: Net.art.history? Trond Lossius <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Sun, 6 Oct 2013 08:57:16 +0200 Hi, On Oct 4, 2013, at 2:56 PM, Michael Connor <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > 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). 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 3.0 Re: nettime: Art on Net carey young nettime-l@desk.nl Thu, 13 Mar 1997 03:47:49 +0000 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 3.0-p.216 <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Rachel O' Dwyer nettime-l@kein.org Thu, 27 Jun 2019 11:27:13 +0100 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. 3.1 Re: nettime: Art on Net Alexei Shulgin nettime-l@desk.nl Thu, 13 Mar 1997 13:47:53 +0300 > The term net-art (as opposed to art that happens to > appear on the net) should be quietly ditched. > 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 3.2 RE: nettime: Art on Net Olia Lialina nettime-l@desk.nl Thu, 13 Mar 1997 16:25:39 +-300 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 3.3 Re: nettime: Art on Net Robert Adrian nettime-l@desk.nl Fri, 14 Mar 1997 19:29:09 +0200 David Garcia wrote (in respect to artists' use of Video): >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. 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 & 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 & d". ==================================================================== *Art should concern itself as much with behavior as it does with appearance* - Norman T. White ==================================================================== Robert Adrian <http://netbase.t0.or.at/~radrian/> 3.4 Re: nettime: Art on Net rachel baker nettime-l@desk.nl Sun, 16 Mar 1997 01:34:01 +0100 >>The term net-art (as opposed to art that happens to >>appear on the net) should be quietly ditched. > >impossible after the definitive introduction by grandmasters Cosic and >Shulgin in Trieste last May > >this term is a heuristic device used with a lot of irony by the operators > >the first truly machinic art form > >-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 >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<+>isle of wight<=>liverpool<if>lusanne<then>vienna<go to>budapest<&> ljublana<re:>barcelone<go to>bahamas 4.0 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Gary Hall nettime-l@kein.org Thu, 27 Jun 2019 13:26:26 +0100 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. 4.0-p.219 <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism snafu nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 09 Nov 1999 02:23:14 +0100 >> > > 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. >> >> in another interview that you gave, you were affirming that what makes the >> difference between the original and the copy on the net is given by the >> domain: an original net artwork would be recognizable, according to you, >> from the name of the server on which the project was uploaded for the >> first time. > >not nessessary the first time, it is more complicated, but in general you >understood me right > >also look at http://art.teleportacia.org/Location_Yes > >> >> >> Next time we will hear you saying that the originality of the net is based >> on interactivity so that all the origninal artworks are the ones based on >> streaming and real time interaction... > >hmm, this i never said, sorry > >> >> >> i don't understand why you are so obsessed in defending this concept, > >i dont think that i defend a concept, i deal with nowadays reality and primitive >perception of copyright subject on the net > >> that >> after all, exist only since the advent of borghesy, but it was unknown to >> the Romans for istance, for which a copy was identical to the original... >> >> originality is the concept on the base of which has been possible over the >> last 200 years steal and extrapolate artworks from their native context to >> transfer them in the western museum and galleries: the genius of the >> creator is always there, trapped in the artwork... you buy the artwork, >> you get a piece of geniality, right? > >right > >> >> >> after all, why the universities continue to teach hystory of art -- that >> has been almost entirely revolutionary over the last century? >> >> beacuse they need critics that are able to draw a line between original >> and fake, real art and unsellable trash... they need critics that >> establish, directly or inderectly, a prize for a form of commodity that >> has always been difficult to categorize and, therefore, to quantify... >> > >sounds convincing, but i never studied at art academy, i dont know their >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... >> if these are the premises, i think that we have to find the potential >> differences that the net introduce, in the production of communication and >> art... > >sure > >> we have to >> >> go for a non mimetic process and to push on mutation, not to reintroduce >> from the window what we could trash from the main door. > >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... >it is loosers ideology sorry, but /~loosers ideology wasn't found on this server >> >> >> plagiarism don't aim necessary to destruction, but it shows how it's easy >> to replicate... great plagiarist always had to learn the techniques of the >> masters before replicating them at an accetable level... > >true > >> now we can >> replicate complex system in few minutes, just using a software... > >but it is not a big deal and this is what i say in the paragraph u qouted above > >> >> >> it means that the machines and the codes had accumulated such a quantity >> of human kwnoledge that, sharing it, we can progress much faster on a >> collective level than we did in the past... > >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 >> any time that i look at the >> source code of an html page i learn something that i could never get from >> a manual...and copy and paste it, it's the easiest way to understand how >> it works for my pourposes... >> >> but we have to fight to keep this openess, and not to continue to defend >> the same old impossible castles... > >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... >> >> >> there's nothing wrong if you get paid to make art, but this is not the >> best way to do it... > >:) it is i'm glad for you :) >olia > 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. 