<br />RHIZOME DIGEST: February 25, 2005<br /><br />Content:<br /><br />+announcement+<br />1. Shankar, Ravi: DRUNKEN BOAT announces Special Double Issue #7 - Aphasia<br />and the Arts, William Meredith, and First Annual Panliterary Awards<br />2. Ryan Griffis: FWD: Futurefarmers Seeking Contributions for ZKM exhibition<br />3. Amy Alexander: runme.org's 300th birthday<br />4. Rachel Greene: McCoys Win Wired Rave Award<br /><br />+work+<br />5. //jonCates: the base case (?) of Re: RHIZOME_RAW: rh:zome Subject (# of<br />texts)<br />6. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: A Seance with Guy by De<br />Geuzen: a foundation for multi-visual research<br />7. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: 1 year performance video<br />(aka samHsiehUpdate) by t.whid<br /><br />+comment+<br />8. Melinda Rackham: Remember this<br />9. Reinhold Grether: Josephine Bosma: Constructing Media Spaces<br />10. Olia Lialina: A Vernacular Web<br /><br />+commissioned for rhizome.org+<br />11. Rebecca Zorach: Rebecca Zorach on YOUgenics 3.0<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />1.<br /><br />Date: 2.22.05<br />From: "Shankar, Ravi (English)" <shankarr@ccsu.edu><br />Subject: DRUNKEN BOAT announces Special Double Issue #7 - Aphasia and the<br />Arts, William Meredith, and First Annual Panliterary Awards<br />Drunken Boat <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.drunkenboat.com">http://www.drunkenboat.com</a>>, international online journal for<br />the arts, announces a special double issue on Aphasia and the Arts and<br />William Meredith! <br /><br />With PHOTOS from Sol Lewitt, Ellen Driscoll, Elisabeth Subrin, Brian Berman<br />and Cecilia Schmidt<br /><br />With POETRY from Paul Amlehn, Sally Ball, Dan Beachy-Quick, Elizabeth Block,<br />Iain Britton, Julie Buchsbaum, Christophe Casamassima, Vernon Frazer, Piotr<br />Gwiazda, Richard Harteis, Gwyneth Lewis, Nancy Kuhl, Kate Light, Evelyn<br />Posamentier, Alexis Quinlan, Ken Rumble, Charles Rafferty, Mary Ann Samyn,<br />Jesse Schweppe, Chris Semansky, Vijay Seshadri, Ron Silliman, Laurel Snyder,<br />Tony Tost, Dan Waber & Dave Grey, Susan Wheeler, Gautam Verma<br /><br />With SOUND from Ros Bandt, Joseph Chaikin, Jan Curtis, Merlin Coleman,<br />Stefano Giannotti, Abinadi Meza, Patrick Simons, and Stephen Vitello<br /><br />With PROSE from Ann Barnes, Gayle Brandeis, Kate Hill Cantrill, Marc<br />Froment-Meurice, Tom Hazuka, Jerome Kaplan, Naomi Leimsider, Cris Mazza,<br />Elinore Mazza, Christina McPhee, John Phillips, Leland Pitts-Gonzalez,<br />Arthur Saltzman, Gregory Spatz, and Frederick Zackel<br /><br />With WEB ART from Peter Horvath, Deena Larson, Jhave Johnston, Michael<br />Knaven, Prema Murthy, Mendi & Keith Obadike, Antoine Schmitt and Tamar<br />Schori<br /><br />With TRANSLATIONS of Salvatore Quasimodo by Wayne Chambliss, Thanh Thao by<br />Linh Dinh, Turkish Sufi poets by Jennifer Ferraro and Latif Bolat, Paul<br />Valéry by Christopher Mulrooney, and Jean Michel Espitallier, Jacques<br />Roubaud, Jacques Jouet and Anita Konkka by Jean-Jacques Poucel<br /><br />With VIDEO from Angela Alston & Ezekiel Das, Nicolas Barrié, Cesar Pesquera,<br />Catherine Ross, Alan Sondheim, and Larry Weinstein<br /><br />FEATURING a special folio on APHASIA and THE ARTS and a retrospective on<br />WILLIAM MEREDITH including video, photos, etchings and never-before seen<br />letters and rare manuscripts<br /><br />and ANNOUNCING Drunken Boat's FIRST ANNUAL PANLITERARY AWARDS - details on<br />website! <br /><br /><<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.drunkenboat.com">http://www.drunkenboat.com</a>><br /><br />*************** <br />Ravi Shankar <br />Poet-in-Residence <br />Assistant Professor<br />CCSU - English Dept.<br />860-832-2766 <br />shankarr@ccsu.edu <br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />2.<br /><br />Date: 2.23.05<br />From: ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com><br />Subject: FWD: Futurefarmers Seeking Contributions for ZKM exhibition<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.futurefarmers.com/zkm/">http://www.futurefarmers.com/zkm/</a><br /><br />COMMUNICULTURE<br />³Jacob Moreno (1889-1974) developed many different techniques for<br />exploring the unseen connections that exist between people. In<br />exploring these connections we can¹t help but make new ones. I wanted<br />to take some of his techniques and explore them on the Internet. This<br />version of Communiculture is a reworking of an earlier project called<br />Prototype World, which was done as a degree show-project for the Royal<br />College of Art.² Josh On<br /><br />In this project, the screen space is given a social value. Users can<br />create visual representations of themselves and then place these<br />screen-selves in ³continuums² that have been written by other visitors<br />to the site. Each continuum has a question and two extreme positions<br />forming a continuum of possible positions a person could take in<br />response to the question. For example, the question might be, ³Do you<br />prefer cats or dogs?² and on one side of the screen would be the answer<br />³dogs² and on the other ³cats². Users can place themselves anywhere on<br />the screen between these two positions and add a comment explaining<br />their choice. Visitors can click on other visitors in the continuum and<br />see where they stand on other continuums.<br /><br />The on-line continuums only allow for a few words of explanation and<br />little room for discussion.