<br />RHIZOME DIGEST: April 28, 2002<br /><br />Content:<br /><br />+editor's note+<br />1. beverly tang: Rhizome.LA–In Our Image: Extreme Genetics<br /><br />+work+<br />2. Salvaggio Museum of Modern Living: "Lamination Ritual" by Ken Montgomery<br />3. Richard Rinehart: Announcing new genomic net.art project<br /><br />+opportunity+<br />4. Impakt Production: CALL FOR ENTRIES to the Impakt Festival 2002<br /><br />+report+<br />5. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Report from Numer.02<br /><br />+interview+<br />6. Eryk Salvaggio: An Interview With John Klima<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />1.<br /><br />Date: 4.28.02<br />From: beverly tang (b@sublimina.com)<br />Subject: Rhizome.LA–In Our Image: Extreme Genetics<br /><br />Rhizome.LA–Sunday, May 12, 2002<br /><br />In Our Image: Extreme Genetics<br /><br />Featuring Natalie Bookchin, Cheryl Kerfeld, davidkremers, and Ruth West<br />with panel discussion led by Ruth West<br /><br />Ever wonder about pigs with spinach genes, copy cats or human clones?<br />Current developments in genetic research and biotechnology are<br />undoubtedly amongst the most significant scientific advances of our<br />time. We will be affected socially, politically, and ethically as this<br />technology plays an increasingly larger part in our ability to<br />reconfigure Life. How can art play a role in this biological and genetic<br />revolution? The practices of biology have recently become the subject,<br />as well as the medium, of contemporary art. Whether it be about ethics<br />or aesthetics, biological art raises as many questions as it seeks to<br />answer.<br /><br />The speakers at the next Rhizome.LA exist in both the art and science<br />worlds. They all see a significance in integrating art and<br />science/technology. Each has a unique approach to, and role within, the<br />realms of biotechnology and the arts. They will share with us current<br />work and what they foresee as the near future in art and genetic<br />research.<br /><br />Location: Rocco, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; (323) 462 8500<br />(just west of Vine St.)<br />Date: Sunday, May 12, 2002<br />Time: 5pm<br />Price: $5-10 Sliding Donation<br />Contact: Beverly Tang, beverly@rhizome.org<br />Info: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/LA">http://rhizome.org/LA</a><br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/LA">http://rhizome.org/LA</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />2.<br /><br />Date: 4.22.02<br />From: Salvaggio Museum of Modern Living (curator@salvaggio-museum.org)<br />Subject: SMOML Presents–"Lamination Ritual" by Ken Montgomery<br /><br />THE ERYK SALVAGGIO MUSEUM OF MODERN LIVING<br /><br />~ presents ~<br /><br />"Lamination Ritual"<br /><br />a collection of found objects,<br />sealed in plastic laminate<br /><br />~ by ~<br /><br />Ken Montgomery<br /><br />in his own tradition of thirteen years<br /><br />~ in the spirit of ~<br /><br />Transformation of the Mundane into the Realms of<br />the Preserved and Extraordinary<br /><br />~ found ~<br /><br />herein (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/01.html">http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/01.html</a>)<br /><br />~ with an interview ~<br /><br />also. (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/interview.html">http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/interview.html</a>)<br /><br />"The Eryk Salvaggio Museum of Modern Living: Blind Hope and Unrepentant<br />Idealism since 1997"<br /><br />The ESMOML Is an independantly run Museum of Historical Proportions,<br />existing solely on the world wide web.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/01.html">http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/01.html</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/interview.html">http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/laminations/interview.html</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/">http://www.salvaggio-museum.org/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />+ad+<br /><br />The time has arrived to pick up the new Leonardo Music Journal, (LMJ),<br />Volume 11, including a double CD titled "Not Necessarily 'English<br />Music.'" The journal and CD feature pieces from pioneering U.K.<br />composers and performers from the late 60s through the mid-70s. Visit the<br />LMJ website at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />3.<br /><br />Date: 4.22.02<br />From: Richard Rinehart (rinehart@uclink.berkeley.edu)<br />Subject: Announcing new genomic net.art project<br /><br />I'm writing to announce a new digital/robotic/net art project now<br />available for participation, enjoyment, collaboration, competition, and<br />the occasional anxiety-producing crash. This work, Chimera Obscura<br />(chimera.berkeley.edu), was commissioned for the exhibition "Gene(sis):<br />Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics" (www.gene-sis.net) which<br />opened at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, on<br />April 5, 2002. I would like to invite you all to visit, explore the<br />project (literally; it's a maze), give us any type of feedback, and<br />enjoy.