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"CODE": {
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"lists": [
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"author_name": "Florian Cramer",
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"id": "00628",
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"content": "Note: This text is almost identical with the essay \"Software Art and Writing\"\nwhich, just as McKenzie Wark's essay \"Codework\", is part of the recent\nissue of the American Book Review, vol.22, no.6. It was written by\nUlrike Gabriel and me as a retrospective reflection of our work in the\njury for the transmediale.01 software art award. \n\nIt is available online in HTML, PDF, LaTeX & plain text formats at \n<http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/index.html#software_art_-_transmediale>\n\n\n-FC\n\n....\n\n\nSoftware Art\n\nFlorian Cramer and Ulrike Gabriel\n\nAugust 15, 2001\n\n\nWhat is software art? How can ``software'' be generally defined? We had to\nanswer these questions at least provisionally when we were asked to be with the\nartist-programmer John Simon jr. in the jury of the ``artistic software'' award\nfor the transmediale.01 art festival in Berlin, Germany.\n\nSince more than a decade, festivals, awards, exhibitions and publications exist\nfor various forms of computer art: computer music, computer graphics,\nelectronic literature, Net Art and computer-controlled interactive\ninstallations, to name only a few, each of them with its own institutions and\ndiscourse. Classifications like the above show that attention is usually being\npaid to how, i.e. in which medium, digital artworks present themselves to the\naudience, externally. They also show that digital art is traditionally\nconsidered to be a part of ``[new] media art,'' a term which covers analog and\ndigital media alike and is historically rooted in video art. But isn't it a\nfalse assumption that digital art - i.e. art that consists of zeros and ones -\nwas derived from video art, only because computer data is conventionally\nvisualized on screens?\n\nBy calling digital art ``[new] media art,'' public perception has focused the\nzeros and ones as formatted into particular visual, acoustic and tactile media,\nrather than structures of programming. This view is reinforced by the fact that\nthe algorithms employed to generate and manipulate computer music, computer\ngraphics, digital text are frequently if not in most cases invisible, unknown\nto the audience and the artist alike. While the history of computer art still\nis short, it is rich with works whose programming resides in black boxes or is\nconsidered to be just a preparatory behind-the-scenes process for a finished\n(and finite) work on CD, in a book, in the Internet or in a ``realtime\ninteractive'' environment. The distribution of John Cage's algorithmically\ngenerated sound play ``Roarotorio,'' for example, includes a book, a CD and\nexcerpts of the score, but not even a fragment of the computer program which\nwas employed to compute the score.\n\nWhile software, i.e. algorithmic programming code, is inevitably at work in all\nart that is digitally produced and reproduced, it has a long history of being\noverlooked as artistic material and as a factor in the concept and aesthetics\nof a work. This history runs parallel to the evolution of computing from\nsystems that could only be used by programmers to systems like the Macintosh\nand Windows which, by their graphical user interface, camouflaged the mere fact\nthat they are running on program code, in their operation as well as in their\naesthetics. Despite this history, we were surprised that the 2001 transmediale\naward for software art was not only the first of its kind at this particular\nart festival, but as it seems the first of its kind at all.\n\nWhen the London-based digital arts project I/O/D released an experimental World\nWide Web browser, the Web Stalker http://www.backspace.org/iod/, in 1997, the\nwork was perceived to be a piece of Net Art. Instead of rendering Web sites as\nsmoothly formatted pages, the Web Stalker displayed their internal control\ncodes and visualized their link structure. By making the Web unreadable in\nconventional terms, the program made it readable in its underlying code. It\nmade its users aware that digital signs are structural hybrids of internal code\nand an external display that arbitrarily depends on algorithmic formatting.\nWhat's more, these displays are generated by other code: The code of the Web\nStalker may dismantle the code of the Web, but does so by formatting it into\njust another display, a display which just pretends to ``be'' the code itself.\nThe Web Stalker can be read as a piece of Net Art which critically examines its\nmedium. But it's also a reflection of how reality is shaped by software, by the\nway code processes code. If complex systems and their generative processors\nthemselves become language, formulation becomes the creation of a frame within\nwhich the system will behave, and of the control of this behaviour. The joint\noperation of these processes creates its own aesthetics which manifests itself\nno longer by application-restricted assignments, but in the free composition of\nthis system as a whole. (Which simply is what developing software is all\nabout.)\n\nSince software is machine control code, it follows that digital media are,\nliterally, written. Electronic literature therefore is not simply text, or\nhybrids of text and other media, circulating in computer networks. If\n``literature'' can be defined as something that is made up by letters, the\nprogram code, software protocols and file formats of computer networks\nconstitute a literature whose underlying alphabet is zeros and ones. By running\ncode on itself, this code gets constantly transformed into higher-level,\nhuman-readable alphabets of alphanumeric letters, graphic pixels and other\nsignifiers. These signifiers flow forth and back from one aggregation and\nformat to another. Computer programs are written in a highly elaborate syntax\nof multiple, mutually interdependent layers of code. This writing does not only\nrely on computer systems as transport media, but actively manipulates them when\nit is machine instructions. The difference is obvious when comparing a\nconventional E-Mail message with an E-Mail virus: Although both are short\npieces of text whose alphabets are the same, the virus contains machine control\nsyntax, code that interferes with the (coded) system it gets sent to.\n\nSoftware art means a shift of the artist's view from displays to the creation\nof systems and processes themselves; this is not covered by the concept of\n``media.'' ``Multimedia'', as an umbrella term for formatting and displaying\ndata, doesn't imply by definition that the data is digital and that the\nformatting is algorithmic. Nevertheless, the ``Web Stalker'' shows that\nmultimedia and terms like Net Art on the one hand and software art on the other\nare by no means exclusive categories. They could be seen as different\nperspectives, the one focussing distribution and display, the other one the\nsystemics.\n\nBut is generative code exclusive to computer programming? The question has been\nanswered by mathematics proper and the many historical employments of\nalgorithmic structures in the arts. A comparatively recent classical example is\nthe Composition 1961 No. I, January I by the contemporary composer and former\nFluxus artist La Monte Young, which is at once considered to be one of the\nfirst pieces of minimal music and one of the first Fluxus performance scores:\n\n ``Draw a straight line and follow it.''1\n\nThis piece can be called a seminal piece of software art because its\ninstruction is formal. At the same time, it is extremist in its aesthetic\nconsequence, in the implication of infinite space and time to be traversed.\nUnlike in most notational music and written theatre plays, its score is not\naesthetically detached from its performance. The line to be drawn could be even\nconsidered a second-layer instruction for the act of following it. But as it is\npractically impossible to perform the score physically, it becomes\nmeta-physical, conceptual, epistemological. As such the piece could serve as a\nparadigm for Henry Flynt's 1961 definition of Concept Art as ``art of which the\nmaterial is `concepts,' as the material of for ex. music is sound.''2 Tracing\nconcept art to artistic formalisms like twelve-tone music, Flynt argues that\nthe structure or concept of those artworks is, taken for itself, aesthetically\nmore interesting than the product of their physical execution. In analogy, we\nwould like to define software art as art of which the material is software.\n\nFlynt's Concept Art integrates mathematics as well, on the acognitive grounds\nof ``de-emphasiz[ing]'' its attribution to scientific discovery.3 With this\nclaim, Flynt coincides, if oddly, with the most influential contemporary\ncomputer scientist, Donald E. Knuth. Knuth considers the applied mathematics of\nprogramming an art; his famous compendium of algorithms is duely titled ``The\nArt of Computer Programming.''4\n\nShould the transmediale software art jury therefore have consisted of\nmathematicians and computer scientists who would have judged the entries by the\nbeauty of their code?\n\nWhat is known as Concept Art today is less rigorous in its immaterialism than\nthe art Flynt had in mind. It is noteworthy, however, that the first major\nexhibition of this kind of conceptual art was named ``Software'' and confronted\nart objects actually with computer software installations.5. Curated in 1970 by\nthe art critic and systems theorist Jack Burnham at the New York Jewish Museum,\nthe show was, as Edward A. Shanken suggests, ``predicated on the idea of\nsoftware as a metaphor for art [my emphasis],''6. It therefore stressed the\ncybernetical, social dimension of programmed systems rather than, as Flynt,\npure structure.\n\nThirty years later, after personal computing became ubiquituous, cultural\nstereotypes of what software is have solidified. Although the expectation that\nsoftware is, unlike other writing, not an aesthetic, but a ``functional tool''\nitself is an aesthetic expectation, software art nevertheless has become less\nlikely to emerge as conceptualist clean-room constructs than reacting to these\nstereotypes. The ``Web Stalker'' again might be referred to as such a piece. In\na similar fashion, the two works picked for the transmediale award, Adrian\nWard's ``Signwave Auto-Illustrator'' and Netochka Nezvanova's ``Nebula M.81,''\nare PC user software which acts up against its conventional codification,\neither by mapping internal functions against their corresponding signifiers on\nthe user interface (Auto-Illustrator) or by mapping the signifiers of program\noutput against human readability (Nebula M.81).\n\nThe range of works entered for the transmediale.01 software art award shows\nthat coding is a highly personal activity. Code can be diaries, poetic,\nobscure, ironic or disruptive, defunct or impossible, it can simulate and\ndisguise, it has rhetoric and style, it can be an attitude. Such attributes\nmight seem to contradict the fact that artistic control over generative\niterations of machine code is limited, whether or not the code was\nself-written. But unlike the Cagean artists of the 1960s, the software artists\nwe reviewed seem to conceive of generative systems not as negation of\nintentionality, but as balancing of randomness and control. Program code thus\nbecomes a material with which artist work self-consciously. Far from being\nsimply art for machines, software art is highly concerned with artistic\nsubjectivity and its reflection and extension into generative systems.7\n\n\nReferences\n\n[Fly61]\n Henry Flynt. Concept art. In La Monte Young and Jackson MacLow, editors, An\n Anthology. Young and MacLow, New York, 1963 (1961).\n[hun90]\n George Maciunas und Fluxus-Editionen, 1990.\n[Knu98]\n Donald E. Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming. Addison-Wesley, Reading,\n Massachusetts, 1973-1998.\n[Sha]\n Edward A. Shanken. The house that jack built: Jack burnham's concept of\n `software` as a metaphor of art. Leonardo Electronic Almanach, 6(10). \n http://www.duke.edu/~giftwrap/House.html\n\n\nFootnotes:\n\n1 facsimile reprint included in [hun90], no page numbering\n\n2 Henry Flynt, Concept Art [Fly61] ``Since `concepts' are closely bound up with\nlanguage,'' Flynt writes, ``concept art is a kind of art of which the material\nis language.''\n\n3 ibid.\n\n4 [Knu98]\n\n5 Among them Ted Nelson's hypertext system in its first public display,\naccording to Edward A. Shanken, The House that Jack Built: Jack Burnham's\nConcept of ``Software'' as a Metaphor for Art, [Sha]\n\n6 ibid.\n\n7 Or, as Adrian Ward puts it: ``I would rather suggest we should be thinking\nabout embedding our own creative subjectivity into automated systems, rather\nthan naively trying to get a robot to have its `own' creative agenda. A lot of\nus do this day in, day out. We call it programming.'' (quoted from an E-Mail\nmessage to the ``Rhizome'' mailing list, May 7, 2001)\n\n\n-- \nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/\nhttp://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html\nGnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA \n\"c u in he][l][avan\" (mez, _Viro.Logic Condition][ing][ 1.1_)\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
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"message-id": "20010920200524.K276@theuth.complit.fu-berlin.",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0109/msg00628.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"list": "nettime_bold",
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"date": "Thu, 20 Sep 2001 20:05:24 +0200",
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"from": "lorian Cramer <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de>",
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"to": "Nettime <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>",
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"subject": "[Nettime-bold] On Software Ar"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "Florian Cramer",
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"id": "00302",
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"content": "(The following review was commissed by MUTE and will appear in the\nforthcoming MUTE issue, see <http://www.metamute.com>. Josephine Berry\nhas my cordial thanks for editing the text into proper English. The MUTE\npeople were so kind to let me speak about literature and systems theory\non a panel with Robert Coover and Jeff Noon at Tate Modern. See\n<http://www.metamute.com/events/mutetate08042001.htm> for the details.\n-FC)\n\n\n\nCODE: Chances and Obstacles in the Digital Ecology\n\n\nThe recent Cambridge conference CODE amounted to more than a\nstraightforward expansion of its acronym into - in computereze - its\nexecutable \"Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Economy\". It\nactually got some of its participants collaborating. The most interesting\nidea regarding collaboration came as an off-the-cuff remark from\nJames Boyle, professor of law at Duke University, who compared the\nrecent interest in open digital code to environmentalism. The first\nenvironmental activists were scattered and without mutual ties, Boyle\nsaid, because the notion of 'the environment' did not yet exist. It had\nto be invented before it could be defended.\n\nAfter two packed days of presentations, it could well be that the\nvirus will spread and make artists, activists and scholars in digital\nculture associate 'IP' with 'Intellectual Property' rather than 'Internet\nProtocol', whether they like it or not. Unlike many Free Software/Open\nSource events with their occasional glimpses at the cultural implications\nof open code, the CODE programme covered the free availability and\nproprietary closure of information in the most general terms setting it\ninto a broad disciplinary framework which included law, literature, music,\nanthropology, astronomy and genetics. Free Software has historically\ntaught people that even digitised images and sounds run on code. But\nthat this code is speech which can be locked into proprietary schemes\nsuch as patents and shrinkwrap licenses, thereby decreasing freedom of\nexpression, is perhaps only beginning to dawn on people. John Naughton,\nmoderator of the panel on \"The Future of Knowledge\", illustrated this\nsituation by describing how, in the US at least, it is illegal to wear\nT-Shirts or recite haikus containing the few sourcecode words of DeCSS,\na program which breaks the cryptography scheme of DVD movies.\n\nThere is little awareness that any piece of digital data, whether an\naudio CD, a video game or a computer operating systems is simply a number\nand that every new copyrighted digital work reduces the amount of freely\navailable numbers. While digital data, just like any text, can be parsed\narbitrarily according to a language or data format (the four letters\ng-i-f-t, for example, parse as a synonym for 'present' in English, but as\n'poison' in German), the copyrighting of digital data implies that there\nis only one authoritative interpretation of signs. The zeros and ones of\nMicrosoft Word are legally considered a Windows program and thus subject\nto Microsoft's licensing, although they could just as well be seen as\na piece of concrete poetry when displayed as alphanumeric code or as\nmusic when burned onto an audio CD. The opposite is also true: no-one\ncan rule out that the text of, say, Shakespeare's Hamlet cannot be parsed\nand compiled into a piece of software that infringes somebody's patents.\n\nThe legal experts speaking at CODE also explained the enormous expansion\nin intellectual property rights in the last few years. While patents are\nwidely known to conflict with the freedom of research and even with the\nfreedom to write in programming languages, the conference nevertheless\nextended its focus beyond this and made its participants aware of IP\nrights as the negative subtext to what was once considered the promiscuous\ntextuality of the Internet. Still, it was surprising to see speakers with\nvery diverse academic and professional backgrounds position themselves so\nunanimously against the current state of IP rights. In another informal\nremark, Volker Grassmuck proposed that we refocus 'information ecology'\nfrom software ergonomics to the politics of knowledge distribution. Does\ndigital code need its own Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund?\n\nThe conference took its inspiration from Free Software, but didn't bother\ngoing into basics and priming the participants on what Free Software\nand Open Source technically are - which was both an advantage and a\ndisadvantage. General topics were advanced right from the first session\nwithout first clarifying such important issues as the meaning of the\n'free' in Free Software. GNU project founder Richard M. Stallman -\nwho usually explains this as 'free, as in speech' not ' free, as in\nbeer' - revealed his own questionable conceptions by proposing three\ndifferent copyleft schemes for what he categorised as 'functional works',\n'opinion pieces' and 'aesthetic works': as if these categories could be\nseparated, as if they weren't aspects of every artwork, and as if computer\nprograms didn't have their own politics and aesthetics (GNU Emacs could\nbe analysed in just the same way Matthew Fuller analysed the aesthetic\nideology of Microsoft Word.) It was annoying to hear Stallman reduce the\ndistribution of digital art to 'bands' distributing their 'songs', and\nit was equally annoying to hear Glyn Moody call Stallman the Beethoven,\nLinus Torvalds the Mozart and Larry Wall - a self-acclaimed postmodernist\nand experimental writer in his own right - the Schubert of programming.\n\nTo make matters worse, the artists who spoke on the second day of CODE\nechoed these aesthetic conservatisms in perfect symmetry. Michael\nCentury, co-organiser of the conference and Stallman's respondent,\nunfortunately didn't have enough time to speak about the notational\ncomplexity of modern art in any detail. He was the only speaker to\naddress this issue. Otherwise, artists were happy to be 'artists', and\nprogrammers were happy to be 'programmers'. Stallman's separation of the\n'functional' and the 'aesthetic' was also implied in Antoine Moireau's\nFree Art License <http://www.artlibre.org>, a copyleft for artworks which\nfailed to illuminate why artists shouldn't simply use the GNU copyleft\nproper. This question is begged all the more since the license is based\non the assumption that the artwork in contrast to the codework is, quote,\n'fixed'. While Moireau's project was at least an honest reflection of\nFree Software/Open Source, one couldn't help the impression that other\ndigital artists appropriated the term as a nebulous, buzzword-compatible\nanalogy. While there are certainly good reasons for not releasing art as\nFree Software, it still might be necessary to speak of digital art and\nFree Software in a more practical way. Much if not most of digital art\nis locked into proprietary formats like Macromedia Director, QuickTime\nand RealVideo. It is doomed to obscurity as soon as their respective\nmanufacturers discontinue the software.\n\nOn the other hand, the Free Software available obviously doesn't cut it\nfor many people, artists in particular. The absence of, for example,\ndesktop publishing software available for GNU/Linux is no coincidence\nsince the probability of finding programmers among graphic artists\nis much lower than the probability of finding programmers among system\noperators. This raises many issues for digital code in the commons, issues\nthe conference speakers seemed, however, to avoid on purpose. While most\nof them pretended that it was no longer necessary to use proprietary\nsoftware, their computers still ran Windows or the Macintosh OS. It\nwould have been good to see such contradictions if not resolved then at\nleast reflected.\n\nCode, Queens College, Cambridge, UK, April 5-6, 2001\n\nFlorian Cramer <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de>\nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/\n\n-- \nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/\nhttp://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html\nGnuPG/PGP public key ID 3D0DACA2 \n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n",
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"message-id": "20010413151956.A9959@gmx.net",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0104/msg00302.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"list": "nettime_bold",
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"date": "Fri, 13 Apr 2001 15:19:56 +0200",
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"from": "lorian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>",
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"to": "Nettime <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>",
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"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Review of the CODE conference (Cambridge/UK, April 5-6, 2001)"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
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"content": "\n> July/August 'Theme of the Month':\n>\n> Software as art\n>\n> If your artwork is 'software that does something' (such as Mongrel's\n> 'Linker' software) then what issues are involved? Do curators get it?\n> Is it 'enabling others', or artwork in itself? How do you 'show' or\n> distribute it? What about 'user support'?\n\nas a start, you can take a look at\n\nhttp://www.transmediale.de/01/en/software.htm\n\nwhich has the jury statement and nominated projects of the competition for\nsoftware art at this year's transmediale festival.\n\nthe competition for transmediale.02 in february 2002 is underway.\n\ngreetings,\n-a\n\n\n------------------------------------------------\nAndreas Broeckmann - [log in to unmask]\ntransmediale - Klosterstr.68-70 - 10179 Berlin\ntel. 030-247219-07 (fax -09) www.transmediale.de",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=230091",
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"follow-up": [
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{
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"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=232018",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\n>Ittai Bar-Joseph\n...\n>Aren't the definitions and \"regulations\" involving the use of a software\n>artwork part of the concept?\n>If so, is it possible / neccesary / advisable to form a set of rules that\n>define the way software art be dealt with?\n\nas with any artistic practice, fixed rules would not help, but an exchange\nof experiences and a comparison of conditions might help to create a good\nand informed curatorial practice.\n\nsoftware art is only just coming into focus, so it is early days to\ndescribe, let alone critique its presentation. we have developed a\ndescription of software art for the transmediale competition that excludes\napplications of software like director or shockwave; what is interesting in\nsoftware are, in my view, is that it is an artistic practice that takes\ncode as its material and that uses programming as a way to 'shape' the\ncode. the result can be open, algorithmic processes that articulate the\nrigid and the open dimensions of digital processes, they can highlight the\ntechnical or the socio-cultural dimensions of technology and do this in the\nvery 'language' of the digital machines themselves. software might be the\nultimate medium of creativity in a digital environment.\n\nbesides the transmediale.01 site, some examples of software art can be found on\ndigital_is_not_analog.01 - http://www.d-i-n-a.org\n\nReena Jana: Real Artists Paint by Numbers\nhttp://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,44377,00.html\n\n\ngreetings,\n-a",
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"date": "Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:49:17 +0200",
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"from": "Andreas Broeckmann",
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"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "Ittai Bar-Joseph",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=233374",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nAndreas Broeckmann wrote:\n\n> we have developed a description of software art for the transmediale competition\n> that excludes\n> applications of software like director or shockwave;\n\nOn what basis was this decision made?\nToday Director is a tool which enables the creation of professional software.\nI think many people (developers included) still refer to Director as an\ninteractive animation / games\napplication, and are quite ignorant when it comes to the more interesting and new\nfeatures that are\nscarcely in use yet. With today's \"imaging lingo\" (new features added in Director\n8), it's possible to\ncreate a Photoshop-like application from scratch.\nCheers,\nIttai.",
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"date": "Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:46:17 +0200",
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"from": "Ittai Bar-Joseph",
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"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "anthony huberman",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=234740",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nAndreas referenced the Reena Jana text in Wired.com. I organized the\nrecent panel and performance event called \"Artists and their Software\" that\nReena's text references, and so this month's topic strikes me as\nparticularly relevant.\n\nThe event went very well. A comment from the audience, however, stuck out\nas something that seems to be a central shortcoming. Many choose to look\nat the coding and the programming and the \"how to\" aspects of\nart-as-software, often overlooking the immensely fertile territory that can\nbe addressed through a broader look at the phenomenon: why is it important?\nWhat implications do this trend have on our general understanding of what\nart-making is all about? How do the values/strategies/principles that\nart-as-software maintain affect the way in which artists and audiences\nunderstand art? Many more broad questions come to mind: why are artists\nattracted to software? How does their awareness of software, and its\navailability, influence their art-making strategies? How do institutions\nneed to respond to this growing interest? Is incorporating software nothing\nmore than a technology fetish? More specific concerns can arise: what\nhappens to \"improvisation\"? How is the notion of chance incorporated in\nthis type of art? What happens to the \"aura\"? What are the boundaries of\nsoftware as an art-making medium? How can artists involve their audiences\nwith software? Can one talk about software-generated art as ever being\n\"finished\"? Do software artists have to be programmers? What is the social\nlife of software?\n\nThe algorithm seems to replace the creative will of the artist, in many\ncases. This is exciting to me not because it is technologically marvelous,\nbut because of what this implies in how the artist and the audience\nunderstand each other.\n\nSoftware is a set of rules. It is the grammar within which a vocabulary of\ncomputer code makes sense. As British sociologist Anthony Giddens has\npointed out, we understand our reality as already existing and seek to\nwrite scenarios that allow us to act out a role within that reality. The\nsoftware seems to be the scenario, but it relies on users to act it out.\n\n\nWhat makes software come alive is precisely its social life: how these set\nof instructions are interpreted and enacted. And understanding this\nprocess of interpretation, of behavior, can fill up pages and pages.\n\nI look forward to more postings this month... thank you!\n\n\nAnthony Huberman\nDirector of Education and Public Programs\nP.S.1 Contemporary Art Center\n22-25 Jackson Ave\nLong Island City, NY 11101\n718.784.2084 ext.24\n[log in to unmask]\nwww.ps1.org",
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"date": "Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:30:36 -0500",
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"from": "anthony huberman",
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"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "Patrick Lichty",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=235574",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nA few glancing ideas...\n\nMany choose to look\n>at the coding and the programming and the \"how to\" aspects of\n>art-as-software, often overlooking the immensely fertile territory that can\n>be addressed through a broader look at the phenomenon: why is it important?\n\nThere are two views I can think of regarding the use of software as art - one\napplies to off-the-shelf, the other to hand-coded... To me, programs like\nPhotoshop offer few real opportuntiies to redefine its own kind of\ninteractivity, so I relegate it to the category of 'tool', rather than\n'expression'.\n\nI think for one that there are functions and aspects of the technonlgies that\nare not being addressed by off-the shelf software. This is the programming\nargument. There are larger threads here such as engagement with the technical\npart of the electronic culture, which has its own fascinating set of protocols.\n\n\n>What implications do this trend have on our general understanding of what\n>art-making is all about?\n\nWell, it's merely an extension of craft placed within the immaterial milieu if\ncomputers, yes? It's very funny that a great deal of excitement is based\naround artists makign their own code. It is a direct attempt to break with the\ncommonly held public perception that computers are easy and cheap, and thus so\nis the art created with them. Many times I have gotten the \"How long does it\ntake you to create that?\" question.\n\nThis is a very Marxist question. Much of commodification of art has to do with\nuse value ascribed to the degree of labor expended.\n\nIt's an attempt to translate craft to the digital.\n\nMany more broad questions come to mind: why are artists\n>attracted to software?\n\nI'm not sure what you're getting at here. To use a computer, you have to have\nit. It's the yin to the yang of chips. As to why artists are drawn to code, I\nthink it's a tug of war between the traditional breaking of extant boundaries\n(or at least pushing them, which is a ubiquitous theme in art since Modernism)\nand the necessity of having to create code to get a computer to do what you\nwant it to do.\n\nMyself, I tend to be modular in combining functions of many off the shelf\nprograms. So, in this respect, I would count myself as a hybrid under my own\nrubric; a pastiche artist in regards to code.\n\n\n\n\n\nHow does their awareness of software, and its\n>availability, influence their art-making strategies?\n\nI think it's quite relevant to how the work is contextualized in regard to the\nmedium (digital technologies).\n\nHow do institutions\n>need to respond to this growing interest?\n\nFirst, the audience for this art is pretty much a niche at this time. For\nexample, there are a LOT of people out there who still do not know how to\ncreate a folder on their hard drive (trust me), and to them, this art is\nlargely meaningless, or the subtleties are lost.\n\nSecondly, the institution (in my experience with it) is trying to update\nitself, but for the most part, lags far behind the artists. Until recently,\nthe Smithsonian servers only had RealServer 2.0 (we're at something like v.7\nnow). Also, the technical support for the work is quite specialized, which\ncompounds the problems.\n\nShould an institution have a highly trained tech staff for a relatively small\ncollection, or subcontract? What are the relative costs, logistics, etc?\n\nIs incorporating software nothing\n>more than a technology fetish?\n\nNO.\n\n\n\n\n\nMore specific concerns can arise: what\n>happens to \"improvisation\"?\n\nThat's dependent largely upon the mode of expression. In the case of off-the\nshelf software, the mode of improv is tied to finding novel uses for extant\nfunctions, and in the case of coding, the novelty of codecraft and finding\ninteresting ways to weave the concept into the code,\n\nTo me this is a very important point, for much of this post, it seems that the\nconversation has been centered around technique and production, and NOT\nCONTENT. This is the technolpolic distraction. In my opinion, with software\nas art, code is little different than steel, or clay, or oils.\n\nYou can choose to make scenes incorporating banal seascapes, or amish buggies,\nor _Guernica_. Maybe I use too broad of a brush here :), but I hope you see my\npoint.\n\nNow, if you get into the realm of generative art, such as algorithmic music,\nAuto-Illustrator, and so on, this is another angle entirely, and sets up\nquestionsof authorship between programmer and audience, and similar questions\nof authorship. In the case of Auto-Illustrator, the statement becomes central\nto the question of origins and synergy. Same for generative music software.\nIn nato software (an addon for the Max programming language for cideo\nprocessing), how much of the intent is the artist's, and how much is nn's?\n\nHowever, I think I would return to my Bryce analogy.\n\n\n\nHow is the notion of chance incorporated in\n>this type of art?\n\n\n>What are the boundaries of\n>software as an art-making medium?\n\nI think there are boundaries at many levels, both technical and cultural. For\nexample, one is limited by the technical capabilities of the hardware to\nperform certain functions (sound quality, interfacing, graphics), the software\nas a certain set of functions and rules that define a protocol, and the culture\ndefines certain parameters which limit the level of engagement between artist\nand audience, depending upon the context within which the work is created. The\nchallenge is to see whether the piece engages with the public within its given\ncultural context in a way that is compelling, and not merely amazing.\n\nI'm tired of being amazed. I want to be confronted by a piece.\n\nA nice example of this is clip.fm by Angie Weller. She has set up phone icons\ndepicting sensitive subjects that one can send to another via WAP-capable\nphone. On one hand hit has some level of technical facility, but on the other\nhand, it engages with me in a really visceral way.\n\n\n\n\n\nCan one talk about software-generated art as ever being\n>\"finished\"?\n\nI have been having a talk about this with a colleague, and we seem be more of\nthe mind that this is more tied to process than product. This seems to even be\nthe case with net art anymore. Even with pieces that are supposed to have a\nterminal point, in many cases, it seems to be going through endless revisions.\n\n> Do software artists have to be programmers?\nTo be virtuosic, I would agree with this, at least to an extent.\n\nWhat is the social\n>life of software?\n\nInteresting question. Please elaborate.\n\n>The algorithm seems to replace the creative will of the artist, in many\n>cases.\n\nI'm not sure I agree. Perhaps I have a more sculptural approach to this\ntopic. Does steel replace the creative will of the sculptor, or in Calder's\ncase, does the motion of the mobile replace his intent? In the case of\ngenerative art, we could go back to Duchamp, Cage, even Mozart. Once again we\narrive at artistic discourse centering upon process, rather than the object\nitself. This is a topic that I've been thinking about for quite some time, as\nI work in algorithmic sound/video a great deal, and I feel that the end result\nis performative in nature. For the reason why I don't believe that it's\nperformance, I can post a text version of my \"Cybernetics of Performance\" text.\n\n\nTo take it from another angle, consider the landscape program Bryce. For years\nI saw endless megabytes of stunning neo_Adamseque landscapes, holding firmly to\nthe paradigm imposed by the program. However, as time went on, people like\nBill Ellsworth took the application and used it to create incredible\nnon-representational imagery, and so on. They became intimate with the\nsoftware to the point of virtuosity. To me, this is key, or at least the\nability to make novel inferences about the context and function of the\ntechnological tools in question.\n\nThis is exciting to me not because it is technologically marvelous,\n>but because of what this implies in how the artist and the audience\n>understand each other.\n\nSeriously, do you feel that there has to be some baseline of technical\nfamiliarity in order for that communication to be more satisfying?\n\n>Software is a set of rules. It is the grammar within which a vocabulary of\n>computer code makes sense.\n\nAnd so is language. Arguably, language has been thought to represent a major\nportion of how we percieve reality and operate upon objects, both metaphorical\nand physical (and vice versa).\n\nMy question to you is how the two contexts differ.\n\nAs British sociologist Anthony Giddens has\n>pointed out, we understand our reality as already existing and seek to\n>write scenarios that allow us to act out a role within that reality. \\\n\nGood point, but I will not accept this as a priori.\n\nThe\n>software seems to be the scenario, but it relies on users to act it out.\n> What makes software come alive is precisely its social life: how these set\n>of instructions are interpreted and enacted. And understanding this\n>process of interpretation, of behavior, can fill up pages and pages.\n\nThat's engagement with the audience. And, I wonder how this is facilitated by\nartists and curators, and wheter there is required a certain common set of\ncultural currency in order for the interaction (read: I'm being purposely\nambiguous here) to engage the audience. If not, then how does technology\nbecome transparent to the point where it is almost purely expressive?",
