BIO
Curt Cloninger is an artist, writer, and Associate Professor of New Media at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His art undermines language as a system of meaning in order to reveal it as an embodied force in the world. His art work has been featured in the New York Times and at festivals and galleries from Korea to Brazil. Exhibition venues include Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Granoff Center for The Creative Arts (Brown University), Digital Art Museum [DAM] (Berlin), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and the internet. He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including commissions for the creation of new artwork from the National Endowment for the Arts (via Turbulence.org) and Austin Peay State University's Terminal Award.
Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of eight books, most recently One Per Year (Link Editions). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.
Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of eight books, most recently One Per Year (Link Editions). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.
Re: Re: dream7 piece
>but, see, that's the problem ---people do look at all of what is
>produced for the web as an extension of Video and Film.
>
>i suspect that part of the problem is that this art movement was
>"academized" BEFORE it actually existed as a movement. and that a
>lot of these academics were coming straight out of video and
>performance studies. it could be also be that people are so used to
>seeing a screen and "reading" it as TV that they do not have any
>other way to apprehend this new media.
>
>all in all, i object to the art world taking Video, and using it as
>the measure for ALL digital art.
>
>best,
>/ l i z a
I agree, but this is my problem with a lot of conceptual art (no
matter what anything is about, it's always about my problem with
conceptual art). If I have to read an artist statment to know that
what seems to be video is actually randomly generated,
database-derived, real-time compiled new media with video data
components, then it just as soon be video. Video is as video does
(or behaves, or seems). If the piece is experientially different
than video, then I won't experience it as video -- problem solved.
Nobody ever mistook http://www.re-move.org for video. If they did,
they are mired in old media and why do I care what they think? What?
They are in charge of some grant money I might qualify for if only
they understood our medium better? I've got a day job -- problem
solved.
I can control my own critical writing. I can control the art I make.
Academics and galleries can get right or get left. If some Flash
artist is making cool stuff* that is liable to be mistaken for video,
but it's still cool stuff*, then I'm bound to support it regardless
of how it might or might not adversely effect the evolution of our
understanding of "new media." Because I'm not responsible for our
overall understanding of new media. I'm only responsible to make and
hype cool stuff*.
peace,
curt
* US patent pending
>produced for the web as an extension of Video and Film.
>
>i suspect that part of the problem is that this art movement was
>"academized" BEFORE it actually existed as a movement. and that a
>lot of these academics were coming straight out of video and
>performance studies. it could be also be that people are so used to
>seeing a screen and "reading" it as TV that they do not have any
>other way to apprehend this new media.
>
>all in all, i object to the art world taking Video, and using it as
>the measure for ALL digital art.
>
>best,
>/ l i z a
I agree, but this is my problem with a lot of conceptual art (no
matter what anything is about, it's always about my problem with
conceptual art). If I have to read an artist statment to know that
what seems to be video is actually randomly generated,
database-derived, real-time compiled new media with video data
components, then it just as soon be video. Video is as video does
(or behaves, or seems). If the piece is experientially different
than video, then I won't experience it as video -- problem solved.
Nobody ever mistook http://www.re-move.org for video. If they did,
they are mired in old media and why do I care what they think? What?
They are in charge of some grant money I might qualify for if only
they understood our medium better? I've got a day job -- problem
solved.
I can control my own critical writing. I can control the art I make.
Academics and galleries can get right or get left. If some Flash
artist is making cool stuff* that is liable to be mistaken for video,
but it's still cool stuff*, then I'm bound to support it regardless
of how it might or might not adversely effect the evolution of our
understanding of "new media." Because I'm not responsible for our
overall understanding of new media. I'm only responsible to make and
hype cool stuff*.
peace,
curt
* US patent pending
Re: Re: Re: dream7 piece
for pieces dealing with text i truly
> believe that flash is the worst possible tool to use ----again,
> because
> you are competing with the greatest "livre a venir".
>
> best,
> / l i z a
>
And yet I find that http://www.yhchang.com combines flash and text brilliantly. I agree with you about the underestimated radicality of non-linearity and programmability. But http://www.dream7.com forks pretty wildly. It's still closed interactivity (discrete amount of paths) vs. open interactivity (infinite amount of paths), but margaret has done her share of experimentation with the linking event.
To dis Flash en toto seems too tool-specific a critique. Flash does not mean web movies, although that's what it was original meant to make.
Not to butter you up, but Mark Napier is the best of both worlds -- conversant in concept, network, and coding, with an eye for the resultant visual aesthetic.
But if I have to choose between 01010101 life sharing and superbad.com, I am going to choose superbad every time. If the museum curators start preferring good looking stuff over bad looking "surveilance cam" stuff (to borrow M. Szpakowski dis), great.
