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: 11.26.04
From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 01:31:30 -0800
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org

RHIZOME DIGEST: November 26, 2004

Content:

+announcement+
1. Francis Hwang: exhibit RSS
2. Brian House: Let's Blast Art Basel!
3. Gregory Chatonsky: MEDIATECA / CAIXAFORUM . 5th Symposium on Art and
Multimedia
4. Mark Tribe: Conference: The Phantom Limb Phenomena AT Goldsmiths College
in London

+opportunity+
5. Gregory Chatonsky: SERIES:THE NUDE Call for participation
6. Christine McLean: Artist in Residency Program
7. Brett Stalbaum: [Fwd: Fwd: Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space]

+work+
8. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Marisa's American Idol
Audition Training Blog by Marisa Olson
9. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Mulholland Drive by Scott
Hessels

+thread+
10. Jim Andrews, t.whid, Geert Dekkers, andrew michael baron, Jason Van
Anden, manik, Archive Registrar, Michael Szpakowski, Curt Cloninger, ryan
griffis, patrick lichty, Marisa Olson, Francis Hwang, Lewis LaCook,
trashconnection, //jonCates, David Goldschmidt, Rob Myers

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1.

Date: 11.22.04
From: Francis Hwang <francis AT rhizome.org>
Subject: exhibit RSS

More RSS goodies: A feed for you to follow the member-curated exhibits
as they come out. Right now, there are only three, but there's no
reason that won't change ...

http://rhizome.org/syndicate/exhibit.rss

Francis Hwang
Director of Technology
Rhizome.org
phone: 212-219-1288x202
AIM: francisrhizome


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2.

Date: 11.22.04
From: Brian House <house AT knifeandfork.org>
Subject: Let's Blast Art Basel

This is a call to arms for creative individuals everywhere to have your
message heard and your images seen at Art Basel Miami Beach!
(http://www.art.ch)

The crème-de-la-crème of the international art world is about to descend
on Miami Beach for the Art Basel festival and the YellowArrow
(http://yellowarrow.org) will be greeting this global art elite at every
corner as the public art project that sweeps the show. A mobile video
installation showcasing all arrows placed around the world will roam the
city's streets, stickers will be artfully placed on every beckoning surface,
and lightbox arrow sculptures will glow from Miami's renowned architecture.

Those of you in Miami, place arrows and have them be seen and messaged, live
on the streets. Those far afield, place arrows in your local cities, take
pictures and have your work integrated into the video loop of the global
gallery, visible to the whole Miami scene.

Questions? Write info AT yellowarrow.org. This is the chance to show the world
what counts today. Make your mark at Art Basel Miami Beach!

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Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships
purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow
participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without
having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering
subsidized memberships to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded
communities.) Please visit http://rhizome.org/info/org.php for more
information or contact Kevin McGarry at Kevin AT Rhizome.org or Rachel Greene
at Rachel AT Rhizome.org.

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3.

Date: 11.24.04
From: Gregory Chatonsky <cgregory AT incident.net>
Subject: MEDIATECA / CAIXAFORUM . 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia

MEDIATECA / CAIXAFORUM
Fundacia "la Caixa"
Barcelona
Spain

5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia
Metanarrativ(e)s
January 28 - 29, 2005

FRIDAY , 28
10:30h Opening

11:00
Within the narrative continuum
Eugeni Bonet, Barcelona, Spain
George Legrady, Santa Barbara,California, USA
(Contributions + Discussion)

16:00
The rules of the game
Espen Aarseth. Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of
Copenhagen, Denmark
Natalie Bokchin. Calarts, Valencia, California,USA
Papers and works or experiments on digital metanarration presentation

SATURDAY, 29
11:00
Desire versus destiny
Glorianna Davenport MIT MediaLab Cambridge, Massachusetts,USA
Gregory Chatonsky Incident, Paris, France
(Contributions + Discussion)

16:00
Papers and works or experiments on digital metanarration presentation
Closure
Jose Luis Orihuela University of Navarra.Pamplona, Spain
Josep Saldaña Website Projecte straddle3.net, Barcelona,Spain
Mercè Molist Journalist specialist on webloging and copyleft, Barcelona,
Spain

Curator : Antoni Mercader
More information : www.mediatecaonline.net

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4.

Date: 11.24.04
From: Mark Tribe <mark.tribe AT gmail.com>
Subject: Conference: The Phantom Limb Phenomena AT Goldsmiths College in
London

For Immediate Release:

The Phantom Limb Phenomena: A Neurobiological Diagnosis With Aesthetic
Cultural and Philosophical Implications.

A conference to be held at Goldsmiths College, Saturday and Sunday, January
15th, and 16th, 2005.

Organized by Warren Neidich, Department of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths College
and Jules Davidoff, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College

Since its original description in 1866 by the Neurologist S. Mitchell the
phantom limb phenomena has attracted many scholars across a broad spectrum
of discourses. It describes the condition, found in many amputees, in which
sensation of the removed limb persists. As such it has served as a metaphor
for many ideas in other fields beyond the scope of neurobiology and
neuro-psychology, such as, philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies,
anthropology, visual cultural, literature, film and art.

This conference will investigate the following: 1.The Cognitive
Neuroscientific and Neuropsychological Implications of the Phantom Limb 2.
The Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Implications of the Phantom Limb 3.The
Phantom Limb as Cultural Probe 4: Artistic Responses to the Phantom Limb.

Participants include: Peter Brugger- Professor Neurology, University of
Zurich, Switzerland, Elizabeth Cohen-University of Rochester, Chris
Frith-Wellcome Principal Research Fellow Professor in Neuropsychology,
Deputy Director, Leopold Müller Functional Imaging Laboratory, Eleanor
Kaufman-Dept of Comparative Literature, UCLA, Norman Klein- California
Institute of the Arts, Scott Lash- Director of the Center for Cultural
Studies, Goldsmiths, James Leach-Dept. of Anthropology, Cambridge, Mac
MacLachlan -Co-Director of the Dublin Psychoprosthetics Group, Dave
McGonigle- Center National Research Scientific,LENA, France Arnold
Modell- Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Andrew
Patrizio-Director of Research Development, Edinburgh College of Art, Marq
Smith, Editor, Visual Culture Magazine Vivian Sobchack-Associate Dean and
Professor of Critical Studies in Film and Television at the UCLA School of
Theater, Film and Television, Janet
Sternburg- California Institute of the Arts Simon Cohn, Dept. of
Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, Nicholas Wade-Professor of Visual
Psychology, University of Dundee, Andreas Weber- Institute for Cultural
Studies, Humboldt University Zu, Berlin, Robert Zimmer- Chairman Department
of Computing, Goldsmiths College.

For more information and sign up application form go to www.artbrain.org,
upcoming events. Or contact j.goldstein AT gold.ac.uk or w.neidich AT gold.ac.uk.

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5.

Date: 11.22.04
From: Gregory Chatonsky <cgregory AT incident.net>
Subject: SERIES:THE NUDE Call for participation

iNCIDENT.NET
SERIES:THE NUDE
Call for participation

///

Until February, the 28th of 2005

Thank you to send us your netart/videoart projects by email
(incident AT incident.net).
Only the works using technologies (interactivity, generativity, network,
etc.) will be selected.

http://incident.net
incident AT incident.net

///


THE NUDE

The Nude is a well-known exercise of the artistic process. It helps the
studend built a relationship between various styles of strokes and the
human anatomy, the scientific norm.

Although nudity has evolved over the ages, it will always be a symptom
of our ambivalent relation to images, halfway between the purity of the
body and the downfall of it, whether this downfall be tattered canvas or
in the ground.

But what is the nude hiding? What lies between what can and can't be
seen? For example in works such as: "The Origin of the World" (Courbet,
1866) and "Etant donnes: 1. La chute d'eau, 2. Le gaz d'eclairage"
(Duchamp, 1946-1966), we find an interstice, a fissure where the world
finds its origin, its sexuality.

The sensuality of the nude is an esthetical concern, which can only be
grasped from a distance. An eye touched by a body becomes blind.

At first sight, it seems that in this age we have standardised nudity,
however, obscenity is still present in female bodies. Clothed and hidden
they forbid men's blind gazes.

If art is to lay bare one's body and soul, if its role is both to veil
and unveil in a single gesture, where is our nudity today? What is a
nude when a body can be cloned and nano-technologies penetrate our
flesh? And what relates a generalised nudity and the other form of
bareness, which is dictated by the aesthetic?

///

Merci pour votre participation!

http://incident.net
incident AT incident.net

///

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6.

Date: 11.24.04
From: Christine McLean <mclean AT studiosoto.com>
Subject: Artist in Residency Program

REAL SPACE
A New Media Residency

Sponsored by Do While Studio and Studio Soto

What
A six-week process-oriented artistâ??s residency for the development of a
new media project. The residency provides living, working and exhibition
space in the heart of downtown Boston, as well as â??think tankâ?? support
from professionals in the field. Projects should be experimental,
research-oriented, community-based, and in need of further development.