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"date": "Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:15:09 -0700",
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"from": "Patrick Lichty",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=237176",
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"list": "crumb",
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"content": "\nsome of the questions that were raised in relation to my posting have\nalready been answered by others, so i will try to be brief with some more\nresponses:\n\nAnthony:\n>The algorithm seems to replace the creative will of the artist, in many\n>cases. This is exciting to me not because it is technologically marvelous,\n>but because of what this implies in how the artist and the audience\n>understand each other.\n\nfor me it is also interesting because the machinic process that develops\nfrom the algorithm reduces the aspect of intentionality from the artistic\nprocess and puts an autopoietic machine process in its place; the aesthetic\ndimension then lies not in the fact that the effect is 'beautiful' or the\ncode is functional or 'beautifully written'. as with any artistic practice,\nthere can be different aesthetic modes according to which works or\nprocesses can be judged. for me, the oscillation between control and\nidiosyncracy in a computer, this supposedly precise machine, is closely\nlinked to the aesthetic experience of a work of software art. to observe\nhow the computer sings itself to sleep, or goes into a mindless delirium.\nan example is Antoine Schmitt's Vexation 1, a programme that sends a small\nwhite ball across a black rectangle, finely balanced between a rule pattern\nand randomness. (http://www.gratin.org/as)\n\n\n>> definition that excludes applications of software like director or\n>>shockwave;\n\nIttai:\n>On what basis was this decision made?\n\nthe idea was to give an award to a piece of original software, rather than\nto an application of software that exists as a commercial product. Susan\nmight be right that there is a 'crafts' idea behind this. another aspect is\nthat we aim to encourage open source projects, rather than the promotion of\nclosed and proprietary softwares. director and shockwave are owned by\ncompanies that can choose to withdraw their product from the market any\nday, making it illegal for people to continue running their scripts. this\nis, obviously, a ludicrous situation, and it cannot happen to you when you\nare using free software.\n\n\n>> How do you 'show' or distribute it?\n\nDave:\n>To interpret this literally: In a code development environment or simulator\n>where you can step forward, halt and continue the instruction sequence and\n>watch what happens?\n>\n>If the idea is to establish that software is an Art form then it would be\n>logical to show it in a similar context and way as other Art: eg in some\n>kind of special space which invokes the necessary awe and aura; in a\n>museum/gallery - virtual or otherwise.\n\ni disagree. long, long gone are the days when you needed an auratic space\nto present something as art - this idea misses the point of a lot of art\nfrom the last 100 years, and we should not continue to buy into the myth.\n'other Art' also gets shown elsewhere.\n\nDave's first question is interesting and gets us, i think, to the core of\nthe problem of software art for a curatorial practice. many paintings are\nmade to be displayed on the wall of a gallery, or an office, or a church.\nthey make sense there, and they sometimes suffer when they are displayed\nout of context, some also win, but there often is a logic to the relation\nbetween an artwork and the environment where it is shown.\n\nhow, then, do you 'exhibit' a process that runs on a tiny processor? Daniel\nGarcia Andujar recently printed out the source code of the I-Love-You virus\nand displayed it on a gallery wall in Dortmund\n(http://www.irational.org/tttp) - this is obviously just an ironic gesture.\na piece like Vexation 1 you can show on an IMac, it keeps running endlessly\nand is designed as a more or less self-explanatory work. in Adrian Ward's\nSignwave Auto-Illustrator (http://www.signwave.co.uk), the best way to\nexperience it is to interact with the programme on a regular PC which can\nbut need not be your own. pieces by JODI and nn are probably best\nexperinced on your own machine because they play with your emotional\nattachments to what's on it. whereas the processes involved in a piece like\nDaniela Plewe's Ultima Ratio (http://www.sabonjo.de) needs a lot of\nexplanation and its 'beauty' might only reveal itself to people who have a\ndeeper understanding of the informatic and logical processes going on in\nthe computer.\n\ni'll leave it here for the moment.\n\ngreetings from sunny berlin,\n-a",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"date": "Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:42:22 +0200",
|
||
"from": "Andreas Broeckmann",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Sarah Thompson",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=237801",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nAndreas Broeckmann says that\n>software art is only just coming into focus, so it is early days to\n>describe, let alone critique its presentation.\n\nWhile I would agree that it is only just being appreciated in its own right\n(software as art), and it is great that Transmediale have acknowledged this\nart form, aren't there examples of artists developing their own computer\nsoftware during the 20th century which give precedents for making,\nappreciating and exhibiting this kind of work?\n\nThere is a danger that if this 'lost history' of artists programming\ncomputers is not rediscovered, that their multiple and different strategies\nand approaches will be ignored in favour of a more singular definition.\n\nAlso, why was their work not appreciated? Why did it fail to, or succeed in\nfitting into the art world context? Did the artists want it to fit into\nthis context or were they trying to _engineer_ a new kind of context for\ntheir work?\nAs Anthony Huberman puts it:\n>What makes software come alive is precisely its social life: how these set\n>of instructions are interpreted and enacted.\n\nAs such, I really like the critique of different pieces of software & how\nto see them by AB:\n>the best way to\n>experience it is to interact with the programme on a regular PC which can\n>but need not be your own. pieces by JODI and nn are probably best\n>experinced on your own machine because they play with your emotional\n>attachments to what's on it.\n\nWhile appreciating that Transmediale is about what is happening *now*, I\njust wanted to make this point within the broader curating new media\ncontext.\n\nbest wishes\n\nSarah\n\nhttp://www.content-type.org.uk\n~~~~~~format=\"flowed\"",
|
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"date": "Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:30:10 +0100",
|
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"from": "Sarah Thompson",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Dave Franklin",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=238489",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nSo far we have only discussed conventional forms of software eg code\nexecuted as a series of instructions (with fixed conditions for branching),\ndigital states of on/off, logical states true/false etc. This provides\noutput which is entirely predictable (given that you know the input).\n\nMight it be that we could also look to the domains of fuzzy logic and\nNeural Networks or Artificial Intelligence in search of software as Art?\n\nThese technologies allow for grey and uncertain states and produce 'code'\nwhich behaves more like biological systems than adding machines. Such\nsystems can be given the ability to learn and adapt. Their output is not\nentirely predictable.\n\nDave\n\n\nDavid Franklin\nGallery Computing and Electronics\nNational Museum of Photography Film & Television\nBradford, Yorks , UK. BD1 1NQ\nTel: 01274 203389\n\n\n\n\n********************************************************************\nThis e-mail and attachments are intended for the named\naddressee only and are confidential. If you have received\nthis e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately,\ndelete the message from your computer system and\ndestroy any copies. Any views expressed in this message\nare those of the individual sender and may not reflect the\nviews of the National Museum of Science & Industry.\n\nThe NMSI website can be found at http://www.nmsi.ac.uk\n*********************************************************************",
|
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"date": "Wed, 4 Jul 2001 17:31:44 +0100",
|
||
"from": "Dave Franklin",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Josephine Bosma",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=240680",
|
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"content-type": "text/plain",
|
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"content": "\nAndreas Broeckmann wrote:\n\n> that we aim to encourage open source projects, rather than the promotion of\n> closed and proprietary softwares. director and shockwave are owned by\n> companies that can choose to withdraw their product from the market any\n> day, making it illegal for people to continue running their scripts. this\n> is, obviously, a ludicrous situation, and it cannot happen to you when you\n> are using free software.\n\nWhat exactly do you mean by 'making it illegal for people to continue running\ntheir scripts'? Do you maybe mean impossible rather then illegal? This sounds so\nstrange to me. And if the makers of director et al choose to withdraw their\nsoftware from the market that does not mean it cannot be used anymore, does it?\nIt would not make sense to sell people software that would become illegal to use\nonce the company does not produce any packets of it (and updates of it) any\nmore. Transmediale's choice for open source projects is a political statement\nand a kind of aesthetic choice too maybe.Your above argumentation against the\nother art codes does not seem to make much sense to me. Or is there more?\n\n\ngreetsz\n\n\n\nJ\n*",
|
||
"date": "Wed, 4 Jul 2001 21:21:46 +0200",
|
||
"from": "Josephine Bosma",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=241313",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plain",
|
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"content": "\n>Andreas Broeckmann wrote:\n>\n>> that we aim to encourage open source projects, rather than the promotion of\n>> closed and proprietary softwares. director and shockwave are owned by\n>> companies that can choose to withdraw their product from the market any\n>> day, making it illegal for people to continue running their scripts. this\n>> is, obviously, a ludicrous situation, and it cannot happen to you when you\n>> are using free software.\n>\n>What exactly do you mean by 'making it illegal for people to continue running\n>their scripts'? Do you maybe mean impossible rather then illegal? This\n>sounds so\n>strange to me. And if the makers of director et al choose to withdraw their\n>software from the market that does not mean it cannot be used anymore,\n>does it?\n>It would not make sense to sell people software that would become illegal\n>to use\n>once the company does not produce any packets of it (and updates of it) any\n>more. Transmediale's choice for open source projects is a political statement\n>and a kind of aesthetic choice too maybe.Your above argumentation against the\n>other art codes does not seem to make much sense to me. Or is there more?\n\nhi josephine,\nthere are people who can explain this much better than i can, but i suggest\nyou read either the software license agreements that most of us click OK\nwithout checking, or the stuff that Richard Stallman has written about\nthese things (www.gnu.org/philosophy); the point is that with most software\nyou buy not the code, but the right to limited usage; that is also why you\nare not allowed to pass it on to friends or copy it - the code is not\nyours, you just pay for the right to use it. that whole legal field is\ncompletely crazy!! read stallman, he is also entertaining.\n\ngreetings,\n-a",
|
||
"date": "Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:04:00 +0200",
|
||
"from": "Andreas Broeckmann",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "dr susan & tim head",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=242172",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plain",
|
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"content": "\nI've only been skimming this one...but I agree with Sarah Thomson when she\nsays\n\n\"There is a danger that if this 'lost history' of artists programming\ncomputers is not rediscovered, that their multiple and different strategies\nand approaches will be ignored in favour of a more singular definition.\"\n\nIt seems that there are (again) so many different kinds of art/and artists\nintentions within this particular thread. For one you have artists such as\nDavid Rokeby...who creates all his own hard and software for his work...but\nwith works such as his Very Nervous System, has also built it as an\narchitecture (both soft and hardware versions) for other artists to use in\ntheir own way - and stretch etc...an 'open system' or sturcture is you\nlike....\nand then there are other artists or groups such as IOD with Webstalker where\nthe very fact that it IS a piece of software is fundamental to its\ncontext/existence et al...\n\nand in answer to Sarah re. examples of artists earlier in the 20th C its worth\nmentioning\nthe artist Harold Cohen who for over 30 years has been developing software to\nthink about drawing/painting the way he thinks about drawing and painting (for\nthose of you not familiar, Harold was a very well known painter in the 60's\nand then moved to the states - san diego now - and has worked with computers\never since)...his philosophy is very much that the program is the artwork, but\nthe program also generates its own artwork (Harold has been present within a\nlot of AI discussion etc etc)...according to Harolds own rules and principles.\nFar fropm being ignored etc...Harold has had shows in many major museums\n(incl. major retrospective at the Tate in London 1983)...and was quite\nvociferous in opposition to artists using readymade software (as opposed to\nwriting their own) when i first met him back in the late 80's...it would be\ninteresting to know his position on this now.....\n\nbest\n\nSusan Collins\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n-- -- dr susan\nhttp://www.susan-collins.net\nhttp://www.inhabited.net",
|
||
"date": "Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:52:57 +0100",
|
||
"from": "dr susan & tim head",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "tom corby",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=242998",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plain",
|
||
"content": "\nThis email was delivered to you by The Free Internet,\na Business Online Group company. http://www.thefreeinternet.net\n---------------------------------------------------------------\n> u\n> are not allowed to pass it on to friends or copy it - the code is not\n> yours, you just pay for the right to use it. that whole legal field is\n> completely crazy!! read stallman, he is also entertaining.\n>\n\nJust to back Andreas up on this, most people don't realise that when\nthey buy software, they are buying the right to use it, not buying the software\nper se.\nYou could equate it to hiring a TV/video etc. microsoft, adobe or macromedia\nstill ultimately own it.\n\nAs far as I'm aware, this also applies to products like Director/shockwave that\nallow\nauthoring. I'm not sure what the status of the authored artefact is , but as they\n'allow you' to distribute the software/artwork\n'under license' as a projector etc. doesn't it follow that macromedia have a part\nshare in any artwork made using their software?\n\nMaybe someone can clarify this.\n\n\nTom\n\n\n_______________________________________________________________________\n\n| Dr. Tom Corby | ++44 020 77034027 | [log in to unmask] |\nwww.reconnoitre.net\n_______________________________________________________________________",
|
||
"date": "Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:30:43 +0100",
|
||
"from": "tom corby",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "tom corby",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=243285",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nThis email was delivered to you by The Free Internet,\na Business Online Group company. http://www.thefreeinternet.net\n---------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n>\n> Might it be that we could also look to the domains of fuzzy logic and\n> Neural Networks or Artificial Intelligence in search of software as Art?\n>\n\nI think you'll find that many artists have drawn upon these areas, not in every\ncase\nto comment on them, but certainly in terms of injecting emergent agency and/or\nunpredictable\nstates/conditions into their work (e.g. Knowbotics research). David Rokeby has\nalready been mentioned, but Stephen Wilson has\na long standing interest in AI as well. A lot of the early interest in computer\nbased art was concerned with simulated agency;\ncertainly many of the exhibits in Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA 1968) were\nconcerned with simulated intelligence.\n\ntom",
|
||
"date": "Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:49:29 +0100",
|
||
"from": "tom corby",
|
||
"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Derek Hales",
|
||
"id": 0,
|
||
"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=243572",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"content": "\nremember saying ...i accept\n\n\nd\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: Josephine Bosma [mailto:[log in to unmask]]\nSent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 8:22 PM\nTo: [log in to unmask]\nSubject: Re: Software as Art\n\n\nAndreas Broeckmann wrote:\n\n> that we aim to encourage open source projects, rather than the promotion\nof\n> closed and proprietary softwares. director and shockwave are owned by\n> companies that can choose to withdraw their product from the market any\n> day, making it illegal for people to continue running their scripts. this\n> is, obviously, a ludicrous situation, and it cannot happen to you when you\n> are using free software.\n\nWhat exactly do you mean by 'making it illegal for people to continue\nrunning\ntheir scripts'? Do you maybe mean impossible rather then illegal? This\nsounds so\nstrange to me. And if the makers of director et al choose to withdraw their\nsoftware from the market that does not mean it cannot be used anymore, does\nit?\nIt would not make sense to sell people software that would become illegal to\nuse\nonce the company does not produce any packets of it (and updates of it) any\nmore. Transmediale's choice for open source projects is a political\nstatement\nand a kind of aesthetic choice too maybe.Your above argumentation against\nthe\nother art codes does not seem to make much sense to me. Or is there more?\n\n\ngreetsz\n\n\n\nJ\n*",
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"date": "Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:39:05 +0100",
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"from": "Derek Hales",
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"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
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}
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],
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"list": "crumb",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"date": "Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:17:51 +0200",
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"from": "Andreas Broeckmann",
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"subject": "Re: Software as Art"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "[log in to unmask]",
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"id": 0,
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"url": "https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind01&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=239368",
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"list": "crumb",
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"content": "\n/// PROPAGANDA /// HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG ///\n\n\n\n\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n# HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG/home/PROPAGANDA/PRESS\n\n\n\n\n/// From \"Wired\", 27 Jun 2001\n/// http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44728,00.html\n\n\n\n\nWant to See Some Really Sick Art?\n\n\nBy Reena Jana\n\nNothing sucks more than a computer virus.\n\nYet the contemporary art world, always hungry for the new, the trendy\nand the controversial, is starting to recognize the virus as an art form\n-- perhaps because computer viruses embody all of the above.\n\nThis year's Venice Biennale -- one of the international art world's most\nprestigious events -- served as the launching pad for \"biennale.py.\"\nIt's the art world's interpretation of the destructive \"Melissa\" and\n\"Love Bug\" viruses that grabbed headlines in recent years.\n\nAt the Biennale, which opened on June 10, a computer infected with\n\"biennale.py\" remains on display until the exhibition closes in\nNovember. Viewers can witness someone else's system crashing and files\nbeing corrupted, in real time, as if it were a creepy performance.\n\nThe artsy-fartsy virus was created by the European Net Art Collective\n0100101110101101.ORG, in collaboration with epidemiC, another group\nknown for its programming skills. The virus only affects programs\nwritten in the Python computer language and is spread if someone\ndownloads infected software or utilizes a corrupted floppy disk.\n\nBecause Python is a relatively esoteric language, the artists hope that\nthe source code, which they've printed on 2,000 T-shirts and published\non a limited edition of 10 CD-ROMs, will be the most contagious form of distribution.\n\n\"The source code is a product of the human mind, as are music, poems and\npaintings,\" explained the epidemiC team, which prefers to speak\ncollectively -- and somewhat pretentiously. \"The virus is a useless but\ncritical handcraft, similar to classical art.\"\n\nAdds a member of 0100101110101101.ORG, which also prefers to speak\ncollectively (and anonymously), \"The only goal of a virus is to\nreproduce. Our goal is to familiarize people with what a computer virus\nis so they're not so paranoid or hysterical when the next one strikes.\"\n\nThe artists have created a mini-hysteria over their piece.\n\nMore than 1,400 of the shirts have been sold at $15 apiece. And they've\nsold three CD-ROMs, at $1,500 each (the collectors chose to remain\nunnamed for legal reasons). Yet the potentially damaging code is\navailable for free on the artists' homepages.\n\n\"In theory, we should get sued,\" said 0100101110101101.ORG's\nspokesperson. \"But we've gotten almost no complaints. Well, we've gotten\na few e-mails from security experts who want to know who these asshole\nartists are.\"\n\nLaws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act state it's illegal to send\ndamaging code in interstate or foreign communications. But the artists\ndon't feel liable for any damage caused by \"biennale.py\" because they\nsent a warning to major software and antivirus companies including\nMicrosoft and McAfee.\n\n\"We've explained how to disable our virus, so people should know how to\nfix it,\" said the 0100101110101101.ORG spokesperson.\n\nNot everyone's buying this excuse.\n\n\"If a thief leaves a note saying he's sorry, do we feel better? No,\"\nsaid Jason Catlett, the president of an anti-spam group called\nJunkbusters, who has testified before Congress on Internet privacy\nissues. \"Doing things that are socially undesirable in the name of art\ndoes not redeem the act.\"\n\nThis isn't the first time artists have adopted annoying practices to\ngain attention. Spam, for instance, is emerging as an \"art form\" as\nwell; the Webby-winning Net art collective Jodi.org sent 1,039 spam\nmessages through the e-mail list Rhizome Raw this January.\n\nSome media art theorists think that an artistic statement about computer\nviruses can only be expressed effectively by spreading a virus itself.\n\n\"To talk about contemporary culture, you have to be able to use all\nkinds of expressions of contemporary culture,\" said Lisa Jevbratt, who\nteaches media art at San Jose State University. \"So a virus can be\nconsidered a legitimate art form. Of course, there will be artists and\npranksters doing interesting new things with such forms. But there will\nbe artists and pranksters whose actions are merely rehashing critiques.\"\n\n\n\n\n/// \"Yandex\", 27 Jun 2001\n/// \"biennale.py\" [ russian ]\nhttp://dz.yandex.ru/dz/article/list_news_last_faced.php\n\n///\"Cyberp@ís\", 21 Jun 2001\n/// \"Venecia y Valencia exhiben virus como una forma de arte\" [ spanish ]\nhttp://www.ciberpais.elpais.es/d/20010621/ocio/portada.htm\n\n/// \"ExiWebArt\", 10 May 2001\n/// \"Biennale: anteprima sul padiglione sloveno\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.exibart.com/IDNotizia2558.htm\n\n/// \"Domus\", 8 Jun 2001\n/// \"biennale.py\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.edidomus.it/domus/Lab/singola_news.cfm?codnews=2072\n\n/// \"Telepolis\", 8 Jun 2001\n/// \"Ein Computervirus als Kunstwerk\" [ german ]\nhttp://heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/sa/7852/1.html\n\n/// \"Geeknews\", 7 Jun 2001\n/// \"A Virus as art\" [ english ]\nhttp://www.geeknews.net/article.php?sid=1628\n\n/// \"il Corriere\", 6 Jun 2001\n/// \"Biennale, il virus informatico diventa arte\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.corriere.it\n\n/// \"la Repubblica\", 6 Jun 2001\n/// \"Ultracorpi robotici e virus a guardia della Biennale\" [ italian]\nhttp://www.repubblica.it/online/cultura_scienze/biennalearte/inaugura/inaugura.html\n\n/// \"l'Espresso\", 6 Jun 2001\n/// \"Un virus contagia la Biennale\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.espressonline.kataweb.it/ESW_articolo/0,2393,17377,00.html\n\n/// \"Vip\", 5 Jun 2001\n/// \"Il Virus della Biennale\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.vip.it/oggi/index2.htm+biennale.py&hl=en\n\n/// \"Mediamente\", 5 Jun 2001\n/// \"C'è un virus alla Biennale\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.mediamente.rai.it\n\n/// \"Punto-informatico\", 5 Jun 2001\n/// \"Un virus si infila nella Biennale\" [ italian ]\nhttp://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=36363\n\n/// \"ExiWebArt\", 4 Jun 2001\n/// \"Un virus chiamato Biennale\" [ italian ]\nhttp://www.exibart.com/IDNotizia2693.htm\n\n\n\n\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n# unsubscribe mailto:[log in to unmask]\n\n\n\n\n/// PROPAGANDA /// HTTP://WWW.0100101110101101.ORG ///",
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"content-type": "text/plain",
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"date": "Wed, 4 Jul 2001 19:53:23 +0200",
|
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"from": "[log in to unmask]",
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"subject": "/// 0100101110101101.ORG /// Want to See Some Really Sick Art?"
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},
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{
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"message-id": "200109222259.SAA24619 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"content": "\n\nCodework\nMcKenzie Wark\n\n\nWhat happens to writing as it collides with new media? I was thinking\nabout this recently while looking over an exhibition of William Blake's\nwork at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. On display was not just Blake\nthe artist, Blake the poet, or Blake the quirky revolutionary. Here was\nBlake the media artist.\n\nBlake assembled all of the elements of a media practice. As a writer he\nexperimented with all aspects of the production process. His aesthetic\ndid not stop with the word on the page. Here, I thought, was a useful\nprecursor to name for the new developments in writing that take place on\nthe Internet, developments I will shortly define as \"codework.\"\n\nBut Blake is interesting in this connection only if one embraces all\naspects of his productivity. There's a tendency, in the teaching of\nliterature and the management of its canons, to separate off the authoring\nof the text from the other aspects of writing as a production. It's a\ntendency that full attention to Blake frustrates, given how fully he was\ninvested in the implication of writing in all aspects of its production\nand circulation. Blakes creation did not stop at the threshold of \"text.\"\n\nDigging writing out of the prison-house of \"text\" might just be what is\nneeded to unblock thinking about where the Internet is taking writing.\nThere has always been more to writing than text, and there is more to\nelectronic writing than hypertext.\n\nHypertext may have come to dominate perceptions of where writing is\nheading in the Internet era, but it is by no means the only, or the most\ninteresting, strategy for electronic writing. Hypertext writers tend to\ntake the link as the key innovation in electronic writing spaces. In\nhypertext writing, the link is supposed to open up multiple trajectories\nfor the reader through the space of the text.\n\nExtraordinary claims were made for this as a liberatory writing strategy.\nHypertext has its limits, however. First, the writing of the text stands\nin relation to the writing of the software as content to form. The two are\nnot really brought together on the same plane of creativity. Secondly,\nhypertext tends not to circulate outside of the academic literary\ncommunity. It has its roots in avant-garde American and English literature\nand tends to hew close to those origins. Thirdly, it doesn't really\nrethink who the writer is, in the new network of statements that the\nexpansion of the Internet makes possible. For all the talk of the death of\nthe author, the hypertext author assumes much the same persona as his or\nher avant-garde literary predecessors.\n\nWhat is interesting about the emergence of codework is that it breaks with\nhypertext strategies on all three points. In many codework writings, both\nthe technical and cultural phenomena of coding infiltrates the work on all\nits levels. Codework finds its home in a wide range of Internet venues,\nforming dialoguessometimes antagonistic oneswith the development of\nother kinds of written communication in an emerging electronic writing\necology. Codework also sets to work on the problem of the author, bringing\nall of the tactics of the Internet to bear on the question of authorship.\n\nCodework \"entities\" such as Antiorp and JODI approach the Internet as a\nspace in which to re-engineer all of the aspects of creative production\nand distribution. Antiorp is famousor rather infamousfor bombarding\nlistservers such as the Nettime media theory list with posts that seem to\nparody the sometimes high-serious style of Internet media theory. It was\noften hard to tell whether the Antiorp writing emanated from a human\nsource or from some demented \"bot\" programmed to produce the semi-legible\ntexts.\n\nAntiorp has spawned a number of alternative identities and imitators. It\nis with some trepidation that one would venture to assign codework texts\nto discrete authors. It may be best to take the fabricated heteronyms\nunder which codework is sometimes published at face value, rather than to\nattempt to assign discrete flesh-and-blood authors.\n\nSome codework frustrates the assigning of authorship as a means of\nbreaking down the link between authorship and intellectual property. The\nLuther Blissett project, for example, encourages writers to assume the\nname Luther Blissett. Many texts of various kinds have appeared under that\nname and without copyright.\n\nSome of the more prolific Luther Blissett authors subsequently became the\nMu Ming Foundation, which claims to be a \"laboratory of digital design\"\noffering \"narrative services.\" The Foundation sees itself as an\nenterprise looking for strategies for regaining control over the\nproduction process for codeworkers.\n\nThe \"texts\" JODI produces hover somewhere at the limit of what a text\nmight be. A sample might look something like this:\n\no\n|:__::::::::::_|_::::::::::_|_:::::::\n:: : :: :\n\nA classic JODI Web page may spit all kinds of \"punctuation art\" across\nthe screen. This work is neither writing nor visual art but something in\nbetween. The programming involved usually teeters on the brink of failure.\nEvery technology brings into being new kinds of crashes or accidents, and\nJODI endeavors to find those accidents unique to the authoring of Web\npages.\n\nInteger sometimes makes interventions into discussions on listservers, all\nwith variations on the same distinctive approach to breaking up the text\nand introducing noise into it, not to mention a somewhat abusive\nhypercritical persona.\n\nthis - a l l this. = but 01 ch!!!!!!p. uneventful\nkorporat fascist gullibloon zpektakle.\n\nThis might be a mangled machine English, or perhaps an English written by\na machine programmed by someone who speaks English as a second language,\nor someone producing a simulation of some such. The decaying grammar and\nspelling of the Internet here becomes a kind of aesthetic alternative.\n\nRather than using e-mail and listservers, Alan Sondheim sometimes uses\nIRC, or Internet Relay Chat, as a means of collaboration and composition,\nas in \"saying names among themselves,\" which begins:\n\nIRC log started Mon May 7 00:40\n*** Value of LOG set to ON\n*** You are now talking to channel \n\t#nikuko\n*** Alan is now known as terrible\n*** terrible is now known as worries_i\n\nThe text proceeds as what appears to be a collaboration between Sondheim\nand unwitting collaborators, who may or may not know that this writing may\ncome to have the status of writing, rather than chat.\n\nMany codework texts hover on the brink of legibility, asking the reader to\nquestion whether the author is made of flesh or silicon, or perhaps\nwhether authoring lies at the level of writing text or coding software to\nwrite text. Kenji Siratoris texts may be machine-made or made to look\nmachine-made.\n\nAnt PC planetary, MURDEROUS CONSEQUENCES! body line \nTREMENDOUS HORROR! drugy miracle ADAM doll \nTREMENDOUS HORROR! thyroid falls
.MURDEROUS \nCONSEQUENCES! vivid placenta world TREMENDOUS HORROR! \nmachinative angel:her soul-machine discharges MURDEROUS \nCONSEQUENCES! speed PC fear