<br />For ZKM, Futurefarmers presents Communiculture on the walls of the<br />museum. Continuums will appear on the walls, and visitors will attach<br />small avatars with comments somewhere between the two positions of the<br />continuum. The continuums will be chosen from a library of submissions<br />made possible through a webpage on the ZKM website. The webpage allows<br />people to submit continuums and to vote on ones that have already been<br />submitted. The most popular continuums will be presented on the walls<br />of ZKM for visitors to physically participate in. We hope that the<br />physical presence of the participants interacting with the wall will<br />foster discussion beyond the limited space available on the avatar.<br />Design by Futurefarmers<br />Illustration by Brian Won, Amy Franceschini, Josh On<br />Programming by Josh On<br />www.communiculture.org<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships<br />purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow<br />participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without<br />having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering<br />subsidized memberships to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded<br />communities.) Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more<br />information or contact Kevin McGarry at Kevin@Rhizome.org or Rachel Greene<br />at Rachel@Rhizome.org.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />3.<br /><br />Date: 2.25.05<br />From: Amy Alexander <plagiari@plagiarist.org><br />Subject: runme.org's 300th birthday<br /><br />runme.org: 2 years + 1 month old - we celebrate our 300+ projects!<br /><br />algorithmic appreciation (3)<br /> > non-code-related (1)<br /> > pseudo-quines (0)<br /><br />appropriation and plagiarism (4)<br /> > stealing (0)<br /><br />artificial intelligence (9)<br /><br />artistic tool (27)<br /> > audiovisual (23)<br /> > narrative (2)<br /> > useless (1)<br /><br />bots and agents (13)<br /><br />browser art (13)<br /><br />code art (16)<br /> > code poetry (7)<br /> > minimal code (1)<br /> > obfuscation (3)<br /> > programming languages (3)<br /> > quines (1)<br /><br />conceptual software (18)<br /> > without hardware - formal instruction (2)<br /><br />data transformation (21)<br /> > data collage (7)<br /> > multimedia (3)<br /> > sonification (2)<br /> > visualization (3)<br /><br />digital aesthetics r&d (6)<br /> > disfunctionality (2)<br /> > low tech (4)<br /><br />digital folk and artisanship (14)<br /> > ascii art (2)<br /> > gimmicks (5)<br /> > screen savers (1)<br /><br />existing software manipulations (6)<br /> > artistic re-packaging (1)<br /> > cracks and patches (0)<br /> > instructions (1)<br /> > software plugins (2)<br /><br />games (8)<br /> > deconstruction and modification (5)<br /> > public games (1)<br /><br />generative art (31)<br /> > algorithmic audio (6)<br /> > algorithmic design (3)<br /> > algorithmic image (14)<br /> > algorithmic multimedia (5)<br /><br />hardware transformation (6)<br /><br />installation-based (5)<br /><br />institutional critique (3)<br /><br />performance-based (6)<br /><br />political and activist software (19)<br /> > cease-and-desist-ware (5)<br /> > illicit software (1)<br /> > software resistance (10)<br /> > useful activist software (2)<br /><br />social software (1)<br /><br />software cultures - links (10)<br /><br />system dysfunctionality (6)<br /> > denial of service (3)<br /> > virus - security (3)<br /><br />text - software art related (43)<br /> > aesthetics of software art (6)<br /> > cultural critique of software (13)<br /> > history of software art (11)<br /> > weblog (1)<br /><br />text manipulation (26)<br /> > text editors (4)<br />runme accepts submissions on a year-round (almost) basis, so please submit<br />your projects in the above categories - or suggest your own - at<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://runme.org">http://runme.org</a><br />-runme admins<br />– <br />Note - Mail sent to the email address in the header may or may not actually<br />reach me! A current, fully-functional address for me can always be found at<br />the <br />bottom of the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://plagiarist.org">http://plagiarist.org</a> home page. Danke, gracias and thanks!<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome Member-curated Exhibits<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/">http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/</a><br /><br />View online exhibits Rhizome members have curated from works in the ArtBase,<br />or learn how to create your own exhibit.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />4.<br /><br />Date: 2.25.05<br />From: Rachel Greene <rachel@rhizome.org><br />Subject: McCoys Win Wired Rave Award<br /><br />I just read on MTEWW's blog that Jenn and Kevin won this award from WIRED.<br />It's called the WIRED Rave award. Congrats from everyone at Rhizome!:<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=12&topic=rave&topic_se">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=12&topic=rave&topic_se</a><br />t= <br /><br />Jennifer & Kevin McCoy<br /> for turning media crit into pop art<br /><br />Latest hit: Soft Rains, a collection of miniature film sets used to<br />deconstruct genres like '50s melodrama and '80s slasher flicks. Feeds from<br />50 videocams are channeled through software that edits them into<br />ever-changing vignettes.