RHIZOME DIGEST: 11.26.04

discussion

Posted Nov. 25 2004 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 11.26.04

RHIZOME DIGEST: November 26, 2004 Content: +announcement+ 1. Francis Hwang: exhibit RSS 2. Brian House: Let's Blast Art Basel! 3. Gregory Chatonsky: MEDIATECA / CAIXAFORUM . 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia 4. Mark Tribe: Conference: The Phantom Limb Phenomena @ Goldsmiths College in London +opportunity+ 5. Gregory Chatonsky: SERIES:THE NUDE Call for participation 6. Christine McLean: Artist in Residency Program 7. Brett Stalbaum: [Fwd: Fwd: Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space] +work+ 8. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog by Marisa Olson 9. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Mulholland Drive by Scott Hessels +thread+ 10. Jim Andrews, t.whid, Geert Dekkers, andrew michael baron, Jason Van Anden, manik, Archive Registrar, Michael Szpakowski, Curt Cloninger, ryan griffis, patrick lichty, Marisa Olson, Francis Hwang, Lewis LaCook, trashconnection, //jonCates, David Goldschmidt, Rob Myers + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 11.22.04 From: Francis Hwang <francis@rhizome.org> Subject: exhibit RSS More RSS goodies: A feed for you to follow the member-curated exhibits as they come out. Right now, there are only three, but there's no reason that won't change … <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/syndicate/exhibit.rss">http://rhizome.org/syndicate/exhibit.rss</a> Francis Hwang Director of Technology Rhizome.org phone: 212-219-1288x202 AIM: francisrhizome + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 11.22.04 From: Brian House <house@knifeandfork.org> Subject: Let's Blast Art Basel This is a call to arms for creative individuals everywhere to have your message heard and your images seen at Art Basel Miami Beach! (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.art.ch">http://www.art.ch</a>) The crÃ¨me-de-la-crÃ¨me of the international art world is about to descend on Miami Beach for the Art Basel festival and the YellowArrow (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://yellowarrow.org">http://yellowarrow.org</a>) will be greeting this global art elite at every corner as the public art project that sweeps the show. A mobile video installation showcasing all arrows placed around the world will roam the city's streets, stickers will be artfully placed on every beckoning surface, and lightbox arrow sculptures will glow from Miami's renowned architecture. Those of you in Miami, place arrows and have them be seen and messaged, live on the streets. Those far afield, place arrows in your local cities, take pictures and have your work integrated into the video loop of the global gallery, visible to the whole Miami scene. Questions? Write info@yellowarrow.org. This is the chance to show the world what counts today. Make your mark at Art Basel Miami Beach! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering subsidized memberships to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded communities.) Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more information or contact Kevin McGarry at Kevin@Rhizome.org or Rachel Greene at Rachel@Rhizome.org. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 11.24.04 From: Gregory Chatonsky <cgregory@incident.net> Subject: MEDIATECA / CAIXAFORUM . 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia MEDIATECA / CAIXAFORUM Fundacia "la Caixa" Barcelona Spain 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia Metanarrativ(e)s January 28 - 29, 2005 FRIDAY , 28 10:30h Opening 11:00 Within the narrative continuum Eugeni Bonet, Barcelona, Spain George Legrady, Santa Barbara,California, USA (Contributions + Discussion) 16:00 The rules of the game Espen Aarseth. Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark Natalie Bokchin. Calarts, Valencia, California,USA Papers and works or experiments on digital metanarration presentation SATURDAY, 29 11:00 Desire versus destiny Glorianna Davenport MIT MediaLab Cambridge, Massachusetts,USA Gregory Chatonsky Incident, Paris, France (Contributions + Discussion) 16:00 Papers and works or experiments on digital metanarration presentation Closure Jose Luis Orihuela University of Navarra.Pamplona, Spain Josep SaldaÃ±a Website Projecte straddle3.net, Barcelona,Spain MercÃ¨ Molist Journalist specialist on webloging and copyleft, Barcelona, Spain Curator : Antoni Mercader More information : www.mediatecaonline.net + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 11.24.04 From: Mark Tribe <mark.tribe@gmail.com> Subject: Conference: The Phantom Limb Phenomena @ Goldsmiths College in London For Immediate Release: The Phantom Limb Phenomena: A Neurobiological Diagnosis With Aesthetic Cultural and Philosophical Implications. A conference to be held at Goldsmiths College, Saturday and Sunday, January 15th, and 16th, 2005. Organized by Warren Neidich, Department of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths College and Jules Davidoff, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College Since its original description in 1866 by the Neurologist S. Mitchell the phantom limb phenomena has attracted many scholars across a broad spectrum of discourses. It describes the condition, found in many amputees, in which sensation of the removed limb persists. As such it has served as a metaphor for many ideas in other fields beyond the scope of neurobiology and neuro-psychology, such as, philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, anthropology, visual cultural, literature, film and art. This conference will investigate the following: 1.The Cognitive Neuroscientific and Neuropsychological Implications of the Phantom Limb 2. The Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Implications of the Phantom Limb 3.The Phantom Limb as Cultural Probe 4: Artistic Responses to the Phantom Limb. Participants include: Peter Brugger- Professor Neurology, University of Zurich, Switzerland, Elizabeth Cohen-University of Rochester, Chris Frith-Wellcome Principal Research Fellow Professor in Neuropsychology, Deputy Director, Leopold MÃ¼ller Functional Imaging Laboratory, Eleanor Kaufman-Dept of Comparative Literature, UCLA, Norman Klein- California Institute of the Arts, Scott Lash- Director of the Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, James Leach-Dept. of Anthropology, Cambridge, Mac MacLachlan -Co-Director of the Dublin Psychoprosthetics Group, Dave McGonigle- Center National Research Scientific,LENA, France Arnold Modell- Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Andrew Patrizio-Director of Research Development, Edinburgh College of Art, Marq Smith, Editor, Visual Culture Magazine Vivian Sobchack-Associate Dean and Professor of Critical Studies in Film and Television at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Janet Sternburg- California Institute of the Arts Simon Cohn, Dept. of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, Nicholas Wade-Professor of Visual Psychology, University of Dundee, Andreas Weber- Institute for Cultural Studies, Humboldt University Zu, Berlin, Robert Zimmer- Chairman Department of Computing, Goldsmiths College. For more information and sign up application form go to www.artbrain.org, upcoming events. Or contact j.goldstein@gold.ac.uk or w.neidich@gold.ac.uk. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 11.22.04 From: Gregory Chatonsky <cgregory@incident.net> Subject: SERIES:THE NUDE Call for participation iNCIDENT.NET SERIES:THE NUDE Call for participation /// Until February, the 28th of 2005 Thank you to send us your netart/videoart projects by email (incident@incident.net). Only the works using technologies (interactivity, generativity, network, etc.) will be selected. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://incident.net">http://incident.net</a> incident@incident.net /// THE NUDE The Nude is a well-known exercise of the artistic process. It helps the studend built a relationship between various styles of strokes and the human anatomy, the scientific norm. Although nudity has evolved over the ages, it will always be a symptom of our ambivalent relation to images, halfway between the purity of the body and the downfall of it, whether this downfall be tattered canvas or in the ground. But what is the nude hiding? What lies between what can and can't be seen? For example in works such as: "The Origin of the World" (Courbet, 1866) and "Etant donnes: 1. La chute d'eau, 2. Le gaz d'eclairage" (Duchamp, 1946-1966), we find an interstice, a fissure where the world finds its origin, its sexuality. The sensuality of the nude is an esthetical concern, which can only be grasped from a distance. An eye touched by a body becomes blind. At first sight, it seems that in this age we have standardised nudity, however, obscenity is still present in female bodies. Clothed and hidden they forbid men's blind gazes. If art is to lay bare one's body and soul, if its role is both to veil and unveil in a single gesture, where is our nudity today? What is a nude when a body can be cloned and nano-technologies penetrate our flesh? And what relates a generalised nudity and the other form of bareness, which is dictated by the aesthetic? /// Merci pour votre participation! <a rel="nofollow" href="http://incident.net">http://incident.net</a> incident@incident.net /// + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 11.24.04 From: Christine McLean <mclean@studiosoto.com> Subject: Artist in Residency Program REAL SPACE A New Media Residency Sponsored by Do While Studio and Studio Soto What A six-week process-oriented artistâ??s residency for the development of a new media project. The residency provides living, working and exhibition space in the heart of downtown Boston, as well as â??think tankâ?? support from professionals in the field. Projects should be experimental, research-oriented, community-based, and in need of further development. When Residency: June 15 - July 31, 2005. Opening reception/Artist Talk: July 29, 2005. Installation/Show: July 29 - August 28, 2005. Who Artists who work with new media and technology. Why We provide real space for real ideas. New media and technology may well offer innovative ways of expressing artistic concepts, but real, physical space is still the best venue for sharing work with the community. How You propose a new media project that meets the residency criteria. We select one resident per year. If we select your project, we provide the necessary support and resources to help you develop it. Who Decides A select panel of new media professionals which might include artists, curators and invited members of Do While Studio and Studio Soto. For more information on the residency program please visit us at: www.newmediaresidency.org Sponsored by: www.dowhile.org and www.studiosoto.