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: 11.22.02
From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 01:14:07 -0500
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org
RHIZOME DIGEST: November 22, 2002

Content:

+announcement+
1. Luuk Bouwman: Call for Submissions
2. Joseph Nechvatal: Lanterna Magika, Czech technological art of the 20th
Century
3. nat muller: UK Premier of tx0oom in Great Yarmouth

+work+
4. Paul St George: Emergent Art
5. Jo-Anne Green: Turbulence Premiere- "American Internet" by Eryk Salvaggio
6. Rachel Jacobs: Moon Radio webTV winter season

+review+
7. ryan griffis: review of Prema Murthy's _Mythic Hybrid_

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1.

Date: 11.18.02
From: Luuk Bouwman (info AT tropisms.org)
Subject: Call for Submissions

www.tropisms.org is a videoblog that consists of "crudities": pieces of raw
experience, regularly uploaded while traveling.

In the coming year, a group of young filmmakers will take part in the
project, to practically study the idea of laptop cinema. Existing structures
such as art- and film festivals will be used to make possible new journeys.

If you run a festival or gallery you can send a submission letter to
info AT tropisms.org or to the address below ? motivate why you want to program
us, what?s special about your gallery / festival / city / location. Include
$30.

Contact:
info AT tropisms.org

Stichting Zig/Zag
Admiraal de Ruyterweg 102
1056 GP Amsterdam
The Netherlands
t: 00 31 (0)20 6839591/ 06 10737560

tropisms will be presented at the Shadowfestival, Nov 27
(www.shadowfestival.nl).
>From Nov 28 to Dec 23, Jan de Bruin and Luuk Bouwman will be traveling
through the US.

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2.

Date: 11.20.02
From: Joseph Nechvatal (joseph_nechvatal AT hotmail.com)
Subject: Lanterna Magika, a point of view on Czech technological art of the
20th Century

Anybody around Paris - this is a good show about Czech art-technology. It
stays open till January 5th. Check it out.
_____________

Lanterna Magika, a point of view on Czech technological art of the 20th
Century.

As part of the Bohémia Magica, une Saison tchèque en France, l'Espace
Electra offers an exhibition on pluridisciplinary Czech art with the
emphasis on technology and art in their culture. During the era when
surrealism and constructivism were opposed in West-Europe, poetry originated
in the Czech Republic linking modernist utopia and irrational thought
bringing on the beginning of the exploration of the links between art and
technology. With the change of regime in 1989, the sudden access to new
technology allows the research to go even deeper, effecting works of art
that unite utopia, magic and critique of which only magic subsists.
_____________

ESPACE ELECTRA FONDATION EDF
6 Rue Récamier
75007 PARIS
Tél. 01 53 63 23 45

Admission free
open every day from 12am till 7pm, except for Mondays and bank holidays

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+ad+

TV Dinner: The Myth of Interactivity, Thur. 12/5, 6pm
Join Edwin Schlossberg (ESI Design) in a discussion about interactivity
in new media today (as informed by film, design, and studio art), with
panelists Scott Snibbe, Camille Utterback, and Grahame Weinbren.
Reservations required,$25(w/ dinner).212.255.5793 x11.www.thekitchen.org

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3.

Date: 11.18.02
From: nat muller (nat AT v2.nl)
Subject: UK Premier of tx0oom in Great Yarmouth

://:://Future Physical ?WEAR ME!!!¹ Arts & Technology programme and FoAm VzW
and partners bring UK premier of txOom to the Hippodrome Circus Space in
Great Yarmouth.//:://:

txOom [textiles in bloom] is a responsive PlaySpace where wearable
architecture and evolving media worlds blend, engendering a rich and
multi-layered experience.
Participants will be able to create and influence their own audio-visual
landscapes as they tangle in textiles and literally wear and expand the
space through their movements and gestures, hence causing physical and
digital worlds to converge and stretch. Each player is sensed by the
playSpace using motion sensors and vision tracking systems incorporated into
the fabric of the space. Gradually, the social interaction between the
participants, the responsive sound and visuals projected throughout the
PlaySpace will transform and grow.