<br /><br />Dada meets data: The McCoys' MO is to compile thousands of film clips - from<br />footage they've shot to snippets snagged from Looney Tunes cartoons and TV<br />shows like Starsky and Hutch - break them down into categories, then create<br />short films straight from their databases. "Instead of looking at point,<br />line, and plane - classic Bauhaus design - we're using popular culture,"<br />says Jennifer, 36. <br /><br /> Jargon watch: The McCoys turned corporate-speak into an art form with<br />1999's Airworld. They set up office on the 91st floor of Tower One at the<br />World Trade Center and wrote a Web crawler to harvest marketing language<br />from the sites of big companies to show the absurdity and familiarity of<br />their jargon. <br /><br /> Amazing stories: The McCoys often rely on daily life and sci-fi motifs to<br />spark creativity. For Soft Rains, they turned to Ray Bradbury's short story<br />"There Will Come Soft Rains" and its theme of total automation. They've<br />tapped Philip K. Dick's Valis to devise a talking elevator and the original<br />Star Trek series for their latest project, I Number the Stars, in which they<br />plan to catalog all the technological activities aboard the Enterprise.<br /><br /> Next: The British Film Institute commissioned the pair to create an<br />electronic sculpture exploring how the media affects people's lives. With<br />this project, they'll turn the lens on themselves. "It's very abject to<br />include ourselves," says Kevin, 38. "Like little voodoo dolls." - Laura<br />Moorhead <br /><br />The other nominees <br />? Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes<br />? Michael Lau & Eric So, vinyl action figures<br />? Golan Levin & Zach Lieberman, messa di voce<br />? Gerfried Stocker, Andreas Exner, Hannes Leopoldseder & Christine Schoepf,<br />Digital Avant-Garde: Celebrating 25 Years of Ars Electronica<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />5. <br /><br />Date: 2.20.05<br />From: //jonCates <joncates@criticalartware.net><br />Subject: the base case (?) of Re: RHIZOME_RAW: rh:zome Subject (# of texts)<br /><br />On Feb 19, 2005, at 1:20 PM, jimpunk wrote:<br /> ><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.screenfull.net/stadium/2005/02/rhzome-subject-of-texts.html">http://www.screenfull.net/stadium/2005/02/rhzome-subject-of-texts.html</a><br /><br />announcing the "rh:zome Subject (# of texts)" project. as of the<br />writing of this [msg/txt] "rh:zome Subject (# of texts)" includes the<br />the following features:<br /><br />"rh:zome Subject (# of texts)" includes a txt msg: "PLEASE DO NOT<br />CL!CK" as an alt tag to a code snippet that self-referentially links<br />to the "screenfull stadium rock net.art" show @:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.screenfull.net/stadium/">http://www.screenfull.net/stadium/</a><br /><br />++ includes links to:<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://del.icio.us/screenfull">http://del.icio.us/screenfull</a><br /><br />++<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://del.icio.us/LaBoiteEnValise">http://del.icio.us/LaBoiteEnValise</a><br /><br />that utilize del.icio.us profiles to [promote/distribute] projects +<br />pieces. LaBoiteEnValise in particular relates to earlier threads on<br />Rhizome.org about the remixological, newMedia, digitalArt, Duchamp +<br />chess.<br /><br />++ screenfull Splash scrs 3, 2 + 1. -> do these Splashes reference<br />Rhizome.org's alt.interfaces "a series of alternative interfaces to<br />Rhizome's archives of text and art." (0) ?<br /><br />++ links to + appropriations of blogger.com + feedburner.com imgs +<br />functionality, the most participatory of which allow comments to be<br />added to the work.<br /><br />all of these elements combine to create a highly self-referential loop<br />through process or loop back test that {branches|bounces} off of<br />Rhizome.org threads, discursively hyperthreading to multiply, connect,<br />decenter + circulate the subject of "rhzome-subject-of-texts". as such,<br />"rh:zome Subject (# of texts)" functions rhizomatically as rhizomeness<br />is described by Gilles Deleuze + Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus:<br />Capitalism and Schizophrenia as quoted by Rhizome.org in Rhizome.org's<br />About Us. (1)<br /><br />this remix of the "PLEASE DO NOT" threads traces back to the ongoing<br />"PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ART" project by trashconnection as sent to<br />RHIZOME_RAW from www AT trashconnection.com. trashconnection's "PLEASE<br />DO NOT SPAM ART" positions spamware as artware + allows usrs of the<br />"PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ART" system to construct + send spam msgs as an<br />ongoing + open process. the "PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ART" posts handmade<br />spam msgs to addressees selected by the usr of the system + also CC's<br />those msgs to the o-o Mailing List. the o-o Mailing List is described<br />as:<br /><br />" o-o is an experimental mailing list for net art and it's theory. Also<br />for providing information about electronic art, technology and events."<br /><br />data.src:<br /><br />title: >>>> info o-o<br />dvr: o-o<br />uri: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.o-o.lt/post/">http://www.o-o.lt/post/</a><br /><br />o-o, which "PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ART" connects to via<br />[CC'ing/porting/piping] data to, also features a<br />"spam.it option" that can be used (anonymously or w/any available<br />identity including 01's own) to fwd msgs to various related other<br />platforms + listservs that address newMedia art theorypraxis, such as<br />list@rhizome.org.