The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.

Subject: RHIZOME DIGEST: 2.24.02
From: list@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:40:54 -0500
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org
RHIZOME DIGEST: February 24, 2002

Content:

+announcement+
1. Technologies To The People: Tomando las Riendas/Taking the Reins
2. Wolfgang Staehle: 217.174.192.66

+work+
3. alex galloway: James Buckhouse With Holly Brubach--Tap
4. napier: A flag for the Internet

+feature+
5. RSG vs. BEIGE: Low Level All-Stars--Interview with Linus Walleij/TRIAD

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1.

Date: 2.22.02
From: Technologies To The People (daniel AT IRATIONAL.ORG)
Subject: Tomando las Riendas/Taking the Reins

Encounter/Workshop
MediaLab Madrid - Centro Cultural Conde Duque
http://www.cibervision.org/tttp/html/
(from 11th to 13th March)

International Medialab Encounter: Taking the Reins/New Spaces in the
Artistic Community

The first International Medialab Encounter examines the question of self-
organising culture on the Net. For this urpouse, Technologies To The
People invites you to attend a program of presentations, conferences and
debates that seek to analyse a series of fundamental experiences
undertakend in four very significant cities and contexts, namely,
Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels and London.

It will involve the direct participation of a large group of artist and
theorists, the creators and protagonists of these initiatives, who will
explain their ideas, needs, motivations, fustrations, successes and
failures.

Participants: Inke Arns, Heath Bunting, David Casacuberta, Daniel García
Andújar, Walter van der Cruijsen, Thomax Kaulmann, Eric Kluitenberg,
Sebastian Luetgert, Dirk de Wit y Simon Worthington.

Free registration. Limited capacity.

Information and registration:
Tel.: 91 588 52 86
e-mail: condeduque AT munimadrid.es
(from 11th to 15 th March)
Workshop: Take the Reins!

Take the Reins! is a practical workshop organised by Technologies To The
People where you can learn to develop your own technological
infraestructures, such as how to build your own Internet plattform using
Open Source and Frre Software applications and technologies, such as
Linux operating system. But that is not all: it is the chance to share
experiences with groups of artists who have been developing or helping
to develop autonomous plattforms for collectives of artits since early
1990s.

Participants: Walter van der Cruijsen (Amsterdam-Berlin-Lubliana),
Thomax Kaulmann (Berlin), Heath Bunting (Bristol- London), Daniel G.
Andújar por Technologies To The People (Valencia)

Free registration. Limited capacity. 15 places

Information and registration:
www.medialabmadrid.org
e-mail: info AT medialabmadrid.org

http://www.cibervision.org/tttp/html/
http://www.medialabmadrid.org

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+ad+

Read Peter Anders article "Anthropic Cyberspace"
in the latest LEONARDO Digital Salon Volume 34 Number 5.
Learn first hand about defining electronic space
and give yourself space to think.
Visit our web site AT http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo

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2.

Date: 2.20.2002
From: Wolfgang Staehle (wolfgang AT THING.NET)
Subject: 217.174.192.66
Keywords: exhibition, internet, design

A presentation by Grégoire Maisonneuve

Sunday, February 24, 7pm (19h)
at THE THING, 601 West 26th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001

artists net projects - starting with
patrick bernier, ludovic burel, dr-brady, claude closky, rainer ganahl,
jan kopp, gianni motti, téléférique

217.174.192.66 is a private initiative - a desire - which, from its
production to its promotion, intends to be accompanied by artistic
projects specifically developed for the Internet.

217.174.192.66 is a platform for artistic proposals. Willed by its
commissioner, Grégoire Maisonneuve, to be a work of art in itself, the
interface of 217.174.192.66 is the fruit of a collaboration with the
artist Patrick Bernier and the computer programmer Jean-Noël Lafargue.
Minimal graphics, access without preliminary navigation, no links or
intermediate pages, neither menu nor alphabetical list. Just art. The
particularity of 217.174.192.66 is shared time. At any given hour, one
project and one project only can be consulted. In order to discover
other projects, one must take the time to come back. This restriction is
incentive for lingering over one project instead of skimming over many.
The manner in which the projects appear on the screen is pre-programmed.
Movement is perpetual.

At present, the looped program containing this first visible body of
work must be able to thrive. 217.174.192.66 is an invitation to support
artistic production on the Net and to support the presence of artists in
this domain which is becoming more and more real.

