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.
REAL
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8.
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2.
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7.
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8.
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13.
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14.
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When you go surfclubbin', don't forget your hat.
Of course we never agreed. And I can't speak for you, but I'm guessing we have both changed (some) since and met somewhere in the middle. Now I'm less impressed with wacky looking, ass-backwards-hacked low-fi animations that end where they begin and are conceptually vacous. And it seems as if y'all's work has become (a bit) less artist-statement dependent and a bit more visceral (although no less conceptual).
I must admit, I'm still a sucker for outsider.net.art (cf: http://deepyoung.org/current/outsider/ ). I just got a DVD from my man cold bacon, and it is really great. But I would be at a loss to justify it conceptually.
I must admit, I'm still a sucker for outsider.net.art (cf: http://deepyoung.org/current/outsider/ ). I just got a DVD from my man cold bacon, and it is really great. But I would be at a loss to justify it conceptually.
When you go surfclubbin', don't forget your hat.
Hi Tom,
I appreciate the specific example. It gives us something specific to talk about. I can "claim it" because all sorts of people were doing similar things as early as 1998. I can "repudiate it" because I have changed my mind about the value of such things and no longer think they are as important as I once did.
In 1999, on Rhizome Raw, Tim Whidden and I spent a lot of time arguing about what wound up being characterized as net art vs. web art. Tim and others defended a kind of "net art" that, if burned on a ROM and then run on a computer without an internet connection, would simply not work (for example, http://www.irational.org/heath/_readme.html ). I defended a kind of "web art" that would work on a CD-ROM, disconnected from the internet, but whose visual aesthetic would seem silly apart from the context of a browser and internet culture (for example, http://www.playdamage.org ). Such "web art" achieved its particular sheen and visual aesthetic from the low bandwidth limitations of the network, from the various technologies that browsers would recognize, from the various glitches and lossiness of the file formats they would support, and from the cut and paste sampling culture of the network itself. It's not that web art was "unconceptual." It's just that its concept was less didactic and more embedded/embodied in a visual "aesthtetic."
As I teach internet art ( http://lab404.com/330 ), I break it up into four categories:
1. Network art
This is Tim's conceptual "net art." Rachel Greene's Thames & Hudson Internet Art book is comprised entirely of this genre of net art. She breaks her books up into various conceptual topics, but it is all basically conceptual art that would not work if a machine were disconnected from the network. Furthermore, this art is usually largely unconcerned with visual "aesthetic." There is nothing more low-bandwidth than a pure concept.
2. Linear narrative
Not really that exciting, but foregrounds the difference between linear web narrative and linear film narrative.
3. Closed Interactivity (lev manovich's term) aka non-linear narrative
Non-linear. May have multiple outcomes, but still only a finite number of them.
4. Open Interactivity (lev manovich's term) aka software art
Like generative painting, an infinite number of outcomes. Processing software is often involved.
--
The elephant in the room of this thread seems to be canonization. I am still awaiting some sort of manifesto or explanation that convinces me that net art 2.0 is something other than a re-bloggable version of linear narrative. I am wondering how javier's animated gif is anything more than "web art" posted to a group blog. I am not convinced that the RSS-ability of his post radicalizes its nature, or that the "semiotic" terrain his animation is exploring is intrinsically related to the "social web." To me, the new technology of the "social web," (the "web 2.0" of twitter, social networks, myspace) simply takes the technology that early net artists were using critically, and makes it available for everyone to use uncritically. This suggests the potential for a new, even more radically critical move on the part of contemporary artists, but reblogging animated gif mashups with vague references to Saussure and Barthes hardly seems to be that move.
To me, here is a high water mark of the social web ( http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol5_No2_sxsw_cloninger.htm )
Non-artists using the network to accidentally create a better distributed, net-centric, non-linear narrative than any single net artist has ever accomplished. Compared to that, how radical is a group of artists photoblogging?
"We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present." - Deleuze+Guattari, 1996
The canonized history of "net art," if it is even canonized at all, will not be decided on rhizome RAW. It won't be decided on anybody's blog or by anybody's pdf article. It won't be decided in Manhattan galleries. It won't be decided by artists (young, old, 1.0, 2.0, or 35.7). It will most likely be decided by academics publishing books for university presses (people like Mary Flanagan, Alex Galloway, Mark Hansen, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Peter Lunenfeld, etc.).
I say all this to try to try to bring clarity to a thread that is becoming increasingly solipsistic and thus uninteresting to me. Marissa, Lauren, do y'all have any clarity to add? I missed the panel. Perhaps you could stream it? A link-list of work in this genre? It's not that the work I've seen thus far is bad. It just doesn't seem to be all that I'm being told it is.