4.1 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Molly Hankwitz nettime-l@kein.org Thu, 27 Jun 2019 15:28:58 -0700 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 <rachel.odwyer@gmail.com> 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. 4.2 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? voyd nettime-l@kein.org Fri, 28 Jun 2019 04:35:45 -0400 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. 4.4 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Tom Keene nettime-l@kein.org Fri, 28 Jun 2019 09:57:54 +0100 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. 4.5 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Minka Stoyanova nettime-l@kein.org Sun, 30 Jun 2019 17:04:57 +0300 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. 4.9 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Rachel O' Dwyer nettime-l@kein.org Mon, 1 Jul 2019 17:38:30 +0100 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. 4.10 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Francis Hunger nettime-l@kein.org Mon, 1 Jul 2019 20:45:54 +0200 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 4.11 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? tacira nettime-l@kein.org Tue, 02 Jul 2019 05:38:15 -0700 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 :) 4.12 Re: <nettime> Has net-art lost political significance? Future Tense nettime-l@kein.org Thu, 04 Jul 2019 18:55:03 +0000 +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? 5.0 <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism Florian Cramer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 15 Nov 1999 03:49:55 +0100 > 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 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: <http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi> 5.0-p.224 olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism nettime maillist mettime-l-temp@material.net Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:25:04 +0200 (CEST) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <nettime-l-temp {AT} material.net> is the temporary home of the nettime-l list while desk.nl rebuilds its list-serving machine. please continue to send messages to <nettime-l {AT} desk.nl> and your commands to <majordomo {AT} desk.nl>. 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 <olialia {AT} teleportacia.org> 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 <olialia {AT} teleportacia.org> Organization: Teleportacia To: nettime-l {AT} Desk.nl, list {AT} rhizome.org, Luther Blissett <12345 {AT} net27.it> 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 5.1 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism Florian Cramer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 15 Nov 1999 15:44:48 +0100 Am Mon, 15.Nov.1999 um 18:47:24 -0800 schrieb Craig Brozefsky: > I fail to see how this technical observation, that we can copy bits > from one place to another and that most net.art is independent of the > server, would be the impetus for a critique. Could you elaborate > please? Are you taling about a critique of conceptions of > 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 5.2 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism olia lialina nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 15 Nov 1999 23:40:28 +0300 Florian Cramer wrote: > > 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 > > 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. :) 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 5.3 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism Florian Cramer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 20 Nov 1999 03:26:00 +0100 Dear Craig, you wrote: > Florian Cramer <paragram {AT} gmx.net> writes: > > > 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. > > 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 <www.mongrel.org.uk>. 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. 5.4 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism robert adrian nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 20 Nov 1999 16:29:18 +0100 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 5.5 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism Simon Biggs nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sun, 21 Nov 1999 12:11:16 +0100 Florian wrote: >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. ----- 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 5.6 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism Tilman Baumgaertel nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sun, 21 Nov 1999 23:16:53 +0100 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. 5.7 Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism olia lialina nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 22 Nov 1999 02:54:40 +0300 > Cramer: > 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_. 