RHIZOME DIGEST: 3.8.02

discussion

Posted March 7 2002 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 3.8.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: March 8, 2002 Content: +work+ 1. Annette Weintraub: The Mirror That Changes +book+ 2. m e t a: 4 x 4 generative design +opportunity+ 3. njenkins@uwic.ac.uk: 12-12–call for submissions 4. electric@telus.net: Call for Entries–DIGITALIS 2 5. pz@werkleitz.de: EMARE_call for applications 6. Kanarinka: CALL TO ARTISTS–info@blah +feature+ 7. Jonah Peretti: The Artist-As-Knowledge Producer + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 3.3.02 From: Annette Weintraub (weintraub@ccny.cuny.edu) Subject: The Mirror That Changes, Annette Weintraub <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.virtualthemeworld.com/mirror">http://www.virtualthemeworld.com/mirror</a> THE MIRROR THAT CHANGES S. as the mirror changes with the color of its subject, so [water] alters with the nature of the place… In time, and with water, everything changes. Leonardo Da Vinci The Mirror That Changes is a meditation on the use of water and its limits, bridging personal use and environmental impact. The visual and aural qualities of moving water create a languid atmosphere in which overtly romantic representations of water intersect with narratives introducing issues of scarcity, purity and equity. Commonplace uses of water (washing clothes, bathing, cooking) find their parallel in the wider forces of nature (rain, ice and flood), linking individual action and global consequence. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.virtualthemeworld.com/mirror">http://www.virtualthemeworld.com/mirror</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ STATE OF THE ARTS SYMPOSIUM * UCLA APRIL 4-6, 2002 * RHIZOME DISCOUNT * <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eliterature.org/state">http://www.eliterature.org/state</a>> ELO invites Rhizome subscribers to join leading web artists, writers, critics, theorists for the seminal e-lit event of 2002. Rhizome subscribers who register before FEB 15 2002 may register at ELO member rates ($25 discount). + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 2.26.2002 From: m e t a (meta@meta.am) Subject: 4 x 4 generative design Keywords: publish, programming, language, interface, design 4 x 4 generative design : beyond photoshop <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.friendsofed.com/books/4x4/generative_design/index.html">http://www.friendsofed.com/books/4x4/generative_design/index.html</a> new artwork, writings, and code by - adrian ward - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/adrianward.html">http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/adrianward.html</a> golan levin - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/golanlevin.html">http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/golanlevin.html</a> lia - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/lia.html">http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/lia.html</a> meta - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/meta.html">http://www.friendsofed.com/4x4/generative/meta.html</a> + + + the computer screen is a compositional viewfinder. it can only see so much. everything that appears there is constructed of code. text. language. applications. file formats. operating systems. while we are in front of the screen they become the basis of our behavior. we can only do what the program and the operating system allow us to do. we come to view these structures as absolutes, as independent entities. yet all this code, these formats and protocols and platforms, are but one small visible aspect of a much larger structure. a process. a movement and flow that is completely dynamic and fluid and alive. it is not our tools and technologies but the rigidity of our preconceptions that limit us. we define our systems in a rigid manner forgetting all the while that our systems define us. generative applications short-circuit this routine, providing an escape from our own habitual behavior. an escape from our own limitations via a partial surrender of control. the chaos and complexity and flux that permeates all of nature is allowed to bleed into our most controlled and logical structures. the programmer allows themselves to become programmed. the designer allows themselves to become designed. //m 127.0.0.1 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://meta.am/216.71.65.73">http://meta.am/216.71.65.73</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Leonardo Music Journal (LMJ) 11 includes a double audio CD, "Not Necessarily 'English Music,'" curated by musician, composer, writer and sound curator David Toop. The CDs feature pieces from pioneering U.K. composers and performers from the late 60s through the mid-70s. Visit the LMJ website at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 3.6.02 From: njenkins@uwic.ac.uk (njenkins@uwic.ac.uk) Subject: 12-12–call for submissions Call for submissions: 12-12 Performance and time based practice live web cast. Saturday May 18th 2002 Time Based Practice. University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. The Time Based Practice dept of UWIC has recently set up audio and video web casting facilities as part of a research post. We are currently inviting submissions of work to be shown as part of the live web cast, to be screened along side work by students and staff from the Time Based Department. Submitted work should have an emphasis on live time based activity (performance, sonic, video, net.art and interdisciplinary practice) and we are particularly interested in work specifically designed for Internet broadcast. The show will be broadcast live from 12 noon to midnight. Although we are unable