<br /><br />while i love the horizontal spread of the "rh:zome Subject (# of<br />texts)" project + the ethic of appropriating [+/or] remixing while<br />porting [+/or] piping a conversational data set from 01 src to another,<br />i wonder if the flatness of "rh:zome Subject (# of texts)", in terms of<br />the engagement it presents as options, doesn't close the feedback loop<br />to closely to the surface. "PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ART" remains open to the<br />abyss of spamware as a system that can be utilized artistically. the<br />o-o Mailing List multiples those options while also targeting specific<br />discursive platforms such as Rhizome.org. the Rhizome.org "PLEASE DO<br />NOT" threads function as a playfull insider's games for those [in/on]<br />the Rhizome.org platform who are familiar w/trashconnection's "PLEASE<br />DO NOT SPAM ART" project + announcements. will "rh:zome Subject (# of<br />texts)" open this system? will "rh:zome Subject (# of texts)" further,<br />widen, deepen [+/or] flatten the conversation? + while these questions<br />circulate, looping through these networks, awaiting remailing,<br />expansion + comment, i also wonder if "rh:zome Subject (# of texts)"<br />offers or mobilizes critique of the systems that are @ play<br />with[in/out] of the project, or if such an intention exists in this<br />mutual recursion… (?)<br /><br />// jonCates<br />2005.02.20<br />CHI IL .US<br /><br />(#) referents:<br /><br />(0)<br /><br />data.src:<br /><br />title: alt.interface<br />dvr: Rhizome.org<br />format: various<br />uri: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/interface/">http://rhizome.org/interface/</a><br /><br />(1)<br /><br />data.src:<br /><br />title: About Us<br />dvr: Rhizome.org<br />format: php, txt + img<br />uri: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/index.php">http://rhizome.org/info/index.php</a><br /><br /><–! NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION EXCEPT ON RHIZOME.ORG WEBSITE AND EMAIL<br />LISTS. !—><br /><br />// jonCates<br />edu: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artic.edu/~jcates">http://www.artic.edu/~jcates</a><br />collab: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.criticalartware.net">http://www.criticalartware.net</a><br />projs: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.systemsapproach.net/">http://www.systemsapproach.net/</a><br />blog: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://newmedianowandthen.blogspot.com/">http://newmedianowandthen.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />6.<br /><br />Date: 2.23.05<br />From: "Rhizome.org" <artbase@rhizome.org><br />Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: A Seance with Guy by De Geuzen:<br />a foundation for multi-visual research<br /><br />Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase …<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?31234">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?31234</a><br />+ A Seance with Guy +<br />+ De Geuzen: a foundation for multi-visual research +<br /><br />Our primary reason for initiating this séance is that we wanted to talk to<br />Guy Debord (a.k.a. the Guru of the Spectacle) about the current state of<br />affairs in the world and imagined that others would like to do the same. As<br />the topic of terrorism dominates the media, it is important to have a direct<br />and frank conversation with the man himself. What are his views on the war<br />on terror, the Bush administration, the state of the European Union or the<br />war in Iraq? Are old Situationist strategies still viable, and what is his<br />perspective on the spectacle in a post-9/11 society? Well, quite simply, the<br />answers are for those curious enough to ask.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Biography<br /><br />De Geuzen is Riek Sijbring, Femke Snelting and Renée Turner. We are an art<br />and design collective that has been working together since 1996. In our<br />work, we deploy a variety of strategies both on and offline to explore our<br />interests in female identity, critical resistance, representation, and<br />narrative archiving. We have done workshops at the Impakt Festival, The<br />Piet Zwart Institute and La Cambre. Our projects have been featured in<br />Manifesta 3, Kuenstlerhaus Bremen and Digitales. Some of our projects are by<br />commission but most are self-initiated.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.geuzen.org/">http://www.geuzen.org/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />7.<br /><br />Date: 2.23.05<br />From: "Rhizome.org" <artbase@rhizome.org><br />Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: 1 year performance video (aka<br />samHsiehUpdate) by t.whid<br /><br />Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase …<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?31334">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?31334</a><br />+ 1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate) +<br />+ t.whid +<br /><br />"1 year performance video" continues MTAAâ??s series of Updates. Our Updates<br />resound seminal performance art from the 60s and 70s in part by replacing<br />human processes with computer processes.<br /><br />"1 year performance video" updates Sam Hsiehâ??s One Year Performance<br />1978-1979 (aka Cage Piece).<br /><br />When a viewer enters the piece she is presented with side-by-side videos of<br />the artists trapped in identical cell-like rooms. The artists go about the<br />mundane activities possible within a cell: in the morning they wake and<br />breakfast; at around 1PM and 7PM they eat; sometimes they exercise;<br />sometimes they surf the net; sometimes they sit and stare at the wall; they<br />piss; at around midnight, they go to bed.<br /><br />The viewer is meant to watch this activity for one year.<br /><br />But, in the work we only mimic endurance; the videos are pre-taped clips<br />edited at runtime via a computer program so that each viewer sees a<br />different sequence. The audience can just close the browser and walk away.