RHIZOME DIGEST: 4.30.03

discussion

Posted April 29 2003 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 4.30.03

RHIZOME DIGEST: April 30, 2004 Content: +announcement+ 1. Rachel Greene: Fwd: [ The Thing ] Online Art Auction Starts Sunday, April 25th! 2. Cinque Hicks: Afrofusionist Art and Other Unsolemn Concoctions 3. Marisa S. Olson: POP_Remix @ Camerawork +opportunity+ 4. Clemente Padim: Reload Call 5. john j.a. jannone: [employment] Hunter College IT/Web Associate position +feature+ 6. Ryan Griffis: The Social Construction of Blogspace + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 4.24.04 From: Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: Fwd: [ The Thing ] ONLINE ART AUCTION STARTS SUNDAY, APRIL 25th! Begin forwarded message: From: THE THING <auction@thing.net> Date: April 23, 2004 5:48:42 PM EDT To: events@bbs.thing.net Subject: [ The Thing ] ONLINE ART AUCTION STARTS SUNDAY, APRIL 25th! Reply-To: events@thing.net THE THING ONLINE ART AUCTION 2004 Bidding begins on April 25 2004 at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://auction.thing.net">http://auction.thing.net</a>. Contact: Gisela Ehrenfried 212.937.0444 auction@thing.net The THE THING presents its fourth annual online art auction with participating artists Mariko Mori, John Miller, Daniel Pflumm, Beat Streuli, Miltos Manetas, Janine Gordon, Julia Scher, Ellen Harvey, Noritsohi Hirakawa, Joy Garnett, Peter Fend, among others. All funds raised will go to supporting THE THING'S commitment to the arts and social activism. At its core, THE THING is a social network, made up of individuals from diverse backgrounds with a wide range of expert knowledge. From this social hub, THE THING has built an exceptional array of programs and initiatives, in both technological and cultural networks. During its first five years, <bbs.thing.net> became widely recognized as one of the founding and leading online centers for new media culture. Its activities include hosting artists' projects and mailing lists as well as publishing cultural criticism. THE THING's multimedia lab has regularly hosted a variety of artists, including Vuk Cosic, Sebatian Luetgert, Nick Crowe, Prema Murty, Daniel Pflumm, Heath Bunnting, Beat Streuli and Mariko Mori. THE THING has also organized many events and symposia on such topics as the state of new media arts, the preservation of online privacy, artistic innovations in robotics, and the possibilities of community empowerment through wireless technologies. If you have any further questions about the auction or THE THING, please contact us at the number or email above. —————- THE THING receives funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. To view our activities please visit: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://bbs.thing.net">http://bbs.thing.net</a> THE THING is a 501©(3) organization. All donations are tax-deductible to the extent of the law. —————- THE THING /// 601 W 26th St 4th floor NY 10001 212.937.0444 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 4.27.04 From: Cinque Hicks (cinque@cinquehicks.com) Subject: Afrofusionist Art and Other Unsolemn Concoctions For your perusal: Electric Skin: Black Art and Techno-Culture News from the Front Lines is now online. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.electricskin.com">http://www.electricskin.com</a> Electric Skin culls contemporary visual art news from around the Internet. The site focuses on news of progressive, black visual art, including film and digital art in the US, Canada, Africa and the UK. Electric Skin's focus is non-exclusive and frequently includes news on technology, nonvisual arts, and news on artists of all cultures. Now featuring a conversation between DJ Spooky and Chris Ofili, plus a review of Ellen Gallagher, and lots more. En-joy. ch Cinqué Hicks, aka MAZE the Low Res <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cinquehicks.com">http://www.cinquehicks.com</a> ================================== Electric Skin: Black Art and Techno-Culture News from the Front Lines <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.electricskin.com">http://www.electricskin.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 4.30.04 From: Marisa S. Olson (marisa@sfcamerawork.org) Subject: POP_Remix @ Camerawork Hello. I'm writing to announce the opening of POP_Remix, at SF Camerawork. A description of the show is below. If you are in town, please stop by our opening, on Tuesday, May 11. It is going to be a TON of fun–with work made from Starsky & Hutch, Super Mario games, and Marilyn Monroe films, among other pop sources, this is probably the most fun I've ever had curating a show! We are also having a number of fun events, including a hacking demonstration by Cory Arcangel & Alex Galloway (5/10 in Mountain View, co-sponsored with Zero1 & Leonardo ISAST) and a screening of "Enjoy!" and "Value-Added Cinema" (5/18, in the downstairs theatre). Check here for more details: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sfcamerawork.org/events.html">http://www.sfcamerawork.org/events.html</a> POP_Remix May 11-June 12, Opening Reception May 11, 5-8pm SF Camerawork-1246 Folsom-SF, CA 94103 USA Cory Arcangel / BEIGE, Matthew Biederman, Anthony Discenza, Radical Software Group (RSG) featuring Alex Galloway, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Paul Pfeiffer {{This exhibition is accompanied by an issue of Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, featuring essays by Lev Manovich, Philip Sherburne, José Luis de Vicente, and others.