RHIZOME DIGEST: 6.2.02

discussion

Posted June 1 2002 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 6.2.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: June 2, 2002 Content: +announcement+ 1. Kim Machan: MAAP '02 in Beijing +opportunity+ 2. LEVEQUE PAULINE: net art competition +work+ 3. m e t a: eccex - vectleu - aerc +comment+ 4. Marisa Olson: Hacktivism as High {Tech} Art 5. Olga Goriunova: read_me 1.2 winners and honorary mentions + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 5.31.02 From: Kim Machan (kim.machan@maap.org.au) Subject: MAAP '02 "MOIST" Beijing 23 October - 10 November MAAP '02 "MOIST" Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Beijing 23 October - 10 November This years MAAP Festival moves to Beijing with the festival theme "MOIST" an evocative adjective suggestive of humidity; life; growth; loaded with references as wide as a fine foggy mist, a compost pile, a first kiss or a sweaty palm. Postioned in seeming oppostion to the mechanics of technology, MOIST will explore artists emotive infusion. The MAAP Festival is a contemporary art cultural event that explores the nexus of art and technology across a range of art forms and practices emphasising interactive multimedia, net art, digital video, video installation, and projects integrating new media. MAAP will present the festival in four core venues in Beijing. + The China Millennium Monument - an impressive official building equipped with excellent exhibition space and state of the art IT capability. The venue boasts a 31 metre curved screen made up of 56 programmable monitors and has Broadband capability. This venue will focus on Chinese/Australian new media art work. + The East Modern Art Centre - The large exhibition hall will accommodate major installations by 15 international artists. + The Central Academy of Fine Arts - Artists residencies program, forum + The Loft New Media Art Space - CDR, screenings & artists talks Since MAAP's inaugural festival in 1998 it has been based in Brisbane and Online presenting an annual festival and regional satellite events with a mix of support from government, corporate and educational sectors.Unprecedented support is emerging from our hosts in Beijing and we look forward to an exciting event that will attract the attention of Chinese and international key audiences. This year the Festival moves to Beijing, leaping into the region creating a unique event and opportunity that also celebrates the 30th Anniversary of China Australia relations. MAAP includes artists from over 12 different countries and will be the first international contemporary art exhibition imported into Beijing from a foreign organisation. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.maap.org.au">http://www.maap.org.au</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 5.31.2002 From: LEVEQUE PAULINE (LEVEQUE@villette.com) Subject: net art competition Keywords: game, audio, net.art VILLETTE DIGITAL International Electronic Arts and New Media Festival The Villette Digital festival is a joint initiative of the Cité des Sciences, the Cité de la Musique and the Parc de la Villette. It is both a showcase for major works from around the world and a forum for experimentation and study. Its aim is to bring together projects directly involved in the use of digital technologies and it encourages visitors to share in many experiments during their entertaining, participative and sensory experience. In this way, the festival's installations, concerts, shows, games, workshops and digital cinema explore the impact of new technologies on our everyday lives and the radical changes they are bringing about in our cultural landscape. MAJOR ONLINE NET ART COMPETITION on the theme of AUDIO GAMES On the occasion of the VILLETTE DIGITAL event to be held between 24 and 29 September 2002, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, the Parc de la Villette and the Cité de la Musique are organising a major international online net art competition. There will be no entry fee for this competition which will run from 1st May until midnight on the final entry date of 30 July 2002 (Paris time). It will be open to all and will reward the best work specifically designed for the Internet to illustrate the theme of "audio games". To participate, you must be at least eighteen years of age and complete the online entry form at the Internet address below including a direct Internet link (URL) pointing to the submitted work: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.villette-numerique.com">http://www.villette-numerique.com</a> The planning committee will shortlist twenty competitors and post their work without charge on the villette-numerique.com site. The jury will be composed of professionals in the field of net art, artists and representatives of various institutions : Sara Diamond (CA) www.codezebra.net, Joshua Davis (US) www.praystation.com, Nathalie Magnan (FR) Ensb-a Dijon, Miltos Manetas (US) www.electronicorphanage.com, Anne Roquigny (FR) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.next-">http://www.next-</a> movies.com, Bruno Samper (FR) www.panoplie.org, Guillaume Sorge (FR) www.d-i-r-t-y.com The jury will select three winners and the prizes will be presented on 29 September 2002 in the Grande Halle at la Villette. The competition regulations will be available on the Internet for consultation and printing at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.villette-numerique.com">http://www.villette-numerique.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.villette-numerique.com">http://www.villette-numerique.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.codezebra.net">http://www.codezebra.net</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.praystation.com">http://www.praystation.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.electronicorphanage.com">http://www.electronicorphanage.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.next-movies.com">http://www.next-movies.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.panoplie.org">http://www.panoplie.org</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.d-i-r-t-y.com">http://www.d-i-r-t-y.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE NEW ISSUE** Coco Fusco/Ricardo Dominguez on activism and art; JJ King on the US military's response to asymmetry and Gregor Claude on the digital commons. Matthew Hyland on David Blunkett, Flint Michigan and Brandon Labelle on musique concrete and 'Very Cyberfeminist International'. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm">http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 5.27.02 From: m e t a (meta@meta.am) Subject: eccex - vectleu - aerc <a rel="nofollow" href="http://meta.am/graphic/eccex/">http://meta.am/graphic/eccex/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://meta.am/graphic/vectleu/">http://meta.am/graphic/vectleu/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://meta.am/octave/aerc/">http://meta.am/octave/aerc/</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> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 5.28.2002 From: Marisa Olson (marisa@concentric.net) Subject: Hacktivism as High {Tech} Art Keywords: surveillance, media activism, language Currently on view at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art is "Open_Source_Art_Hack," a group show of artists poetically conflating hacking with open-sourcing. There is, already, a bit of a hacker ethos to open source. The idea that often commercially-valuable, always laboriously-constructed codes should be openly accessible (openly modifiable!) by all begs the invention of naughty plots à la Bruce Sterling's 1993 cult classic, "The Hacker Crackdown." But the artists in this show are not rerouting police emergency calls to phone- sex lines or breathing heavily into payphone receivers to rip off Baby Bells. They are co-opting existing means of surveillance or surveillance-culture indoctrination to make new comments about life in network culture. Incidentally, by participating in a major museum show, they are also helping to launch "hacktivism" into the colloquy of contemporary art… On Sundays, in New York, the curious can take a walking tour of the city's hidden cameras, led by members of the Surveillance Camera Players. The group has mapped over half of the city's estimated ten thousand strategically-placed cameras–though the total figure continues to rise, following post-911 rally- cries for increased surveillance. The Players have worked, through tours, performances, protests, and other activities, to protect the rights of Americans, outlined under the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, "against unreasonable searches and seizures." Americans, they say, have a right to observe those observing them. This mantra plays out, self-reflexively, in all of the work included in "Open Source Art Hack." In SCP's case, the surveillance camera is treated like a television camera, before which the group performs theatrical gems from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" to Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi." After six years of interventions, SCP has come to feel that passersby have become more their audience than the police eyes trained on their target cameras, as evidenced in protests in which members inform oblivious strollers that they were being watched. Videos of these performances and walking-tours comprise SCP's contribution to the show. Museum visitors (or otherwise oblivious strollers) will find themselves peering in at the videos in the museum's storefront window–an at-once typical site for the investment of scopophilic energy and atypical site for the museum-display of art. Next to SCP's videos, and further inside the museum, are the Radical Software Group's "Carnivore" clients. RSG's packet-sniffing machine monitors the traffic on a selection of computers–in this case, those in the museum's media lounge– and visualizes the docking-sites and use of pre-programmed keywords. Putting the "art" in "art hack," each RSG client has created a unique interface for this visualization. Particularly poignant is entopy8zuper's representation of active users as globe-circling airplanes trudging a crash-and-burn path where logoffs leave fiery pock-marks in an ambiguous web world. While "Carnivore" is modeled after the FBI's surveillance engine, RSG-founder Alex Galloway has shrugged off the typical hacker coat of arms, claiming to be more interested in exploring positive models of observation than undermining the state apparatus. Here, RSG, like its "Open Source Art Hack" peers, reestablishes mimicry as a beautiful, if scientifically-complex, form of defense. But what is it that is being defended against? For starters, it's the infusion of panoptic strategies into network culture. Whether it is packet sniffing or search engine data- cataloguing, internet users are always-already vulnerable to the search and display of their activities and communication. Indeed, it is not just that Google is archiving one's chat-group confessions, but the possibility that any and all future actions might be monitored that invokes a Foucaultian digital panopticon-an always-present eye casting an impact upon the moves we make. LAN's "Tracenoizer" clone sites exploit the abundance of unfiltered personal information online, creating sources of mis-information about websurfers bearing a data-based resemblance (say, a similar name) to "Tracenoizer" users. Filmmaker Harun Farocki, a welcome addition to the cadre of what has become a too-tight nepotistic circle of "new media" artists, explores these panoptic issues in his "Eye/Machine." Exposing the means and motives by which war machines look, Farocki pairs interviews of surveillance pilots with sample footage. The