.MURDEROUS \nCONSEQUENCES!\n\nThat text is called \"Alan Sondheim-conference\" and appears to be a\nresponse to a conference report by Sondheim.\n\nWhile some codeworkers pounce upon the texts of others as raw material for\ncodeworking, Stéphan Barron asks others to volunteer texts. In \"Com_post\nConcepts\" he solicits contributions with a text that begins:\n\nWeb surfers send in their texts by e-mail. All are then composted! Just as\nwe ourselves are composted! Recycling as organic and cyclical technology,\na technology of intelligence and responsibility, of the link to the\nnatural and artificial world.\n\nThe sender receives her or his own text back at weekly intervals, in an\nincreasingly noisy and unintelligible state.\n\nThe Internet emerges in much of this work as a noisy space, in which the\nstructures of text decay and writing becomes granular, a chaotic space of\ntemporary orders constantly becoming randomized. Yet within this chaotic\nspace, the destructive character of the codeworker proposes new kinds of\nsensemaking that might, for a moment, keep the parasite of noise at bay.\n\nAnother precursor one might mention, besides Blake, for the emerging world\nof codework, is the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake. In Wake, multiplicity\ncan erupt at any point along the textual surface, not just at discrete\nhyperlinked nodes. Permutations, a Web site by Florian Cramer, reproduces\nin digital form many of the great combinatory text systems, from Raymond\nLullus to Ramond Queneau. Cramer has also produced a codework machine that\ncreates permutations on Finnegans Wake, called \"Here Comes Everybody.\" It\nworks at the level of the syllable, producing a virtual universe of new\nportmanteau words out of original Joyce-text.\n\nThe Australian codeworker Mez has developed a distinctive prose style that\nshe calls mezangelle, producing texts that tend to look like this:\n\n.nodal +death+-points swallowed in a dea.th.rush.\n.u begin 2 -f][l][ail-, ar][t][][is][ms all awry n caught in webbed\nma][ulers][ws.\n\nRather than link discrete blocs of text, or \"lexias,\" to each other, Mez\nintroduces the hypertext principle of multiplicity into the word itself.\nRather than produce alternative trajectories through the text on the\nhypertext principle of \"choice,\" here they co-exist within the same\ntextual space.\n\nThe interest of Mez's writings is not limited to this distinctive approach\nto the text. While the words split and merge on the screen, the authoring\n\"avatar\" behind them is also in a state of flux. Texts issue, in various\nforms in various places, from data[h!bleeder, Phonet][r][ix, netwurker,\nand many other heteronyms.\n\nAt the heart of the codeworking enterprise is a call for a revised\napproach to language itself. Many of the creative strategies for making or\nthinking about writing in the latter part of the twentieth century drew on\nFerdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. In the hands of\npoststructuralists, language poets, or hypertext authors and theorists,\nthis was a powerful and useful place to start thinking about how language\nworks. But Saussure begins by separating language as a smooth and abstract\nplane from speech as a pragmatic act. Language is then divided into\nsignifier and signified, with the referent appearing as a shadowy third\nterm. The concept of language that emerges, for all its purity, is far\nremoved from language as a process.\n\nWhat codework draws attention to is the pragmatic side of language.\nLanguage is not an abstract and homogenous plane, it is one element in a\nheterogeneous series of elements linked together in the act of\ncommunication. Writing is not a matter of the text, but of the assemblage\nof the writer, reader, text, the text's material support, the laws of\nproperty and exchange within which all of the above circulate, and so on.\nCodework draws attention to writing as media, where the art of writing is\na matter of constructing an aesthetic, an ethics, even a politics, that\napproaches all of the elements of the process together. Codework makes of\nwriting a media art that breaks with the fetishism of the text and the\nabstraction of language. It brings writing into contact with the other\nbranches of media art, such as music and cinema, all of which are\nconverging in the emerging space of multimedia, and which often have a\nricher conception of the politics of media art as a collaborative practice\nthan has been the case with writing conceived within the prison-house of\n\"text.\"\n\nfrom American Book Review\n\n\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\nWe no longer have roots, we have aerials. \n~~~~~~~~~~ McKenzie Wark ~~~~~~~~~\n\n\n\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"from": "McKenzie Wark <mw35 {AT} nyu.edu>",
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"author_name": "McKenzie Wark",
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"id": "00223",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/msg00223.html",
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"follow-up": [
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{
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"author_name": "Paul D. Miller",
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"id": "00224",
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"message-id": "200109230434.AAA02339 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/msg00224.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\nKen - I'm sitting here in Florida, and just have to sigh a little \nbit. This is the problem with the digital media scene - it is SUPER \nWHITEBREAD - there is alot more going on.... I'm not attacking you, \nI just wish that the computer \"art/literary\" scene - especially where \nit comes to \"language as code\" - would think about precedents for \ntheater and spectacle outside of the normal discourse that goes on in \nspots like nettime... at the end of the day, the \"visual interface\" \nthat most of digital culture uses to create art/text/etc etc is not \nneutral, and again, this is a Mcluhan refraction of the old inner \near/eye thing, but with a little bit more of a technical twist. \nThere's a great essay that the physicist David Bohm wrote on this \ntopic called \"Thought as a System\" - the idea of progress is a \nconvergence of these \"visual cues\" that hold the eye and hand \ntogether when we think... Multi valent/multi-cultural approaches to \nlanguage and all of the sundry variations its going through right \nnow, are what make this kind of stuff alot more interesting... Artaud \nwas the fellow who invented the term \"virtual reality\" not Jaron \nLanier... think of the media repetitions of the WTC as a scene out of \n\"Theater of Cruelty\" and combine it with how mourning passes through \nthe media sphere a la Princess Diana's death etc etc and you get the \nidea of the whole gestalt of this kind of thing... or even the way \nthat linguistic permutation has evolved out of music and spoken text \n(think of Cab Calloway or Kurt Schwitters or later material like John \nCage's 'mesotics' (I'm writing this off the cuff... did I spell that \nright?), and even the way dj's play with words while spinning music \nin a set - this in itself is one of the major developments of 20th \ncentury culture: the ability not just to accept the linguistic \nregulations of a situation (again, Debord meets Grand Master \nFlash...) - but to constantly change them. This is one of the major \nissues that Henry Louis Gates wrote about in his \"Signifying Monkey\" \nessay a long while ago, but you can easily see the digital component \nof the same system of thought on-line when people play with words as \ndomain names etc etc.... there's shareware like Ray Kurzweil's \nCybernetic Poet \nhttp://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/poetry/rkcp_overview.php3\n\nand hip-hop material like Saul Williams and Kool Keith, and even the \nway the poetry of algorithms became rhythm (there's a great site on \nthe history of drum machines... http://www.drummachine.com/\n\nand out of Australia, there's the global digital poetry site that \nuses algorithms to create text and hyperlinks:\nhttp://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/~komninos/maysites.html\n\nor even the \"visual thesaurus\" that creates 3-D models of how words \nrelate to one another...\nhttp://www.thinkmap.com/\n\nand even more MAX/MSP based code material from stuff like composer \nKarlheinz Essl's explorations of free jazz and code structures with \nhis \"lexicon-sonate\" programs:\nhttp://www.essl.at/works/lexson-online.html\n\nor nifty stuff like Chris Csikszentmihalyi's \"Robot Dj\" that does \nstuff like cuttin' and scratchin' - after all \"phonograph\" breaks \ndown to \"Sound - writing\" i.e. \"phonetics of graphology...\"\n\nhttp://www.dj-i-robot.com/\n\nsequencing and figuring out different permutations as core aspects of \ncode is an archetypal situation at this point... Alan Sondheim is \nperhaps the equivalent of an MC for Nettime, but again, the field \ncould and should be expanded at this point.\n\n\nthe idea here is to point out\n1) multi-cultural variations in language (Stephen Pinker does a great \njob of describing \"patois\" and cultural change as linguistic \nvariation in his \"How the Mind Works\") as a platform for figuring out \nhow codes evolve out of linguistic systems\n2) multi cultural takes on this are alot more fun... and the parties \nare alot better, and the music is alot better...\n3) what next? Ken - how about a nick name - \"Dj Oulipo\" or something...\n\npeace,\nPaul\n\n\nhttp://www2.ec-lille.fr/~book/oulipo/info/\n\n\n>Codework\n>McKenzie Wark\n>\n>\n>What happens to writing as it collides with new media? I was thinking\n>about this recently while looking over an exhibition of William Blake's\n>work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. On display was not just Blake\n>the artist, Blake the poet, or Blake the quirky revolutionary. Here was\n>Blake the media artist.\n>\n>Blake assembled all of the elements of a media practice. As a writer he\n>experimented with all aspects of the production process. His aesthetic\n>did not stop with the word on the page. Here, I thought, was a useful\n>precursor to name for the new developments in writing that take place on\n>the Internet, developments I will shortly define as \"codework.\"\n>\n>But Blake is interesting in this connection only if one embraces all\n>aspects of his productivity. There's a tendency, in the teaching of\n>literature and the management of its canons, to separate off the authoring\n>of the text from the other aspects of writing as a production. It's a\n>tendency that full attention to Blake frustrates, given how fully he was\n>invested in the implication of writing in all aspects of its production\n>and circulation. Blakeνs creation did not stop at the threshold of \"text.\"\n>\n>Digging writing out of the prison-house of \"text\" might just be what is\n>needed to unblock thinking about where the Internet is taking writing.\n>There has always been more to writing than text, and there is more to\n>electronic writing than hypertext.\n>\n>Hypertext may have come to dominate perceptions of where writing is\n>heading in the Internet era, but it is by no means the only, or the most\n>interesting, strategy for electronic writing. Hypertext writers tend to\n>take the link as the key innovation in electronic writing spaces. In\n>hypertext writing, the link is supposed to open up multiple trajectories\n>for the reader through the space of the text.\n>\n>Extraordinary claims were made for this as a liberatory writing strategy.\n>Hypertext has its limits, however. First, the writing of the text stands\n>in relation to the writing of the software as content to form. The two are\n>not really brought together on the same plane of creativity. Secondly,\n>hypertext tends not to circulate outside of the academic literary\n>community. It has its roots in avant-garde American and English literature\n>and tends to hew close to those origins. Thirdly, it doesn't really\n>rethink who the writer is, in the new network of statements that the\n>expansion of the Internet makes possible. For all the talk of the death of\n>the author, the hypertext author assumes much the same persona as his or\n>her avant-garde literary predecessors.\n>\n>What is interesting about the emergence of codework is that it breaks with\n>hypertext strategies on all three points. In many codework writings, both\n>the technical and cultural phenomena of coding infiltrates the work on all\n>its levels. Codework finds its home in a wide range of Internet venues,\n>forming dialoguesσsometimes antagonistic onesσwith the development of\n>other kinds of written communication in an emerging electronic writing\n>ecology. Codework also sets to work on the problem of the author, bringing\n>all of the tactics of the Internet to bear on the question of authorship.\n>\n>Codework \"entities\" such as Antiorp and JODI approach the Internet as a\n>space in which to re-engineer all of the aspects of creative production\n>and distribution. Antiorp is famousσor rather infamousσfor bombarding\n>listservers such as the Nettime media theory list with posts that seem to\n>parody the sometimes high-serious style of Internet media theory. It was\n>often hard to tell whether the Antiorp writing emanated from a human\n>source or from some demented \"bot\" programmed to produce the semi-legible\n>texts.\n>\n>Antiorp has spawned a number of alternative identities and imitators. It\n>is with some trepidation that one would venture to assign codework texts\n>to discrete authors. It may be best to take the fabricated heteronyms\n>under which codework is sometimes published at face value, rather than to\n>attempt to assign discrete flesh-and-blood authors.\n>\n>Some codework frustrates the assigning of authorship as a means of\n>breaking down the link between authorship and intellectual property. The\n>Luther Blissett project, for example, encourages writers to assume the\n>name Luther Blissett. Many texts of various kinds have appeared under that\n>name and without copyright.\n>\n>Some of the more prolific Luther Blissett authors subsequently became the\n>Mu Ming Foundation, which claims to be a \"laboratory of digital design\"\n>offering \"narrative services.\" The Foundation sees itself as an\n>μenterpriseξ looking for strategies for regaining control over the\n>production process for codeworkers.\n>\n>The \"texts\" JODI produces hover somewhere at the limit of what a text\n>might be. A sample might look something like this:\n>\n>o\n>|:__::::::::::_σσ|_::::::::::_σσ|_:::::::\n>:: : :: :\n>\n>A classic JODI Web page may spit all kinds of \"punctuation art\" across\n>the screen. This work is neither writing nor visual art but something in\n>between. The programming involved usually teeters on the brink of failure.\n>Every technology brings into being new kinds of crashes or accidents, and\n>JODI endeavors to find those accidents unique to the authoring of Web\n>pages.\n>\n>Integer sometimes makes interventions into discussions on listservers, all\n>with variations on the same distinctive approach to breaking up the text\n>and introducing noise into it, not to mention a somewhat abusive\n>hypercritical persona.\n>\n>this - a l l this. = but 01 ch!!!!!!p. uneventful\n>korporat fascist gullibloon zpektakle.\n>\n>This might be a mangled machine English, or perhaps an English written by\n>a machine programmed by someone who speaks English as a second language,\n>or someone producing a simulation of some such. The decaying grammar and\n>spelling of the Internet here becomes a kind of aesthetic alternative.\n>\n>Rather than using e-mail and listservers, Alan Sondheim sometimes uses\n>IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, as a means of collaboration and composition,\n>as in \"saying names among themselves,\" which begins:\n>\n>IRC log started Mon May 7 00:40\n>*** Value of LOG set to ON\n>*** You are now talking to channel\n>\t#nikuko\n>*** Alan is now known as terrible\n>*** terrible is now known as worries_i\n>\n>The text proceeds as what appears to be a collaboration between Sondheim\n>and unwitting collaborators, who may or may not know that this writing may\n>come to have the status of writing, rather than chat.\n>\n>Many codework texts hover on the brink of legibility, asking the reader to\n>question whether the author is made of flesh or silicon, or perhaps\n>whether authoring lies at the level of writing text or coding software to\n>write text. Kenji Siratoriνs texts may be machine-made or made to look\n>machine-made.\n>\n>Ant PC planetary, MURDEROUS CONSEQUENCES! body line\n>TREMENDOUS HORROR! drugy miracle ADAM doll\n>TREMENDOUS HORROR! thyroid fallsΦ.MURDEROUS\n>CONSEQUENCES! vivid placenta world TREMENDOUS HORROR!\n>machinative angel:her soul-machine discharges MURDEROUS\n>CONSEQUENCES! speed PC fearΦ.MURDEROUS\n>CONSEQUENCES!\n>\n>That text is called \"Alan Sondheim-conference\" and appears to be a\n>response to a conference report by Sondheim.\n>\n>While some codeworkers pounce upon the texts of others as raw material for\n>codeworking, StΘphan Barron asks others to volunteer texts. In \"Com_post\n>Concepts\" he solicits contributions with a text that begins:\n>\n>Web surfers send in their texts by e-mail. All are then composted! Just as\n>we ourselves are composted! Recycling as organic and cyclical technology,\n>a technology of intelligence and responsibility, of the link to the\n>natural and artificial world.\n>\n>The sender receives her or his own text back at weekly intervals, in an\n>increasingly noisy and unintelligible state.\n>\n>The Internet emerges in much of this work as a noisy space, in which the\n>structures of text decay and writing becomes granular, a chaotic space of\n>temporary orders constantly becoming randomized. Yet within this chaotic\n>space, the μdestructive characterξ of the codeworker proposes new kinds of\n>sensemaking that might, for a moment, keep the parasite of noise at bay.\n>\n>Another precursor one might mention, besides Blake, for the emerging world\n>of codework, is the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake. In Wake, multiplicity\n>can erupt at any point along the textual surface, not just at discrete\n>hyperlinked nodes. Permutations, a Web site by Florian Cramer, reproduces\n>in digital form many of the great combinatory text systems, from Raymond\n>Lullus to Ramond Queneau. Cramer has also produced a codework machine that\n>creates permutations on Finnegans Wake, called \"Here Comes Everybody.\" It\n>works at the level of the syllable, producing a virtual universe of new\n>portmanteau words out of original Joyce-text.\n>\n>The Australian codeworker Mez has developed a distinctive prose style that\n>she calls mezangelle, producing texts that tend to look like this:\n>\n>.nodal +death+-points swallowed in a dea.th.rush.\n>.u begin 2 -f][l][ail-, ar][t][][is][ms all awry n caught in webbed\n>ma][ulers][ws.\n>\n>Rather than link discrete blocs of text, or \"lexias,\" to each other, Mez\n>introduces the hypertext principle of multiplicity into the word itself.\n>Rather than produce alternative trajectories through the text on the\n>hypertext principle of \"choice,\" here they co-exist within the same\n>textual space.\n>\n>The interest of Mez's writings is not limited to this distinctive approach\n>to the text. While the words split and merge on the screen, the authoring\n>\"avatar\" behind them is also in a state of flux. Texts issue, in various\n>forms in various places, from data[h!bleeder, Phonet][r][ix, netwurker,\n>and many other heteronyms.\n>\n>At the heart of the codeworking enterprise is a call for a revised\n>approach to language itself. Many of the creative strategies for making or\n>thinking about writing in the latter part of the twentieth century drew on\n>Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. In the hands of\n>poststructuralists, language poets, or hypertext authors and theorists,\n>this was a powerful and useful place to start thinking about how language\n>works. But Saussure begins by separating language as a smooth and abstract\n>plane from speech as a pragmatic act. Language is then divided into\n>signifier and signified, with the referent appearing as a shadowy third\n>term. The concept of language that emerges, for all its purity, is far\n>removed from language as a process.\n>\n>What codework draws attention to is the pragmatic side of language.\n>Language is not an abstract and homogenous plane, it is one element in a\n>heterogeneous series of elements linked together in the act of\n>communication. Writing is not a matter of the text, but of the assemblage\n>of the writer, reader, text, the text's material support, the laws of\n>property and exchange within which all of the above circulate, and so on.\n>Codework draws attention to writing as media, where the art of writing is\n>a matter of constructing an aesthetic, an ethics, even a politics, that\n>approaches all of the elements of the process together. Codework makes of\n>writing a media art that breaks with the fetishism of the text and the\n>abstraction of language. It brings writing into contact with the other\n>branches of media art, such as music and cinema, all of which are\n>converging in the emerging space of multimedia, and which often have a\n>richer conception of the politics of media art as a collaborative practice\n>than has been the case with writing conceived within the prison-house of\n>\"text.\"\n>\n>from American Book Review\n>\n>\n>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\n>We no longer have roots, we have aerials.\n>~~~~~~~~~~ McKenzie Wark ~~~~~~~~~\n>\n>\n>\n>\n>\n># distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n># <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n># collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n># more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n># archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n\n\n============================================================================\n\nPort:status>OPEN\nwildstyle access: www.djspooky.com\n\nPaul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid\n\nSubliminal Kid Inc.\n\nOffice Mailing Address:\n\nMusic and Art Management\n245 w14th st #2RC NY NY\n10011\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"date": "Sat, 22 Sep 2001 19:10:42 -0400",
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"from": "\"Paul D. Miller\" <anansi1 {AT} earthlink.net>",
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"to": "\"nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net\" <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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}
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],
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"list": "nettime_l",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"date": "Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:15:09 -0500",
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"subject": "<nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "McKenzie Wark",
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"id": "00677",
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"content": "[Hopefully, this time with the right formatting...]\n\nCodework\nMcKenzie Wark\n\n\nWhat happens to writing as it collides with new media? I was \nthinking about this recently while looking over an exhibition of \nWilliam Blake’s work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. On \ndisplay was not just Blake the artist, Blake the poet, or Blake the \nquirky revolutionary. Here was Blake the media artist.\n\nBlake assembled all of the elements of a media practice. As a \nwriter he experimented with all aspects of the production process. \nHis aesthetic did not stop with the word on the page. Here, I \nthought, was a useful precursor to name for the new \ndevelopments in writing that take place on the Internet, \ndevelopments I will shortly define as “codework.”\n\nBut Blake is interesting in this connection only if one embraces all \naspects of his productivity. There’s a tendency, in the teaching of \nliterature and the management of its canons, to separate off the \nauthoring of the text from the other aspects of writing as a \nproduction. It’s a tendency that full attention to Blake frustrates, \ngiven how fully he was invested in the implication of writing in all \naspects of its production and circulation. Blake’s creation did not \nstop at the threshold of “text.”\n\nDigging writing out of the prison-house of “text” might just be what \nis needed to unblock thinking about where the Internet is taking \nwriting. There has always been more to writing than text, and there \nis more to electronic writing than hypertext.\n\nHypertext may have come to dominate perceptions of where \nwriting is heading in the Internet era, but it is by no means the only, \nor the most interesting, strategy for electronic writing. Hypertext \nwriters tend to take the link as the key innovation in electronic \nwriting spaces. In hypertext writing, the link is supposed to open \nup multiple trajectories for the reader through the space of the text.\n\nExtraordinary claims were made for this as a liberatory writing \nstrategy. Hypertext has its limits, however. First, the writing of the \ntext stands in relation to the writing of the software as content to \nform. The two are not really brought together on the same plane of \ncreativity. Secondly, hypertext tends not to circulate outside of the \nacademic literary community. It has its roots in avant-garde \nAmerican and English literature and tends to hew close to those \norigins. Thirdly, it doesn’t really rethink who the writer is, in the new \nnetwork of statements that the expansion of the Internet makes \npossible. For all the talk of the death of the author, the hypertext \nauthor assumes much the same persona as his or her \navant-garde literary predecessors.\n\nWhat is interesting about the emergence of codework is that it \nbreaks with hypertext strategies on all three points. In many \ncodework writings, both the technical and cultural phenomena of \ncoding infiltrates the work on all its levels. Codework finds its \nhome in a wide range of Internet venues, forming \ndialogues—sometimes antagonistic ones—with the development \nof other kinds of written communication in an emerging electronic \nwriting ecology. Codework also sets to work on the problem of the \nauthor, bringing all of the tactics of the Internet to bear on the \nquestion of authorship.\n\nCodework “entities” such as Antiorp and JODI approach the \nInternet as a space in which to re-engineer all of the aspects of \ncreative production and distribution. Antiorp is famous—or rather \ninfamous—for bombarding listservers such as the Nettime media \ntheory list with posts that seem to parody the sometimes \nhigh-serious style of Internet media theory. It was often hard to tell \nwhether the Antiorp writing emanated from a human source or \nfrom some demented “‘bot” programmed to produce the \nsemi-legible texts.\n\nAntiorp has spawned a number of alternative identities and \nimitators. It is with some trepidation that one would venture to \nassign codework texts to discrete authors. It may be best to take \nthe fabricated heteronyms under which codework is sometimes \npublished at face value, rather than to attempt to assign discrete \nflesh-and-blood authors.\n\nSome codework frustrates the assigning of authorship as a \nmeans of breaking down the link between authorship and \nintellectual property. The Luther Blissett project, for example, \nencourages writers to assume the name Luther Blissett. Many \ntexts of various kinds have appeared under that name and without \ncopyright.\n\nSome of the more prolific Luther Blissett authors subsequently \nbecame the Mu Ming Foundation, which claims to be a “laboratory \nof digital design” offering “narrative services.” The Foundation \nsees itself as an “enterprise” looking for strategies for regaining \ncontrol over the production process for codeworkers.\n\nThe “texts” JODI produces hover somewhere at the limit of what a \ntext might be. A sample might look something like this:\n\no\n|:__::::::::::_——|_::::::::::_——|_:::::::\n:: : :: :\nA classic JODI Web page may spit all kinds of “punctuation art” \nacross the screen. This work is neither writing nor visual art but \nsomething in between. The programming involved usually teeters \non the brink of failure. Every technology brings into being new \nkinds of crashes or accidents, and JODI endeavors to find those \naccidents unique to the authoring of Web pages.\n\nInteger sometimes makes interventions into discussions on \nlistservers, all with variations on the same distinctive approach to \nbreaking up the text and introducing noise into it, not to mention a \nsomewhat abusive hypercritical persona.\n\nthis - a l l this. = but 01 ch!!!!!!p. uneventful\nkorporat fascist gullibloon zpektakle.\n\nThis might be a mangled machine English, or perhaps an English \nwritten by a machine programmed by someone who speaks \nEnglish as a second language, or someone producing a \nsimulation of some such. The decaying grammar and spelling of \nthe Internet here becomes a kind of aesthetic alternative.\n\nRather than using e-mail and listservers, Alan Sondheim \nsometimes uses IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, as a means of \ncollaboration and composition, as in “saying names among \nthemselves,” which begins:\n\nIRC log started Mon May 7 00:40\n*** Value of LOG set to ON\n*** You are now talking to channel \n\t#nikuko\n*** Alan is now known as terrible\n*** terrible is now known as worries_i\n\nThe text proceeds as what appears to be a collaboration between \nSondheim and unwitting collaborators, who may or may not know \nthat this writing may come to have the status of writing, rather than \nchat.\n\nMany codework texts hover on the brink of legibility, asking the \nreader to question whether the author is made of flesh or silicon, \nor perhaps whether authoring lies at the level of writing text or \ncoding software to write text. Kenji Siratori’s texts may be \nmachine-made or made to look machine-made.\n\nAnt PC planetary, MURDEROUS CONSEQUENCES! body line \nTREMENDOUS HORROR! drugy miracle ADAM doll \nTREMENDOUS HORROR! thyroid falls….MURDEROUS \nCONSEQUENCES! vivid placenta world TREMENDOUS HORROR! \nmachinative angel:her soul-machine discharges MURDEROUS \nCONSEQUENCES! speed PC fear….MURDEROUS \nCONSEQUENCES!\n\nThat text is called “Alan Sondheim-conference” and appears to be \na response to a conference report by Sondheim.\n\nWhile some codeworkers pounce upon the texts of others as raw \nmaterial for codeworking, Stéphan Barron asks others to volunteer \ntexts. In “Com_post Concepts” he solicits contributions with a text \nthat begins:\n\nWeb surfers send in their texts by e-mail. …All are then \ncomposted! Just as we ourselves are composted! Recycling as \norganic and cyclical technology, a technology of intelligence and \nresponsibility, of the link to the natural and artificial world.\n\nThe sender receives her or his own text back at weekly intervals, in \nan increasingly noisy and unintelligible state.\n\nThe Internet emerges in much of this work as a noisy space, in \nwhich the structures of text decay and writing becomes granular, a \nchaotic space of temporary orders constantly becoming \nrandomized. Yet within this chaotic space, the “destructive \ncharacter” of the codeworker proposes new kinds of sensemaking \nthat might, for a moment, keep the parasite of noise at bay.\n\nAnother precursor one might mention, besides Blake, for the \nemerging world of codework, is the James Joyce of Finnegans \nWake. In Wake, multiplicity can erupt at any point along the textual \nsurface, not just at discrete hyperlinked nodes. Permutations, a \nWeb site by Florian Cramer, reproduces in digital form many of the \ngreat combinatory text systems, from Raymond Lullus to Ramond \nQueneau. Cramer has also produced a codework machine that \ncreates permutations on Finnegans Wake, called “Here Comes \nEverybody.” It works at the level of the syllable, producing a virtual \nuniverse of new portmanteau words out of original Joyce-text.\n\nThe Australian codeworker Mez has developed a distinctive prose \nstyle that she calls mezangelle, producing texts that tend to look \nlike this:\n\n.nodal +death+-points swallowed in a dea.th.rush.\n.u begin 2 -f][l][ail-, ar][t][][is][ms all awry n caught in webbed\nma][ulers][ws.\n\nRather than link discrete blocs of text, or “lexias,” to each other, \nMez introduces the hypertext principle of multiplicity into the word \nitself. Rather than produce alternative trajectories through the text \non the hypertext principle of “choice,” here they co-exist within the \nsame textual space.\n\nThe interest of Mez’s writings is not limited to this distinctive \napproach to the text. While the words split and merge on the \nscreen, the authoring “avatar” behind them is also in a state of flux. \nTexts issue, in various forms in various places, from \ndata[h!bleeder, Phonet][r][ix, netwurker, and many other \nheteronyms.\n\nAt the heart of the codeworking enterprise is a call for a revised \napproach to language itself. Many of the creative strategies for \nmaking or thinking about writing in the latter part of the twentieth \ncentury drew on Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General \nLinguistics. In the hands of poststructuralists, language poets, or \nhypertext authors and theorists, this was a powerful and useful \nplace to start thinking about how language works. But Saussure \nbegins by separating language as a smooth and abstract plane \nfrom speech as a pragmatic act. Language is then divided into \nsignifier and signified, with the referent appearing as a shadowy \nthird term. The concept of language that emerges, for all its purity, \nis far removed from language as a process.\n\nWhat codework draws attention to is the pragmatic side of \nlanguage. Language is not an abstract and homogenous plane, it \nis one element in a heterogeneous series of elements linked \ntogether in the act of communication. Writing is not a matter of the \ntext, but of the assemblage of the writer, reader, text, the text’s \nmaterial support, the laws of property and exchange within which \nall of the above circulate, and so on.\nCodework draws attention to writing as media, where the art of \nwriting is a matter of constructing an aesthetic, an ethics, even a \npolitics, that approaches all of the elements of the process \ntogether. Codework makes of writing a media art that breaks with \nthe fetishism of the text and the abstraction of language. It brings \nwriting into contact with the other branches of media art, such as \nmusic and cinema, all of which are converging in the emerging \nspace of multimedia, and which often have a richer conception of \nthe politics of media art as a collaborative practice than has been \nthe case with writing conceived within the prison-house of “text.”\n\nfrom American Book Review\n\n\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\nWe no longer have roots, we have aerials. \n~~~~~~~~~~ McKenzie Wark ~~~~~~~~~\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
|
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"message-id": "306742307747.307747306742@homemail.nyu.edu",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0109/msg00677.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
|
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"list": "nettime_bold",
|
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"date": "Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:15:09 -0500",
|
||
"from": "McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>",
|
||
"to": "nettime-l@bbs.thing.net",
|
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"subject": "[Nettime-bold] from hypertext to codework",
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"follow-up": [
|
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{
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"author_name": "Paul D. Miller",
|
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"id": "00253",
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"content": "\nHey Ken -\n1) Artaud - relatively decent Artaud sites:\nhttp://www.hydra.umn.edu/artaud/ab.html\n\nhttp://www.antoninartaud.org/home.html\n\nand the Artaud reference can be found in the \"Theater and It's \nDouble\" at the beginning of the section entitled \"The Theater and its \nShadow\"\n\naround p.49 in the edition I have \"la realite virtuelle\" - 1938.... \nin the section called the \"theater and it's shadow\" or something like \nthat... the original context was that humans were inundated with life \nas symbolic reality... both me and Erik Davis deal with this in our \nrespective writings on the topic.\n\n2) There's plenty of room for figuring out how Walter Ong's ideas of \norality and text flow together, his book \"Orality and Literacy: the \nTechnologizing of the Word\" remains a pretty good glimpse into how \nwords became \"the noetic navigation of places\" - but words assign \nplace and meaning on-line, but in the world of stuff like Amos \nTutualoa or John Lee (the black hacker on the cover of Wired a long \ntime ago who was into the whole language as cipher-text etc etc his \ncrew was called \"The Masters of Deception\"), it'd be nifty to figure \nout on how mantras etc etc fit into this too....\n\n3) your idea that \"everything Alan does is a proposition on how to \nread...\" - well, yep, but again, it's the permutations of the process \nthat make reading him interesting. Otherwise, no disrespect to Alan, \nit'd be like listening to the same beat over and over and over... \neven the linguistic origins of jazz (from the French verb \"jazzer\" - \nwhich means to \"have a dialog\") - still pertains to what you spoke \nabout.Some of this relates basically as the \"lowest common \ndenominator\" kind of scenario to the \"sequencing/spatializing\" of the \nword that Ong deals with, but again, there's plenty of stuff like \nthat in electronic music at this point... There's a couple of great \ntreatments of that topic in Robert Farris Thompson's classic \"Flash \nof the Spirit\"...\n\n4) yep, I agree about mixing styles and genres... in academia, there \nare rules and regulations about this kind of thing - and keeping the \nboundaries between \"zones\" in this day and age is getting more and \nmore problematic, but I have a feeling the next generation of folks \nwill all look at this kind of thing as a video game or hypertext of a \nkind of collaborative filtering or something... if you still have \nthat article around (the one on language and whatnot with henry louis \ngates etc etc) we're still working on getting 21C started up - I've \nbeen travelling alot, and that's slowed things down..... Let me know \nif you'd be into re-publishing it or something. I'm going to set up \nthe web version of the magazine first and deal with the print in a \nlittle bit (www.21cmagazine.com is up and running, but again, there's \nonly 24 hours in the day... I have a decent amount of articles from \nvarious folks, but I need about two weeks of down-time - which I'm \ntaking in mid-October - to finalize everything... more on that in a \nbit)\nokay,\npeace from Florida\nPaul\n\n\n\n>Thanks to Paul for\n>his remarks, but i\n>think, as they say,\n>that\n>i want to break it\n>down...\n <...>\n\n\n============================================================================\n\nPort:status>OPEN\nwildstyle access: www.djspooky.com\n\nPaul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid\n\nSubliminal Kid Inc.\n\nOffice Mailing Address:\n\nMusic and Art Management\n245 w14th st #2RC NY NY\n10011\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"message-id": "200109251747.NAA22389 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/msg00253.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"list": "nettime_l",
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"date": "Mon, 24 Sep 2001 22:53:16 -0400",