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + For $65 annually, Rhizome members can put their sites on a Linux server, with a whopping 350MB disk storage space, 1GB data transfer per month, catch-all email forwarding, daily web traffic stats, 1 FTP account, and the capability to host your own domain name (or use <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.net/your_account_name">http://rhizome.net/your_account_name</a>). Details at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/services/1.php">http://rhizome.org/services/1.php</a> ++ Through December 31: a free domain with each hosting plan purchased! ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 11.24.04 From: Brett Stalbaum <stalbaum@ucsd.edu> Subject: Fwd: Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space ——– Original Message ——– Subject: Fwd: Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 07:38:41 -0800 From: Carol Hobson <chobson@ucsd.edu> To: chobson@ucsd.edu >UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO >Visual Arts Department > >Beginning Associate Professor, >tenured, beginning July 1, 2005 > > >Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space > >UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Visual Arts Department > >Beginning Associate Professor, tenured, beginning July 1, 2005. Rank >and salary commensurate with qualifications and experience and based >upon UC pay scales. > >We are seeking an artist who comes from a visual art, architectural, >or urban studies background, and preferably works across these >disciplines as both a practitioner and a theorist. The candidate >should work with the city as a site of investigation and develop >ways of intervening in urban space. This could be someone who works >in the mode of public art or tactical intervention into public >debate but more generally, they should work with a problematic of >the public and the politics of the public sphere. > >UCSD is a research university that actively promotes and supports >creative work within a broadly interdisciplinary arts department >that includes studio, computing, art and media history, theory and >criticism. Teaching will include both graduate seminars and >undergraduate courses, large and small. The candidate will actively >participate in the ongoing development of curriculum and facilities. >MFA or equivalency and teaching experience required. > >Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, names and addresses of >three references (do not send letters of recommendation and/or >placement files) and evidence of work in the field. This evidence >may be in the form of slides, tapes, discs, publications and/or >public lectures and should be accompanied by return mailer and >postage. > >Steve Fagin, Chair (Position #PC05-E) >University of California, San Diego >Visual Arts Department (0327) >9500 Gilman Drive >La Jolla, California 92093-0327 > >All applications received by January 10, 2005, or thereafter until >position is filled, will receive thorough consideration. Please >reference position #PC05-E on all correspondence. UCSD is an Equal >Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer with a strong institutional >commitment to the achievement of diversity among its faculty and >staff. Proof of U.S. citizenship or eligibility for U.S. employment >will be required prior to employment (Immigration Reform and Control >Act of 1986). – Brett Stalbaum Lecturer, psoe Coordinator, ICAM Department of Visual Arts, mail code 0084 University of California, San Diego 9500 Gillman La Jolla CA 92093 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 11.22.04 From: "Rhizome.org" <artbase@rhizome.org> Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog by Marisa Olson Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase … <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?29242">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?29242</a> + Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog + + Marisa Olson + This project, whose very didactic name was designed to maximize search engine results, is one in which I spent three months "in training" to audition for American Idol. Aware that success on the show is about much more than vocal talent, I performed training exercises ranging from dance lessons to research into audition-line campout gear, and many more rigorous wardrobe, physique, dermatology, and showwomanship trainingâ??including some musicological research into top-fortydom. Everything was blogged on this site, whose very structure investigated the nascent tropes of blogging. I was excited to bring a self-reflexive touch to the processes associated with this all-star American spectacle. The site grew enormously popular, due to the hundreds of people Googling American Idol Audition Tips/Songs/etc, and after inclusion in the New York Times, the site took off. (It was syndicated on many reality TV sites and led over 6,000 people to vote on what I should wear and sing at the auditions.) My project takes advantage of this large, captive, mostly non-art audience. As the diary/training progresses, I dug into the politics of the show (Fox, gender issues, etc) and general stereotypes about fame, beauty, and talent., whcih the show often perpetuates. As my "training" ran concurrent with the build up to the 2004 Presidential elections, I tried to cast the project as a campaign and to encourage readers to vote on issues ranging from wardrobe selection to public policy–playing off of the discrepancy in the number of young Americans voting in association with the show and not voting in governmental elections, This series is an extension of my interests in the cultural history of technology and narrativity, including questions of authorship, storytelling formats, the rhetoric of the image, and the impacts of technologies upon social relationships. These interests are specifically located within an investigation of the nature of the contemporary art world. Borrowing from the lexicon of the music world, the projects ask ironic questions about the relationship between being a pop star and being an art star, which is more generally a question about the relationship between fame & talent. While the project may exist as larger interrogations of the nature of two commercial systems, it is also a very personal reflection of my own identity. + + + Biography Marisa S. Olson is a San Francisco-based artist, critic, and curator. She has most recently performed or exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, Pond Gallery, Lucky Tackle, and Rx Gallery, in the Bay Area; Debs & Co., Foxy Productions, and Flux Factory, in New York; and the Access Center (Vancouver), STUK/Zed Cinema (Leuven-Belgium), the Futuresonic04 Festival (Manchester), the Electrofringe Festival (Newcastle, Australia), the Machinista Festival (Glasgow), and VIPER (Basel), internationally. The New York Times recently called her work "anything but stupid." Marisa's essays on contemporary art and visual culture have appeared in Flash Art, Art on Paper, Afterimage, Wired, Mute, Artweek, Surface, Planet, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. She has also introduced artists' monographs and written commissioned essays on new media for several artists and institutions, including the Walker Art Center, Eyebeam, and the Getty Information Institute. Marisa has held the positions of Associate Director at SF Camerawork and Curator for Zero:One and has previously worked on programs at the J. Paul Getty Museum; FILE, Sao Paolo; the American Film Institute (AFI); the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in San Diego; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; White Columns; and SFMOMA, where she served, for three years, on the media arts advisory board, and was founding editor of the zine, SMAC!. Marisa has been a visiting scholar or artist in residence at the University of London/Goldsmiths College, the Smithsonian Institute, Northwestern University, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Technical University-Dresden. She holds MA's in History of Consciousness, from UCSC, and Rhetoric from UC Berkeley, where she is currently completing her PhD in Film & Digital Media. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 9. Date: 11.23.04 From: "Rhizome.org" <artbase@rhizome.org> Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Mulholland Drive by Scott Hessels Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase … <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?29364">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?29364</a> + Mulholland Drive + + Scott Hessels + Three artists drove Los Angeles' famous Mulholland Drive with five types of sensors–measuring tilt, altitude, direction,speed, and engine sound. The captured data was used computationally to control two robotic lights in a dark room filled with fog. Two beams of light and the processed sound of the engine recreated the topology of the road as a new formof visual experience and sculpture–cinema without image. "Mulholland Drive" is a light installation that translates the movement across a topology as two beams of light. Instead of direct human interaction, the work takes the sensed data (tilt, sound, and GPS) of traversing an environment and recreates the drive through angles, light, and sound. A passive interactive experience, the artwork emphasizes the spatial quality of light–it is cinema without image. Like cinema, direct data is captured, then edited, and shaped. However, here the environment directly defines the experience, using the geography computationally. In a sense, "Mulholland Drive" is a new media Earthwork and demonstrates how suddenly the rhythms, patterns, and random chance of the environment can be sensed through new media technologies and used to create new forms of visual experience. + + + Biography Producing under the name Damaged Californians, Scott Hessels has released experimental art and commercial projects in several different media including film, video, web, music, broadcast, print, and performance for the last decade. His work has shown in international film and new media festivals, on television, and in contemporary art galleries. He recently completed a commission of three interactive films and six online movies for Australia and was honored with a career retrospective at the Melbourne International Film Festival. As a media artist, his installations have shown at CiberArt in Bilbao, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Professionally, as Director of Information Technology for Fox Television, he was responsible for the systems, software, communications, and security for two television stations and two cable networks–a career he followed for 25 years. He currently teaches digital video at UCLA in the Design | Media Arts Department and is studying for my graduate degree in that field. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + NEW: Rhizome Member-curated Exhibits <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/">http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/</a> View online exhibits Rhizome members have curated from works in the ArtBase, or learn how to create your own exhibit. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 10. Date: 11/19/04-11/27/04 From: Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>, t.whid <twhid@twhid.com>, Geert Dekkers <geert@nznl.com>, andrew michael baron <baron@parsons.edu>, Jason Van Anden <jason@smileproject.com>, manik <manik@ptt.yu>, Archive Registrar <registrar@deepyoung.org>, Michael Szpakowski <szpako@yahoo.com>, Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>, ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>, patrick lichty <voyd@voyd.com>, Marisa Olson <artstarrecords@yahoo.com>, Francis Hwang <francis@rhizome.org>, Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com>, trashconnection <www@trashconnection.com>, //jonCates <joncates@criticalartware.net>, David Goldschmidt <david@personify.tv>, Rob Myers <robmyers@mac.com> Subject: why so little discussion? + Quotation Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> posted: why is it that there is so little discussion of net.art posted to rhizome? a lot of the posts announce work that isn't viewable, ie, announcements of installation projects and whatnot, but there are posts concerning net.work that is viewable online, and it is rarely discussed. ja <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com">http://vispo.com</a> + + + t.whid <twhid@twhid.com> replied: This question has been asked over and over on this list. I think most recently by Jason Van Anden. Good luck. + + + Geert Dekkers <geert@nznl.com> replied: The issue being not asking "why there is so little discussion?", but actually going ahead and starting a discussion. Geert (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://nznl.com">http://nznl.com</a>) + + + andrew michael baron <baron@parsons.edu> replied: This is a timely post t.whid. I was going to drop a line to the list this weekend to let everybody know I was planning on formally introducing a guest blogger in the indirect form of the Rhizome Raw Robot to list the data of this Rhizome list onto the Julia Set blog <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://a.parsons.edu/%7Ejuliaset">http://a.parsons.edu/%7Ejuliaset</a>> (the Parsons School of Design and Tech blog) for exactly one week starting this Monday. Each day, I would "reblog" the Rhizome Raw list, especially listing all of the great opportunities and showings around the world. I don't know if this breaks any Rhizome rules or would upset any of you. I was planning on looking into all the fine print first, though perhaps it would be okay for this one instance. The reasoning was that this is one of my top two favorite email lists and I believe it is the most valuable locale (physical or otherwise) to be for whats going on with the arts online and also off (at least that I know of). Every single day I think there should be a campaign at Parsons to get all of the students on the list, even if for the digest version. IT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY NEED. I have thought briefly about filtering some of the comments for the week, or maybe not. If anyone has any ideas with regard to this question, please let me know, otherwise I would probably just play it by ear. Again, I certainly don't want to do it if people would be upset but I think it only stand to help the cause. ps, sorry I felt like I didnt do very well in articulating the connection. . .I think the Rhizome list, EVEN WITHOUT THE DISCUSSION, is priceless for the artist. I find the discussion that IS here, to be very enjoyable. T.Whind, I dont know you at all beyond this list but you are a daily character in my life now. I love Rhizome Raw but I don't want to get an e-mail every 5 seconds. Andrew + + + Jason Van Anden <jason@smileproject.com> replied: I suggest you check out this long thread I initiated based upon a similar observation: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=13777&text=26247">http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=13777&text=26247</a> . Discussion ebbs and flows. If you think about it, this is not such a bad thing. We are a bunch of artists for goodness sake - if we spent all of our time discussing stuff who would make all of the art? Rest assured, you are in the right place. It's up to you to spark a discussion. From my experience, a long bit of silence makes the meaty discussions that much more scrumptious. Jason Van Anden www.smileproject.com + + + manik <manik@ptt.yu> replied: It's knocking on the open door. Why don't we discuss about Rhizome_ Raw politic of punishment,censure,inconsequence… How do you imagine that;discussion about something unnamed,something "in general",not specific case,no name… After more than hundred Maniks IMAGES,suddenly Rhizome_Raw refuse to publish them further. Is that way to show us power?Or teaching us democracy? It's not important what you talk,power which allows you to talk is determinate by institution,economic,weapon… Talk means to be able to talk,to have power to talk.And that's privilege of "Main Subject"(U.S-J.Habermas) That's opposite of rhizomatic way of communication,far from Delleuse&Guattari(they are open for new interpretations).But Rhizome_Raw became more and more conservative, academic,boring,…Strange,it was few years ago interesting place. So tell us(toMANIK)why don't you refuse our kind of discussion,our images?Open and honest. MANIK + + + Archive Registrar <registrar@deepyoung.org> replied: I'm just lurking around waiting for all the preaching-to-the-choir / pissing-in-the-wind political venting to ebb. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4045">http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4045</a> why don't more people make one of these?: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/">http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/</a> It seems that HTML posting capabilities are turned on there. You might could hack your own exhibit via CSS a la <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2261">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2261</a> blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. + + + Michael Szpakowski <szpako@yahoo.com> replied: Hi Jim, all I'm replying to your original post although I read the others. I don't know what the answer is; I certainly enjoy it when a topic catches fire -in general that doesn't seem to happen with discussions of specific pieces, which is a shame because this requires a more subtle approach than some of the polarised *in-general* positions often argued here. So I'm going to post some stuff about a recent piece in the hope someone will respond. I meant to post awhile back to say how much I'd liked the MTAA "Five Small Videos About Interruption and Disappearing" <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/">http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/</a> Like them very much I do; but they also intrigue me. The blurb says they are inspired by early performance videos - a genre and a period which I enjoy a lot. There was a marvellous exhibition at the ICA here about a year ago of single channel video works - lots of Acconci, Baldessari and also early Nauman -wonderful stuff. One thing that occurs to me about the MTAA response is firstly how *elegant* it is - & this is a quality of all their work - elegance and thoroughness, or perhaps elegance due to thoroughness - one could never accuse them of a lack of craft. This is in stark contrast to the sheer edginess and sense of ( often literal!) danger in much of that early video work. Doing my sums I can't put this down to the newness of video as a medium - actually I suspect that the technologies used by MTAA are newer relative to them. There's a temptation to see this piece ( and others such as the one year performance piece) as a sort of conceptual post modernist whimsy, beautifully made but essentially a clever formal exercise. I think this would be wrong - actually there seems to me to be a feel of "classicism" about this work - the elegance seems not a symptom or a bolt on but a very much integral part of the work. I see this happening quite a lot -its as if in the shadow of high modernism it wasn't quite respectable to use the methods and the language of the past without being *ironic* or having a high concept. Now all those barriers have long been broken we can simply move on to using a good move no matter when or where we saw it. SO specifically here it's as if the artists of the seventies having blazed a trail, created edgy stuff in a kind of white heat, MTAA are examining the language and the practice with the benefit of a couple of decades of hindsight and appropriating *what fits*, *what works* into their own practice. And the resultant work for me isn't simply clever or knowing but actually quite touching - I'm quite moved by these two characters in the videos ( and there are longer backward shadows cast here - Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, the *comic film duo* , spring to mind). Certainly the piece feels to me to have many resonances that go beyond the intellectual, the clever, the knowing and enter the world of the affective. I'd be interested to know what you or others think. best michael + + + Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com> replied: Hi Michael, I think the Laurel and Hardy insight is a useful one, and I'll touch on that later. I don't see the pieces in "five small videos" primarily in relationship to experimental video, although they technichally contain aspects of video media, and the title of the series is "five small videos". I see them primarily in relationship to interface design culture. MTAA are applying their conceptual/performance art insights to expose the absurdities of the Human Computer Interface. The pieces are actually explicitly post-video, which is what makes them so compelling. There was a lot of "sick" (in the positive sense) abstract work in lingo/director emerging around 1998 on the web ( <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turux.org">http://turux.org</a> being the classic example). The code was trigonometric functions tweaking little 2X2 pixel colored triangles with the "trace" effect turned on, and it functioned like a kind of reactive abstract digital painting process. Which was cool and still is cool, and I'm not knocking that. Then people started to map that same kind reactive/generative code onto images of physical bodies. A great example is <a rel="nofollow" href="http://lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm">http://lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm</a> . Yugo Nakamura has some amazing stuff along the same lines: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=24">http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=24</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=3">http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=3</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=29">http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=29</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=26">http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=26</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yugop.com/ver2/works/typospace3.html">http://yugop.com/ver2/works/typospace3.html</a> So