to offer financial support or artists fees, this represents a unique opportunity to showcase work to an international audience. The work will be performed and broadcast from the Space Workshop, the Time Based Studio area, sited at the Howard Gardens campus of UWIC. For full details, application form and submission guidelines, please see our website: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.timebased.org.uk">http://www.timebased.org.uk</a> or send SAE to: 12-12 Time Based Practice Cardiff School of Art and Design. University of Wales Institute, Howard Gardens, Cardiff. CF24 0PS. email: timebased@uwic.ac.uk closing date for submissions 22 March 2002 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.timebased.org.uk">http://www.timebased.org.uk</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE ART ISSUE** Peter Fend 10 page special, Andrew Gellatly on selling art online, Benedict Seymour on the closure of London's Lux Centre, Michael Corris on Conceptual art, Hari Kunzru in Las Vegas. Reviews: Don't blow IT conference, Wizards of OS, Wolfgang Shaehle's 2001 Show <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/current/index.htm">http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/current/index.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 3.8.02 From: electric@telus.net (electric@telus.net) Subject: Call for Entries–DIGITALIS 2: THE SPIRITUAL IN DIGITAL ART Call for Entries: DIGITALIS 2: THE SPIRITUAL IN DIGITAL ART The Digitalis Digital Art Society and the Evergreen Cultural Centre announce DIGITALIS 2: THE SPIRITUAL IN DIGITAL ART, a group exhibition of digital print, object, interactivity, music and performance. The exhibition will run from February 23 - March 29, 2003. Please submit a maximum of 3 low resolution JPEG or GIF files as well as a bio, artist statement and proposal to electric@telus.net by June 1, 2002. The Evergreen Cultural Centre <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca">http://www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca</a> is located in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, near Vancouver (3 hours north of Seattle.) Proposed work can be in the form of print, objects such as stereo lithography output, interactive CD/DVD-ROM and Web works, and computer aided music and performance. Shipping to the gallery will be the responsibility of the artist. The gallery will pay return shipping costs. For more information please contact James K-M, DIGITALIS curator, at electric@telus.net. DIGITALIS 1: A GROUP EXHIBITION OF DIGITAL PRINT took place in December 2001. For an overview please see <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.undergroundart.120seconds.com/">http://www.undergroundart.120seconds.com/</a> (This is not a 'new age' exhibition per se, but is inspired by the 1987 exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890 - 1985 which included Rothko, Hilma af Klint, Kandinsky, O'Keefe, Beuys, Taeuber-Arp and many others.) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca">http://www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.undergroundart.120seconds.com/">http://www.undergroundart.120seconds.com/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 3.6.02 From: pz@werkleitz.de (pz@werkleitz.de) Subject: EMARE_call for applications European Media Artists in Residence Exchange EMARE–Grants for European Media Artists for England, Scotland, Germany and Netherlands The eighth European Media Artists in Residence Exchange will take place in Autumn 2002 to Spring 2003. Europe based Media Artists in the fields of digital media including internet and computer based art, filmmakers, sound and video artists are invited to apply for a two month residence based stipend at Hull Time Based Arts, Kingston Uppon Hull in England; at Duncan of Jordanstone College School of Television and Imaging, Dundee, Scotland, at V2 Organisation, Rotterdam, Netherlands or at Werkleitz Gesellschaft's Center for Media Arts Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Students are not permitted, but young artists encouraged. EMARE includes a grant of 2.000 Euro, free accomodation, 250 Euro travel expenses, access to the technical facilities and media labs and a professional presentation. Entries should include a CV, (audio)visual reference projects documentation and a proposal sketch for the project which should be developed within EMARE. Artists with residence in or identity card for EU and associated countries should contact one of the Contact following institutions for further details and application form or visit the homepage: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.werkleitz.de/emare">http://www.werkleitz.de/emare</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 3.3.02 From: Kanarinka (kanarinka@ikatun.com) Subject: CALL TO ARTISTS–info@blah CALL TO ARTISTS :: info@blah :: mining the data glut :: a month long exhibit in a Boston MA gallery and on the internet in Fall 2002 All of the below information can be found online here: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ikatun.com/infoblah">http://www.ikatun.com/infoblah</a> Call To Artists Submissions deadline: April 1, 2002 iKatun, a Boston-based nonprofit collaborative, is looking for artists to submit visual, sound, performance, digital and scientific materials for INFO@BLAH, a month long multimedia exhibit planned for Fall 2002. INFO@BLAH will take place in a Boston area gallery space and on the Internet. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ikatun.com/infoblah">http://www.ikatun.com/infoblah</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 2.22.2002 From: Jonah Peretti (jonah@eyebeam.org) Subject: The Artist-As-Knowledge Producer Keywords: science, research, knowledge production, art world A Conversation between Jonah Peretti, Director of R&D and Post-Graduate Studies at Eyebeam, and design engineer and technoartist Natalie Jeremijenko Part II: The Artist-As-Knowledge Producer Eyebeam (www.eyebeam.org) is a not-for-profit organization established in 1996 to provide access, education, and support for artists, students, and the general public in the field of art and technology. Eyebeam is in the process of creating a research and development division, and I recently had an extended conversation with the newest member of our R&D advisory committee, design engineer and technoartist, Natalie Jeremijenko (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/">http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/</a>). She is in a unique position to reflect on the role of technical innovation in the context of the art world. Her work has been exhibited at major art institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New York Museum of Modern Art. She has also developed technology projects at leading research labs, including Xerox PARC, Stanford's design engineering program, and the Center for Advanced Technology at New York University. She currently has an appointment at NYU's Center for Advanced Technologies and at Yale University, where she is creating a Product Design Studio and an exhibition incubation lab. + + + JP: You recently gave a talk at MIT entitled, "the artist as knowledge producer." NJ: Yes. In the information age, what is information is very much determined by the hard sciences, economics, or scholarship. Generally, it is not recognized that artists can also produce knowledge, even facts. JP: So have you produced a fact when you were working as an artist? NJ: Well…[laughter]…ideas become facts when they are persuasive enough that other people see them as almost incontestable. I am obviously interested in this process and in my own work I do try to use some of the very persuasive strategies of representation that are used in the natural sciences. This is one of the reasons I use empiricism or empirical representations. JP: But does it produce a fact or does it just make people think about scientific representation more critically? NJ: In my own work, this distinction is tricky to manage. The papers that I am producing about the One Tree project. You know the One Tree project, with all the clones of trees? JP: Yes. (See www.onetrees.org.) NJ: Right. It's obviously a very simple demonstration. JP: A demonstration that genetics isn't destiny, that there are still many differences between the trees even though they are cloned? NJ: Right. But the problem that I had with exhibiting the one tree project where the clones were lined up side-by-side was very simple: everyone who came felt cheated that these trees did not look the same. They seemed to think "this flaky artist." JP: Right, like you messed up the science or something. NJ: Yes. It is easier to question the artist's grasp of the science, than to understand this very simple demonstration and the challenge it issues to the popular misconceptions of genetic control of organisms. If the environment was exactly the same and the genes were exactly the same, then perhaps what genes control is actually much more partial than the way that the popular imagination has been informed. If you look at a river you do not immediately assume that there is a central processing unit or a genetic algorithm that controls its branching structure. Yet everyone can recognize that the form of the river and the branching structure of trees is similar. Yet we assume one is controlled completely by genes and the other is not. There is a whole lot of work that looks at how much genes do control - independent of the nature/nurture question. When I was an aspiring neuroscientist, I was taught that there is some sort of ideal form that is mitigated or somehow influenced by the external nature. Rather than understanding that the external environment is as important to growth as the so-called book of life, or code, or central processing. Getting that idea across. JP: Well let me ask you, are you just "getting the idea across" or does the One Tree project actually help produce knowledge that proves that the idea is right? NJ: It is both. Of course, it is both. It is an on-going spectacle. The trees are now being planted in pairs in public places throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. So we have many years to answer this question. But as a simple demonstration people do have to answer the question, "But why are they different?" How they answer that is obviously not completely in my control. It is interesting, however, that the only people who didn't see that they were different were the art critics. In none of the reviews, did they actually comment on the differences I was framing: that these trees, genetically identical, grown in environmentally identical situations, were different. JP: Poor art critics! They became art critics because they didn't understand science, and now they have to review your shows. NJ: Well, it is a simple thing to notice. But we have to look to the particular institutional context. The art critics missed out because they were walked around by the curators, press packs in hand. The curators in that show were invested in a particular sort of corporate celebration of this idea that the biotechnological revolution has already happened hence the show's name Paradise NOW! JP: So One Tree was offering a counter-example to this vision? NJ: Yes. Material evidence that demonstrates quite unequivocally that genes aren't comprehensively controlling. JP: This makes me think of accounts of Boyle's air pump experiments. He would place a bird in the air pump and the gentleman of science would watch as the