curt cloninger
Since the beginning
Works in Canton, North Carolina United States of America

ARTBASE (7)
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.
Discussions (1122) Opportunities (4) Events (17) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

synesthetic bubble gum cards


http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/

SYNESTHETIC BUBBLE GUM CARDS ARE HERE!

Taste the iridescence!
Feel the effervescence!
Hear the luminescence!

"Fantastic invention. Revolutionize the industry. You can suck 'em
and suck 'em and suck 'em, and they'll never get any smaller. Never.
At least I don't think they do. A few more tests."
- Willy Wonka

enjoy,
curt

DISCUSSION

Re: Death Bets


perhaps this diagram will help:
http://www.lab404.com/apmec/

+++++++

t.whid wrote:

> and i'm not sure what curt is saying...
>
> ;-) cya
>
>
> At 5:04 -0400 8/1/03, Curt Cloninger wrote:
> >m. said:
> >Along a this line, twhid and others have pointed out to me that DADA
> >was one of the more interesting reactions to WWI, as in; "if this is
> >the way the world works, I'm fucking out of here..."
> >
> >t. said:
> >Dada led to eventually to conceptual art and there is indeed ample
> >reason for a comeback of the absurd.
> >
> >j. m. said:
> >of our elaborate plans / the end
> >of everything that stands / the end
> >
> >----------
> >
> >yet
> >
> >run/dmc said:
> >i'm not going out like that
> >
> >and
> >
> >radiohead said:
> >we ride tonight / ghost horses
> >
> >http://www.sarahmasen.com/dark/story.php/8
> >
> >----------
> >
> >he who has ears, let him hear.
> >
>
> --
> <twhid>
> http://www.mteww.com
> </twhid>

DISCUSSION

Re: Death Bets


m. said:
Along a this line, twhid and others have pointed out to me that DADA
was one of the more interesting reactions to WWI, as in; "if this is
the way the world works, I'm fucking out of here..."

t. said:
Dada led to eventually to conceptual art and there is indeed ample
reason for a comeback of the absurd.

j. m. said:
of our elaborate plans / the end
of everything that stands / the end

----------

yet

run/dmc said:
i'm not going out like that

and

radiohead said:
we ride tonight / ghost horses

http://www.sarahmasen.com/dark/story.php/8

----------

he who has ears, let him hear.

_
_

DISCUSSION

fall quilt completed


The fall quilt is completed and viewable at:
http://www.playdamage.org/fall/

Now accepting submissions for the pop quilt:
http://www.playdamage.org/quilt/invite.html

View all the quilts here:
http://www.playdamage.org/quilt/

_
_

DISCUSSION

Re: Request to Safari users


Hi all,

I just got back from out of town. My gut feeling is that this
argument is going to be won (if it's won at all) not by trying to get
coders to recognize the aesthetic value of net art (star peg, square
hole), but by correctly pointing out that animated gifs are standards
compliant, tiling background images are standards compliant, and
setting a gif of any kind as a tiling background is standards
compliant. Safari is failing to support standards in this instance.

I have to go back and recode playdamage.org for Safari anyway,
because it doesn't recognize my vertical center code (and it's
correct not to, there is technichally no <td> height attribute in
HTML4 or XHTML1). Fortunately, there is a CSS layers solution to
this, and I'll just have to retrofit.

There's a way around the non-animating gif background as well -- in
CSS, just set the gif as "background-image" of a div layer, set the
layer height and width to 100%, and set its z-index to 0. Again,
it's just more retrofitting for me, but whatever.

The idea of coding my DHTML art to standards is something that never
occured to me, but based on recent events in the commercial browser
world, it's starting to make sense to me. Not to "comply" or to be
"disability friendly," but for archival longevity (to keep from
having to retrofit my site every browser regime change).

What raises my dander is the way that if some coder knows W3C
standards and a modicum of usability practice, he also presumes to be
an expert on aesthetics and "right" uses of the web. The irony is, I
just shared the Seattle Web Design World stage with Jeffrey Zeldman,
Mark Newhouse, Steve Mulder, and a host of standards/usability/xml
superfreaks:
http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/webdesignworld/seattle/speakers.a
sp
Furthermore, I tech edited the industry standard tome on web design
for people with disabilities:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/073571150X/qid5967149
6/
It's not that I'm unaware. It's just that those concerns do not
apply to this use.

peace,
curt

[Feel free to cross-post as beneficial.]

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

Nick Barker wrote:

> All I really wanted was to get anyone who might prefer Safari to
> support animated background gifs to mention it to Apple
> but anyway - things are really hotting up over at
> http://discussions.info.apple.com/
> Discussions > Safari > Request to Safari users
>

<snip>

> Posts: 73
>
> >1. drop your ignorant definitions of web art. it's extremely
> insulting and makes you sound like an idiot.
>
> There's no need to become abusive. It's a stretch of the imagination
> to call it "art" at all. Everything you want to display could be done
> in Flash. Using the browser to do it is about technology; not art.
>
>
> >2. i'm not being disengenious or misleading. there is nothing in HTML
> that would allow you to have [object] tags render in the background,
> but come to think of it, why not have java, quicktime movies, flash,
> or text as the background of the page?
>
> Because there's absolutely no need to.
>
> Imagine a page with black text, and a background that animations from
> dark to light to back again. Half the time the text is unreadable.
>
> What you want to do is make the web harder to use for the visually
> impaired and average users, and benefitting only a very tiny niche who
> use browsers as never intended.
>
>
> you could do some interesting things.
>
> You can do "interesting things" without animated backgrounds. The web
> is about communicating; not showing off silly browser tricks.
>
>
> >3. i support following standards. i repeat, if images are allowed to
> be in the background of an HTML doc by W3C standards then it's simply
> proper practice to support the format completely.
>
> If you supported following standards then you'd understand that
> animated backgrounds violate principles of accessibility and
> readability.
>
>
> >4. why is the background considered not part of the content of the
> page?
>
> It underlies the body element or table elements. It is, and should be,
> a static layer that does not interfere with the ability of the user to
> view content lying over it.
>
> Using it to create tiled animating images is a hack that takes
> advantage of what a few browsers did that they never needed to.
>
>
> lots of the newest CSS techniques use background images to place
> graphic headings on pages
>
> In violation of the Semantic Web. How is an audio reader meant to
> render background headlines? So much for standards.
>
>
> >5. Would you support not allowing background PNGs to have their
> alpha-transparency feature?
>
> Alpha transparency doesn't interfere with the usability of a page.
> More disingenuousness.
>
>
> >6. my answer to your real question: I *need* to display a graphic
> format that the browser claims to support.
>
> No, you want it to do something that other browsers did, that there is
> no compelling reason to do. Backgrounds aren't for animating. Again,
> if you want to display content over a large animated field, Safari
> already provides the facility to do that: Flash or Quicktime. You
> could probably even do it in SMIL.
>
>
> I want it to be better and animated GIFs make it better for me.
>
> Animating them underneath the body content layer does not make it
> better for 99% of users; it makes it demonstrably worse. Apple has no
> need to add it in and then add a preferences option: that's hours of
> development time, and unneeded additional complexity added to the
> software.
>
>
> >7. Your directive to use different formats doesn't help the thousands
> of pages already built with this one effect in mind.
>
> It's a hack, a misuse of browsers to begin with. How is this Apple's
> problem?
>
>
> it would be so easy for Apple to fix this one little thing and let
> some web art live for a bit longer in the Safari browser.
>
> Use another browser. Find a way to do it in Safari that works now. Use
> Flash. There's many solutions available to you. People using the web
> as intended, as a communication medium, don't need animated
> backgrounds.