now instead of being able to control abstract shapes (or watch the computer auto-control abstract shapes), I'm able as a user to control human or animal forms (or watch the computer auto-control them). This is a lot more conceptually promising, since we're humans. But who of the Flash/Director script kiddies was exploring the implications of these concepts? Few. I position <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/">http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/</a> in this same genre (interactive body stuff), but with a greater focus on the conceptual, human implications. For instance, in "sliding compression," by mapping the slider resolution to their own faces, the artists raise all sorts of intriguing issues. The two artists are part of a collaborate partnership, but does one grow in fame at the expense of the other? I love the minimalistic terseness of this piece. It doesn't need an expanded artist statement. It doesn't even need the word "fame" in the title of the piece. The simultaneous crisping and blurring of the respective artist faces says it all. By naming the piece after its mere technical interface mechanism ("sliding compression"), the artists foreground the fact that there is always more ethically implicit in our technology than what it is merely technichally doing. Why does tech always have ethical implications? Because our technology is not just "operating" on dots or lines or data structures. Ultlimately, it's "operating" on us. (And McLuhan said so.) If the images of the artists were mere cartoons (as in the MTAA avatar logos), the piece would be schlocky and feel like so many Flash animation gag reels (cf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jibjab.com">http://www.jibjab.com</a> ). If the images were static jpgs, they would still feel like mere simulacra [note to academics: used trendy critical term]. I propose that even if the clips were live-action filmed in front of a realistic background the profundity of the piece would be greatly decreased (cf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://subservientchicken.com">http://subservientchicken.com</a> ). By the way, I think subservient chicken is actually brialliant conceptual net art, but it will never make it into the canon because it's a burger king marketing campaign. Too bad for the canon. Anway, the fact that the artists are silhoutted on white yet still moving makes them seem like little tiny people inside the screen ( cf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:H6jOp1QtRHIJ:userwww.sfsu.edu/~nathang">http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:H6jOp1QtRHIJ:userwww.sfsu.edu/~nathang</a> r/wonka/mikemini.jpg ). Issues of perpetual stuckness, looping, and time are raised. Similar issues are raised in MTAA's "One Year Performance" piece, but to less effect. With "Five Small Videos," I don't need to know the esoteric history of performance art to immediately get the full impact of the piece. But then I like stereolab better than Ornette Coleman, so sue me. Back to the Laurel and Hardy insight, which brings up the topic of physical comedy, which leads to the topic of the human body. There was a big push early on for we humans to insert our "selves" into a virtual world, with all the utopianism and man-as-his-own-god promises which that implied. We would leave our old bodies and get new bodies inside the machine. But who wants to live inside a freaking machine? If macmall.com can't even hook me up with the right USB male/female cable adaptor, what does this bode for my virtual sex life? "Five Small Videos" successfully lampoons the promise of VR by inserting the non-stylized, non-abstracted, "real/normal" bodies of the "tired old" artists (not that they are actually tired or old; it's "acting!") into the contemporary, non-utopian, "real" machine – subjecting them to all the bland, inane, dehumanizing restrictions of contemporary usability-influenced, dont-make-me-think web design best practices. t. whid himself knows web development and is all too familiar with its interface design conventions. So much so, that this piece "presses the buttons" (pun overintented) of non-artsy, "normal" web users everywhere; they relate to it intuitively; and it wins a "macromedia site of the day" award (how gauchely populist!) And well it should. The best art is able to dialogue on an allusive art history level without that aspect being strictly requisite to its appreciation. It's cool that Mathew Barney uses his body as a prop. Along similar lines (but in graphic design rather than art) Stefan Sagmeister uses his body as a prop to powerful effect ( <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sagmeister.com/work5.html">http://www.sagmeister.com/work5.html</a> , <a rel="nofollow" href="http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/3/SVA_exhibition.jpg">http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/3/SVA_exhibition.jpg</a> , <a rel="nofollow" href="http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/2/Sagmeister%20Inc.-Zurich2.jpg">http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/2/Sagmeister%20Inc.-Zurich2.jpg</a> ). It's lame and desparate when Genesis P. Orridge maimes his body as a prop, or when that one armed guy nailed his one arm to the wall and called it art, or when that other guy got shot in the arm as art. Spectacle, spectacle! [note use of trendy critical term #2] It's not just that an artist uses his body; it's how he does it (hubba hubba). What Barney and Sagmeister and Laurel and Hardy all have in common is that their bodies are tools of imprinture into archived media. Whereas Genesis P. Orridge rolling around in glass is live. His body isn't just the brush, it's the canvas. Is Beuys body his own canvas in "I love America and America loves me?" Not really. He's more like an actor in a drama. Put a camera in there with him and the coyote and release the footage on double DVD – have you captured the import of the performance? Not at all. Because the medium of video inserts a linear rigor into the mix that removes some of the most interesting elements of the performance, namely – is the coyote going to bite him? The video can be an archive of the outcome of the performance, but nothing more. What's cool about "Five Small Videos" is that they aren't videos. In our post-film, "interactive" era, MTAA are able to insert non-linearity back into the performative process, yet they still maintail all the "archival/removed/time-shifted" nature of film. In "One Year Performance," they don't have to really be in the rooms for a year. You do that work for them (or the loop code of the machine does, and you agree to suspend your disbelief). Just like the three stooges didn't have to go around from vaudeville show to vaudeville show forever poking each other in the eye. Record once; play anywhere. But add interactivity to video, and it feels like the actors are "actually there," because they are responding to my real-time imput. But really the machine is responding to my real-time input. But since the behavior of the machine is now mapped onto their "bodies," they become my puppets (with all the strangeness and awkwardness that such control implies). In "lights on, lights off," I can't wake M. River up too many times without feeling a little sadistic. Best leave sleeping dogs lie. "Five Small Videos" is actually very potent in a way that most cyborg extropian art (and most of the didactically reflexive/self-aware cary peppermint stuff) never is for me. It hits the mark because it succinctly foregrounds the absurdities of the medium, it steps back, and it allows these absurdities to trip over themselves for my own amusement/contemplation without a whole lot of didactic moralizing from the artists themselves. All it lacks is a generative ragtime piano soundtrack. peace, curt "i've got your discussion hanging" cloninger + + + twhid replied: I encourage everyone to keep talking about me & mriver ;-) Can't get enough of me & mriver? Go here: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29969">http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29969</a> I know, I know. I talk about about me & mriver a lot, but here's my response to tom moody's post: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/twhid/tom_moody_does_1ypv.html">http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/twhid/tom_moody_does_1ypv.html</a> I¹ll quote bits, then comment (read the entire post (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29969">http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29969</a>), I can¹t figure out if it¹s positive or negative, but it¹s thoughtful and honest so you can¹t ask for more than that). Tom Moody: > Pieces that refer so specifically to known, past artworks, satirically > or otherwise, are problematic?more on this below?but there¹s much to > think about here. Unlike the Globe and Mail, I¹d discuss the work in > terms of voyeurism, and artist recuperation of the part-guileless, > part-sleazy home webcam phenomenon. In real (Internet) life, the only > reason a surfer would stay with a site like this for hours was in the > hope that the subjects might do something kinky. I know there are > people watching this for art, but why? Perhaps the presence of white > plastic buckets in the rooms creates some morbid curiosity about how > the artists handle basic elimination needs, but frankly I didn¹t stick > around to find out. t.whid: Buckets: one¹s dirty, one¹s clean; they both get used at some point. Seriously, we have people who have been running the piece for (as of today) 36 days. Obviously they haven¹t been watching the piece the entire time, they simply let it run on an unused computer in their lab or studio. But on the other hand, one can¹t prove they haven¹t been watching it either ;-) When we created the piece we understood that not many people would view it for more than a few minutes. But that¹s OK. One doesn¹t need to view it for more than a few minutes. Once one gets the idea and also understands how digital media and computer networks function then it¹s enough to know that it is there, ready to be viewed for an indefinite period of time, anytime you wish. To me it becomes sublime at that point. Tom Moody: > Like Penn and Teller explaining a magic trick, the artists reveal?on a > related web page?quite a bit about the scripting and webserving > mechanics behind their simulation. This geeks-only backstory actually > makes for fairly fascinating reading. [snip] t.whid: He¹s referring to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.turbulence.org/Works/1year/info.php?page=tech">http://www.turbulence.org/Works/1year/info.php?page=tech</a>. It was important to include that material for three reasons: (1) We back open source software initiatives especially in relation to technical arts and artworks (the The Open Art Network is doing great work and we hope to add what we can from 1YPV to it soon), (2) we didn¹t want anyone to mistake the webcam for something real; it¹s important to the piece that the viewer knows they¹re watching canned clips and (3) I had a secret private hope (that I¹m first sharing now) that someone would re-mix/re-purpose/re-use the video clips. Tom Moody: > For sure the technology changes the Hsieh piece quite a bit, which did > allow observers, but only at specified times, like a prison visit. > Ultimately the MTAA work¹s relationship to current tech-shaped > behavior patterns and pop culture tropes feels more compelling than > its parody of the Hsieh performance, which is almost by definition an > art world in-joke, with a singular interpretation: that when > computer-age art revisits the physically demanding, emotionally > wrenching work of yesteryear, an insincere, fast-food facsimile > inevitably results. Sorry to leach the humor out of it, but there it > is. t.whid: We received the same criticism from Kevin McCoy (discussions with Kevin during the building of the piece were invaluable). The crit being that by making it simply an ?update¹ (or parody or satire) of Hsieh didn¹t do justice to the piece. That it ?stands on its own¹, why quote Hsieh at all? It¹s great that it seems many people are looking beyond the initial hook and finding other cultural resonances in the piece like Tom describes. But I would argue with Tom¹s ?singular interpretation.