<br />No one needs to suffer on this one; failure is built-in at the front end.<br /><br />"1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate)" is a 2004 commission of New<br />Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web<br />site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Biography<br /><br />MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art Associates) is a Brooklyn, New York-based<br />conceptual and net art collaboration founded in 1996.<br /><br />Their studies of networked culture, the economics of art, digital materials,<br />and the institutional art world take the form of web sites, installations,<br />sculptures, and photographic prints. Their work has been commissioned by The<br />Alternative Museum, Creative Time, New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc., and<br />The Whitney Museum of American Art and has been exhibited by PS1 Art Center<br />(New York, 2000), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2000) and Eyebeam (New<br />York, 2002).<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />8.<br /><br />Date: 2.21.05<br />From: Melinda Rackham <melinda@subtle.net><br />Subject: Remember this<br /><br />Remember this?<br /><br />Several years ago I was on a jury for a Networked art<br />show….<br /><br />While sifting through endless days of net.art sites I came<br />across jimpunk's "nowar.nogame.org" . How refreshing to sit<br />back, feel out of control and to be driven along by the<br />browser. Somewhere in the midst of the work was a section<br />where the Twin Towers.. ( the square NYC World Trade Towers<br />variety not the beautiful circular Petronas Towers in KL )<br />made from empty pop-up grey vertically rectangular browser<br />windows on a plain grey horizontal background, appeared.<br />Then with a strike of thunderous sound, one by one they fell<br />down.. or in more technical terms compacted towards the<br />bottom of the screen.<br /><br />A short, powerful, simple sequence. Beautiful I thought.<br />Fantastic use of pop-ups. jimpunk goes on my top 10<br />favourite artists list. I put a link to it on my web site<br />entitled 'best twin towers at jimpunk". The net equivalent<br />perhaps to Sean Penn's moving September 11 short film on<br />death and transformation when the grief and denial of an<br />elderly man (Ernest Borgnine) is healed when light streams<br />into his dark apartment as the Twin Towers collapse.<br /><br />Funnily enough the work didn't make it into the net art<br />show, as I discovered the other juror had completely<br />opposite aesthetic sense to myself , and didn't share my<br />enthusiasm for jimpunk's work, nor I for the works he liked.<br />After much negotiation we settled for works we both though<br />were good rather than ones we individually loved [ah the<br />joys of the jury process].<br /><br />I have wanted to view this fragment of work again, and to<br />show it in lectures, however I was never able to find it. I<br />thought perhaps it was an Easter egg, a little gift for the<br />adventurous user hidden within the site, and it was just<br />eluding me. However recently jimpunk has told me the<br />sequence I recall didn't ever exist.<br /><br /> I dont quiet believe him - but nowar.nogame.org is offline<br />now so I can't check<br />for myself. He directed me to 9/11 Memorial, which has a<br />similar use of pop-ups. But the towers are stable, the back<br />ground is animated and they just disappear rather than<br />collapse. It is much more formal, and to my mind a less<br />powerful work than the apparently non-existent one I recall.<br /><br />So perhaps I was the only recipient of that random<br />combination of windows that became such a potent artwork in<br />my memory. Perhaps it was the optical hallucinatory affect<br />of massively moving pop-ups. Perhaps it illustrates<br />networked art is a truly individual experience. Perhaps it<br />was an illusion - the art equivalent of false memory<br />syndrome - created by mediated tower terror pattern<br />recognition. The only certainty is that the reality of<br />memory bears no relation to truth or falsity.<br />Melinda Rackham<br />_________________<br /><br />nowar.nogame.org<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jimpunk.com/www.nowar.nogame.org/">http://www.jimpunk.com/www.nowar.nogame.org/</a><br /><br />9/11 memorial REMEMBER<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jimpunk.com/NYC/wtc/">http://www.jimpunk.com/NYC/wtc/</a><br /><br />Petronas Towers<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.klcc.com.my/Showcase/PTT/ps_ptt_overview.htm">http://www.klcc.com.my/Showcase/PTT/ps_ptt_overview.htm</a><br />Dr Melinda Rackham<br />artist | curator | producer<br />www.subtle.net/empyre<br />-empyre- media forum<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />9.<br /><br />Date: 2.22.05<br />From: Reinhold Grether <Reinhold.Grether@netzwissenschaft.de><br />Subject: Josephine Bosma: Constructing Media Spaces<br />Josephine Bosma: Constructing Media Spaces<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/">http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/</a><br /><br />"In her essay, "Constructing Media Spaces," Josephine Bosma<br />argues that forms of networked art, in particular, are progenitors<br />of what media theorist calls "public domain 2.0," and that the<br />works of the artists described in her text "bring people closer<br />to technology on many different levels. Some only create curiosity<br />and wonder (the first level of familiarity); others clearly aim at<br />audience participation or even education. All of these works deal<br />with the public domain as a virtual, mediated space consisting<br />of both material and immaterial matter.""