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_" , > > > 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). but this is already a big lost http://art.teleportacia.org/Location_Yes 6.0 Re: net.art situation - G a r r e t t - <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Sat, 15 Feb 2003 21:04:42 +0000 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.... >I have to say that I=B9m offended by this whole thread on Rhizome and this is >likely the first time I have posted to this listserve. I=B9m offended because >I feel Rhizome and any online net art institutions/orgs like it are >essential to the community of artists and researchers that have developed >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! >So far, The mercantile solutions aren't doing the trick, although the Thing >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! >Sure, the Whitney has the Artport, but my point is talking about integration >within the gallery, which is a bit antithetical to the genre, but I think >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. >Good point. My mentor in grad school (whom, I feel, taught me so well that >I left before finishing - I think it had something to do with snatching that >pebble out of his hand) once said that the most honest art he had ever seen >was made by a 2-year old. I would argue that in the case of net art, this >would be possible, but unlikely. There is too much cultural baggage tied up >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!). >This is a great approach, but the question remains: Which institutions are >willing to work with the artists, and which artists are willing to work >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? >I am working in funding body. It does funded new media work and there is >certain institutions receive funding, and a lot of interesting project going >on. However, I do agree the structure not there, e.g. network, education, >promotion... In the recent selection of Award for Artists (one of the >funding scheme) the quality of applications that we received in the new >media arts section is so bad (not being critical, but really is true) I >wonder why the sector keep shouting there is no funding while we only >receive poor application? I understand there is frustration there to deal >with the funder, but the situation should be changed, both the attitude and >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! >I would, however, like >to throw out the idea that net art is a critical stance rather than an art >form, much the same way as "conceptual art" now is. Can a painting be net >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! >So where is the net art discourse? Not with Lev Manovich, heaven forbid slap your hand for going against the tides of popularism!!! :) >I've decided we may have came up with an answer. Not THE answer but >certainly >a response to this particular call. > >More over the weekend. waiting anxiously! a+ gar -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ [log in to unmask] http://www.asquare.org/ http://www.bannerart.org/ http://www.zendco.com/ +-----------------------------------------------------------+ 7.0 Re: net.art situation Murphy <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Sun, 16 Feb 2003 19:09:15 -0500 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: > what are the Thing doing these days? its been a while since i saw > 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. >> I would, however, like >> to throw out the idea that net art is a critical stance rather than an art >> form, much the same way as "conceptual art" now is. Can a painting be net >> 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! 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 & 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 7.0-p.228 <nettime> Re: [Nettime-bold] Josephine Berry's net art history Josephine Bosma nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 10 Feb 2001 10:33:37 +0100 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 * 7.1 Re: net.art situation Zoe Li <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Sun, 16 Feb 2003 22:57:47 -0800 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 7.2 Re: net.art situation - G a r r e t t - <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Mon, 17 Feb 2003 15:21:34 +0000 >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. 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! >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. 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! >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). 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. > 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... 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/ +-----------------------------------------------------------+ 7.3 Re: net.art situation Murphy <new-media-curating@jiscmail.ac.uk> Mon, 17 Feb 2003 17:09:39 -0500 on 2/17/03 10:21 AM, - G a r r e t t - at [log in to unmask] wrote: > 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.... 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. > 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! 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. > 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. 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. > 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. You seem to be making of net.art what you need to. Don't worry about Vuk's retirement. > 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. 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 8.0 Re: <nettime> Re: [Nettime-bold] Josephine Berry's net art history Josephine Berry nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 12 Feb 2001 11:06:24 +0000 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. ->- www.metamute.com -<- coming back soon * ->- www.ouimadame.org -<- * to follow 8.0-p.240 <nettime> Josephine Bosma: Between moderation and extremes. text warez nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Fri, 22 Sep 2000 13:08:07 +0200 (MEST) Text for Moscow: Between moderation and extremes. the tensions between net art theory and popular art discourse. ~ Josephine Bosma <<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&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. 8.1 Re: <nettime> Re: net art history Josephine Bosma nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:31:37 +0100 Josephine Berry wrote: > 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. > 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. >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. > 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 * 8.2 Re: <nettime> Re: [Nettime-bold] Josephine Berry's net art history Tilman Baumgaertel nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 13 Feb 2001 18:22:02 +0100 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: > >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, <...