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: why so little discussion?
Hi Michael,
I think the Laurel and Hardy insight is a useful one, and I'll touch
on that later. I don't see the pieces in "five small videos"
primarily in relationship to experimental video, although they
technichally contain aspects of video media, and the title of the
series is "five small videos". I see them primarily in relationship
to interface design culture. MTAA are applying their
conceptual/performance art insights to expose the absurdities of the
Human Computer Interface. The pieces are actually explicitly
post-video, which is what makes them so compelling.
There was a lot of "sick" (in the positive sense) abstract work in
lingo/director emerging around 1998 on the web ( http://turux.org
being the classic example). The code was trigonometric functions
tweaking little 2X2 pixel colored triangles with the "trace" effect
turned on, and it functioned like a kind of reactive abstract digital
painting process. Which was cool and still is cool, and I'm not
knocking that.
Then people started to map that same kind reactive/generative code
onto images of physical bodies. A great example is
http://lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm . Yugo Nakamura has some
amazing stuff along the same lines:
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id$
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=3
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id)
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id&
http://yugop.com/ver2/works/typospace3.html
So now instead of being able to control abstract shapes (or watch the
computer auto-control abstract shapes), I'm able as a user to control
human or animal forms (or watch the computer auto-control them).
This is a lot more conceptually promising, since we're humans. But
who of the Flash/Director script kiddies was exploring the
implications of these concepts? Few.
I position http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/ in this same
genre (interactive body stuff), but with a greater focus on the
conceptual, human implications. For instance, in "sliding
compression," by mapping the slider resolution to their own faces,
the artists raise all sorts of intriguing issues. The two artists
are part of a collaborate partnership, but does one grow in fame at
the expense of the other? I love the minimalistic terseness of this
piece. It doesn't need an expanded artist statement. It doesn't
even need the word "fame" in the title of the piece. The
simultaneous crisping and blurring of the respective artist faces
says it all. By naming the piece after its mere technical interface
mechanism ("sliding compression"), the artists foreground the fact
that there is always more ethically implicit in our technology than
what it is merely technichally doing. Why does tech always have
ethical implications? Because our technology is not just "operating"
on dots or lines or data structures. Ultlimately, it's "operating"
on us. (And McLuhan said so.)
If the images of the artists were mere cartoons (as in the MTAA
avatar logos), the piece would be schlocky and feel like so many
Flash animation gag reels (cf: http://www.jibjab.com ). If the
images were static jpgs, they would still feel like mere simulacra
[note to academics: used trendy critical term]. I propose that even
if the clips were live-action filmed in front of a realistic
background the profundity of the piece would be greatly decreased
(cf: http://subservientchicken.com ). By the way, I think subservient
chicken is actually brialliant conceptual net art, but it will never
make it into the canon because it's a burger king marketing campaign.
Too bad for the canon. Anway, the fact that the artists are
silhoutted on white yet still moving makes them seem like little tiny
people inside the screen ( cf:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:H6jOp1QtRHIJ:userwww.sfsu.edu/~nathangr/wonka/mikemini.jpg
). Issues of perpetual stuckness, looping, and time are raised.
Similar issues are raised in MTAA's "One Year Performance" piece, but
to less effect. With "Five Small Videos," I don't need to know the
esoteric history of performance art to immediately get the full
impact of the piece. But then I like stereolab better than Ornette
Coleman, so sue me.
Back to the Laurel and Hardy insight, which brings up the topic of
physical comedy, which leads to the topic of the human body. There
was a big push early on for we humans to insert our "selves" into a
virtual world, with all the utopianism and man-as-his-own-god
promises which that implied. We would leave our old bodies and get
new bodies inside the machine. But who wants to live inside a
freaking machine? If macmall.com can't even hook me up with the
right USB male/female cable adaptor, what does this bode for my
virtual sex life? "Five Small Videos" successfully lampoons the
promise of VR by inserting the non-stylized, non-abstracted,
"real/normal" bodies of the"tired old" artists (not that they are
actually tired or old; it's "acting!") into the contemporary,
non-utopian, "real" machine -- subjecting them to all the bland,
inane, dehumanizing restrictions of contemporary
usability-influenced, dont-make-me-think web design best practices.
t. whid himself knows web development and is all too familiar with
its interface design conventions. So much so, that this piece
"presses the buttons" (pun overintented) of non-artsy, "normal" web
users everywhere; they relate to it intuitively; and it wins a
"macromedia site of the day" award (how gauchely populist!) And
well it should. The best art is able to dialogue on an allusive art
history level without that aspect being strictly requisite to its
appreciation.