When
Residency: June 15 - July 31, 2005.
Opening reception/Artist Talk: July 29, 2005.
Installation/Show: July 29 - August 28, 2005.

Who
Artists who work with new media and technology.

Why
We provide real space for real ideas. New media and technology may well
offer innovative ways of expressing artistic concepts, but real, physical
space is still the best venue for sharing work with the community.

How
You propose a new media project that meets the residency criteria. We select
one resident per year. If we select your project, we provide the necessary
support and resources to help you develop it.

Who Decides
A select panel of new media professionals which might include artists,
curators and invited members of Do While Studio and Studio Soto.

For more information on the residency program please visit us at:
www.newmediaresidency.org

Sponsored by: www.dowhile.org and www.studiosoto.com


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For $65 annually, Rhizome members can put their sites on a Linux
server, with a whopping 350MB disk storage space, 1GB data transfer per
month, catch-all email forwarding, daily web traffic stats, 1 FTP
account, and the capability to host your own domain name (or use
http://rhizome.net/your_account_name). Details at:
http://rhizome.org/services/1.php

++ Through December 31: a free domain with each hosting plan purchased! ++

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7.

Date: 11.24.04
From: Brett Stalbaum <stalbaum AT ucsd.edu>
Subject: Fwd: Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 07:38:41 -0800
From: Carol Hobson <chobson AT ucsd.edu>
To: chobson AT ucsd.edu

>UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
>Visual Arts Department
>
>Beginning Associate Professor,
>tenured, beginning July 1, 2005
>
>
>Artist in Public Culture/Urban Space
>
>UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Visual Arts Department
>
>Beginning Associate Professor, tenured, beginning July 1, 2005. Rank
>and salary commensurate with qualifications and experience and based
>upon UC pay scales.
>
>We are seeking an artist who comes from a visual art, architectural,
>or urban studies background, and preferably works across these
>disciplines as both a practitioner and a theorist. The candidate
>should work with the city as a site of investigation and develop
>ways of intervening in urban space. This could be someone who works
>in the mode of public art or tactical intervention into public
>debate but more generally, they should work with a problematic of
>the public and the politics of the public sphere.
>
>UCSD is a research university that actively promotes and supports
>creative work within a broadly interdisciplinary arts department
>that includes studio, computing, art and media history, theory and
>criticism. Teaching will include both graduate seminars and
>undergraduate courses, large and small. The candidate will actively
>participate in the ongoing development of curriculum and facilities.
>MFA or equivalency and teaching experience required.
>
>Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, names and addresses of
>three references (do not send letters of recommendation and/or
>placement files) and evidence of work in the field. This evidence
>may be in the form of slides, tapes, discs, publications and/or
>public lectures and should be accompanied by return mailer and
>postage.
>
>Steve Fagin, Chair (Position #PC05-E)
>University of California, San Diego
>Visual Arts Department (0327)
>9500 Gilman Drive
>La Jolla, California 92093-0327
>
>All applications received by January 10, 2005, or thereafter until
>position is filled, will receive thorough consideration. Please
>reference position #PC05-E on all correspondence. UCSD is an Equal
>Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer with a strong institutional
>commitment to the achievement of diversity among its faculty and
>staff. Proof of U.S. citizenship or eligibility for U.S. employment
>will be required prior to employment (Immigration Reform and Control
>Act of 1986).

--
Brett Stalbaum
Lecturer, psoe
Coordinator, ICAM
Department of Visual Arts, mail code 0084
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gillman
La Jolla CA 92093


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8.

Date: 11.22.04
From: "Rhizome.org" <artbase AT rhizome.org>
Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Marisa's American Idol Audition
Training Blog by Marisa Olson

Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase ...
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?29242


+ Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog +
+ Marisa Olson +

This project, whose very didactic name was designed to maximize search
engine results, is one in which I spent three months "in training" to
audition for American Idol. Aware that success on the show is about much
more than vocal talent, I performed training exercises ranging from dance
lessons to research into audition-line campout gear, and many more rigorous
wardrobe, physique, dermatology, and showwomanship trainingâ??including some
musicological research into top-fortydom.

Everything was blogged on this site, whose very structure investigated the
nascent tropes of blogging. I was excited to bring a self-reflexive touch to
the processes associated with this all-star American spectacle. The site
grew enormously popular, due to the hundreds of people Googling American
Idol Audition Tips/Songs/etc, and after inclusion in the New York Times, the
site took off. (It was syndicated on many reality TV sites and led over
6,000 people to vote on what I should wear and sing at the auditions.) My
project takes advantage of this large, captive, mostly non-art audience. As
the diary/training progresses, I dug into the politics of the show (Fox,
gender issues, etc) and general stereotypes about fame, beauty, and talent.,
whcih the show often perpetuates. As my "training" ran concurrent with the
build up to the 2004 Presidential elections, I tried to cast the project as
a campaign and to encourage readers to vote on issues ranging from wardrobe
selection to public policy--playing off of the discrepancy in the number of
young Americans voting in association with the show and not voting in
governmental elections,

This series is an extension of my interests in the cultural history of
technology and narrativity, including questions of authorship, storytelling
formats, the rhetoric of the image, and the impacts of technologies upon
social relationships. These interests are specifically located within an
investigation of the nature of the contemporary art world. Borrowing from
the lexicon of the music world, the projects ask ironic questions about the
relationship between being a pop star and being an art star, which is more
generally a question about the relationship between fame & talent. While the
project may exist as larger interrogations of the nature of two commercial
systems, it is also a very personal reflection of my own identity.

+ + +

Biography

Marisa S. Olson is a San Francisco-based artist, critic, and curator. She
has most recently performed or exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific
Film Archive, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, Pond Gallery, Lucky
Tackle, and Rx Gallery, in the Bay Area; Debs & Co., Foxy Productions, and
Flux Factory, in New York; and the Access Center (Vancouver), STUK/Zed
Cinema (Leuven-Belgium), the Futuresonic04 Festival (Manchester), the
Electrofringe Festival (Newcastle, Australia), the Machinista Festival
(Glasgow), and VIPER (Basel), internationally. The New York Times recently
called her work "anything but stupid."

Marisa's essays on contemporary art and visual culture have appeared in
Flash Art, Art on Paper, Afterimage, Wired, Mute, Artweek, Surface, Planet,
the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. She has also introduced
artists' monographs and written commissioned essays on new media for several
artists and institutions, including the Walker Art Center, Eyebeam, and the
Getty Information Institute. Marisa has held the positions of Associate
Director at SF Camerawork and Curator for Zero:One and has previously worked
on programs at the J. Paul Getty Museum; FILE, Sao Paolo; the American Film
Institute (AFI); the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in San Diego; the
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; White Columns; and SFMOMA, where she
served, for three years, on the media arts advisory board, and was founding
editor of the zine, SMAC!.

Marisa has been a visiting scholar or artist in residence at the University
of London/Goldsmiths College, the Smithsonian Institute, Northwestern
University, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Technical
University-Dresden. She holds MA's in History of Consciousness, from UCSC,
and Rhetoric from UC Berkeley, where she is currently completing her PhD in
Film & Digital Media.


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9.

Date: 11.23.04
From: "Rhizome.org" <artbase AT rhizome.org>
Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: Mulholland Drive by Scott
Hessels

Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase ...
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?29364


+ Mulholland Drive +
+ Scott Hessels +

Three artists drove Los Angeles' famous Mulholland Drive with five types of
sensors--measuring tilt, altitude, direction,speed, and engine sound. The
captured data was used
computationally to control two robotic lights in a dark room filled with
fog. Two beams of light and the processed sound of the engine recreated the
topology of the road as a new formof visual experience and sculpture--cinema
without image.

"Mulholland Drive" is a light installation that translates the movement
across a topology as two beams of light. Instead of direct human
interaction, the work takes the sensed data (tilt, sound, and GPS) of
traversing an environment and recreates the drive through angles, light, and
sound. A passive interactive experience, the artwork emphasizes the spatial
quality of light--it is cinema without image. Like cinema, direct data is
captured, then edited, and shaped. However, here the environment directly
defines the experience, using the geography computationally. In a sense,
"Mulholland Drive" is a new media Earthwork and demonstrates how suddenly
the rhythms, patterns, and random chance of the environment can be sensed
through new media technologies and used to create new forms of visual
experience.

+ + +

Biography

Producing under the name Damaged Californians, Scott Hessels has released
experimental art and commercial projects in several different media
including film, video, web, music, broadcast, print, and performance for the
last decade. His work has shown in international film and new media
festivals, on television, and in contemporary art galleries. He recently
completed a commission of three interactive films and six online movies for
Australia and was honored with a career retrospective at the Melbourne
International Film Festival. As a media artist, his installations have
shown at CiberArt in Bilbao, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Japan
Media Arts Festival. Professionally, as Director of Information Technology
for Fox Television, he was responsible for the systems, software,
communications, and security for two television stations and two cable
networks--a career he followed for 25 years. He currently teaches digital
video at UCLA in the Design | Media Arts Department and is studying for my
graduate degree in that field.

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NEW: Rhizome Member-curated Exhibits

http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/

View online exhibits Rhizome members have curated from works in the ArtBase,
or learn how to create your own exhibit.