}} The Pop art era of Warhol and Lichtenstein may have officially come to pass, but the movement has not ended. In today's moving image culture, the context of Pop art is ripe for reconsideration-a "remixing" if you will? The creative strategy of appropriation has only grown, in function and in source-material, since the Television experiments and video art of the 1960s. Just as Pop artists of that era lifted logos and vernacular imagery, the work in POP_Remix takes as its marrow appropriated segments of popular films, TV programs, and video games. The deconstructed and remixed results serve as meditations on mainstream image-making and its cultural import. Anthony Discenza is concerned with the engorgement of our lives by the images of "mediated culture." His work thus attempts to realize the decay of the images that work to "decay" our selves. This effort appears to us in the form of often painterly, abstract, or kaleidoscopic video (de)constructions. Here he presents portraits of three "Hosts," the yield of layering footage of seven major network news anchors. Paul Pfeiffer explores the visual histories of the film, TV, and digital/video eras, Pfeiffer's projects often take up issues in (and parallels among) religion, sports, colonialism, racism, masculinity, and power. In his photographic series, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Pfeiffer has "erased" iconic images of Marilyn Monroe from film stills, leaving only a hazy vacant landscape. Through techniques of parody, pastiche, and laborious dissection, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy explore the enculturating impacts of genre and narrative structure. For Every Shot, Every Episode, the McCoys created a database of every shot in every episode of "Starsky and Hutch." Viewers can choose to play disks categorizing the indexed data. In How I Learned, the McCoys similarly catalogued episodes from the show "Kung-Fu," rhetorically asking 'if all you ever knew about the world you learned from this show, what would you know?' Matthew Biederman is also engaged in deconstructing TV clips. In his AleatoryTV, a computer scans a channel of live TV for specific words via speech recognition algorithms. The words form a sentence, pre-selected by the artist. As the agent "hears" the words on TV, it samples the audio and visual content that accompanies it, placing the clip in a loop that is continuously played back on a large television. New utterances of the word replace old ones and the process begins anew each day. In 2x2 Alex Galloway, founder of the Radical Software Group (RSG) "degrades" video clips from popular films and TV programs into linear animations two pixels tall by two pixels wide. The flickering clips are played on GameBoys. Galloway's Prepared PlayStation 2 uses unmodified versions of the PlayStation game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 to exploit "bugs and glitches in the code to create dirty, jolting game loops." Both projects point to an internal collapse of the system within which they signify. In NES Home Movies: 8bit Landscape Studies Cory Arcangel spins a tale about his youth, traced by those images he grew up staring at, thus revealing his identity to be, in a sense "photosensitive." They work effects a reverse of the trajectory of the image's "evolution" from still to film to video to video game by reverse-engineering his 8-bit videos into panoramic photographs.His relayering of self-composed Detroit-style rock or old school raver tunes over remixed clips of Mario and his environs, in Video Ravings, brings new meaning to the work it mimes. In defiance to the commercially-driven "evolution" of machine culture, and in recognition of the formal origin of these remixes, Arcangel saves the new videos on game cartridges and runs them on original Nintendos. In each of these works we can begin to chart the cultural shift from accessing screen-based photographic images in the forms of cinematic projections, to television screens, to hand-held screens. With each shift there have come physical and cultural shifts, among them a change in the allowed modes of representation and access of these images. In each case, the machinery of a work of art dictates the conditions of its production, distribution, and-arguably-its interpretation. These issues are at the heart of Pop art, alongside questions about authorship, the status of the multiple, and interrogations of commodity fetishism. Overall, the exhibition serves as a meditation on mainstream image-making and its cultural import. Each project is at once accessible-even fun!-by virtue of its relationship to pop culture, while simultaneously revealing the deeper cumulative effects of our relationship to its content. Ultimately, we are invited to consider the impacts these popular lens-based genres have had upon the ways in which we choose to look at the world. -Marisa S. Olson, Curator SF Camerawork encourages emerging and mid-career artists to explore new directions in photography and related media by fostering creative forms of expression that push existing boundaries. This year marks our 30th Anniversary. We would like to extend special thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, Zero: One, Leonardo ISAST, the Hotel Tax Fund of San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Hosfelt Gallery, Lucasey Mounting Systems, Steven Blumenkrantz, Jona Frank, Anthony Laurino, and Thomas Meyer. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 4.25.04 From: Clemente Padín (7w1k4nc9@adinet.com.uy) Subject: Reload call F5 - Reload yto.cl (isabel aranda) 2004 español - english CONVOCATORIA yto.cl (isabel aranda) - artista visual - digital - e Ismael Frigerio director del Centro de Artes Visuales de Santiago CAVS. , le invitan a participar en la Convocatoria Internacional de Arte Correo F5 Reload, que se expondrá en el CAVS, Santiago de Chile. F5 Reload. Actualiza tu arte. Nuevos medios en el arte. Tecnología, comunicación y vanguardia. F5 Reload es la tecla del computador que se usa para actualizar los archivos que se están visualizando. Haz tu propio "reload". Enviar una obra que integre los nuevos medios en el arte. Puede ser en la técnica o en el tema. También se reciben textos teóricos. ¿Qué entiende usted por "nuevos medios"? Tamaño: A4 o libre Técnica: Libre. Las obras serán expuestas en el C.A.V.S (Centro de Artes Visuales de Santiago). Sin Jurado. Sin retorno de la obra. Deadline: 31 de Julio de 2004 Todas las obras serán publicadas en el sitio web: www.escaner.cl/artepostal (excepto las que sobrepasen los 300 kb.) No olvidar escribir dirección e-mail para informar y enviar certificados de participación. Si no tiene dirección e-mail por favor infórmenos. Enviar obras a: Isabel Aranda yto.cl Proyecto F5 Casilla 140 - Santiago 11. Santiago de Chile. Sólo animaciones digitales por e-mail: ytoaranda@lycos.es ó ytoaranda@hotmail.com (o si usted tiene problemas para pagar el correo) Nota: (2001) Moscas en la sopa: Por favor bajar CD : <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.escaner.cl/artepostal/uniacc2001">http://www.escaner.cl/artepostal/uniacc2001</a> (7MB) F5 - Reload Isabel Aranda (yto.cl) 2004 CALL Isabel Aranda * yto.cl * (visual - digital artist) and Ismael Frigerio director of the Center of Visual Arts of Santiago CAVS. invite you to participate in the International call of Mail Art : F5 Reload that will be exposed in the CAVS, Santiago de Chile. F5 Reload. Reload your art. New means in the art. Technology, communication and vanguard. F5 Reload is the key of the computer that is used to reload the files that are visualizing. Make your own "reload". Send a work that integrates the new means in the art. It can be in the technique or in the topic. Theoretical texts are also received. What do you understand for "new means?" Size: A4 or free. Technique: Free. Deadline: July 31 2004 The works will be exposed in the C.A.V.S (Center of Visual Arts of Santiago). No Jury. No return of the work. All the works will be published in the web site : www.escaner.cl/artepostal (except those that surpass the 300 kb.) Not forget send e-mail address please! I want inform and send participation certificates through e-mail. If you don't have address e-mail you please inform me. To send works to: Isabel Aranda yto.cl F5 Reload Casilla 140 - Santiago 11. Santiago de Chile. Only Digital animations through e-mail: ytoaranda@lycos.es or ytoaranda@hotmail.com (or if you have problems to pay the postal mail) Note: (2001) Flies on the soup: Please download CD : <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.escaner.cl/artepostal/uniacc2001">http://www.escaner.cl/artepostal/uniacc2001</a> (7MB) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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 Jessica Ivins at Jessica@Rhizome.org. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 4.27.04 From: john j.a. jannone (john@ballibay.com) Subject: [employment] Hunter College IT/Web Associate position HUNTER COLLEGE of The City University of New York Department of Film and Media Studies INFORMATION SYSTEMS ASSOCIATE for WEB ADMINISTRATION AND DIGITAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGY JOB DESCRIPTION The Information Systems Associate in the Department of Film and Media Studies is expected to be an authority on computer based media systems (primarily Macintosh), including: web server administration, web authoring, hardware and software networking, server and client side web programming, basic graphic design hardware and software and basic digital video and audio software and hardware. Duties expected of the Film and Media Information Systems Associate include: 1. Serve as Web Administrator in charge of maintaining all departmental web servers and the departmental web site. 2. Run regular technical training workshops (software and hardware) for undergraduate and graduate students. 3. Manage staffing, oversight, and scheduling in digital media labs. 4. Installing, troubleshooting and day-to-day maintenance of computer equipment and related peripherals, software management, and system scheduling. 5. As the technical expert in digital media systems, the Associate must consult with the department faculty and participate in the planning, designing and equipping of the new digital media facilities as well as develop long range resource upgrade strategies. 6. The Associate will be expected to work collaboratively with faculty and staff to devise and support the successful implementation of technology in the classroom, including managing the allocation of server space. 