In Great Yarmouth, an important part of the site specific environment is
being developed through interaction with local communities , involving
creative user workshops researching involvement, playfulness, creativity and
learning in responsive environments. (in collaboration with SeaChange)

::://More info:://
http://fo.am/txoom/

:::Dates and opening hours: 1.12.2002 - 8.12.2002, from 11am to 7pm, except
4.12.2002 (1pm - 8pm) and 8.12.2002 (11pm - 3pm)
::Location: Hippodrome Circus Space, St. George Road, Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk (UK)
:::::Tickets: £4/£2 concessions for 30 minute sessions.
:::Box office: 01493 844172. Only 8 people per session. Bookings in advance
required. For all ages 5yrs +.

//::txOom Credits:://

txOom is developed by FoAM VzW in collaboration with Time'sUp (Austria),
Future
Physical (UK), Interactive Institute (Sweden), KIBLA (Slovenia) and several
independent artists and technologists.

major funding support:
Culture 2000 Programme of the European Union.
Ministry of the Flemish Community, Belgium.
Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, The
Netherlands.
FUTURE PHYSICAL (East England Arts/shinkansen in association with the Arts
Council of England New Audience Programme), UK
Cieffe Benelux

txOom is based on the TGarden system (copyright sponge, FoAM and associates)

for detailed credits see http://fo.am/txoom/credits.html

WEAR ME!!! Is a co-production between Future Physical (shinkansen/East
England Arts), Plan B, FoAm VzW and Norwich Arts Centre in co-operation with
SeaChange, Magna, Xybernaut and The Forum with funding assistance from
Culture 2000 framework of the European Commission, Arts Council National
Touring Programme and PlayGarden.

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4.

Date: 11.20.02
From: Paul St George (lists_stgeorge AT lgu.ac.uk)
Subject: Emergent Art

Under the right conditions, complex patterns and sequences emerge
from the interaction of simple events.

Please see my new work called Emergent Art at
http://www.paulstgeorge.com/emergence/

On the left you will see patterns emerge from the interaction of
cells as they obey the rules of Conway's Game of Life.

On the right you will see a different representation of the same
emerging patterns. The square cells are replaced by vertical lines
and the position and colour of the lines are determined according to
the sequences of coloured cells.

I welcome comments, criticism and also any information about other
forms of emergent art.

Thank you.
--
Paul St George
http://www.paulstgeorge.com/

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5.

Date: 11.19.02
From: Jo-Anne Green (j.o.green AT verizon.net)
Subject: Turbulence Premiere: "American Internet" by Eryk Salvaggio

November 19, 2002
For Immediate Release
American Internet by Eryk Salvaggio
http://turbulence.org/Works/Eryk/ai/index.html


Turbulence is proud to present the premiere of Eryk Salvaggio?s
commissioned work ?American Internet.?

?It can be said that there is no greater symbol for American
Globalization than the logo plastered onto Coca Cola cans. Coca Cola is
so linked to America that its factories share a distinction with
American embassies and battleships as terrorist targets?

There is another equivalent on the internet: ASCII; the universal
standard for transmitting data via email and web sites? A universal
standard, it is named after its country of origin- The American Standard
Code for Information Interchange.?

In American Internet Eryk Salvaggio has rendered "portraits" of Coca
Cola cans from different countries in ASCI. Accessed through a central
index made up of domain extensions from foreign countries, it is his
hope that the portraits will be enjoyed for their aesthetic value and at
the same time raise questions about globalization.

Eryk Salvaggio has been working with new media since 1997. His current
work is driven primarily by the "Six Rules For Internet Art," currently
the basis of an online show being organized at the University of Denver
in Colorado. These rules created a "back to basics" aesthetic that
leaves Salvaggio free to play with the rudimentary building blocks of
the World Wide Web in ways that may have gone unexplored as new
technologies developed. Since the web was created almost exclusively for
combinations of text and image, these are the elements he explores in
American Internet and in his other recent works--primarily, the
aesthetics of textual presentations of information.

Salvaggio?s work on the World Trade Center, "September 11th, 2001" was
recently reviewed by Matthew Mirapaul in the New York Times. It can be
viewed at http://www.anatomyofhope.net/wtc/2/8.html

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+ad+

Metamute continues with its specially commissioned series of articles.
The latest are Stewart Home on Martin Amis, Benedict Seymour on Border
Crossing, and Nat Muller in conversation with Palestinian filmmaker Azza
El Hassan. http://www.metamute.com

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6.