¹ I don¹t think the update has a singular interpretation, Tom¹s is one interpretation, but there can be others. First, it¹s not insincere, we are paying tribute to Hsieh. Second, it¹s not a facsimile; it¹s an *update*. We¹ve taken parts of the original which work and used them unmodified (a cell, a year), we¹ve take other parts and modified them (who¹s commitment?), and we¹ve added totally new parts (top 5, top 10 lists). So it becomes a new thing, not a facsimile. It¹s new but it¹s in dialogue with the original. My own interpretation is that when we take a Hsieh¹s piece, automate it and at the same time transfer the onus of the commitment from the artist to the viewer, the viewer invariably will reject the commitment *or* automate the commitment themselves. This rejection/automation is interesting. Hsieh challenged himself, we challenge the viewer. That is the crux of the update. + + + ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com> replied: What i want to know is, when is someone going to try to break the virtual twhid + mriver out of those cells? Free MTAA! But really, another interesting question would be, "who could afford to stay in a cell for a year anyway?" The transference of privilege into the "freedom" to be visually "unproductive" for the span of a year is an interesting, problematic proposition. Imagine if there was a paypal-like system that forced people to "deposit" 25 cents in order to see a segment of the video… My other reactions to this work (both the 1YPV and the 5 short videos) was to see it as a continuation of Dan Graham's (who i think must have been a Laurel & Hardy fan) examination of media devices via performance, updated to interface/database design (as Curt pointed out). Not that a particular history should be prioritized, but hey, that history is part of my vocabulary like it or not. And the austere "elegance" is riffing on Apple/GAP seamless PR to me, as well as white cubes. just dumb thoughts on smart work. ryan + + + manik replied: ryan griffis wrote: >"who could afford to > stay in a cell for a year anyway?" Pillar Saints or Stylites. A class of ascetics, chiefly of Syria, who took up their abode on the top of a pillar, from which they never descended. (See Stylites .) St.Danilo spend 50 years on pillar,St.Alimpye about 30.St.Simeon….etc. Ryan question is paradigmatic for contemporary state of mind. People believe that they can compress experience.Virtual!?! This "Project" with cell is fanny and sad.And hopeless… www.thebookofdays.com/months/jan/5.htm - www.stthomasirondequoit.com/SaintsAlive/id551.htm MANIK + + + ryan griffis replied: > Pillar Saints or Stylites. A class of ascetics, chiefly of Syria, who > took > up their abode on the top of a pillar, from which they never > descended. (See > Stylites .) > St.Danilo spend 50 years on pillar,St.Alimpye about > 30.St.Simeon….etc. Sure, if you call that "affording it." But it demands someone else to grow, produce and distribute food to the ascetic - they didn't live 30+ years on birdshit. Someone else is affording it for him. Perhaps an analysis of the subsidization of ascetics is a useful comparison for artists. > > Ryan question is paradigmatic for contemporary state of mind. > People believe that they can compress experience.Virtual!?! > This "Project" with cell is fanny and sad.And hopeless… Maybe my question if paradigmatic, i don't know. But i think your critique assumes my use of the word "virtual" means "compressed." i'm certainly not speaking to any notion of experiential compression… maybe an expansion. It's just another form of experience to deal with critically, not a paradigmatic shift for me. An elaboration of the "fanniness," "sadness" and "hopelessness" might help me understand what you're reacting against, if that's of any concern to you. ryan + + + patrick lichty <voyd@voyd.com> added: I think that in many cases, there hasn't been that much to discuss. There's been a lull in good work, or at least meaty thought on the subject. I think a new wave is coming with the consideration of the historical, but I got a note for a new book on the history of new media from 1715-1914? Ok, I'm going to get this volume, but this seems like a book that is constructing a historical context that may or may not be there. What I call a, "Tactical Reality" to validate New Media. Under my criteria, New media really has to do with electronic computation as one of its core components. Therefore, I really doubt that anyone's going to make a good argument for what we conceive as new media art before the 60's. Back to the discussion topic. I for one have been swamped. I'm entering academia at the moment, and I had no idea what demands they were going to impose. Also, I've been putting together ideas for larger texts, which is another matter entirely. And of course, IA & the Yes Men (when I have something to do for them) keep me hopping. + + + curt cloninger replied: The entire agrarian community collectively brought the food and left it there at the base of the pillar every morning. It was good karma for them to do so. "Growth, production, distribution" are all anachronistic Marxist ways of thinking about it. They pulled the carrots and taters from the ground, walked to the base of the pillar, and placed the carrots and taters in the basket for hoisting. They ate the maggots that fell from the flesh of the ascetics. I think the comparison is telling. There was a "performance" that consumed the life of the "artist," and not just for a year. But it wasn't a stunt or a clever conceptual angle; it was an act of worship. Furthermomre, it totally captured the imagination of the entire community, so much so that they financially supported its perpetuation of their own free will. To me, a lot of performance art pales as contrivance compared to actual devotional living. Which may be why Beuys described his teaching career as his best piece. I'm reminded of a Lydia Lunch quote which goes something like, "What would be better than to die for your art? To die for my art. Yeah, that'd be great." _ ryan wrote: Sure, if you call that "affording it." But it demands someone else to grow, produce and distribute food to the ascetic - they didn't live 30+ years on birdshit. Someone else is affording it for him. Perhaps an analysis of the subsidization of ascetics is a useful comparison for artists. + + + ryan griffis replied: > The entire agrarian community collectively brought the food and left > it there at the base of the pillar every morning. It was good karma > for them to do so. "Growth, production, distribution" are all > anachronistic Marxist ways of thinking about it. They pulled the > carrots and taters from the ground, walked to the base of the pillar, > and placed the carrots and taters in the basket for hoisting. They > ate the maggots that fell from the flesh of the ascetics. > > I think the comparison is telling. There was a "performance" that > consumed the life of the > "artist," and not just for a year. But it wasn't a stunt or a clever > conceptual angle; it was an act of worship. Furthermomre, it totally > captured the imagination of the entire community, so much so that they > financially supported its perpetuation of their own free will. Yeah, lots of things capture the imagination of an entire community. genocidal acts take lots of willing participants, for example. So did the civil rights movements. What doesn't? Just because lots of people are compelled to support someone/something doesn't make it great or heroic, anymore than it makes it "groupthink" or fascist. And anyway, my point was that the ascetics couldn't afford it - their community could. big difference. i didn't realize that economics was anachronistic. someone should tell all those people losing their welfare checks to cheer up and find a pillar. > > To me, a lot of performance art pales as contrivance compared to > actual devotional living. Which may be why Beuys described his > teaching career as his best piece. whatever - performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever that means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art. i don't understand the comparison. a "performance artist" could make bad art and live a devotional life. > > I'm reminded of a Lydia Lunch quote which goes something like, "What > would be better than to die for your art? To die for my art. Yeah, > that'd be great." How heroic. Too bad all those non-artists just have to die for someone else's art. ryan + + + curt cloninger replied: ryan: Yeah, lots of things capture the imagination of an entire community. genocidal acts take lots of willing participants, for example. So did the civil rights movements. What doesn't? curt: contemporary performance art. ryan: i didn't realize that economics was anachronistic. curt: not economics, just marxist economics. ryan: whatever - performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever that means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art. i don't understand the comparison. a "performance artist" could make bad art and live a devotional life. curt: devotional living is moment-by-moment living devoted to someone or something. the ascetic on the pole suggests to me that one's art (even one's performance art) could be more holistically bound up in / derived from one's personal inner life. It could be more idiosyncratically passionate and less tactically contrived: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.narrowlarry.com/page1.html">http://www.narrowlarry.com/page1.