7. The Associate will conduct research in areas of computer based media production tools, peripherals and software and will make timely recommendations to faculty and staff. 8. The Associate will identify, train and supervise College Lab Assistants and student assistants appointed to the areas and facilities, which utilize computers and digital technology systems. 9. Cross platform, basic graphics, web design and programming, and basic digital video editing expertise is required and a working knowledge of digital video production equipment and digital/video interface is expected. 10. The Associate should have working familiarity with maintenance of computer networks and servers. Send a letter describing qualifications, experience and research agenda with resume and names of three references to: Dr. Jay Roman Chair, Film and Media Hunter College, CUNY 695 Park Ave. New York, NY 10021 Review of application will begin immediately. The search will remain until the position is filled. CUNY is an AA/EO employer M/F/D/V – john j.a. jannone <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.john.ballibay.com">http://www.john.ballibay.com</a> assistant professor, brooklyn college, cuny director, program in performance and interactive media arts <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.interactivearts.org">http://www.interactivearts.org</a> 718 951 4203 (office) 718 951 4418 (fax) office: 376 Gershwin Hall office hours Spring 2004: Tuesdays 1-4, by appointment. campus mailing address: 304 Whitehead Hall, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210-2889 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 4.30.04 From: Ryan Griffis (grifray@yahoo.com) Subject: The Social Construction of Blogspace Ryan Griffis The Social Construction of Blogspace "In these high tech times, the question isn't why publish, rather it's why not?" Interestingly, the statement above was made by zine publisher Edward Dean in 1989 in response to the question of why zine producers publish, but the axiomatic belief that technology practically demands, rather than enables, people to publish bears a striking resemblance to the stated motivations of many bloggers.1 Similar to this understanding of zines, blogs are also generally identified by their technology and form. As historians and theorists of both zines and blogs point out, any attempt at defining them according to content proves futile. Zines are often described to be non-commercial, cheaply produced periodicals on any number of topics, from popular to subcultural, which are created and distributed by individuals. A commonly accepted definition for blogs, short for weblogs, is frequently updated websites consisting of chronologically ordered and archived posts published by individuals or small groups using an informal and personal writing style.2 "Blogs have made the creation and publication of content as simple as browsing the Web. Blogging tools have removed virtually all the technical barriers that previously prohibited publication by the masses."3 The utopian ideals of participatory democracy found in the discourse surrounding both blogs and zines seem rooted in notions of access to communication technologies. Alternative forms of communication and distribution, allowed by increased contact with inexpensive and relatively easy to use technologies, are believed to "reactivate the memory of everyday life and reconstitute the narrative of daily practices and anonymous itineraries hidden in the thick folds of the social fabric."4 At the moment, blogs, unseating the deflated hype of the Internet in general, are often cited as the communicative form that best brings what de Certeau calls the "memory of everyday life" into the mediated space we call "public". It is this rhetorical function, and potential, of the "everyday" that seems to be implicit in how blogging is framed by its proponents as progressive. What seems to come through in the rhetoric and aesthetic of blogs is the power given to the local, the specific, the individual. In this sense, one could say that de Certeau's notions of a public sphere, one infused with informal networks of narrative and "how to" knowledge, meets the rational ideals of a Habermasian public based on consensus building through logical dialogue. But, I would argue, when one looks at the conversations both within and about blogs, the pragmatics of consensus break down into "mere opinions" as fast as ever. The publicness exhibited in blogs is one constructed of individuated spaces, where the movement of personalities can be identified and tracked. While there may be a strong communal ethic, blogs are sites of contact for externalized egos, and are definitely to be distinguished from other forms of communicative networks currently being organized, like Wikis, where the content and structure of a website are modified by members of a community in the process of communicating. Linguistic researchers have noted that "I" is the most common form of identification used, and the overwhelming number of active (not to say the most widely read) blogs are sites of personal storytelling, ranting and journaling.5 As one prominent blogger puts it, "a weblog used technology to bring the psychological you outside."6 The situation of mediated contact, or interface, between the individual and the "public," places the blogger in a position of an intermediary or mediator. For de Certeau, the transmission of communication through a network involves three levels: intermediaries, original sources, and the practices of circulation and transmission. Bloggers map quite well onto de Certeau's loose schema as mediators - those "who decode and recode fragments of knowledge, link them, transform them by generalization." These individuals are further defined as "linking agents" and "amateur mediators" who "distinguish themselves by the very particular interest and razor sharp attention that they bring to the slightest issues of life." Bloggers are valued, not for their objectivity and disinterestedness, but for their overt perspective and personality in how they filter through the haystack of media to find the needle that pricks interest. One of the strongest ideological imperatives within zine culture remains its steadfast opposition to commercial culture. This reactionary aspect, while often part of the literary content of the medium, became a very deliberate aesthetic practice. In the 1980s, producers of punk zines made sincere claims that such publications were: "authentic, and get to the heart of the matter. They exist outside of commodification; they are real. They come straight from the source."7 This sense of expressionist immediacy is most certainly found in discussions about blogging. Descriptions of blogs as the "pirate radio stations of the Web" that are ³first on the scene² are common among enthusiasts and theorists alike. One of the traits common to de Certeau's intermediaries is a wariness of official language and administrative tone. For de Certeau, this caution stems in part from a conscious and unconscious attempt to avoid the formation of dependent relationships based on authority. Aversion to institutional forms of speech is not something found just in personal journal style blogging, but even in those run by academics and researchers. Even the process of peer approval is handled in a pedestrian manner, blogrolls, and other forms of interlinking among sites with similar interests, are often as much signs of "solidarity" ("shout outs") with similarly minded writers as bibliographic citations. It has even been noted that within blog networks, those sites with a high rate of "solidarity links" occupied more central locations (read: more widely read/referenced) than did sites with more informational links, which tended to exist on the periphery.8 "The idea of communication immediately calls up that of the network, with all the ambiguity attached to that word. Does it mean networks materialized through an infrastructure allowing for the circulations of goods, furnishings or persons? Or networks plotting the implantation of a belief or of an ideology?"9 So what about the other two aspects of networked communication offered by de Certeau, the original media sources and the practices of circulation? It has been said that the "only aspect of mail art that one can state with any degree of certainty is that it is entirely dependent upon the international postal system for its existence."10 While the dependent relationship between blogs and the Internet is as self-evident as that between mail art and the postal system, stating this is pretty meaningless in and of itself. My Interest is how these relationships are perceived, and how that perception shapes action. As some have observed, the potential of networks is often discussed as if they "suddenly appear out of nowhere," despite their historical and ideological inheritence.11 And we certainly must be critical of all claims of immediacy and authenticity, not just because such claims depend on repeatable conventions. One of the ways that blogs as communicative tools are usually separated from more static websites, like the "personal home page", is that they exhibit a degree of "self-organization." Steven Johnson has explained that static websites lack the ability for self-organization because they are inhospitable to feedback.12 But weblogs - where feedback is part of the structure - are positioned as an "emergent" form of organizing. "Emergence," an explanation of order and regulation derived from self-organization and practice, rather than a top-down model imposed by authority, is often cited by those asserting the democratic potential of blogs.13 The power of "emergence" as a concept seems to come from its use of analogies to the natural world. Ant colonies and neural networks provide compelling examples of self-organization and order that seem to bypass ideological conflicts and make the democratization of knowledge not just desirable, but biologically determined. The problem to be solved is self-evident; it is the observable fact that representative forms of governance and media are incapable of managing "the scale, complexity and speed of the issues of the world today."14 New forms of communication, like blogs, are said to be able to generate a more natural form of direct democracy. But I wonder about the use of concepts like "emergence" and deference to what seems "natural." Critique of the political usage of "Nature" is, of course, nothing new, which is partly why I'm suspicious when some understanding of the behavior of ants is used to support beliefs about democracy, especially when those beliefs include technology. Weblogs depend on