It's cool that Mathew Barney uses his body as a prop. Along similar
lines (but in graphic design rather than art) Stefan Sagmeister uses
his body as a prop to powerful effect (
http://www.sagmeister.com/work5.html ,
http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/3/SVA_exhibition.jpg ,
http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/2/Sagmeister%20Inc.-Zurich1.jpg
). It's lame and desparate when Genesis P. Orridge maimes his body
as a prop, or when that one armed guy nailed his one arm to the wall
and called it art, or when that other guy got shot in the arm as art.
Spectacle, spectacle! [note use of trendy critical term #2] It's not
just that an artist uses his body; it's how he does it (hubba hubba).
What Barney and Sagmeister and Laurel and Hardy all have in common is
that their bodies are tools of imprinture into archived media.
Whereas Genesis P. Orridge rolling around in glass is live. His body
isn't just the brush, it's the canvas.
Is Beuys body his own canvas in "I love America and America loves
me?" Not really. He's more like an actor in a drama. Put a camera
in there with him and the coyote and release the footage on double
DVD -- have you captured the import of the performance? Not at all.
Because the medium of video inserts a linear rigor into the mix that
removes some of the most interesting elements of the performance,
namely -- is the coyote going to bite him? The video can be an
archive of the outcome of the performance, but nothing more.
What's cool about "Five Small Videos" is that they aren't videos. In
our post-film, "interactive" era, MTAA are able to insert
non-linearity back into the performative process, yet they still
maintail all the "archival/removed/time-shifted" nature of film. In
"One Year Performance," they don't have to really be in the rooms for
a year. You do that work for them (or the loop code of the machine
does, and you agree to suspend your disbelief). Just like the three
stooges didn't have to go around from vaudeville show to vaudeville
show forever poking each other in the eye. Record once; play
anywhere. But add interactivity to video, and it feels like the
actors are "actually there," because they are responding to my
real-time imput. But really the machine is responding to my
real-time input. But since the behavior of the machine is now mapped
onto their "bodies," they become my puppets (with all the strangeness
and awkwardness that such control implies). In "lights on, lights
off," I can't wake M. River up too many times without feeling a
little sadistic. Best leave sleeping dogs lie.
"Five Small Videos" is actually very potent in a way that most cyborg
extropian art (and most of the didactically reflexive/self-aware cary
peppermint stuff) never is for me. It hits the mark because it
succinctly foregrounds the absurdities of the medium, it steps back,
and it allows these absurdities to trip over themselves for my own
amusement/contemplation without a whole lot of didactic moralizing
from the artists themselves. All it lacks is a generative ragtime
piano soundtrack.
peace,
curt "i've got your discussion hanging" cloninger
_
At 6:22 AM -0800 11/20/04, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
>Hi Jim, all
>I'm replying to your original post although I read the
>others.
>I don't know what the answer is; I certainly enjoy it
>when a topic catches fire -in general that doesn't
>seem to happen with discussions of specific pieces,
>which is a shame because this requires a more subtle
>approach than some of the polarised *in-general*
>positions often argued here.
>So I'm going to post some stuff about a recent piece
>in the hope someone will respond.
>I meant to post awhile back to say how much I'd liked
>the MTAA "Five Small Videos About Interruption and
>Disappearing"
>
>http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/
>
>Like them very much I do; but they also intrigue me.
>The blurb says they are inspired by early performance
>videos - a genre and a period which I enjoy a lot.
>There was a marvellous exhibition at the ICA here
>about a year ago of single channel video works - lots
>of Acconci, Baldessari and also early Nauman
>-wonderful stuff.
>
>One thing that occurs to me about the MTAA response is
>firstly how *elegant* it is - & this is a quality of
>all their work - elegance and thoroughness, or perhaps
>elegance due to thoroughness - one could never accuse
>them of a lack of craft.
