RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.09.03

discussion

Posted Aug. 8 2003 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.09.03

RHIZOME DIGEST: August 9, 2003 Content: +announcement+ 1. Rachel Greene: JEFF GOMPERTZ / FAKESHOP: PROJECTS FOR 3 ASIAN CITIES 2. Mushon Zer-Aviv: The Right to Flash - A petiton demanding equal Flash rights for Right-To-Left languages 3. fee: Announcing the closure of the-phone-book.com by March 2004 +opportunity+ 4. Wilfried Agricola de Cologne: Call for entries: Netart from Asian-Pacific area 5. Andrew Hutchison: Cybernetic garments +work+ 6. Jim Andrews: Ana Maria Uribe +comment+ 7. Curt Cloninger: on archiving, ephemera, and analog distortion +feature+ 8. Rachel Greene: Matt Locke's essay on relational aesthetics, 'Are You Awake? Are You In Love?' + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 8.02.03 From: Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: JEFF GOMPERTZ / FAKESHOP: PROJECTS FOR 3 ASIAN CITIES Begin forwarded message: From: Esther McGowan (emcgowan@ArtsInternational.org) Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 3:25:42 PM US/Eastern To: Subject: Please Join Us! ARTS INTERNATIONAL presents a World New Media Blender Event & Exhibition JEFF GOMPERTZ / FAKESHOP: PROJECTS FOR 3 ASIAN CITIES Opening Reception & Artist Presentation: August 7, 2003 7pm - 9pm Gallery Hours: August 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21 1pm - 4pm Arts International Gallery 251 Park Avenue South, Fifth Floor Corner of E. 20th Street & Park Avenue South RSVP: (212) 674-9744, Ext. 218 Click here for on-line press release, including images and more information: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://artsinternational.org/whats_new/gompertz.htm">http://artsinternational.org/whats_new/gompertz.htm</a> Combining Net technologies with traditional tools of multi-media production, Jeff Gompertz has been creating web specific installations and installation specific websites since 1995. Built around contemporary themes, these projects incorporate architectural, digital video/imaging, net broadcasting, audio and performance. Since the founding of the artist collective Fakeshop (www.fakeshop.com) in 1997, his production methods have included bringing these elements to work in collaborative projects. Winner of a Pollock-Krasner award and exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Deitch Projects, Eyebeam, Franklin Furnace, and Gavin Brown, among many other galleries and museums internationally, Gompertz is perhaps best known for his interactive Japanese capsule hotel projects, installed at The Kitchen in 2001 and included in the Cooper Hewitt Museum's New Hotels for Global Nomads exhibition in 2003. At Arts International, Gompertz will make a presentation of works currently in progress/proposal form to be realized at architectural sites in three Asian cities: the Hanoi Army Museum in Hanoi, Vietnam; the skeleton buildings of downtown Bangkok, Thailand; and the Russian Cultural Center/Gem Mining Company in Vientianne, Laos. Combining elements of installation, digital imaging, video-conferencing, and web-design to create "architectural interventions" at each site, the projects will also include collaborations with local artists and performers to explore the social, political, and historical context of each chosen site. The presentation at Arts International will also include media documentation of the award-winning capsule hotel project already completed with the cooperation of owner/operators of capsule hotels in Osaka and Tokyo, Japan, made possible with help from the Japan Foundation, Franklin Furnace and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. On the afternoon of August 7th, Gompertz and architect Jose Salinas will preview these three new proposals in a mixed-media format. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 8.03.03 From: Mushon Zer-Aviv (mushon@zeraviv.co.il) Subject: The Right to Flash - A petiton demanding equal Flash rights for Right-To-Left languages ———————————————————————= The Right to Flash - A petiton demanding equal Flash rights for Right-To-Left languages ———————————————————————= ——————————————— The Right to Flash is the initiative of Amir Dotan (London, UK), Mushon Zer-Aviv (Tel-Aviv, Israel) and Naim Kamel (Ramallah, Palestine). It was launched in July 2003 in order to make sure the middle east, doesn=92t get left behind the development of the internet, believing it to be a powerful tool for overcoming differences and for new methods of communication. In the case of Flash both Palestinian users and Israeli users are united by the similarity of our languages, both unfortunately left behind by Macromedia= =92s Flash MX technology. Exerpt from the petition: "…Macromedia Flash does not support Right-to-left languages. It is broken and needs to be fixed. It currently doesn't meet the standards we've come to expect from a company, which constantly expresses a commitment to show the world 'what the web can be'…" We believe The Right to Flash is universal and shouldn=92t be restricted by cultures or languages. We look forward to start speaking Flash in our own languages and to fully use its potential to make the web all that it can be. PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION ON: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.the-right-to-flash.com">http://www.the-right-to-flash.com</a> ———————————————————————= ———————————————————————= PLEASE FORWARD THIS MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE, MAILING LISTS OR WEB NEWS-POSTS= AS YOU CAN. ———————————————————————= ———————————————————————= + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 8.04.03 From: fee (fee@the-phone-book.ltd.uk) Subject: Announcing the closure of the-phone-book.com by March 2004 Hello everyone, December 1st 2003 will be the last edition of the-phone-book.com. If you have always liked the idea of writing a 150-word story, but never quite got around to submitting one, now is your last chance (submissions close at midnight GMT on November 1st 2003). By February 2004, the end of our last edition, the-phone-book.com will have reached the grand old age of three. The international success of this project is a tribute to our writing community; however, we cannot leave without also praising our Editor, Ben Stebbing. Every edition he has been faced with thousands of stories and has had the un-enviable task of whittling them down to the 100-150 we have been able to fund. We thank him for his fantastic work. We must also show appreciation for the male 'voice of the-phone-book', David Williams, who has delightfully brought our collection to life each quarter under the energetic direction of Ben Jones. (For those who haven't guessed already, Fee is the female voice…). the-phone-book.com has been a labour of love for all people involved, and we greatly thank Arts Council England and Arts Council England, North West for their ongoing support and encouragement. Thanks to them we will be leaving an archive of twelve editions - equalling over a thousand stories, several exhibitions, an audio CD and an anthology from year one, a vast international community, and an entire wall of folders containing all submissions from the last three years. Instead of the usual new edition, March 2004 will be celebrated with an event to launch a new direction for the creators. After that time the complete archive, mailing list and chatroom will continue to be available for as long as we are able to sustain them, and we hope our community will continue to be inspired by wireless technologies as a distribution platform who knows, we may well return for special one-off editions or collaborations. Ben Stebbing will be developing his own projects, and the-phone-book Limited will carry on commissioning new works of innovative content for mobile phones via our other projects, artones.net, the-sketch-book.com, our workshop series and some new projects in development. Anyone wishing to keep in touch with us after March 2004 is invited to contact Ben Stebbing (ben@benstebbing.co.uk), Ben Jones (ben@the-phone-book.ltd.uk) or Fee Plumley (fee@the-phone-book.ltd.uk). Our heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who has ever written, read or listened to our collection, whether on their phone, their computer, at an exhibition, or at any of our presentations. Warm regards, the-phone-book.com team. [apologies for cross postings, please forward] )) more info (( <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.the-phone-book.ltd.uk">http://www.the-phone-book.ltd.uk</a> - creative content for mobile phones worldwide fee plumley production director the-phone-book Limited po box 134 manchester m21 9wz united kingdom + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 8.06.03 From: Wilfried Agricola de Cologne (agricola-w@netcologne.de) Subject: Call for entries: Netart from Asian-Pacific area [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork] )))))))))))))))))))))) JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art (Java=Joint Advanced Virtual Affairs) www.javamuseum.org Call for entries: Netart from Asian-Pacific area Deadline Monday 5 January 2004 Currently, JavaMuseum is planning new features for the "3rd of Java series" 2003/2004, focussing on netart from particular cultural regions on the globe. For February/March 2004, a feature exhibition will be prepared unter the working title, "Netart from Asian -Pacific area", in order to pay attention to this globally emerging cultural region, which is related to netart widely unknow in the Western countries. All artists, who work netbased and are born or have their residency in one of the countries of this area are invited to submit and participate. All serious submissions will be included. Deadline Monday, 5 January 2004. Please use following entry form for submitting: 1. firstname/name of artist, email, URL 2. a brief bio/CV (not more than 300 words only in English, please) 3. title and URL of the max 3 projects/works, 4. a short work description for each work (not more than 300 words only in English, please), 5. a screen shot for each submitted work (max 800x600 pixels, .jpg) Please send your submission to asianfeature@javamuseum.org ************************ JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art (Java=Joint Advanced Virtual Affairs) www.javamuseum.org info@javamuseum.org corporate member of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork] - the experimental platform for netbased art - operating from Cologne/Germany. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 8.07.03 From: Andrew Hutchison (a.hutchison@curtin.edu.au) Subject: Cybernetic garments Call for Participation ?Cybernetic Garments¹ at The Space Between textiles_art_design_fashion conference 15 17 April 2004 Perth, Western Australia www.thespacebetween.org.au the space between conference and associated events will centre on the new creative and theoretical potentialities that have emerged from the blurring of the boundaries between art, fashion, textiles and other creative/design disciplines. It will provide an international forum for the presentation of new ideas, current research and an in-depth exchange of ideas and experiences. One particular focus of the conference will be the potential and consequences of the uptake of ?new¹ technologies and techniques (bio, nano, digital, other) in the creation of ?cybernetic garments¹, utilising re-oriented notions of ?garment¹, ?technology¹ and ?cybernetic¹. Thus, clothing reclaims it¹s status as a ?technology¹ extending the function of the skin, a highly sensitive, visually conspicuous protective surface of the body, variable in colour and texture, defining the physical difference between the single human and the rest of the world, mediating the exchange of both physical matter and information. In this context, a ?garment¹ is anything worn close to the body, and so includes sunglasses, jewellery, hair pieces and cosmetics. The comparatively recent, but now ubiquitous digital devices mobile phones, cameras, identity/credit cards, make explicit the cybernetic relation between humans and garments, since they are ?active¹ and of a ?new¹ technology. Proposals are invited for papers, panels, presentations and displayable artefacts/artworks that explore the impact of new technology and techniques in the design of active ?cybernetic¹ garments. Specific topics might be, but are not limited to: Actual garments, prototypes, design concepts, materials, processes, possible applications in fashion/everyday wear, performance art, sport, industrial/safety, entertainment and other areas, including wearable and pervasive technology, smart clothes and textiles. The application of garment and fashion design into virtual environments such as games and on-line communities. The consequences of possible cybernetic garments on individual identity and society. The history of cybernetic garments and technology in garment, fashion and textiles design. The moral and ethical implications of new technological processes for garment design, especially bio-technology. The fetishisation of new technology and ?the cybernetic¹ for its own sake. The practical limitations/pitfalls of technology, compared to popular expectations. For further information specific to the Cybernetic Garments focus, contact Andrew Hutchison, a.hutchison@curtin.edu.au Deadline for Submission of Abstracts and Proposals: 30 September 2003. Notification of acceptance: 15 November 2003 Publication date for abstracts and proposals: 1 February 2004 Final date for submission of full papers and visual documentation: 16 February 2004 Due to the nature of interdisciplinary practice, research is not always best presented in the traditional academic format. We invite interested participants to present their current research, relevant to the conference topics by: Formal paper ? submission to include an abstract of approximately 300 words. or Performance/Presentation of a small body of work, representing current research ? submission to include a proposal of approximately 300 words giving a brief description of work to be presented and appropriate visual material (eg: 4-6 slide transparencies or equivalent) illustrating your work. Please include details of technical requirements for the presentation format eg: computers, projectors, software, lighting, wall space, floor space and any other needs. Abstracts and proposals submitted will be refereed by a panel of international subject experts. For further information, newsletter subscription, registration, keynote speaker details, visit the conference website: www.thespacebetween.org.au This significant event has been convened by the Textile Exchange Project in partnership with Curtin University of Technology. Conference convenors: Moira Doropoulos and Anne Farren. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 8.03.03 From: Jim Andrews (jim@vispo.com) Subject: Ana Maria Uribe I am proud to announce that there is now a mirror of Ana Maria Uribe's site at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com/uribe">http://vispo.com/uribe</a> . Argentina's Ana Maria Uribe is one of my favorite poets. She has been building her site at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://orbita.starmedia.com/%7Eamuribe/">http://orbita.starmedia.com/%7Eamuribe/</a> for many years; the mirror on vispo.com is of a mature, well-developed site of innovative digital poetry. Perhaps this is the start of some sort of process of the two sites growing together over time. Ana Maria and I and others worked together on Paris Connection (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com/thefrenchartists">http://vispo.com/thefrenchartists</a>) for several intense months. And we are both poets inclined toward a multimedia approach. Who knows what the future will bring? In any case, I invite you to check out Ana Maria's inspiring work! ja <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com">http://vispo.