The projects produced by Patrick Bernier, Ludovic Burel and Téléférique
were produced by and for 217.174.192.66. Those by Claude Closky, the
Collection Yoon Ja & Paul Devautour, Rainer Ganahl, Jan Kopp and Gianni
Motti were a sign of encouragement for artists and for the initiative of
217.174.192.66.

http://217.174.192.66

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+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 http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/current/index.htm

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3.

Date: 2.19.2002
From: alex galloway (alex AT rhizome.org)
Subject: James Buckhouse With Holly Brubach: Tap
Keywords: wireless technology, design

Dia Center for the Arts press release 2/14/02
JAMES BUCKHOUSE WITH HOLLY BRUBACH: TAP
Artists' Project for the Internet Makes Use of Wireless Technology

On March 1, 2002, Dia Center for the Arts will launch Tap, a work
created by James Buckhouse in collaboration with Holly Brubach for Dia's
series of artists' projects for the web. Tap may be seen at
www.diacenter.org/buckhouse. Dia and the artists will launch the project
on Friday, March 1, from 6 to 8pm, with a party for the public in Dia's
bookshop at 548 West 22nd Street, New York City.

For Tap, a project commissioned by Dia Center for the Arts, presented in
cooperation with Creative Time, and selected for the Whitney Museum of
American Art's 2002 Biennial, Buckhouse has created two animated
dancers, one male and one female, that the user may direct to practice
movements or give recitals. Tap is made for distribution on wireless
handheld networks and is accessible via Dia's website, as well as from
beaming stations that interface with all Palm PoweredTM personal digital
assistants (PDAs). By taking advantage of beaming technology, which
enables wireless transmission of data, Buckhouse encourages the project
to expand beyond the internet and individual computer desktops: Users
may pass dancers to other users and exchange choreography with those who
already have a dancer.

When instructed to "practice," a Tap dancer begins to learn a series of
sixteen basic moves, inevitably making mistakes but gradually expanding
the number of steps it has mastered. A dancer may then combine the steps
into a dance, either through randomized improvisation or with a sequence
of moves specified by the user. Once codified, the dances may be saved
for future performances.

While digital media traditionally allows users to exchange exact copies
of data, Tap, with its potential for the transfer of unique
choreography, emphasizes difference rather than repetition, treating
digital data not as defined packets of information but as the seeds for
a creative process. By enabling interchange between and among users, the
project creates a network of communication.

Buckhouse's collaborator, Holly Brubach, organized the dance elements of
the project. She recruited ballet dancer and choreographer Christopher
Wheeldon, resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet, to
participate in the project, and taught Wheeldon to Tap dance. Videos of
Brubach and Wheeldon were used by Buckhouse as templates for the female
and male animated line drawings.

From March 1 through July 27, 2002, users may download the project onto
their PDAs from a beaming station at Dia. During this same period,
Creative Time will present additional beaming stations at the Barnes &
Noble at Union Square and two additional locations in New York City.
Tap, which was selected for the Whitney's 2002 Biennial, will also be
available via a beaming station in the Whitney's lobby during the course
of the Biennial, from March 7 through May 26, 2002.

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James Buckhouse

James Buckhouse, born in 1972, currently lives and works in San
Francisco. He has exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals in the
United States and Europe and recently completed a year as a visiting
artist at the Stanford University Digital Art Center, where he created
and co-curated an exhibition on artist-produced screen savers as a form
of public art. Buckhouse has also created computer-based animation for
major-release films. Artist and programmer Scott Snibbe assisted
Buckhouse with the programming for the project.

Holly Brubach

Journalist and fashion designer Holly Brubach began her career as a
dancer. The author of three books, she has also been on the editorial
staff at Vogue, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and most recently The
New York Times, where she served as style editor for almost five years.
Former director of Prada's home and sport collections, Brubach recently
started her own business. She lives and works in New York and Milan,
where she continues to teach Tap.

Artists' Projects for the Web

Dia Center for the Arts initiated a series of web-based works in early
1995, becoming one of the first arts organizations to foster the use of
the world wide web as an artistic and conceptual medium. Previous
projects, which can be visited on Dia's website, include Shimabuku's
Moon Rabbit (2001), Feng Mengbo's Phantom Tales (2001), David
Claerbout's Present (2000), Stephen Vitiello's Tetrasomia (2000), Arturo
Herrera's Almost Home (1998), Diller + Scofidio's Refresh (1998),
Molissa Fenley's Latitudes (1996), and Komar and Melamid's The Most
Wanted Paintings (1995). All may be viewed at www.diacenter.org.