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"from": "\"Paul D. Miller\" <anansi1 {AT} mail.earthlink.net>",
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"to": "\"nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net\" <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
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"subject": "<nettime> resending.... from hypertext to codework"
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{
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"message-id": "v04220810b7d2bde6a674@[209.246.104.235]",
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"content": "Ken - I'm sitting here in Florida, and just have to sigh a little \nbit. This is the problem with the digital media scene - it is SUPER \nWHITEBREAD - there is alot more going on.... I'm not attacking you, \nI just wish that the computer \"art/literary\" scene - especially where \nit comes to \"language as code\" - would think about precedents for \ntheater and spectacle outside of the normal discourse that goes on in \nspots like nettime... at the end of the day, the \"visual interface\" \nthat most of digital culture uses to create art/text/etc etc is not \nneutral, and again, this is a Mcluhan refraction of the old inner \near/eye thing, but with a little bit more of a technical twist. \nThere's a great essay that the physicist David Bohm wrote on this \ntopic called \"Thought as a System\" - the idea of progress is a \nconvergence of these \"visual cues\" that hold the eye and hand \ntogether when we think... Multi valent/multi-cultural approaches to \nlanguage and all of the sundry variations its going through right \nnow, are what make this kind of stuff alot more interesting... Artaud \nwas the fellow who invented the term \"virtual reality\" not Jaron \nLanier... think of the media repetitions of the WTC as a scene out of \n\"Theater of Cruelty\" and combine it with how mourning passes through \nthe media sphere a la Princess Diana's death etc etc and you get the \nidea of the whole gestalt of this kind of thing... or even the way \nthat linguistic permutation has evolved out of music and spoken text \n(think of Cab Calloway or Kurt Schwitters or later material like John \nCage's 'mesotics' (I'm writing this off the cuff... did I spell that \nright?), and even the way dj's play with words while spinning music \nin a set - this in itself is one of the major developments of 20th \ncentury culture: the ability not just to accept the linguistic \nregulations of a situation (again, Debord meets Grand Master \nFlash...) - but to constantly change them. This is one of the major \nissues that Henry Louis Gates wrote about in his \"Signifying Monkey\" \nessay a long while ago, but you can easily see the digital component \nof the same system of thought on-line when people play with words as \ndomain names etc etc.... there's shareware like Ray Kurzweil's \nCybernetic Poet \nhttp://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/poetry/rkcp_overview.php3\n\nand hip-hop material like Saul Williams and Kool Keith, and even the \nway the poetry of algorithms became rhythm (there's a great site on \nthe history of drum machines... http://www.drummachine.com/\n\nand out of Australia, there's the global digital poetry site that \nuses algorithms to create text and hyperlinks:\nhttp://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/~komninos/maysites.html\n\nor even the \"visual thesaurus\" that creates 3-D models of how words \nrelate to one another...\nhttp://www.thinkmap.com/\n\nand even more MAX/MSP based code material from stuff like composer \nKarlheinz Essl's explorations of free jazz and code structures with \nhis \"lexicon-sonate\" programs:\nhttp://www.essl.at/works/lexson-online.html\n\nor nifty stuff like Chris Csikszentmihalyi's \"Robot Dj\" that does \nstuff like cuttin' and scratchin' - after all \"phonograph\" breaks \ndown to \"Sound - writing\" i.e. \"phonetics of graphology...\"\n\nhttp://www.dj-i-robot.com/\n\nsequencing and figuring out different permutations as core aspects of \ncode is an archetypal situation at this point... Alan Sondheim is \nperhaps the equivalent of an MC for Nettime, but again, the field \ncould and should be expanded at this point.\n\n\nthe idea here is to point out\n1) multi-cultural variations in language (Stephen Pinker does a great \njob of describing \"patois\" and cultural change as linguistic \nvariation in his \"How the Mind Works\") as a platform for figuring out \nhow codes evolve out of linguistic systems\n2) multi cultural takes on this are alot more fun... and the parties \nare alot better, and the music is alot better...\n3) what next? Ken - how about a nick name - \"Dj Oulipo\" or something...\n\npeace,\nPaul\n\n\nhttp://www2.ec-lille.fr/~book/oulipo/info/\n\n\n>Codework\n>McKenzie Wark\n>\n>\n>What happens to writing as it collides with new media? I was thinking\n>about this recently while looking over an exhibition of William Blake's\n>work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. On display was not just Blake\n>the artist, Blake the poet, or Blake the quirky revolutionary. Here was\n>Blake the media artist.\n>\n>Blake assembled all of the elements of a media practice. As a writer he\n>experimented with all aspects of the production process. His aesthetic\n>did not stop with the word on the page. Here, I thought, was a useful\n>precursor to name for the new developments in writing that take place on\n>the Internet, developments I will shortly define as \"codework.\"\n>\n>But Blake is interesting in this connection only if one embraces all\n>aspects of his productivity. There's a tendency, in the teaching of\n>literature and the management of its canons, to separate off the authoring\n>of the text from the other aspects of writing as a production. It's a\n>tendency that full attention to Blake frustrates, given how fully he was\n>invested in the implication of writing in all aspects of its production\n>and circulation. Blakeís creation did not stop at the threshold of \"text.\"\n>\n>Digging writing out of the prison-house of \"text\" might just be what is\n>needed to unblock thinking about where the Internet is taking writing.\n>There has always been more to writing than text, and there is more to\n>electronic writing than hypertext.\n>\n>Hypertext may have come to dominate perceptions of where writing is\n>heading in the Internet era, but it is by no means the only, or the most\n>interesting, strategy for electronic writing. Hypertext writers tend to\n>take the link as the key innovation in electronic writing spaces. In\n>hypertext writing, the link is supposed to open up multiple trajectories\n>for the reader through the space of the text.\n>\n>Extraordinary claims were made for this as a liberatory writing strategy.\n>Hypertext has its limits, however. First, the writing of the text stands\n>in relation to the writing of the software as content to form. The two are\n>not really brought together on the same plane of creativity. Secondly,\n>hypertext tends not to circulate outside of the academic literary\n>community. It has its roots in avant-garde American and English literature\n>and tends to hew close to those origins. Thirdly, it doesn't really\n>rethink who the writer is, in the new network of statements that the\n>expansion of the Internet makes possible. For all the talk of the death of\n>the author, the hypertext author assumes much the same persona as his or\n>her avant-garde literary predecessors.\n>\n>What is interesting about the emergence of codework is that it breaks with\n>hypertext strategies on all three points. In many codework writings, both\n>the technical and cultural phenomena of coding infiltrates the work on all\n>its levels. Codework finds its home in a wide range of Internet venues,\n>forming dialoguesósometimes antagonistic onesówith the development of\n>other kinds of written communication in an emerging electronic writing\n>ecology. Codework also sets to work on the problem of the author, bringing\n>all of the tactics of the Internet to bear on the question of authorship.\n>\n>Codework \"entities\" such as Antiorp and JODI approach the Internet as a\n>space in which to re-engineer all of the aspects of creative production\n>and distribution. Antiorp is famousóor rather infamousófor bombarding\n>listservers such as the Nettime media theory list with posts that seem to\n>parody the sometimes high-serious style of Internet media theory. It was\n>often hard to tell whether the Antiorp writing emanated from a human\n>source or from some demented \"bot\" programmed to produce the semi-legible\n>texts.\n>\n>Antiorp has spawned a number of alternative identities and imitators. It\n>is with some trepidation that one would venture to assign codework texts\n>to discrete authors. It may be best to take the fabricated heteronyms\n>under which codework is sometimes published at face value, rather than to\n>attempt to assign discrete flesh-and-blood authors.\n>\n>Some codework frustrates the assigning of authorship as a means of\n>breaking down the link between authorship and intellectual property. The\n>Luther Blissett project, for example, encourages writers to assume the\n>name Luther Blissett. Many texts of various kinds have appeared under that\n>name and without copyright.\n>\n>Some of the more prolific Luther Blissett authors subsequently became the\n>Mu Ming Foundation, which claims to be a \"laboratory of digital design\"\n>offering \"narrative services.\" The Foundation sees itself as an\n>ìenterpriseî looking for strategies for regaining control over the\n>production process for codeworkers.\n>\n>The \"texts\" JODI produces hover somewhere at the limit of what a text\n>might be. A sample might look something like this:\n>\n>o\n>|:__::::::::::_óó|_::::::::::_óó|_:::::::\n>:: : :: :\n>\n>A classic JODI Web page may spit all kinds of \"punctuation art\" across\n>the screen. This work is neither writing nor visual art but something in\n>between. The programming involved usually teeters on the brink of failure.\n>Every technology brings into being new kinds of crashes or accidents, and\n>JODI endeavors to find those accidents unique to the authoring of Web\n>pages.\n>\n>Integer sometimes makes interventions into discussions on listservers, all\n>with variations on the same distinctive approach to breaking up the text\n>and introducing noise into it, not to mention a somewhat abusive\n>hypercritical persona.\n>\n>this - a l l this. = but 01 ch!!!!!!p. uneventful\n>korporat fascist gullibloon zpektakle.\n>\n>This might be a mangled machine English, or perhaps an English written by\n>a machine programmed by someone who speaks English as a second language,\n>or someone producing a simulation of some such. The decaying grammar and\n>spelling of the Internet here becomes a kind of aesthetic alternative.\n>\n>Rather than using e-mail and listservers, Alan Sondheim sometimes uses\n>IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, as a means of collaboration and composition,\n>as in \"saying names among themselves,\" which begins:\n>\n>IRC log started Mon May 7 00:40\n>*** Value of LOG set to ON\n>*** You are now talking to channel\n>\t#nikuko\n>*** Alan is now known as terrible\n>*** terrible is now known as worries_i\n>\n>The text proceeds as what appears to be a collaboration between Sondheim\n>and unwitting collaborators, who may or may not know that this writing may\n>come to have the status of writing, rather than chat.\n>\n>Many codework texts hover on the brink of legibility, asking the reader to\n>question whether the author is made of flesh or silicon, or perhaps\n>whether authoring lies at the level of writing text or coding software to\n>write text. Kenji Siratoriís texts may be machine-made or made to look\n>machine-made.\n>\n>Ant PC planetary, MURDEROUS CONSEQUENCES! body line\n>TREMENDOUS HORROR! drugy miracle ADAM doll\n>TREMENDOUS HORROR! thyroid fallsÖ.MURDEROUS\n>CONSEQUENCES! vivid placenta world TREMENDOUS HORROR!\n>machinative angel:her soul-machine discharges MURDEROUS\n>CONSEQUENCES! speed PC fearÖ.MURDEROUS\n>CONSEQUENCES!\n>\n>That text is called \"Alan Sondheim-conference\" and appears to be a\n>response to a conference report by Sondheim.\n>\n>While some codeworkers pounce upon the texts of others as raw material for\n>codeworking, StÈphan Barron asks others to volunteer texts. In \"Com_post\n>Concepts\" he solicits contributions with a text that begins:\n>\n>Web surfers send in their texts by e-mail. All are then composted! Just as\n>we ourselves are composted! Recycling as organic and cyclical technology,\n>a technology of intelligence and responsibility, of the link to the\n>natural and artificial world.\n>\n>The sender receives her or his own text back at weekly intervals, in an\n>increasingly noisy and unintelligible state.\n>\n>The Internet emerges in much of this work as a noisy space, in which the\n>structures of text decay and writing becomes granular, a chaotic space of\n>temporary orders constantly becoming randomized. Yet within this chaotic\n>space, the ìdestructive characterî of the codeworker proposes new kinds of\n>sensemaking that might, for a moment, keep the parasite of noise at bay.\n>\n>Another precursor one might mention, besides Blake, for the emerging world\n>of codework, is the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake. In Wake, multiplicity\n>can erupt at any point along the textual surface, not just at discrete\n>hyperlinked nodes. Permutations, a Web site by Florian Cramer, reproduces\n>in digital form many of the great combinatory text systems, from Raymond\n>Lullus to Ramond Queneau. Cramer has also produced a codework machine that\n>creates permutations on Finnegans Wake, called \"Here Comes Everybody.\" It\n>works at the level of the syllable, producing a virtual universe of new\n>portmanteau words out of original Joyce-text.\n>\n>The Australian codeworker Mez has developed a distinctive prose style that\n>she calls mezangelle, producing texts that tend to look like this:\n>\n>.nodal +death+-points swallowed in a dea.th.rush.\n>.u begin 2 -f][l][ail-, ar][t][][is][ms all awry n caught in webbed\n>ma][ulers][ws.\n>\n>Rather than link discrete blocs of text, or \"lexias,\" to each other, Mez\n>introduces the hypertext principle of multiplicity into the word itself.\n>Rather than produce alternative trajectories through the text on the\n>hypertext principle of \"choice,\" here they co-exist within the same\n>textual space.\n>\n>The interest of Mez's writings is not limited to this distinctive approach\n>to the text. While the words split and merge on the screen, the authoring\n>\"avatar\" behind them is also in a state of flux. Texts issue, in various\n>forms in various places, from data[h!bleeder, Phonet][r][ix, netwurker,\n>and many other heteronyms.\n>\n>At the heart of the codeworking enterprise is a call for a revised\n>approach to language itself. Many of the creative strategies for making or\n>thinking about writing in the latter part of the twentieth century drew on\n>Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. In the hands of\n>poststructuralists, language poets, or hypertext authors and theorists,\n>this was a powerful and useful place to start thinking about how language\n>works. But Saussure begins by separating language as a smooth and abstract\n>plane from speech as a pragmatic act. Language is then divided into\n>signifier and signified, with the referent appearing as a shadowy third\n>term. The concept of language that emerges, for all its purity, is far\n>removed from language as a process.\n>\n>What codework draws attention to is the pragmatic side of language.\n>Language is not an abstract and homogenous plane, it is one element in a\n>heterogeneous series of elements linked together in the act of\n>communication. Writing is not a matter of the text, but of the assemblage\n>of the writer, reader, text, the text's material support, the laws of\n>property and exchange within which all of the above circulate, and so on.\n>Codework draws attention to writing as media, where the art of writing is\n>a matter of constructing an aesthetic, an ethics, even a politics, that\n>approaches all of the elements of the process together. Codework makes of\n>writing a media art that breaks with the fetishism of the text and the\n>abstraction of language. It brings writing into contact with the other\n>branches of media art, such as music and cinema, all of which are\n>converging in the emerging space of multimedia, and which often have a\n>richer conception of the politics of media art as a collaborative practice\n>than has been the case with writing conceived within the prison-house of\n>\"text.\"\n>\n>from American Book Review\n>\n>\n>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\n>We no longer have roots, we have aerials.\n>~~~~~~~~~~ McKenzie Wark ~~~~~~~~~\n>\n>\n>\n>\n>\n># distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n># <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n># collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n># more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n># archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net\n\n\n\n============================================================================\n\nPort:status>OPEN\nwildstyle access: www.djspooky.com\n\nPaul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid\n\nSubliminal Kid Inc.\n\nOffice Mailing Address:\n\nMusic and Art Management\n245 w14th st #2RC NY NY\n10011\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
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"from": "\"Paul D. Miller\" <anansi1@earthlink.net>",
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"author_name": "Paul D. Miller",
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"id": "00714",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0109/msg00714.html",
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"follow-up": [
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{
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"author_name": "McKenzie Wark",
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"id": "00741",
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"message-id": "6ab1b36b0778.6b07786ab1b3@homemail.nyu.edu",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0109/msg00741.html",
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"follow-up": [
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{
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"author_name": "Paul D. Miller",
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"id": "00770",
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"message-id": "v0422082ab7d5080b24e4@[209.246.104.235]",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0109/msg00770.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "Hey Ken -\n1) Artaud - relatively decent Artaud sites:\nhttp://www.hydra.umn.edu/artaud/ab.html\n\nhttp://www.antoninartaud.org/home.html\n\nand the Artaud reference can be found in the \"Theater and It's \nDouble\" at the beginning of the section entitled \"The Theater and its \nShadow\"\n\naround p.49 in the edition I have \"la realite virtuelle\" - 1938.... \nin the section called the \"theater and it's shadow\" or something like \nthat... the original context was that humans were inundated with life \nas symbolic reality... both me and Erik Davis deal with this in our \nrespective writings on the topic.\n\n2) There's plenty of room for figuring out how Walter Ong's ideas of \norality and text flow together, his book \"Orality and Literacy: the \nTechnologizing of the Word\" remains a pretty good glimpse into how \nwords became in a word \"the noetic navigation of places\" - but words \nassign place and meaning on-line, but in the world of stuff like Amos \nTutualoa or John Lee (the black hacker on the cover of Wired a long \ntime ago who was into the whole language as cipher-text etc etc his \ncrew was called \"The Masters of Deception\"), it'd be nifty to figure \nout on how mantras etc etc fit into this too....\n\n3) your idea that \"everything Alan does is a proposition on how to \nread...\" - well, yep, but again, it's the permutations of the process \nthat make reading him interesting. Otherwise, no disrespect to Alan, \nit'd be like listening to the same beat over and over and over... \neven the linguistic origins of jazz (from the French verb \"jazzer\" - \nwhich means to \"have a dialog\") - still pertains to what you spoke \nabout.Some of this relates basically as the \"lowest common \ndenominator\" kind of scenario to the \"sequencing/spatializing\" of the \nword that Ong deals with, but again, there's plenty of stuff like \nthat in electronic music at this point... There's a couple of great \ntreatments of that topic in Robert Farris Thompson's classic \"Flash \nof the Spirit\"...\n\n4) yep, I agree about mixing styles and genres... in academia, there \nare rules and regulations about this kind of thing, but I have a \nfeeling the next generation of folks will all look at this kind of \nthing as a video game or hypertext of a kind of collaborative \nfiltering or something... speaking of rules, I see that Mark Dery is \nnow an assistant (junior) professor of Journalism at NYU... ha! ha! - \ngod help the children who study under him.... But uh... anyway... if \nyou still have that article around (the one on language and whatnot \nwith henry louis gates etc etc) we're still working on getting 21C \nstarted up - I've been travelling alot, and that's slowed things \ndown..... Let me know if you'd be into re-publishing it or something. \nI'm going to set up the web version of the magazine first and deal \nwith the print in a little bit (www.21cmagazine.com is up and \nrunning, but again, there's only 24 hours in the day... I have a \ndecent amount of articles from various folks, but I need about two \nweeks of down-time - which I'm taking in mid-October - to finalize \neverything... more on that in a bit)\nokay,\npeace from Florida\nPaul\n\n\n\n>Thanks to Paul for\n>his remarks, but i\n>think, as they say,\n>that\n>i want to break it\n>down...\n>\n> >the problem with\n>the digital media\n>scene - it is\n>SUPER\n> > WHITEBREAD -\n>there is alot more\n>going on....\n>Yes, but when it\n>comes to entities\n>like antiorp or\n>jodi, is it\n>all that useful to\n>pose things in\n>this old\n>identity-bound\n>language?\n>\n> >think about\n>precedents for\n>theater and\n>spectacle outside\n>of the >normal\n>discourse that\n>goes on...\n>Yes, but i don't\n>quite have the\n>freedom of\n>movement that\n>you\n>do, Paul. As an\n>artist, you can cut\n>and mix in a way\n>that one can't\n>in scholarship. Its\n>not the medium,\n>its the genre.\n>\n> >this is a Mcluhan\n>refraction of the\n>old inner\n> > ear/eye thing,\n>but with a little bit\n>more of a\n>technical twist.\n>Always been\n>skeptical about\n>that aspect of\n>McLuhan, but I\n>think Ong is\n>useful here. He\n>talks of\n>'secondary orality',\n>which\n>is the orality that\n>arises within a\n>literate culture,\n>but i think\n>there is also now\n>a 'secondary\n>literacy', the\n>literacy that arises\n>within an\n>electro-oral\n>world....\n>\n> > Artaud was the\n>fellow who\n>invented the term\n>\"virtual reality\"\n>Oh really?\n>Where? [scholar\n>mode] \"We must\n>awaken the Gods\n>that sleep in\n>museums.\" Yes,\n>Artaud is a good\n>handle for\n>understanding\n>the global media\n>event. My first\n>book already\n>covers all this.\n>\n> > this in itself is\n>one of the major\n>developments of\n>20th\n> > century culture:\n>the ability not just\n>to accept the\n>linguistic\n> > regulations of a\n>situation (again,\n>Debord meets\n>Grand Master\n> > Flash...) - but to\n>constantly change\n>them. This is one\n>of the major\n> > issues that\n>Henry Louis\n>Gates wrote\n>about in his\n>\"Signifying\n> > Monkey\" essay\n>a long while ago\n>Yes, i once wrote\n>an essay on\n>Gates' signifying\n>monkey and\n>Skooly D, who\n>has a great rap\n>about the\n>monkey, the\n>faggot\n>and the fat-assed\n>pimp. Needless\n>to say i couldn't\n>get it\n>published...\n>\n> > Alan Sondheim\n>is\n> > perhaps the\n>equivalent of an\n>MC for Nettime\n>Alan posts to a lot\n>of lists and does\n>a lot of other stuff\n>besides,\n>so i don't think he\n>would want\n>anyone to see his\n>stuff here as\n>representative.\n>But i think that's a\n>nice take on it.\n>Sondheim as\n>an MC of sense,\n>of affect, cutting\n>and mixing the\n>letter to that\n>effect. Everything\n>Alan does is a\n>proposition about\n>how to\n>read.\n>\n> >but again, the\n>field\n> > could and\n>should be\n>expanded at this\n>point.\n>Its your job to\n>think like that,\n>Paul, some of us\n>have to work in\n>a different kind of\n>time. Its not about\n>slow or fast, but\n>about\n>rhythms (all\n>rhythms are the\n>same speed as\n>they all get you\n>there in the end).\n>Its about being\n>untimely. Mixing\n>past and\n>present is\n>another kind of\n>mix. Blake and\n>Integer. What is in\n>that edit? I don't\n>see it as\n>invalidated by the\n>other edits it\n>passes over in\n>silence.\n>\n> > 1) multi-cultural\n>variations in\n>language\n>You're an\n>American, Paul, to\n>whom\n>'multicultural'\n>means\n>multi-racial.\n>That's fine, but it\n>is not the\n>definition of\n>multiplicity with\n>which the rest of\n>the world\n>necessarily\n>works. I'm not so\n>keen on the\n>compression of\n>difference\n>down to this\n>narrow plane so\n>as to squeeze it\n>into\n>American\n>bandwidth. The\n>celebration of\n>multiplicity\n>going on right\n>now is a\n>frightening\n>reminder of just\n>how\n>narrow\n>conceptions of\n>difference are in\n>the United States.\n>\n> > multi cultural\n>takes on this are\n>alot more fun...\n>Well they would\n>be, but American\n>multiculturalism\n>isn't\n>much of a\n>multiplicity. I find\n>it tone-deaf to\n>'patois' that isn't\n>minted locally.\n>And look at the\n>basis on which\n>other kinds\n>of multiplicity are\n>annexed to its\n>needs: the\n>appropriation\n>of\n>postcolonialism,\n>the Black Atlantic\n>and so on. All well\n>and good, but in\n>the long run just\n>variations on the\n>self\n>image of America\n>in the world.\n>\n>So: there's a\n>problem with the\n>multicultural\n>scene, its\n>SUPER-AMERICA\n>N. But, again, its\n>not a criticism of\n>you,\n>Paul, but just\n>indiciative of the\n>difficulty of\n>working in this\n>place and time.\n>Its hard to see the\n>context, and how\n>the\n>context shapes\n>the discourse.\n>\n>Thanks for the\n>urls, which i'm\n>looking at and\n>learning from.\n>\n>cheers\n>\n>ken\n\n\n\n============================================================================\n\nPort:status>OPEN\nwildstyle access: www.djspooky.com\n\nPaul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid\n\nSubliminal Kid Inc.\n\nOffice Mailing Address:\n\nMusic and Art Management\n245 w14th st #2RC NY NY\n10011\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
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"date": "Mon, 24 Sep 2001 12:45:51 -0400",
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"from": "\"Paul D. Miller\" <anansi1@mail.earthlink.net>",
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"to": "\"nettime-l@bbs.thing.net\" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>",
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"subject": "[Nettime-bold] from hypertext to codework"
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}
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],
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"content": "\nThanks to Paul for \nhis remarks, but i \nthink, as they say, \nthat\ni want to break it \ndown...\n\n>the problem with \nthe digital media \nscene - it is \nSUPER \n> WHITEBREAD - \nthere is alot more \ngoing on.... \nYes, but when it \ncomes to entities \nlike antiorp or \njodi, is it\nall that useful to \npose things in \nthis old \nidentity-bound\nlanguage?\n\n>think about \nprecedents for \ntheater and \nspectacle outside \nof the >normal \ndiscourse that \ngoes on...\nYes, but i don't \nquite have the \nfreedom of \nmovement that \nyou\ndo, Paul. As an \nartist, you can cut \nand mix in a way \nthat one can't\nin scholarship. Its \nnot the medium, \nits the genre. \n\n>this is a Mcluhan \nrefraction of the \nold inner \n> ear/eye thing, \nbut with a little bit \nmore of a \ntechnical twist. \nAlways been \nskeptical about \nthat aspect of \nMcLuhan, but I\nthink Ong is \nuseful here. He \ntalks of \n'secondary orality', \nwhich\nis the orality that \narises within a \nliterate culture, \nbut i think\nthere is also now \na 'secondary \nliteracy', the \nliteracy that arises\nwithin an \nelectro-oral \nworld....\n\n> Artaud was the \nfellow who \ninvented the term \n\"virtual reality\" \nOh really? \nWhere? [scholar \nmode] \"We must \nawaken the Gods\nthat sleep in \nmuseums.\" Yes, \nArtaud is a good \nhandle for \nunderstanding \nthe global media \nevent. My first \nbook already\ncovers all this. \n\n> this in itself is \none of the major \ndevelopments of \n20th \n> century culture: \nthe ability not just \nto accept the \nlinguistic \n> regulations of a \nsituation (again, \nDebord meets \nGrand Master \n> Flash...) - but to \nconstantly change \nthem. This is one \nof the major \n> issues that \nHenry Louis \nGates wrote \nabout in his \n\"Signifying \n> Monkey\" essay \na long while ago\nYes, i once wrote \nan essay on \nGates' signifying \nmonkey and\nSkooly D, who \nhas a great rap \nabout the \nmonkey, the \nfaggot\nand the fat-assed \npimp. Needless \nto say i couldn't \nget it\npublished...\n\n> Alan Sondheim \nis \n> perhaps the \nequivalent of an \nMC for Nettime\nAlan posts to a lot \nof lists and does \na lot of other stuff \nbesides,\nso i don't think he \nwould want \nanyone to see his \nstuff here as\nrepresentative. \nBut i think that's a \nnice take on it. \nSondheim as\nan MC of sense, \nof affect, cutting \nand mixing the \nletter to that\neffect. Everything \nAlan does is a \nproposition about \nhow to\nread.\n\n>but again, the \nfield \n> could and \nshould be \nexpanded at this \npoint.\nIts your job to \nthink like that, \nPaul, some of us \nhave to work in\na different kind of \ntime. Its not about \nslow or fast, but \nabout\nrhythms (all \nrhythms are the \nsame speed as \nthey all get you\nthere in the end). \nIts about being \nuntimely. Mixing \npast and\npresent is \nanother kind of \nmix. Blake and \nInteger. What is in\nthat edit? I don't \nsee it as \ninvalidated by the \nother edits it\npasses over in \nsilence.\n\n> 1) multi-cultural \nvariations in \nlanguage \nYou're an \nAmerican, Paul, to \nwhom \n'multicultural' \nmeans\nmulti-racial. \nThat's fine, but it \nis not the \ndefinition of\nmultiplicity with \nwhich the rest of \nthe world \nnecessarily\nworks. I'm not so \nkeen on the \ncompression of \ndifference\ndown to this \nnarrow plane so \nas to squeeze it \ninto \nAmerican \nbandwidth. The \ncelebration of \nmultiplicity\ngoing on right \nnow is a \nfrightening \nreminder of just \nhow\nnarrow \nconceptions of \ndifference are in \nthe United States.\n\n> multi cultural \ntakes on this are \nalot more fun... \nWell they would \nbe, but American \nmulticulturalism \nisn't\nmuch of a \nmultiplicity. I find \nit tone-deaf to \n'patois' that isn't\nminted locally. \nAnd look at the \nbasis on which \nother kinds\nof multiplicity are \nannexed to its \nneeds: the \nappropriation\nof \npostcolonialism, \nthe Black Atlantic \nand so on. All well\nand good, but in \nthe long run just \nvariations on the \nself\nimage of America \nin the world. \n\nSo: there's a \nproblem with the \nmulticultural \nscene, its\nSUPER-AMERICA\nN. But, again, its \nnot a criticism of \nyou,\nPaul, but just \nindiciative of the \ndifficulty of \nworking in this\nplace and time. \nIts hard to see the \ncontext, and how \nthe\ncontext shapes \nthe discourse.\n\nThanks for the \nurls, which i'm \nlooking at and \nlearning from.\n\ncheers\n\nken\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
|
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"date": "Sun, 23 Sep 2001 14:02:48 -0500",
|
||
"from": "McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>",
|
||
"to": "\"Paul D. Miller\" <anansi1@earthlink.net>",
|
||
"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Paul D. Miller",
|
||
"id": "00770",
|
||
"message-id": "v0422082ab7d5080b24e4@[209.246.104.235]",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0109/msg00770.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "Hey Ken -\n1) Artaud - relatively decent Artaud sites:\nhttp://www.hydra.umn.edu/artaud/ab.html\n\nhttp://www.antoninartaud.org/home.html\n\nand the Artaud reference can be found in the \"Theater and It's \nDouble\" at the beginning of the section entitled \"The Theater and its \nShadow\"\n\naround p.49 in the edition I have \"la realite virtuelle\" - 1938.... \nin the section called the \"theater and it's shadow\" or something like \nthat... the original context was that humans were inundated with life \nas symbolic reality... both me and Erik Davis deal with this in our \nrespective writings on the topic.\n\n2) There's plenty of room for figuring out how Walter Ong's ideas of \norality and text flow together, his book \"Orality and Literacy: the \nTechnologizing of the Word\" remains a pretty good glimpse into how \nwords became in a word \"the noetic navigation of places\" - but words \nassign place and meaning on-line, but in the world of stuff like Amos \nTutualoa or John Lee (the black hacker on the cover of Wired a long \ntime ago who was into the whole language as cipher-text etc etc his \ncrew was called \"The Masters of Deception\"), it'd be nifty to figure \nout on how mantras etc etc fit into this too....\n\n3) your idea that \"everything Alan does is a proposition on how to \nread...\" - well, yep, but again, it's the permutations of the process \nthat make reading him interesting. Otherwise, no disrespect to Alan, \nit'd be like listening to the same beat over and over and over... \neven the linguistic origins of jazz (from the French verb \"jazzer\" - \nwhich means to \"have a dialog\") - still pertains to what you spoke \nabout.Some of this relates basically as the \"lowest common \ndenominator\" kind of scenario to the \"sequencing/spatializing\" of the \nword that Ong deals with, but again, there's plenty of stuff like \nthat in electronic music at this point... There's a couple of great \ntreatments of that topic in Robert Farris Thompson's classic \"Flash \nof the Spirit\"...\n\n4) yep, I agree about mixing styles and genres... in academia, there \nare rules and regulations about this kind of thing, but I have a \nfeeling the next generation of folks will all look at this kind of \nthing as a video game or hypertext of a kind of collaborative \nfiltering or something... speaking of rules, I see that Mark Dery is \nnow an assistant (junior) professor of Journalism at NYU... ha! ha! - \ngod help the children who study under him.... But uh... anyway... if \nyou still have that article around (the one on language and whatnot \nwith henry louis gates etc etc) we're still working on getting 21C \nstarted up - I've been travelling alot, and that's slowed things \ndown..... Let me know if you'd be into re-publishing it or something. \nI'm going to set up the web version of the magazine first and deal \nwith the print in a little bit (www.21cmagazine.com is up and \nrunning, but again, there's only 24 hours in the day... I have a \ndecent amount of articles from various folks, but I need about two \nweeks of down-time - which I'm taking in mid-October - to finalize \neverything... more on that in a bit)\nokay,\npeace from Florida\nPaul\n\n\n\n>Thanks to Paul for\n>his remarks, but i\n>think, as they say,\n>that\n>i want to break it\n>down...\n>\n> >the problem with\n>the digital media\n>scene - it is\n>SUPER\n> > WHITEBREAD -\n>there is alot more\n>going on....\n>Yes, but when it\n>comes to entities\n>like antiorp or\n>jodi, is it\n>all that useful to\n>pose things in\n>this old\n>identity-bound\n>language?\n>\n> >think about\n>precedents for\n>theater and\n>spectacle outside\n>of the >normal\n>discourse that\n>goes on...\n>Yes, but i don't\n>quite have the\n>freedom of\n>movement that\n>you\n>do, Paul. As an\n>artist, you can cut\n>and mix in a way\n>that one can't\n>in scholarship. Its\n>not the medium,\n>its the genre.\n>\n> >this is a Mcluhan\n>refraction of the\n>old inner\n> > ear/eye thing,\n>but with a little bit\n>more of a\n>technical twist.\n>Always been\n>skeptical about\n>that aspect of\n>McLuhan, but I\n>think Ong is\n>useful here. He\n>talks of\n>'secondary orality',\n>which\n>is the orality that\n>arises within a\n>literate culture,\n>but i think\n>there is also now\n>a 'secondary\n>literacy', the\n>literacy that arises\n>within an\n>electro-oral\n>world....\n>\n> > Artaud was the\n>fellow who\n>invented the term\n>\"virtual reality\"\n>Oh really?\n>Where? [scholar\n>mode] \"We must\n>awaken the Gods\n>that sleep in\n>museums.\" Yes,\n>Artaud is a good\n>handle for\n>understanding\n>the global media\n>event. My first\n>book already\n>covers all this.\n>\n> > this in itself is\n>one of the major\n>developments of\n>20th\n> > century culture:\n>the ability not just\n>to accept the\n>linguistic\n> > regulations of a\n>situation (again,\n>Debord meets\n>Grand Master\n> > Flash...) - but to\n>constantly change\n>them. This is one\n>of the major\n> > issues that\n>Henry Louis\n>Gates wrote\n>about in his\n>\"Signifying\n> > Monkey\" essay\n>a long while ago\n>Yes, i once wrote\n>an essay on\n>Gates' signifying\n>monkey and\n>Skooly D, who\n>has a great rap\n>about the\n>monkey, the\n>faggot\n>and the fat-assed\n>pimp. Needless\n>to say i couldn't\n>get it\n>published...\n>\n> > Alan Sondheim\n>is\n> > perhaps the\n>equivalent of an\n>MC for Nettime\n>Alan posts to a lot\n>of lists and does\n>a lot of other stuff\n>besides,\n>so i don't think he\n>would want\n>anyone to see his\n>stuff here as\n>representative.\n>But i think that's a\n>nice take on it.\n>Sondheim as\n>an MC of sense,\n>of affect, cutting\n>and mixing the\n>letter to that\n>effect. Everything\n>Alan does is a\n>proposition about\n>how to\n>read.\n>\n> >but again, the\n>field\n> > could and\n>should be\n>expanded at this\n>point.\n>Its your job to\n>think like that,\n>Paul, some of us\n>have to work in\n>a different kind of\n>time. Its not about\n>slow or fast, but\n>about\n>rhythms (all\n>rhythms are the\n>same speed as\n>they all get you\n>there in the end).\n>Its about being\n>untimely. Mixing\n>past and\n>present is\n>another kind of\n>mix. Blake and\n>Integer. What is in\n>that edit? I don't\n>see it as\n>invalidated by the\n>other edits it\n>passes over in\n>silence.\n>\n> > 1) multi-cultural\n>variations in\n>language\n>You're an\n>American, Paul, to\n>whom\n>'multicultural'\n>means\n>multi-racial.\n>That's fine, but it\n>is not the\n>definition of\n>multiplicity with\n>which the rest of\n>the world\n>necessarily\n>works. I'm not so\n>keen on the\n>compression of\n>difference\n>down to this\n>narrow plane so\n>as to squeeze it\n>into\n>American\n>bandwidth. The\n>celebration of\n>multiplicity\n>going on right\n>now is a\n>frightening\n>reminder of just\n>how\n>narrow\n>conceptions of\n>difference are in\n>the United States.\n>\n> > multi cultural\n>takes on this are\n>alot more fun...\n>Well they would\n>be, but American\n>multiculturalism\n>isn't\n>much of a\n>multiplicity. I find\n>it tone-deaf to\n>'patois' that isn't\n>minted locally.\n>And look at the\n>basis on which\n>other kinds\n>of multiplicity are\n>annexed to its\n>needs: the\n>appropriation\n>of\n>postcolonialism,\n>the Black Atlantic\n>and so on. All well\n>and good, but in\n>the long run just\n>variations on the\n>self\n>image of America\n>in the world.\n>\n>So: there's a\n>problem with the\n>multicultural\n>scene, its\n>SUPER-AMERICA\n>N. But, again, its\n>not a criticism of\n>you,\n>Paul, but just\n>indiciative of the\n>difficulty of\n>working in this\n>place and time.\n>Its hard to see the\n>context, and how\n>the\n>context shapes\n>the discourse.\n>\n>Thanks for the\n>urls, which i'm\n>looking at and\n>learning from.\n>\n>cheers\n>\n>ken\n\n\n\n============================================================================\n\nPort:status>OPEN\nwildstyle access: www.djspooky.com\n\nPaul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid\n\nSubliminal Kid Inc.\n\nOffice Mailing Address:\n\nMusic and Art Management\n245 w14th st #2RC NY NY\n10011\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Mon, 24 Sep 2001 12:45:51 -0400",