Whether young hae chang's work is legal net art is irrelevant to me. I think it is medium-specific, in an anti-web sort of way. It subverts the interaction of text chat rooms, it subverts the flash of Flash animations. It uses the web to do the exact opposite of what the web is supposed to be best at, and this "wrong" formalism perfectly contextualizes the cynically playful subjects of its text. (Additionally, I think it's beatiful visual minimalism.)
There's one aspect of the web that most people in gallery NYC overlook -- the web is popular/rural/brut/folk. All those attributes are inherently "web-centric" as well. I can run an online "gallery" like http://www.deepyoung.org from my home office in my spare time and get emails from "real" curators saying, "you displayed x's work; do you have his contact information," when all I did was link to some guy's site. Margaret Penney of dream7 can make funky collabs with people in England while she teaches high school students in upstate New York. All these things are "net-centric" too. In truth, populist playing is what all those then amateur now famous(?) eastern european net.artists were doing back in the day. True, they didn't use Flash. They didn't have it.
I'm still not at the point of saying "it's all good," but I could do with a little more home-grown audio-visual funk and a little less allusive academic sleight of hand. But then I have a day job (albeit as a new media academic) and I'm known to quote Steely Dan in serious conversation.
> believe that flash is the worst possible tool to use ----again,
> because
> you are competing with the greatest "livre a venir".
>
> best,
> / l i z a
>
And yet I find that http://www.yhchang.com combines flash and text brilliantly. I agree with you about the underestimated radicality of non-linearity and programmability. But http://www.dream7.com forks pretty wildly. It's still closed interactivity (discrete amount of paths) vs. open interactivity (infinite amount of paths), but margaret has done her share of experimentation with the linking event.
To dis Flash en toto seems too tool-specific a critique. Flash does not mean web movies, although that's what it was original meant to make.
Not to butter you up, but Mark Napier is the best of both worlds -- conversant in concept, network, and coding, with an eye for the resultant visual aesthetic.
But if I have to choose between 01010101 life sharing and superbad.com, I am going to choose superbad every time. If the museum curators start preferring good looking stuff over bad looking "surveilance cam" stuff (to borrow M. Szpakowski dis), great.
Whether young hae chang's work is legal net art is irrelevant to me. I think it is medium-specific, in an anti-web sort of way. It subverts the interaction of text chat rooms, it subverts the flash of Flash animations. It uses the web to do the exact opposite of what the web is supposed to be best at, and this "wrong" formalism perfectly contextualizes the cynically playful subjects of its text. (Additionally, I think it's beatiful visual minimalism.)
There's one aspect of the web that most people in gallery NYC overlook -- the web is popular/rural/brut/folk. All those attributes are inherently "web-centric" as well. I can run an online "gallery" like http://www.deepyoung.org from my home office in my spare time and get emails from "real" curators saying, "you displayed x's work; do you have his contact information," when all I did was link to some guy's site. Margaret Penney of dream7 can make funky collabs with people in England while she teaches high school students in upstate New York. All these things are "net-centric" too. In truth, populist playing is what all those then amateur now famous(?) eastern european net.artists were doing back in the day. True, they didn't use Flash. They didn't have it.
I'm still not at the point of saying "it's all good," but I could do with a little more home-grown audio-visual funk and a little less allusive academic sleight of hand. But then I have a day job (albeit as a new media academic) and I'm known to quote Steely Dan in serious conversation.
Re: Re: anti-art-incorporating-dead-animals-&-be ds
bull
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/p/potter/y_bull.jpg
> > providing needles for your balloons
>
> http://www.balloonhq.com/highlights/koons/rabbit.html
>
> > http://www.stuckism.com/remod.html
> "At this appropriate time, The Stuckists, the first
> Remodernist Art Group, announce the birth of
> Remodernism."
>
> http://www.hawaii.edu/lruby/art302/INNOCEN.GIF
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
> http://search.yahoo.com
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/p/potter/y_bull.jpg
> > providing needles for your balloons
>
> http://www.balloonhq.com/highlights/koons/rabbit.html
>
> > http://www.stuckism.com/remod.html
> "At this appropriate time, The Stuckists, the first
> Remodernist Art Group, announce the birth of
> Remodernism."
>
> http://www.hawaii.edu/lruby/art302/INNOCEN.GIF
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
> http://search.yahoo.com
anti-art-incorporating-dead-animals-&-beds
providing needles for your balloons
http://www.stuckism.com/remod.html
http://www.flaminglips.com/media/discography/singles/07_providingNeedl
es/sfc_providingNeedles.jpg
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http://www.stuckism.com/remod.html
http://www.flaminglips.com/media/discography/singles/07_providingNeedl
es/sfc_providingNeedles.jpg
_
_