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/artenvi.htm">http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/artenvi.htm</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cgee.hamline.edu/see/goldsworthy/see_an_andy.html">http://cgee.hamline.edu/see/goldsworthy/see_an_andy.html</a> is this approach "artist-as-hero"? is it "modern" (the scarlet "m")? i think such dismissals are too convenient. maybe it's pre-pre-pre-modern. Maybe it's more punk and less poser. Maybe it's just generally more interesting. maybe it's just me. + + + Marisa Olson <artstarrecords@yahoo.com> added: A general question… It seems that 'quotation' lies at the heart of "postmodern" cultural production… That is, simulations, appropriations, and self-referential "deconstruction" have been cited as both harbingers and cornerstones of artistic "work" in the post-modern era–by Jameson, Baudrillard, and so many others… It's one thing to see how Warhol might appropriate an older image in a "newer" painting, but what of "net art"'s appropriation of earlier works, images, conversations, etc..? Does the medium make any difference? What of the difference between the veil of code and its appearance? What difference does the ability to forge a "real" link (vs a semi-anonymous reference) to an earlier work make? From historiographic perspective, where does the old end and the new (interpretation) begin? Sorry for all the quotations. It can, at times, be hard to keep a straight face using all these general terms. Plus, we are talking about """"quotation"""" right? Marisa + + + Michael Szpakowski <szpako@yahoo.com> replied: I'm always faintly taken aback when I read assertions like this. <It seems that 'quotation' lies at the heart of "postmodern" cultural production… That is, simulations, appropriations, and self-referential "deconstruction" have been cited as both harbingers and cornerstones of artistic "work"> All these characteristics can be found in most periods of art, in music ( variations on a theme of…), visual art ( such and such *after* such and such) and literature ( pretty much the whole of Shakespeare). Its perhaps a question of degree, of the ( sometimes deeply desperate) self consciousness of deployment which marked the something new in post modernism. What interests me is the feeling ( and I referred to this specifically in an earlier post in this thread on MTAAs wonderful 'five small videos' ) that this self consciousness is disappearing, that we're perhaps returning to an earlier kind of practice where quotation (and the cloud of concepts related to it) is merely one scarcely remarked weapon in the artist's arsenal, to be wielded relatively unselfconsciously. I mean I've not done a *scientific survey* or anything - but it's a feeling that we're moving into a period of *consolidation* of artistic language, of an *application* of lots of the formal shenanigans of the last half century of so to something that is concerned more with a profound combination of the intellectual and the affective & which is also aware of its place in an ongoing tradition ( and this does not of course imply massive surface complexity -what 'five small videos' has in common with a Schubert Lied is the appearance of *necessity* -"yes that's the only way it could be!" - and hence simplicity, but a simplicity which isn't exhausted the first or the second time round but continues to reveal new layers, new meanings on repeated engagement) The recent work of MTAA is inceasingly beginning to feel to me like an exemplar of this tendency ( another significant one being for me the work of Alan Sondheim which if people don't know they absolutely *should* <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.asondheim.org/">http://www.asondheim.org/</a> ). The thrust (and also the appeal) of the two video pieces seems to me not primarily formal, conceptual or didactic in some way, but affective, rich and open ended; aware of its place in tradition and paying due homage to it but not simply smart commentary on it. I can't help speculating too that this quality is not unrelated to a revival of oppositional political ideas at the base of society - the experience that artists had of being part of the millions who marched against the war and the general revival of a discourse that not only does not accept the market but situates itself in opposition to it ( look at the sales of Moore's books, the massive numbers attending the various social forums around the world, the millions truly 'lions led by donkeys', who came into polical activity around the Kerry campaign). best michael + + + Jim Andrews added: hi Marisa, re "the veil of code, its appearance" and """"quotation"""": not long ago i was working on a piece in which the wreader may introduce their own text. a collaborator pointed out that if she used quotation marks in her text, the programming failed (because the programming was using quotation marks to delimit texts). i fixed the bug so the piece could quote the wreader and the wreader's quotations or quotations of quotations etc. it felt like i was fixing more than a little bug, was expanding the piece significantly. ja <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com">http://vispo.com</a> + + + Michael Szpakowski replied: HI Curt, Ryan Curt - erecting straw men is an entirely uncharacteristic method for you, so it's a shame to see you doing it with "Marxist economics" - <"Growth, production, distribution" are all anachronistic Marxist ways of thinking about it.> How are Ryan's 'growth, production and distribution' specifically Marxist concepts? -you can find these concepts in *any* account of economics. How does anyone eat, without production? - or, as soon as society reaches any level of complexity, without distribution? How can a society that grows in numbers ( & hence mouths needing to be fed) therefore ignore the concept of "growth"? Far from being anachronistic, production, distribution and exchange (to use the more common Marxian triad) are actually *universal* questions in any society other that Robinson Crusoe's. Of course I'm sure you'd disagree cogently with where Marx takes us from those premises but your original point is both mistaken and unworthy of your normal level of debate. I suspect what you have encountered is several doses of the particularly poisoned marxism of the academy - I recommend reading some of the original stuff, you wouldn't agree with it, but the man is an invigorating read & not at all the dullard of myth. Ryan - although I agree with your general point, I can hear the sound of baby and bath water here: < performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever that means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art. > This does rather tend to write off the roots of art as a practice in religious ritual ( often designed precisely to *do* something) and its development along those lines for thousands of years ( and not only in Western culture). This therefore: < it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art> does seem to me to be demonstrably an anachronism. And personally speaking, though I don't have a shred of religious belief, my life would be a much poorer experience without, say, Monteverdi's Vespers. best michael + + + Curt Cloninger replied: Hi Michael (and Ryan), I'm just saying that most of these pillar-donating instances occurred in self-sustaining local agrarian economies, so all of that theoretical economic infrastructure (and the cultural relationships it implies) are overkill. To focus on the economic aspects of this situation is to apply one's pat contemporary grid backwards. It's to focus on something that these people weren't focusing on. Since the time of Moses, 11 tribes supported a 12th tribe of priests with their tithes and offerings. Call it specialization of spiritual services if you like. But these pillar ascetics weren't even priests. These were freewill offerings above and beyond the tithe. My family grow some of our own food here and we are surrounded by farmers. It's nothing for our back neighbor to bring by five bushels of corn and give it to us on a whim. These townspeope were giving the pillar ascetics the leavings/gleanings of their crop. It doesn't take much "capital" to live on top of a pole. The townspeople just had to be intentional enough to bring the food daily, which they were. Just like the MTAA year in a room project (getting back to it). It was more an issue of "mindshare" than of "growth, production, distribution." peace, curt + + + Francis Hwang <francis@rhizome.org> added: One small thing to add to this discussion: On Nov 19, 2004, at 6:32 PM, manik wrote: > After more than hundred Maniks IMAGES,suddenly Rhizome_Raw refuse to > publish > them further. > Is that way to show us power?Or teaching us democracy? If you're talking about no longer being able to send along attachments through list@rhizome.org, that's an anti-spam measure. Now, theoretically I could go to heroic measures to configure sendmail to try to distinguish between good attachments (manik's images) and bad attachments (Outlook virii), and then make sure those configurations are kept up to date as a new Windows virus comes out every fucking week. But just imagine, I actually have better things to do, so goodbye attachments. Also, I think MTAA's piece is cool too. + + + Michael Szpakowski <szpako@yahoo.com> HI Curt I don't particularly want to have a big ding dong back and forth about this so these few observations will be my last on this sub thread, by way of which I'll try & return my contribution to the topic of art. I'll leave you or Ryan the last word , should you want it. (1) <so all of that theoretical economic infrastructure (and the cultural relationships it implies) are overkill> I disagree - trying to understand things is never overkill.