Dia

Founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation plays a vital and original role
among visual arts institutions nationally and internationally by
initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects in
nearly every medium, and by serving as a primary locus for
interdisciplinary art and criticism.

Dia presents a program of exhibitions at Dia Center for the Arts in
Chelsea, New York City. Supplementary programming at Dia Center for the
Arts includes the artists' projects for the web, lectures, poetry
readings, film and video screenings, performances, scholarly research
and publications, symposia, and an arts education program that serves
area students. Dia is currently constructing a new museum in Beacon, New
York, sixty miles north of New York City, to house its permanent
collection. The museum in Beacon will open in spring 2003.

Creative Time

Creative Time is a nonprofit arts organization with a thirty-year
history of presenting public arts projects of all disciplines, through
both grassroots activism and highly prominent venues. From the Brooklyn
Bridge Anchorage, Grand Central Terminal and Times Square to milk
cartons, billboards, and skywriting over New York City, Creative Time
has a distinguished history of commissioning and presenting art that
enhances the public realm, inspires and provokes discussion of socially
relevant topics such as domestic violence, HIV/AIDS pandemic, genetic
engineering, and now, the proliferation of wireless technologies in the
arts and society at large. For more information about Creative Time,
please visit www.creativetime.org.

Funding

Tap was commissioned by Dia Center for the Arts. Its presentation is
being made in cooperation with Creative Time. Technology is provided by
Palm, Inc., with additional support from hi beam. Dia's series of
artists' projects for the web receives funding from the New York State
Council on the Arts.

For confirmation or additional press information on this project and
programming at Dia Center for the Arts in Chelsea, New York, please
contact Sarah Thompson, tel. 212 293 5518; fax 212 989 4055; email
sthompson AT diacenter.org.

For additional press information about Dia:Beacon, please contact
Heather Pesanti at Jeanne Collins & Associates, tel. 646 486 7050; fax
646 486 3731, email info AT jeannecollinsassociates.com.

http://www.diacenter.org/buckhouse
http://www.creativetime.org

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+ad+

STATE OF THE ARTS SYMPOSIUM * UCLA APRIL 4-6, 2002 * RHIZOME DISCOUNT *
<http://www.eliterature.org/state> 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).

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4.

Date: 2.18.2002
From: napier (napier AT INTERPORT.NET)
Subject: A flag for the Internet
Keywords: internet, colonialism

net.flag

http://netflag.guggenheim.org

The unofficial flag for the Internet opens today. The visitor to
net.flag not only views the flag but can change it in a moment to
reflect their own nationalist, political, apolitical or territorial
agenda. The resulting flag is both an emblem and a micro territory in
it's own right; a place for confrontation, assertion, communication and
play.

Commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum:
http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart

http://netflag.guggenheim.org
http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart

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5.

Date: 2.22.2002
From: RSG vs. BEIGE (rsg AT rhizome.org)
Subject: Low Level All-Stars--Linus Walleij/TRIAD

[To coincide with the exhibition "Kingdom of Piracy"
(http://kop.adac.com.tw/) RSG and BEIGE have entered into a head to
head, 8-bit computing battle in search of what we call "the low level
all-stars." First round goes to Cory Arcangel of BEIGE who contacted
Linus Walleij of the legendary Swedish demo crew Triad
(http://www.triad.c64.org/). In the following interview Linus describes
his craft: the art of the cracker "intro." Part demo, part graffiti,
intros are the animations that appear at the start-up of a cracked video
game. Designed to showcase the cracker's talent, these mini projects
also shed an interesting light on computer art...and where it came
from.]

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Cory Arcangel: How did you get started in the intro scene?

Linus Walleij: You know, intros were around. Intros gave you the
impression of following an old tradition, just like the groups that the
intros were for. They made the impression of having existed forever.
They all portrayed themselves as organizations as old and powerful as
the Freemasons, and their art was just as serious-looking. So intros
stuck to my mind, they followed their own code of beauty.

Cory Arcangel: Would you consider intros to be graffiti, art,
information? Some combination of the three?

Linus Walleij: Intros are graffiti and both intros and graffiti are art.
It is graffiti-like in the sense that intro makers want to be seen, and
want to belong to something. Just like intro makers, graffitti creators
live under the impression of being a part of something much bigger that
has been around for ages.

