I'm excited to be exploring the brand new, uncharted waters of net.art! It's not often you get to be a part of a revolution! I'm excited to see what kind of unprecedented discussions we'll have, and what language we'll have to invent to have those discussions! LOL!
BIO
Re: Re: Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology
On Oct 7, 2004, at 4:59 PM, curt cloninger wrote:
> You're describing bad graphic design education, but not all graphic
> design education is bad.
And someone with herpes isn't always contagious. It's impossible to
ignore the fact that graphicDsign has exploded from a niche industry
into an army of pixelPushers, and equally impossible to ignore the
assemblyLine pedagogy that produces them.
> Last time I checked, New media art was not in danger of being hijacked
> by graphic designers. If anything the scene could use a bit more
> craft.
Without railing on anyone in particular, all that's needed is to take a
quick stroll over to the artBase. While there's a lot of great work in
there, a lot of it is graphic design with an artist's statement. Sadly,
a lot of the statements could be interchangeable. PersonX is "dealing
with a sense of place" whereas PersonY is "addressing the body" yet
both works are clicky color boxes in Flash.
> curt:
> I'm not advocating design for desisgn's sake. You seemed to be
> dismissing Casey's work as FlashFormalism. I was pointing out that
> it's not. Are you agreeing with me?
Huh? When was I dismissing Casey's work?
> In art history class those are the artists we discuss. But on
> contemporary art bulletin boards we may discuss all sorts of
> off-the-radar contemporaries making all sorts of art for all sorts of
> reasons, many of whom will never be remembered, nor do they care to be
> remembered, nor are they making art in hopes of being remembered.
> Such are the joys of a contemporary art scene.
Okay. Back to FlashArtisans.
> you miss my point. I'm not saying they weren't important in their
> time. I'm saying they are still important now and they disagree with
> your assertion that all good art is about ideas.
Whether or not they agree, their art is intellectually engaging,
whereas FlashFormalism is (to me) not. Regardless of the artists' spin
on their work, it can all be situated in an intellectual debate of
their time. I'm waiting to see if FlashFormalism can say the same
thing.
> I mention the above pieces particularly because they are *not* purely
> abstract. I'm illustrating the fact that new media can successfully
> combine elements of visual abstraction with concept. It's not an
> either/or. Evidently we agree here.
Not really -- none of those pieces utilize visual abstraction. Every
pixel in the first two pieces is procedural and representative,
actually. What we agree on is that abstraction isn't incompatible with
concept. What we don't agree on is the idea that interesting art can be
antiConcept.
> not in a stric art brut sense. That would be impossible. But they
> are outsiders to the net art scene.
Wow. Okay. It's a good thing you're there to discover them and allow
their pathetic voices to be heard, then! I wonder what fresh insights
they'll have from the outside!
> the people on this list respond to in-depth critical analysis of most
> any piece of new media artwork with inordinate silence. it's the
> nature of the list.
Sounds like a cool community, glad I joined. Anyone want a change?
> A pox on your shocking, challenging, intellectually stimulating
> critera, Ben Syverson! There are more things in heaven and earth than
> are dreamt of in your philosophy.
You're right. That's what this list is for, right? No one here is
interested in the art world, right? Let's all sit around not discussing
work, since it should be exempt from criticality.
> I couldn't disagree more. Art and music have the unique (dare I say
> "sacred") capacity to bypass the brain/mind and speak viscerally and
> non-textually to the core of us (spirit). If you don't get this (and
> few Marxist-influenced critics do), then you won't get art that does.
> Art is not an argument.
What's all this Marxist bullShizer you keep pulling? No one here is
talking about art as production -- I'm just trying to poke the corpse
of Rhizome to see if it's dead or just sleeping.
- ben
> You're describing bad graphic design education, but not all graphic
> design education is bad.
And someone with herpes isn't always contagious. It's impossible to
ignore the fact that graphicDsign has exploded from a niche industry
into an army of pixelPushers, and equally impossible to ignore the
assemblyLine pedagogy that produces them.
> Last time I checked, New media art was not in danger of being hijacked
> by graphic designers. If anything the scene could use a bit more
> craft.
Without railing on anyone in particular, all that's needed is to take a
quick stroll over to the artBase. While there's a lot of great work in
there, a lot of it is graphic design with an artist's statement. Sadly,
a lot of the statements could be interchangeable. PersonX is "dealing
with a sense of place" whereas PersonY is "addressing the body" yet
both works are clicky color boxes in Flash.
> curt:
> I'm not advocating design for desisgn's sake. You seemed to be
> dismissing Casey's work as FlashFormalism. I was pointing out that
> it's not. Are you agreeing with me?