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://chimera.berkeley.edu">http://chimera.berkeley.edu</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gene-sis.net">http://www.gene-sis.net</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />+ad+<br /><br />**MUTE MAGAZINE NEW ISSUE** Coco Fusco/Ricardo Dominguez on activism and<br />art; JJ King on the US military's response to asymmetry and Gregor<br />Claude on the digital commons. Matthew Hyland on David Blunkett, Flint<br />Michigan and Brandon Labelle on musique concrete and 'Very Cyberfeminist<br />International'. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm">http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />4.<br /><br />Date: 4.22.02<br />From: Impakt Production (production@impakt.nl)<br />Subject: CALL FOR ENTRIES to the Impakt Festival 2002<br /><br />CALL FOR ENTRIES<br /><br />Impakt is an international festival for innovative audio-visual arts.<br />The program offers a high-quality selection of recent audio-visual<br />productions. For a more complete impression of the Impakt Festival<br />please visit our website: www.impakt.nl<br /><br />The 13th edition of the Impakt Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands,<br />will take place in the fall of 2002.<br /><br />Impakt Festival is open for submissions of single-channel videos, films,<br />websites and CD-Roms, production year 2001/2002. The entry form is<br />available on our website <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.impakt.nl/home.html">http://www.impakt.nl/home.html</a> Please fill out<br />this entry form if you wish to participate in Impakt 2002. Please<br />include the filled out entry form in the parcel with your video or CD.<br />Do NOT send us entry forms by e-mail.<br /><br />The deadline for entries is May 30, 2002.<br /><br />Due to the large amount of work and high costs it is unfortunately no<br />longer possible for us to return your submission. Artists who have<br />participated in the Impakt Festival in the past and artists who are<br />personally invited to send documentation or preview material are<br />excluded. The will get their preview material returned if requested.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.impakt.nl">http://www.impakt.nl</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />5.<br /><br />Date: 4.23.2002<br />From: Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah@coin-operated.com)<br />Subject: Report from Numer.02<br />Keywords: internet, interface, interact, design<br /><br />Report from Numer 02<br />April 19-21, 2002<br />Centre Georges Pompidou<br />Paris, France<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.numer.org">http://www.numer.org</a><br /><br />On a warm, spring April weekend in Paris, the Numer 02 International<br />Conference on Interaction Design (www.numer.org)- "Look Ahead" - opened<br />its proceedings to an international audience. Assembled from around the<br />globe by conference coordinator, Pierre Lavoie, participants ranged from<br />producers to designers to artists to musicians. The goal? Attempt to<br />build a framework for current practices and future directions in<br />interactivity and design using technology. The conference included six<br />design themed panels with over 40 panelists along with a audio/visual<br />music performance at the Insitut de Recherche et Coordination<br />Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), a "Zapping" showcase featuring 30 local<br />designers flaunting their wares, as well as a design/programming<br />workshop by Ben Fry and Casey Reas - on their new interactive graphics<br />authoring tool, "Proce55ing".<br /><br />The opening panel, "Process and Adequacy" centered on the creative<br />practices of multimedia teams working on interactive projects and the<br />criteria that makes this work valuable. Canadian designer, Stuart<br />Butterfield, (www.the5k.org), opened the panel with severe jet lag<br />speaking on the poverty of the navigational metaphor for interactive<br />media. His talk focused on the need for context in navigating<br />information spaces and how getting 'lost' online is not necessarily a<br />negative experience. Arnaud Mercier, also on the panel and founder of<br />elixirstudio.com posed the questions "Is web design dead?" and "How can<br />we define notions of 'quality' pertaining to interactivity?" These might<br />seem like lofty questions for a suspecting crowd, but they simply<br />skimmed the surface of the themes discussed.<br /><br />The evening session on "Interactive Cinema" featured an eclectic mix of<br />pioneers in the field such as Montreal's Luc Courchesne<br />(www.din.umontreal.ca/courchesne), Michael Naimark (www.naimark.net),<br />stuckontheweb.com's Chris Hales, and 3D designer, Xavier Boissarie. The<br />questions focused on how the user can play a part not only in the<br />outcome of a narrative but also in creating the narrative itself as it<br />is generated through the interaction process. Hales' talk, "Why bother<br />with interactive movies?" was a light-hearted romp through the criteria<br />inherent to interactive movies including screen constraints and using<br />the movie itself as interface. He demonstrated these techniques with the<br />hilarious "Messed Up!", a mouse-based attempt at destroying some poor<br />guy's apartment by clicking on hotspots that spill wine on the floor and<br />knock over books. Naimark, on the other hand asked the audience a<br />rhetorical question, "How do you know I'm not a movie?" He went on to<br />talk about his past projects and concepts of "Movie- Mapping" spaces<br />along with his current work on "Camera Zapping" or neutralizing cameras<br />by aiming low-power laser pointers at their lenses.