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10.

Date: 11/19/04-11/27/04
From: Jim Andrews <jim AT vispo.com>, t.whid <twhid AT twhid.com>, Geert Dekkers
<geert AT nznl.com>, andrew michael baron <baron AT parsons.edu>, Jason Van Anden
<jason AT smileproject.com>, manik <manik AT ptt.yu>, Archive Registrar
<registrar AT deepyoung.org>, Michael Szpakowski <szpako AT yahoo.com>, Curt
Cloninger <curt AT lab404.com>, ryan griffis <grifray AT yahoo.com>, patrick
lichty <voyd AT voyd.com>, Marisa Olson <artstarrecords AT yahoo.com>, Francis
Hwang <francis AT rhizome.org>, Lewis LaCook <llacook AT yahoo.com>,
trashconnection <www AT trashconnection.com>, //jonCates
<joncates AT criticalartware.net>, David Goldschmidt <david AT personify.tv>, Rob
Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>
Subject: why so little discussion? + Quotation


Jim Andrews <jim AT vispo.com> posted:

why is it that there is so little discussion of net.art posted to rhizome? a
lot of the posts announce work that isn't viewable, ie, announcements of
installation projects and whatnot, but there are posts concerning net.work
that is viewable online, and it is rarely discussed.

ja
http://vispo.com

+ + +

t.whid <twhid AT twhid.com> replied:

This question has been asked over and over on this list.

I think most recently by Jason Van Anden.

Good luck.

+ + +

Geert Dekkers <geert AT nznl.com> replied:

The issue being not asking "why there is so little discussion?", but
actually going ahead and starting a discussion.

Geert
(http://nznl.com)

+ + +

andrew michael baron <baron AT parsons.edu> replied:

This is a timely post t.whid. I was going to drop a line to the list this
weekend to let everybody know I was planning on formally introducing a guest
blogger in the indirect form of the Rhizome Raw Robot to list the data of
this Rhizome list onto the Julia Set blog <http://a.parsons.edu/%7Ejuliaset>
(the Parsons School of Design and Tech blog) for exactly one week starting
this Monday. Each day, I would "reblog" the Rhizome Raw list, especially
listing all of the great opportunities and showings around the world.

I don't know if this breaks any Rhizome rules or would upset any of you. I
was planning on looking into all the fine print first, though perhaps it
would be okay for this one instance.

The reasoning was that this is one of my top two favorite email lists and I
believe it is the most valuable locale (physical or otherwise) to be for
whats going on with the arts online and also off (at least that I know of).
Every single day I think there should be a campaign at Parsons to get all of
the students on the list, even if for the digest version. IT IS EXACTLY WHAT
THEY NEED.

I have thought briefly about filtering some of the comments for the week, or
maybe not. If anyone has any ideas with regard to this question, please let
me know, otherwise I would probably just play it by ear.

Again, I certainly don't want to do it if people would be upset but I think
it only stand to help the cause.

ps, sorry I felt like I didnt do very well in articulating the
connection. . .I think the Rhizome list, EVEN WITHOUT THE DISCUSSION, is
priceless for the artist. I find the discussion that IS here, to be very
enjoyable. T.Whind, I dont know you at all beyond this list but you are
a daily character in my life now. I love Rhizome Raw but I don't want to
get an e-mail every 5 seconds.

Andrew

+ + +

Jason Van Anden <jason AT smileproject.com> replied:

I suggest you check out this long thread I initiated based upon a similar
observation: http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=13777&text=26247 .

Discussion ebbs and flows. If you think about it, this is not such a bad
thing. We are a bunch of artists for goodness sake - if we spent all of our
time discussing stuff who would make all of the art? Rest assured, you are
in the right place. It's up to you to spark a discussion. From my
experience, a long bit of silence makes the meaty discussions that much more
scrumptious.

Jason Van Anden
www.smileproject.com

+ + +

manik <manik AT ptt.yu> replied:

It's knocking on the open door.

Why don't we discuss about Rhizome_ Raw politic of
punishment,censure,inconsequence...

How do you imagine that;discussion about something unnamed,something "in
general",not specific case,no name...

After more than hundred Maniks IMAGES,suddenly Rhizome_Raw refuse to publish
them further.

Is that way to show us power?Or teaching us democracy?
It's not important what you talk,power which allows you to talk is
determinate by institution,economic,weapon...

Talk means to be able to talk,to have power to talk.And that's privilege of
"Main Subject"(U.S-J.Habermas)

That's opposite of rhizomatic way of communication,far from
Delleuse&Guattari(they are open for new interpretations).But Rhizome_Raw
became more and more conservative, academic,boring,...Strange,it was few
years ago interesting place.

So tell us(toMANIK)why don't you refuse our kind of discussion,our
images?Open and honest.

MANIK

+ + +

Archive Registrar <registrar AT deepyoung.org> replied:

I'm just lurking around waiting for all the preaching-to-the-choir /
pissing-in-the-wind political venting to ebb.

http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4045

why don't more people make one of these?:
http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/

It seems that HTML posting capabilities are turned on there. You might
could hack your own exhibit via CSS a la http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2261

blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay.

+ + +

Michael Szpakowski <szpako AT yahoo.com> replied:

Hi Jim, all
I'm replying to your original post although I read the
others.
I don't know what the answer is; I certainly enjoy it
when a topic catches fire -in general that doesn't
seem to happen with discussions of specific pieces,
which is a shame because this requires a more subtle
approach than some of the polarised *in-general*
positions often argued here.
So I'm going to post some stuff about a recent piece
in the hope someone will respond.
I meant to post awhile back to say how much I'd liked
the MTAA "Five Small Videos About Interruption and
Disappearing"

http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/

Like them very much I do; but they also intrigue me.
The blurb says they are inspired by early performance
videos - a genre and a period which I enjoy a lot.
There was a marvellous exhibition at the ICA here
about a year ago of single channel video works - lots
of Acconci, Baldessari and also early Nauman
-wonderful stuff.

One thing that occurs to me about the MTAA response is
firstly how *elegant* it is - & this is a quality of
all their work - elegance and thoroughness, or perhaps
elegance due to thoroughness - one could never accuse
them of a lack of craft.
This is in stark contrast to the sheer edginess and
sense of ( often literal!) danger in much of that
early video work. Doing my sums I can't put this down
to the newness of video as a medium - actually I
suspect that the technologies used by MTAA are newer
relative to them.

There's a temptation to see this piece ( and others
such as the one year performance piece) as a sort of
conceptual post modernist whimsy, beautifully made but
essentially a clever formal exercise.
I think this would be wrong - actually there seems to
me to be a feel of "classicism" about this work - the
elegance seems not a symptom or a bolt on but a very
much integral part of the work.
I see this happening quite a lot -its as if in the
shadow of high modernism it wasn't quite respectable
to use the methods and the language of the past
without being *ironic* or having a high concept.
Now all those barriers have long been broken we can
simply move on to using a good move no matter when or
where we saw it.
SO specifically here it's as if the artists of the
seventies having blazed a trail, created edgy stuff in
a kind of white heat, MTAA are examining the language
and the practice with the benefit of a couple of
decades of hindsight and appropriating *what fits*,
*what works* into their own practice.
And the resultant work for me isn't simply clever or
knowing but actually quite touching - I'm quite moved
by these two characters in the videos ( and there are
longer backward shadows cast here - Laurel and Hardy,
Abbott and Costello, the *comic film duo* , spring to
mind).

Certainly the piece feels to me to have many
resonances that go beyond the intellectual, the
clever, the knowing and enter the world of the
affective.
I'd be interested to know what you or others think.
best
michael

+ + +

Curt Cloninger <curt AT lab404.com> replied:

Hi Michael,

I think the Laurel and Hardy insight is a useful one, and I'll touch
on that later. I don't see the pieces in "five small videos"
primarily in relationship to experimental video, although they
technichally contain aspects of video media, and the title of the
series is "five small videos". I see them primarily in relationship
to interface design culture. MTAA are applying their
conceptual/performance art insights to expose the absurdities of the
Human Computer Interface. The pieces are actually explicitly
post-video, which is what makes them so compelling.

There was a lot of "sick" (in the positive sense) abstract work in
lingo/director emerging around 1998 on the web ( http://turux.org
being the classic example). The code was trigonometric functions
tweaking little 2X2 pixel colored triangles with the "trace" effect
turned on, and it functioned like a kind of reactive abstract digital
painting process. Which was cool and still is cool, and I'm not
knocking that.

Then people started to map that same kind reactive/generative code
onto images of physical bodies. A great example is
http://lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm . Yugo Nakamura has some
amazing stuff along the same lines:
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=24
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=3
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=29
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=26
http://yugop.com/ver2/works/typospace3.html

So now instead of being able to control abstract shapes (or watch the
computer auto-control abstract shapes), I'm able as a user to control
human or animal forms (or watch the computer auto-control them).
This is a lot more conceptually promising, since we're humans. But
who of the Flash/Director script kiddies was exploring the
implications of these concepts? Few.