>This is in stark contrast to the sheer edginess and
>sense of ( often literal!) danger in much of that
>early video work. Doing my sums I can't put this down
>to the newness of video as a medium - actually I
>suspect that the technologies used by MTAA are newer
>relative to them.
>
>There's a temptation to see this piece ( and others
>such as the one year performance piece) as a sort of
>conceptual post modernist whimsy, beautifully made but
>essentially a clever formal exercise.
>I think this would be wrong - actually there seems to
>me to be a feel of "classicism" about this work - the
>elegance seems not a symptom or a bolt on but a very
>much integral part of the work.
>I see this happening quite a lot -its as if in the
>shadow of high modernism it wasn't quite respectable
>to use the methods and the language of the past
>without being *ironic* or having a high concept.
>Now all those barriers have long been broken we can
>simply move on to using a good move no matter when or
>where we saw it.
>SO specifically here it's as if the artists of the
>seventies having blazed a trail, created edgy stuff in
>a kind of white heat, MTAA are examining the language
>and the practice with the benefit of a couple of
>decades of hindsight and appropriating *what fits*,
>*what works* into their own practice.
>And the resultant work for me isn't simply clever or
>knowing but actually quite touching - I'm quite moved
>by these two characters in the videos ( and there are
>longer backward shadows cast here - Laurel and Hardy,
>Abbott and Costello, the *comic film duo* , spring to
>mind).
>Certainly the piece feels to me to have many
>resonances that go beyond the intellectual, the
>clever, the knowing and enter the world of the
>affective.
>I'd be interested to know what you or others think.
>best
>michael
>
>
>
>--- Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> wrote:
>
>> why is it that there is so little discussion of
>> net.art posted to rhizome? a
>> lot of the posts announce work that isn't viewable,
>> ie, announcements of
>> installation projects and whatnot, but there are
>> posts concerning net.work
>> that is viewable online, and it is rarely discussed.
>>
>> ja
>> http://vispo.com
>>
>>
>> +
>> -> post: list@rhizome.org
>> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
>> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
>> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is
>> open to non-members
>> +
>> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set
>> out in the
>> Membership Agreement available online at
>> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
>http://my.yahoo.com
>
I think the Laurel and Hardy insight is a useful one, and I'll touch
on that later. I don't see the pieces in "five small videos"
primarily in relationship to experimental video, although they
technichally contain aspects of video media, and the title of the
series is "five small videos". I see them primarily in relationship
to interface design culture. MTAA are applying their
conceptual/performance art insights to expose the absurdities of the
Human Computer Interface. The pieces are actually explicitly
post-video, which is what makes them so compelling.
There was a lot of "sick" (in the positive sense) abstract work in
lingo/director emerging around 1998 on the web ( http://turux.org
being the classic example). The code was trigonometric functions
tweaking little 2X2 pixel colored triangles with the "trace" effect
turned on, and it functioned like a kind of reactive abstract digital
painting process. Which was cool and still is cool, and I'm not
knocking that.
Then people started to map that same kind reactive/generative code
onto images of physical bodies. A great example is
http://lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm . Yugo Nakamura has some
amazing stuff along the same lines:
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id$
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id=3
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id)
http://yugop.com/ver3/index.asp?id&
http://yugop.com/ver2/works/typospace3.html
So now instead of being able to control abstract shapes (or watch the
computer auto-control abstract shapes), I'm able as a user to control
human or animal forms (or watch the computer auto-control them).
This is a lot more conceptually promising, since we're humans. But
who of the Flash/Director script kiddies was exploring the
implications of these concepts? Few.
I position http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/ in this same
genre (interactive body stuff), but with a greater focus on the
conceptual, human implications. For instance, in "sliding
compression," by mapping the slider resolution to their own faces,
the artists raise all sorts of intriguing issues. The two artists
are part of a collaborate partnership, but does one grow in fame at
the expense of the other? I love the minimalistic terseness of this
piece. It doesn't need an expanded artist statement. It doesn't
even need the word "fame" in the title of the piece. The
simultaneous crisping and blurring of the respective artist faces
says it all. By naming the piece after its mere technical interface
mechanism ("sliding compression"), the artists foreground the fact
that there is always more ethically implicit in our technology than
what it is merely technichally doing. Why does tech always have
ethical implications? Because our technology is not just "operating"
on dots or lines or data structures. Ultlimately, it's "operating"
on us. (And McLuhan said so.)
