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.
some things I did this semester
Here are some things I did this semester. It is not a complete list.
a performance:
http://deepyoung.org/current/tonight/
a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Fresher-Styles-Web-Designers-Underground/dp/0321562690/
a sermon:
http://www.thevine.cc/podcasts/VineSunday20080921-CurtCloninger.mp3
a video:
http://lab404.com/video/idontrunnewyorkcity/
some singing:
http://www.thevine.cc/podcasts/VineSunday20080914_PrayerTeamSunday.mp3
a talk:
http://lab404.com/morris/
some "net art":
http://playdamage.org/66.html
http://playdamage.org/67.html
http://playdamage.org/68.html
http://playdamage.org/69.html
http://playdamage.org/70.html
http://playdamage.org/71.html
http://playdamage.org/72.html
http://playdamage.org/73.html
some teaching:
http://lab404.com/255/
http://lab404.com/320/
http://lab404.com/438/
some innocuous mind-control experiments:
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/38354
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/38412
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/40519
http://www.rollingstones.com/discog/index.php?v=so&a=1&id=138 ,
Curt
a performance:
http://deepyoung.org/current/tonight/
a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Fresher-Styles-Web-Designers-Underground/dp/0321562690/
a sermon:
http://www.thevine.cc/podcasts/VineSunday20080921-CurtCloninger.mp3
a video:
http://lab404.com/video/idontrunnewyorkcity/
some singing:
http://www.thevine.cc/podcasts/VineSunday20080914_PrayerTeamSunday.mp3
a talk:
http://lab404.com/morris/
some "net art":
http://playdamage.org/66.html
http://playdamage.org/67.html
http://playdamage.org/68.html
http://playdamage.org/69.html
http://playdamage.org/70.html
http://playdamage.org/71.html
http://playdamage.org/72.html
http://playdamage.org/73.html
some teaching:
http://lab404.com/255/
http://lab404.com/320/
http://lab404.com/438/
some innocuous mind-control experiments:
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/38354
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/38412
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/40519
http://www.rollingstones.com/discog/index.php?v=so&a=1&id=138 ,
Curt
Response to "New Media Artists vs Artists With Computers"
Hi Ry,
I agree with you. I use "tech savvy" and "tech agnostic" to characterize my understanding of other people's arguments, but those are not my arguments. How close or how far one works from "scratch" should be determined by the topical concerns of one's practice (cf: http://www.graphicsnews.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=463 ).
I'm just chiming in to counter what I perceive to be a mis-characterization of "new media art" history.
To summarize:
1.
It is historically inaccurate to associate hand-coding with a lack of concern for concept and to associate templates with a concern for concept. Actually, in 2000, the exact opposite association was made. To use C++ meant you were a legitimate conceptual artist, and to use Flash or Photoshop meant you were an illegitimate graphic designer. Then and now, such dichotomous associations are overly simplistic.
Using code to make art doesn't inherently make one's art "about" code any more than painting on hand-stretched canvas inherently make one's paintings "about" hand-stretched canvas. Using templates and off-the-shelf software to make art doesn't inherently make one's art "conceptual" any more than using pre-stretched canvas inherently makes one's paintings "conceptual."
2.
Furthermore, concept/craft is an artificial dichotomy endemic to modernism. Cindy Sherman's work is necessarily concerned with both. Each informs the other. I dare say the same is true of Oliver Laric's youTube remix work. Laric's approach to the craft of video editing is different than Stan Brakhage's approach (Laric's approach serves more "conceptual," less "aesthetic" ends), but that doesn't mean Laric is unconcerned with craft. Sherman's approach to the craft of photography is different than Walker Evans' approach (Sherman's approach serves more "conceptual," less "aesthetic" ends), but that doesn't mean Sherman is unconcerned with craft.