Date: 11.19.02
From: Rachel Jacobs (rachel AT active-ingredient.co.uk)
Subject: Moon Radio webTV winter season

www.moonradio.co.uk
A Brave New World of Broadcasting
Moon Radio webTV is an Internet broadcast channel with a regular programme
of new work by contemporary artists, showing live performance, interactive
web work, on demand film, and video and audio video mixing. Exploring the
live experience through the ever-expanding world of Internet broadcast.

Active Ingredient presents 2 new digital projects for Moon Radio WebTV
Moon Radio is launching a new season of work for the winter months beginning
this November:
The Drop Down Menu
By Frank Abbott
Online from 6pm, Friday 29th November
The Drop Down Menu is a website and a building site. It has assembled a raft
of menus about the strange transformations things go through. Words turn
into actions ?hairdressers and chopping and slicing devices undertake their
own transformations- and menus turn into meals.
The Drop Down Menu is itself in a constant state of transformation and you
can be part of it. Download the Drop Down font and create your masterpiece,
send us a snap of your local hairdresser, mail us a digital effect made out
of cardboard boxes or work out why it all started with a word. Online on
www.moonradio.co.uk

To be a witness to the launch ceremony for Drop Down Menu visit the main bar
at Broadway Cinema, 14-18 Broad St, Nottingham between 4-6pm on 29th
November.

Holiday on Ice
by Gareth Howell
Sunday 15th December
Holiday on Ice is an online ice rink, where you can wrap up warm, lace up
those old skates and take to the ice with a host of virtual friends.
You can visit Holiday on Ice online at www.broadway.org.uk or
www.moonradio.co.uk from December 15th.
It will also be projected live in Broadway Café bar, 14-18 Broad St,
Nottingham, so no swearing or pushing!

Moon Radio webTV is funded by East Midlands Arts, EMMI and EMDA, with
support from Broadway

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+ad+

David Byrne on northern european Blip Hop music and others in
LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL special issue no 12. on PLEASURE.
Orders from journals-orders AT mit.edu for Table of Contents see
http://www.leonardo.info/lmj. CD features experimental music from
EASTERN EUROPE curated by Christian Scheib and Susanna Niedermayr.

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7.

Date: 11.18.02
From: ryan griffis (grifray AT yahoo.com)
Subject: review of Prema Murthy's _Mythic Hybrid_

a (contextual) review of Prema Murthy's _Mythic Hybrid_
http://turbulence.org/Works/mythichybrid/index.html

_ Mr. Gates seemed as interested in the quality of the young peoples' lives
as in the architecture of their software. He asked Mr. Murthy about how
employees got to the campus (by bus and by car, with more cars all the
time), where they lived and where they ate.
Usually one of the cafeterias, for about 40 cents a meal, he was told.
Subsidized?, he asked.
No, no subsidies.
Oh really?, a surprised Mr. Gates said, quickly calculating that employees
could eat for about a dollar a day._
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/international/asia/14INDI.html

Despite the establishment and acceptance of the critique of e-utopianism
(superhighways and such), the outcome of this acceptance is maybe not what
the critics were looking for. It's starting to sound a lot like Madeleine
Albright's acceptance of the gruesome death toll from US enforced sanctions
on Iraqi civilians. And it's important to note that critiques of
techno-utopianism are pretty much kept in close quarters and don't filter
out to mainstream life much anyway. Even acknowledgment of the _digital
divide_ rarely goes beyond marketing Microsoft to inner city schools.

Just take the above quoted conversation, from a NY Times article, between
Bill Gates and Mr. Murphy, the chairman of Infosys Technologies, an Indian
software company. Spoken, printed, and read with no cynicism, one can see
what's going on without a special decoder ring. This conversation occurred
during a (supposedly) dual purpose trip by Gates to: one, present India with
100 million from the Gates Foundation to fight the spread of Aids; two,
invest 400 million dollars - on behalf of Microsoft - to fight the spread of
Linux. Most (mainstream press) articles on Gates's visit represented it as
_mixing philanthropy and business_, not as acting in one-and-the-same
interests. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/technology/13SOFT.html
http://hrw.org/press/2002/11/india111302.htm
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021114/ap_wo_en_po/india
_microsoft_s_largess_1 http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1114/p07s02-wosc.html )
One must look at the Gates's own words for that:
_The humanitarian imperative for action is undeniable. But there are other
reasons for the West to be concerned in India's future. With one of the
largest scientific and technical work forces in the world, it is also an
increasingly important business partner..._(
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/opinion/09GATE.html )