I position http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/ in this same
genre (interactive body stuff), but with a greater focus on the
conceptual, human implications. For instance, in "sliding
compression," by mapping the slider resolution to their own faces,
the artists raise all sorts of intriguing issues. The two artists
are part of a collaborate partnership, but does one grow in fame at
the expense of the other? I love the minimalistic terseness of this
piece. It doesn't need an expanded artist statement. It doesn't
even need the word "fame" in the title of the piece. The
simultaneous crisping and blurring of the respective artist faces
says it all. By naming the piece after its mere technical interface
mechanism ("sliding compression"), the artists foreground the fact
that there is always more ethically implicit in our technology than
what it is merely technichally doing. Why does tech always have
ethical implications? Because our technology is not just "operating"
on dots or lines or data structures. Ultlimately, it's "operating"
on us. (And McLuhan said so.)

If the images of the artists were mere cartoons (as in the MTAA
avatar logos), the piece would be schlocky and feel like so many
Flash animation gag reels (cf: http://www.jibjab.com ). If the
images were static jpgs, they would still feel like mere simulacra
[note to academics: used trendy critical term]. I propose that even
if the clips were live-action filmed in front of a realistic
background the profundity of the piece would be greatly decreased
(cf: http://subservientchicken.com ). By the way, I think subservient
chicken is actually brialliant conceptual net art, but it will never
make it into the canon because it's a burger king marketing campaign.
Too bad for the canon. Anway, the fact that the artists are
silhoutted on white yet still moving makes them seem like little tiny
people inside the screen ( cf:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:H6jOp1QtRHIJ:userwww.sfsu.edu/~nathang
r/wonka/mikemini.jpg
). Issues of perpetual stuckness, looping, and time are raised.
Similar issues are raised in MTAA's "One Year Performance" piece, but
to less effect. With "Five Small Videos," I don't need to know the
esoteric history of performance art to immediately get the full
impact of the piece. But then I like stereolab better than Ornette
Coleman, so sue me.

Back to the Laurel and Hardy insight, which brings up the topic of
physical comedy, which leads to the topic of the human body. There
was a big push early on for we humans to insert our "selves" into a
virtual world, with all the utopianism and man-as-his-own-god
promises which that implied. We would leave our old bodies and get
new bodies inside the machine. But who wants to live inside a
freaking machine? If macmall.com can't even hook me up with the
right USB male/female cable adaptor, what does this bode for my
virtual sex life? "Five Small Videos" successfully lampoons the
promise of VR by inserting the non-stylized, non-abstracted,
"real/normal" bodies of the "tired old" artists (not that they are
actually tired or old; it's "acting!") into the contemporary,
non-utopian, "real" machine -- subjecting them to all the bland,
inane, dehumanizing restrictions of contemporary
usability-influenced, dont-make-me-think web design best practices.
t. whid himself knows web development and is all too familiar with
its interface design conventions. So much so, that this piece
"presses the buttons" (pun overintented) of non-artsy, "normal" web
users everywhere; they relate to it intuitively; and it wins a
"macromedia site of the day" award (how gauchely populist!) And
well it should. The best art is able to dialogue on an allusive art
history level without that aspect being strictly requisite to its
appreciation.

It's cool that Mathew Barney uses his body as a prop. Along similar
lines (but in graphic design rather than art) Stefan Sagmeister uses
his body as a prop to powerful effect (
http://www.sagmeister.com/work5.html ,
http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/3/SVA_exhibition.jpg ,
http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/2/Sagmeister%20Inc.-Zurich1.jpg
). It's lame and desparate when Genesis P. Orridge maimes his body
as a prop, or when that one armed guy nailed his one arm to the wall
and called it art, or when that other guy got shot in the arm as art.
Spectacle, spectacle! [note use of trendy critical term #2] It's not
just that an artist uses his body; it's how he does it (hubba hubba).
What Barney and Sagmeister and Laurel and Hardy all have in common is
that their bodies are tools of imprinture into archived media.
Whereas Genesis P. Orridge rolling around in glass is live. His body
isn't just the brush, it's the canvas.

Is Beuys body his own canvas in "I love America and America loves
me?" Not really. He's more like an actor in a drama. Put a camera
in there with him and the coyote and release the footage on double
DVD -- have you captured the import of the performance? Not at all.
Because the medium of video inserts a linear rigor into the mix that
removes some of the most interesting elements of the performance,
namely -- is the coyote going to bite him? The video can be an
archive of the outcome of the performance, but nothing more.

What's cool about "Five Small Videos" is that they aren't videos. In
our post-film, "interactive" era, MTAA are able to insert
non-linearity back into the performative process, yet they still
maintail all the "archival/removed/time-shifted" nature of film. In
"One Year Performance," they don't have to really be in the rooms for
a year. You do that work for them (or the loop code of the machine
does, and you agree to suspend your disbelief). Just like the three
stooges didn't have to go around from vaudeville show to vaudeville
show forever poking each other in the eye. Record once; play
anywhere. But add interactivity to video, and it feels like the
actors are "actually there," because they are responding to my
real-time imput. But really the machine is responding to my
real-time input. But since the behavior of the machine is now mapped
onto their "bodies," they become my puppets (with all the strangeness
and awkwardness that such control implies). In "lights on, lights
off," I can't wake M. River up too many times without feeling a
little sadistic. Best leave sleeping dogs lie.

"Five Small Videos" is actually very potent in a way that most cyborg
extropian art (and most of the didactically reflexive/self-aware cary
peppermint stuff) never is for me. It hits the mark because it
succinctly foregrounds the absurdities of the medium, it steps back,
and it allows these absurdities to trip over themselves for my own
amusement/contemplation without a whole lot of didactic moralizing
from the artists themselves. All it lacks is a generative ragtime
piano soundtrack.

peace,
curt "i've got your discussion hanging" cloninger

+ + +

twhid replied:

I encourage everyone to keep talking about me & mriver ;-)

Can't get enough of me & mriver? Go here:
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29969

I know, I know. I talk about about me & mriver a lot, but here's my
response to tom moody's post:

http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/twhid/tom_moody_does_1ypv.html

I¹ll quote bits, then comment (read the entire post
(http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?29969), I can¹t figure out
if it¹s positive or negative, but it¹s thoughtful and honest so you
can¹t ask for more than that).

Tom Moody:
> Pieces that refer so specifically to known, past artworks, satirically
> or otherwise, are problematic?more on this below?but there¹s much to
> think about here. Unlike the Globe and Mail, I¹d discuss the work in
> terms of voyeurism, and artist recuperation of the part-guileless,
> part-sleazy home webcam phenomenon. In real (Internet) life, the only
> reason a surfer would stay with a site like this for hours was in the
> hope that the subjects might do something kinky. I know there are
> people watching this for art, but why? Perhaps the presence of white
> plastic buckets in the rooms creates some morbid curiosity about how
> the artists handle basic elimination needs, but frankly I didn¹t stick
> around to find out.


t.whid:
Buckets: one¹s dirty, one¹s clean; they both get used at some point.

Seriously, we have people who have been running the piece for (as of
today) 36 days. Obviously they haven¹t been watching the piece the
entire time, they simply let it run on an unused computer in their lab
or studio. But on the other hand, one can¹t prove they haven¹t been
watching it either ;-)

When we created the piece we understood that not many people would view
it for more than a few minutes. But that¹s OK. One doesn¹t need to view
it for more than a few minutes. Once one gets the idea and also
understands how digital media and computer networks function then it¹s
enough to know that it is there, ready to be viewed for an indefinite
period of time, anytime you wish. To me it becomes sublime at that
point.

Tom Moody:
> Like Penn and Teller explaining a magic trick, the artists reveal?on a
> related web page?quite a bit about the scripting and webserving
> mechanics behind their simulation. This geeks-only backstory actually
> makes for fairly fascinating reading. [snip]

t.whid:
He¹s referring to
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/1year/info.php?page=tech. It was
important to include that material for three reasons: (1) We back open
source software initiatives especially in relation to technical arts
and artworks (the The Open Art Network is doing great work and we hope
to add what we can from 1YPV to it soon), (2) we didn¹t want anyone to
mistake the webcam for something real; it¹s important to the piece that
the viewer knows they¹re watching canned clips and (3) I had a secret
private hope (that I¹m first sharing now) that someone would
re-mix/re-purpose/re-use the video clips.

Tom Moody:
> For sure the technology changes the Hsieh piece quite a bit, which did
> allow observers, but only at specified times, like a prison visit.
> Ultimately the MTAA work¹s relationship to current tech-shaped
> behavior patterns and pop culture tropes feels more compelling than
> its parody of the Hsieh performance, which is almost by definition an
> art world in-joke, with a singular interpretation: that when
> computer-age art revisits the physically demanding, emotionally
> wrenching work of yesteryear, an insincere, fast-food facsimile
> inevitably results. Sorry to leach the humor out of it, but there it
> is.

t.whid:
We received the same criticism from Kevin McCoy (discussions with Kevin
during the building of the piece were invaluable). The crit being that
by making it simply an ?update¹ (or parody or satire) of Hsieh didn¹t
do justice to the piece. That it ?stands on its own¹, why quote Hsieh
at all?