That both things are art is obvious, intros are deeply human in
character, they reflect on classical symbolism and beauty ideals and so
on.

Cory Arcangel: I am interested in how the architecture of a specific
machine effects the aesthetic of the work produced on that machine. For
example, Mario is a square because the Nintendo Entertainment System
displays graphics in groups of 8*8 pixels. How did the architecture of
the Commodore 64 (C64) effect the look of the intros?

Linus Walleij: Characters are displayed in groups of 8x8 pixels just
like on the Nintendo. This had profound influence. Also the groups of
8x8 characters are just 256 different "characters" so, for example, a
logo was never bigger than to fit in 256 characters (including some
empty character).

The C64 had 8 sprites which are graphics blocks in 24x21 pixels. These
could float over other graphics, making it a popular feature. They could
be expanded twice along X and Y axis, which was used for some nice
blocky logotypes (see old Hotline intros for an example of this).

Fading color: this seems obvious, but flashes and the like actually had
to be invented from scratch. The Commodore 64 had 16 colors which had to
be arranged by luminosity in order to "fade" things in and out.

Rasterbars were invented on the C64 (also called copper-bars on the
Amiga). It was common to just change the color at a certain raster
scanline using raster IRQ and color registers.

Hardware registers for scrolling lead to smooth scrollers. "Bugs" in the
hardware that made it possible to delay the drawing of a certain
charcter line (40 8x8 characters) were used to created whole blocks of
graphics moving smoothly in sinusoidal Y-patterns over the screen. And
so on.

Cory Arcangel: I am also interested in the idea of space limitations.
Today it is easy today to get a 90 Gig firewire hard drive for a few
hundred dollars. Size is no longer a constraint when making work on a
computer. What were the common size limitations when making an intro,
and how did the size limitations effect the look of the demo?

Linus Walleij: Each C64 intro was only a few K. Perhaps 6-8k if it was a
big one. When you only have 64k to play with this is quite natural. Also
it was hard to use more memory: what should you use it for? A full
character on the C64 is 2k, you can have 2 of them, some sprites, a tune
may be 2-3k. That is 7k. It is actually hard to use more memory without
going to high-res graphics and sampled music, or entire sprite character
sets. And the Intro-form didn't usually include that. This would often
be used in stand-alone demos however, but NOBODY would attach that to
some game.

Cory Arcangel: In what way were the disks commonly traded?

Linus Walleij: The most common way was "swapping," i.e. people sent them
in the mail. A "swapper" was a special member class in the group and an
active swapper had up to 500 contacts that he constantly mailed and got
mail from.

Cory Arcangel: How much effect do you think the disk distribution
network had on the development of the intro?

Linus Walleij: Well it was vital, When you coded an intro you never knew
who was gonna see it and how big the network was. Perhaps you lived in
the imagination that hundreds of thousands would see your intro, and
then you'd be like a pop star, see. But I guess not more than a thousand
at most would actually see your intro, usually a lot less than that
even.

Cory Arcangel: What are the hallmarks of a good intro, and who do you
think the best groups were?

Linus Walleij: Hard to say, what is good art generally? Something that
touches on the human condition in one way or another, something that
affects you emotionally--that is good art.

Cory Arcangel: Can you briefly explain the idea of training a game, and
how it got started [I understand Triad invented this...]

Linus Walleij: I don't know if this was how it happened generally, but
in Triad, a cracker named Mr Z always created cheat backdoors in the
games in order so that he could himself play through the games and test
them, so that we hadn't f**ed it up somehow in the cracking process.

So he actually left the hooks in, and in the games you could usually
press "C" (for "Cheat") in the intro screen instead of the usual
"space." This activated "Cheat mode." At some point Ixion started
mentioning this in the scroll texts, and then later it became a part of
the art of cracking for a lot of groups.

I don't know if this is the whole story about how the "training" came
along, but it is definately part of the story.

Cory Arcangel: Do you have any favorite intros?

Linus Walleij: Yep, Ikari, Hotline and C64CG intros from the late 1980's
are the best.

Cory Arcangel: Do you still code in 6502?

Linus Walleij: Absolutely. I'm learning MIPS assembler right now, but my
heart will always be with the 6502.

http://kop.adac.com.tw/
http://www.triad.c64.org/

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Alex Galloway (alex AT rhizome.org).
ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 8. Article submissions to
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