This turn of events caused me to consider the significance of the recent
work of Prema Murthy (partly due to the coinciding name of the Infosys
chairman), especially _Mythic Hybrid_. As an artist that has been involved
in many activities influential for the networked niche of the art world,
like Fakeshop, she has also begun a line of work that challenges the
current, ongoing status of networked art from a position in desperate need
of more attention. In previous works like _rDNA_, _Mimic_ and especially
_BindiGirl_, Murthy generates reevaluations of the utopic/dystopic concept
of the cyborg from a gendered, embodied perspective. She states this
intention clearly in an interview with Josephine Bosma
_When I first started on the internet I was really excited about ideas of
democracy and how identity did not matter, gender was not an issue... but
the more I saw the same kind of disfunctionalities in society being played
out in this virgin territory..._


_Mythic Hybrid_, supported by the Creative Capital and Greenwall Foundations
and hosted by Turbulence .org, represents Murthy's personal investigations
into the effects of the computer industry on the women who work in
microelectronics manufacturing. Here, we are given access to Murthy's
recombinant thoughts - combining Haraway's _Cyborg Manifesto_ with the
material realities at the other end of high tech labor. Just as _BindiGirl_
( http://www.thing.net/~bindigrl/ ) conflates the oppressive tendencies of
both religion and high tech, fetishized porn, _Mythic Hybrid_ problematizes
the liberating potential of the network and universalistic notions of
emancipatory hybridity. Murthy represents the problem as one, not just of
unequal labor/access between North and South, but as one of oppression based
on a gendered and hierarchal concept of a North/South divide.
_ The boss tells me not to bring our women's problems with us to work if we
want to be treated equal. What does he mean by that? I am working here
because of my women's
problems - because I am a woman. Working here creates my women's problems._

In _Mythic Hybrid_, we are presented with two small video clips of women at
work sandwiching statements made by such women about their work environment.
The women?s' statements indicate a high level of awareness and consciousness
regarding their positions as exploited labor, as well as how this situation
is exacerbated by management because of their gender. Taken during Murthy's
2001 trip to India (I'm guessing), these statements confounded even her
expectations, based on reports gathered before hand. As she states:
_What I found along the way was contrary to expectations ? a group of sane,
rational women with identities constructed by a set of complex social and
psychological factors._
An audio accompaniment combines what sounds like promotional tracks for
Indian high tech products with the sounds of factory activity. These
representations are accessed via a search results page that also gives us
links to outside sites with information on women workers, globalization, and
other relevant topics.


Most of us know that _third world_ economies are greatly subjugated by
Western ones, but how often do we think of the relationship between
oppressed labor and the products of their labor? What about when that labor
is performed by women? What do individual Indian women think about the
products they make; what's their relationship to networked technology?
Murthy gives us the chance to ask such questions, and hopefully take them
even further.


While these art works are not exactly what has come to be called _tactical
media_, they have a great deal to add to such practices, beyond just being
sympathetic. Not long ago, I attempted to interview a member of a tactical
media collective about a particular production that combined theoretical and
pragmatic skills in order to release repressed sexual desire. My first
question was how particular feminist ideas had been incorporated to deal
with the (likely) possibility that unleashed sexual desire in the current
environment would be equally as, or more, harmful to women (and sexual
minorities) as our current repressive state. Critical Art Ensemble has noted
that the _return of the repressed_ could just as equally be authoritarian as
liberating, but that the oppressed have little to lose. To that I would add
that they'd have even less to lose if they're involved in the struggle, an
idea Murthy's work seems to give some access to. The very technology we
use/criticize, whether information or biological technologies, must also be
considered within the notion of the _repressed_. It certainly seems like
Bill Gates is aware of the stakes, but it appears the workers imagined in
_Mythic Hybrid_ are as well:
_Well the bosses think they're pretty clever with their doubletalk, and that
we're just a bunch of dumb aliens. But it takes two to use a see-saw. What
we're gradually figuring out here is how to use their own logic against
them._

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Rachel Greene (rachel AT rhizome.org). ISSN:
1525-9110. Volume 7, number 47. Article submissions to list AT 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
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