As far as the "Art World" is concerned I don't exist. I
don't make products that they can comfortably promote and
sell. As for the real world I don't work for a corporation
or a government, or a university, in other words I don't
exist or I am so marginal as to be uninteresting.
But in the" Virtual" world I exist, I have a personality and
a presence that no entrenched hierarchy can deny me. In the
old information worlds they can't see it, yet I exist in
spite of an inability to fit any known categories. To me
this is both freedom and identity. Let the old world
physical hierarchies have their physical matter based
reality, let them drown in their own leaden materialistic
philosophies.
Let them fetishize objects and create cults of personality
around politicians and pop stars. They can't go where we're
going on the web it's the "old camel through the eye of a
needle".
+ + +
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 19:35:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Julia Lazarus (jlazarus@indy1.CALARTS.EDU)
Subject: the Internet and its "democratic" structures
I am amazed that you are still believing in the better world
since it had been proved by radio and television twice in
our century, that not the media is changing the human being,
but the human-being is developing the media after their
needs.
With the commercial usability of the Web, the Internet and
its "democratic" structures will change dramatically. As
more people are on the Web, as more our "real society" with
its hierarchies and powerstructures will be represented in
the Internet, and Art and other smarties will be in exactly
the same corners as in reality. If you don't have an
identity in real life, you are just a shy person, and you
need to learn to talk to people in your real life as you do
on the Internet. Try it, it works.
+ + +
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 11:42:04 -0500 From: "G.H.
Hovagimyan" (gh@thing.net)
Subject: social norms
I said I don't fit into social norms. And I do this by
choice. I am an artist. I define my world and choose my
society. I dislike societies based on old metaphors and
associations such as tribal, racial, ethnic, religious,
regional, class, business etc. I use the initials G.H. for
my first name because it is gender neutral. This may not be
alot but it's a small gesture.
+ + +
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 11:27:44 -0500 From: Julia
Lazarus (jlazarus@indy1.CALARTS.EDU)
Subject: paradise like structures
Hallo G.H.
I do respect your feeling about the Internet, and I know
there are many good amazing parts about the Web,
especially the publishing facilities artists gains by
the Web, >Publishing without Hierarchies<.
I wish that we could actually save these paradise like
structures but then you have to remember it is just because
the selection of people accessing the Internet is still a
very specific part of humanity, mostly college graduated
white males, mostly american and a couple of artists, who
are following the science very closely very often.
However the percentage of smart and interesting people on
the Internet will change dramatically, as I can see in the
headlines of L.A. Times, where they already talk about the
problem involved in opening the acces to all
company-members, for if they actually could access sex-pages
during worktimes. Those questions are certainly not the kind
you and I are interested in.
+ + +
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 19:28:46 -0800
From: pbergman@sgva-serv1.ucsd.edu (Peter Bergman)
Subject: lets examine some "entrenched hierarchies."
Dear GH,
>I have a personality and a presence that no entrenched
hierarchy can deny me.
First off, those "entrenched hierarchies" either are, or
soon will be, running the cyber-circus. Already politicians
in the good ol' USA are panicking about how long this whole
bonanza has gone unchecked. By virtue of being
entrenched "they" have the ability to usurp and use whatever
suits their projected plans for the future. So, I suggest you launch
your own satalite or get ready to get denied.
Actually, that is giving you too much weight. You will be
allowed your personality simply for the reason that no one will notice,
or care, about one more lonely person soap-boxing it up. Just like
the organic world, SURPRISE! The only difference between you and someone
screaming at passing traffic is that you had better remember to pay
the electric bill.
Now lets examine some "entrenched hierarchies." How about
class? How much does your computer cost? How much is your internet
access? Has it ever occured to you that sitting on an upper rung
of an entrenched hierarchy (those that have,)
you form attittudes and associations that catagoricly deny
the prescence and personalities of most of the (dare I say it) real world;
specificly, those that have not? Let the starving and unemployed "drown in their
own leaden materialistic philosophies" as you so eloquently put it.
After all, "They cant go where we are going on the web." Right?
>I exist in spite of an inability to fit any known categories.
Technocrat.
