In reply to Alex Galloway's "<a href="/cgi-local/query.cgi?action=grab_object&kt=kt1015">New Interfaces, New
Softwares, New Networks</a>" [RHIZOME CONTENTBASE, 1.15.98], carmin wrote:

I've been writing code for decades. Elegant executable code is
absolutely beautiful.

We are all digitized and we are learning to see the beauty of the code.
Code is Art. All of my Art is Code.

honoria added:

I am happy to see this article by alex galloway because it starts out
about web art in general with some definition-questions about art on the
web, then has some examples of web programs that evolved using premises
and institutions of the Web. It has been my personal experience that
with the web-based opera I really have experienced "artist must also be
a designer, and a programmer, and a business person, and a publicist."
In the article, programs are also described as art/artist, as in the
example of the Web Stalker.

What seems left out in this article is the number of web-based art
collaborations. The old artist as loner image still seems to be
represented in this article in spite of the interconnectiveness of
linked projects, teamwork needed to pull together, maintain and morph a
major web-based art "object" and the creative virtual communities that
have taken root on the Web.

I was talking to another artist/dancer/multimedia designer, Bryan Green,
the other night about my sketchbook & we agreed that we never just
seemed to DRAW any more. My new year's resolution is to make some fun
messy drawings in my sketch book(s).

Danny Hobart wrote:

I find that, while drawing, I have bouts of frustration over not being
able to hit 'command-z' when i want to erase my last stroke.

To which, G. H. Hovagimyan replied:

I'm looking forward to the day that drawing tools will be totally
digital and integrated into the body so that I can dance and draw in a
hybrid virtual/real world. I find the idea of using paper and physical
instruments for drawing to be linear, weighted and constricting in the
extreme. You need to have the mind of a 14th Century artisan to work
with those materials. Working in digital space I/You/We are free from
the frame/object/box/perspective. We as artists should demand better
digital tools. Indeed we need to invent our own, just as Leonardo
invented the pencil to draw with.

On the disappearance of drawing, Lee Turner wrote:

I don't think that any of us do enough drawing anymore. I used to draw
all the time, especially from life models, now very little. It's a
fundamental practice that should be maintained. How hard is it to do a
drawing when you haven't done one for so long (erasers at the ready).

Aurora.blue continued GH's thread:

Some cannot draw as Leonardo did. Others of us have the ability to
capture with pen or pencil the beauty and horrors that surround us every
day.

In a digital environment, pad and pencil, or any ather artform the key
is draw(ing) upon both left and right sides of Ones brain.

A perfect balance in any form.

QueeneMUSE wrote:

A student of animation and a professional artist, I have calluses on my
fingers from use of pencil and paper.

The idea of "drawing" with my finger or mind itself, "jacking in" from a
direct link into some kind of neural net computer is what I imagine when
I hear "drawing tools will be totally digital and integrated into the
body"–would be fun.

In the meantime we artists better create new interfaces since what 2D
and 3D digital art supplies we have been given so far basically suck…

The delight of drawing for me comes from training that precision, that
discipline, to achieve the "flow" of the mechanical process–brain to
hand–that's the most satisfying element of the interface… will it be
more exiting to be completely digital? Only I can make the difference…

Finally, aharon wrote:

This turned into an interesting thread… From techie interfaces to
pencils and papers…

By working with digital/electronic-based media what is generally
regarded as art is shifting. The interactive interface gains more
prominence in artists vocabulary as interfaces and interactive
possibilities are used with expressive intentions. It relates to a
pencil and paper by the act of using a pencil to interface and interact
with the paper.

As far as visual aesthetics go, pencil interacting with paper allows a
different kind of expressions than, for example, an acryliced finger and
paper. The highlight given to interactive interfaces via
digital/electronic-based media has implications which stretch to the
very bases of art, its practice, definition, process and social
position. This is because the focus on interactive interfaces in art is
in fact a bright beam at the process and practice of creating mediums.
If the focus is shifted from expression via mediums to creating mediums,
we just might be at the threshold of a brand new set of artistic
strategies, a new ball game…

The practice of dead-end expression will be left to any person who
interacts with the art works, and the practice of creation will be
artists' only territory. This takes a step towards realisation of the
omnipotent need for art in human life, and repositioning of the artist
as a kind of magician.

The attractive potency contained within the pencil and the paper is in
the simplicity and the infinite possibilities it is able to provide.
This kind of almost primal attraction seems to hide or even disappear
within digital/electronic-based media. But that is an intermediate stage
in the process…