Anyone who claims the status of "conceptual" artist as an excuse to avoid rigorously sweating the details (and as an excuse to dismiss those who do sweat the details) is probably a pretty lame conceptual artist. Even Nauman and Weiner sweat the details. Their ability to remove "aesthetics" from the equation is achieved with a great deal of rigorous craft. It's just a different kind of craft. Warhol sweated the details so well he was able to fool a legion of armchair art historians into believing that he wasn't sweating the details.
3.
Furthermore, the critical tactic of rendering past art movements irrelevant simply by characterizing them as "unprogressive" is convenient but facile.
Best,
Curt
I agree with you. I use "tech savvy" and "tech agnostic" to characterize my understanding of other people's arguments, but those are not my arguments. How close or how far one works from "scratch" should be determined by the topical concerns of one's practice (cf: http://www.graphicsnews.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=463 ).
I'm just chiming in to counter what I perceive to be a mis-characterization of "new media art" history.
To summarize:
1.
It is historically inaccurate to associate hand-coding with a lack of concern for concept and to associate templates with a concern for concept. Actually, in 2000, the exact opposite association was made. To use C++ meant you were a legitimate conceptual artist, and to use Flash or Photoshop meant you were an illegitimate graphic designer. Then and now, such dichotomous associations are overly simplistic.
Using code to make art doesn't inherently make one's art "about" code any more than painting on hand-stretched canvas inherently make one's paintings "about" hand-stretched canvas. Using templates and off-the-shelf software to make art doesn't inherently make one's art "conceptual" any more than using pre-stretched canvas inherently makes one's paintings "conceptual."
2.
Furthermore, concept/craft is an artificial dichotomy endemic to modernism. Cindy Sherman's work is necessarily concerned with both. Each informs the other. I dare say the same is true of Oliver Laric's youTube remix work. Laric's approach to the craft of video editing is different than Stan Brakhage's approach (Laric's approach serves more "conceptual," less "aesthetic" ends), but that doesn't mean Laric is unconcerned with craft. Sherman's approach to the craft of photography is different than Walker Evans' approach (Sherman's approach serves more "conceptual," less "aesthetic" ends), but that doesn't mean Sherman is unconcerned with craft.
Anyone who claims the status of "conceptual" artist as an excuse to avoid rigorously sweating the details (and as an excuse to dismiss those who do sweat the details) is probably a pretty lame conceptual artist. Even Nauman and Weiner sweat the details. Their ability to remove "aesthetics" from the equation is achieved with a great deal of rigorous craft. It's just a different kind of craft. Warhol sweated the details so well he was able to fool a legion of armchair art historians into believing that he wasn't sweating the details.
3.
Furthermore, the critical tactic of rendering past art movements irrelevant simply by characterizing them as "unprogressive" is convenient but facile.
Best,
Curt
A Performance Diptych
Dates:
Sat Nov 15, 2008 00:00 - Tue Dec 09, 2008
Documentation of a recent Performance Diptych in Brooklyn at Over The Opening:
http://deepyoung.org/current/tonight/
http://deepyoung.org/current/tonight/
Response to "New Media Artists vs Artists With Computers"
Hi Brian,
It seems more like this:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1.
Tom Moody's characterization (circa 2008):
a. tech-savvy = unconceptual = rhizome.org
b. tech-agnostic = conceptual = artfagcity.com
2.
Michael Samyn's characterization (circa 2000):
a. tech-savvy = unconceptual = e8z.org
b. tech-agnostic = conceptual = rhizome.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A more accurate (though no less simplistic) characterization of internet art might look something like this:
I. 1996-1999 = net.art = low-bandwidth = conceptual
2. 2000-2005 = net/browser art = medium-bandwidth = conceptual and aesthetic
3. 2005-present = net-based video/template art = high-bandwidth = conceptual and aesthetic
Samyn is writing at the cusp of a transition in internet art history. e8z will soon collaborate with Galloway on the carnivore project ( http://r-s-g.org/carnivore/). On that project, Galloway will handle the overall conceptual framework and farm out the coding and visual aesthetics to Samyn (and several others).