Huh? When was I dismissing Casey's work?
> In art history class those are the artists we discuss. But on
> contemporary art bulletin boards we may discuss all sorts of
> off-the-radar contemporaries making all sorts of art for all sorts of
> reasons, many of whom will never be remembered, nor do they care to be
> remembered, nor are they making art in hopes of being remembered.
> Such are the joys of a contemporary art scene.
Okay. Back to FlashArtisans.
> you miss my point. I'm not saying they weren't important in their
> time. I'm saying they are still important now and they disagree with
> your assertion that all good art is about ideas.
Whether or not they agree, their art is intellectually engaging,
whereas FlashFormalism is (to me) not. Regardless of the artists' spin
on their work, it can all be situated in an intellectual debate of
their time. I'm waiting to see if FlashFormalism can say the same
thing.
> I mention the above pieces particularly because they are *not* purely
> abstract. I'm illustrating the fact that new media can successfully
> combine elements of visual abstraction with concept. It's not an
> either/or. Evidently we agree here.
Not really -- none of those pieces utilize visual abstraction. Every
pixel in the first two pieces is procedural and representative,
actually. What we agree on is that abstraction isn't incompatible with
concept. What we don't agree on is the idea that interesting art can be
antiConcept.
> not in a stric art brut sense. That would be impossible. But they
> are outsiders to the net art scene.
Wow. Okay. It's a good thing you're there to discover them and allow
their pathetic voices to be heard, then! I wonder what fresh insights
they'll have from the outside!
> the people on this list respond to in-depth critical analysis of most
> any piece of new media artwork with inordinate silence. it's the
> nature of the list.
Sounds like a cool community, glad I joined. Anyone want a change?
> A pox on your shocking, challenging, intellectually stimulating
> critera, Ben Syverson! There are more things in heaven and earth than
> are dreamt of in your philosophy.
You're right. That's what this list is for, right? No one here is
interested in the art world, right? Let's all sit around not discussing
work, since it should be exempt from criticality.
> I couldn't disagree more. Art and music have the unique (dare I say
> "sacred") capacity to bypass the brain/mind and speak viscerally and
> non-textually to the core of us (spirit). If you don't get this (and
> few Marxist-influenced critics do), then you won't get art that does.
> Art is not an argument.
What's all this Marxist bullShizer you keep pulling? No one here is
talking about art as production -- I'm just trying to poke the corpse
of Rhizome to see if it's dead or just sleeping.
- ben
Re: Too Much Information!!! j/k, LOL
On Oct 7, 2004, at 3:43 PM, curt cloninger wrote:
> Perhaps the goal of every B/MFA student is to make a powerful
> statement, but this too shall pass.
Okay, but if the goal of FlashFormalism is not to be provocative and
engage with ideas, then lets stop talking about them that way. Until
someone gives me a reason not to, I'll refer to the purveyors of
FlashFormalism as FlashArtisans, and consider their intellectual weight
to be on a par with painted pottery.
- ben
> Perhaps the goal of every B/MFA student is to make a powerful
> statement, but this too shall pass.
Okay, but if the goal of FlashFormalism is not to be provocative and
engage with ideas, then lets stop talking about them that way. Until
someone gives me a reason not to, I'll refer to the purveyors of
FlashFormalism as FlashArtisans, and consider their intellectual weight
to be on a par with painted pottery.
- ben
Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology
On Oct 7, 2004, at 3:29 PM, Rob Myers wrote:
> There's a difference between abstraction, aesthetics, and vacuous
> prettiness. Critic beware. :-)
Yes, but no one will flesh out for me why FlashFormalism isn't vacuous
prettiness. I'm eager to know. We've heard the TooMuchInformation!
explanation, but to me it rings hollow. Bueller?
> Demanding pre-existent cultural/critical/textual import of digital art
> is demanding that it normalise itself with the entrenched values of
> the academic/commerical artworlds. Illustration is not the opposite of
> insignificance.
Read more closely -- I'm not trying to import newMedia into the
"pre-existent" criticalModels used in contempArt, I'm trying to point
out that there's NO critical discourse happening around this work, and
I'm publicly asking why. I suspect the reason that FlashFormalism is
totally impossible to discuss is because, as t.whid points out, there's
nothing to discuss. It's oaklandStyle -- no there there.
> Feed them "Emigre". ;-)
They're too busy kerning ad copy for Starbucks at $100/hr to sit down
and read about the [implications/hystories/theories] of typefaces...
> Inasmuchas it is not simply illustrating and confirming the
> unreflective critical demands of cultural studies departments, ff is
> potentially more critical than anything that simply mirrors
> pre-existent "critical" virtues.