Best,
Curt
I appreciate the specific example. It gives us something specific to talk about. I can "claim it" because all sorts of people were doing similar things as early as 1998. I can "repudiate it" because I have changed my mind about the value of such things and no longer think they are as important as I once did.
In 1999, on Rhizome Raw, Tim Whidden and I spent a lot of time arguing about what wound up being characterized as net art vs. web art. Tim and others defended a kind of "net art" that, if burned on a ROM and then run on a computer without an internet connection, would simply not work (for example, http://www.irational.org/heath/_readme.html ). I defended a kind of "web art" that would work on a CD-ROM, disconnected from the internet, but whose visual aesthetic would seem silly apart from the context of a browser and internet culture (for example, http://www.playdamage.org ). Such "web art" achieved its particular sheen and visual aesthetic from the low bandwidth limitations of the network, from the various technologies that browsers would recognize, from the various glitches and lossiness of the file formats they would support, and from the cut and paste sampling culture of the network itself. It's not that web art was "unconceptual." It's just that its concept was less didactic and more embedded/embodied in a visual "aesthtetic."
As I teach internet art ( http://lab404.com/330 ), I break it up into four categories:
1. Network art
This is Tim's conceptual "net art." Rachel Greene's Thames & Hudson Internet Art book is comprised entirely of this genre of net art. She breaks her books up into various conceptual topics, but it is all basically conceptual art that would not work if a machine were disconnected from the network. Furthermore, this art is usually largely unconcerned with visual "aesthetic." There is nothing more low-bandwidth than a pure concept.
2. Linear narrative
Not really that exciting, but foregrounds the difference between linear web narrative and linear film narrative.
3. Closed Interactivity (lev manovich's term) aka non-linear narrative
Non-linear. May have multiple outcomes, but still only a finite number of them.
4. Open Interactivity (lev manovich's term) aka software art
Like generative painting, an infinite number of outcomes. Processing software is often involved.
--
The elephant in the room of this thread seems to be canonization. I am still awaiting some sort of manifesto or explanation that convinces me that net art 2.0 is something other than a re-bloggable version of linear narrative. I am wondering how javier's animated gif is anything more than "web art" posted to a group blog. I am not convinced that the RSS-ability of his post radicalizes its nature, or that the "semiotic" terrain his animation is exploring is intrinsically related to the "social web." To me, the new technology of the "social web," (the "web 2.0" of twitter, social networks, myspace) simply takes the technology that early net artists were using critically, and makes it available for everyone to use uncritically. This suggests the potential for a new, even more radically critical move on the part of contemporary artists, but reblogging animated gif mashups with vague references to Saussure and Barthes hardly seems to be that move.
To me, here is a high water mark of the social web ( http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol5_No2_sxsw_cloninger.htm )
Non-artists using the network to accidentally create a better distributed, net-centric, non-linear narrative than any single net artist has ever accomplished. Compared to that, how radical is a group of artists photoblogging?
"We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present." - Deleuze+Guattari, 1996
The canonized history of "net art," if it is even canonized at all, will not be decided on rhizome RAW. It won't be decided on anybody's blog or by anybody's pdf article. It won't be decided in Manhattan galleries. It won't be decided by artists (young, old, 1.0, 2.0, or 35.7). It will most likely be decided by academics publishing books for university presses (people like Mary Flanagan, Alex Galloway, Mark Hansen, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Peter Lunenfeld, etc.).
I say all this to try to try to bring clarity to a thread that is becoming increasingly solipsistic and thus uninteresting to me. Marissa, Lauren, do y'all have any clarity to add? I missed the panel. Perhaps you could stream it? A link-list of work in this genre? It's not that the work I've seen thus far is bad. It just doesn't seem to be all that I'm being told it is.
Best,
Curt
When you go surfclubbin', don't forget your hat.
1. Do you know who Marcel Duchamp is?
Do you know who Marcel Broodthaers is?
2. Do you know who Roland Barthes is?
Do you know who Georges Perec is?
3. Do either of them have any bearing on art practice?
Both get name checked a lot by a certain group of contemporary artists. Duchamp bears on a practice because he dropped out all that time to play chess. He was Coltrane to Picasso's Miles Davis. The moral: less self-pimping; more hunkered-down, idiosyncratic, rigorous inquiry. It might wind up mattering (beyond the confines of one's insular, parochial scene).
4. Does an artist who uses a computer have to be able to "program" it?
Now that "art" is anything and an "artist" is anyone, what are the criteria for discerning art that actually matters?