It¹s great that it seems many people are looking beyond the initial
hook and finding other cultural resonances in the piece like Tom
describes. But I would argue with Tom¹s ?singular interpretation.¹ I
don¹t think the update has a singular interpretation, Tom¹s is one
interpretation, but there can be others. First, it¹s not insincere, we
are paying tribute to Hsieh. Second, it¹s not a facsimile; it¹s an
*update*. We¹ve taken parts of the original which work and used them
unmodified (a cell, a year), we¹ve take other parts and modified them
(who¹s commitment?), and we¹ve added totally new parts (top 5, top 10
lists). So it becomes a new thing, not a facsimile. It¹s new but it¹s
in dialogue with the original.

My own interpretation is that when we take a Hsieh¹s piece, automate it
and at the same time transfer the onus of the commitment from the
artist to the viewer, the viewer invariably will reject the commitment
*or* automate the commitment themselves. This rejection/automation is
interesting.

Hsieh challenged himself, we challenge the viewer. That is the crux of
the update.

+ + +

ryan griffis <grifray AT yahoo.com> replied:

What i want to know is, when is someone going to try to break the
virtual twhid + mriver out of those cells?
Free MTAA!
But really, another interesting question would be, "who could afford to
stay in a cell for a year anyway?" The transference of privilege into
the "freedom" to be visually "unproductive" for the span of a year is
an interesting, problematic proposition. Imagine if there was a
paypal-like system that forced people to "deposit" 25 cents in order to
see a segment of the video...
My other reactions to this work (both the 1YPV and the 5 short videos)
was to see it as a continuation of Dan Graham's (who i think must have
been a Laurel & Hardy fan) examination of media devices via
performance, updated to interface/database design (as Curt pointed
out). Not that a particular history should be prioritized, but hey,
that history is part of my vocabulary like it or not. And the austere
"elegance" is riffing on Apple/GAP seamless PR to me, as well as white
cubes.
just dumb thoughts on smart work.
ryan

+ + +

manik replied:

ryan griffis wrote:
>"who could afford to
> stay in a cell for a year anyway?"

Pillar Saints or Stylites. A class of ascetics, chiefly of Syria, who took
up their abode on the top of a pillar, from which they never descended. (See
Stylites .)
St.Danilo spend 50 years on pillar,St.Alimpye about 30.St.Simeon....etc.

Ryan question is paradigmatic for contemporary state of mind.
People believe that they can compress experience.Virtual!?!
This "Project" with cell is fanny and sad.And hopeless...

www.thebookofdays.com/months/jan/5.htm -
www.stthomasirondequoit.com/SaintsAlive/id551.htm

MANIK

+ + +

ryan griffis replied:

> Pillar Saints or Stylites. A class of ascetics, chiefly of Syria, who
> took
> up their abode on the top of a pillar, from which they never
> descended. (See
> Stylites .)
> St.Danilo spend 50 years on pillar,St.Alimpye about
> 30.St.Simeon....etc.

Sure, if you call that "affording it." But it demands someone else to
grow, produce and distribute food to the ascetic - they didn't live 30+
years on birdshit. Someone else is affording it for him.
Perhaps an analysis of the subsidization of ascetics is a useful
comparison for artists.
>
> Ryan question is paradigmatic for contemporary state of mind.
> People believe that they can compress experience.Virtual!?!
> This "Project" with cell is fanny and sad.And hopeless...

Maybe my question if paradigmatic, i don't know. But i think your
critique assumes my use of the word "virtual" means "compressed." i'm
certainly not speaking to any notion of experiential compression...
maybe an expansion. It's just another form of experience to deal with
critically, not a paradigmatic shift for me.
An elaboration of the "fanniness," "sadness" and "hopelessness" might
help me understand what you're reacting against, if that's of any
concern to you.
ryan

+ + +

patrick lichty <voyd AT voyd.com> added:

I think that in many cases, there hasn't been that much to discuss.
There's been a lull in good work, or at least meaty thought on the
subject.
I think a new wave is coming with the consideration of the historical,
but I got a note for a new book on the history of new media from
1715-1914?

Ok, I'm going to get this volume, but this seems like a book that is
constructing a historical context that may or may not be there. What I
call a, "Tactical Reality" to validate New Media.

Under my criteria, New media really has to do with electronic
computation as one of its core components. Therefore, I really doubt
that anyone's going to make a good argument for what we conceive as new
media art before the 60's.

Back to the discussion topic.

I for one have been swamped. I'm entering academia at the moment, and I
had no idea what demands they were going to impose. Also, I've been
putting together ideas for larger texts, which is another matter
entirely.

And of course, IA & the Yes Men (when I have something to do for them)
keep me hopping.

+ + +

curt cloninger replied:

The entire agrarian community collectively brought the food and left it
there at the base of the pillar every morning. It was good karma for them
to do so. "Growth, production, distribution" are all anachronistic Marxist
ways of thinking about it. They pulled the carrots and taters from the
ground, walked to the base of the pillar, and placed the carrots and taters
in the basket for hoisting. They ate the maggots that fell from the flesh
of the ascetics.

I think the comparison is telling. There was a "performance" that consumed
the life of the
"artist," and not just for a year. But it wasn't a stunt or a clever
conceptual angle; it was an act of worship. Furthermomre, it totally
captured the imagination of the entire community, so much so that they
financially supported its perpetuation of their own free will.

To me, a lot of performance art pales as contrivance compared to actual
devotional living. Which may be why Beuys described his teaching career as
his best piece.

I'm reminded of a Lydia Lunch quote which goes something like, "What would
be better than to die for your art? To die for my art. Yeah, that'd be
great."

_

ryan wrote:
Sure, if you call that "affording it." But it demands someone else to
grow, produce and distribute food to the ascetic - they didn't live 30+
years on birdshit. Someone else is affording it for him.
Perhaps an analysis of the subsidization of ascetics is a useful
comparison for artists.

+ + +

ryan griffis replied:

> The entire agrarian community collectively brought the food and left
> it there at the base of the pillar every morning. It was good karma
> for them to do so. "Growth, production, distribution" are all
> anachronistic Marxist ways of thinking about it. They pulled the
> carrots and taters from the ground, walked to the base of the pillar,
> and placed the carrots and taters in the basket for hoisting. They
> ate the maggots that fell from the flesh of the ascetics.
>
> I think the comparison is telling. There was a "performance" that
> consumed the life of the
> "artist," and not just for a year. But it wasn't a stunt or a clever
> conceptual angle; it was an act of worship. Furthermomre, it totally
> captured the imagination of the entire community, so much so that they
> financially supported its perpetuation of their own free will.

Yeah, lots of things capture the imagination of an entire community.
genocidal acts take lots of willing participants, for example. So did
the civil rights movements. What doesn't? Just because lots of people
are compelled to support someone/something doesn't make it great or
heroic, anymore than it makes it "groupthink" or fascist. And anyway,
my point was that the ascetics couldn't afford it - their community
could. big difference. i didn't realize that economics was
anachronistic. someone should tell all those people losing their
welfare checks to cheer up and find a pillar.
>
> To me, a lot of performance art pales as contrivance compared to
> actual devotional living. Which may be why Beuys described his
> teaching career as his best piece.

whatever - performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever that
means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art. i
don't understand the comparison. a "performance artist" could make bad
art and live a devotional life.
>
> I'm reminded of a Lydia Lunch quote which goes something like, "What
> would be better than to die for your art? To die for my art. Yeah,
> that'd be great."

How heroic. Too bad all those non-artists just have to die for someone
else's art.
ryan

+ + +

curt cloninger replied:

ryan:
Yeah, lots of things capture the imagination of an entire community.
genocidal acts take lots of willing participants, for example. So did
the civil rights movements. What doesn't?

curt:
contemporary performance art.

ryan:
i didn't realize that economics was
anachronistic.

curt:
not economics, just marxist economics.

ryan:
whatever - performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever that
means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art. i
don't understand the comparison. a "performance artist" could make bad
art and live a devotional life.

curt:
devotional living is moment-by-moment living devoted to someone or
something. the ascetic on the pole suggests to me that one's art (even
one's performance art) could be more holistically bound up in / derived from
one's personal inner life. It could be more idiosyncratically passionate
and less tactically contrived:
http://www.narrowlarry.com/page1.html
http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/artenvi.htm
http://cgee.hamline.edu/see/goldsworthy/see_an_andy.html

is this approach "artist-as-hero"? is it "modern" (the scarlet "m")? i
think such dismissals are too convenient. maybe it's pre-pre-pre-modern.
Maybe it's more punk and less poser. Maybe it's just generally more
interesting. maybe it's just me.

+ + +

Marisa Olson <artstarrecords AT yahoo.com> added:

A general question... It seems that 'quotation' lies
at the heart of "postmodern" cultural production...
That is, simulations, appropriations, and
self-referential "deconstruction" have been cited as
both harbingers and cornerstones of artistic "work" in
the post-modern era--by Jameson, Baudrillard, and so
many others...