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 8.07.03 From: Curt Cloninger (curt@lab404.com) Subject: on archiving, ephemera, and analog distortion On Archiving, Ephemera, and Analog Distortion According to Carrie Bickner, New York Public Library Assistant Director for Digital Information and System Design ( <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.roguelibrarian.com">http://www.roguelibrarian.com</a> ), digital archivists have two main concerns. The concern is not just with "bit integrity" (the integrity of the actual media being preserved); there exists the equally troublesome task of preserving the technology used to read the media. For example, my MS Word 2.0 document may be perfectly intact, but this does me no good if I no longer have any software that can read it. Imagineer Danny Hillis looked into the problems of making a clock that would still be telling time thousands of years from now, and his best solution was to build a non-digital clock, trusting in the continuity of human culture to wind it physically as needed. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.longnow.com">http://www.longnow.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/hillis.html">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/hillis.html</a> But what if one relies on the peculiar quirks of a particular technology to create his signature art? Where would Jimi Hendrix be without Marshall tube amp distortion? AmpFarm currently makes a digital Plug-In for Pro Tools that simulates the Hendrix amp set up, and the results are close, but no cigar. Recently, Microsoft announced that it will no longer support Internet Explorer for the Mac. This means that all the Mac surfers currently using IE (a huge majority) will eventually migrate to something else, most likely Safari. And (as Nick Barker [ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nickbarker.org">http://www.nickbarker.org</a> ] recently pointed out) Safari does not support tiling animated gifs. To hardcore conceptual net artists and ActionScript/Lingo/Java net artists this is no big deal, but to a lo-fi dhtml net artist like myself, this failure is of some concern. It means that, for a potentially increasing number of visitors, the technology used to create some of the "art" of my "art" no longer functions desirably. Not that Netscape 6 for Mac ever displayed tiling animated gifs "properly." It actually chokes on them, but in an interesting way (surf <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.playdamage.org">http://www.playdamage.org</a> on Mac N6 for examples). But Safari doesn't even attempt to animate them. This is akin to the difference between analog and digital distortion. Analog distortion is messed up, but in a warm, gradual way that remains in dialogue with its source signal. It's a good thing. Digital distortion is binary. You either have a clear non-distorted signal, or a boring monotone clip that in no way resembles its source signal. Safari not animating the gifs at all is equivalent to this monotone clip. To a hardcore conceptual artist to whom aesthetic craft is tangential fluff, my animated gif concerns are insipid. To a hardcore programmer coding abstract interactive vector shape environments, my animated gif concerns are obsolete. To a W3C-aware software developer at Safari, my concerns are ridiculous. But to a net.art archivist, my concerns are of potential interest. [cf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/artbase/policy.htm">http://rhizome.org/artbase/policy.htm</a> , "appendix D: artist's intent"]. There is a legendary story about Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page that seems applicable. A rock journalist once asked Jimmy Page what rig he used (guitar, foot pedals, amp head, speakers) to get his signature tone. Page said, "I no longer answer that question publicly." Page went on to explain that he uses vintage equipment that's no longer newly manufactured. One time a few years ago, Page named the specific make and model of the equipment he used in an interview that was widely circulated in a major British publication. The next time Page's vintage equipment needed replacement parts, he went shopping around to vintage equipment dealers and pawn shops for the parts he needed, only to find that they were unaccountably sold out. Tons of young British guitarists had read the article and snatched up the remaining vintage equipment. Now their hero was no longer able to continue creating the original tone his fans were trying so hard to emulate. This tale is usually told as a cautionary moral regarding fame and mass media, but it also speaks of the ephemera of the technology to which we develop our personal symbiotic relationships. Auriea Harvey [ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.e8z.org">http://www.e8z.org</a> ] confided to me a couple of years ago that she was feeling like all the work she had done on the web was in vain and lost. At the time, I thought she was over-reacting, temporarily burned out on the medium. Now, as browser companies crumble and the