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

Response to "New Media Artists vs Artists With Computers"


Hi Ceci,

I largely agree with your analysis. Lots of great conceptual artists have had craft skills (Warhol, Duchamp, arguably even Cage). The most ingenious conceptual artists are able to figure a way of allowing their craft to inform their conceptual work (because matter matters) without making their work "about" craft per se. For example, Cindy Sherman has mad craft skills. Without them, her conceptual explorations would be a lot more clunky and a lot less adroit/deft.

Granted, there are a group of Processing artists (for lack of a better term) interested in using generative algorithms (craft skills) to create what I understand to be contemporary abstract expressionist work (albeit with a much larger emphasis on process -- more akin to Pollock than Rothko). Jared Tarbell is an example ( http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/interAggregate/index.php ). The irony is, these generative/expressionist artists, apart from their inherent interest in process, actually have a lot in common with "artists-using-the-computer" outsider/pop artists (like your friend http://out-4-pizza.livejournal.com/ ). Both share a fetishistic interest in an a-conceptual visual aesthetic. Granted, their respective aesthetics look entirely different, but they are both very much interested in what the work looks like.

I must say, it is curious to hear net.art associated with a concern for craft/aesthetic and a lack of concern for concept. On the contrary, net.art (the [now] curatorially recognized variety) was all about concept, because there was no bandwidth in 1996. Even an animated gif takes time to download, but a concept is the ultimate low bandwidth medium. I'll reference a couple of pieces: Shulgin's Form Art ( http://www.c3.hu/collection/form/ ) -- a cheeky para-institutional critique of formalism using low-bandwidth HTML forms. It is simultaneously conceptual, formal, pop, and geek tech. It is conceptually concerned with critiquing "aesthetics," but it is hardly trying to be aesthetic. Indeed, that's the joke. Also Mark Napier's coderly painting (or painterly coding). Something like http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/ is simultaneously painterly and conceptual. But much net.art that I recall was just plain conceptual (as in Fluxus, text-centric, instruction-based conceptual). Even the most "conceptual" contemporary youTube remix artist is much more "aesthetic" than early net.artists, simply because youTube artists have more animated, streaming bits to tweak.

Is it really an either/or? Are we still thinking dialectically about concept/aesthetic, craft/pop, insider/outsider, form/content, abstraction/figuration? These are modern dichotomies, and we have never been modern.

Best,
Curt


EVENT

In Real Life


Dates:
Sun Nov 16, 2008 00:00 - Thu Nov 13, 2008

In Real Life

Curt Cloninger will spend 12 hours in a booth at the Black Rabbit Bar in Greenpoint Brooklyn eating, drinking, and talking with anyone who comes by to visit him. Please come by. In between visits, Cloninger will read Michael Nyman’s “ExperimentalMusic: Cage and Beyond” and Richard Schechner’s ”Performance Theory.”

Duration: 12 Hours
Media: Food, Guiness, Language, Time
Where: Black Rabbit, 91 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, US.
When: 1pm - 1am, Sunday, November 16, 2008.

Directions:
http://blackrabbitbar.com/about


EVENT

Pop Mantra #3 (Tonight)


Dates:
Sat Nov 15, 2008 00:00 - Thu Nov 13, 2008

Pop Mantra #3 (Tonight)

The third in a series of performances where Curt Cloninger perpetually performs a short excerpt from a single pop song for several hours blindfolded.

Excerpt: “tonight / wait, now” from The Ramones song “I Just Wanna Have Something To Do”
Duration: 6 Hours
Media: Electric Guitar, Voice, Black Felt Blindfold, Black Converse All Stars, Time
Where: Over The Opening, Brooklyn, New York, US.
When: 6pm - 12 midnight, Saturday, November 15, 2008.

Directions:
http://www.tinjail.com/over_the_opening/directions


DISCUSSION

selected weekend search terms


This report lists selected actual keywords/phrases people typed into search engines to find my sites. Entries are ranked by the number of Sessions each was responsible for.