|
||
"from": "\"Paul D. Miller\" <anansi1@mail.earthlink.net>",
|
||
"to": "\"nettime-l@bbs.thing.net\" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>",
|
||
"subject": "[Nettime-bold] from hypertext to codework"
|
||
}
|
||
],
|
||
"list": "nettime_bold",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"date": "Sat, 22 Sep 2001 19:10:42 -0400",
|
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"to": "McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>,\"nettime-l@bbs.thing.net\" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>",
|
||
"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"message-id": "l031028b6b7fc17936674@[195.35.27.166]",
|
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"content": "ken,\n\nthis thread was still hanging around ... i want to take issue with your\nclaim that the codework you reference is an example of collaborative,\nnon-identity oriented practice.\n\n>Codework makes of\n>writing a media art that breaks with the fetishism of the text and the\n>abstraction of language. It brings writing into contact with the other\n>branches of media art, such as music and cinema, all of which are\n>converging in the emerging space of multimedia, and which often have a\n>richer conception of the politics of media art as a collaborative practice\n>than has been the case with writing conceived within the prison-house of\n>\"text.\"\n\ni fully respect your examples as artistic/literary practices, but in what\nway are jodi, mez, antiorp/nn, sondheim etc. representatives of open\nprocesses? jodi's work is good _because_ jo&di have the code under\ncontrol, just as mez is an _author_, machine-aided, style-enhanced, yes,\nbut an author. just as antiorp/nn - the most collaborative entity in the\nseries, i guess - poses as one; we all know they are several, but they\nexhibit a clear sense of ideological tightness and closure. the identities\nmay be fictional, but i don't see that any of these breaks out of the\nidentity shell. nn might be the best gamer, but its insults are too much\nfor my stomach. [she'll call me a weak imbecile for this remark, won't you,\ndear?]\n\nwhat you describe are machinic processes, yes, but the kinds of\ncollaborative practices that heico idensen talks about (in the hypertext\nworld mainly) - i don't see them in your codework examples. is artistic\ncodework more authorial than open source programming?\n\ngreetings,\n-a\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
|
||
"from": "Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@transmediale.de>",
|
||
"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
|
||
"id": "00609",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0110/msg00609.html",
|
||
"follow-up": [
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Alan Sondheim",
|
||
"id": "00628",
|
||
"message-id": "Pine.NEB.4.40.0110241743510.20241-100000@panix2.panix.com",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0110/msg00628.html",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"content": "\nThere is collaboration in a number of ways. None of us (examples you give)\noperate or produce in a vacuum; my work often requires assistance or col-\nlaboration, to the extent that \"my\" becomes suspect. The identities I work\nwith - \"Nikuko\" and others - are also disseminations across other\npractices (IRC, newsgroups, email lists, etc.) and others have also taken/\nused the name. There were also projects created for the trAce online\nwriting group which were all collaborations in the traditional sense; one\nof them, Lost, is still running.\n\nThen there is also a question of nettime; what I place on nettime (and\nthis may be true of others you mention) is what nettime accepts; the\ncollaborative dance/bodywork has no place or room here; this is also true\nfor most of the directory material on the cdroms. An email is almost\nalways signed, leaving its trace; it is a trail which almost literally\nhystericizes its identity function in the full header. And again, this\naffects, if not effects, what any of us are capable of doing in this\nmedium.\n\nAlan -\n\nInternet text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt\nPartial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html\nTrace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Wed, 24 Oct 2001 17:49:03 -0400 (EDT)",
|
||
"from": "Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>",
|
||
"to": "Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@transmediale.de>",
|
||
"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "McKenzie Wark",
|
||
"id": "00867",
|
||
"message-id": "F47mwO9suAkWORuXB3Q000032fa@hotmail.com",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0110/msg00867.html",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"content": "Andreas writes,\n\n>i fully respect your examples as artistic/literary practices, but in what \n>way are jodi, mez, antiorp/nn, sondheim etc. >representatives of open \n>processes?... what you describe are machinic processes, yes, but the kinds \n>of collaborative practices that heico >idensen talks about (in the \n>hypertext world mainly) - i don't see them in your codework examples. is \n>artistic codework more authorial than open source programming?\n\n\nWell, isn't this a collaborative process, this discussion? Isn't\nnettime \"collaborative filtering?\" There's some limitations in what\nthe examples given might uphold. Its not as if everything is in\nthe text. I'm more interested in a new way of thinking about the\npractice of writing.\n\nSemiotics and structural linguistics have a lot to answer for. They\ncreated a concept of language as a homogemous plane, which then\nentered into relations with the world as something external.\n\nWhat's interesting about Guattari is the anti-linguistics in which\none thinks of the speech act as an element in a heterogeneous,\ntemporal series. It seems to me timely to think of some of the new\nwriting practices in those terms.\n\nHypertext had its roots firmly in a (post)structural linguistics,\nand it shows in the early works composed under its sign. All the\naction is in the 'text'. There's not a lot of thought about\nthe hetereogeneous assemblages into which it might enter.\n\nk\n\n___________________________________________________\n\nhttp://www.feelergauge.net/projects/hackermanifesto/version_2.0/\n ... we no longer have roots, we have aerials ...\n___________________________________________________\n\n\n_________________________________________________________________\nGet your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Wed, 31 Oct 2001 11:21:28 -0500",
|
||
"from": "\"McKenzie Wark\" <mckenziewark@hotmail.com>",
|
||
"to": "abroeck@transmediale.de, nettime-l@bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "christopherotto",
|
||
"id": "00890",
|
||
"message-id": "Pine.SGI.4.31L.02.0110312256080.5874265-100000@irix1.gl.umbc.edu",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0110/msg00890.html",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "I would present as an example of this is the extension of my piece\ntimeascolor by Brad Borevitz earlier this year.\n\nhttp://userpages.umbc.edu/~cotto1/timeascolor.html\nhttp://www.onetwothree.net/art/somethingelse/\n\nwhat i see as interesting in (client-side) net.art is that the text\nand visuals of the artist are sent simultaneously and are inseperable from\nthe perspective of the viewer, possibly in the same way sasseure\nvisualized signified/signifier/sign as a card with two sides. very\ndifferent than seeing a painting and then reading the artist's sketchbook?\n\nI have a short paper that extends this idea - email me personally if you\nwould like to read it.\n\nchristopher otto\n\n\nOn Wed, 31 Oct 2001, McKenzie Wark wrote:\n\n>\n> Andreas writes,\n>\n> >i fully respect your examples as artistic/literary practices, but in what\n> >way are jodi, mez, antiorp/nn, sondheim etc. >representatives of open\n> >processes?... what you describe are machinic processes, yes, but the kinds\n> >of collaborative practices that heico >idensen talks about (in the\n> >hypertext world mainly) - i don't see them in your codework examples. is\n> >artistic codework more authorial than open source programming?\n>\n>\n> Well, isn't this a collaborative process, this discussion? Isn't\n> nettime \"collaborative filtering?\" There's some limitations in what\n> the examples given might uphold. Its not as if everything is in\n> the text. I'm more interested in a new way of thinking about the\n> practice of writing.\n>\n> Semiotics and structural linguistics have a lot to answer for. They\n> created a concept of language as a homogemous plane, which then\n> entered into relations with the world as something external.\n>\n> What's interesting about Guattari is the anti-linguistics in which\n> one thinks of the speech act as an element in a heterogeneous,\n> temporal series. It seems to me timely to think of some of the new\n> writing practices in those terms.\n>\n> Hypertext had its roots firmly in a (post)structural linguistics,\n> and it shows in the early works composed under its sign. All the\n> action is in the 'text'. There's not a lot of thought about\n> the hetereogeneous assemblages into which it might enter.\n>\n> k\n>\n> ___________________________________________________\n>\n> http://www.feelergauge.net/projects/hackermanifesto/version_2.0/\n> ... we no longer have roots, we have aerials ...\n> ___________________________________________________\n>\n>\n> _________________________________________________________________\n> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp\n>\n> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n> # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net\n>\n\n\n\"christ\"! (O), pher \"ot to\". . .\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nNettime-bold mailing list\nNettime-bold@nettime.org\nhttp://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold\n\n\n\n",
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"date": "Wed, 31 Oct 2001 23:11:50 -0500",
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"from": "christopherotto <cotto1@gl.umbc.edu>",
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"to": "McKenzie Wark <mckenziewark@hotmail.com>",
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"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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}
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],
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"list": "nettime_bold",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"date": "Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:13:15 +0200",
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"to": "McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>",
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"subject": "[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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}
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]
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},
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{
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"author_name": "Richard",
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"id": "00036",
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"content": "\nAre people still interested in ART on this list?\nPerhaps they are...\n\n\nSoftware Art After Programming\n\nRichard Wright, April 2004.\n\nFirst published in MUTE magazine, no. 28, Autumn 2004\nhttp://www.metamute.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=3D1&IdPublication=3D1=\n&NrIssue=3D28&NrSection=3D10&NrArticle=3D1397\n\n\nThe history of computing in arts practice is littered with the mental =\ndebris of its half-forgotten debates, unresolved problems and anxieties, =\nand questions that have now become as obsolete as the Commodore 64s and =\nVAX mainframes that accompanied them. Who can remember the art and =\ntechnology projects of the sixties when the question of 'Can the =\ncomputer make art?' allowed a generation of isolated computer artists to =\nposition themselves as a team of intrepid explorers setting out to cross =\na new continent without first waiting to find out whether it could =\nsupport life. Under what conditions was the question ever first =\nconsidered worthy of posing in the first place? Did the computer offer =\ninput into specific art issues, such as arts relation to other forms of =\nscientific knowledge, to language, representation or the abandonment of =\nthe object? Or was it just intuitively realised that 'computer art' was =\nat the forefront of a slow, inexorable computerisation of twentieth =\ncentury society which would eventually demand access to every facet of =\nhuman culture?\n\nAs computer hardware and the programming skills needed to operate it =\nbecame more accessible, the question 'Can the computer make art?' was =\nasked less and less often. By the beginning of the '80s artists were =\nusing the first personal computers to produce more varied kinds of work =\nuntil, with all this activity growing, the question of whether art was =\npossible on a computer lost all sense. There was a moment when the =\nparameters of the question were redrawn, from 'Can the computer make =\nart?' to 'Can a computer be an artist?', redirecting it into issues of =\nsimulated creativity and artificial intelligence. It was at this point =\nthat the first cracks of a coming schism in the community of computer =\nartists became noticeable; this would go on to form the next stage in =\nthe debate. It seemed to a growing number of artists that as the =\ncomplexity of software increased, so many new possibilities for the =\nhuman artist were appearing that the prospect of deferring to a machine =\nartist seemed almost indicative of a lack of imagination.\n\nAlthough the computer seemed to have made its case as a machine of =\ncreative potential, there now emerged the question of how to efficiently =\nleverage all this creativity. By the late eighties, the interactive =\ninterfaces and simplified menu commands of personal desktop systems that =\nhad helped to cause this ground swell of activity had firmly refocused =\nquestions on the artists themselves. Were the pre-packaged functions, =\noptions and parameters of the new art applications sufficient to cover =\nall artistic fields of inquiry, all aesthetic nuances, all personal =\nidioms? Or would it always be necessary to have recourse to the =\nprecision and particularities of programming languages in order to =\nensure that no desire was left uncatered for? 'Do artists need to =\nprogram?' became the burning question at SIGGRAPH panel sessions and =\nelectronic art festivals.\n\nTo some extent this divergence between programmers and program users =\nmasked the fact that they had become two sides of the same coin. As the =\nargument went, the artist-programmer would regard '.software not as a =\nfunctional tool on which the \"real\" artwork is based, but software as =\nthe material of artistic creation', as the Transmediale Software Art =\njury statement would phrase it much later in 2002. On the other hand, =\nfor program users, programming was only ever a means to an end. Yet it =\nwas their fixation on this end that hastened their acquiescence to the =\nmeans of their programs and the reconfiguration of their practice by =\nprogrammers. 'Is the computer a medium or a tool?' Yes, it was true that =\nsome artists were only interested in software 'tools' that were totally =\nsubservient to their subjectivity, but it was a subjectivity that was =\nnow mapped onto minutely variable parameter lists and option check =\nboxes, mirroring the remoteness of the artist's precious and peculiar =\nvisions by burying its origins deep within the recesses of multiple menu =\nlayers. Aided by the runaway success of packages like Amiga's Deluxe =\nPaint, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, software manufacturers were =\nredefining the creative process as a decision making process converging =\ntowards a predetermined ideal goal.=20\n\nThe problem was also attacked from the opposite direction by a top-down =\nsystem design employing pre-sets, wizards, helpers, macros and plug-ins =\nthat pre-empted the creative process by offering a one button solution =\nto achieve those essential lens flares, ripples, rollovers and drop =\nshadow effects. The users of programs now found themselves programmed by =\ntheir very own favourite artistic effects, expressed as a suite of easy =\nto use software extensions. In the end, both artist programmers and =\nartist program users produced artwork that was about the software that =\nhad produced it. Both became caught up in a wider move to rewrite =\nsociety in terms of information processing.\n\nBy the early '80s the artist Harold Cohen had developed software to =\nautomate his own personal artistic style. A former successful gallery =\npainter, Cohen still works on a suite of artificial intelligence =\nprograms called AARON that seek to encode his earlier painting practice. =\nCohen had always insisted that the content of his work was the software =\nitself, and always exhibited the entire process in the form of a live =\ncomputer connected up to a mobile painting device or 'turtle' that would =\nscuttle over his canvases. As he told his students, 'Don't ask what you =\ncan do with the software, ask what the software can do.' But Cohen's =\nwork now seems to function more as evidence of a historical transition =\nthat occurred over his working life and reached its culmination during =\nthe '90s. While we have been watching Cohen's computer prove it can =\nrecreate art, other computers have been recreating our whole society in =\ntheir own image. But this new image is not the image of the expressive =\nsubject that is simulated in Cohen's work. It is the image of the =\nsubject as a node, a switching station for providing feedback to =\ncalibrate the central processing system, the individual's expressive =\nutterances only called upon to ensure their movements are correctly =\nsynchronised. The artist programmer of today exists in relation to a =\nwhole culture that has the computer as its central organising =\ntechnology. The pervasive quality of software culture and the resultant =\nnormalisation of computer use have made it impossible to maintain the =\nconceptual categories that underpinned previous debates. In a world =\nwhere artists use software to write software that will be seen by virtue =\nof other software, questions about the 'aesthetics of the code' become a =\nsymptom of not being able to see the wood for the trees. Programming is =\nnot only the material of artistic creation, it is the context of =\nartistic creation. Programming has become software.\n\nOne interesting example of the end game of the debate on 'Computer Art' =\nis a piece of artist's software called Auto-Illustrator. Written by =\nAdrian Ward around the year 2000, Auto-Illustrator was the prize winner =\nof the first competition for Software Art organised by Berlin's =\nTransmediale media art festival in 2001. Ward describes the work as a =\nparody of commercial art and design packages like Adobe Illustrator, =\nspecifically of their pretensions to provide functionality and user =\ncontrol. In contrast, Ward fills his package with 'generative art' tools =\nthat explicitly try to automate the drawing process. The appearance of =\nAuto-Illustrator when running is much like a typical menu driven art and =\ndesign package with the exception that the tool palette and effects =\nfilters incorporate generative algorithms. For instance, the Pencil tool =\nadds wiggles or sweeps to your strokes, while the Oval tool will use =\nsettings like 'childish' or 'adult' to control a sprinkling of little =\nfaces. Some tools like Brush seem entirely random in operation, while =\nsome filters like 'Instant Mute Design' will reproduce an entire =\niconography designed to appeal to the Digerati generation.=20\n\nIn fact, many of these generative techniques are strikingly reminiscent =\nof various experiments in computer art from over the last thirty years. =\nThe line tools generate scribbles using algorithms almost certainly =\nrelated to the stochastic perturbations of Frieder Nake or Peter Beyls =\nwhile the 'bug' tool roves around the screen using the same principles =\nas Harold Cohen's turtle graphics engine. Even the icons of the 'Instant =\nMute Design' effect are almost identical to Edward Zajec's permutations =\nof cubic modules. In this way, Auto-Illustrator is like a compendium of =\nclassic computer art programs but now presented as a list of menu =\noptions with conveniently editable parameters. Presented in this =\ncontext, the individual aesthetics of each of these venerable pioneering =\npractices are erased, leaving us with more of a confusion of =\nidiosyncratic styles. From this viewpoint, Auto-Illustrator's =\n'generative tools' actually pastiche the chaotic 'feature mountain' of =\nbloated modern software systems, as they are commonly disorganised by =\nthe superabundance of toolbars, drop-down lists and floating inspectors. =\nInstead of defining a drawing function, it might have been more relevant =\nfor Ward to have his 'bug' tunnelling into the dizzying depths of =\ncascading sub-menus and option boxes to find that single cherished =\nfunction with which the user nurtures their unique individual style. =\nWard actually states that wider issues such as interface design are of =\nno interest to him and describes 'consumer-based application software' =\nas his chosen medium. Auto-Illustrator is successful in its intention to =\nparody the functionality-as-expression of mainstream software design, =\nbut only at the level of coding. By not addressing the wider user =\nexperience it is unable to think outside of the window box in which this =\nfunctionality is now defined.\n\nSince Auto-Illustrator's release there has been at least one attempt to =\naccount for a contemporary digital aesthetic with reference to the =\ndesign of a family of software packages and related technologies. In =\n2002 the theorist Lev Manovich published 'Generation Flash', an essay in =\nwhich he tried to characterise a then prevalent cultural sensibility. =\nManovich referred to the prevailing visual style of Flash, Shockwave and =\nJava based multimedia as 'soft modernism', a reaction against the =\nclutter of postmodern eclecticism that returns to an elemental =\n'rationality of software'. Aesthetic motifs are defined by Manovich in =\nterms of technologically motivated processes: instead of appropriation =\nwe simply have the sample, a basic operation in the new mode of cultural =\nproduction. Another cultural building block is the network, and =\ntherefore also one of the terms of a new critical language. These =\noperations (networking, sampling) are applied in new modes of expression =\nlike data visualisation. This can be seen, for instance, in =\nFuturefarmer's They Rule project in which the directors of the USA's top =\ncorporations are cross referenced to purportedly reveal a web-like =\npattern of interrelated allegiances. For Manovich this kind of work =\nreplaces older forms of authored representation by giving us the tools =\nto objectively analyse raw data and deduce the necessary conclusions.\n\nAlthough Manovich's detailed analysis of the structural basis of new =\nmedia adds an absolutely essential dimension to new critical tools, the =\napproach risks being interpreted as a form of technological determinism =\nonce we lose sight of a specifically cultural perspective. For example, =\nour understanding of the workings of the corporate world order do not =\narise automatically out of its most common data visualisations, such as =\nthe stock market fluctuations diagrammatically portrayed on the =\nFinancial Times website. Not all visualisations are equal. At one point =\nManovich argues that the 'neo-minimalism' of the Flash style arises =\nquite naturally from the practice of programming - the pixel thin grid =\nlines, restricted colour palettes, abstracted symbols 'ALWAYS happens =\nwhen people begin to generate graphics through programming and discover =\nthat they can use simple equations, etc' (Manovich's emphasis). This is =\nindeed the case where programming is taught within a certain computer =\nscience tradition, but it is now impossible to discount the influence of =\nscripting environments such as Flash. Not all programming practices are =\nequal.\n\nOther discussions of Flash have merely tended to shift the technological =\nfocus, such as whether the limited bandwidth of the web was the most =\nsignificant reason for the linear aesthetic of vector graphics. At other =\ntimes it moved on to question the 'openness' of the Flash graphics =\nstandard, whether Macromedia would ultimately allow programmers to =\nleverage the full potential of its functionality. However, the =\n'functionality', 'rationality' or 'potential' of software will always be =\nstrictly unknown. It is the 'user experience' of software, the values =\ngenerated by the way it is meant to be used, how it gives shape to a =\npractice, how easily a technical 'potential' can be perceived and =\nengaged with that should form the basis of software critique. It is =\npossible to trace many formative influences on the Flash style not to =\nthe code itself, but to the conditions in which it is written. =\nProgramming is now often practised in the form of 'scripting' languages =\nthat are integrated into mainstream art and design software =\napplications. This makes artist programmers and program users both =\nsubject to the same philosophies of system design that hold sway in =\npoint-and-click style desktop packages. By examining these environments =\nwe can find many ways in which they funnelled Flash Actionscript or =\nDirector Lingo programming practice into nourishing certain wider =\ncultural sensibilities during this period.\n\nMultimedia scripting languages like Flash Actionscript tend to differ =\nfrom conventional programming languages by offering access to a library =\nof functions that are specific to that particular multimedia =\napplication. This easy access to a set of predefined 'events' such as =\nmouse clicks, drag actions and rollovers is somewhat analogous to the =\nway a software user's practice is structured in terms of the predefined =\nconfiguration of menu commands, option boxes and plug-in effects. These =\nlibrary functions that populate the programmers imagination with a =\nreadymade vocabulary of discrete interactive 'behaviours' can be coded =\nup and attached to individual multimedia objects - button triggers, =\nsprite actions, sound effects, linkages, etc. Actionscript therefore =\ntended to differ from typical program development environments by =\nidentifying code with graphical and other concrete entities that would =\nbecome principle actors in the interactive scenario. This also tended to =\ndiscourage the writing of long passages of control logic and instead led =\nto the writing of terse mathematical expressions to manipulate an =\nobject's properties, movements and relationships to other objects. When =\ncombined with the instancing abilities of the Object Orientated =\nProgramming philosophy, Actionscript became very efficient at applying =\nthese code segments to multiple copies of 'semi-automated' graphic =\nelements, sprites, movie clips and sounds. As implemented in multimedia =\nauthoring software like Flash, Object Orientated Programming actually =\nfostered an 'object orientated' approach to interactive art and =\nanimation.\n\nThe point here is to look at Flash at the moment at which its patterns =\nof techniques and processes re-emerge as motifs that can enter =\nconsciousness and practice on an aesthetic level. To start with we have =\nan authoring system that orientated the user towards the replication (or =\n'birthing') of multitudes of objects and orchestrating complex yet =\nconcise interactions between them. It is even possible to identify the =\nmost common form of mathematical expression that was used to regulate =\nthis interaction during the millennial Flash period. There is a single =\nline of code that appears over and over again, a simplified expression =\nthat produces a distinctive dampening effect on a moving object before =\nit finally comes to rest. It was easy for Flash users to apply this =\nexpression to any or all of ones objects and events until it produced =\nthe classic Flash 'wobble'. A Flash site became a constellation of =\nrippling, bobbing, trembling buttons, icons, eyeballs, legs and rollover =\nitems as if someone had poured a bucket of water into your computer =\nmonitor. In the open source spirit, the Flash community ensured that =\nsuch expressions were quickly disseminated until they became an almost =\nuniversal kinetic attribute.\n\nThe Flash style was integrated, via its web browser plug-in, to other =\ndesktop based work and leisure patterns of activity. By keying into the =\ninternet gold rush fever, Flash art was turned into a highly visible =\ndesign component of the dotcom boom era. This new informal space imbued =\nFlash art with the role of a distraction, a demo or toy, making any more =\ndemanding appreciation of its fluid stylistic and tactile qualities =\nunnecessary. The net culture of the time also provided a preexisting =\ndiscourse in which it's visual aesthetic could be interpreted and =\nflourish. Echoing the ubiquitous net-cultural meme of the 'digital Gaia' =\n- an ecological interpretation of the web of globally interconnected and =\nindependent agents - foremost Flash designer Joshua Davis commented: =\n'.our work should reflect the nature of a fern and be comprised of tiny =\nlittle objects that all talk to each other. The more we add these little =\nobjects, the more complex and intense the nature of our work becomes.'=20\n\nThere are many more factors that could be marshalled to 'explain' the =\nFlash style. But as far as practising artists are concerned, how can we =\nget a handle on such a deluge of widely different factors, some of which =\nseek to align us with a particular model of subjectivity and others =\nwhich just seem like arbitrary collections of protocols? How can we =\nforge a path through layer after layer of designed information to form =\nways of working not pre-empted by the predicates of current software =\nculture?\n\nThere are some emerging ideas that might help. One of these is the =\n'techno-aesthetic' - different motifs that permeate these technological, =\nsocial and cultural levels. The idea is rooted in materialist notions of =\nsocial process, but a society now constituted through IT. The emphasis =\nis on how specifically cultural forces can form technology into a means =\nof expression that is able to exceed its most obvious properties and =\nstructures. One software art example of this in action is Mongrel's =\noften-cited Linker project of 1999. Developed to support a series of =\nstory telling workshops for the non-expert computer user, the software =\nis a highly stripped down system that simply allows users to load and =\nmake connections between a collection of digital elements - images, =\ntext, video, sounds. For a start, this transfers an emphasis on the =\npractice of the software to the practice of the user. Compared to the =\nother examples, Linker coheres around a figure that unites its levels of =\nthought and construction yet retains an open space in which imagination =\ncan breathe. As theorist Matthew Fuller described Linker, 'It relies on =\nthe simple function of doing exactly what the name says it does - link =\nthings. Here, the poetics of connection forms a techno-aesthetic and =\nexistential a priori to the construction of a piece of software.' This =\naesthetic is made explicit when the software is first launched - it =\ndisplays a map image of its three by three grid of interconnected =\nregions. Linker is constructed around this image of itself that =\ncommunicates and instantiates its underlying algorithmic structure, =\ncreative use and conceptual model. It is this figuration of itself as an =\nidea that makes Linker art as well as software.\n\nThe debate about Linker was unfortunately always limited to its mode of =\nproduction and the social constituency of its intended user group as =\nthough it had been designed as a tool of social engineering, ready to =\narise fully formed out of a sub-menu check-box list of community =\n'needs'. But discussions of DIY empowerment, Open Source and the =\n'sociability' of software are presumptuous without any attention to the =\ncontext in which imaginative ideas can grow. When we look at the kinds =\nof applications that have actually resulted from Linux we simply see =\ncopies of standard Microsoft functionality. The Open Source model of =\nproduction is a dead end without an equivalent 'model of creativity', =\ndefaulting instead to a wannabe culture. Instead we should look for =\ninspiration in practices that could nourish a poetics of data =\n'copyability' such as plagiarism and detournement, as noted by writer =\nJosephine Berry. But unfortunately free software developers do not =\nprioritise this aesthetic context which is what has the power to =\ndetermine whether software will enable or restrain its user's =\nperceptions and mode of action.=20\n\nIt is not a matter of the different technical abilities of software or =\nof how much it costs, but of how easily a technical potential can be =\nperceived by the user in a way that motivates engagement. When software =\nis written, choices must be made about which data fields carry value, =\nhow the display of information forms contours of meaning, how the =\nmodelling of the interface moulds the subjectivity of the user. The =\nquestion of whether artists should learn to program is replaced by the =\nquestion of what kind of programming. Which programming practice has the =\nmost 'open aesthetic', capable of making software that is not just the =\nproduct of an arbitrary confluence of techniques or a slavish mimicry =\nbut is aware of all its possible formative cultural and philosophical =\ncategories and values.\n\nFor the first generation of artist programmers there was hardly any =\ninformation society in existence, certainly not one within reach. In the =\nearly eighties during a period when the launch of the personal computer =\nmarked a radical shift in computer culture, artist Harold Cohen stressed =\nthe importance of asking the right questions. Now that we live in a =\nworld in which his AARON program is downloadable as a screen saver it is =\ntime for us to extend his question - 'Don't ask what the software can =\ndo, ask what it can do to other software.'\n\nURLS:\nAuto-Illustrator: www.auto-illustrator.com\nJoshua Davis: www.joshuadavis.com\nLinker & 9: www.linker.org.uk, 9.waag.org\nAARON screensaver: www.kurzweilcyberart.com\n\nAcknowledgement\nThis article was based on research supported by a grant from the Arts =\nand Humanities Research Board.\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
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"message-id": "E1CJsjB-0003MW-6w {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0410/msg00036.html",
|
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"list": "nettime_l",
|
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"date": "Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:07:27 +0100",
|
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"from": "\"Richard\" <richard {AT} dig-lgu.demon.co.uk>",
|
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"to": "\"nettime\" <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
|
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"subject": "<nettime> Software Art After Programming"
|
||
},
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{
|
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"message-id": "20011024114349.D23281 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