> 8.3 <nettime> Re: net art history trip dixon nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 14 Feb 2001 22:26:17 -0500 >>>>>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>>> ...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<<<<----- but maybe I'm just talking bollocks. }}}}}}}}}Any input? {screen.print())()){{{{<<<< } &&&&&&trip ((&cultural appropriation in sound::: http://www.mp3.com/tripDixon )) 8.4 <nettime> Re: Re: net art history Josephine Bosma nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Thu, 15 Feb 2001 12:39:30 +0100 robert adrian wrote: > All of the artists > you mention treat the Internet as public space > and, no matter what their other agendas may be, > an important political element of their work is > 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'. 8.5 Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history OVER EXPOSURE nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Thu, 15 Feb 2001 12:20:04 -0500 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 8.6 <nettime> Re: net art history josephine starrs nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Fri, 16 Feb 2001 04:57:13 +1100 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 8.7 Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history G.H. HOVAGIMYAN nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Fri, 16 Feb 2001 08:20:19 -0500 (EST) 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. 8.8 Re: <nettime> Re: net art history anne-marie nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 17 Feb 2001 16:25:47 -0800 > > >we in 'vns matrix' (cyberfeminist artist group) were making interactive >artworks and text based performances on the internet pre web days.... as > > >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. > 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/ 8.9 Re: <nettime>net.art-history Pit Schultz nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 19 Feb 2001 01:00:27 +0100 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) 8.10 Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history olia lialina nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:35:36 +0300 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 <http://www.russ.ru/netcult/20001114_olialia.html> and German <http://art.teleportacia.org/du.html>. 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: <http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/gr.jpg>. 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: <http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/1.jpg> <http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/2.jpg> <http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/3.jpg> <http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/4.jpg> <http://art.teleportacia.org/wvn/5.jpg> forever yours olia 8.11 Re: Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history Josephine Bosma nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:24:01 +0100 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: > "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. 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. > 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. 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) > Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very > 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? > 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." 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 * 8.12 <nettime> Re: art history n integer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:43:47 +0100 (CET) josephine bosma [u!l ador d!sz ja] re: olia lialina kommentari >> 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. > >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. 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. >> Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very >> different from saying it's dead. > >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 8.13 Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history murphy nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 19 Feb 2001 20:23:48 -0500 (EST) On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, olia lialina wrote: > 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. 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. > 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. 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. > I can already see the development, innovation and result. > We'll get a bunch of experts from Colorado writing > 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 8.14 Re: [Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime>net.art-history { brad brace } nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 20 Feb 2001 01:54:16 -0800 (PST) On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Pit Schultz wrote: > [...] > > 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) 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 8.15 <nettime> Re: net art history Simon Biggs nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:59:40 +0000 >On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, olia lialina wrote: >> 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. Murph wrote: >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. ----- 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. >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. ----- 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... >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. ----- 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 ;) 8.16 RE: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history Ivan Redi nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 20 Feb 2001 12:01:44 +0100 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 don’t 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. 