structure, and a fairly rigid and hierarchal one, to function as defined, both in terms of the visual presentation of information (chronological, vertical, etc.) and as it relates to the larger space of the Internet. This spatial aspect of weblogs is beginning to be discussed in terms of a political economy that includes the cultural and economic exchange of value through links.15 The mechanisms of access are also discussed, including search engines like Google that are considered as integral to blogging as "the Otis elevator was to skyscrapers."16 But what of the aesthetics of management utilized by blogs? The rigid, hierarchal structure of blogs is what is said to allow for the aesthetics of immediacy within the content. What does this understanding of content and form within weblog discourse mean politically? "The modern world has given us ways to experience the extension into space, ways that are more accessible (maybe) than older routes of mediation… Space has become obsolete."17 I certainly don't have any answers to my questions, just suggestions for discussion. The issue of space, where contact between subjectivity and social conventions occurs, is one that seems worth investigating. The dichotomy of form and content seen in blogs can be seen to intersect with how space is created and understood. If the form of distribution (blog tools and the Internet) creates an experience of public space as a field with no distance, then the content becomes a marker by which to recognize location. Blogs become "virtually local" within the communities in which they participate.18 If de Certeau's assertion that the local has consistently been an obstacle to the historical development of communication still holds true (if it ever did), what does the current situation represent? If there does seem to be a kind of return to the local, it has a largely rhetorical function. The battle between a homogenized, ideal public realm and a network of fragmented subjectivities seems to find resolution in the naturalist metaphors of self-organization, but there are no virtual Galapagos Islands from which to observe these developments as they occur. We are certainly moving into a paradigm of standardization in communication, and this movement involves managing space as much as knowledge. It may be the motion of emergent organization, but as always, the fuel used to power its mechanisms are the desires and interests of its active agents. If there can be no communication without standards and operations, the question is "Whose standards will we practice?" Will we organize as a "plurality other than the masses consuming and repeating imposed models,"19 or possibly "capitalize on the homogeneity found in networks to resonate far and wide with little effort?"20 Or will we emerge somewhere more familiar? At least I can be assured that if someone comes up with any answers they'll be posted somewhere, on someone's blog. Or even better… published in a zine. 1 in Mike Gunderloy's compilation for Pretzel Press called "Why Publish" available at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.zinebook.com/resource/gunderpublish.html">http://www.zinebook.com/resource/gunderpublish.html</a> 2 See: Jill Walker's definition drafted for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/revised_definition.html">http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/revised_definition.html</a> 3 Eric Janssen, "Weblogs Will Save the World," <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.webraw.com/theory/weblogworld_050903.shtml">http://www.webraw.com/theory/weblogworld_050903.shtml</a> 4 from Michel de Certeau, The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings, University of Minnesota Press, 1997 5 Stephanie Nilsson, "The Function of Language to Facilitate and Maintain Social Networks in Research Weblogs" <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eng.umu.se/stephanie/web/LanguageBlogs.pdf">http://www.eng.umu.se/stephanie/web/LanguageBlogs.pdf</a> 6 Joe Clark of JoeClark.org quoted in Nilsson 7 Fred Wright, "The History and Characteristics of Zines, 8 Nilsson 9 de Certeau 10 Stephen Perkins, "Mail Art and Networking Magazines (1970-1980), Zinebook.com 11 Alex Galloway and Eugene Thacker, "The Limits of Networking," sent to Nettime 3/15/04 12 Steven Johnson, Emergence, Scribner, 2001 13 Joichi Ito, "Emergent Democracy," v. 1.3, 2003 14 Ito 15 Jill Walker, "Links and Power: The Political Economy of Links on the Web," 2002 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/txt/linksandpower.html">http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/txt/linksandpower.html</a>; Clay Shirky, "Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality," 2003 16 Tim Dunlop, "If You Build It They Will Come," Evatt Foundation <a rel="nofollow" href="http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/91.html">http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/91.html</a> 17 Sean Wolf Hill from "Why Pubish? 18 Gary Thompson, "Weblogs, Warblogs, the Public Sphere and Bubbles" <a rel="nofollow" href="http://transformations.cqu.edu.au/journal/issue7/articles/text.htm#thompson">http://transformations.cqu.edu.au/journal/issue7/articles/text.htm#thompson</a> 19 de Certeau 20 Galloway and Thacker + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. 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