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"content": "\nken,\n\nthis thread was still hanging around ... i want to take issue with your\nclaim that the codework you reference is an example of collaborative,\nnon-identity oriented practice.\n\n>Codework makes of\n>writing a media art that breaks with the fetishism of the text and the\n>abstraction of language. It brings writing into contact with the other\n>branches of media art, such as music and cinema, all of which are\n>converging in the emerging space of multimedia, and which often have a\n>richer conception of the politics of media art as a collaborative practice\n>than has been the case with writing conceived within the prison-house of\n>\"text.\"\n\ni fully respect your examples as artistic/literary practices, but in what\nway are jodi, mez, antiorp/nn, sondheim etc. representatives of open\nprocesses? jodi's work is good _because_ jo&di have the code under\ncontrol, just as mez is an _author_, machine-aided, style-enhanced, yes,\nbut an author. just as antiorp/nn - the most collaborative entity in the\nseries, i guess - poses as one; we all know they are several, but they\nexhibit a clear sense of ideological tightness and closure. the identities\nmay be fictional, but i don't see that any of these breaks out of the\nidentity shell. nn might be the best gamer, but its insults are too much\nfor my stomach. [she'll call me a weak imbecile for this remark, won't you,\ndear?]\n\nwhat you describe are machinic processes, yes, but the kinds of\ncollaborative practices that heico idensen talks about (in the hypertext\nworld mainly) - i don't see them in your codework examples. is artistic\ncodework more authorial than open source programming?\n\ngreetings,\n-a\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"from": "Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck {AT} transmediale.de>",
|
||
"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
|
||
"id": "00133",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0110/msg00133.html",
|
||
"follow-up": [
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Alan Sondheim",
|
||
"id": "00137",
|
||
"message-id": "200110250316.XAA08786 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0110/msg00137.html",
|
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\nThere is collaboration in a number of ways. None of us (examples you give)\noperate or produce in a vacuum; my work often requires assistance or col-\nlaboration, to the extent that \"my\" becomes suspect. The identities I work\nwith - \"Nikuko\" and others - are also disseminations across other\npractices (IRC, newsgroups, email lists, etc.) and others have also taken/\nused the name. There were also projects created for the trAce online\nwriting group which were all collaborations in the traditional sense; one\nof them, Lost, is still running.\n\nThen there is also a question of nettime; what I place on nettime (and\nthis may be true of others you mention) is what nettime accepts; the\ncollaborative dance/bodywork has no place or room here; this is also true\nfor most of the directory material on the cdroms. An email is almost\nalways signed, leaving its trace; it is a trail which almost literally\nhystericizes its identity function in the full header. And again, this\naffects, if not effects, what any of us are capable of doing in this\nmedium.\n\nAlan -\n\nInternet text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt\nPartial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html\nTrace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm\n\n\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"date": "Wed, 24 Oct 2001 17:49:03 -0400 (EDT)",
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"from": "Alan Sondheim <sondheim {AT} panix.com>",
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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},
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{
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"author_name": "McKenzie Wark",
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"id": "00176",
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"message-id": "200110312139.QAA30859 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0110/msg00176.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\n\nAndreas writes,\n\n>i fully respect your examples as artistic/literary practices, but in what \n>way are jodi, mez, antiorp/nn, sondheim etc. >representatives of open \n>processes?... what you describe are machinic processes, yes, but the kinds \n>of collaborative practices that heico >idensen talks about (in the \n>hypertext world mainly) - i don't see them in your codework examples. is \n>artistic codework more authorial than open source programming?\n\n\nWell, isn't this a collaborative process, this discussion? Isn't\nnettime \"collaborative filtering?\" There's some limitations in what\nthe examples given might uphold. Its not as if everything is in\nthe text. I'm more interested in a new way of thinking about the\npractice of writing.\n\nSemiotics and structural linguistics have a lot to answer for. They\ncreated a concept of language as a homogemous plane, which then\nentered into relations with the world as something external.\n\nWhat's interesting about Guattari is the anti-linguistics in which\none thinks of the speech act as an element in a heterogeneous,\ntemporal series. It seems to me timely to think of some of the new\nwriting practices in those terms.\n\nHypertext had its roots firmly in a (post)structural linguistics,\nand it shows in the early works composed under its sign. All the\naction is in the 'text'. There's not a lot of thought about\nthe hetereogeneous assemblages into which it might enter.\n\nk\n\n___________________________________________________\n\nhttp://www.feelergauge.net/projects/hackermanifesto/version_2.0/\n ... we no longer have roots, we have aerials ...\n___________________________________________________\n\n\n_________________________________________________________________\nGet your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"date": "Wed, 31 Oct 2001 11:21:28 -0500",
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"from": "\"McKenzie Wark\" <mckenziewark {AT} hotmail.com>",
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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}
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],
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"list": "nettime_l",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"date": "Wed, 24 Oct 2001 11:43:49 -0400",
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework"
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},
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{
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"message-id": "200206180141.VAA02477 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"content": "\nHow We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\nBy RSG\n\n\t\"Disobedience to authority is one of the most natural and\n\thealthy acts.\"\n\t--Empire, Hardt & Negri\n\nEthernet was invented at the University of Hawaii. Scientists there in\nthe early 1970s faced a unique problem: How to network different\ncampuses, each on different islands separated by water. The solution was\nto use the free airwaves, to transmit data through the air, or \"ether,\"\nusing radio. There were no wires. Like a radio station, each node sent\nmessages broadly over the sea to other islands. A protocol was developed\nto avoid collision between simultaneous communications. Ever since,\nEthernet has been based on an open transmission model. The protocol\ntranslated well to wire-based networks too, and is now the most widely\nused local networking protocol in the world.\n\nSince Ethernet is based on an open broadcast model, it is trivial for\nlisteners to make themselves \"promiscuous\" and eavesdrop on all\ncommunications, not simply those specifically addressed to them. This\ntechnique is called packet-sniffing and has been used by systems\nadministrators and hackers alike for decades. Ethernet, sniffers, and\nhacking are at heart of a public domain surveillance suite called\nCarnivore (http://rhizome.org/carnivore) developed by RSG and now used\nin a civilian context by many artists and scientists around the world.\n\nHacking\n\nToday there are generally two things said about hackers. They are either\nterrorists or libertarians. Historically the word meant an amateur\ntinkerer, an autodictat who might try a dozen solutions to a problem\nbefore eking out success.[1] Aptitude and perseverance have always\neclipsed rote knowledge in the hacking community. Hackers are the type\nof technophiles you like to have around in a pinch, for given enough\ntime they generally can crack any problem (or at least find a suitable\nkludge). Thus, as Bruce Sterling writes, the term hacker \"can signify\nthe free-wheeling intellectual exploration of the highest and deepest\npotential of computer systems.\"[2] Or as the glowing Steven Levy\nreminisces of the original MIT hackers of the early sixties, \"they were\nsuch fascinating people. [...] Beneath their often unimposing exteriors,\nthey were adventurers, visionaries, risk-takers, artists...and the ones\nwho most clearly saw why the computer was a truly revolutionary\ntool.\"[3] These types of hackers are freedom fighters, living by the\ndictum that data wants to be free.[4] Information should not be owned,\nand even if it is, non-invasive browsing of such information hurts no\none. After all, hackers merely exploit preexisting holes made by\nclumsily constructed code.[5] And wouldn't the revelation of such holes\nactually improve data security for everyone involved?\n\nYet after a combination of public technophobia and aggressive government\nlegislation, the identity of the hacker changed in the US in the mid to\nlate eighties from do-it-yourself hobbyist to digital outlaw.[6] Such\nlegislation includes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 which made\nit a felony to break into federal computers. \"On March 5, 1986,\"\nreported Knight Lightning of Phrack magazine, \"the following seven\nphreaks were arrested in what has come to be known as the first computer\ncrime `sting' operation. Captain Hacker \\ Doctor Bob \\ Lasertech \\ The\nAdventurer [\\] The Highwayman \\ The Punisher \\ The Warden.\"[7] \"[O]n\nTuesday, July 21, 1987,\" Knight Lightning continued, \"[a]mong 30-40\nothers, Bill From RNOC, Eric NYC, Solid State, Oryan QUEST, Mark\nGerardo, The Rebel, and Delta-Master have been busted by the United\nStates Secret Service.\"[8] Many of these hackers were targeted due to\ntheir \"elite\" reputations, a status granted only to top hackers. Hackers\nwere deeply discouraged by their newfound identity as outlaws, as\nexemplified in the famous 1986 hacker manifesto written by someone\ncalling himself[9] The Mentor: \"We explore... and you call us criminals.\nWe seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.\"[10] Because of\nthis semantic transformation, hackers today are commonly referred to as\nterrorists, nary-do-wells who break into computers for personal gain. So\nby the turn of the millennium, the term hacker had lost all of its\noriginal meaning. Now when people say hacker, they mean terrorist.\n\nThus, the current debate on hackers is helplessly throttled by the\ndiscourse on contemporary liberalism: should we respect data as private\nproperty, or should we cultivate individual freedom and leave computer\nusers well enough alone? Hacking is more sophisticated than that. It\nsuggests a future type of cultural production, one that RSG seeks to\nembody in Carnivore.\n\nCollaboration\n\nBruce Sterling writes that the late Twentieth Century is a moment of\ntransformation from a modern control paradigm based on centralization\nand hierarchy to a postmodern one based on flexibility and\nhorizontalization:\n\n\t\"For years now, economists and management theorists have\n\tspeculated that the tidal wave of the information revolution\n\twould destroy rigid, pyramidal bureaucracies, where everything\n\tis top-down and centrally controlled. Highly trained \"employees\"\n\twould take on greater autonomy, being self-starting and self-\n\tmotivating, moving from place to place, task to task, with great\n\tspeed and fluidity. \"Ad-hocracy\" would rule, with groups of\n\tpeople spontaneously knitting together across organizational\n\tlines, tackling the problem at hand, applying intense computer-\n\taided expertise to it, and then vanishing whence they came.\"[11]\n\n From Manuel Castells to Hakim Bey to Tom Peters this rhetoric has become\ncommonplace. Sterling continues by claiming that both hacker groups and\nthe law enforcement officials that track hackers follow this new\nparadigm: \"they all look and act like `tiger teams' or `users' groups.'\nThey are all electronic ad-hocracies leaping up spontaneously to attempt\nto meet a need.\"[12] By \"tiger teams\" Sterling refers to the employee\ngroups assembled by computer companies trying to test the security of\ntheir computer systems. Tiger teams, in essence, simulate potential\nhacker attacks, hoping to find and repair security holes. RSG is a type\nof tiger team.\n\nThe term also alludes to the management style known as Toyotism\noriginating in Japanese automotive production facilities. Within\nToyotism, small pods of workers mass together to solve a specific\nproblem. The pods are not linear and fixed like the more traditional\nassembly line, but rather are flexible and reconfigurable depending on\nwhatever problem might be posed to them.\n\nManagement expert Tom Peters notes that the most successful contemporary\ncorporations use these types of tiger teams, eliminating traditional\nhierarchy within the organizational structure. Documenting the\nmanagement consulting agency McKinsey & Company, Peters writes:\n\"McKinsey is a huge company. Customers respect it. [...] But there is no\ntraditional hierarchy. There are no organizational charts. No job\ndescriptions. No policy manuals. No rules about managing client\nengagements. [...] And yet all these things are well understood-make no\nmistake, McKinsey is not out of control! [...] McKinsey works. It's\nworked for over half a century.\"[13]\n\nAs Sterling suggests, the hacker community also follows this\norganizational style. Hackers are autonomous agents that can mass\ntogether in small groups to attack specific problems. As the influential\nhacker magazine Phrack was keen to point out, \"ANYONE can write for\nPhrack Inc. [...] we do not discriminate against anyone for any\nreason.\"[14] Flexible and versatile, the hacker pod will often dissolve\nitself as quickly as it formed and disappear into the network. Thus,\nwhat Sterling and others are arguing is that whereby older resistive\nforces were engaged with \"rigid, pyramidal bureaucracies,\" hackers\nembody a different organizational management style (one that might be\ncalled \"protocological\"). In this sense, while resistance during the\nmodern age forms around rigid hierarchies and bureaucratic power\nstructures, resistance during the postmodern age forms around the\nprotocological control forces existent in networks.\n\nCoding\n\nIn 1967 the artist Sol LeWitt outlined his definition of conceptual art:\n\n\t\"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important\n\taspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of\n\tart, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made\n\tbeforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea\n\tbecomes a machine that makes the art.\"[15]\n\nLeWitt's perspective on conceptual art has important implications for\ncode, for in his estimation conceptual art is nothing but a type of code\nfor artmaking. LeWitt's art is an algorithmic process. The algorithm is\nprepared in advance, and then later executed by the artist (or another\nartist, for that matter). Code thus purports to be multidimensional.\nCode draws a line between what is material and what is active, in\nessence saying that writing (hardware) cannot do anything, but must be\ntransformed into code (software) to be affective. Northrop Frye says a\nvery similar thing about language when he writes that the process of\nliterary critique essentially creates a meta text, outside of the\noriginal source material, that contains the critic's interpretations of\nthat text.[16] In fact Kittler defines software itself as precisely that\n\"logical abstraction\" that exists in the negative space between people\nand the hardware they use.[17]\n\nHow can code be so different than mere writing? The answer to this lies\nin the unique nature of computer code. It lies not in the fact that code\nis sub-linguistic, but rather that it is hyper-linguistic. Code is a\nlanguage, but a very special kind of language. Code is the only language\nthat is executable. As Kittler has pointed out, \"[t]here exists no word\nin any ordinary language which does what it says. No description of a\nmachine sets the machine into motion.\"[18] So code is the first language\nthat actually does what it says-it is a machine for converting meaning\ninto action.[19] Code has a semantic meaning, but it also has an\nenactment of meaning. Thus, while natural languages such as English or\nLatin only have a legible state, code has both a legible state and an\nexecutable state. In this way, code is the summation of language plus an\nexecutable meta-layer that encapsulates that language.\n\nDreaming\n\nFredric Jameson said somewhere that one of the most difficult things to\ndo under contemporary capitalism is to envision utopia. This is\nprecisely why dreaming is important. Deciding (and often struggling) for\nwhat is possible is the first step for a utopian vision based in our\ndesires, based in what we want.\n\nPierre Lévy is one writer who has been able to articulate eloquently the\npossibility of utopia in the cyberspace of digital computers.[20]\n\"Cyberspace,\" he writes, \"brings with it methods of perception, feeling,\nremembering, working, of playing and being together. [...] The\ndevelopment of cyberspace [...] is one of the principle aesthetic and\npolitical challenges of the coming century.\"[21] Lévy's visionary tone\nis exactly what Jameson warns is lacking in much contemporary discourse.\nThe relationship between utopia and possibility is a close one. It is\nnecessary to know what one wants, to know what is possible to want,\nbefore a true utopia may be envisioned.\n\nOnce of the most important signs of this utopian instinct is the hacking\ncommunity's anti-commercial bent. Software products have long been\ndeveloped and released into the public domain, with seemingly no profit\nmotive on the side of the authors, simply for the higher glory of the\ncode itself. \"Spacewar was not sold,\" Steven Levy writes, referring to\nthe early video game developed by several early computer enthusiasts at\nMIT. \"Like any other program, it was placed in the drawer for anyone to\naccess, look at, and rewrite as they saw fit.\"[22] The limits of\npersonal behavior become the limits of possibility to the hacker. Thus,\nit is obvious to the hacker that one's personal investment in a specific\npiece of code can do nothing but hinder that code's overall development.\n\"Sharing of software [...] is as old as computers,\" writes free software\nguru Richard Stallman, \"just as sharing of recipes is as old as\ncooking.\"[23] Code does not reach its apotheosis for people, but exists\nwithin its own dimension of perfection. The hacker feels obligated to\nremove all impediments, all inefficiencies that might stunt this quasi-\naesthetic growth. \"In its basic assembly structure,\" writes Andrew Ross,\n\"information technology involves processing, copying, replication, and\nsimulation, and therefore does not recognize the concept of private\ninformation property.\"[24] Commercial ownership of software is the\nprimary impediment hated by all hackers because it means that code is\nlimited-limited by intellectual property laws, limited by the profit\nmotive, limited by corporate \"lamers.\"\n\nHowever, greater than this anti-commercialism is a pro-protocolism.\nProtocol, by definition, is \"open source,\" the term given to a\ntechnology that makes public the source code used in its creation. That\nis to say, protocol is nothing but an elaborate instruction list of how\na given technology should work, from the inside out, from the top to the\nbottom, as exemplified in the RFCs, or \"Request For Comments\" documents.\nWhile many closed source technologies may appear to be protocological\ndue to their often monopolistic position in the market place, a true\nprotocol cannot be closed or proprietary. It must be paraded into full\nview before all, and agreed to by all. It benefits over time through its\nown technological development in the public sphere. It must exist as\npure, transparent code (or a pure description of how to fashion code).\nIf technology is proprietary it ceases to be protocological.\n\nThis brings us back to Carnivore, and the desire to release a public\ndomain version of a notorious surveillance tool thus far only available\nto government operatives. The RSG Carnivore levels the playing field,\nrecasting art and culture as a scene of multilateral conflict rather\nthan unilateral domination. It opens the system up for collaboration\nwithin and between client artists. It uses code to engulf and modify the\noriginal FBI apparatus.\n\nCarnivore Personal Edition\n\nOn October 1, 2001, three weeks after the 9/11 attacks in the US, the\nRadical Software Group (RSG) announced the release of Carnivore, a\npublic domain riff on the notorious FBI software called DCS1000 (which\nis commonly referred to by its nickname \"Carnivore\"). While the FBI\nsoftware had already been in existence for some time, and likewise RSG\nhad been developing it's version of the software since January 2001,\n9/11 brought on a crush of new surveillance activity. Rumors surfaced\nthat the FBI was installing Carnivore willy-nilly on broad civilian\nnetworks like Hotmail and AOL with the expressed purpose of intercepting\nterror-related communication. As Wired News reported on September 12,\n2001, \"An administrator at one major network service provider said that\nFBI agents showed up at his workplace on [September 11] `with a couple\nof Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core.'\"\nOfficials at Hotmail were reported to have been \"cooperating\" with FBI\nmonitoring requests. Inspired by this activity, the RSG's Carnivore\nsought to pick up where the FBI left off, to bring this technology into\nthe hands of the general public for greater surveillance saturation\nwithin culture. The first RSG Carnivore ran on Linux. An open source\nschematic was posted on the net for others to build their own boxes. New\nfunctionality was added to improve on the FBI-developed technology\n(which in reality was a dumbed-down version of tools systems\nadministrators had been using for years). An initial core (Alex\nGalloway, Mark Napier, Mark Daggett, Joshua Davis, and others) began to\nbuild interpretive interfaces. A testing venue was selected: the private\noffices of Rhizome.org at 115 Mercer Street in New York City, only 30\nblocks from Ground Zero. This space was out-of-bounds to the FBI, but\nopen to RSG.\n\nThe initial testing proved successful and led to more field-testing at\nthe Princeton Art Museum (where Carnivore was quarantined like a virus\ninto its own subnet) and the New Museum in New York. During the weekend\nof February 1st 2002, Carnivore was used at Eyebeam to supervise the\nhacktivists protesting the gathering of the World Economic Forum.\n\nSensing the market limitations of a Linux-only software product, RSG\nreleased Carnivore Personal Edition (PE) for Windows on April 6, 2002.\nCarnivorePE brought a new distributed architecture to the Carnivore\ninitiative by giving any PC user the ability to analyze and diagnose the\ntraffic from his or her own network. Any artist or scientist could now\nuse CarnivorePE as a surveillance engine to power his or her own\ninterpretive \"Client.\" Soon Carnivore Clients were converting network\ntraffic to sound, animation, and even 3D worlds, distributing the\ntechnology across the network.\n\nThe prospect of reverse-engineering the original FBI software was\nuninteresting to RSG. Crippled by legal and ethical limitations, the FBI\nsoftware needed improvement not emulation. Thus CarnivorePE features\nexciting new functionality including artist-made diagnosic clients,\nremote access, full subject targetting, full data targetting, volume\nbuffering, transport protocol filtering, and an open source software\nlicense. Reverse-engineering is not necessarily a simple mimetic\nprocess, but a mental upgrade as well. RSG has no desire to copy the FBI\nsoftware and its many shortcomings. Instead, RSG longs to inject\nprogressive politics back into a fundamentally destabilizing and\ntransformative technology, packet sniffing. Our goal is to invent a new\nuse for data surveillance that breaks out of the hero/terrorist dilemma\nand instead dreams about a future use for networked data.\n\nhttp://rhizome.org/carnivore/\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n[1] Robert Graham traces the etymology of the term to the sport of golf:\n\"The word `hacker' started out in the 14th century to mean somebody who\nwas inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity (such as a golf\nhacker). In the 1970s, the word `hacker' was used by computer\nenthusiasts to refer to themselves. This reflected the way enthusiasts\napproach computers: they eschew formal education and play around with\nthe computer until they can get it to work. (In much the same way, a\ngolf hacker keeps hacking at the golf ball until they get it in the\nhole)\" (http://www.robertgraham.com/pubs/hacking-dict.html).\n\n[2] Bruce Sterling The Hacker Crackdown (New York: Bantam, 1992), p. 51.\nSee also Hugo Cornwall's Hacker's Handbook (London: Century, 1988),\nwhich characterizes the hacker as a benign explorer. Cornwall's position\nhighlights the differing attitudes between the US and Europe, where\nhacking is much less criminalized and in many cases prima facie legal.\n\n[3] Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York:\nAnchor Press/Doubleday, 1984), p. ix.\n\n[4] This slogan is attributed to Stewart Brand, who wrote that \"[o]n the\none hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable.\nThe right information in the right place just changes your life. On the\nother hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it\nout is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two\nfighting against each other.\" See Whole Earth Review, May 1985, p. 49.\n\n[5] Many hackers believe that commercial software products are less\ncarefully crafted and therefore more prone to exploits. Perhaps the most\ninfamous example of such an exploit, one which critiques software's\ngrowing commercialization, is the \"BackOrifice\" software application\ncreated by the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow. A satire of\nMicrosoft's \"Back Office\" software suite, BackOrifice acts as a Trojan\nHorse to allow remote access to personal computers running Microsoft's\nWindows operating system.\n\n[6] For an excellent historical analysis of this transformation see\nSterling's The Hacker Crackdown. Andrew Ross explains this\ntransformation by citing, as do Sterling and others, the increase of\ncomputer viruses in the late eighties, especially \"the viral attack\nengineered in November 1988 by Cornell University hacker Robert Morris\non the national network system Internet. [.] While it caused little in\nthe way of data damage [.], the ramifications of the Internet virus have\nhelped to generate a moral panic that has all but transformed everyday\n`computer culture.'\" See Andrew Ross, Strange Weather: Culture, Science,\nand Technology in the Age of Limits (New York: Verso, 1991), p. 75.\n\n[7] Knight Lightning, \"Shadows Of A Future Past,\" Phrack, vol. 2, no.\n21, file 3.\n\n[8] Knight Lightning, \"The Judas Contract,\" Phrack, vol. 2, no. 22, file\n3.\n\n[9] While many hackers use gender neutral pseudonyms, the online\nmagazine Phrack, with which The Mentor was associated, was characterized\nby its distinctly male staff and readership. For a sociological\nexplanation of the gender imbalance within the hacking community, see\nPaul Taylor, Hackers: Crime in the digital sublime (New York: Routledge,\n1999), pp. 32-42.\n\n[10] The Mentor, \"The Conscience of a Hacker,\" Phrack, vol. 1, no. 7,\nfile 3. http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/manifesto.html\n\n[11] Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown, p. 184.\n\n[12] Ibid.\n\n[13] Tom Peters, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for\nthe Nanosecond Nineties (New York: Knopf, 1992), pp. 143-144. An older,\nmore decentralized (rather than distributed) style of organizational\nmanagement is epitomized by Peter Drucker's classic analysis of General\nMotors in the thirties and forties. He writes that \"General Motors\nconsiders decentralization a basic and universally valid concept of\norder.\" See Peter Drucker, The Concept of the Corporation (New\nBrunswick: Transaction, 1993), p. 47.\n\n[14] \"Introduction,\" Phrack, v. 1, no. 9, phile [sic] 1.\n\n[15] Sol LeWitt, \"Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,\" in Alberro, et al.,\neds., Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999),\np. 12. Thanks to Mark Tribe for bring this passage to my attention.\n\n[16] See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton UP,\n1957). See also Fredric Jameson's engagement with this same subject in\n\"From Metaphor to Allegory\" in Cynthia Davidson, Ed., Anything\n(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001).\n\n[17] Friedrich Kittler, \"On the Implementation of Knowledge-Toward a\nTheory of Hardware,\" nettime\n(http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199902/msg00038.html).\n\n[18] Kittler, \"On the Implementation of Knowledge.\"\n\n[19] For an interesting commentary on the aesthetic dimensions of this\nfact see Geoff Cox, Alex McLean and Adrian Ward's \"The Aesthetics of\nGenerative Code\" (http://sidestream.org/papers/aesthetics/).\n\n[20] Another is the delightfully schizophrenic Ted Nelson, inventor of\nhypertext. See Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Redmond, WA:\nTempus/Microsoft, 1987).\n\n[21] Pierre Lévy, L'intelligence collective: Pour une anthropologie du\ncyberspace (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1994), p. 120, translation\nmine.\n\n[22] Levy, Hackers, p. 53. In his 1972 Rolling Stone article on the\ngame, Steward Brand went so far as to publish Alan Kay's source code for\nSpacewar right along side his own article, a practice rarely seen in\npopular publications. See Brand, \"SPACEWAR,\" p. 58.\n\n[23] Richard Stallman, \"The GNU Project,\" available online at\nhttp://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html and in Chris Dibona (Editor),\net al, Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (Sebastopol,\nCA: O'Reilly, 1999).\n\n[24] Ross, Strange Weather, p. 80.\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"from": "RSG <rsg {AT} rhizome.org>",
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"author_name": "RSG",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00088.html",
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"follow-up": [
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"author_name": "Morlock Elloi",
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"content": "\n> Ethernet was invented at the University of Hawaii. Scientists there in\n> the early 1970s faced a unique problem: How to network different\n> campuses, each on different islands separated by water. The solution was\n\nNonsense.\n\nI fart in your general direction with indignation.\n\nFacts:\n\n1970 - N. Abramson at the University of Hawaii designed ALOHA, ground based\nradio packet network.\n\n1972 Roberts, also of UoH, improved the bandwith by using time slots - \"Slotted\nALOHA\".\n\n1976 - Metcalfe and Boggs of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto, CA) published a description\nof a coaxial cable network, Ethernet.\n\n\n\n=====\nend\n(of original message)\n\nY-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:\n\n__________________________________________________\nDo You Yahoo!?\nYahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup\nhttp://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"date": "Mon, 17 Jun 2002 21:28:20 -0700 (PDT)",
|
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"from": "Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi {AT} yahoo.com>",
|
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\""
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||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Andreas Broeckmann",
|
||
"id": "00114",
|
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"message-id": "200206211555.LAA18372 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00114.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\n>1) artist-made diagnosic clients created by leading net artists around\n>the world\n\nwhat do these carnivore clients do? the engine replicates network\nsurveillance technology and the clients turn them into pretty images. is\nthere any level of agency involved? these 'diagnostic clients' come across\nas _pure illustration_ and work best as screen-savers. what will be the\ntherapy that follows _this_ diagnosis?\n\ni've said this before: i believe that it is grossly negligent to pretend\nthat somebody who looks at such an illustration understands anything about\nthe political background and impact of network surveillance systems. it is\nall too slick and too pretty. in fact, the project would in my eyes first\nhave to prove that it is not exactly the kind of applied art project that\nthe FBI would commission in order to show how benign and in fact\n_beautiful_ such control systems can be. i realise that the technology that\nyou have developed may be smart and differ from the fbi-carnivore - but\nwhat are the chances that the clients will ever do anything more than what\nthey are doing now, in this important and prize-winning period? (maybe the\nsuccess should have been delayed?)\n\nalex, you have to realise that it would be irritating and politically\ncounter-productive if somebody hyperbolically pushed a project called\nECHELON that would take feeds from all sorts of data streams and turn them\ninto ear-candy.\n\n'Carnivore' - are we talking lions, wolves, dinosaurs? unfortunately and so\nfar, the flock of rsg-carnivores looks like dinosaurs on prozac, painted\npink and blue. the system may have teeth, but at least for the moment, it\nhas a digestive problem, for what comes out are not farts from hell, but\nbaby-poops. 'xcuse the language.\n\nregards,\n-a\n\n\nps:\n\n>instead of stumbling over technical details, perhaps the nettime\n>community can engage in a deeper critique of the software and its uses?\n\nif you are really interested in this critique, why then use this\nfeature-happy promo-language of 'leading net artists around the world'\npasted over the layer of stardom-bound 'rsg' anonymity instead of 'engage\nin a deeper critique of the software and its uses'?\n(maybe you could also point out the ratio of artists living in\nNYC/USA/beyond of this 'around the world' artists group? out of the 11\nprojects mentioned, 2 seem to be from outside the US - belgium and italy;\ni'm sure both these failed imperial powers will be glad to represent 'the\nworld' ;-)\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
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"date": "Fri, 21 Jun 2002 13:24:22 +0200",
|
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"from": "Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck {AT} transmediale.de>",
|
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\""
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "eye scratch",
|
||
"id": "00117",
|
||