result is a document of the constructed realities (read: visions) of war and the impetus for incorporating military machinery into civilian life. Both Knowbotic Research and Cue P. Doll have turned established search mechanisms on their heads in creating alternative means of gathering information about the world's major companies and organizations. Knowbotic Research's entrancing installation has at its heart a portal for the exposure of the crack- vulnerabilities of a public group's server. Plastic containers flash and buzz with varying intensity–a comment on the physicality of the firewall–as data rolls and pops on screen, Vegas-style. Cue P. Doll's "CueJack" bites the tongue of the "CueCat," a barcode scanner that delivers users at the door of retail websites. "CueJack" also reads barcodes, but rather than touting the many fine products for sale by the manufacturer of the item you've scanned, "CueJack" takes you to a database of the corporate wrong-doings and related boycotts of said retailer. Both Knowbotic Research's installation and Cue P. Doll's scanner require readings with the body, thereby making users corporeally complicit in the {art-} hack activities. Radioqualia calls for sonic participation in their "Free Radio Linux" project. Artists Adam Hyde and Honor Harger have created an online and on-air radio station in which a computerized voice reads the Linux operating system code–an endeavor that will take years to complete. "Free Radio Linux" is the ultimate self-reflexive case of artists commenting on the character and relative complexities of existing channels of representation, distribution, and interpretation. Their project provides the sonic backdrop for the asking of several key questions underscored by "Open Source Art Hack." Perhaps most important is the question, "What is a code?" The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) defines it as "a set of unambiguous rules specifying the manner in which data may be represented in a discrete form." The fact that we use the same four-letter word to describe a system of representation that we do to refer to social norms (see dress "code") is less a matter of irony and more an indication of the degree to which that system of representation is a reflection of a dominant ideology. That special milieu we've named "network culture" is no more than a percentage of the population at large behaving and interacting in such a way as to self- reflexively trace their patterns of protocol-driven activity. Seemingly mechanical activity like the ping-pong game of one computer chatting with another was scripted by humans who have been enculturated in a society in which there exist elaborate codes of propriety and impropriety, in communicative exchange, and where a sort of social Darwinism has translated keeping up with the Joneses into keeping up with the OS's. However phantasmatic the traces of these social scripts are upon computer codes, their products are entirely tangible. Hacktivism, while admittedly entrenched in recognizing–if not following–rules of engagement, then seems a worthwhile means of attempting to dissect the ideological apparatuses at play in this closed circle of coded signification. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.newmuseum.org/">http://www.newmuseum.org/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.netartcommons.net/">http://www.netartcommons.net/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thehacktivist.com/">http://www.thehacktivist.com/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/">http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/">http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.tracenoizer.org">http://www.tracenoizer.org</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cuejack.com">http://www.cuejack.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://radioqualia.va.com.au/freeradiolinux/">http://radioqualia.va.com.au/freeradiolinux/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.atis.org/tg2k/">http://www.atis.org/tg2k/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.antiwargame.org">http://www.antiwargame.org</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/">http://tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/wwwhack.html">http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/wwwhack.html</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 5.22.02 From: Olga Goriunova (og@avia.formoza.ru) Subject: read_me 1.2 winners and honorary mentions read_me 1.2 software art / software art games <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/">http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/</a> on-line: October-February 2001-2002 off-line: 18-19 of May, Moscow Macros-center, Moscow The jury (Amy Alexander, Florian Cramer, Cue P. Doll, RTMark and Alexei Shulgin) voted to award prizes to three projects: DeskSwap, ScreenSaver, and Textension. The term "software art" is a decidedly broad category, and each of the awarded projects takes a very different approach to it. The festival guidelines originally called for the awarding of first, second and third prizes. However, the jury felt that ranking such disparate projects with respect to one another would be artificial. Therefore, in recognition of the fact that "software art" is not simply one genre but encompasses a variety of approaches, the jury has decided to dispense with the rankings and award each of the three selected projects equivalent prizes. Since read_me 1.2 is one of the pioneering festivals of software art we felt it necessary to open up the field rather than to prematurely narrow it down. We consider software art to be art whose material is algorithmic instruction code and/or which addresses cultural concepts of software. For us this implies not restricting software art to PC user applications, nor even just to executable machine code. Each of the three winning