I think you may have just taken the Ridonculous Award from curt. Fuck
cultural studies. I'm asking this group, this meeting of the minds,
what is [critical/challenging/progressive] about FlashFormalism, and
the sound you hear is the deafening silence of apatheticShrugs.
> We may have work to do if our language is not sufficient for the task.
> That would be exciting for a critic, surely?
This is devastatingly depressing. There are so many discussions that
have been woven together to form newMedia, and now you want to pretend
not to see them and start over with new language. As if the cybernetics
discussion in the earlyVideo moment isn't still relevant. As if the
hypertext discussion of the earlyHypermedia moment isn't still
relevant. As if "interactivity" and "cybernetics" are unrelated, and
unrelated to what's happening now. This is one of the main reasons I
built liken into criticalartware.net; from the very beginning we wanted
to be sure that we were connecting with and expanding upon existing
discussions that were directly relevant to the discussion of newMedia.
Make up your own language if you like -- have fun reinventing the wheel
and calling it something else. I'll keep working hard to
[continue/reexamine/revive/extend] the discussions you're so eager to
cast off.
> There *is* something there, or if there isn't, it's failure on terms
> that aren't fully captured by a signification/prettiness opposition.
I'm waiting...
...Bueller?
- ben
> There's a difference between abstraction, aesthetics, and vacuous
> prettiness. Critic beware. :-)
Yes, but no one will flesh out for me why FlashFormalism isn't vacuous
prettiness. I'm eager to know. We've heard the TooMuchInformation!
explanation, but to me it rings hollow. Bueller?
> Demanding pre-existent cultural/critical/textual import of digital art
> is demanding that it normalise itself with the entrenched values of
> the academic/commerical artworlds. Illustration is not the opposite of
> insignificance.
Read more closely -- I'm not trying to import newMedia into the
"pre-existent" criticalModels used in contempArt, I'm trying to point
out that there's NO critical discourse happening around this work, and
I'm publicly asking why. I suspect the reason that FlashFormalism is
totally impossible to discuss is because, as t.whid points out, there's
nothing to discuss. It's oaklandStyle -- no there there.
> Feed them "Emigre". ;-)
They're too busy kerning ad copy for Starbucks at $100/hr to sit down
and read about the [implications/hystories/theories] of typefaces...
> Inasmuchas it is not simply illustrating and confirming the
> unreflective critical demands of cultural studies departments, ff is
> potentially more critical than anything that simply mirrors
> pre-existent "critical" virtues.
I think you may have just taken the Ridonculous Award from curt. Fuck
cultural studies. I'm asking this group, this meeting of the minds,
what is [critical/challenging/progressive] about FlashFormalism, and
the sound you hear is the deafening silence of apatheticShrugs.
> We may have work to do if our language is not sufficient for the task.
> That would be exciting for a critic, surely?
This is devastatingly depressing. There are so many discussions that
have been woven together to form newMedia, and now you want to pretend
not to see them and start over with new language. As if the cybernetics
discussion in the earlyVideo moment isn't still relevant. As if the
hypertext discussion of the earlyHypermedia moment isn't still
relevant. As if "interactivity" and "cybernetics" are unrelated, and
unrelated to what's happening now. This is one of the main reasons I
built liken into criticalartware.net; from the very beginning we wanted
to be sure that we were connecting with and expanding upon existing
discussions that were directly relevant to the discussion of newMedia.
Make up your own language if you like -- have fun reinventing the wheel
and calling it something else. I'll keep working hard to
[continue/reexamine/revive/extend] the discussions you're so eager to
cast off.
> There *is* something there, or if there isn't, it's failure on terms
> that aren't fully captured by a signification/prettiness opposition.
I'm waiting...
...Bueller?
- ben
Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology
On Oct 7, 2004, at 3:07 PM, Rob Myers wrote:
> In order for art to have ideas, for it to be critically interesting,
> it must have some degree of autonomy and it must be problematic for
> criticism (and language), of which it is the object.
Sure, it must be problematic, and not just for critics. So what makes
you think FlashFormalism is problematic? The only thing problematic
about it is that it's not problematic whatsoever!
> Critics (as we are being here), must look at it and curse the artists'
> name because they can see that there's something there, but they're
> going to have to work out what it is rather than reel off
> DeleuzeGuattariBaudrillardDerrida and go to bed early.
Exactly. Yet there's no reason to curse the names of FlashFormalists.
The work is so MindNumbingly boring that I can barely remember their
names.
> There are definite ideas in Flash formalism, and it is a definite
> social product, more so than the dreary new media weekend marxism of
> politically engaged net.art. The fact that FF defeats our critical
> language yet is striking, engaging, is healthy for all concerned.