"message-id": "200206220225.WAA00666 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00117.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\n[ this carnivore craze seems to find its spiritual ancestor in dancing --\n you snatch a rhythm here, a beat there, a slight movement that denotes --\n a melody. like sniffing packets to then create an assemblage, who knows --\n perhaps we'll learn to read the results somehow, and respond --\n like some huge cardiovascular system, limbic in essence --\n again you can tune in to us on SUNDAY {AT} http://share.ffem.org --\n take it to the grain -- es ]\n\n\nMILLION MERMAID MARCH (Mermaid Parade tomorrow, Saturday)\n\n\n June 13, 2002, New York, NY -- Legalize Dancing NYC (LDNYC) and The Dance\n Liberation Front (DLF) are joining forces to fight NYC's cabaret laws in the\n 2002 Coney Island Mermaid Parade and extending an open invitation to all of\n New York City to join us in the fight for our right to dance!\n\n The two groups are sponsoring a \"Million Mermaid March\" float and inviting\n all Mermaids (as well as Neptunes and other aquatic life forms) to march with\n us in fighting to deregulate dance in New York City.\n\n You can join \"the Million Mermaid March\" at West 16th Street in Coney Island\n between 10 a.m.-- 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 22nd where we will be\n decorating vehicles and ourselves. The Mermaid Parade commences at 2:00 p.m..\n We are encouraging everyone to bring percussion instruments and/or whistles.\n To get to Coney Island by train take the F, Q or W trains to Stillwell\n Avenue-Coney Island (the last stop) which will let you out on Surf Ave. 16th\n Street is a couple of blocks away. Be on the lookout for after party \non the beach! (w/ soca and hip hop from Danny Casolaro, BK)\n\n While it may sounds like a joke, the NYC cabaret laws are very real and have\n for the last several years adversely affected our city's economy, culture and\n community. These antiquated statutes were originally written during\n prohibition in the 1920s and made it illegal to dance in any establishment\n without a cabaret license--which are now virtually impossible to obtain. The\n cabaret laws were resurrected the in the late-90s by the Giuliani\n administration and were selectively enforced causing hundreds of\n establishments undue economic hardship and damaging NYC's once-vibrant dance\n culture.\n\n We assert that dancing is a fundamental right that need not be regulated by\n government; that a flourishing dance culture is good for the NYC economy and\n culture; and that dancing fosters positive social relations making for a\n stronger and healthier community. Outside of the dance regulations, our group\n supports safety codes, capacity limits, noise statues, drug and alcohol laws,\n and any other laws in the best interest of the NYC community.\n\n Legalize Dancing NYC is currently working with City Councilmen Alan Gerson,\n other pro-dance organizations (DLF, Yehoodi, Mother, etc.), the New York\n Nightlife Association, civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, NYU Law Professor\n Paul Chevigny, the Bloomberg administration, local business owners, and the\n NYC community at large to introduce pro-dance legislation to the New York\n City Council. With your support, these laws will be repealed. We are planning\n a massive rally in Tompkins Square Park for late September to coincide with\n the legislation. We are also holding a fundraiser July 17th at the Slipper\n Room in Manhattan.\n\n For more information on the Mermaid Parade go to:\n http://www.coneyisland.com/mermaid.shtml\n\n To join Legalize Dancing NYC and find out what's going on in our efforts to\n legalize dance send a blank email to\n nodancingallowed-subscribe {AT} yahoogroups.com\n\n For more information on the cabaret laws log onto www.nodancingallowed.com\n\n To volunteer to help out with the Million Mermaid March and/or Legalize\n Dancing NYC email NYCandyg {AT} aol.com or call 212-673-4182 and press #2 to leave\n a message.\n\n To read a Village Voice articles about Legalize Dancing go to::\n http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/sotc.php (last item)\n http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/romano.php (Last item)\n\n-- \n ``` <0B {AT} {AT} $ggG%3^`\n `C%%G%%3Vg {AT} {AT} $gG00G/%8g8^\n :C8888Gg83VC3G0 {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 88%80G8GV\n ( {AT} {AT} $Gg88%CCCGg$BB00 {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $8Gg$0B0$ {AT} 0\n X0 {AT} {AT} 0BBB00ggg8G8$$B0gg08$ {AT} {AT} {AT} $8g0000$$C`\n ($00 {AT} BBg000gB0B$0880BB0$$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} gGggg0B$G\n < {AT} {AT} $$$g000000$ {AT} $$0000B00$$%$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} g$$0g0$$8\n X {AT} {AT} {AT} B$$$$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $0B$$BBBB0( ^VGB$B$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $$ {AT} (^\n G {AT} {AT} $$0B$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} BBBB {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 0B8` `/B {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $ {AT} G%^%3\n < {AT} {AT} {AT} $BB$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $BC X$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $8g {AT} $\n ^B {AT} $$$B {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} BC `VgB {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $ {AT} {AT} {AT} ^\n ~ {AT} $0$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $0C. </GB$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} \n {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} XC` ^8gG {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} \n {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $ {AT} B/(3G0$BGCX` ~8$g88/$ {AT} {AT} {AT} \n {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 3. V8G80 {AT} {AT} {AT} 08/<` ^(33< g {AT} {AT} 0\n {AT} {AT} $$ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $` <^` ^(<<<^ ^^^~ <VV g {AT} {AT} ^\n {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $8 ^.` (<V {AT} {AT} $((<` ^VCX^ {AT} {AT} $.C {AT} 0`\n {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 0` `^~gB%<X {AT} {AT} {AT} / << /( {AT} V\n ( {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 0^ ^< ^\n % {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} V `\n . {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} %`^ >Yes, i like it!\n B {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 0(.^^` ^^\n :$ {AT} {AT} {AT} $$0$ {AT} V< .^^^.. ^</XX$0<(8%\n 3 {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 3%%^` ^^^`.` ^ :3G {AT} 0C/G3\n ` {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} ` `^^ `^~<` `.\n $ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} ^ ` `^<<.```^` <VV<<XV^\n 0 {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} B`````` ^<^^`^<C {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $ {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} $8:^\n / {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} C`~~.`` `~~`.<X0g0BB0GCX/^^^^\n < {AT} {AT} {AT} {AT} 8`(/<<((^^^.^``^^<XV3G3GC< ~^\n `0 {AT} $3 <///((((^^^`^~^^<<(/(<^`^^\n ` `^((<//(/(<<<^ `^^^<</:\n ` `^<//(((<<//////XXV33/\n 3X^ `^///XC33333CC3CCVV^`\n ^:///(/(//^ ^~<(/VC%%%33CV/` ``/X\n `<(((((:((((/VVCVVCC//^^<:(((((<^^ V%<^\n (((<<<<<<<:::(((((////C3CVVC3X////////((<<::<`\n N!C3 S!MULC4ST STR34M!!! hTTp://share.ffem.org\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Fri, 21 Jun 2002 14:17:49 -0400",
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"from": "eye scratch <eyescratch {AT} terminal.cz>",
|
||
"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\""
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Are Flagan",
|
||
"id": "00125",
|
||
"message-id": "200206231344.JAA14837 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00125.html",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"content": "\n\nOn 6/21/02 7:36 PM, \"Florian Cramer\" <cantsin {AT} zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:\n\n> The bottomline: \"RSG Carnivore\" is a packet sniffer for the purpose of\n> creating aestheticized visualizations.\n\nFirst: A word of appreciation for the technical outline Florian Cramer\nprovided.\n\nDue to the _transcoding_ principle, the net art scene has of course become\ninundated with projects that offer a visual and highly anesthetized\ntreatment/display of data streams, collected by various methods such as user\ninput, network sniffing, search engines, and so on. What seems almost\ncollectively to be lacking in this _artistic_ processing are efforts to\ninvoke an intelligence at the front end: why those algorithms, this\nappearance, these rules? At this juncture, these endeavors may rise from the\nlevel of ability to utility (like the FBI has made very clear). Any critique\nleveled at the increased surveillance of the network must surely start from\nthe base presumption that the bitstream channels knowledge and not pretty\npictures for the screen.\n\n-af\n\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Sat, 22 Jun 2002 13:02:43 -0400",
|
||
"from": "Are Flagan <areflagan {AT} mac.com>",
|
||
"to": "<nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\""
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Felix Stalder",
|
||
"id": "00126",
|
||
"message-id": "200206231347.JAA15101 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00126.html",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"content": "\n\nThe question that Florian Cramer raises -- whether or not RSC Carnivore is\ntechnically innovative or simply repackaging existing functionality -- is\nvalid. I accept his technological knowledge, amply displayed, based on\nwhich he claims that, indeed, the project is mainly repackaging. However,\nthe critique also strikes me as overly narrow.\n\nThe FBI Carnivore is not just a sophisticated packet sniffing program, but\nit is part of a larger techno-administrational set-up in which the program\nperforms very specific things that no other packet sniffing software does:\nproviding intelligence for secret law enforcement operations. Carnivore\nonly is Carnivore because it's embedded in a framework that allows the US\ngovernment to act upon intelligence gathered through it.\n\nThe difference between Carnivore and other sniffers is that Carnivore can\nget you detained. If you're unlucky these days, indefinitely without a\ntrial. In other words, Carnivore is not just a program, but an integral\nelement of a law enforcement strategy.\n\nAny critique of the an art work dealing with FBI's Carnivore must consider\nhow it addresses the various aspects of the entire process of carnivore,\nie. the all those things that turn the packet sniffing program to Carnivore.\n\n\n>From: Randall Packer <rpacker {AT} zakros.com>\n>Subject: Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\n[....]\n>In my mind, it is important to keep in mind that the Carnivore\n>software itself is the focal point of the project. At this early\n>stage, I think the applications being developed are skimming the\n>surface of what is possible. The use of network data to generate\n>real-time visual and musical experiences is clearly in its infancy.\n\nRandall Packer points approvingly to what strikes me as the real problem\nwith RSC Carnivore. Despite iclaims to the contrary -- and including\n\"Carnivore\" in the title is a strong claim to political relevance -- its\nobjectives are primarily aesthetic. Traffic data is taken to be input for\nvisual displays. Their quality is dertimed by the fact that they were\n\"created by leading net artists around the world,\" rather than by the fact\nthat they reveal otherwise hidden patterns in the data streams.\n\nHowever, the claim that we now have \"our own Carnivore\" somehow suggests\nthat we have your own intelligence gathering capacities. It implies that we\ncan somehow turn the tables, that were are not only spied on, but we have\nthe ability to observe back, and to observe in a meaningful way. And with\nmeaningful I mean that the process of observing yields information that\nallows us to act effectively upon the observed.\n\n>From what I have seen, RSA Carnivore offers little in this regard. So,\nperhaps rather than calling the explanatory essay \"How we built our own\nCarnivore\" it seems to have been more accurate to call it \"How to visualize\ndata traffic\". I admit this is less sexy, but at least it doesn't come\ndangerously close to false advertising.\n\nFelix\n\n\n\n\n--------------------++-----\nLes faits sont faits.\nhttp://felix.openflows.org\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:11:24 -0400",
|
||
"from": "elix Stalder <felix {AT} openflows.org>",
|
||
"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\""
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"message-id": "200206201835.OAA21828 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
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"content": "\n\nTable of Contents:\n\n How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" \n \"clement Thomas\" <ctgr {AT} free.fr> \n\n Re: [thingist] How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" \n Peter von Brandenburg <blackhawk {AT} thing.net> \n\n Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" \n RSG <rsg {AT} rhizome.org> \n\n Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" \n Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi {AT} yahoo.com> \n\n Re: <nettime> \"How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\" \n Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck {AT} transmediale.de> \n\n\n\n------------------------------\n\nDate: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 17:18:18 +0200\nFrom: \"clement Thomas\" <ctgr {AT} free.fr>\nSubject: How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\n\nrectificandoque !!\n\ninternet is invented in france by pavu.com and frederic Madre !!\nand we farte the board with olive oil !\n\nIt is Marilyn Monroe who was invented in Hawai !\nand 028 in Toulouse !\n\n- --\nOG\n\n-------------\n\nDate: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:44:57 -0400\nFrom: Peter von Brandenburg <blackhawk {AT} thing.net>\nSubject: Re: [thingist] How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\n\nVisita\nInteriora\nTerrae\nRectificando\nInvenies\nOccultem\nLapidem\n\n\nclement Thomas wrote:\n\n> rectificandoque !!\n>\n> internet is invented in france by pavu.com and frederic Madre !!\n> and we farte the board with olive oil !\n>\n> It is Marilyn Monroe who was invented in Hawai !\n> and 028 in Toulouse !\n\n\n------------------------------\n\nDate: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:47:54 -0400\nFrom: RSG <rsg {AT} rhizome.org>\nSubject: Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\n\n\ntrue, Metcalfe and Boggs's invention was called \"Ethernet.\" but by\nattributing Ethernet to them, you will miss why Ethernet was designed the\nway it was. all the important innovations were Abramson's, particularly\nhis solution to the problem of packet collision. sourcing the Ethernet\ntechnology in radio also explains why it is based on an open broadcast\nmodel and hence can be sniffed.\n\nMetcalfe & Boggs even cite Abramson's work in the introduction to their\n1976 paper: \"The Aloha Network at the University of Hawaii was originally\ndeveloped to apply packet radio techniques for communication between a\ncentral computer and its terminals scattered among the Hawaiian\nIslands...\" (http://www.acm.org/classics/apr96/)\n\nthink before you fart.\n\n- -RSG\n\nhttp://rhizome.org/RSG\n\n\n------------------------------\n\nDate: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 11:03:16 -0700 (PDT)\nFrom: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi {AT} yahoo.com>\nSubject: Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\n\n> true, Metcalfe and Boggs's invention was called \"Ethernet.\" but by\n> attributing Ethernet to them, you will miss why Ethernet was designed\n> the way it was. all the important innovations were Abramson's,\n> particularly his solution to the problem of packet collision. sourcing\n> the Ethernet technology in radio also explains why it is based on an\n> open broadcast model and hence can be sniffed.\n\nThis is a bit off nettime topic ... it can be claimed for any bit moving\nprotocol that it descended from a previous older one. Technology learns\nfrom it's history. I could enumarate tens of differences between ethernet\nand Aloha - - whoever is interested in this should peek in, say,\nTannenbaum's Computer Networks. I could also prove that ATM is based on\nswitched ethernet. Or Sonet. And that ethernet itself is, in fact, morse\ntelegraph code with immaterial improvements.\n\nSo it's a matter of quantities and shades.\n\nBut no one today confuses ATM with ethernet and this is the first time I've\nheard that Aloha and ethernet are essentially the same.\n\n> think before you fart.\n\nAu contraire, it was carefully premeditated.\n\n\n\n=====\nend\n(of original message)\n\nY-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:\n\n\n------------------------------\n\nDate: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 18:52:18 +0200\nFrom: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck {AT} transmediale.de>\nSubject: Re: <nettime> \"How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\"\n\ndear RSG,\n\n>How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\"\n\nalthough sympathetic to the exercise in general, it is difficult to\nunderstand why in this new text posted on the discussion forum *nettime*\n(apparently written for the ars electronica book, given the rhetoric) you\naddress neither the critique of 'screen saver art' that has been raised\nagainst the program's clients, nor discuss the technical analysis offered\nby the Moscow-jury which, from what i understand as a techno-idiot and\nreading against the grain, basically says that your Carnivore program\noffers nothing new under the sun??\n\ngiven the self-acclamation of your text, it would be interesting if you\nalso were to engage the criticism.\n\nbest regards,\n- -a\n\n\nCARNIVORE by RSG http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/7/\n\nBosses currently use all kinds of elaborate software to spy on their\nworkers. Products like MailCensor (http://www.mailcensor.com) encourage\nbosses to check for \"unauthorized transmission of Email containing\nconfidential data\" and \"provide a safe and productive work environment for\nemployees, by filtering out offensive/inappropriate email from the\nInternet.\"\n\nOn some networks, software can be installed by users to spy on their bosses\nas well. Packet sniffers, used by systems administrators to diagnose\nnetwork problems, can often be used or modifed to do just that. Some\npacket-sniffing software is expensive, some free:\n\n http://www.tucows.com/, search on sniffer\n http://www.softpile.com/search.phtml?query=sniffer&pp=10&in=title\n\nThe trouble is, most of this software wouldn't be easy for a non-technical\nuser to convert into a tool for gathering useful information. Those\nproducts that are easy to use for corporate spying tend to have pricetags\nthat are easy for bosses and companies to afford but not for employees.\nAmong currently available sniffing products, the jury likes Ethereal\n(http://www.ethereal.com), a free, cross-platform diagnostic tool that can\nbe used fairly easily by employees to spy on their boss's e-mail,\nwebsurfing and other network communications.\n\nAn upcoming version of Rhizome's Carnivore is planned to make it easier for\nan art audience to get involved in corporate spying. The jury hopes it\nwill do this. Since Carnivore is open source software, other people with\nthe appropriate programming expertise can also write such modifications\nthemselves. For now, Carnivore only runs on specialized servers, and it\ndoesn't gather data in a human-readable form.\n\nThe relationship of Rhizome's Carnivore to the FBI's spying tool of the\nsame name seems to be a matter of concept and hipness-value, but it is not\nexplained and is not very obvious.\n\n\n\n...\n>The RSG Carnivore levels the playing field,\n>recasting art and culture as a scene of multilateral conflict rather\n>than unilateral domination. It opens the system up for collaboration\n>within and between client artists. It uses code to engulf and modify the\n>original FBI apparatus.\n...\n>The prospect of reverse-engineering the original FBI software was\n>uninteresting to RSG. Crippled by legal and ethical limitations, the FBI\n>software needed improvement not emulation. Thus CarnivorePE features\n>exciting new functionality including artist-made diagnosic clients,\n>remote access, full subject targetting, full data targetting, volume\n>buffering, transport protocol filtering, and an open source software\n>license. Reverse-engineering is not necessarily a simple mimetic\n>process, but a mental upgrade as well. RSG has no desire to copy the FBI\n>software and its many shortcomings. Instead, RSG longs to inject\n>progressive politics back into a fundamentally destabilizing and\n>transformative technology, packet sniffing. Our goal is to invent a new\n>use for data surveillance that breaks out of the hero/terrorist dilemma\n>and instead dreams about a future use for networked data.\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"from": "\"nettime's digestion\" <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
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||
"author_name": "nettime's digestion",
|
||
"id": "00103",
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||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00103.html",
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"follow-up": [
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "RSG",
|
||
"id": "00106",
|
||
"message-id": "200206210115.VAA30988 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00106.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\n>From: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck {AT} transmediale.de>\n>[...] discuss the technical analysis offered by the Moscow-jury which, \n>from what i understand as a techno-idiot and reading against the grain, \n>basically says that your Carnivore program offers nothing new under the sun??\n\nas stated in our original post, Carnivore Personal Edition is rich with\nnew features not included in its FBI counterpart. Here are a few of\nthem:\n\n1) artist-made diagnosic clients created by leading net artists around\nthe world\n\n2) remote access--meaning clients can access CarnivorePE data streams\nfrom other computers via the Internet\n\n3) full subject targetting--meaning all users are sniffed, not just a\nsingle user\n\n4) full data targetting--all data is sniffed, not just email\n\n5) volume buffering--to avoid packet storms, CarnivorePE can buffer\npacket output to either 1, 5, 20, or 100 packets per second.\n\n6) transport protocol filtering--meaning CarnivorePE can sniff on TCP or\nUDP packets, or both\n\n7) output channels--meaning clients can request one of three output\nchannels: \"carnivore\" for full packet data in ASCII, \"hexivore\" for full\npacket data in hex, or \"minivore\" for packet headers only\n\n8) an open source software license (a dramatic improvement over its\nchief rival, Etherpeek, which isn't open source and costs $1,295)\n\n9) a distributed rather than centralized architecture\n\nmost of these features are also missing in the various other sniffers\navailable including Snort and tcpdump.\n\ninstead of stumbling over technical details, perhaps the nettime\ncommunity can engage in a deeper critique of the software and its uses?\n\n-RSG\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"date": "Thu, 20 Jun 2002 15:32:59 -0400",
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"from": "RSG <rsg {AT} rhizome.org>",
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" [6x]"
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},
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||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Pit Schultz",
|
||
"id": "00107",
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"message-id": "200206210706.DAA06264 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00107.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"content": "\n* costs of success *\n\ncertainly this hacker tool is well crafted in many ways (2), reading about\nit i first thought 'build for success', but does it's success make it a\n'good' art work, a work one might talk about in a few years in a\nrespectful way? Surely it is symptomatic, but is carnivocre a work of art\nwhich started an own genre, which made oneself look at the possiblities of\nmaking art in a new way, a work of art which made it impossible to\ncontinue to produce an accepted form of art in the old way? i don't say\nthat successful art (or software) is to be dismissed because of it's\nsuccess, but because what it might sacrificed to become successful (3),\nbeeing secondary consumers in the food chains.\n\n\n* conceptual confusion *\n\ni think carnivocre is as rationally planned as it is conceptually\nconfused. it doesn't provide a proper idea about the art context in its\nrelation to software. it provides an interface service. it hardly carries\nan own concept of itself beeing software, nor beeing a piece of art. it is\nneither social, nor critical but includes the discoursive gestures of\nthose features. especially if the techniques you mention are all\nimplemented properly, it is exactly this ambitious featuritis on all\nlevels which make the piece questionable as a piece of art, yes a filter,\nbut art? if it is not conceptual than why does it need such a long\ndescription, if it is conceptual than why does it need to prove to perform\nso well practically? if it is context sensitive then, isn't it first and\nfor all the context of the media art discourse it is produced for\nproviding a romantic version of the strange and beautiful digital\nlandscape of the united states? why then all the reference to be\nfunctional outside of it? and if it will become a wildly used sniffing\ntool, what is it that makes it different from other sniffing tools other\nthen aesthetification of the politics of packet sniffing?\n\n\n* dog shows *\n\nby beeing conformative to all sides and on all levels, carnivocre achieves\nseemingly a high degree of customization. affirmative and critical, open\nsource and mysterious, practical and aesthetical, software and art, it\ngenerates a heterogenous homogenity which has something for everyone but\nsays nothing in general. it doesn't make clear cuts but it boroughs from\nall contexts one might think of as relevant for the targeted market. as\nsuch it is designed like a new car model, a hyperopportunistic piece of\nproject management and it clearly reports more about the culture from\nwhich it derives than about all the sources it tries to nourish itself\nfrom. there is only one slight possibilty, that in another dimension by\nshowing all this, the work tries to overcome itself and all the meaning it\ncarries, beeing a parody of a pastiche (1), sending the observer in a loop\nof salon data art for the purpose of salon data art, to produce a\nbeautifully crafted confused inertia.\n\n\n1) pastiche, A work of art using a borrowed style and usually made up of\nborrowed elements, but not necessarily a direct copy. A pastiche often\nverges on conscious or unconscious caricature through its exaggeration of\nwhat seems most typical in the original model. (Thames & Hudson)\n\n2) my critique on the softwareculture list, from 30Apr02\n\n >>take the case of \"carnivocre\". it seems to include technological\ncriticism, but it is also working on the marketplace of forms, including\nvarious 'styles' from ascii, to distributed networks, global maps,\nsurveillance, programming, p2p, and the beauty of code on the ground level\nof tcp/ip. but finally it is showing the highest perfection on the level\nof project management. the critique is symbolic, as there is no real\neffect outside the art context. the technique is without relevance as\nnoone outside the art context is using it. but to the art system it looks\nlike it comes from the \"other side\", it interfaces it, makes it\n'understandable' and fulfills the need for a criticism which doesn't\nhurt.<<\n\n3) see the discoursive meltdown arround Martin Walser's new (e)book in\ngermany. also on textz.com\n\n\n\n\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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||
"date": "Fri, 21 Jun 2002 03:55:36 +0200",
|
||
"from": "Pit Schultz <pit {AT} klubradio.de>",
|
||
"to": "nettime <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" [6x]"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "integer",
|
||
"id": "00115",
|
||
"message-id": "200206211557.LAA18409 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00115.html",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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||
"content": "\nRe: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" [6x]\n\n\nABSTRAKT: by looking through others' garbage.\n\n\n\n\n\n>>instead of stumbling over technical details, \n\nunfortunately your software is simply.technical\n+ inspired by others software which is simply.permit someone to smile at your genetik garb.\n\n\n>perhaps the nettime\n>community \n\nyes. prove it\n\n\n\n>can engage in a deeper critique of the software and its uses?\n>\n>-RSG\n\n\nit is almost as interesting + elegant as 0101's life sharing\nie. it is almost as interesting + elegant as looking through others' garbage [genetik garbage if you like. sch....\n\ndifference being 0101 aren't americans hence aren't as ugly not terribly dressed\nas rhizome simply.cheap fresh from the ny streets smurfs. [don't despair -\neveryone works the streets more or less. artists just do it more oftenly]\n\n\nnn\n\n\n\n\n\n\n-\n-\n-\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n /_/\n /\n \\ \\/ i should like to be a human plant\n \\/ __\n __/\n i will shed leaves in the shade\n \\_\\ because i like stepping on bugs\n\n\n\n*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--\nNetochka Nezvanova nezvanova {AT} eusocial.com\n http://www.eusocial.com\n\n http://www.ggttctttat.com/!\n n r . 5 !!! http://steim.nl/leaves/petalz\n*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*-- --*--*--*--*--*--*--\n \n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Fri, 21 Jun 2002 05:29:00 +0200 (CEST)",
|
||
"from": "integer {AT} www.god-emil.dk",
|
||
"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" [6x]"
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
"author_name": "Florian Cramer",
|
||
"id": "00123",
|
||
"message-id": "200206221523.LAA17153 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00123.html",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"content": "\n\nAm Thu, 20.Jun.2002 um 15:32:59 -0400x schrieb RSG:\n> >From: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck {AT} transmediale.de>\n> >[...] discuss the technical analysis offered by the Moscow-jury which, \n> >from what i understand as a techno-idiot and reading against the grain, \n> >basically says that your Carnivore program offers nothing new under the sun??\n> \n> as stated in our original post, Carnivore Personal Edition is rich with\n> new features not included in its FBI counterpart. \n\nFBI's \"Carnivore\" is, as far as known, an Ethernet sniffer set up to do\nvery specific/particular tasks, like sniffing only E-Mail of only one\nperson (see: <http://www.howstuffworks.com/carnivore3.htm>). As the FBI\nputs it itself:\n\n \"The Carnivore device works much like commercial \"sniffers\" and other\n network diagnostic tools used by ISPs every day, except that it\n provides the FBI with a unique ability to distinguish between\n communications which may be lawfully intercepted and those which may\n not.\"\n\n\"RSG Carnivore\" has no such encoded sniffing rulesets. It is yet another\nof the many Ethernet sniffing programs out there, except that its output\nis meant for \"Net.art\" visualization front-ends or, to use your\nterminology, \"plugins\". \n\nThe \"RSG Carnivore\" we - i.e. the Moscow read_me 1.2 jury - reviewed was\na simple Perl script wrapper around the well-known standard Linux/Unix\nprogram \"tcpdump\" and another third-party program that converted the\nlatter's binary output into ASCII. \"tcpdump\" did the actual sniffing (or\n\"surveillance\", the \"Carnivore\" Perl scripts only transferred the output\nto the web so that it could be used by Net.art visualization \"plugins\".\nThis, I assume, was also the version of \"RSG Carnivore\" which the ars\nelectronica jury reviewed and awarded.\n\nThe new \"RSG Carnivore PE\" differs from the old \"RSG Carnivore\" in that\nit is not a Linux/Unix, but a Windows program, and that it doesn't need\nto be installed on servers. It is written in Visual Basic instead of\nPerl and uses the third-party software WinPcap\n<http://winpcap.polito.it/> as its sniffing engine, instead of tcpdump. \n\n\nOf the 9 differences you find in \"RSG Carnivore\" as opposed to other\nEthernet sniffing tools, I could validate at least the first:\n\n> 1) artist-made diagnosic clients created by leading net artists around\n> the world\n\nConcerning the rest:\n\n> 2) remote access--meaning clients can access CarnivorePE data streams\n> from other computers via the Internet\n\nTrivial to implement if you combine an ethernet sniffer with a webserver\nor file sharing tool, like\n\ntethereal -x > sniffdata.txt\n\n...and then share this file in Gnutella or a locally running webserver.\n\n> 3) full subject targetting--meaning all users are sniffed, not just a\n> single user\n\nAny network sniffing software I know does this. (Ethereal, dsniff,\nettercap...)\n\n> 4) full data targetting--all data is sniffed, not just email\n\nAs above. \n\nWhat you write sounds reads a hackish prank; a hack to sell\ntrivial/commonplace functionality as extraordinary to people who, due to\ntheir non-technical background, can't judge it. \n\n\nman ethereal:\n\n The following is a table of protocol and protocol fields that are\n filterable in Ethereal. \n\n 802.1q Virtual LAN (vlan)\n[...]\n 802.1x Authentication (eapol)\n[...]\n AOL Instant Messenger (aim)\n[...]\n ATM (atm)\n[...]\n Address Resolution Protocol (arp)\n[...]\n Appletalk Address Resolution Protocol (aarp)\n[...]\n[...]\n Cisco Auto-RP (auto_rp)\n[...]\n\n\n[Skipping dozens and hundreds of protocols]\n\n\n\n> 5) volume buffering--to avoid packet storms, CarnivorePE can buffer\n> packet output to either 1, 5, 20, or 100 packets per second.\n\n\nman ethereal:\n\n -b If a maximum capture file size was specified, cause Ethereal to\n run in \"ring buffer\" mode, with the specified number of\n files. In \"ring buffer\" mode, Ethereal will write to\n several capture files; the name of the first file, while the cap\n ture is in progress, will be the name specified\n by the -w flag, and subsequent files with have\n .n appended, with n counting up.\n\n\n> 6) transport protocol filtering--meaning CarnivorePE can sniff on TCP or\n> UDP packets, or both\n\nman ethereal, continued from 4):\n\n\n User Datagram Protocol (udp)\n\n udp.checksum Checksum\n Unsigned 16-bit integer\n\n udp.checksum_bad Bad Checksum\n Boolean\n\n udp.dstport Destination Port\n Unsigned 16-bit integer\n\n udp.length Length\n Unsigned 16-bit integer\n\n udp.port Source or Destination Port\n Unsigned 16-bit integer\n\n udp.srcport Source Port\n Unsigned 16-bit integer\n \n\nman ettercap:\n\n -u, --udp\n sniff only UDP packets (default is TCP). \n\n\n> 7) output channels--meaning clients can request one of three output\n> channels: \"carnivore\" for full packet data in ASCII, \"hexivore\" for full\n> packet data in hex, or \"minivore\" for packet headers only\n\nman ethereal:\n\n It can assemble all the packets in a TCP conversation and\n show you the ASCII (or EBCDIC, or hex) data in that conversation.\n Display filters in Ethereal are very powerful; more\n fields are filterable in Ethereal than in other protocol\n analyzers, and the syntax you can use to create your filters is\n richer. As Ethereal progresses, expect more and more protocol\n fields to be allowed in display filters.\n\n> 8) an open source software license (a dramatic improvement over its\n> chief rival, Etherpeek, which isn't open source and costs $1,295)\n\nLooking up...\n\n/usr/doc/ethereal/copyright: \n\n [...]\n GPL, as evidenced by existence of GPL license file \"COPYING\".\n (the GNU GPL may be viewed on Debian systems in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL)\n\n/usr/doc/dsniff/copyright:\n\n [...]\n\n Copyright: Copyright (c) 1999, 2000 Dug Song <dugsong {AT} monkey.org>\n All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed.\n\n Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without\n modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions\n are met:\n\n 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright\n notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.\n 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright\n notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the\n documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.\n 3. The name of author may not be used to endorse or promote products\n derived from this software without specific prior written permission.\n\n\n/usr/doc/ettercap/copyright:\n\n [...]\n\n Ettercap is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL.\n\n The GPL licence can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses on modern\n Debian systems.\n\n> 9) a distributed rather than centralized architecture\n> \n> most of these features are also missing in the various other sniffers\n> available including Snort and tcpdump.\n\n(See point 2.)\n\n> instead of stumbling over technical details, perhaps the nettime\n> community can engage in a deeper critique of the software and its uses?\n\nA deeper critique would be that the\ndeveloper team of \"Ethereal\", a free cross-plattform (Linux/Unix and\nWindows) tool which offers everything you describe except the Net.art\n\"plugins\", should have run\n\ns/Ethereal/Carnivore/g\n\nover their sourcecode and sold it as a \"critical\", \"political\",\n\"subversive\", \"provocative\" etc. piece of software (art), and that\nperhaps this is what the RSG hacktivism is actually about. Next we sell\n\"Norton Unerase\" + some fancy \"Net.art\" visualization backend as a\ncritical software art piece on personal data privacy.\n\n\nThe bottomline: \"RSG Carnivore\" is a packet sniffer for the purpose of\ncreating aestheticized visualizations. I appreciate that because I often\nrun packet-sniffers to entertain myself with accidental concrete poetry\n(particularly radical and sexually intense if you sniff on Gnutella\nconnections). But you agree that, as aesthetic sniffing, it is\ndifferent from the targetted law-enforcement packet sniffing of FBI\nCarnivore whose algorithmic intelligence is spent on the input backend,\nnot on the output frontend.\n\nI am also in in tune with exploiting ready-made software concepts and\ntools. (I even think RSG could have saved much effort by working with a\nhigh-level cross-platform tool like \"Ethereal\" right away instead of\nwriting its own Perl/Visual Basic wrappers around low-level sniffing\nengines.) \n\nThe difference between FBI Carnivore and commonplace packet sniffers\nshows that the difference is in the targetting and the particular\napplication. In the Moscow jury, we just failed to see the rhetoric\nimplied in the title \"Carnivore\" (and the subsequent political rhetoric\nyou posted here) backed-up in the piece. \n\nMeanwhile, though, I changed my mind and think our objections were\npremature. While the targetting and application of \"RSG Carnivore\" might\nbe different from FBI Carnivore on the technical level, it is not so\ndifferent on the discursive level. Because \"RSG Carnivore\", as it turns\nout, are not those who run it and let it sniff their networks, but the\nnet.art world itself, as obvious in this thread it provoked. \"RSG\nCarnivore\" was sophisticatedly at work when Olga Goriunova posted the\nread_me 1.2 jury statement, but rhizome-digest of June 2nd, 2002\nincluded it in a version modified by the rhizome editors that skipped\nall of our frivolous remarks about \"RSG Carnivore\", passing it as Olga's\noriginal E-Mail though, without any editorial annotation or typographic\n[...] markup. This was Carnivore at work: The implied appeal to readers\nto critically question media-fabricated truth (whether by the\nsyndication of, say, ABC News and Disney or rhizome.org and RSG\nCarnivore) by matching rhizome-digest against rhizome-raw showed what\nthe piece was actually about. Contrary to what Andreas criticized, the\n\"Net.art\"-themed screensaver output turned out to be a clever means of\ntactical distraction from thei actual piece.\n\nYou call your award-winning piece \"Carnivore\" instead of (seemingly more\nappropriate) \"Rhizome Community Network Sniffer\"; this honesty is much\nappreciated!\n\nFlorian\n\n-- \nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/\nhttp://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html\nGnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA, finger cantsin {AT} mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