5. Is a blog a multiple choice format?
all of the above
6. Does a blog limit artistic expression?
c, d, and e
7. Is "finding" enough or must one also "make?
Should an art practice be driven by rigorous conceptual inquiry, or may it simply concern itself with superficial, formal dichotomies? What would an art practice look like that rigorously inquired into the conceptual ramifications of superficial, formal dichotomies?
8. Which is more interesting, the network or the content on the network?
Why ask questions that tautologically presuppose a modernist rift between form and content?
9. Is a scan of a photo of a painting on a blog "net art"?
http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/broggernetart,we.html
http://www.linkoln.net/complex/
Why ask is it "art" or is it "net art"? Why not instead develop a criteria for evaluating whether it matters?
10. Which is better, blog pages that change every day or static, fixed pages?
Why are we still talking about "blog pages?"
11. Which is better, pages where new content is at the top or pages where you have to hunt for the content?
Why are we still talking about "pages" and "content"?
12. Is speed a virtue on the Internet or is slowness a valid experience?
Is red a virtue on the color spectrum, or is blue a valid experience?
13. Broken links: cool or uncool?
Why are we still talking about "links?"
14. Which is the best way to communicate--email ListServs or blog comments?
http://www.meet-in-a-nice-restaurant.org
15. Is the design of a page more important or the content on the page?
Why (repeatedly) ask questions that tautologically presuppose a modernist rift between form and content?
16. Are default templates unartistic?
Why ask is it "artistic" or "unartistic"? Why not instead develop a criteria for evaluating whether it matters?
17. Are computers good and are they helping us to be a better species?
Are hammers good and are they helping us to be a better species?
18. Should every artwork question its own means of implementation?
http://lab404.com/misc/wwcd.jpg (cf: rule #6)
19. Is an artwork an individual statement in space and time or could it be cumulative?
May I be excused professor Bergson? I have to go to the bathroom.
20. When a group of artists agree on a set of conventions is that significant or insignificant?
It can be a good marketing strategy if you hope to get canonized in an art history book (unless the art your group is making turns out to be insignificant.)
Do you know who Marcel Broodthaers is?
2. Do you know who Roland Barthes is?
Do you know who Georges Perec is?
3. Do either of them have any bearing on art practice?
Both get name checked a lot by a certain group of contemporary artists. Duchamp bears on a practice because he dropped out all that time to play chess. He was Coltrane to Picasso's Miles Davis. The moral: less self-pimping; more hunkered-down, idiosyncratic, rigorous inquiry. It might wind up mattering (beyond the confines of one's insular, parochial scene).
4. Does an artist who uses a computer have to be able to "program" it?
Now that "art" is anything and an "artist" is anyone, what are the criteria for discerning art that actually matters?
5. Is a blog a multiple choice format?
all of the above
6. Does a blog limit artistic expression?
c, d, and e
7. Is "finding" enough or must one also "make?
Should an art practice be driven by rigorous conceptual inquiry, or may it simply concern itself with superficial, formal dichotomies? What would an art practice look like that rigorously inquired into the conceptual ramifications of superficial, formal dichotomies?
8. Which is more interesting, the network or the content on the network?
Why ask questions that tautologically presuppose a modernist rift between form and content?
9. Is a scan of a photo of a painting on a blog "net art"?
http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/broggernetart,we.html
http://www.linkoln.net/complex/
Why ask is it "art" or is it "net art"? Why not instead develop a criteria for evaluating whether it matters?
10. Which is better, blog pages that change every day or static, fixed pages?
Why are we still talking about "blog pages?"
11. Which is better, pages where new content is at the top or pages where you have to hunt for the content?
Why are we still talking about "pages" and "content"?
12. Is speed a virtue on the Internet or is slowness a valid experience?
Is red a virtue on the color spectrum, or is blue a valid experience?
13. Broken links: cool or uncool?
Why are we still talking about "links?"
14. Which is the best way to communicate--email ListServs or blog comments?
http://www.meet-in-a-nice-restaurant.org
15. Is the design of a page more important or the content on the page?
Why (repeatedly) ask questions that tautologically presuppose a modernist rift between form and content?
16. Are default templates unartistic?
Why ask is it "artistic" or "unartistic"? Why not instead develop a criteria for evaluating whether it matters?
17. Are computers good and are they helping us to be a better species?
Are hammers good and are they helping us to be a better species?
18. Should every artwork question its own means of implementation?
http://lab404.com/misc/wwcd.jpg (cf: rule #6)
19. Is an artwork an individual statement in space and time or could it be cumulative?
May I be excused professor Bergson? I have to go to the bathroom.
20. When a group of artists agree on a set of conventions is that significant or insignificant?
It can be a good marketing strategy if you hope to get canonized in an art history book (unless the art your group is making turns out to be insignificant.)