<br /><br />Where day one focused on processes of visual interaction, day two<br />included the "Creativity and Formalization" panel which included the<br />relation of audio to interactive visual systems. Jean-Jacques Birgé<br />(www.hyptique.com/drame) began the session with his flocking on-screen<br />birds that created musical compositions in relation to the cursor.<br />Sodaplay.com designer, Ed Burton, livened the audience when he demoed<br />his interactive soda constructor applet. He showed examples of projects<br />people have created with his software - everything from a wild animal in<br />a zoo to a memorial for late racecar driver, Dale Earnhardt. He is soon<br />launching sodarace.net - a space for people to build Sodaplay creatures<br />that race each other. Think virtual Battlebots. Proceeding speakers<br />included Andy Cameron of Italy's Fabrica Studio who spoke on and showed<br />simple examples of input/output dealing with sound and video<br />interaction.<br /><br />"Keep it simple" seemed to be an ongoing conference theme. This<br />continued with Golan Levin (www.flong.com), MIT Media Lab Aesthetics and<br />Computation graduate, who presented simple interfaces and interactions<br />using dots, lines, planes, pixels, and sound. Levin also performed his<br />much heralded "Audio/Visual Environment Suite" at the IRCAM the previous<br />evening and focused on how sound and image both have to be equally<br />malleable in interactive interfaces. Ben Fry and Casey Reas, also ex-ACG<br />students gave an explanation of their new language/system called<br />proce55ing (www.proce55ing.net) which is similar to John Maeda's Design<br />By Numbers, and allows designers to learn and think about programming<br />from a visual perspective. Their main concept was that computers provide<br />a unique area of expression and how can simple tools and simple<br />interfaces lead to more complex tools and complex interfaces? Even so, a<br />question asked of them was: How can you teach complexity by hiding it?<br /><br />Maybe Steve Cannon, lead programmer of Netomat.net, answered this best<br />when he opened his talk with a quote from Clement Greenberg that read,<br />"All profoundly original art looks ugly at first." This could be the<br />case, but this subjective statement really depends on your definition of<br />ugly. He then challenged the audience to come up with an abstract e-<br />commerce experience to fill his domain, abstractstore.com. Closing out<br />the talk was designer/programmer Peter Cho (www.pcho.net), also ex-ACG,<br />who presented some interactive typography experiments.<br /><br />Other panels included "Culture and Critique" which focused on the<br />cultural implications of computer interaction and "Beyond the Screen"<br />which examined the relationship of physical objects (from wearables to<br />tangible interfaces) to networked digital systems. Regine Halter and<br />Dorothee Schiesser (Shoplab) of the Hyperwerk studio (www.hyperwerk.ch)<br />in Basel gave a talk entitled "We like design (but we don't know if<br />design likes us)" where they detailed interactive projects their<br />students worked on ranging from fabric pattern design created by<br />tracking people in a space to augmented experiences in the retail<br />shopping world. Taking the virtual onto the street was Katherine<br />Moriwaki and Sabine Seymour, both Design Fellows at Parsons School of<br />Design in NYC. They spoke about their collaboration studio in Wearable<br />Technology and Fashion (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://a.parsons.edu/~fashiontech">http://a.parsons.edu/~fashiontech</a>) and presented<br />their focus on fashion and technology as the ultimate "fantasy<br />amplifiers" - focusing on student projects which included a camera-flash<br />necklace called the "Man Repellent" and a t-shirt as dynamic visual<br />display for activist groups. Finishing up the panel was the French duo,<br />ElectronicShadow.com who presented a slick version of hybrid networked<br />spaces with multiple projection screens, a wearable scarf/telephone, and<br />a new interpretation of Internet time as the global "25th time zone".<br /><br />As the conference came to a close, even more questions arose as to where<br />the future of interaction design is heading. Will faster computers<br />surpass the imagination? Are we in an epic battle between high-tech<br />hyperrealism and lo-tech creativity? Are metaphors of interface too<br />great to overcome? How can we integrate the breath and depth of human<br />experience into human/computer interaction? How far has this debate come<br />and how will it manifest itself in the future? Hopefully that's a<br />question that will be constantly challenged and questioned over time.<br />Lucky for us, events like Numer 02 exist and continue to honor this<br />dialogue as an integral element of technological theory and<br />implementation both at the individual and social levels.