( and whether people are aware that what they are doing conforms to our description or not is a red herring -the question is, does our description lay bare the mechanics of what is occurring? - I like to think that you uncovered things as a critic in your bravura contribution here on "five small videos" the other day, that could well be news to MTAA). Furthermore you're actually a lot closer in what you concede here to a classically Marxist position than you might think. The key is <Since the time of Moses, 11 tribes supported a 12th tribe of priests with their tithes and offerings> and this is *precisely* Marx and Engels account of the beginnings of classes & the state: a separate caste of people, living off the surplus created by others and dedicated to ruling or ritual or religion. ( although they would date this substantially before the time of Moses I think) Prior to this although I've no doubt that people worshipped, or attempted to placate, Gods or spirits or whatever there was no separate body of people devoted to this function simply because no society's productive forces were developed enough to create a surplus. Everyones labour: hunting, gathering, was needed in order to guarantee everyones mere survival. What would of course be totally ahistorical is to speak of "capital" in any of this - capital and capitalist are not terms of abuse but precise technical descriptions of phenomena within *capitalism*, something that has been with us for only a few hundred years. And of course you're right about people making gifts to these ascetics of their own free will. They still had to *produce* it though; their gifts still formed part of a pattern of *distribution*. I don't wish at all to deny or disparage the contemporary description you give of simple good neighbourliness -I experienced enough of that in my fathers recent last months to both be very aware of its reality and be profoundly grateful for it -indeed it seems to me that in that sort of human decency, not driven by need or greed, lies quite a lot of hope for the future. Where is the art in this? Well, I suppose where I agree with Ryan is that on the whole I feel the folk who gave up their dinners to suport the guys on the pole got the rough end of the deal. Having said that though, I'm aware that my disapproval or approval isn't going to alter the fact that it happened and that I *do* think it has some bearing on art, for reasons I explained in the post before this. And coming almost full circle back to 1970s video I'm struck by how much of it does seem to be involved with an almost mystical strain of mortification of the flesh - you can certainly see this in Acconci, but there's also a pair of artists from what was then Yugoslavia, whose names escape me, who did the most alarming things to each other. I'm absolutely not going to confine my notion of what constitutes either great or interesting art ( or its precursors and paraphenomena) to what pleases me politically (in the narrow sense of the word). best michael + + + curt cloninger replied: I am always looking for this kind of maturation – the self-reflexive, self-conscious, uber-media-aware gradually being replaced by simply interesting art about existence. A good example to me is DJ Spooky's music vs. DJ Spooky's theory. The music is so rich and fascinating and autobiographical and essential. It's an urban lifestyle strategy/celebration – appropriation as talisman against personal assimilation (an intuitive solution to Bunting's proposed dilema – "own, be owned, or remain invisible"). But DJ Spooky's theoretical prose is like watching the paint dry. The fact that he is able to map mix culture backwards to 20th Century French philosophy is interesting I guess, and it may evangelize some Lev Manovich types to frequent the occasional late night electronica fest, but it's almost like reading a novelization of a film. I'd rather just listen to the mix. Marisa asks, " Does the medium make any difference [vis appropriation]"? In terms of ease of artistic production, definitely – digital media + global networks = ease of remix. Pre-net/google, I doubt I would have ever explored something like this: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/picture/">http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/picture/</a> But, like Michael, I'm not entirely convinced that "remixity" ["quotations intended"] is uniquely intrinsic or inherent to the underlying ethos of all digital art (although maybe it is, and there are sure plenty of people trumpeting the fact that it definitely is). Maybe remixity is just the most immediately obvious thing to do with digital media, and so we see a lot of it simply because the novelty hasn't worn off yet. One way or the other, it's safe to assert that digital art makes remixity and appropriation feasibly/logistically easier from a production standpoint. + + + curt cloninger added: Hi Michael, Well said. Not by way of argument, but just riffing: There's a contemporary genre of gallery artwork that foregrounds value exchange systems in relation to art, relativism, and the art market. Whereas here we've been hinting at something which to me is much more interesting – an earlier, less convoluted, more primordial art/value/exchange system. And it makes me think of this wonderful project: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dream-dollars.com">http://www.dream-dollars.com</a> I dote on this project. It works for me on about 20 different levels. It is gradually becoming one of my favorite pieces of net art. Just to whet your appetite, the following passage is from the biography of Samuel Brundt, co-founder of the utopian Colony of Nadiria, for whom the antarctic dream dollars were currency: +++++++++ "Life is an exchange," Samuel Brundt was wont to say. "An exchange of heat, energy, force, love, hate, art. There are spiritual and material transactions occurring every minute. Our monetary system is a microcosm of this." (Excerpt from, The Great Transaction, by Samuel Brundt, New York 1843) The Church of Spiritual Commerce grew out of the philosophy and teachings of Samuel and Constance Brundt. It officially formed in New York City on January 1, 1838 as a metaphysical society of like-minded thinkers, and had an initial membership of 16 people… ++++++++ It goes on and on and just gets weirder and weirder. Brilliant and highly recommended. peace, curt + + + Francis Hwang added: On Nov 22, 2004, at 11:40 AM, curt cloninger wrote: > But, like Michael, I'm not entirely convinced that "remixity" > ["quotations intended"] is uniquely intrinsic or inherent to the > underlying ethos of all digital art (although maybe it is, and there > are sure plenty of people trumpeting the fact that it definitely is). > Maybe remixity is just the most immediately obvious thing to do with > digital media, and so we see a lot of it simply because the novelty > hasn't worn off yet. One way or the other, it's safe to assert that > digital art makes remixity and appropriation feasibly/logistically > easier from a production standpoint. I'd say that remixity isn't the raison d'etre of digital art, though digital tools certainly favor remixity disproportionately over other modes of production. Remixity is interesting for plenty of reasons on its own; one of the big ones is that, outside of the whole whomping intellectual property debate, it rejiggers the proportional role of the artist in society. For one thing, it takes a long time to get down the craftsmanship of original image- or object-crafting, whether that's sculpting marble or using oil paint or whatever. It's a lot quicker just to buy a bunch of LPs and learn to spin. Not to say that DJing isn't a skill–but that you're leveraging the creativity of others in a way that requires, on one hand, less effort from you, but on the other hand, more effort if you want to stand out the way Pollock or Picasso did. (As a sidenote, I am pretty annoyed with how "DJ" in club culture has devolved into "somebody who knows how to play records" from "somebody who knows how to spin records". I suppose that's just my old club snobbery popping up again.) If we accept remixing as a creative mode that's as worthy of study as painting or sculpture or video or performance, then the tent of fine arts suddenly becomes a lot bigger, because people out in the world are remixing all the time without writing an artist's statement. 16-year-old kids making mashups on their Macs at home. PC casemods. Quilts. We probably don't have room in all our museums to show all that stuff, too. + + + Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com> added: when you play a musical instrument, all you're doing is remixing sounds that exist as potential in the instrument in ways you find pleasing—when you write a poem, all you're doing is remixing the english language until you find your text interesting–> ALL ART IS REMIXING—ALL CULTURE IS REMIXING—- bliss l + + + trashconnection <www@trashconnection.com> replied: Hello Francis, FH> If we accept remixing as a creative mode that's as worthy of study as FH> painting or sculpture or video or performance, then the tent of fine FH> arts suddenly becomes a lot bigger, because people out in the world are FH> remixing all the time without writing an artist's statement. The statements are not always written by artists if you know. FH> 16-year-old kids making mashups on their Macs at home. PC casemods. FH> Quilts. We probably don't have room in all our museums to show all that FH> stuff, too. You have a very conservative point of view, like my mum does, watching Jackson Pollock or Rothko. You better take care of tech stuff. Finally you are the Director of Technology. – Roman Minaev trashconnection.com + + + Marisa Olson <artstarrecords@yahoo.com> added: I tend to agree with Lewis, below, and also with Michael about the creepyness of forecasting quotation as specifically postmodern, given that it has been happening "forever." The question, now, is this… Is every quotation a remix? And, furthermore, while we're at it… What is the difference between hacking & remixing, if hacking is simply a modification of the object? (Is it?) Is it a specific intent (ie political, activist, deviant, whatever…)? Is it a matter of functionality–ie the object's ability to do so, as intended, after the mod? Is it a question of the relationship between a representational form/object and its machinery? (ie a film object vs the content of film; software vs the computer it runs on–not that these are parallel terms, in this analogy!) ?????? marisa + + + ryan griffis replied: On Nov 22, 2004, at 3:31 AM, Michael Szpakowski wrote: > This therefore: > < it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen > as art> > does seem to me to be demonstrably an anachronism. > And personally speaking, though I don't have a shred > of religious belief, my life would be a much poorer > experience without, say, Monteverdi's Vespers. point taken Michael, i actually am a religious person and believe in many of the tenets of Marxism simultaneously (even the Althusserian depiction of religious institutions as part of a superstructure). my statement was a bit hasty and reactionary, but was meant merely to suggest that perhaps the judgment of one's art and the judgment of one's life may not be the same, and that to compare the practice of ascetics to contemporary performance artists is absurd to me. but i feel this may be getting into an argument with no resolution and little at stake. take care, ryan + + + Francis Hwang replied: On Nov 22, 2004, at 3:02 PM, trashconnection wrote: > Hello Francis, > > FH> If we accept remixing as a creative mode that's as worthy of study > as > FH> painting or sculpture or video or performance, then the tent of > fine > FH> arts suddenly becomes a lot bigger, because people out in the > world are > FH> remixing all the time without writing an artist's statement. > > The statements are not always written by artists if you know. That wasn't my point. My point was that all sorts of creativity happens without those creators working to put their work into the context of the arts. > > FH> 16-year-old kids making mashups on their Macs at home. PC casemods. > FH> Quilts. We probably don't have room in all our museums to show all > that > FH> stuff, too. > > You have a very conservative point of view, like my mum does, watching > Jackson Pollock or Rothko. > You better take care of tech stuff. Finally you are the Director of > Technology. I suspect you're misreading what I say. I'm not saying that remixing isn't art. I'm saying that accepting remixing as art is difficult because it starts to tug away at all sorts of institutional foundations. It's like pulling a thread on a sweater; pull enough and the whole thing unravels. However, I'm not saying that that unraveling is a bad thing. Just that there's a lot of institutional force working against it. + + + //jonCates <joncates@criticalartware.net> added: curt cloninger wrote: > >"remixity" "academically speaking" i think the "term" is "remixology" [+/or] also "remixological". ³Remixology doesn¹t replace a track so much as proliferate it into parallel alterdimensions. Remixology is the science of continuation and the art of drastic remaking, total remaking, remodelling.