If the images of the artists were mere cartoons (as in the MTAA
avatar logos), the piece would be schlocky and feel like so many
Flash animation gag reels (cf: http://www.jibjab.com ). If the
images were static jpgs, they would still feel like mere simulacra
[note to academics: used trendy critical term]. I propose that even
if the clips were live-action filmed in front of a realistic
background the profundity of the piece would be greatly decreased
(cf: http://subservientchicken.com ). By the way, I think subservient
chicken is actually brialliant conceptual net art, but it will never
make it into the canon because it's a burger king marketing campaign.
Too bad for the canon. Anway, the fact that the artists are
silhoutted on white yet still moving makes them seem like little tiny
people inside the screen ( cf:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:H6jOp1QtRHIJ:userwww.sfsu.edu/~nathangr/wonka/mikemini.jpg
). Issues of perpetual stuckness, looping, and time are raised.
Similar issues are raised in MTAA's "One Year Performance" piece, but
to less effect. With "Five Small Videos," I don't need to know the
esoteric history of performance art to immediately get the full
impact of the piece. But then I like stereolab better than Ornette
Coleman, so sue me.
Back to the Laurel and Hardy insight, which brings up the topic of
physical comedy, which leads to the topic of the human body. There
was a big push early on for we humans to insert our "selves" into a
virtual world, with all the utopianism and man-as-his-own-god
promises which that implied. We would leave our old bodies and get
new bodies inside the machine. But who wants to live inside a
freaking machine? If macmall.com can't even hook me up with the
right USB male/female cable adaptor, what does this bode for my
virtual sex life? "Five Small Videos" successfully lampoons the
promise of VR by inserting the non-stylized, non-abstracted,
"real/normal" bodies of the"tired old" artists (not that they are
actually tired or old; it's "acting!") into the contemporary,
non-utopian, "real" machine -- subjecting them to all the bland,
inane, dehumanizing restrictions of contemporary
usability-influenced, dont-make-me-think web design best practices.
t. whid himself knows web development and is all too familiar with
its interface design conventions. So much so, that this piece
"presses the buttons" (pun overintented) of non-artsy, "normal" web
users everywhere; they relate to it intuitively; and it wins a
"macromedia site of the day" award (how gauchely populist!) And
well it should. The best art is able to dialogue on an allusive art
history level without that aspect being strictly requisite to its
appreciation.
It's cool that Mathew Barney uses his body as a prop. Along similar
lines (but in graphic design rather than art) Stefan Sagmeister uses
his body as a prop to powerful effect (
http://www.sagmeister.com/work5.html ,
http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/3/SVA_exhibition.jpg ,
http://journal.aiga.org/resources/file/1/8/2/2/Sagmeister%20Inc.-Zurich1.jpg
). It's lame and desparate when Genesis P. Orridge maimes his body
as a prop, or when that one armed guy nailed his one arm to the wall
and called it art, or when that other guy got shot in the arm as art.
Spectacle, spectacle! [note use of trendy critical term #2] It's not
just that an artist uses his body; it's how he does it (hubba hubba).
What Barney and Sagmeister and Laurel and Hardy all have in common is
that their bodies are tools of imprinture into archived media.
Whereas Genesis P. Orridge rolling around in glass is live. His body
isn't just the brush, it's the canvas.
Is Beuys body his own canvas in "I love America and America loves
me?" Not really. He's more like an actor in a drama. Put a camera
in there with him and the coyote and release the footage on double
DVD -- have you captured the import of the performance? Not at all.
Because the medium of video inserts a linear rigor into the mix that
removes some of the most interesting elements of the performance,
namely -- is the coyote going to bite him? The video can be an
archive of the outcome of the performance, but nothing more.
What's cool about "Five Small Videos" is that they aren't videos. In
our post-film, "interactive" era, MTAA are able to insert
non-linearity back into the performative process, yet they still
maintail all the "archival/removed/time-shifted" nature of film. In
"One Year Performance," they don't have to really be in the rooms for
a year. You do that work for them (or the loop code of the machine
does, and you agree to suspend your disbelief). Just like the three
stooges didn't have to go around from vaudeville show to vaudeville
show forever poking each other in the eye. Record once; play
anywhere. But add interactivity to video, and it feels like the
actors are "actually there," because they are responding to my
real-time imput. But really the machine is responding to my
real-time input. But since the behavior of the machine is now mapped
onto their "bodies," they become my puppets (with all the strangeness
and awkwardness that such control implies). In "lights on, lights
off," I can't wake M. River up too many times without feeling a
little sadistic. Best leave sleeping dogs lie.