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.numer.org">http://www.numer.org</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.the5k.org">http://www.the5k.org</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://elixirstudio.com">http://elixirstudio.com</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.naimark.net">http://www.naimark.net</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://stuckontheweb.com">http://stuckontheweb.com</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hyptique.com/drame">http://www.hyptique.com/drame</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://Sodaplay.com">http://Sodaplay.com</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://sodarace.net">http://sodarace.net</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flong.com">http://www.flong.com</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.proce55ing.net">http://www.proce55ing.net</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://Netomat.net">http://Netomat.net</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://abstractstore.com">http://abstractstore.com</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pcho.net">http://www.pcho.net</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hyperwerk.ch">http://www.hyperwerk.ch</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://http://a.parsons.edu/~fashiontech">http://http://a.parsons.edu/~fashiontech</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://ElectronicShadow.com">http://ElectronicShadow.com</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />6.<br /><br />Date: 4.14.2002<br />From: Eryk Salvaggio (eryk@maine.rr.com)<br />Subject: An Interview With John Klima<br />Keywords: internet, interface, design, 3D<br /><br />John Klima is a 3D artist whose recent proposal, "Context Breeder," has<br />received one of three of this years inaugural Rhizome Grants. He has<br />also presented his work, "EARTH", in this years Whitney Biennial.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />ES: Tell me how you decided to go into digital art. What did you see<br />that interested you, what did you think it would be like?<br /><br />JK: Its really quite simple. I was messing around with computers to make<br />art, the net "materialized" and I started putting my work online. I was<br />also making color photographs, totally straight without digital<br />processing, that looked as though they were heavily "photoshopped." So I<br />was thinking about the digital long before there was the net, and when<br />the net became available as a distribution point, I put stuff up. My<br />prior art practice had everything to do with my practice now. I studied<br />photography in school exclusively working on still life, then I designed<br />furniture for a living - I used the first autocad programs to design<br />furniture, then I started making realtime 3D, which more or less is a<br />combination of still life photography and furniture design.<br /><br />ES: Furniture design strikes me as a natural, analog version of 3D<br />graphic rendering. I have no real idea why. Furniture design seems like<br />the most 3D of the 3D arts, more so than sculpture, where you start with<br />one base and reduce. Furniture assembly is the combination of parts;<br />much as coding itself is. Would you agree with this concept?<br /><br />JK: Definitely. I mean three dimensional is three dimensional and<br />furniture and sculpture are the same, but if you mean 3d as in computer<br />3d, furniture, both design and assembly, have a great deal to do with<br />design and assembly of a 3d rendering. It depends on your practice, but<br />in sculptural forms, you are concerned less with methods of construction<br />and engineering than in furniture. Nobody dances on a David Smith, but<br />I've seen people dance on one of my coffee tables, so you are thinking<br />about physics, loads, etc… in 3d programming you also have to think a<br />lot about how the parts will function, about physics real or invented.<br /><br />ES: Was there anything specific you learned from furniture making that<br />you apply to your practices in 3D design?<br /><br />JK: When I've seen students first getting their feet wet in 3d, the<br />biggest problem they have is figuring out just where the hell everything<br />"is." When I first started build 3d models, I didn't really have this<br />problem. Perhaps because I've been dealing with spatial relationships as<br />major focus of my work since 1985, it came natural. Perhaps because<br />designing furniture is very much about figuring out how things get put<br />together conceptually, before you cut the first board. Its an economic<br />imperative. There's a funny phrase in the furniture making world, "I<br />keep cutting this board and it's STILL too short." Then, there is the<br />expression "measure twice, cut once." Both expressions point to a<br />necessity to plan in detail ahead of time, and this ability I think is<br />essential to working in 3d. Also, I quite literally used my furniture<br />skills to design and build the custom computer boxes I put the EARTH<br />edition into.<br /><br />ES: You had mentioned the idea of video games as an inspiration before.<br />What generation of games were you playing? What kind of aesthetic<br />interested you most? I've always found video games to have a particular<br />aesthetic specifically to their system- the atari 2600 vs the NES, for<br />example. Or were you talking more about elements of gameplay and<br />interactivity? And how do these different models affect your work?