ephemera of my early work becomes more apparent, I begin to understand a bit of what she was feeling. The "solution" in commercial web design is, "code to standards." But if part of your art involves using non-standards code to "overdrive/break" standard browser rendering practices, then coding to standards is not always possible. Perhaps the solution is to embrace the ephemerality and just keep making new stuff. If that's the case, it could be argued that pimping one's own work becomes more important than ever. If people don't see it now, they won't be able to see it four years from now. The focus then shifts to the artist as public figure, and away from any single work itself. How many web designers revere Josh Davis without ever having seen early versions of <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.once-upon-a-forest.com">http://www.once-upon-a-forest.com</a> ? How many net artists revere jodi without ever having seen any of the early iterations of <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jodi.org">http://www.jodi.org</a> ? Thus the net artists who "succeed" are those good at PR, good at branding themselves, good at coming up with projects that spin well and are viral, good at peppering the press with ongoing small projects instead of working for extended periods of time on larger, more meaningful projects. (Have I just described the contemporary gallery world in general?) Perhaps the solution is to pull an entropy8zuper – abandon the net as an artistic medium altogether, go into hibernation for a year, and develop a grand narrative entertainment game that is neither net nor art. Or perhaps the solution is to keep working in the medium, dare to take on larger projects (perhaps making them modular, like <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.worldofawe.com">http://www.worldofawe.com</a> or <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.marrowmonkey.com">http://www.marrowmonkey.com</a> ), and then just not really give a crap about what lasts or who sees it. Personally, I think I'm over the "who sees it" part (as much as any artist can be), but I'm surprised at how much the "what lasts" part is goading me. peace, curt cf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/tribearchivingne.html">http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/tribearchivingne.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/dietzcuratingont.html">http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/dietzcuratingont.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol3_No1_curation_schleiner.html">http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol3_No1_curation_schleiner.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.deepyoung.org">http://www.deepyoung.org</a> _ _ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 8.03.03 From: Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: Matt Locke's essay on relational aesthetics, 'Are You Awake? Are You In Love?' >From Matt Locke's Blog, Originally published by SF Camera Work Matt's BLOG is here – <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.test.org.uk/">http://www.test.org.uk/</a> Are You Awake? Are You In Love? [this is a recently finished article commissioned by Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, based in San Francisco. Thanks to Marisa Olson for the commission, and the artists for their assistance] Part 1: Three stories about trust. 1: A story about Uncle Roy All Around You by Blast Theory I'm standing in a red phone booth on the lower half of Regent St, London. Outside, a drunk-looking man in a tweed suit looks desperate to make a phone call, whilst I'm standing here, holding a PDA, waiting for the phone to ring. After what seems like an age, the call comes, and a man's voice tells me that I have to trust him, and that he has something he has to ask me to do for him. After he finishes the call, I've got to head north, take the first left turn, and get into the white limousine that's parked by the side of the road. I wait in the limousine for about 5 minutes, then a man in a brown suit gets in and sits next to me. Without saying a word, the limousine drives off, and the man starts asking me questions, looking straight ahead all the time. Have I ever had to trust a stranger? Would I be able to help someone I've never met if they were in need? Could I be at the end of the phone whenever they needed to call me? Could I commit to that for a year? 2: A story about Surrender Control by Tim Etchells My mobile makes the two-tone bleep that tells me I've got a text message. Scrolling down, the message reads "Write the word SORRY on your hands. Leave it there until it fades". What should I do with this instruction? Obey it? Delete it? What would happen if I did write SORRY on my hands? I think through the rest of my day - a meeting at work, a packed underground train, meeting my wife in a restaurant… What would people think I was sorry for? Is it a reminder to say sorry, or to be sorry? Would they ask me about it, or would they store the memory, forever affecting their impression of me, of who I am and what I might do? Am I the kind of person who writes messages on their hands about emotional issues? Am I the kind of person who says sorry? 