Alexis Turner
Since 2005
Works in United States of America

BIO
http://redheadedstepchild.org/

I am not an artist.
Discussions (61) Opportunities (0) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: new media art should/can/should entertain...thecharlie thread


::Well Alexis, where are points beyond?
Um. Outside of the new media community. As crytpic and postmodern as my
arguments usually are, I would hope at least this one point would have come
through?

::Where is this public you talk about?
Playing Google Earth at their desks. Definitely not looking at art.

::Do you believe the general public needs, sees, requires the traditional art forms of painting sculpture etc.?
Yes, no, and that depends on if you mean require for themselves or require to
function (because the answer is no and yes, respectively).

::Get on a subway with a reproduction of let's say a Kapoor sculpture. Hell, even a one of John's Flags, and find out how many recognize the artist or even know what it is.
::Please, c'mon, which world is this you are talking about?
This is EXACTLY the world I am talking about. My point is that artists'
eltist, condescending, protectionist attitude has created the exact situation
you just described. As long as artists insulate themselves from the world,
they likewise insulate the world from their art. Congratulations. It's a
shitty view from up here.
-Alexis

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: new media art should/can/should entertain...thecharlie thread


Yeah, because MIT publishing academic treatises on technology is not
the usual audience publishing to the usual audience. Come on now, I hope you
can do better than that. My ears might have perked up if you'd mentioned fi5e
or someone else getting the message to points beyond.
-Alexis

On Sun, 10 Sep 2006 dymond@idirect.ca wrote:

::One of the comments made by Charlie and we've seen this elsewhere on the
::list is that New Media exists in some kind of Ghetto.
::Searching Amazon returns 1423 books on "new media art" in the topic area
::of "Arts and Photography".
::http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_kk_3/104-8222300-8632728?ie=UTF8&search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=new%20media%20art
::I'm guessing it would be easier to get a book published about New Media
::than it would about Painting or Drawing.
::The MIT press currently lists 86 books in the New Media category, so I
::guess the serious critical/academic ambivalence Charlie mentioned is a
::myth as well.
::http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/default.asp?cidG&pcid=2
::
::There are only 28 books in the MIT catalog about Sculpture:
::http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/default.asp?cidP&pcid=2
::So where is the New Media wasteland everyone is refering to?
::It's a myth as well, but it makes great press.
::Eric
::

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: new media art should/can/should entertain...thecharlie thread


Eric,

No, not censuring you. Just saying that my particular argument really isn't
applicable to you if you aren't concerned with your audience - the whole point
of my stance is how to get an audience.

Personally, I don't care about an audience for my own work. Hell, I don't
even call what I do art. But I AM pretty sick of everyone ELSE on the list
bitching and moaning about it, albeit disguised as different discussions. At
the end of the day though,
everyone of them comes back down to the question of "why doesn't NMA have an
audience outside of the NMA community?"

Frankly, I'm baffled as to the continual moan amongst the art world, not
just NMA, as to "why doesn't anyone view art any more?" As the
occasional art viewer, I find it pretty fucking offensive that most artists
want me as an audience...and then turn around and treat me like I'm the enemy
once I'm there. If I wanted to get enemy-status, I'd visit the family at the
holidays, not view a work of art. There's nothing magical or academic or
complex about this argument, which is probably why it resoundingly bounds
off the heads of those that need to hear it most. It's plain old common sense,
something both rare and in general disregard these days.

Take the following:

The Monks are a good band. I like the Monks. Their music tells me (and
pretty much the whole world) to go fuck myself. BUT it is well written and makes
me shake my ass. I therefore become more receptive to them telling me that
people kill themselves for me. I accept and think about their message. Having
done this, I also become more receptive to their more ludicrous and/or
experimental songs, and my mind is opened to new ways of listening to music. I
give their album to my friends. Perhaps I even look up other bands who
influenced/were influenced by The Monks and listen to them, too. Success.

See? Simple.

At any rate, my suggestions on here are to "assist" in addressing this issue
which keeps coming up over and over. I understand that there are problems with
obtaining an audience - particularly the ones you mentioned in your message
below. That said, there are problems with obtaining food in a
forest if you are morally opposed to killing animals. You can perhaps live off
shoots, but it won't be pretty, and you will almost definitely not have enough
strength to undertake the 3 month hike to find civilization again. You die 50
years later, still alone, still sitting in the forest. if your goal is to be a
hermit, you have obtained success. If you goal is to be rescued and interact
with other people, you have failed.
-Alexis

On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 dymond@idirect.ca wrote:

::>why
::> can't
::> we get an audience?! Waaahhh!
::
::Van Eyck's Marriage of the Arnolfini had an original audience of 2.
::Rothko's Huoston Chappel sees fewer and fewer visitors every year.
::What does audience size have to do with anything?
::If its money you want, and the only way to get it is going to be through a
::largely non-art audience then you will wait6 a long time. On the other
::hand the museum/public gallery market has potential for income generation.
::But you will then have to deal with Academic circles which determine your
::income level. This Academic community has grown enormousely over the past
::30 yrs, thanks in part to a changing social climate, and wealth that
::didn't exist before. There must be a network of curators/critics that you
::can appeal to for funding/ audience. As for a model similar to Van Eyck's,
::thats tougher but still doable, George Soros is an example.
::> doing and feel free to ignore most of what I say - it has no application
::> to you.
::
::Well, so I'm censured then? no problem.
::
::+
::-> post: list@rhizome.org
::-> questions: info@rhizome.org
::-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
::-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
::+
::Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
::Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
::

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: new media art should/can/should entertain...the charlie thread


In response to Eric:

(Work that is both conceptually thick and meant to be entertaining is
*potentially* edutainment. Making a user think and actually teaching them
something are different. Edutainment teaches.)