projects fits our concept of software art in a different way. Since we wanted to communicate the scope and potential of software art as broadly as possible, we gave, in addition to the three prizes, a total of five honorary mentions: to Re (ad.htm, Tracenoizer, Carnivore, Portret of President and WinGluk Builder. It should be said that very few of the pieces submitted had any political or activist usefulness, although several pretended to. While the jury appreciated the diversity of the works entered, we were somewhat dismayed by the scarcity of political content. + + + SCREEN SAVER by Eldar Karhalev and Ivan Khimin Of the three awarded pieces, "Screen Saver" is the most challenging to the concept of software and software art. At first glance, it doesn't seem to be software in its own right. The piece consists of a simple step-by-step instruction for configuring the screen saver of the Microsoft Windows operating system. As a result, the PC is turned into a display of a giant rectangle which slowly moves from the left to the right corner of the screen and back, slightly modulating its color in the process. This is a simple, elegant and beautiful piece. It could be called a black square of digital art, but that wouldn't explain why it is interesting as software. "Screen Saver" is software in at least two respects: On the one hand, it shows that software art can be post- or meta-software which, instead of being coded from scratch, manipulates existing software, managing to turn it upside down even without much technical sophistication. It reprograms Windows without employing programmer's skills. On the other hand, its formal instruction for misconfiguring the software is itself a software code. "Screen Saver" thus shows that software doesn't have to be written in computer programming languages. In an age of code abundance thanks to personal computers and the Internet, Software Art no longer needs to design algorithms from scratch, but can be disassemblings, contaminations and tweaks of code found in the public. This makes contemporary software art distinct from the computer-generative art of the 1950s to 1980s. "Screen Saver" exemplifies this postmodern condition of software art in an almost paradigmatic simplicity. It brings up such questions as: Are there software readymades? Can non-programmers reprogram systems? Which does limit or extend which, and what does prevail in the end; the manipulation or the object manipulated, the artistic hack or Microsoft Windows? Another proof of "Screen Saver" being software is the fact that, although curious for the jury, its original authors have split over different opinions and forked the codebase into two separate projects (similar to programs like Emacs and XEmacs). The second was entered under the name ".scr" to the competition; it differs from "Screen Saver" only in its instruction to choose a different font in the Windows screensaver setup. As a result, the rectangle doesn't slide from left to right, but bounces in all four directions. We found this result inferior to the more minimalist and hypnotic "Screen Saver". As in any program code, one changed instruction can make a big difference. We therefore feel it is justified that we award only "Screen Saver", not ".scr". One final note: the jury noticed that "Screen Saver" breaks under Windows XP. The rectangle becomes much smaller and only bounces in the middle portion of the screen, thus destroying the effect. Like much great art, "Screen Saver" is a real period piece. + + + DESKSWAP by Mark Daggett This is a program that critically considers the problem of the standardization of personal computer users' workspaces. It allows you to compare your desktop with desktops of other people, living in different countries and speaking unknown languages. Each time you get terrified by the consequences of globalization that manifest themselves in the predetermined aesthetic solutions of your surroundings: sofa from IKEA, wallpaper from Microsoft. The voyeuristic aspect of the project provides a certain relief, which you experience looking at other people's desktops: everything is ok, people are using their computers for the same rubbish as you - same programs, same files and folders. But - maybe "serious" users just don't have time to play around with strange programs like Deskswap? Deskswap is made in a very simple and elegant way; it doesn't pretend to be more than it is. It is effective, interesting and very user-friendly. The program is used with great pleasure by "normal" people (! not just by media art curators). That's because Deskswap offers the possibility of communication in our time of global alienation. + + + TEXTENSION by Joshua Nimoy In terms of aesthetic enjoyment, Textension is a clear winner. It is delightful, exciting, fantastic to play with. It points in many directions at once, suggesting that hypertext could be fun and beautiful and profound in all kinds of new ways that it isn't today. Interestingly, the way to this development is pointed out by the typewriter, which produced beautiful things through the physical action of metal. Textension is the first piece of software to pick up effectively this very lost thread. Note: The jury is sad that mode #9 does not have a "save" feature, in which branching constructions could be stored by an author and reread by readers, in a perpetuation of the author/reader model of literature; zoom and rotate features would of course then also be nice. + + + HONORARY MENTIONS: RE (AD.HTM by mez breeze PORTRET OF PRESIDENT by Vladislav Tselischev TRACENOIZER by LAN WINGLUK BUILDER by CooLer CARNIVORE by RSG + + + <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/">http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/</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 22. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. 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