Hi Martin,
Thanks for throwing this piece into the ongoing discussion
(http://rhizome.org/object.php?oG072&m42361). I missed it when it
was added to the artbase. The piece is great and I just want to
attempt to connect it to something that came up recently. First of
all, since you don't give a whole lot of information about it (not a
bad thing) I'm going to assume that it is essentially a sort of
reworking of your "Is still alive" piece which is of course a
reworking of On Kawara's telegrams, faxes, etc (did he perhaps also
tell people he was "okay"? Not sure.). I'm also assuming that there is
an automated process adding each line to "is okay" in the same way
that "Is still alive" automatically sends to available recipients.
Recently, in a conversation online someone tried to suggest to me that
making art is a "human act" but that writing code is not. Needless to
say, I didn't agree. If we argue that On Kawara's consistent reminders
to people about his state of being each represented a "human act" and
that's what makes them important in the context of his art, then where
does that put something that emulates what he does but the "human act"
is only performed once. That being when the code that controls the
automated action is written. Maybe this can also apply to MTAA's "One
Year Performance Video." It makes for an interesting thought.

On another note, If you really want people to leave comments I would
suggest eliminating the registration requirement. I really think that
in a project like this people aren't going to bother leaving comments
if they have to register. Can't you just make a single dedicated user
that all posts are attributed to and bypass registration that way?

Pall

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Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
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