<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/">http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/</a><br /><br />"Text Sections: Some thoughts on art + (Re)defining the public<br />domain + Performing physical interfaces: Face-to-face with<br />technology + Station Rose + Heath Bunting: Project-X + Mongrel +<br />Etoy: "Etoy.Daycare" + Collaboration and co-authorship: Art spaces<br />online + The Thing + Public Netbase and other early European<br />media labs and online platforms + nettime + Rhizome + New diversity:<br />Sarai, Furtherfield, Netartreview, Empyre + Software: Layering media,<br />portable media spaces and media as metaphor + Software art context +<br />WebStalker + RunMe.org + Virus as intervention: Forkbomb + Conceptual<br />software: ".walk" + Public Domain 2.0 Redux"<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/">http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />10.<br /><br />Date: 2.23.05<br />From: olia lialina <olia@profolia.org><br />Subject: A Vernacular Web<br /><br />A Vernacular Web<br /><br />An extended and illustrated version of my talk at the Decade of Web<br />Design Conference in Amsterdam, January 2005<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/">http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/</a><br /><br />When I started to work on the World Wide Web I made a few nice things<br />that were special, different and fresh. They were very different from<br />what was on the web in the mid 90's.<br /><br />I'll start with a statement like this, not to show off my contribution,<br />but in order to stress that – although I consider myself to be an early<br />adopter – I came late enough to enjoy and prosper from the "benefits of<br />civilization". There was a pre-existing environment; a structural,<br />visual and acoustic culture you could play around with, a culture you<br />could break. There was a world of options and one of the options was to<br />be different.<br /><br />So what was this culture? What do we mean by the web of the mid 90's and<br />when did it end?<br /><br />To be blunt it was bright, rich, personal, slow and under construction.<br />It was a web of sudden connections and personal links. Pages were built<br />on the edge of tomorrow, full of hope for a faster connection and a more<br />powerful computer. One could say it was the web of the indigenous…or<br />the barbarians. In any case, it was a web of amateurs soon to be washed<br />away by dot.com ambitions, professional authoring tools and guidelines<br />designed by usability experts.<br /><br />I wrote that change was coming "soon" instead of putting an end date at<br />1998, for example, because there was no sickness, death or burial. The<br />amateur web didn't die and it has not disappeared but it is hidden.<br />Search engine rating mechanisms rank the old amateur pages so low<br />they're almost invisible and institutions don't collect or promote them<br />with the same passion as they pursue net art or web design.<br /><br />Over the past ten year the number of amateur pages have dropped. It¹s<br />now a developed and highly regulated space. You wouldn¹t get on the web<br />just to tell the world, ³Welcome to my home page.² The web has<br />diversified, the conditions have changed and there¹s no need for this<br />sort of old fashioned behavior. Your CV is posted on the company<br />website. Your diary will be organized on a blog and your vacation photos<br />are published on photos.com. There¹s a community for every hobby and<br />question.<br /><br />This is why I refer to the amateur web as a thing of the past;<br />aesthetically a very powerful past. Even people who weren¹t online in<br />the last century, people who look no further than the first 10 search<br />engine results can see the signs and symbols of the early web thanks to<br />the numerous parodies and collections organized by usability experts who<br />use the early elements and styles as negative examples.<br /><br />Just as clothing styles come back into fashion so do web designs. On a<br />visual level things reappear. Last year I noticed that progressive web<br />designers returned to an eclectic style reincorporating wallpapers and<br />3D lettering in their work. In the near future frames and construction<br />signs will show up as retro and the beautiful old elements will be<br />stripped of their meaning and contexts.<br /><br />In the past few years I¹ve also been making work that foregrounds this<br />disappearing aesthetic of the past. With these works I want to apologize<br />for my arrogance in the early years and to preserve the beauty of the<br />vernacular web by integrating them within contemporary art pieces. But<br />this is only half of the job.<br /><br />Creating collections and archives of all the midi files and animated<br />gifs will preserve them for the future but it is no less important to<br />ask questions. What did these visual, acoustic and navigation elements<br />stand for? For which cultures and media did these serve as a bridge to<br />the web? What ambitions were they serving? What problems did they solve<br />and what problems did they create? Let me talk about the difficult<br />destiny of some of these elements.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/">http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />11.