air was evacuated causing the bird to die. This was simultaneously a dramatic spectacle and a proof of the existence of the vacuum. But despite its striking aesthetic and dramatic appeal, this was never seen as art. NJ: The people who are really behind my work don't tend to be the established art critics. And that is a problem in actually showing this work. JP: Sure, but your work has been displayed at the Whitney, MoMA, the Guggenheim. NJ: But the issue is what happens when it is exhibited. Like with One Tree, if it had been reviewed in a different way it could have enabled a different sort of public discourse. I used to get frustrated that such a simple demonstration could be misread. But then you need to think about the political context. Take for instance Suicide Box at the Whitney Biennial. JP: What did you show? Did you show video? NJ: It was the video. So here is this footage captured by a high end Silicon Graphics machine with custom software that was a hell of a thing to build, deploy, install and maintain in the middle of nowhere to capture the footage. But the curators at the Whitney wrote about it as: "simulated footage of suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge." They immediately assumed that they were not real, that it was not true. So all of this work producing this empirically gathered evidence of this actual tragic social phenomena was completely and immediately dismissed. Any question a viewer might have about how to understand these images was closed down. They did not check with me. They didn't say, "Is this real?" It was immediately assumed it was not, and could not be real, largely because it was produced by an artist. So in both One Tree and Suicide Box there was strong, completely visual and unambiguous evidence of something that was radically reconfigured in the curatorial context. In both of those cases, you can see the empiricism is overridden by the social institution in which it is presented. JP: We have talked a bit about the individual artist's status as a knowledge producer, but I am interested to hear your thoughts on technoart collectives. What do you think about underground organizations- -like the Bureau of Inverse Technology, the Institute for Applied Autonomy, Etoy, or RTMark–that hide the identities of their members and sometime attempt to mislead people in order to achieve political goals? What do you think of this as a strategy? NJ: Obviously, I think a lot of it. I call this phenomena "corporate art" since it reproduces bureaucratic fronts. And I think each organization is quite different. RTMark obscures the people involved but "For Cultural Profit" is clearly their mission. The people at RTMark use different names and changed identities. But Etoy, for instance, it is very much a rock band phenomena - they dress the same and produce a brand identity. For the Bureau, they obscure on the level of what the organization is for and what it does, in order to confuse it with other organizations or corporations. The roles are circumscribed so that I am "known to be an engineer for the Bureau of Inverse Technology." JP: Well, this is also mocking the passive voice that is used in science and research. NJ: Right. Because technological culture is produced by this dispersed accountability. Who is actually producing it? Who can you point to who actually wrote the Microsoft operating system? No one can be held accountable, it is like "well…I just did the user interface" or "I did part of the database structure." It is this condition of diffuse accountability that is very crucial to understanding and perhaps intervening in technoculture. At the Bureau, conceptual authorship is left hanging, which has been confusing for people. There is this anxiety: "Is it real? Is it simulated? What sort of organization would video tape suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge? Am I being tricked?" But this is exactly this productive anxiety that calls into question the corporate bureaucratic fronts that have the conceptual authorship. JP: The other thing about these organizations is that a lot of the members also work at government or university research labs. Do you think that underground tech-art collectives are just a parody of their mainstream counterparts or do you think they are a place where real knowledge production can happen? NJ: There is a real production of youth culture and alternative culture that this "corporate art" is a vanguard for. They are not just empty ironies, they are organizing real human activities, for example the two of us sitting here spending our time talking about them. Besides the Bureau has lasted twice as long as the corporate lab Interval Research did. These collectives are as real as it gets. JP: Thank you, Natalie. It has been a pleasure speaking with you. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eyebeam.org">http://www.eyebeam.org</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/">http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://bureauit.org/data/">http://bureauit.org/data/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this free publication, please consider making a contribution within your means. We accept online credit card contributions at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Or call us at +1.212.625.3191. Contributors are gratefully acknowledged on our web site at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3">http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3</a>. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Alex Galloway (alex@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 10. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe.rhiz">http://rhizome.org/subscribe.rhiz</a>. 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