² - Kodwo Eshun c: title: More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction dvr: Kodwo Eshun date: 1999 format: [book/text] c also: subject: <nettime> Interview with Kodwo Eshun date: 2000.07.25 time: 11:15:17 +0200 uri: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0007/msg00112.html">http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0007/msg00112.html</a> ++ also, for an academic programs involving these concepts… c: title: MA Sonic Culture: Sound, Arts and Media in the Digital Age dvr: Dr. Steve Goodman date: 2004 - on uri: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.uel.ac.uk/cultural-innovation/teaching/postgrad/">http://www.uel.ac.uk/cultural-innovation/teaching/postgrad/</a> sonic_cult.htm ++ [personally/academically] for me, remix + remixology are core concepts for understanding + operating digitally as new media [artists/culturalAgents]. i.e. i discuss these issues w/in the [continuum/categoricalLeakage] of Film, Video and New Media in my intro class New Media 01. recently we followed the following [chronological/remixological] hyperthreads on screen: The Andromeda Strain - Robert Wise ++ Strain Andromeda, The - Anne McGuire ++ AMG Strain - Barbara Lattanz this particular strand is [exciting/inspiring] to me [personally/academically] in a variety of ways, i.e. the interplay of time [compression/expansion], looping, the post-medium condition + media specificity. + + + David Goldschmidt <david@personify.tv> added: i love this quote … it's my new favorite. "appropriation as talisman against personal assimilation" In my opinion, remixers can create new and original aesthetics (just like other artists) but there may be an inherent distaste for mashed-art because the process (of remixing) reveals, in a patently obvious way, just how repetitive humans are – dare i say replicant/borg. thanks for the great quote curt best, david goldschmidt www.mediatrips.com + + + Rob Myers <robmyers@mac.com> added: There was a Creative Commons radio programme called "The Creative Remix" that takes remixing back to classical poetry (the canto). <a rel="nofollow" href="http://radio.creativecommons.org/">http://radio.creativecommons.org/</a> Listening to "Abridged Too Far" I think the difference now is Modernist reflexivity: the remixes are very obviously remixes and the point of them is that they're remixes. There's an interesting compositional negative space aspect to it, but remixes that are rough, ready, skippy and stretchy are "orientating themselves to flatness". In the case of ATF (which I am getting more from with each listening), there's the problem of camp (pace Sontag) as well. If this is untransformed kitsch it's kitsch, but you can't have knowing kitsch. And if it's transformative it's academic, imperialistic, disenfranchising. Deconstruction is normative. The sweet spot for all of this would be if the work was sympathetic in some way to its source material and engaged with it to work on the assumptions of the listener. If the source material kept or problematised some context(s). Does ATF do achieve this as music or is it strain-to-hear-it "sound art"? - Rob. + + + Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> added: Hi Rob, Interesting writing. One of the main things I like about ATF is that I find it brilliantly tuneful, at points. Like in "Cattle Call" and also in "I've Got You", as I wrote earlier. When the work is tuneful, the point is not that it is remix, but she is trying to create new sorts of melodies and harmonies or anti-harmonies(?) that either sound good by the standards of the original music or by other standards. Also, I think Vicki Bennett is sympathetic to much of the material. For instance, about 1/3 of the way into "Ach Du" she takes a, erm, a polka or something and puts it together with some percussive electronica that, if you put it on the dancefloor, would rock the joint out for a few seconds. A lot of this piece is percussive in that she's mixing rhythms toward something wonderfully varied in rhythm that usually makes 'sense' percussively, ie, you can follow it percussively. Concerning 'problematising', there's quite a bit of that, like the change in the lyrics of 'Kae Sara Sara' I mentioned concerning "I've Got You". Also, machismo, when it appears, usually 'has the piss taken out of it' as the brits say. And in "Close To You", I thought I heard some sympathy for the fate of Karen Carpenter and Marilyn Monroe, and some attempt to relate those to the music. Concerning the transformative, well, the album has quite a historical range of reference over considerable music from the 20th c. It doesn't dwell on particular tunes for very long; instead it goes through a kaleidascope of musical sounds and styles yet creates a style of its own. That I haven't heard before. Remix for the sake of remix would be pretty dull. What I like about ATF is that she is actually trying to make listenable, new music in a remix mode. I had a look at John Oswald's <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.plunderphonics.com">http://www.plunderphonics.com</a> but the links to the mp3's are 404 (legal issues, i presume). He became very famous for his remix work and was recently awarded Canada's highest honor for media art. But I have heard very little of his work, unfortunately. It would be interesting to compare his approach with Bennett's. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.plunderphonics.com/xhtml/xplunder.html">http://www.plunderphonics.com/xhtml/xplunder.html</a> is an interesting 1985 essay by Oswald called "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative". He talks about quotation quite a bit. "Without a quotation system, well-intended correspondences cannot be distinguished from plagiarism and fraud." ja + + + curt cloninger replied: Hi David, The idea really is Paul Miller's. I just distilled the sound-byte, but he's conscious that he's doing this. cf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=12455&text=24021">http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=12455&text=24021</a> scroll down to "I am the DJ, I am what I splay." Regarding the repetition critique, I mostly concur and I think Francis hit the nail on the head when he said something like, "now that any 14 year-old can mix, the challenge becomes to distinguish yourself by mixing especially well" [i'm paraphrasing]. In this sense, mixing is like poetry in that the entry-level bar is set pretty low. Not anybody can write a congent 10 page academic essay, but anybody who can speak at all can write poetry. The challenge then, is to write an especially good poem. In the same way, it's easier to put together a mix tape than it is to play three bar chords on the guitar (but not that much easier). From the Troggs to the Sex Pistols, kids have proved that rock and roll is not really that difficult. And then there are the Shaggs, who prove that some human beings are actually from Mars: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000I0QQ/">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000I0QQ/</a> peace, curt + + + Lewis LaCook replied: — Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com> wrote: Not anybody can write a cogent 10 page academic essay, > but anybody who can speak at all can write poetry. actually, curt, i think this is more likely the other way around…. bliss l + + + curt cloninger added: Hi Jim, I probably have all those plunderphonic tracks on one of my hard drives somewhere. I actually bought the original CD from him back in the day. I love it, because it is way processed, but you can still discern the original sources. But he's obviously doing it just to make his own music. None of it is even really allusive. Like Michael Jackson's "bad" becomes more of an ambient piece; it has has nothing to do with motown or pop. He's just treating it all as sound. I sample a bit of the plunderphonic stuff in this ridiculous mix (circa 1991): <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lab404.com/audio/tbomv/">http://www.lab404.com/audio/tbomv/</a> The james brown/public enemy break from 5:43-6:13 is all Oswald. peace, curt + + + Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> added: A local record shop had a copy of Oswald's Plunderphonics, so I bought it. Normally I just download music. It's somehow appropriately messed up that it'd be Plunderphonics I'd have to end up buying. These works were created between 1969 and 1997, with most of them created in the late eighties or early nineties. Plunderphonics comes with a 46 page interview with Norman Igma. I hear some of the same tunes as Vicki Bennett has used. Whether this is allusive on Bennett's part or not, I don't know. Probably not, since they both deal with popular music. Listening to Oswald's Plunderphonics, I am struck with the resemblances and dissimilarities with "Abridged Too Far". They are both trying to create new music, as opposed to simply remixing in such a way that the source material is more prominent than the mix. The music Oswald uses is almost always from popular music you would hear in North America from the fifties to the nineties, ie, rock and roll of one stripe or another (with a few exceptions, as in "White" by 'Gibbons Cry'), whereas the ATF sounds are from popular music from Europe and North America from the 20's to 90's. The earlier pieces by Oswald are less articulate musically, probably because the technology was less articulate. As the technology becomes more capable of subtle articulation, the music becomes more originally tuneful and interestingly percussive. One can imagine a program that has access to a huge collection of music. The program pre-listens to each recording and analyses the sound and categorizes it in samples of various lengths. Then spins a composition based on whatever logic of composition the programmer has the wit to devise. All future machines are now possible, by the way, except if they require faster processing than is now available. A computer can be any machine. So it's now no longer a matter of music progressing according to the technology that is available. All imaginable music machines are now possible. But then so is AI. ja + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. 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