Here is an idealistic screed I wrote a mere seven months after the Samyn/Galloway dialogue:
http://ps2.praystation.com/pound/assets/2001/09-04-2001/
I actually quote Samyn from that same dialogue. At the time, I too was associating phase 1 of net.art with high-concept/low-aesthetic work.
Moody is lumping the first two phases of internet art (and all "new media art" prior) into one vague straw man.
Best,
Curt
It seems more like this:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1.
Tom Moody's characterization (circa 2008):
a. tech-savvy = unconceptual = rhizome.org
b. tech-agnostic = conceptual = artfagcity.com
2.
Michael Samyn's characterization (circa 2000):
a. tech-savvy = unconceptual = e8z.org
b. tech-agnostic = conceptual = rhizome.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A more accurate (though no less simplistic) characterization of internet art might look something like this:
I. 1996-1999 = net.art = low-bandwidth = conceptual
2. 2000-2005 = net/browser art = medium-bandwidth = conceptual and aesthetic
3. 2005-present = net-based video/template art = high-bandwidth = conceptual and aesthetic
Samyn is writing at the cusp of a transition in internet art history. e8z will soon collaborate with Galloway on the carnivore project ( http://r-s-g.org/carnivore/). On that project, Galloway will handle the overall conceptual framework and farm out the coding and visual aesthetics to Samyn (and several others).
Here is an idealistic screed I wrote a mere seven months after the Samyn/Galloway dialogue:
http://ps2.praystation.com/pound/assets/2001/09-04-2001/
I actually quote Samyn from that same dialogue. At the time, I too was associating phase 1 of net.art with high-concept/low-aesthetic work.
Moody is lumping the first two phases of internet art (and all "new media art" prior) into one vague straw man.
Best,
Curt
Response to "New Media Artists vs Artists With Computers"
Hi Ceci,
I think Brody Condon's recent dialogue with Nauman's work is a good example of the historically contingent (or at least potentially fruitful) relationship between contemporary "new media" video and '60/'70s "conceptual/phenomenological" video. Generative coders found an affinity with Sol Lewitt. My own "new media" audio performances ( http://deepyoung.org/current/breathing/ | lab404.com/video/francis.html ) find an affinity with La Monte Young and early Steve Reich (and Beckett on another vector).
It seems more interesting to try and keep everything simultaneously in play and on the table rather than seeing art history as a dialectic competition with one side emerging as the victor and the other side disappearing as the irrelevant loser. There is this great passage in "Making Things Public" where Bruno Latour cautions against "progressive" politics. It seems an equally relevant caution against a kind of "progressive" art criticism:
-------------------------
"Imagine you have the responsibility of assembling together a set of disorderly voices, contradictory interests and virulent claims. Then imagine you are miraculously offered a chance, just at the time when you despair of accomodating so many dissenting parties, to get rid of most of them. Would you not embrace such a solution as a gift from heaven?
This is exactly what happened when the contradictory interests of people could be differentiated by using the following shobboleths: "Are they progressive or reactionary? Enlightened or archaic? In the vanguard or in the rear guard?" ["New media artists or artists with computers?"] Dissenting voices were still there, but most of them represented backward, obscurantist or regressive trends. The cleansing march of progress was going to render them passe. You could safely forget two-thirds of them, and so your task of assembling them was simlified by the same amount.
In the remaining third, not everything had to be taken into account either, since most of the positions were soon to be made obsolete by the passage of time. Among the contemporary parties to the dispute, progressive minds had to take into consideration only those few seen as the harbingers of the future. So, through the magical ordering power of progress, politics was a cinch, since 90 percent of the contradictory passions had been spirited away, left to linger in the limbo of irrationality [or in the limbo of Rhizome's discusson forum]. By ignoring most of the dissenters, you could reach a solution that would satisfy everyone, namely those who made up the liberal or revolutionary avant-garde. In this way, the arrow of time could safely thrust forward...