My suggestion about considering the viewer is in response to one very specific
question that keeps cropping up here over (and over and over and...) - why can't
we get an audience?! Waaahhh!

If you care about and want an audience, or if it bothers you that NMA is
in a ghetto, please read my posts. If you just want to make art and don't give
two shits about who/how many see it, what they think of it if they do, and
where you get money from to make it, then continue doing just what you are
doing and feel free to ignore most of what I say - it has no application to you.

===================================================

On a slightly different note,
Can we please move the hell away from the word "entertainment?" So many
artists, critics, and academics immediately have a knee jerk reaction to the
word ("Entertainment is for the filthy unwashed masses, not ME"), that I find it
quite useless on here. I am referring only objects that people respond to
with anything other than disgust, hatred, or boredom. These objects are
created by many entities that understand human nature and
human needs, and manipulate that knowledge to acheive a result (I want bodies
in seats, I want to be considered brilliant, I want some fast cash...whatever).
The actual "entertainment" sector is the most visible and probably largest of
these, but it not even remotely the only one.

Good lord, what on earth are you so afraid of? Can you make unique art? Then I
would hope you could debase yourself long enough to look at a piece of ANYTHING
IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD AT ALL without immediately running out and copying it
verbatim. Other forms are not infectious diseases that will cause you to start
plagiarizing them, in spite of what academic theoreticians would have us
believe. Are our minds so impotent and powerless that, when exposed to a
single commercial, we MUST HAVE JIFFY PEANUTBUTTER RIGHT NOW? (Oh shit, I said
JIFFY PEANUT BUTTER. Whatever you do, do not go and buy JIFFY PEANUT BUTTER
right now. Do not think about JIFFY PEANUT BUTTER for the rest of the day.
Especially do not think about JIFFY PEANUT BUTTER tomorrow. Do not let JIFFY
PEANUT BUTTER insinuate itself into your life. Sweet. Jesus. I can't stop
saying JIFFY PEANUT BUTTER.)
-A.

PS: To quit blabbing and make things concise, I'll just say that my overall
point is simply that the ghetto|bubble is not something others have put NMA
into - it is something NMA keeps itself in by its unwillingness to sully itself
with the <strike>outside world</strike> JIFFY PEANUT BUTTER.

On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, Eric Dymond wrote:

::Don't we call that edutainment?
::I honestly don't care if the user is happy, sad, entertained, or whatever state they end up in emotionally.
::I am not responsible for their happiness, and I hope I never am.
::We make work that fits our artistic sensibilities, and if viewer likes it or not matters not one iota at any point in time.
::If you start making work that is aimed at entertaining then you are screwed.
::As for conceptually thick..., I don't have a clue what "thick conceptual work" could be.
::Forget about conceptual concerns (as Robbin pointed out in his follow up on Lewiitt) and worry about expressing something that somehow fits into your need to put something down/on/out there.
::Be expressive/impressive/contradictory/geometric/fluid/ whatever, just don't be conceptual ( at least not in a systemic way, see Chronophobia).
::Eric
::also see Alex's post re: the first net art work.
::
::Eric

DISCUSSION

Re: recent new media/net art debates/rebates: the new divers.


Ja, all good points. But you've left out the one totally insane idea that art
can possibly be for just regular people, people that don't *have* to give a damn
about it, but people that we could make do so if it were in a language they
spoke.

I'm not going into the streets and only speaking katharevusa because its "pure."
It's asinine and elitist, and, on a more practical level, no one would
understand what on earth I was saying. If I want to reach a wider audience, I
speak demotiki. If I want to throw in a little challenge (respect) for
my audience, I might mix and match. In this way, and in time, the language is
expected to converge to a nice blend of both. Such with language. Such with
art.
-Alexis

:: This makes a lot of sense, I think. How would you characterize that other
::(or those other) audience(s) on the Web, say?
::
:: A couple of things come to mind.
::
:: A New Media Institute once flew me in to participate in a conference
::called 'Sensing the News'. It wasn't an art institute, but a 'journalistic
::think tank'. I was confused why they invited me to show my interactive audio
::work and other work since I'm not a journalist, so I asked the organizer why
::she invited me. She said that journalists also have to come to grips with
::interactive media on the Web and the idea of the conference was to show the
::people there, almost all of whom were journalists, possibilities both from
::journalism and from other fields.
::
:: But of course!
::
:: Journalists give a damn about new media because they too have to come to
::grips with it. More generally, if we ask who gives a damn about new media,
::the most pressing audience consists of those who have to come to grips with
::it.
::
:: ARN quotes Charlie Gere:
:: "The web," Charlie says, " has the alarming potential of realising the
::idea of the artist Joseph Beuys, that everyone is an artist. This could
::spell the end of art as we know it, when everyone becomes a producer and we
::all drown in a sea of mediocrity made up of billions of minutely-niched
::microchannels."
::
:: If "everyone becomes a producer" then they are part of the most pressing
::audience for new media. Because producers need to come to grips with new
::media. Questions and issues that arise and are relevant to producers may not
::have dawned on those who are solely consumers of new media.
::
:: It isn't so much a matter of everyone becoming a producer of art, either,
::but rather of new media in some form. Whether it is journalism or government
::information or entertainment or educational, etc.
::
:: It would be wonderful to drown in a sea of educated, informed citizens of
::enlightened democracies.
::
:: To go back to the beginning of my post, there is another part of the
::audience I haven't mentioned, and that's the young. They grew up with the
::Web. They are quite savvy about the Web even if their pop net is mainly for
::yuks. There is useful work to be done in infiltrating the pop net, as well
::as the other spheres I mentioned.
::
:: ja
:: http://vispo.com
::