8.17 Re: Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history Station Rose nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:16:10 +0100 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 & 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 >approached the question (that is one of a number of questions that keep >coming up): "Why have there been no great net artists? olia lialina : >> My students came back from Transmediale in Berlin and said >> there was a speaker, Mark America, who was announcing that >> net art is dead. >> 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 8.18 <nettime> Re: net art history Amy Alexander nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 21 Feb 2001 03:28:52 -0800 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} 8.19 Re: <nettime> Re: net art history nullpointer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:48:22 -0000 >>> >> 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. >> ASCII Paparazzi. . Anyway, the biggest problem net art journalists and observers have is that we are too few with too much to do. >> 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 >> 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:\> C:\>PATH=C:\PERL\BIN;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;\C:jdk1.2.2\bin ________________________________________________________ http://www.nullpointer.co.uk (all suffixes enabled) 8.20 Re: Re: Re: <nettime> Re: Re: net art history Cornelia Sollfrank nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:25:07 +0000 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. 8.21 <nettime> net art history (digest) olia lialina nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Fri, 23 Feb 2001 22:21:32 +0300 Josephine Bosma wrote: > 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. 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." > > Btw, saying that net art is just beginning isn't very > > 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! 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: > nn opinie it = the most intelligent + interessant data outputted by olia > lialina [second being ascii paparazzi] natalja, ti stanovish'sa sentimental'noj. ja ne uznaju tebia ------------------------------- murphy {AT} thing.net wrote: > > 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. > > Can't see that has happened much from my perch here in NYC. One day it too will come to NYC. ------------------------------- Pit Schultz: > 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. Yes, very true. ----------------------------------------------------------- brad brace wrote: > "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? 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: > Net.art: is this art in net? Yes > or art about net? Yes > or hypertext description of art? No > or rhetorical dilemma what art in general should be presented in net? No > Does it go beyond ugly designed web pages... No >... pure presentation of the canvases done in atelier... Yes >... boring pages of ASCII dogmas of? something... Yes >... technological > experiments of things never worked and never will (or if working then > simple: 2 web cams and a video beam v with a load of textual explanations)? Yes > 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. 8.22 <nettime> net art history (!ngezt) integer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 24 Feb 2001 11:17:47 +0100 (CET) olia lialina <olialia {AT} televisie.org> >Pit Schultz: > > >> 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. > > >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. >integer {AT} www.god-emil.dk wrote: > >> nn opinie it = the most intelligent + interessant data outputted by olia >> lialina [second being ascii paparazzi] > >natalja, ti stanovish'sa sentimental'noj. ja ne uznaju tebia konzum>zntmntl.g!glb!tz. du != d!fr ver!. Tilman Baumgaertel <tilman_baumgaertel {AT} csi.com> - lo.tekk kr!ket begd >hallo > >thanks for all the info. Very interesting. I've been thinking for years >that somebody should do something like that, The screenshots look great. > >Unfortunately all doesn't replace personal experience of the >piece/workofart/programm. I need to know that it works, unlike projects >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. >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 >So I need a copy of the >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 >Btw, did you consider to open source the whole thing? unsanitary open sore +? smile++ _ >Or are you trying to >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 | | +---------- | | < \\----------------+ | n2t0 | > e 8.23 software art vs. net art, was: Re: <nettime> net art history (digest) Florian Cramer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 24 Feb 2001 12:00:32 +0100 > Pit Schultz: > > > 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. 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" <http://www.signwave.co.uk> (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) 8.24 re: <nettime> net art history Robert Atkins nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 24 Feb 2001 11:50:39 -0500 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 8.25 <nettime> Re: net art history - Interview Yourself! Amy Alexander nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:16:12 -0800 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: >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. 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. 