It's one thing to see how Warhol might appropriate an
older image in a "newer" painting, but what of "net
art"'s appropriation of earlier works, images,
conversations, etc..? Does the medium make any
difference? What of the difference between the veil of
code and its appearance? What difference does the
ability to forge a "real" link (vs a semi-anonymous
reference) to an earlier work make? From
historiographic perspective, where does the old end
and the new (interpretation) begin?

Sorry for all the quotations. It can, at times, be
hard to keep a straight face using all these general
terms. Plus, we are talking about """"quotation""""
right?

Marisa

+ + +

Michael Szpakowski <szpako AT yahoo.com> replied:

I'm always faintly taken aback when I read assertions
like this.
<It seems that 'quotation' lies
at the heart of "postmodern" cultural production...
That is, simulations, appropriations, and
self-referential "deconstruction" have been cited as
both harbingers and cornerstones of artistic "work">
All these characteristics can be found in most periods
of art, in music ( variations on a theme of...),
visual
art ( such and such *after* such and such) and
literature ( pretty much the whole of Shakespeare).
Its perhaps a question of degree, of the ( sometimes
deeply desperate) self consciousness of deployment
which marked the something new in post modernism.
What interests me is the feeling ( and I referred to
this specifically in an earlier post in this thread on
MTAAs wonderful 'five small videos' ) that this self
consciousness is disappearing, that we're perhaps
returning to an earlier kind of practice where
quotation (and the cloud of concepts related to it) is
merely one scarcely remarked weapon in the artist's
arsenal, to be wielded relatively unselfconsciously.
I mean I've not done a *scientific survey* or anything
- but it's a feeling that we're moving into a period
of *consolidation* of artistic language, of an
*application* of lots of the formal shenanigans of the
last half century of so to something that is concerned
more with a profound combination of the intellectual
and the affective & which is also aware of its place
in an ongoing tradition ( and this does not of course
imply massive surface complexity -what 'five small
videos' has in common with a Schubert Lied is the
appearance of *necessity* -"yes that's the only way it
could be!" - and hence simplicity, but a simplicity
which isn't exhausted the first or the second time
round but continues to reveal new layers, new meanings
on repeated engagement)
The recent work of MTAA is inceasingly beginning to
feel to me like an exemplar of this tendency ( another
significant one being for me the work of Alan Sondheim
which if people don't know they absolutely *should*
http://www.asondheim.org/ ).
The thrust (and also the appeal) of the two video
pieces seems to me not primarily formal, conceptual
or didactic in some way, but affective, rich and open
ended; aware of its place in tradition and paying due
homage to it but not simply smart commentary on it.
I can't help speculating too that this quality is not
unrelated to a revival of oppositional political ideas
at the base of society - the experience that artists
had of being part of the millions who marched against
the war and the general revival of a discourse that
not only does not accept the market but situates
itself in opposition to it ( look at the sales of
Moore's books, the massive numbers attending the
various social forums around the world, the millions
truly 'lions led by donkeys', who came into polical
activity around the Kerry campaign).
best
michael

+ + +

Jim Andrews added:

hi Marisa,

re "the veil of code, its appearance" and """"quotation"""":

not long ago i was working on a piece in which the wreader may introduce
their own text. a collaborator pointed out that if she used quotation marks
in her text, the programming failed (because the programming was using
quotation marks to delimit texts). i fixed the bug so the piece could quote
the wreader and the wreader's quotations or quotations of quotations etc. it
felt like i was fixing more than a little bug, was expanding the piece
significantly.

ja
http://vispo.com

+ + +

Michael Szpakowski replied:

HI Curt, Ryan

Curt - erecting straw men is an entirely
uncharacteristic method for you, so it's a shame to
see you doing it with "Marxist economics" -
<"Growth, production, distribution" are all
anachronistic
Marxist ways of thinking about it.>
How are Ryan's 'growth, production and distribution'
specifically Marxist concepts? -you can find these
concepts in *any* account of economics.
How does anyone eat, without production? - or, as soon
as society reaches any level of complexity, without
distribution? How can a society that grows in numbers
( & hence mouths needing to be fed) therefore ignore
the concept of "growth"?
Far from being anachronistic, production, distribution
and exchange (to use the more common Marxian triad)
are actually *universal* questions in any society
other that Robinson Crusoe's.
Of course I'm sure you'd disagree cogently with where
Marx takes us from those premises but your original
point is both mistaken and unworthy of your normal
level of debate.
I suspect what you have encountered is several doses
of the particularly poisoned marxism of the academy -
I recommend reading some of the original stuff, you
wouldn't agree with it, but the man is an invigorating
read & not at all the dullard of myth.

Ryan - although I agree with your general point, I can
hear the sound of baby and bath water here:
< performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever
that
means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be
seen as art. >
This does rather tend to write off the roots of art as
a practice in religious ritual ( often designed
precisely to *do* something) and its development along
those lines for thousands of years ( and not only in
Western culture).
This therefore:
< it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen
as art>
does seem to me to be demonstrably an anachronism.
And personally speaking, though I don't have a shred
of religious belief, my life would be a much poorer
experience without, say, Monteverdi's Vespers.
best
michael

+ + +

Curt Cloninger replied:

Hi Michael (and Ryan),
I'm just saying that most of these pillar-donating instances occurred
in self-sustaining local agrarian economies, so all of that
theoretical economic infrastructure (and the cultural relationships
it implies) are overkill. To focus on the economic aspects of this
situation is to apply one's pat contemporary grid backwards. It's to
focus on something that these people weren't focusing on. Since the
time of Moses, 11 tribes supported a 12th tribe of priests with their
tithes and offerings. Call it specialization of spiritual services
if you like. But these pillar ascetics weren't even priests. These
were freewill offerings above and beyond the tithe.

My family grow some of our own food here and we are surrounded by
farmers. It's nothing for our back neighbor to bring by five bushels
of corn and give it to us on a whim. These townspeope were giving
the pillar ascetics the leavings/gleanings of their crop. It doesn't
take much "capital" to live on top of a pole. The townspeople just
had to be intentional enough to bring the food daily, which they were.

Just like the MTAA year in a room project (getting back to it). It
was more an issue of "mindshare" than of "growth, production,
distribution."

peace,
curt

+ + +

Francis Hwang <francis AT rhizome.org> added:

One small thing to add to this discussion:

On Nov 19, 2004, at 6:32 PM, manik wrote:

> After more than hundred Maniks IMAGES,suddenly Rhizome_Raw refuse to
> publish
> them further.
> Is that way to show us power?Or teaching us democracy?

If you're talking about no longer being able to send along attachments
through list AT rhizome.org, that's an anti-spam measure. Now,
theoretically I could go to heroic measures to configure sendmail to
try to distinguish between good attachments (manik's images) and bad
attachments (Outlook virii), and then make sure those configurations
are kept up to date as a new Windows virus comes out every fucking
week. But just imagine, I actually have better things to do, so goodbye
attachments.

Also, I think MTAA's piece is cool too.

+ + +

Michael Szpakowski <szpako AT yahoo.com>

HI Curt
I don't particularly want to have a big ding dong back
and forth about this so these few observations will be
my last on this sub thread, by way of which I'll try &
return my contribution to the topic of art. I'll leave
you or Ryan the last word , should you want it.

(1)
<so all
of that
theoretical economic infrastructure (and the
cultural relationships
it implies) are overkill>

I disagree - trying to understand things is never
overkill.( and whether people are aware that what they
are doing conforms to our description or not is a red
herring -the question is, does our description lay
bare the mechanics of what is occurring? - I like to
think that you uncovered things as a critic in your
bravura contribution here on "five small videos" the
other day, that could well be news to MTAA).
Furthermore you're actually a lot closer in what you
concede here to a classically Marxist position than
you might think.
The key is
<Since the
time of Moses, 11 tribes supported a 12th tribe of
priests with their
tithes and offerings>
and this is *precisely* Marx and Engels account of the
beginnings of classes & the state: a separate caste of
people, living off the surplus created by others and
dedicated to ruling or ritual or religion.
( although they would date this substantially before
the time of Moses I think)
Prior to this although I've no doubt that people
worshipped, or attempted to placate, Gods or spirits
or whatever there was no separate body of people
devoted to this function simply because no society's
productive forces were developed enough to create a
surplus. Everyones labour: hunting, gathering, was
needed in order to guarantee everyones mere survival.

What would of course be totally ahistorical is to
speak of "capital" in any of this - capital and
capitalist are not terms of abuse but precise
technical descriptions of phenomena within
*capitalism*, something that has been with us for only
a few hundred years.

And of course you're right about people making gifts
to these ascetics of their own free will. They still
had to *produce* it though; their gifts still formed
part of a pattern of *distribution*.
I don't wish at all to deny or disparage the
contemporary description you give of simple good
neighbourliness -I experienced enough of that in my
fathers recent last months to both be very aware of
its reality and be profoundly grateful for it -indeed
it seems to me that in that sort of human decency, not
driven by need or greed, lies quite a lot of hope for
the future.

Where is the art in this?
Well, I suppose where I agree with Ryan is that on the
whole I feel the folk who gave up their dinners to
suport the guys on the pole got the rough end of the
deal.

Having said that though, I'm aware that my disapproval
or approval isn't going to alter the fact that it
happened and that I *do* think it has some bearing on
art, for reasons I explained in the post before this.
And coming almost full circle back to 1970s video I'm
struck by how much of it does seem to be involved with
an almost mystical strain of mortification of the
flesh - you can certainly see this in Acconci, but
there's also a pair of artists from what was then
Yugoslavia, whose names escape me, who did the most
alarming things to each other.
I'm absolutely not going to confine my notion of what
constitutes either great or interesting art ( or its
precursors and paraphenomena) to what pleases me
politically (in the narrow sense of the word).
best
michael

+ + +

curt cloninger replied:

I am always looking for this kind of maturation -- the self-reflexive,
self-conscious, uber-media-aware gradually being replaced by simply
interesting art about existence. A good example to me is DJ Spooky's music
vs. DJ Spooky's theory. The music is so rich and fascinating and
autobiographical and essential. It's an urban lifestyle
strategy/celebration -- appropriation as talisman against personal
assimilation (an intuitive solution to Bunting's proposed dilema -- "own, be
owned, or remain invisible"). But DJ Spooky's theoretical prose is like
watching the paint dry. The fact that he is able to map mix culture
backwards to 20th Century French philosophy is interesting I guess, and it
may evangelize some Lev Manovich types to frequent the occasional late night
electronica fest, but it's almost like reading a novelization of a film.
I'd rather just listen to the mix.

Marisa asks, " Does the medium make any difference [vis appropriation]"? In
terms of ease of artistic production, definitely -- digital media + global
networks = ease of remix.

Pre-net/google, I doubt I would have ever explored something like this:
http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/picture/

But, like Michael, I'm not entirely convinced that "remixity" ["quotations
intended"] is uniquely intrinsic or inherent to the underlying ethos of all
digital art (although maybe it is, and there are sure plenty of people
trumpeting the fact that it definitely is). Maybe remixity is just the most
immediately obvious thing to do with digital media, and so we see a lot of
it simply because the novelty hasn't worn off yet. One way or the other,
it's safe to assert that digital art makes remixity and appropriation
feasibly/logistically easier from a production standpoint.

+ + +

curt cloninger added:

Hi Michael,

Well said.

Not by way of argument, but just riffing:

There's a contemporary genre of gallery artwork that foregrounds
value exchange systems in relation to art, relativism, and the art
market. Whereas here we've been hinting at something which to me is
much more interesting -- an earlier, less convoluted, more primordial
art/value/exchange system.

And it makes me think of this wonderful project:
http://www.dream-dollars.com
I dote on this project. It works for me on about 20 different
levels. It is gradually becoming one of my favorite pieces of net
art.

Just to whet your appetite, the following passage is from the
biography of Samuel Brundt, co-founder of the utopian Colony of
Nadiria, for whom the antarctic dream dollars were currency:


+++++++++

"Life is an exchange," Samuel Brundt was wont to say. "An exchange of
heat, energy, force, love, hate, art. There are spiritual and
material transactions occurring every minute. Our monetary system is
a microcosm of this." (Excerpt from, The Great Transaction, by Samuel
Brundt, New York 1843) The Church of Spiritual Commerce grew out of
the philosophy and teachings of Samuel and Constance Brundt. It
officially formed in New York City on January 1, 1838 as a
metaphysical society of like-minded thinkers, and had an initial
membership of 16 people...

++++++++

It goes on and on and just gets weirder and weirder. Brilliant and
highly recommended.

peace,
curt

+ + +

Francis Hwang added:


On Nov 22, 2004, at 11:40 AM, curt cloninger wrote:
> But, like Michael, I'm not entirely convinced that "remixity"
> ["quotations intended"] is uniquely intrinsic or inherent to the
> underlying ethos of all digital art (although maybe it is, and there
> are sure plenty of people trumpeting the fact that it definitely is).
> Maybe remixity is just the most immediately obvious thing to do with
> digital media, and so we see a lot of it simply because the novelty
> hasn't worn off yet. One way or the other, it's safe to assert that
> digital art makes remixity and appropriation feasibly/logistically
> easier from a production standpoint.

I'd say that remixity isn't the raison d'etre of digital art, though
digital tools certainly favor remixity disproportionately over other
modes of production. Remixity is interesting for plenty of reasons on
its own; one of the big ones is that, outside of the whole whomping
intellectual property debate, it rejiggers the proportional role of the
artist in society. For one thing, it takes a long time to get down the
craftsmanship of original image- or object-crafting, whether that's
sculpting marble or using oil paint or whatever. It's a lot quicker
just to buy a bunch of LPs and learn to spin. Not to say that DJing
isn't a skill--but that you're leveraging the creativity of others in a
way that requires, on one hand, less effort from you, but on the other
hand, more effort if you want to stand out the way Pollock or Picasso
did.

(As a sidenote, I am pretty annoyed with how "DJ" in club culture has
devolved into "somebody who knows how to play records" from "somebody
who knows how to spin records". I suppose that's just my old club
snobbery popping up again.)

If we accept remixing as a creative mode that's as worthy of study as
painting or sculpture or video or performance, then the tent of fine
arts suddenly becomes a lot bigger, because people out in the world are
remixing all the time without writing an artist's statement.
16-year-old kids making mashups on their Macs at home. PC casemods.
Quilts. We probably don't have room in all our museums to show all that
stuff, too.

+ + +

Lewis LaCook <llacook AT yahoo.com> added:

when you play a musical instrument, all you're doing
is remixing sounds that exist as potential in the
instrument in ways you find pleasing---when you write
a poem, all you're doing is remixing the english
language until you find your text interesting-->

ALL ART IS REMIXING---ALL CULTURE IS REMIXING----

bliss
l

+ + +

trashconnection <www AT trashconnection.com> replied:

Hello Francis,

FH> If we accept remixing as a creative mode that's as worthy of study as
FH> painting or sculpture or video or performance, then the tent of fine
FH> arts suddenly becomes a lot bigger, because people out in the world are
FH> remixing all the time without writing an artist's statement.

The statements are not always written by artists if you know.

FH> 16-year-old kids making mashups on their Macs at home. PC casemods.
FH> Quilts. We probably don't have room in all our museums to show all that
FH> stuff, too.

You have a very conservative point of view, like my mum does, watching
Jackson Pollock or Rothko.
You better take care of tech stuff. Finally you are the Director of
Technology.

--
Roman Minaev
trashconnection.com

+ + +

Marisa Olson <artstarrecords AT yahoo.com> added:

I tend to agree with Lewis, below, and also with
Michael about the creepyness of forecasting quotation
as specifically postmodern, given that it has been
happening "forever."

The question, now, is this... Is every quotation a
remix?

And, furthermore, while we're at it... What is the
difference between hacking & remixing, if hacking is
simply a modification of the object? (Is it?)

Is it a specific intent (ie political, activist,
deviant, whatever...)? Is it a matter of
functionality--ie the object's ability to do so, as
intended, after the mod? Is it a question of the
relationship between a representational form/object
and its machinery? (ie a film object vs the content of
film; software vs the computer it runs on--not that
these are parallel terms, in this analogy!)

??????
marisa

+ + +

ryan griffis replied:


On Nov 22, 2004, at 3:31 AM, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
> This therefore:
> < it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen
> as art>
> does seem to me to be demonstrably an anachronism.
> And personally speaking, though I don't have a shred
> of religious belief, my life would be a much poorer
> experience without, say, Monteverdi's Vespers.

point taken Michael,
i actually am a religious person and believe in many of the tenets of
Marxism simultaneously (even the Althusserian depiction of religious
institutions as part of a superstructure). my statement was a bit hasty
and reactionary, but was meant merely to suggest that perhaps the
judgment of one's art and the judgment of one's life may not be the
same, and that to compare the practice of ascetics to contemporary
performance artists is absurd to me.
but i feel this may be getting into an argument with no resolution and
little at stake.
take care,
ryan

+ + +

Francis Hwang replied:


On Nov 22, 2004, at 3:02 PM, trashconnection wrote:

> Hello Francis,
>
> FH> If we accept remixing as a creative mode that's as worthy of study
> as
> FH> painting or sculpture or video or performance, then the tent of
> fine
> FH> arts suddenly becomes a lot bigger, because people out in the
> world are
> FH> remixing all the time without writing an artist's statement.
>
> The statements are not always written by artists if you know.

That wasn't my point. My point was that all sorts of creativity happens
without those creators working to put their work into the context of
the arts.

>
> FH> 16-year-old kids making mashups on their Macs at home. PC casemods.
> FH> Quilts. We probably don't have room in all our museums to show all
> that
> FH> stuff, too.
>
> You have a very conservative point of view, like my mum does, watching
> Jackson Pollock or Rothko.
> You better take care of tech stuff. Finally you are the Director of
> Technology.

I suspect you're misreading what I say. I'm not saying that remixing
isn't art. I'm saying that accepting remixing as art is difficult
because it starts to tug away at all sorts of institutional
foundations. It's like pulling a thread on a sweater; pull enough and
the whole thing unravels.

However, I'm not saying that that unraveling is a bad thing. Just that
there's a lot of institutional force working against it.

+ + +

//jonCates <joncates AT criticalartware.net> added:

curt cloninger wrote:
> >"remixity"

"academically speaking" i think the "term" is "remixology" [+/or] also
"remixological".

³Remixology doesn¹t replace a track so much as proliferate it into
parallel alterdimensions. Remixology is the science of continuation and
the art of drastic remaking, total remaking, remodelling.² - Kodwo
Eshun

c:

title: More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction
dvr: Kodwo Eshun
date: 1999
format: [book/text]

c also:

subject: <nettime> Interview with Kodwo Eshun
date: 2000.07.25
time: 11:15:17 +0200
uri: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0007/msg00112.html

++

also, for an academic programs involving these concepts...

c:

title: MA Sonic Culture: Sound, Arts and Media in the Digital Age
dvr: Dr. Steve Goodman
date: 2004 - on
uri:
http://www.uel.ac.uk/cultural-innovation/teaching/postgrad/
sonic_cult.htm

++

[personally/academically] for me, remix + remixology are core concepts
for understanding + operating digitally as new media
[artists/culturalAgents]. i.e. i discuss these issues w/in the
[continuum/categoricalLeakage] of Film, Video and New Media in my intro
class New Media 01. recently we followed the following
[chronological/remixological] hyperthreads on screen:

The Andromeda Strain - Robert Wise

++

Strain Andromeda, The - Anne McGuire

++

AMG Strain - Barbara Lattanz

this particular strand is [exciting/inspiring] to me
[personally/academically] in a variety of ways, i.e. the interplay of
time [compression/expansion], looping, the post-medium condition +
media specificity.

+ + +

David Goldschmidt <david AT personify.tv> added:

i love this quote ... it's my new favorite. "appropriation as talisman
against personal assimilation"

In my opinion, remixers can create new and original aesthetics (just
like other artists) but there may be an inherent distaste for mashed-art
because the process (of remixing) reveals, in a patently obvious way,
just how repetitive humans are -- dare i say replicant/borg.

thanks for the great quote curt

best,

david goldschmidt
www.mediatrips.com

+ + +

Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com> added:

There was a Creative Commons radio programme called "The Creative Remix"
that takes remixing back to classical poetry (the canto).

http://radio.creativecommons.org/

Listening to "Abridged Too Far" I think the difference now is Modernist
reflexivity: the remixes are very obviously remixes and the point of them is
that they're remixes. There's an interesting compositional negative space
aspect to it, but remixes that are rough, ready, skippy and stretchy are
"orientating themselves to flatness".

In the case of ATF (which I am getting more from with each listening),
there's the problem of camp (pace Sontag) as well. If this is untransformed
kitsch it's kitsch, but you can't have knowing kitsch. And if it's
transformative it's academic, imperialistic, disenfranchising.
Deconstruction is normative.

The sweet spot for all of this would be if the work was sympathetic in some
way to its source material and engaged with it to work on the assumptions of
the listener. If the source material kept or problematised some context(s).
Does ATF do achieve this as music or is it strain-to-hear-it "sound art"?

- Rob.

+ + +

Jim Andrews <jim AT vispo.com> added:

Hi Rob,

Interesting writing. One of the main things I like about ATF is that I find
it brilliantly tuneful, at points. Like in "Cattle Call" and also in "I've
Got You", as I wrote earlier. When the work is tuneful, the point is not
that it is remix, but she is trying to create new sorts of melodies and
harmonies or anti-harmonies(?) that either sound good by the standards of
the original music or by other standards.

Also, I think Vicki Bennett is sympathetic to much of the material. For
instance, about 1/3 of the way into "Ach Du" she takes a, erm, a polka or
something and puts it together with some percussive electronica that, if you
put it on the dancefloor, would rock the joint out for a few seconds. A lot
of this piece is percussive in that she's mixing rhythms toward something
wonderfully varied in rhythm that usually makes 'sense' percussively, ie,
you can follow it percussively.

Concerning 'problematising', there's quite a bit of that, like the change in
the lyrics of 'Kae Sara Sara' I mentioned concerning "I've Got You". Also,
machismo, when it appears, usually 'has the piss taken out of it' as the
brits say. And in "Close To You", I thought I heard some sympathy for the
fate of Karen Carpenter and Marilyn Monroe, and some attempt to relate those
to the music.

Concerning the transformative, well, the album has quite a historical range
of reference over considerable music from the 20th c. It doesn't dwell on
particular tunes for very long; instead it goes through a kaleidascope of
musical sounds and styles yet creates a style of its own. That I haven't
heard before.

Remix for the sake of remix would be pretty dull. What I like about ATF is
that she is actually trying to make listenable, new music in a remix mode.

I had a look at John Oswald's http://www.plunderphonics.com but the links to
the mp3's are 404 (legal issues, i presume). He became very famous for his
remix work and was recently awarded Canada's highest honor for media art.
But I have heard very little of his work, unfortunately. It would be
interesting to compare his approach with Bennett's.
http://www.plunderphonics.com/xhtml/xplunder.html is an interesting 1985
essay by Oswald called "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional
Prerogative". He talks about quotation quite a bit. "Without a quotation
system, well-intended correspondences cannot be distinguished from
plagiarism and fraud."

ja

+ + +

curt cloninger replied:

Hi David,

The idea really is Paul Miller's. I just distilled the sound-byte,
but he's conscious that he's doing this. cf:
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=12455&text=24021
scroll down to "I am the DJ, I am what I splay."

Regarding the repetition critique, I mostly concur and I think
Francis hit the nail on the head when he said something like, "now
that any 14 year-old can mix, the challenge becomes to distinguish
yourself by mixing especially well" [i'm paraphrasing]. In this
sense, mixing is like poetry in that the entry-level bar is set
pretty low. Not anybody can write a congent 10 page academic essay,
but anybody who can speak at all can write poetry. The challenge
then, is to write an especially good poem.

In the same way, it's easier to put together a mix tape than it is to
play three bar chords on the guitar (but not that much easier). From
the Troggs to the Sex Pistols, kids have proved that rock and roll is
not really that difficult. And then there are the Shaggs, who prove
that some human beings are actually from Mars:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000I0QQ/

peace,
curt

+ + +

Lewis LaCook replied:


--- Curt Cloninger <curt AT lab404.com> wrote:
Not anybody can write a cogent 10 page academic essay,
> but anybody who can speak at all can write poetry.

actually, curt, i think this is more likely the other
way around....

bliss
l

+ + +

curt cloninger added:

Hi Jim,

I probably have all those plunderphonic tracks on one of my hard drives
somewhere. I actually bought the original CD from him back in the day. I
love it, because it is way processed, but you can still discern the original
sources. But he's obviously doing it just to make his own music. None of
it is even really allusive. Like Michael Jackson's "bad" becomes more of an
ambient piece; it has has nothing to do with motown or pop. He's just
treating it all as sound.

I sample a bit of the plunderphonic stuff in this ridiculous mix (circa
1991):
http://www.lab404.com/audio/tbomv/
The james brown/public enemy break from 5:43-6:13 is all Oswald.

peace,
curt

+ + +

Jim Andrews <jim AT vispo.com> added:

A local record shop had a copy of Oswald's Plunderphonics, so I bought it.
Normally I just download music. It's somehow appropriately messed up that
it'd be Plunderphonics I'd have to end up buying. These works were created
between 1969 and 1997, with most of them created in the late eighties or
early nineties. Plunderphonics comes with a 46 page interview with Norman
Igma.

I hear some of the same tunes as Vicki Bennett has used. Whether this is
allusive on Bennett's part or not, I don't know. Probably not, since they
both deal with popular music.

Listening to Oswald's Plunderphonics, I am struck with the resemblances and
dissimilarities with "Abridged Too Far". They are both trying to create new
music, as opposed to simply remixing in such a way that the source material
is more prominent than the mix. The music Oswald uses is almost always from
popular music you would hear in North America from the fifties to the
nineties, ie, rock and roll of one stripe or another (with a few exceptions,
as in "White" by 'Gibbons Cry'), whereas the ATF sounds are from popular
music from Europe and North America from the 20's to 90's.

The earlier pieces by Oswald are less articulate musically, probably because
the technology was less articulate. As the technology becomes more capable
of subtle articulation, the music becomes more originally tuneful and
interestingly percussive.

One can imagine a program that has access to a huge collection of music. The
program pre-listens to each recording and analyses the sound and categorizes
it in samples of various lengths. Then spins a composition based on whatever
logic of composition the programmer has the wit to devise.

All future machines are now possible, by the way, except if they require
faster processing than is now available.

A computer can be any machine.

So it's now no longer a matter of music progressing according to the
technology that is available. All imaginable music machines are now
possible.

But then so is AI.

ja

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Kevin McGarry (kevin AT rhizome.org). ISSN:
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