3: A story about Audit by Lucy Kimbell It¹s a Wednesday. I'm at my desk, thinking of ways to not do things that I know I should be doing. I flick through the pile of envelopes in my in-tray, and come across an A4 manila envelope. Inside is a questionnaire from someone I've met a few times over the last few years - it¹s an audit about her and about our relationship. The questions are strange; like a work appraisal, but veering off into more intimate territory - Would she make a good parent? Do I think she should have children? If she died tomorrow, or if we never communicated again, what are the three things I would miss about her? I start filling out the questionnaire, taking it seriously at first, as if it were a tax form, or a reference for a passport application. I feel like I know her, but we're acquaintances rather than friends, and some of the questions push me to be more intimate, to imagine parts of her life that I don't know about. What will she do with this? Why is she asking me? If I drew up a list of people to fill in a similar audit about me, would I include her? Part 2: Trust, art, and technology Those stories describe three interactions. Or performances. Or moments in the production, or consumption, of an artwork. Or perhaps they are descriptions of how the production and consumption of an artwork can be reduced to the same act, the same moment. They operate within, to use Nicholas Bourriaud's term, a 'relational aesthetic' - these artworks don't rely on an encounter with a traditional art object, nor do they substitute that with some transcendent concept of a dematerialised art object. In Bourriaud's definition, these works exist within "the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space". They are moments to be experienced, not viewed, reaching out and enmeshing themselves in the messy network of conversations and relationships that make up your life. But these are not 'happenings', 'live art' or, worst of all, 'public art' - these aren't experiences created to celebrate the liberation of art from the constrictions of the White Cube, and the high capitalist symbolic value bestowed upon art by those hermetically sealed walls. Enough politics already! For some critics, art cannot exist amongst the quotidian without taking to the barricades. It's damned if it keeps quiet within the safe walls of the museum, and damned if it tries to live outside that space without constantly reminding you of that fact. For isn't most 'public' art exactly like the worst kind of evangelist - carrying a bundle a pamphlets behind its back whilst it tries to disarm you with a handshake? There's no real risk there - no commitment to existing more than a toddler's-step from the safe arms of the curators and critics, plaques and pronouncements that silently re-build white gallery walls around their 'interventions' into our city streets. Much harder to just put something out there, to put yourself in someone else¹s shoes, to risk misunderstandings and rejection. If these works have one thing in common, it is this - they understand how communication technologies have created a series of fissures in everyday life, a series of moments when some small act - a phone call, text message or a letter - creates the possibility of stepping into someone else's world. Bourriaud is right when he says this kind of work isn't about the modernist fantasy of progress and opportunity - "Art was intended to prepare and announce a future world: today it is modelling possible universes" . But he then coins the term 'hands-on utopias', as if artists had slipped the shackles of the avant-garde project only to engage in the equivalent of community service. The fissures these works inhabit are sometimes more like wounds than open doors. They are intrinsically wound up in the dual morality of communication technology - the yet-to-be-answered phone call could just as easily be a bomb threat as a declaration of love. Of course, we've been here before. Photography, the cultural virus that infected the last century, was heralded as a technology for emancipation and understanding. Given the grand project of uniting the world under an egalitarian flashlight, it instead illuminated our darkest shadows, creating unheimlich Memento Mori. Sophie Calle, in her book Suite Venitienne, embraces this duality, and uses the camera as a tool for an uneasy exploration of desire. Taking a chance encounter with a stranger as a sign, she follows him to Venice, keeping a diary of photos taken with a lens that took photos at 90 degrees from the camera driection. The diary documents, in breathless prose, her stalking of the mysterious ?Henry B.¹ through the streets of Venice. There is no clear justification for the act it¹s a folly, but the desire with which she throws herself into the project always threatens to become something else entirely ³I must not forget that I don¹t have any amorous feelings towards Henri B." The intimacy of the mobile phone creates a similarly fragmented network of communication and desire. In Tim Etchells¹ Surrender Control, a series of flyers were distributed in London with the enigmatic message ?Do you want to Surrender Control?