<br /><br />JK: The first "video game" I played was text based lunar lander, on<br />green bar paper printout. That was before pong. I actually saw pong in a<br />research lab before it was available to the consumer. I must have been<br />about 9 or 10 years old. While pong was cool, I preferred lunar lander,<br />even though there were no graphics. It was a thinking game not a twitch<br />game. The first twitch game to really grab me was galaga, not because of<br />the game play but because the movement and animation was so compelling.<br />I also really dug tempest because it was such a weird interface, though<br />the game play wasn't as fun as galaga. And I liked battlezone, to my<br />knowledge that was the original "first person shooter." I never really<br />"compared" the aesthetics of each of these technologies, I just focused<br />on what each one had that was unique to it.<br /><br />ES: Can you give us an example of how this is addressed in your work?<br /><br />JK: Text based lunar lander (specifically) points to concerns I have to<br />this day. Although it was pure text, it makes use of physical properties<br />and processed input to produce a dynamic output. It's not "canned," it's<br />not an animation, it's an algorithm. "Ecosystm" directly addresses this<br />notion. Battlezone was the first game (to my knowledge) that mapped a 3d<br />space, it was pure language used to create a complete dynamic<br />environment, and this still is my primary intellectual urge for using<br />3d. Tempest was the first game to suggest a non-real world interface,<br />fully informed by the unique properties of the medium, and "glasbead"<br />comes straight out of that. In "glasbead" from the very beginning I<br />wanted to throw out all references to existing musical structure and<br />notation, and throw out all existing metaphors.<br /><br />ES: Why is your project, EARTH, Offline? Do you think this should still<br />be considered "net.art" as opposed to, say, interactive art, or digital<br />art? Part of what makes net.art "net.art" is the net part. I mean, that<br />seems like it would be obvious, but more and more you see work that is<br />essentially video art, made on computers. Could you tell us about this<br />particular work, in particular, and how it addresses that gap?<br /><br />JK: EARTH is offline because it has to be. It is such high bandwidth<br />that to use it without having the whole earth in cache would be<br />atrociously slow and painful. Originally I intended it to be online with<br />no cache, and indeed it can function that way. In that form the original<br />download is actually quite small. But because I'm using high resolution<br />images the cache became essential for its use. I also wanted to insure<br />that the net resources would be available in the future, so I had to put<br />them all in cache. So the way earth works is that it first loads<br />whatever is in cache, then it goes and grabs whatever is the newest<br />image from the net. As you might know, I'm not fond of the term<br />"net.art," I think it geeks out the work. I just like the word art. I<br />think that EARTH is still very much network based art because, firstly<br />its a MUD of sorts, and secondly because it is still very much connected<br />to the net for its resources. It could not exist without the net. It<br />needs the net to make it alive.<br /><br />ES: The interesting thing about what is happening now, is that digital<br />art as a website is becoming obsolete. What you see more and more are<br />offline installations, WAPart, and other kinds of software projects. I<br />noted with interest that almost every winner of the rhizome grant is a<br />piece of work which will not be available as a website. Do you think<br />there is a future for websites in digital art?<br /><br />JK: Well it gets down to semantics I suppose. If it's in the browser is<br />that enough to make it website art? The problem with pure html and site<br />architecture as a medium, is that you just can't do a whole lot. Even<br />the best funded and developed commercial sites really only do one thing,<br />they show pictures and text. The visual design of html is also<br />incredibly limiting, you can't to column justified text for crying out<br />loud. Print graphic designers hate web page design. I wouldn't suggest<br />that its impossible to make an interesting piece of web site art, but I<br />don't think there is a whole lot of room left in that arena, and there<br />wasn't a whole lot of room left since Jodi put up their first site.<br />However, what I think will happen, now that pretty much every html<br />"trick" has been identified, is that web artists will focus on the<br />narrative, on the content. Yael [Kanarek -ed.] is a good example of<br />this, she takes competent design and html skills as the basis, and<br />focuses on an ever expanding story. The net becomes essential to the<br />work in that she can grow it endlessly, it wouldn't work on paper. I<br />think in the not too distant future, it won't be visual artists who make<br />web sites, it will be writers. Interesting to note that the early<br />hypertext practitioners were writers not artists. Also interesting,<br />Christiane Paul, the adjunct curator of new media at the whitney museum,<br />holds a phd in english literature, not art history.