8.26 <nettime> Re: net art history - Interview Yourself! Josephine Bosma nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 26 Feb 2001 17:18:15 +0100 Amy Alexander wrote: > I propose a new approach, as part of the Plagiarist "New Millenium > 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 * 9.0 Re: <nettime> Josephine Bosma: Between moderation and extremes. richard barbrook nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Fri, 22 Sep 2000 19:53:51 -0400 Hiya, >the anti NATO protest by 'antiorp' during Kosovo war >(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 9.0-p.243#2 <nettime> Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 Tilman Baumgaertel nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 11 Dec 1999 18:24:31 +0100 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 & 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- & 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. & Raakim: Paid in full Dr. Tilman Baumgaertel, email: tilman {AT} thing.de MY HOMEPAGE HAS MOVED!!! http://www.thing.de/tilman 10.0 <nettime> re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 Dooley Le Cappellaine nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 11 Dec 1999 22:28:27 -0500 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. >At 15:12 15.11.99 -0500, you wrote: >> >>Hello Tillman, >>I am an artist and curator. >>From 1988-94 I ran a gallery of cutting edge contemporary art in SoHo New >York. >>During 1994 I got very interested in new media and decided to close my >>galley in order to focus on my work in this new medium. >>From late 1994 through September 1996 I worked on a CD Rom and website. >>The CD Rom was titled "Technophobia" and is an interactive exhibition of >>artists making artworks in New Media. I thought at the time I would produce >>CD Rom exhibitions the way I had presented real exhibitions in a gallery. >>I saw a few really Horrible on-line gallery sites and decided to >>concentrate on work that used New Media as an Art Medium rather than an >>archival or electronic catalog. >>Learning the progammes and buying the hardware that were necessary to >>realize MY plans and to realize the artists' projects for CD Rom, was a >>huge investment of time and money. >>Also the website had to be totally made from scratch as the material from >>the CD Rom was far too high in file size to present on the web. >>So the website: Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery; became an exhibtion site for >>the artists on "Technophobia". >>It was the first exhibition on the site and has been remade/upgraded >>countless times as my skills and the possibilities of the web expanded. > >So when did that go online exactly? > >> >>In late 1995 I met Wolfgang Staehle of "The Thing". I knew he'd exhibited a >>version of "the thing' as an art work at TZ Gallery in New York (through >>Tom Zollner) and I was intrigued. >>I think it can accurately be said that Wolfgang was the the first person in >>the "artworld" in New York at that time to be seriously exploring what for >>the moment is being called "New Media". > >I know all that. > >>However at that time it was shockingly primative; just people exchanging >>typed- out text messages: not much more that a crystal radio set. >> >>When I was inviting artists to participate in "Technophobia" I talked to >>Wolfgang again; "The thing" had really morphed from an artwork into a >>business. >>"the Thing" became the ISP for my gallery at http://www.thing.net/dooley. > >As I said, i need the date. > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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 10.0-p.250 <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories t.whid nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sun, 14 May 2000 14:15:39 -0400 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: <snip> > >[let me ammend this: I was specifically refering to .txt files that >comprise the textbase- plain text (which when it boils down to it the >Rhizome archive is) it will most likely port better than stuff that is >specically dependent on hardware, like an artwork that is dependent on a >certain type of machine (with like you say 5.25 floppies, etc). This is >never foolproof of course. But for the time being, the texts at Rhizome >and Nettime etc are what alot of people are going off of. And, yes it's >true that their server could be wiped out at anytime in a flood or >something...true, true, true!] </snip> 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 10.1 Re: <nettime> Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 Armin Medosch nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 13 Dec 1999 11:25:38 +0000 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 10.2 <nettime> Re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 Florian Cramer nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 14 Dec 1999 00:00:42 +0100 Am Sat, 11.Dec.1999 um 18:24:31 +0100 schrieb Tilman Baumgaertel: > 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. 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 <http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/emma/Gallery/telenetlink.html>) "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: <http://www.geocities.com/Paris/4947/>) 1990, summer Panscan Conference on ECHO BBS (later echonyc.com) Mark Bloch New York City production of a collaborative E-Mail poem (text at <http://www.echonyc.com/~panman/epoem.html>) 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 <http://www.neoism.org> 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: <http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi> 10.3 <nettime> [net\.]art(history|definition) [feigl, baumgaertel, future] nettime's_synthetic_system nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 14 Dec 1999 00:36:19 -0500 (EST) "Franz F. Feigl" <franz {AT} feigl.com> Re: <nettime> re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 Tilman Baumgaertel <tilman_baumgaertel {AT} csi.com> Re: <nettime> Re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 "Dr. Future" <richard {AT} dig-lgu.demon.co.uk> Re: <nettime> defining net.art (was: Olia Lialina, was: something or other...) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 02:58:31 +0100 From: "Franz F. Feigl" <franz {AT} feigl.com> Subject: Re: <nettime> 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 <tilman_baumgaertel {AT} csi.com> Subject: Re: <nettime> Re: Tilman-RFC #1: net art history 1993 - 1996 At 00:00 14.12.99 +0100, Florian Cramer wrote: >Am Sat, 11.Dec.1999 um 18:24:31 +0100 schrieb Tilman Baumgaertel: > >> 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. > >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. > 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. & 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" <richard {AT} dig-lgu.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: <nettime> defining net.art (was: Olia Lialina, was: something or other...) melinda rackham wrote: > >simon wrote: > > 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... <...> > if work is intended for flexible delivery over a global network with its > unique download rthythm its net.art, anything intended for distribution on > cdrom has a completely different intent, architecture and mode of > production. the definition is in the intention and the expereince. a few > years ago i remember asking Tiia Johansen from Estonia about why she was > putting up huge single images as web works, when all i was interrested in > was making tiny files for fast delivery, and her reply (made even more > dramatic by her fabulous accent) was " i like to make them wait." > > For me it is that wait... the delivery space, - the gap - , the > possibilities contained within the gap, and the expereience of that gap > 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... 10.4 Re: <nettime> [net\.]art(history|definition) Sean Cubitt nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 14 Dec 1999 12:44:07 +0000 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 10.5 Re: <nettime> [net\.]art(history|definition) [feigl, baumgaertel, future] Terrence J Kosick nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sat, 18 Dec 1999 22:52:34 -0800 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. 11.0 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories { brad brace } nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sun, 14 May 2000 13:48:06 -0700 (PDT) On Sun, 14 May 2000, t.whid wrote: > At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote: > <snip> > 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? This would only be worthwhile if the lists were _not moderated, and/or _all posts were archived. The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project >>>> since 1994 <<<< + + + 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 } 11.1 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories t byfield nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 15 May 2000 01:31:54 -0400 twhid {AT} spacelab.net (Sun 05/14/00 at 02:15 PM -0400): > 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. 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 11.2 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories cisler nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Mon, 15 May 2000 06:29:32 -0700 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 11.3 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories alex galloway nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Tue, 16 May 2000 10:31:13 -0700 >At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote: ><snip> > > > >[let me ammend this: I was specifically refering to .txt files that > >comprise the textbase- plain text (which when it boils down to it the > >Rhizome archive is) it will most likely port better than stuff that is > >specically dependent on hardware, like an artwork that is dependent on a > >certain type of machine (with like you say 5.25 floppies, etc). This is > >never foolproof of course. But for the time being, the texts at Rhizome > >and Nettime etc are what alot of people are going off of. And, yes it's > >true that their server could be wiped out at anytime in a flood or > >something...true, true, true!] ></snip> > >could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their >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 11.4 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories Zvonimir Bakotin nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 17 May 2000 04:43:35 +0200 (CEST) Dear archeologists, > > >At 1:25 PM -0400 5/14/00, Jennifer Crowe wrote: > ><snip> > > > > > >[let me ammend this: I was specifically refering to .txt files that > > >comprise the textbase- plain text (which when it boils down to it the > > >Rhizome archive is) it will most likely port better than stuff that is > > >specically dependent on hardware, like an artwork that is dependent on a > > >certain type of machine (with like you say 5.25 floppies, etc). This is > > >never foolproof of course. But for the time being, the texts at Rhizome > > >and Nettime etc are what alot of people are going off of. And, yes it's > > >true that their server could be wiped out at anytime in a flood or > > >something...true, true, true!] > ></snip> > > > >could the administrators of these lists post some comments on their > >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. <snip> 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... >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 11.5 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories Robbin Neal Murphy nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 17 May 2000 02:30:17 -0400 (EDT) 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 11.6 Re: <nettime> Re: (protocol) Re: Histories t byfield nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Wed, 24 May 2000 17:15:52 -0400 alex {AT} rhizome.org (Tue 05/16/00 at 10:31 AM -0700): > 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. 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: <http://rhizome.org/subscribe/sub_agree.html> ... 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. ... <http://rhizome.org//artbase/provider_agmt.html> ... 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. ... > 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