The assertation that FlashFormalism is striking and engaging is almost
rivals curtCloninger's riDONCulous suggestion that "outsider art" will
reinvigorate newMedia. FlashFormalism defeats our critical language?
Yes, in much the same way that cottonCandy defeats critical discourse
by being irrelevant.
> Imagine a world in which formal, algorithmic, visual art was
> realistic, necessary, even urgent. Now work back from that world to
> our own.
Ok, here I go.
...
That was an interesting trip, but meanwhile, back on planetEarth,
FlashFormalism is anything but necessary and urgent.
> Think of the impressionists, their tube paint and the new railroad
> network that took them from Paris to the nearby scenery they painted.
That's an interesting way to look at it -- I look at Impressionist work
and see a radical protest at the dawn of the machine age. If you think
their work was a joyful expression of how wonderful it was to take the
train and paint flowers, you're missing the only thing in those
paintings of interest to me. What I admire about them is the furiously
angry assault on the blackened industrial wastelands their cities had
become -- so angry that even their brushstrokes rebelled against being
used as fully representational marks (like they were in the
assemblyLine of quick-cash portrait painting).
The impressionists were not formalists.
> Of the abstract expressionists, artificial mediums and individualism.
> Form follows function.
The AbExers were not formalists either.
> These pseudo-chaotic structures and seemingly ordered systems are our
> lives rendered for us to see, the space we live in (or that is
> dictated to us). This is how it is. This is keeping it real. The
> mapping is defensible.
That's about half of an idea, but not nearly enough to warrant the
fullScale rejection of intellectual discourse and conceptualism. The
important thing to keep in mind is that all art is conceptual, whether
you like it or not, because it "happens" in the brain. If no one will
step up to the plate and talk about this art, it's because not very
much is happening in anyone's brain as they ingest it.
> It'll grow on ya. ;-)
Hopefully some of deesMemes will grow on you too :)
- ben
> In order for art to have ideas, for it to be critically interesting,
> it must have some degree of autonomy and it must be problematic for
> criticism (and language), of which it is the object.
Sure, it must be problematic, and not just for critics. So what makes
you think FlashFormalism is problematic? The only thing problematic
about it is that it's not problematic whatsoever!
> Critics (as we are being here), must look at it and curse the artists'
> name because they can see that there's something there, but they're
> going to have to work out what it is rather than reel off
> DeleuzeGuattariBaudrillardDerrida and go to bed early.
Exactly. Yet there's no reason to curse the names of FlashFormalists.
The work is so MindNumbingly boring that I can barely remember their
names.
> There are definite ideas in Flash formalism, and it is a definite
> social product, more so than the dreary new media weekend marxism of
> politically engaged net.art. The fact that FF defeats our critical
> language yet is striking, engaging, is healthy for all concerned.
The assertation that FlashFormalism is striking and engaging is almost
rivals curtCloninger's riDONCulous suggestion that "outsider art" will
reinvigorate newMedia. FlashFormalism defeats our critical language?
Yes, in much the same way that cottonCandy defeats critical discourse
by being irrelevant.
> Imagine a world in which formal, algorithmic, visual art was
> realistic, necessary, even urgent. Now work back from that world to
> our own.
Ok, here I go.
...
That was an interesting trip, but meanwhile, back on planetEarth,
FlashFormalism is anything but necessary and urgent.
> Think of the impressionists, their tube paint and the new railroad
> network that took them from Paris to the nearby scenery they painted.
That's an interesting way to look at it -- I look at Impressionist work
and see a radical protest at the dawn of the machine age. If you think
their work was a joyful expression of how wonderful it was to take the
train and paint flowers, you're missing the only thing in those
paintings of interest to me. What I admire about them is the furiously
angry assault on the blackened industrial wastelands their cities had
become -- so angry that even their brushstrokes rebelled against being
used as fully representational marks (like they were in the
assemblyLine of quick-cash portrait painting).
The impressionists were not formalists.
> Of the abstract expressionists, artificial mediums and individualism.
> Form follows function.
The AbExers were not formalists either.
> These pseudo-chaotic structures and seemingly ordered systems are our
> lives rendered for us to see, the space we live in (or that is
> dictated to us). This is how it is. This is keeping it real. The
> mapping is defensible.
That's about half of an idea, but not nearly enough to warrant the
fullScale rejection of intellectual discourse and conceptualism. The
important thing to keep in mind is that all art is conceptual, whether
you like it or not, because it "happens" in the brain. If no one will
step up to the plate and talk about this art, it's because not very
much is happening in anyone's brain as they ingest it.
> It'll grow on ya. ;-)
Hopefully some of deesMemes will grow on you too :)
- ben