|
||
"date": "Sat, 22 Jun 2002 01:36:29 +0200",
|
||
"from": "lorian Cramer <cantsin {AT} zedat.fu-berlin.de>",
|
||
"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" [6x]"
|
||
}
|
||
],
|
||
"list": "nettime_l",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"date": "Thu, 20 Jun 2002 14:28:40 -0400",
|
||
"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
|
||
"subject": "Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\" [6x]"
|
||
}
|
||
],
|
||
"list": "nettime_l",
|
||
"content-type": "text/plai",
|
||
"date": "Mon, 17 Jun 2002 15:41:20 -0400",
|
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"subject": "<nettime> How We Made Our Own \"Carnivore\""
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},
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{
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"from": "lorian Cramer <cantsin {AT} zedat.fu-berlin.de>",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00037.html",
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"author_name": "Florian Cramer",
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"content": "\n[Note: This paper was written for the catalogue of read_me 1.2/Moscow\nand is also reprinted in the user manual of Signwave Auto Illustrator. -\nIt's an both an update on an older paper on software art I wrote with\nUlrike Gabriel & attempt to clarify (a) what 'software [art]' is and (b)\nhow software art may differ from older generative art. - The paper is\nalso available at:\nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/writings/software_art/concept_notations//concepts_notations_software_art.pdf\nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/writings/software_art/concept_notations//concepts_notations_software_art.html\n-Florian]\n\n\nt\n$Id: concepts_notations_software_art.tex,v 1.1 2002/03/25 01:09:31 paragram Exp $\n\n\nConcepts, Notations, Software, Art\n\nFlorian Cramer\n\nc/o Freie Universität Berlin\nSeminar für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft\nHüttenweg 9\nD-14195 Berlin\ncantsin {AT} zedat.fu-berlin.de\nhttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin\n\nMarch 23rd, 2002\n\nSoftware and Concept Notations\n\nSoftware in the Arts\n\nTo date, critics and scholars in the arts and humanities have considered\ncomputers primarily as storage and display media, as something which transmits\nand reformats images, sound and typography. Reflection of the as such invisible\nlayer of software is rare. Likewise, the term ``digital art'' has been\nassociated primarily with digital images, music or audiovisual installations\nusing digital technology. The software which controls the audio and the visuals\nis frequently neglected, working as a black box behind the scenes.\n``Interactive'' room installations, for example, get perceived as a\ninteractions of a viewer, an exhibition space and an image projection, not as\nsystems running on code. This observation all the more applies to works in\nwhich it is not obvious at all that their production relied on programmation\nand computing. John Cage's 1981 radio play ``Roaratorio'', for example, appears\nto be a tape montage of a spoken text based on James Joyce's ``Finnegans\nWake'', environmental sounds recorded in several cities of the world and Irish\nfolk music, edited with analog recording technology. Yet at the same time it is\nan algorithmic artwork; the spoken text was extracted from the novel using a\npurely syntactical, formal method (mesostychs of the name ``James Joyce''), and\nthe montage was done according to a random score generated on a computer at the\nParisian IRCAM studios. While the book-plus-CD set of ``Roarotorio'' documents\nthe whole composition extensively, containing the audio piece itself, a\nrecording and a reprint of John Cage's reading, a recording and a reprint of an\ninterview, an inventory of the cities where sound was recorded, it includes the\ncomputer-generated score itself only in a one-page excerpt and nothing at all\nof the computer program code which generated the random score.{1}\n\nThe history of the digital and computer-aided arts could be told as a history\nof ignorance against programming and programmers. Computer programs get locked\ninto black boxes, and programmers are frequently considered to be mere factota,\ncoding slaves who execute other artist's concepts. Given that software code is\na conceptual notation, this is not without its own irony. In fact, it is a\nstraight continuation of romanticist philosophy and its privileging of\naisthesis (perception) over poeisis (construction),{2} cheapened into a\nrestrained concept of art as only that what is tactile, audible and visible.\nThe digital arts themselves participate in this accomplicity when they call\nthemselves [new] ``media art''. There's nothing older than ``new media'', a\nterm which is little more than a superficial justification for lumping together\na bunch of largely unrelated technologies, such as analog video and computing,\njust because they were ``new'' at a particular time. If one defines as a medium\nsomething that it is between a sender and a receiver, then computers are not\nonly media, but also senders and receivers which themselves are capable of\nwriting and reading, interpreting and composing messages within the limitations\nof the rule sets inscribed into them. The computer programs for example which\ncalculate the credit line of checking accounts or control medical instruments\nin an emergency station can't be meaningfully called ``media''. If at all,\ncomputer processes become ``media'' only by the virtue that computers can\nemulate any machine, including all technical media, and by the virtue of the\nanalog interfaces which transform the digital zeros and ones into analog sound\nwaves, video signals, print type and vice versa.\n\nA Crash Course in Programming\n\nA piece of software is a set of formal instructions, or, algorithms; it is a\nlogical score put down in a code. It doesn't matter at all which particular\nsign system is used as long as it is a code, whether digital zeros and ones,\nthe Latin alphabet, Morse code or, like in a processor chip, an exactly defined\nset of registers controlling discrete currents of electricity. If a piece of\nsoftware is a score, is it then by definition an outline, a blueprint of an\nexecuted work?\n\nImagine a Dadaist poem which makes random variations of Hugo Ball's sound poem\n``Karawane'' (``Caravan''):\n\n KARAWANE\n \n jolifanto bambla ô falli bambla\n grossiga m'pfa habla horem\n égiga goramen\n higo bloiko russula huju\n hollaka hollala\n anlogo bung\n blago bung\n blago bung\n bosso fataka\n ü üü ü\n schampa wulla wussa ólobo\n hej taat gôrem\n eschige zunbada\n wulebu ssubudu uluw ssubudu\n tumba ba-umpf\n kusagauma\n ba-umpf\n \nThe new Dada poem could simply consists of eight variations of the line ``tumba\nba-umpf''. The author/performer could throw a coin twice for each line and,\ndepending on the result, choose to write down either the word ``tumba'' or\n``ba-umpf'', so that the result would look like:\n\n tumba tumba\n ba-umpf tumba\n tumba ba-umpf\n tumba ba-umpf\n ba-umpf ba-umpf\n ba-umpf tumba\n tumba ba-umpf\n tumba ba-umpf\n\nThe instruction code for this poem could be written as follows:\n\n 1. Take a coin of any kind with two distinct sides.\n 2. Repeat the following set of instructions eight times:\n a. Repeat the following set of instructions twice:\n i. Throw the coin.\n ii. Catch it with your palm so that it lands on one side.\n iii. If the coin shows the upper side, do the following:\n # Say \"tumba\"\n iv. Else do the following:\n # Say \"ba-umpf\"\n b. Make a brief pause to indicate the end of the line.\n 3. Make a long pause to indicate the end of the poem.\n\nSince these instructions are formal and precise enough to be as well executed\nby a machine (imagine this poem implemented into a modified cuckoo clock), they\ncan be translated line by line into a computer program. Just as the above\ninstruction looks different depending on the language it is written in, a\ncomputer program looks different depending on the programming language used.\nHere I choose the popular language ``Perl'' whose basic instructions are rather\nsimple to read:\n\nfor $lines (1 .. 8) \n {\n for $word (1 .. 2) \n {\n $random_number = int(rand(2));\n if ($random_number == 0) \n {\n print \"tumba\"\n }\n else \n {\n print \"ba-umpf\"\n }\n print \" \"\n }\n print \"\\n\"\n }\n\n\n\nThe curly brackets enclose statement blocks executed under certain conditions,\nthe $ prefix designates a variable which can store arbitrary letters or\nnumbers, the ``rand(2)'' function generates a random value between 0 and 1.9,\n``int'' rounds its result to either zero or one, `` '' stands for a blank, ``\nn'' for a line break. This program can be run on virtually any computer; it is\na simple piece of software. Complex pieces of software, such as computer\noperating systems or even computer games, differ from the above only in the\ncomplexity of their instructions. The control structures - variable\nassignments, loops, conditional statements - are similar in all programming\nlanguages.\n\nUnlike in the instruction for throwing coins, the artists' work is done once\nthe code is written. A computer program is a blueprint and its execution at the\nsame time. Like a pianola roll, it is a score performing itself. The artistic\nfascination of computer programming - and the perhaps ecstatic revelation of\nany first-time programmer - is the equivalence of architecture and building,\nthe instant gratification given once the concept has been finished. Computer\nprogramming collapses, as it seems, the second and third of the three steps of\nconcept, concept notation and execution.\n\nContrary to conventional data like digitized images, sound and text documents,\nthe algorithmic instruction code allows a generative process. It uses computers\nfor computation, not only as storage and transmission media. And this precisely\ndistinguishes program code from non-algorithmic digital code, describing for\nexample the difference between algorithmic composition on the one hand and\naudio CDs/mp3 files on the other, between algorithmically generated text and\n``hypertext'' (a random access database model which as such doesn't require\nalgorithmic computation at all), or between a graphical computer ``demo'' and a\nvideo tape. Although one can of course use computers without programming them,\nit is impossible not to use programs at all; the question only is who programs.\nThere is, after all, no such thing as data without programs, and hence no\ndigital arts without the software layers they either take for granted, or\ndesign themselves.\n\nTo discuss ``software art'' simply means to not take software for granted, but\npay attention to how and by whom programs were written. If data doesn't exist\nwithout programs, it follows that the separation of processed ``data'' (like\nimage and sound files) from ``programs'' is simply a convention. Instead, data\ncould be directly embedded into the algorithms used for its transmission and\noutput to external devices. Since a ``digital photograph'' for example is\nbit-mapped information algorithmically transformed into the electricity\ncontrolling a screen or printer, via algorithmic abstraction layers in the\ncomputer operating system, it follows that it could just as well be coded into\na file which contains the whole transformation algorithms themselves so that\nthe image would display itself even on a computer that provides no operating\nsystem.{3}\n\nSoftware Art\n\nExecutable Code in Art\n\nIf software is generally defined as executable formal instructions, logical\nscores, then the concept of software is by no means limited to formal\ninstructions for computers. The first, English-language notation of the Dadaist\npoem qualifies as software just as much as the three notations in the Perl\nprogramming language. The instructions only have to meet the requirement of\nbeing executable by a human being as well as by a machine. A piano score, even\na 19th century one, is software when its instruction code can be executed by a\nhuman pianist as well as on a player piano.\n\nThe Perl code of the Dada poem can be read and executed even without running it\non machines. So my argument is quite contrary to Friedrich Kittler's media\ntheory according to which there is either no software at all or at least no\nsoftware without the hardware it runs on:{4} If any algorithm can be executed\nmentally, as it was common before computers were invented, then of course\nsoftware can exist and run without hardware. - A good example are programming\nhandbooks. Although they chiefly consist of printed computer code, this code\ngets rarely ever executed on machines, but provides examples which readers\nfollow intellectually, following the code listings step by step and computing\nthem in their minds.\n\nInstead of adapting Dadaist poetry as software, one could regard some\nhistorical Dadaist works as software right away; above all, Tristan Tzara's\ngeneric instruction for writing Dada poems by shuffling the words of a\nnewspaper article{5}:\n\n To make a Dadaist poem:\n Take a newspaper.\n Take a pair of scissors.\n Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem. Cut out\n the article.\n Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a\n bag.\n Shake it gently.\n Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they\n left the bag.\n Copy conscientiously.\n The poem will be like you.\n And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a\n sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.\n\nThe poem is effectively an algorithm, a piece of software which may as well be\nwritten as a computer program.{6}. If Tzara's process would be adapted as Perl\nor C code from the original French, it wouldn't be a transcription of something\ninto software, but a transcription of non-machine software into machine\nsoftware.\n\nConcept Art and Software Art\n\nThe question of what software is and how it relates to non-electronic\ncontemporary art is at least thirty-two years old. In 1970, the art critic and\ntheorist Jack Burnham curated an exhibition called \"Software\" at the Jewish\nMuseum of New York which today is believed to be first show of concept art. It\nfeatured installations of US-American concept artists next installations of\ncomputer software Burnham found interesting, such as the first prototype of Ted\nNelson's hypertext system ``Xanadu''. Concept art as an art ``of which the\nmaterial is `concepts,' as the material of for ex. music is sound'' (Henry\nFlynt's definition from 1961{7}) and software art as an art whose material is\nformal instruction code seem to have at least two things in common:\n\n 1. the collapsing of concept notation and execution into one piece;\n 2. the use of language; instructions in software art, concepts in concept art.\n Flynt observes: ``Since `concepts' are closely bound up with language,\n concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language''.{8}\n \n It therefore is not accidental that the most examples of pre-electronic\n software art cited here are literary. Literature is a conceptual art in\n that is not bound to objects and sites, but only to language. The trouble\n the art world has with net.art because it does not display well in\n exhibition spaces is foreign to literature which always differentiated\n between an artwork and its material appearance.\n \n Since formal language is a language, software can be seen and read as a\n literature.{9}\n \nIf concepts become, to quote Flynt again, artistic``material'', then concept\nart differs from other art in that it actually exposes concepts, putting their\nnotations up front as the artwork proper. In analogy, software art in\nparticular differs from software-based art in general in that it exposes its\ninstructions and codedness. Since formal instructions are a subset of\nconceptual notations, software art is, formally, a subset of conceptual art.\n\nMy favorite example of both concept art in Flynt's sense and non-computer\nsoftware art is La Monte Young's ``Composition 1961'', a piece of paper\ncontaining the written instruction ``Draw a straight line and follow it''. The\ninstruction is unambiguous enough to be executed by a machine. At the same\ntime, a thorough execution is physically impossible. So the reality of piece is\nmental, conceptual.\n\nThe same duplicity of concept notation and executable code exists in Sol\nLeWitt's 1971 ``Plan for a Concept Art Book'', a series of book pages giving\nthe reader exact instructions to draw lines on them or strike out specific\nletters.{10} LeWitt's piece exemplifies that the art called concept art since\nthe 1970s was by far not as rigorous as the older concept art of Henry Flynt,\nLa Monte Young and Christer Hennix: While the ``Composition 1961'' is a concept\nnotation creating an artwork that itself exists only as a concept, mentally,\nLeWitt's ``Plan for a Concept Art Book'' only is a concept notation of a\nmaterial, graphic artwork. Unlike the concept art ``of which the material is\n`concepts''', LeWitt's piece belongs to a concept art that rather should be\ncalled a concept notation art or ``blueprint art''; an art whose material is\ngraphics and objects, but which was instead realized in the form of a score. By\nthus reducing its its own material complexity, the artwork appears to be\n``minimalist'' rather than rigorously conceptualist.\n\nA writing which writes itself, LeWitt's ``Plan'' could also be seen in a\nhistorical continuity of combinatory language speculations: From the\npermutational algorithms in the Sefer Jezirah and ecstatic Kabbalah to the\nmedieval ``ars'' of Raimundus Lullus to 17th century permutational poetry and\nMallarmé's ``Livre''. The combinatory most complex known permutation poem,\nQuirinus Kuhlmann's 1771 sonnet ``Vom Wechsel menschlicher Sachen'' consists of\n13*12 nouns can be arbitrarily shuffled so that they result in 10114\npermutations of the text.{11} Kuhlmann's and La Monte Young's software arts\nmeet in their aesthetic extremism; in an afterword, Kuhlmann claims that there\nare more permutations of his poem than grains of sand on the earth.{12} If such\nimplications lurk in code, a formal analysis is not enough. Concept art\npotentially means terror of the concept, software art terror of the algorithm;\na terror grounded in the simultaneity of minimalist concept notation and\ntotalitarian execution, helped by the fact that software collapses the concept\nnotation and execution in the single medium of instruction code. - Sade's ``120\ndays of Sodom'' could be read as a recursive programming of excess and its\nsimultaneous reflection in the medium of prose.{13} The popularity of spamming\nand denial-of-service code in the contemporary digital arts is another\npractical proof of the perverse double-bind between software minimalism and\nself-inflation; the software art pieces awarded at the transmediale.02\nfestival, ``tracenoizer'' and ``forkbomb.pl'' also belong to this category.\n\nLa Monte Young's ``Composition 1961'' not only provokes to rethink what\nsoftware and software art is. Being the first and still most elegant example of\nall artistic jamming and denial-of-service code, it also addresses the\naesthetics and politics coded into instructions. Two years before Burnham's\n``Software'' exhibition, the computer scientist Donald E. Knuth published the\nfirst volume of his famous textbook on computer programming, ``The Art of\nComputer Programming''.{14} Knuth's wording has adopted in what Steven Levy\ncalls the hacker credo that ``you can create art and beauty with computers''.\n{15} It is telling that hackers, otherwise an avant-garde of a broad cultural\nunderstanding of digital technology, rehash a late-18th century classicist\nnotion of art as beauty, rewriting it into a concept of digital art as inner\nbeauty and elegance of code. But such aesthetic conservativism is widespread in\nengineering and hard-science cultures; fractal graphics are just one example of\nNeo-Pythagorean digital kitsch they promote. As a contemporary art, the\naesthetics of software art includes ugliness and monstrosity just as much as\nbeauty, not to mention plain dysfunctionality, pretension and political\nincorrectness.{16}\n\nAbove all, software art today no longer writes its programs out of nothing, but\nworks within an abundance of available software code. This makes it distinct\nfrom works like Tzara's Dada poem which, all the while it addresses an\nabundance of mass media information, contaminates only the data, not its\nalgorithm; the words become a collage, but the process remains a synthetic\nclean-room construct.\n\nSince personal computers and the Internet became popular, software code in\naddition to data has come to circulate in abundance. One thus could say that\ncontemporary software art operates in a postmodern condition in which it takes\npre-existing software as material - reflecting, manipulating and\nrecontextualizing it. The ``mezangelle'' writing of mez, an Australian net\nartist, for example uses software and protocol code as material for writings in\na self-invented hybrid of English and pseudo-code. Her ``net.wurks'' are an\nunclean, broken software art; instead of constructing program code\nsynthetically, they use readymade computations, take them apart and read their\nsyntax as gendered semantics. In similar fashion, much software art plays with\ncontrol parameters of software. Software artworks like Joan Leandre's\n``retroyou'' and ``Screen Saver'' by Eldar Karhalev and Ivan Khimin are simply\nsurprising, mind-challenging disconfigurations of commercial user software: a\ncar racing game, the Microsoft Windows desktop interface. They manage to put\ntheir target software upside down although their interventions are technically\nsimple and don't involve low-level programming at all.\n\nSoftware Formalism vs. Software Culturalism\n\nMuch of what is discussed as contemporary software art and discourse on has its\norigin in two semi-coherent London-based groups. The older one around Matthew\nFuller, Graham Harwood and the groups I/O/D and Mongrel is known, among others,\nfor the experimental web browser ``WebStalker'', which instead of formatted\npages displays their source code and link structures, the ``Linker'', a piece\nof ``social software'' (to use a term by Fuller) designed to empower\nnon-literate users to design their own digital information systems, and\n``natural selection'', a politically manipulated web search engine. Fuller also\nwrote a scrupulous cultural analysis of Microsoft Word's user interface and an\nessay with the programmatic title ``Software as Culture''. The other group\ninvolves the programmer-artists Adrian Ward (whose ``Auto-Illustrator'' won the\ntransmediale.01 software art prize) and Alex McLean (whose ``forkbomb.pl'' won\nthe transmediale.02 software art prize), the theoretician Geoff Cox and\nparticipants in the mailing list ``eu-gene'', the web site http://\nwww.generative.net and the ``DorkBot'' gatherings in London (which involve\npoetry readings of program code). Both groups take exactly opposite standpoints\nto software art and software criticism: While Fuller/Harwood regard software as\nfirst of all a cultural, politically coded construct, the eu-gene group rather\nfocuses on the formal poetics and aesthetics of software code and individual\nsubjectivity expressed in algorithms.\n\nIf software art could be generally defined as an art\n\n * of which the material is formal instruction code, and/or\n * which addresses cultural concepts of software,\n\nthen each of their positions sides with exactly one of the two aspects. If\nSoftware Art would be reduced to only the first, one would risk ending up a\nwith a neo-classicist understanding of software art as beautiful and elegant\ncode along the lines of Knuth and Levy. Reduced on the other hand to only the\ncultural aspect, Software Art could end up being a critical footnote to\nMicrosoft desktop computing, potentially overlooking its speculative potential\nat formal experimentation. Formal reflections of software are, like in this\ntext, inevitable if one considers common-sense notions of software a problem\nrather than a point of departure; histories of instruction codes in art and\ninvestigations into the relationship of software, text and language still\nremain to be written.\n\nReferences\n\n[Cag82]\n John Cage. Roaratorio. Ein irischer Circus über Finnegans Wake. Athenäum,\n Königstein/Taunus, 1982.\n[CWM01]\n Geoff Cox, Adrian Ward, and Alex McLean. The Aesthetics of Generative Code,\n 2001. http://www.generative.net/papers/aesthetics/index.html.\n[Fly61]\n Henry Flynt. Concept art. In La Monte Young and Jackson MacLow, editors, An\n Anthology. Young and MacLow, New York, 1963 (1961).\n[Hon71]\n Klaus Honnef, editor. Concept Art. Phaidon, Köln, 1971).\n[Kit91]\n Friedrich Kittler. There is no software, 1991. http://textz.gnutenberg.net/\n textz/kittler_friedrich_there_is_no_software.txt.\n[Kuh71]\n Quirinus Kuhlmann. Himmlische Libes=küsse. ?, Jena, 1671.\n[Lev84]\n Steven Levy. Hackers. Project Gutenberg, Champaign, IL, 1986 (1984).\n[Mol71]\n Abraham A. Moles. Kunst und Computer. DuMont, Köln, 1973 (1971).\n[Tza75]\n Tristan Tzara. Pour fair une počme dadaďste. In Oeuvres complčtes.\n Gallimard, Paris, 1975.\n\nŠThis document can be freely copied and used according to the terms of the Open\nPublication License http://www.opencontent.org/openpub\n\nFootnotes:\n\n{1} [Cag82] - Regarding randomness generated with computers, the software\nartist Ulrike Gabriel says that it doesn't exist because the machine as a fact\nby itself is not accidental.\n\n{2} A similar angle is taken in the paper ``The Aesthetic of Generative Code''\nby Geoff Cox, Adrian Ward and Alex McLean, [CWM01]\n\n{3} I would not be surprised if in a near future the media industry would embed\naudiovisual data (like a musical recording) directly into proprietary one-chip\nhardware players to prevent digital copies.\n\n{4} [Kit91]\n\n{5} [Tza75]\n\n{6} My own Perl CGI adaption is available under \"http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/\n~cantsin/permutations/tzara/poeme_dadaiste.cgi\"\n\n{7} [Fly61]\n\n{8} ibid.\n\n{9} But since formal language is only a small subset of language as a whole,\nconclusions drawn from observing software code can't be generally applied to\nall literature.\n\n{10} [Hon71], p. 132-140\n\n{11} [Kuh71]\n\n{12} ibid.\n\n{13} As Abraham M. Moles noticed already in 1971, [Mol71], p. 124\n\n{14} knuth:art\n\n{15} according Steven Levy [Lev84]; among those who explicitly subscribe to\nthis is the German Chaos Computer Club with its annual ``art and beauty\nworkshop''.\n\n{16} which is why I think would be wrong to (a) restrict software art to only\nproperly running code and (b) exclude, for political reasons, proprietary and\nother questionably licensed software from software art presentations.\n\n\n\"*star[.dot]*star\" <netwurker {AT} hotkey.net.au>, [dis|in|con|verse|vective|text]\n\n\n\n [. s.(mike)hunt.ing............................................]\n\n\n ::burst[ing].thru.yr. ][drenched][ groomed (as per)fumed n.odes\n\n[f][ye ][old.ing body weaponed plague singe.rs//polarised \n][s][winger-as-a-typo.graphic-yearning//head \ntag.cocked*flicking//autho(g)r.it(t)y stances in poser ta(c)[tile]unts]\n\n ::in.Verse inve.C][li][t.ories\n\n[n.gauging d.ream.bouy & life \n][pre][serve.her.grr(ow!)l//s.tam(e)ping.my.blistering.context.foot(er vs \nh[r]eaders)//pornoesque.slickness.beads.yr.unborn.mouth]\n\n ::context dynam][j][ism][ick!][ ah.lur][ch][t\n\n[clik shi(rt)f][lif][ters & \n][syn][tax][oh!g(e)nomic][.grabblers//sten][ograph][.ching.of.yr.pedal.stall(ing)//u.sw.eat.&.shit//symb[ch]o.lick.yr.project.g.land(ing \ngear).]\n\n\n\n\n. . .... .....\nblind [t]rusting.txt\n.\n.\n*star[.dot]*star\nwww.cddc.vt.edu/host/netwurker/\nhttp://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/71/index-en.html\n.... . .??? .......\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"to": "Nettime <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
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"from": "atthew fuller <matt {AT} axia.demon.co.uk>",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00041.html",
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"author_name": "matthew fuller",
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"content": "\n\nDear Florian, \n\nThank you for your useful essay, 'Concepts, Notations, Software, Art'\nrecently posted to nettime. In the spirit of it being a new version of\nan old text, I'd like to suggest a plug-in.\n\nAt the very least, a brief patch may be required if we are not to have\na repetition of the usual scission, in the last few paragraphs, between\nthe simply 'formal' and simply, and woollily, 'social'. (The twentieth\ncentury is dotted with too many of such debates.) I'd like to make two\nshort suggestions:\n\n1 'Formal' operations do not occur alone. There is clearly a current\nof art using computer networks or instructions which believes itself to\nbe primarily formalist. However, this belief is the result of a\nparticular perspectivalism that cleaves the work from it's more messy\nor productive implications and connections. In order to clarify this,\ntwo examples drawn from the text:\n\n\n1.1 Hugo Ball's poem Carawan. Do we misunderstand the work if it is\nread in relation to certain of the Dada Zurich artists' ostensive\nreference to 'African' speech and symbolism, to further read this in\nrelation to the predatory colonialism of Europe, or in relation to\nBall's own yearning for a mystical language of immediacy (along the\nlines of that which you usefully describe in 'Language as Virus') which\ncould be accessed via such poetry?\n\n1.2 Sol LeWitt. LeWitt's work exists both as a series of instructions,\nand their execution. There are two ways in which we can understand\nthis simple formalist limit to the work as requiring an expansion. \n\n1.2.1 Organisation: the work is addressed to a possible executor - a\nsocius of two or more is thus composed. This at the very least allows\nthe work to be carried out and shown without any trouble to the artist,\none can also note that it is one of the mechanisms which allowed\nconceptual exhibitions to be mounted by post and by phone in across the\nworld in several locations at low cost. (See Katherine Moseley's\nexcellent catalogue, 'Conceptions, the conceptual art document'.)\n\nFurther, if you wish to include an authorised LeWitt in an exhibition\nit is necessary to contact his representative in order to receive\npermission to carry out the particular set of instructions you wish to\nhave realised. As is common in much of the conceptual work begun in\nthe sixties there is a deployment of a particular set of apparatuses\nwhich define roles, often by contract: representative,\nartist/instructor, executor, and so on. It is clear that such\narrangements are immediately 'social' in a variety of ways. Making the\nnotary an explicit rather than implicit transactor of some art systems\nis one of the minor ways which certain conceptual works addressed\nthemselves to the political and economic dimensions of such systems.\n\n1.2.2 Material 'substrate': one of the problems of an approach which\nallows for a simple formalism is that it reduces the components of its\nrealisation to a simple 'substrate' through which the work is realised.\n A kind of matter is captured and given form by an idea. What might\nusefully be proposed instead is that particular works, including those\nyou discuss, operate by arranging combinations of material,\norganisation, perception etc. LeWitt's work here for instance might\nbe seen to operate as a particular realisation of a certain combination\nof the propensities of: postal and fax networks; orthography, geometry,\nand the materials wall/paper and pen/pencil for their actuation;\nalphabetised language, linguistic technologies of description; art\neconomies of desire, command, and authorship, art economies of objects\nand spaces, of publications, or theorisations and naming; the pleasure\nof repetitive exercise and expectation in the person/s of those\nactuating the work, the conditions of employment of gallery assistants\nwho carry out such work; etc.\n\nThe particular compositional terms by which such an arrangement is\nmade, correspond in some way with what is reductively described as the\n'formal'. However, such a way of engaging with a work immediately\nconnects art to the question of what to do with life, with the world,\nwithout loosing any of the power assigned to it under the schismatic\nand reductive term, 'formal'. \n\n2 Such compositional terms are dynamics are generated in order to be\nlaunched into an outside. To name or describe such a system, the modes\nof a dynamic, the terms of an arrangement, calls it into being - with\none or another degree of virtuality. Each such act depends on the\narrangements that it is part of in order to become actuated and\nmobilised.\n\nFor purposes of presentation, Forkbomb.pl, for instance, uses both the\nactual script and the operation of the program within a computer where\na sound / graphics generation program is also running. Forkbomb\n'competes' with this program for resources as it gradually uses them\nup. As the number of fork commands increases it gradually makes the\noperation of this other program impossible, producing variation in\nsound and image. \n\nThis variation allows the perception of the two programs' interactions\nto become perceptible in a different way - to different senses and\naesthetic codes, and in terms of duration. The production of sound and\nimage is also notably varied by the configuration of the particular\nmachine that the work is being run on.\n\nPart of the work in deciding how to best mobilise Forkbomb is\ntherefore to bring it into some kind of arrangement with the contexts\nit operates in, as well as cpan and the normal routes for code\ndistribution, these include exhibitions and conference presentations. \nPart of a work is also its means of promotion, its mobilisation in\n'secondary' contexts, the way it appeals to certain kinds of\ninterpretation, or of remobilization by or participation in certain\nkinds of discourse - such as this. Utilising various ways of making it\n'sensible' are a way of generating its operation in an 'outside', the\ncontexts in which it appears and to which it is addressed. (This does\nnot of course preclude things occurring or being repurposed in other\ncontexts).\n\nTo remove the possibility of such a work being understood as 'social'\nwould therefore seem to deny part of what is important in what is\nbrought together in its different actuations.\n\nI have not touched up the presence of what you describe as simply\n'formal' in the those works you describe as simply 'social' because for\nthe purposes of this text that would be unnecessary. The work\nmentioned, other related work, as well as the texts around them give no\ngrounds for the repetition of this doubly useless scission.\n\nThe above couple of proposals of course make only a slight amendment to\nthe tail-end of what is otherwise a valuable argument - I look forward\nto seeing more!\n\n\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"to": "nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"date": "Fri, 7 Jun 2002 13:15:51 +0100",
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"message-id": "200206072212.SAA30156 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"id": "00041",
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"subject": "<nettime> the form, the social, the rest. re: 'Concepts, Notations, Software, Art'",
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"list": "nettime_l"
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},
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{
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"from": "lia lialina <olialia {AT} teleportacia.org>",
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"url": "https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0206/msg00058.html",
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"author_name": "olia lialina",
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"content": "\n> If software art could be generally defined as an art\n\n> * of which the material is formal instruction code, and/or\n> * which addresses cultural concepts of software,\n\n\ni know two projects that indeed address cultural and esthetical and\ntechnical concepts of software\n\nhttp://a-blast.org/~drx/net/mbcbftw/war.wrl \n\n2000\n\nhttp://entropy8zuper.org/olia/herboyfriendcamebackfromthewar.swf \n\n2000\n\n\nbest\n\nolia\n\n\n\n\n# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission\n# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets\n# more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and \"info nettime-l\" in the msg body\n# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net\n\n",
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"to": "Nettime <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>",
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"date": "Mon, 10 Jun 2002 18:29:09 +0200",
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"message-id": "200206102208.SAA30026 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"id": "00058",
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"subject": "Re: <nettime> Concepts, Notations, Software, Art"
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}
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],
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"date": "Thu, 6 Jun 2002 17:00:59 +0200",
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"message-id": "200206061921.PAA26464 {AT} bbs.thing.net",
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"content-type": "text/plai",
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"id": "00037",
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"subject": "<nettime> Concepts, Notations, Software, Art",
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"list": "nettime_l"
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}
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],
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"desc": "..."
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}
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} |