<br /><br />Date: 2.25.05<br />From: Rebecca Zorach <rezorach@uchicago.edu><br />Subject: Rebecca Zorach on YOUgenics 3.0<br /><br />Rebecca Zorach on YOUgenics 3.0<br /><br />YOUgenics is about YOU: your body, the food and medicine you put in<br />it, the institutions and practices in which it is embedded. In<br />YOUgenics 3.0, genetic engineering is the spool around which numerous<br />issues–labor and inequality and reproduction and consumption and<br />militarism and surveillance (and their histories)–are wound. The third<br />YOUgenics exhibition, which ran from December 8, 2004 to February 25,<br />2005 at the Betty Rymer Gallery at the School of the Art Institute<br />of Chicago, is part of an ongoing (and ever-changing) project<br />curated by Ryan Griffis. YOUGenics 1.0 and 2.0 were at Orlo<br />Exhibition Space, Portland, Oregon, in 2002, and Art & Design<br />Gallery, Southwest Missouri State University, in 2003. The entire<br />project seeks to remedy a lack of public discussion around crucial<br />issues of biotechnology that affect all of us–and to do it in creative,<br />challenging and sometimes surprising ways.<br /><br />While the dominant discourses of education, politics and the media construct<br />science as powerful, impressive, authoritative, arcane, and, all-too-often,<br />invisible, a number of artists have, for years, been doing their best to<br />make these issues visible. Some of them have paid dearly, as in the recent<br />FBI investigation and prosecution of Critical Art Ensemble's Steve Kurtz.<br />Amidst the small flurry of press coverage of the issue, Richard Roberts, DNA<br />researcher and Nobel laureate, was quoted as saying that "you could teach<br />these skills to a high-school student, and you could probably teach them to<br />an artist."<br /><br />Because he was addressing the possibility of manipulating bacterial DNA for<br />purposes of bioterrorism, in one fell swoop he both presumed the merit of<br />the FBI's assertions and denigrated artists, whose practical and<br />intellectual capabilities he apparently feels are less than those of high<br />school students.<br /><br />In fact, artists–so YOUgenics asserts–have something to teach all of us<br />about science. In their position as critical thinkers-cum-provocateurs they<br />can reveal the vested interests and biases of those authorized to speak from<br />a position of expertise; they can question established truisms and newer<br />forms of creeping groupthink; they might even do a demonstration of basic<br />experimental science.<br /><br />A program of events associated with the exhibition included a panel<br />discussion and video screening, as well as two performances, by the<br />cyberfeminist collective subRosa on February 18. (The performance<br />accompanied their digital installation and "Mapping the Appropriation of<br />Life Materials," a wall-mounted timeline of stem cell developments<br /><br />that emphasized the conversion of "life materials," i.e. people's DNA and<br />stem cells, into property.) As part of the performance, subRosa members<br />demonstrated the process involved in inserting an antibiotic-resistant gene<br />into e. coli bacteria. Visitors were not<br /><br />allowed to have contact with the actual bacteria but were encouraged to<br />practice (using only a heated loop) streaking the plate of a Petri dish as<br />if with a bacterial culture. Since a Bunsen burner was not allowed in the<br />gallery, we used a candle, and because of school regulations the security<br />guard had to be called in to stand at the ready with a fire extinguisher.<br />Similarly, the yogurt the collective produced as a second part of the<br />performance (to demonstrate an everyday use of bacterial cultures) could not<br />be served in the gallery because of health regulations. At the same time<br />visitors were encouraged to create collages ­ some of which were<br />three-dimensional and many of which turned out to be quite beautiful – out<br />of old alchemical and anatomical images, corporate logos, pictures of sheep<br />and other animals, and certain keywords. Thus, the performance<br /><br />combined an invitation to engage in an older form of "recombinant"<br />technology (the collage) while making participants acutely aware of the<br />legal constraints on scientific research – which, combined with the<br />intimidation many members of the public feel about science, keeps research<br />developments and their consequences hidden from public view.<br /><br />"Route In ­ Root Out" (2004), an installation by the British<br />artist-and-botanist team, Kerry Morrison and Alicia Prowse, also<br />foregrounded the legal difficulties involved in carrying out their project.<br />The installation centered on a wooden crate of glass specimen jars<br />containing ointments and tinctures made from European plants used in<br />traditional herbal medicine, such as the poetically named purple loose<br />strife, alder buckthorn, common toadflax, hairy willowherb, and teasel.<br />Binders of correspondence<br /><br />documented the difficulty the collaborators had getting the plant materials<br />through customs. Meanwhile, listserve discussions projected on the wall<br />dealt with conflicting views on non-native species, including the unusual<br />position that restricting the entry of<br /><br />"invasive" species (or even calling them that) might constitute a form of<br />"ecological hate" or "eco-Nazism."<br /><br />Also appearing in the exhibition was Natalie Bookchin's "Metapet"<br />(<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metapet.net/">http://www.metapet.net/</a>), a video game in which you play a manager at a<br />genetic engineering company who must supervise a "Metapet," a human-dog<br />hybrid supposedly (but not entirely successfully) engineered for obedience.