¹ with the instruction to send a text message saying ?SURRENDER¹. A week or so afterwards, a series of instructions were sent back, each from an anonymous source, and increasing in risk over the following days from banal thought experiments (?Look around. See who¹s looking¹) to actions that have tangible effects on real life (?Dial a number one different from that of a friend. If someone answers, try to keep them talking¹). But who is really surrendering control here? Subscribers, experiencing the frisson of an instruction from an unknown Other, can still decide whether to actually obey the actions or not. But the artist risks much more. Nothing heralded this work as ?art¹ in fact, in online discussions that commented on the project, it was frequently mistaken for a corporate viral marketing campaign . The work exists or not in the mind of the receiver (audience seems too passive a noun, whilst participant assumes an activity that might not actually have taken place). The text message, less than 160 characters long, was easily deleted, and there was no avenue for feedback like Calle, Etchells wanted an unconsummated relationship. Describing the Other, or giving a motive behind the communication, would have greatly diminished its power better to let people project from their own intimacies, and imagine their own masters: "At first I felt as though something was lacking. Motivation, I think. Why would I want to follow these instructions? I wanted more of a story, reasons, causality, a role to fill, perhaps? Who was supposed to be sending these messages? I can easily imagine a messaging sequence like this with a clear narrative frame. […] And yet there is some narrative here. It's like a very loosely woven net that I slip through easily, but if I'm careful to stay inside it I can pull at threads and find the connections, feel someone else pulling threads pulling me towards them, imagine from the rhythm of the pulling and the messages who that other person might be. Do everything in the wrong order, was my latest instruction. Shall I? Hmm…" [fromjill/txt] Lucy Kimbell¹s Audit treads a similarly risky path. By sending out the questionnaire, she risked rejection, or, even worse, earnest responses that could be as disturbing as they were enlightening. In the book published to document the project, she uses a number of critical approaches to frame the responses, from economic theories to sociological. But the work keeps sliding out from under the microscope, with some respondents resisting the format, and Kimbell¹s own sidebar comments that never quite give her the last word. So what is it as a document? It¹s obviously flawed as a serious piece of research, due to the complicity of researcher and subject, It¹s not a portrait of the artist despite the whole book being ostensibly about her, you could read the whole thing and still pass her by in the street. Instead, it¹s a fragile kind of map a temporary document of a series of relationships, created not according to a strict topography, but by the warp and weft of real life. Those that didn¹t respond don¹t appear on the map, and the ones that did form a chorus of unreliable narrators. Audit, for the purposes of research, treats relatives and relative strangers with the same even hand, and demonstrates the fragile networks of trust that exist between them. Part 3: Epilogue At the end of our car ride around London, the brown-suited stranger asked me for a postcard I¹d picked up from a disused office earlier on. Driven by a series of hints and instructions sent to me over the PDA, I¹d discovered this office in an otherwise normal block on Regent Street. After rummaging around amongst desks, computers and guidebooks to London, I found a postcard printed with the text ?When would you ever trust a stranger?¹. I wrote, ?When you have no other choice¹, and slipped it into a shirt pocket. Back in the car, we¹d parked by the side of the street, near a post box. The stranger asked me to write my phone number on the card, then added an address and stuck on a stamp. ³This is the address of a stranger² he said. ³There is a post box outside. If you post this card, the stranger will have your number. You will be committing to be there for them, at the end of a phone call, for 12 months. They can call you anytime, for any reason. Will you post the card?² As the stranger drove off, I stood in the street, the postcard bending in my hand from the wind. I thought about posting the card, about how a simple act would transform a few square inches of ink and paper into a year-long commitment to trust, and being trusted. How many small acts of trust do I commit to every day without thinking about it? How many promises, phone calls, emails, letters? What kind of network is formed by these pushes and pulls how many knots, how many loose ends? And finally, how come its taken a stranger to make me think about this? + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. 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 Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 8, number 32. 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">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>. Subscribers to Rhizome Digest are subject to the terms set out in the Member Agreement available online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/29.php">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +