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> MTAA Contextualizer <

You have entered an empty white room. In front of you are three figures dressed in black tuxedos.

M. River waving: Hello and welcome to MTAA's On Kawara Update. Before we begin to talk about the project, T. Whid and I would like to introduce our new Junior Associate: P. Erl.

P. Erl: 
join(MTAA, p.erl);
print "hello world!";
T. Whid : Word! P. Erl has been brought into the Association to provide MTAA with some actual technical skills, as well as a much needed fashion and style advice.

M. River giving T. Whid and P. Erl a glass of Champagne: Yes, a toast! Here's to P. Erl. Cheers. And now let's talk about the Update.

T Whid: The signature works of conceptual artist On Kawara are his black date paintings. The small paintings, each identical in size and format, consist only of the date painted in white on a black background. Included with each painting are news clippings for that date. The paintings, one for each day in the series, have been made for decades. We assume that this practice will continue until the artist's death.

M. River: MTAA's On Kawara Update takes his system and automates it by means of self-generating web pages. The automation of the process as well as the bots which gather the news headlines are the work of P. Erl. No muss. No fuss. And no zen-like devotion.

P. Erl: 
 UPDATE:
gethostbyname and unpack;
do my `/network/spider/ro.bot`; accept ALL and dump;
seek;select;send;
open(ON_KAWARA,>>net.art)
  shift perspective; write if push to end
  last if pop(@head) and die; wait and warn;
  chomp;
  if exists time { write oct $20th, 2001; }
T. Whid: Ummm..Yeah...what P. Erl said...

M. River: Well, that's about it. We hope you will enjoy looking at the On Kawara Update page each and every day until... well, actually... forever and ever.

T Whid: Ahhh, wait a second M. River, what about your contextual rant?

M. River: Oh, yeah! The rant! I keep seeing it happen: some institutions will take a blue chip artist, set them up with a programmer, set up a web site and *Presto*! A new web artist is born. It does't end there! Suddenly blue chip artist X's work begins to be contextualized within a "discourse of new technology" Arggggggggggggg! What in the world is this about? Sure, I want everyone to be able to join in the fun, but damnit! let's be a little bit realistic here. The On Kawara Update is, in some manner, an attempt to distort this process. Take a blue chip artist and turn him into a source for net art.

T. Whid: Okay, is that it? Nothing else to say? It all seems a little bit to easy...

M. River: Well...here is the other side of the coin. Time is moving forward and we have lost our way. So much to say and so much to do. Make art. Look at the world. Live. We wish it could go on forever, even when we aren't there. This is not about history and looking back but the need to project ourselves forward beyond this moment. It is not to live forever but rather to imagine the future beyond ourselves. Is that better T. Whid ?

T. Whid: A little. Anyway. Thanks to everyone for stopping by the contextualization. We'll see everyone in the future.

P. Erl: 
if (time<0 && my $head eq tired) { read FROM, $book, 1; sleep; }
M. River: waving goodbye Yeah, What P.Erl said...

The figures evaporate and the room fades to black leaving only the date in white letters before your eyes.
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