<br /><br />ES: Well; what strikes me about this answer is that you view the history<br />of the web site as art by means of its technical limitations, rather<br />than its noted conceptual leeway. Web sites as art would have a very<br />different set of criteria than coded projects- web sites serve as a<br />public space, for one thing, so they are able to manipulate perception<br />of public spaces; an art in and of itself. When you say that the<br />potential for a website to be art is limited, you are in a sense saying<br />that technical developments take precedent over what can be said, who<br />can say it, and who can access it. That said, don't you think there is a<br />wide range of potential for "art" in this media? I mean, sculpture is<br />still considered valid, despite the fact that the rocks they use are<br />millions of years old, you know?<br /><br />JK: Yeah, well, I'm something of a technologist so it stands to reason<br />that I view web site art in terms of what it can do. Also don't forget<br />I'm an artist so I look at other work in terms of its medium's<br />capabilities, more so than a non-artist would. I'm constantly looking<br />for stuff to "steal" (as artists have always done). I'm also looking at<br />the computer as a creative medium from the standpoint of gaming, not<br />only from the standpoint of art history, conceptual or otherwise. But<br />within my answer, I point directly to what I think the "future" of<br />website art is, the narrative. That is, the conceptual, the message, in<br />other words. We take a book for granted now, we've seen all (or most of<br />the) the tricks available to html, and now it's time to focus on what is<br />being delivered and not how its being delivered. We will shortly take<br />the web page for granted (if we don't already). I don't think this is at<br />all true about software art in general, we have only begun to see what<br />it can "do" what with generative algorithms, alternate interfaces etc.<br />This isn't to say there is no place for html to go, i'm sure it will<br />constantly expand its functionality. But I think that the basic premise<br />of what a web site is/does is more or less established and web site<br />artists now need to refine and explore what it is being presented, and<br />what is best presented within that form. Ultimately, I think this great,<br />and I think that pure web page art will become accepted in the<br />mainstream artworld far quicker than software art, because web page art<br />has been through its primary formalist stage. The reason I do what I do<br />is because I don't think "software art" ever will complete its formalist<br />stage, because the medium never seems to complete itself. It's in it's<br />nature not to. Perhaps the same can be said about web pages, but I'm not<br />so sure about that. But that's an essay in and of itself.<br /><br />ES: Do you think html can be seen as a valid method of expression,<br />albeit on a different criteria than art has been traditionally<br />evaluated?<br /><br />JK: Certainly. The introduction of a new medium invariably changes how<br />art has been evaluated. We are doing just that right now. Eventually,<br />the elements we have added to the conversation become the "traditional<br />criteria," and then a new medium comes along that adds to the<br />conversation. It always takes time for the new to be a part of the old,<br />I'm just thrilled to be around and working now and not 50 years from<br />now, so I'm part of the conversation early.<br /><br />ES: Do you think the word "art" is relevant to what you do, or does it<br />not matter? Like if someone saw your work as entertainment, would you be<br />bothered? This is probably a dumb question, but there's a lot of people<br />who believe there is an important distinction between the two, I'm<br />curious if you are one of them.<br /><br />JK: I certainly would not be bothered if someone saw my work as<br />entertainment, as long as they see it as art too. Many people have<br />suggested that contemporary art is so far removed from the experience of<br />the vast majority of the population that it no longer has any impact.<br />Natalie Jeremijenko called the art world "a prissy little thing in the<br />corner" and in many ways she's right. I don't think that saying a work<br />of art is entertainment is an indictment, rather it is a compliment<br />perhaps. I think the important distinction to be made, on a case by case<br />basis, is if a work transcends itself, if it can't be squarely placed in<br />either camp, and I'd like to think that my work does just that. I think<br />the word "art" is essential to what I do. So are the words "game" and<br />"interface" and "science." Throughout the course of human history,<br />artists have endeavored to expand the meaning of the word "art" and I<br />don't see that I am doing anything different. It is interesting to<br />speculate whether the definition will expand to the point where it is<br />meaningless, but I don't think that will happen, because art will always<br />be whatever everything else isn't. Every word is defined by "what it is<br />not" as much as (perhaps more so) by "what it is."<br /><br />ES: What is more important to you; immediacy of an art work, or<br />complexity of an art work?