Friday, 8/7/08 - Sunday, 8/9/08:

1. 100+ways+to+annoy+your+roommate7 4.35%
2. ghost+in+the+machine5 3.11%
3. 10+best+guitar+solos4 2.48%
4. paul+rand+logos4 2.48%
8. artist+statement+generator3 1.86%
9. what+is+web+media2 1.24%
13. grace+soundtrack2 1.24%
16. the+tears+of+allah2 1.24%
17. best+guitar+solo2 1.24%
20. mommy2 1.24%
21. cannonball1 0.62%
22. deep+ethereal1 0.62%
23. sister1 0.62%
24. jesus+healing+the+blind1 0.62%
25. what+is+linear+animation1 0.62%
28. f0x1 0.62%
29. st+frank1 0.62%
30. medici+princess+cornell1 0.62%
31. bodyrocks+illusion1 0.62%
33. speka.net1 0.62%
34. jim+punk1 0.62%
35. enemies1 0.62%
39. animated+gif+grocery+bag1 0.62%
40. processing+lab+4041 0.62%
41. poster1 0.62%
42. can+see+eternity++in+an+instant+blake1 0.62%
43. yiung+blacl+and+fab1 0.62%
44. download+andys+region+blur31 0.62%
47. deep+young+etherial+radio1 0.62%
49. justin+canha1 0.62%
50. playgrounds1 0.62%
51. lossless+comprehension1 0.62%
52. lee+harvey+oswald+band1 0.62%
54. fltr1 0.62%
55. playdamage1 0.62%
56. interactive%2bsystem%2bmodel1 0.62%
58. when+you+try+to+walk+in+the+spirit+does+the+flesh+try+hard+to+take+over+and+make+you+feel+like+you+are+going+to+freek+out1 0.62%
59. ivonline1 0.62%
60. launch1 0.62%
61. creative+process+design1 0.62%
65. zoolander1 0.62%
66. donnie+darko+clues1 0.62%
68. 1951%20spartan%20royal%20mansion1 0.62%
69. professionalism+attendence1 0.62%
70. candy+website+design1 0.62%
71. drafting+table+transformer+style1 0.62%
73. mnemonos1 0.62%
74. quotes+on+gods+favor1 0.62%
78. explode+like+two+bugs+on+glass1 0.62%
79. supporting+paragraphs+how+to+write1 0.62%
80. meggs%27+history+of+graphic+design,+4th+edition1 0.62%
81. market1 0.62%
82. 100+ways+to+annoy+yami+yugi1 0.62%
83. property+of+light+quiz1 0.62%
84. damage+play1 0.62%
86. non%20linear%20text1 0.62%
88. ethereal+archive1 0.62%
89. n_gen1 0.62%
90. mondrian+poster1 0.62%
91. strengths+and+weaknesses+of+a+non+linear+narrative1 0.62%
94. current1 0.62%
95. new+web+ideas1 0.62%
97. drafting+table+3d+transformer1 0.62%
9102. silverladder+girl1 0.62%
105. flash+hybrid1 0.62%
107. jean+luc+marion:+denys+the+areopagite1 0.62%
108. cornell+cassiopeia1 0.62%
109. internet+art1 0.62%
110. pop+of+mantra1 0.62%
112. milton+glaser+business+card1 0.62%
118. heidegger+apophatic1 0.62%
119. casey_reas.pdf1 0.62%
121. media+analogy1 0.62%
122. laurel1 0.62%
123. sezyum+1 0.62%
124. binarynoise

DISCUSSION

playdamage #73: TONIGHT


http://playdamage.org/73.html

Artaud wanted to make language "spatial and significant... to manipulate it like a solid object." Language is the heated focus of a more general conflict. The ambition to make theater into ritual is nothing other than a wish to make performance efficacious, to use events to change people.

http://www.tinjail.com/over_the_opening/shows/curt-cloninger-at-oto