<br />Though ostensibly simple, the<br /><br />game is maddening. As the Metapet types away at its desk, you throw good<br />money after bad, deploying every possible means at your disposal<br />(employee-of-the month plaques, mugs, lunch breaks, exercise programs, and<br />various types of genetic tests) to wring more productivity out of your<br />recalcitrant pet. Reading the pet's email will reveal that your<br /><br />pet is prone to sex chat, and open to discussing labor issues with co-pets.<br />The relationship of genetic engineering to the labor issues at the core of<br />the game is perhaps a bit tenuous. Yet through the game's insidiously<br />hysterical manipulations of the player, it raises troubling questions about<br />the none-too-distant prospect of a world in which humans are engineered to<br />display machine-like traits.<br /><br />The inclusion of Missouri artist Beth Hall's collages, "Drawing on the Right<br />Side of<br /><br />the Brain," links the issue of eugenics with other kinds of body<br />modifications practiced in the service of a concept of ideal beauty. Hall<br />superimposes mathematical diagrams used for drawing instruction, medical<br />texts, Old Master drawings, and phrenology diagrams on graphic images of<br />plastic surgery in progress. Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q. Lê's<br />"Damaged Gene Project" (1998) documents a boutique the artist opened in Ho<br />Chi Minh<br /><br />City to draw attention to the genetic consequences of the U.S. use of Agent<br />Orange during the Vietnam War; in the boutique Lê sold such mutated garments<br />as a baby sweater with two hoods or (on display at YOUgenics) a set of<br />one-armed pink baby pajamas monogrammed with "Monsanto" (a maker of Agent<br />Orange). In "Relative Velocity Inscription Device," Buffalo-based Paul<br />Vanouse set up a "race" – that is, a test of speed – among DNA samples<br />from his racially diverse family, propelled through gel by an electric<br />current.<br /><br />The exhibition also included Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle's cryogenic sperm banks<br />with artworld people's sperm; Heath Bunting's Superweed Kit 1.0 (1999), a<br />DIY mixture of genetically modified and naturally occurring Brassica seeds<br />which one might (should one so choose) release into the environment to<br />compete with genetically modified crops; Deborah Koons Garcia's film "The<br />Future of Food"; Ryan Griffis's own Temporary<br /><br />Travel Office tour of the Chicago Technology Park; and works by Thomas Cobb,<br />Mark Cooley, Alan Montgomery, and William C. Raines. Critical Art Ensemble<br />could not be absent: their project, Molecular Invasion (originally 2002),<br />represents one facet of their long engagement with biotechnology issues. In<br />it a chemical compound was applied to<br /><br />Monsanto's Roundup Ready corn and soy to disable the plants' resistance to<br />the Roundup herbicide. These plants, along with non-GMO plants and untreated<br />Roundup Ready plants, were all sprayed with Roundup. As it happened, at<br />YOUgenics 3.0 all the plants died?but the treated Roundup Ready plants died<br />before the untreated ones, demonstrating the treatment's effectiveness at<br />"reversing" the effects of genetic modifications. And, incidentally,<br />reminding us that art might have something to say about science.<br /><br />The exhibition raised questions, in particular, about corporate abuses and<br />about access to information, and encouraged an active stance toward these<br />issues. A danger with this kind of politically engaged exhibition might be<br />that its programmatic aspects would overwhelm aesthetic inventiveness, or<br />that it would preach only to the converted. Certainly, the exhibition was<br />full of aesthetic pleasures and exquisitely humorous<br /><br />moments (Gail Wight's fenced-in fluffy neon chickens come to mind) and works<br />that effectively invited participation. It is hard for me to tell whether<br />YOUgenics 3.0 succeeded at reaching audiences not already "in the know."<br />And, in fact, Ryan has plans to expand the discussions raised in the<br />exhibition into other media such as billboards,<br /><br />newspaper ads, and public performances, working with activist groups and<br />focusing on issues of particular local relevance to different communities.<br />For future excursions into the public forum, a gallery exhibition, even if a<br />relatively restricted space, can serve as a<br /><br />laboratory of ideas?as well as of bacterial cultures?that will continue to<br />extend beyond its walls.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://yougenics.net">http://yougenics.net</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of<br />the New Museum of Contemporary Art.<br /><br />Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard<br />Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for<br />the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council<br />on the Arts, a state agency.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome Digest is filtered by Kevin McGarry (kevin@rhizome.org). ISSN:<br />1525-9110. Volume 10, number 9. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org<br />are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art<br />and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome<br />Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org.<br /><br />To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>.<br />Subscribers to Rhizome Digest are subject to the terms set out in the<br />Member Agreement available online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/29.php">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php</a>.<br /><br />Please invite your friends to visit Rhizome.org on Fridays, when the<br />site is open to members and non-members alike.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br />