But through a twist of history that neither reformists nor revolutionaries ever anticipated,... we have shifted from the time of Time to the time of Simultaneity... Revolutionary time, the great Simplificator, has been replaced by cohabitation time, the great Complicator. In other words, space has replaced time as the main ordering principle.
It's fair to say that the reflexes of politicians, the passions of militants, the customs of citizens, their ways to be indignant, the rhetoric of their claims, the ecology of their interests are not the same in the time of Time and in the time of Space. No one seems prepared to ask: What should now be simultaneously present?"
(Latour, "Making Things Public," 39-40).
-------------------------
Latour's "cohabitation Time" seems to me a fruitful place from which to critique and make art. I am no longer waiting for (or actively lobbying to bring about) the perceived obsolescence of "enemy" movements. There are no passe or outre influences. Everything is now in play and on the table.
Curt
I think Brody Condon's recent dialogue with Nauman's work is a good example of the historically contingent (or at least potentially fruitful) relationship between contemporary "new media" video and '60/'70s "conceptual/phenomenological" video. Generative coders found an affinity with Sol Lewitt. My own "new media" audio performances ( http://deepyoung.org/current/breathing/ | lab404.com/video/francis.html ) find an affinity with La Monte Young and early Steve Reich (and Beckett on another vector).
It seems more interesting to try and keep everything simultaneously in play and on the table rather than seeing art history as a dialectic competition with one side emerging as the victor and the other side disappearing as the irrelevant loser. There is this great passage in "Making Things Public" where Bruno Latour cautions against "progressive" politics. It seems an equally relevant caution against a kind of "progressive" art criticism:
-------------------------
"Imagine you have the responsibility of assembling together a set of disorderly voices, contradictory interests and virulent claims. Then imagine you are miraculously offered a chance, just at the time when you despair of accomodating so many dissenting parties, to get rid of most of them. Would you not embrace such a solution as a gift from heaven?
This is exactly what happened when the contradictory interests of people could be differentiated by using the following shobboleths: "Are they progressive or reactionary? Enlightened or archaic? In the vanguard or in the rear guard?" ["New media artists or artists with computers?"] Dissenting voices were still there, but most of them represented backward, obscurantist or regressive trends. The cleansing march of progress was going to render them passe. You could safely forget two-thirds of them, and so your task of assembling them was simlified by the same amount.
In the remaining third, not everything had to be taken into account either, since most of the positions were soon to be made obsolete by the passage of time. Among the contemporary parties to the dispute, progressive minds had to take into consideration only those few seen as the harbingers of the future. So, through the magical ordering power of progress, politics was a cinch, since 90 percent of the contradictory passions had been spirited away, left to linger in the limbo of irrationality [or in the limbo of Rhizome's discusson forum]. By ignoring most of the dissenters, you could reach a solution that would satisfy everyone, namely those who made up the liberal or revolutionary avant-garde. In this way, the arrow of time could safely thrust forward...
But through a twist of history that neither reformists nor revolutionaries ever anticipated,... we have shifted from the time of Time to the time of Simultaneity... Revolutionary time, the great Simplificator, has been replaced by cohabitation time, the great Complicator. In other words, space has replaced time as the main ordering principle.
It's fair to say that the reflexes of politicians, the passions of militants, the customs of citizens, their ways to be indignant, the rhetoric of their claims, the ecology of their interests are not the same in the time of Time and in the time of Space. No one seems prepared to ask: What should now be simultaneously present?"
(Latour, "Making Things Public," 39-40).
-------------------------
Latour's "cohabitation Time" seems to me a fruitful place from which to critique and make art. I am no longer waiting for (or actively lobbying to bring about) the perceived obsolescence of "enemy" movements. There are no passe or outre influences. Everything is now in play and on the table.
Curt