<br /><br />JK: Neither is more or less important. EARTH is both immediate and<br />complex. Everyone has an immediate reaction when they see an image of<br />the earth, more so when that image is "live." Then you have the<br />complexity of the various data layers, there is something to explore,<br />there are things to do. A simple, immediate work of art can be powerful<br />but 9 times out of 10, you get the joke and move on. There's not much<br />else to ponder than what the artist has offered up. A good "one liner"<br />artist will create so many "one liners" that you begin to see the<br />complexity of thought across all the little examples. The examples<br />connect and relate to each other in a myriad of complex ways, and that<br />keeps you coming back. But, I think it's a rare artist who can pull that<br />off. Normally you see one or two good one liners, and the rest are just<br />so-so.<br /><br />ES: There is something to be said that a series of one liners, done<br />correctly, is in and of itself a complex work, wouldn't you say? It's<br />also interesting that you use the term "one liners" which is a literary<br />term, mostly, and most of the people who pull off this task seem to be<br />writers, not so much visual artists. Do you know of any visual artists<br />who you feel make compelling work in this way?<br /><br />JK: Joseph Kosuth, "The Chair and the Picture of the Chair" is a good<br />example, though the complexity he draws from is not only his own, its<br />everything around him as well. Hans Hacke, is also good, he consistently<br />addresses political and social issues in succinct ways, and it becomes<br />something of a game to guess what he's gonna look at next. Off the top<br />of my head, I can't really site more examples, like I said it's rare,<br />but I do believe the use of the one liner is very much in literary<br />terms, that conceptual jokes and puns in the visual arts are usually<br />literary in nature.<br /><br />ES: So, what are you trying to convey with your own work?<br /><br />JK: That's just about the hardest question to answer, I'm asked it all<br />the time, and I usually ask it back, "What do you think the work<br />conveys?" When I start a new work, I never say to myself "I want to<br />convey blah blah and to do so, I will execute such and such", it's much<br />more about "What do I want to see exist?" And I just trust that whatever<br />it is I want to see, conveys something. Take "The Great Game", easily<br />interpreted as conveying "something." But I didn't intend to convey<br />anything specifically. It's reportage. I wanted to take the scant info<br />available and make it visceral. I wanted to use the work as an excuse<br />for me to pay close attention to how the conflict was prosecuted<br />militarily. the only thing that conveys something literally is the<br />title, which I must admit is essential to the work, but the title<br />materialized on its own accord. I made the piece and the title inserted<br />itself all on its own. Same with glasbead, I made the piece and then I<br />realized what I made was something akin to "the glass bead game" as<br />described in Hesse's novel (of the same title in German). If I have one<br />grand unified theory of conveyance, it's quite simple really: look at<br />this medium and what it can do. Look at how this medium can invent<br />context, look how it allows us to look at things we never thought we<br />could look at.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Glasbead:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cityarts.com/glasbeadweb/">http://www.cityarts.com/glasbeadweb/</a><br /><br />Rhizome Proposal:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cityarts.com/rhizome/">http://www.cityarts.com/rhizome/</a><br /><br />Yael Kanarek:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.worldofawe.net">http://www.worldofawe.net</a><br /><br />Joseph Kosuth:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_791.html">http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_791.html</a><br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cityarts.com/rhizome/">http://www.cityarts.com/rhizome/</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cityarts.com/glasbeadweb/">http://www.cityarts.com/glasbeadweb/</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.worldofawe.net">http://www.worldofawe.net</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_791.html">http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_791.html</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this<br />free publication, please consider making a contribution within your<br />means.<br /><br />We accept online credit card contributions at<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115<br />Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Or call us at +1.212.625.3191.<br /><br />Contributors are gratefully acknowledged on our web site at<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3">http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3</a>.<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 Alex Galloway (alex@rhizome.org).<br />ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 17. Article submissions to<br />list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme<br />of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on<br />advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org.<br /><br />To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe.rhiz">http://rhizome.org/subscribe.rhiz</a>.<br /><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.php3">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php3</a>.<br />