"Five Small Videos" is actually very potent in a way that most cyborg
extropian art (and most of the didactically reflexive/self-aware cary
peppermint stuff) never is for me. It hits the mark because it
succinctly foregrounds the absurdities of the medium, it steps back,
and it allows these absurdities to trip over themselves for my own
amusement/contemplation without a whole lot of didactic moralizing
from the artists themselves. All it lacks is a generative ragtime
piano soundtrack.
peace,
curt "i've got your discussion hanging" cloninger
_
At 6:22 AM -0800 11/20/04, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
>Hi Jim, all
>I'm replying to your original post although I read the
>others.
>I don't know what the answer is; I certainly enjoy it
>when a topic catches fire -in general that doesn't
>seem to happen with discussions of specific pieces,
>which is a shame because this requires a more subtle
>approach than some of the polarised *in-general*
>positions often argued here.
>So I'm going to post some stuff about a recent piece
>in the hope someone will respond.
>I meant to post awhile back to say how much I'd liked
>the MTAA "Five Small Videos About Interruption and
>Disappearing"
>
>http://mteww.com.twhid.com/five_small_videos/
>
>Like them very much I do; but they also intrigue me.
>The blurb says they are inspired by early performance
>videos - a genre and a period which I enjoy a lot.
>There was a marvellous exhibition at the ICA here
>about a year ago of single channel video works - lots
>of Acconci, Baldessari and also early Nauman
>-wonderful stuff.
>
>One thing that occurs to me about the MTAA response is
>firstly how *elegant* it is - & this is a quality of
>all their work - elegance and thoroughness, or perhaps
>elegance due to thoroughness - one could never accuse
>them of a lack of craft.
>This is in stark contrast to the sheer edginess and
>sense of ( often literal!) danger in much of that
>early video work. Doing my sums I can't put this down
>to the newness of video as a medium - actually I
>suspect that the technologies used by MTAA are newer
>relative to them.
>
>There's a temptation to see this piece ( and others
>such as the one year performance piece) as a sort of
>conceptual post modernist whimsy, beautifully made but
>essentially a clever formal exercise.
>I think this would be wrong - actually there seems to
>me to be a feel of "classicism" about this work - the
>elegance seems not a symptom or a bolt on but a very
>much integral part of the work.
>I see this happening quite a lot -its as if in the
>shadow of high modernism it wasn't quite respectable
>to use the methods and the language of the past
>without being *ironic* or having a high concept.
>Now all those barriers have long been broken we can
>simply move on to using a good move no matter when or
>where we saw it.
>SO specifically here it's as if the artists of the
>seventies having blazed a trail, created edgy stuff in
>a kind of white heat, MTAA are examining the language
>and the practice with the benefit of a couple of
>decades of hindsight and appropriating *what fits*,
>*what works* into their own practice.
>And the resultant work for me isn't simply clever or
>knowing but actually quite touching - I'm quite moved
>by these two characters in the videos ( and there are
>longer backward shadows cast here - Laurel and Hardy,
>Abbott and Costello, the *comic film duo* , spring to
>mind).
>Certainly the piece feels to me to have many
>resonances that go beyond the intellectual, the
>clever, the knowing and enter the world of the
>affective.
>I'd be interested to know what you or others think.
>best
>michael
>
>
>
>--- Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> wrote:
>
>> why is it that there is so little discussion of
>> net.art posted to rhizome? a
>> lot of the posts announce work that isn't viewable,
>> ie, announcements of
>> installation projects and whatnot, but there are
>> posts concerning net.work
>> that is viewable online, and it is rarely discussed.
>>
>> ja
>> http://vispo.com
>>
>>
>> +
>> -> post: list@rhizome.org
>> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
>> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
>> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is
>> open to non-members
>> +
>> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set
>> out in the
>> Membership Agreement available online at
>> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
>http://my.yahoo.com
>