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

Re: Re: Re: Boxer


Jim Andrews wrote:

All art... is doomed to failure in a culture such as this
one, in a sense. On the other hand, there is a sense in which only art is
worthwhile in this sort of culture.

////

well ovserved and duly noted:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lab404/

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Net Art Market


Patrick Simons wrote:

> To take this further, isn't the very idea of producing work which is
> beyond the commodifying process, of making something which has some
> resonance for other people, but has no possibility of being reduced to
> capital just magnificent and life re-affirming?
> Patrick

It is to me.

I love the part in "Dig!" where the Brian Jonestown Massacre plays an 8-hour gig to a roomful of 10 people. I'll pass on the task of unraveling their motivations.

http://www.pifmagazine.com/vol23/c_clon.shtml
http://www.pifmagazine.com/vol25/c_clon.shtml
http://www.pifmagazine.com/vol26/c_clon.shtml
curt

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Net Art Market


Hi Judson,

We disagree, and it's one of those things that probably won't get
worked out on a mailing list. I just didn't want to let your
assertion pass without objection. Regarding your response, I'm not
letting you off the hook with the 'semantic differences/we're
basically saying the same thing' argument. In your cosmology,
perhaps. But it's the fundamental suppositions of your cosmology to
which I object.

The question is less whether your position is cynical/cold or
enlightened/progressive. The question is whether it accurately
accounts for actual human behavior.

One of my critiques of your position is that it's so generalized and
all-encompassing. You're saying that every single human action is in
some way self-serving. There's no room for any exception whatsoever.
That's a tough position to defend. I'm not proposing that every
single person who claims an altruistic action is truly altruistic,
but I am saying that a selfless love does indeed exist. I don't have
to show that selfless love hapens all over the place, or even that
it's the norm. I just have to show that it exists at all.
Experientially, I've received and witnessed enough acts of selfless
love to categorically disagree with you. Based on my experience, it
takes much more faith for me to believe that every human act of good
will is actually some behaviorally driven form of self service than
it does for me to believe that a kind of selfless love actually
exists.

I propose that a kind of selfless love exists that by its very
definition is not self-seeking (all semantics and endorphins and
displaced taboo motivations aside). Its attributes are summarized
here:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/index.php?searchorinthians13

Such a love might cause someone to labor at great personal cost and
totally off the radar to make art like this:
http://www.inpreparation.com/nekchand/gallery.html
http://www.simplephotographs.com/wickham/bigger.html
http://www.narrowlarry.com/nlwatts.html

You perhaps have a ready behavioral explanation. I propose that
there are more mysterious, spiritual, wondrous forces at work in
heaven and earth, Judson, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Selfless love is chief among them.

Note that I'm not dissing people who want to make money off their
art, nor am I saying that making art for an audience of one is better
or more pure. I'm just objecting to the categorical assertion that
"art only exists as a solution, a vehicle, for getting what you
really want."

respectfully,
curt

At 12:10 PM -0400 4/25/05, Plasma Studii - judsoN wrote:
>>> art only exists as a solution, a vehicle, for getting
>>> what you really want, be it respect or a new pair of shoes.
>>
>>This kind of statement always riles me. It's so materialistic,
>>cynical, and overly simplistic. It's like something a marxist
>>economist would teach to freshmen. What if making art is a
>>celebration? What if it's play? What if it's worship out of a
>>heart of thanksgiving for the mere fact that we exist? It's pretty
>>cold (but not at all uncommon) to reduce play and celebration and
>>worship to unconscious self-serving activity. I object.
>
>ok, and that's cool. i would too at first. it definitely turned me
>off about psychology only until recently. but it's kind of like
>assuming computers can't make art because they are cold and
>heartless. (so are paint brushes. but both are just tools.) you
>may be assuming "what we want" and "celebration" are incompatible?
>
>
>but we can still be driven by a desire to be happy . you could also
>say we're driven by an addiction to the chemicals released in the
>brain. but that's a method not an end. that doesn't say happiness
>can't be spontaneous, that explains what differentiates happiness
>from non-happiness technically, just not poetically. And a poetic
>calibration isn't useful technically (though it's all over the US
>legal system).
>
>it's not that these free-will vs. reaction arguments are ever right
>or wrong. it's that often, they can be the same thing. for
>instance, how does a god end up making happiness in people and have
>them want to keep trying to attain it? do it with dopamine. it's
>just a tool!
>
>
>arguing against "self-serving" motivations is like saying
>masturbating is a sin. ok, some people love their hang ups. i
>can't expect you to agree, but may suspect we'd be saying the same
>thing if it weren't clouded by centuries of repressed and displaced
>taboo motivations.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Net Art Market


judsoN wrote:

> art only exists as a solution, a vehicle, for getting
> what you really want, be it respect or a new pair of shoes.

This kind of statement always riles me. It's so materialistic, cynical, and overly simplistic. It's like something a marxist economist would teach to freshmen. What if making art is a celebration? What if it's play? What if it's worship out of a heart of thanksgiving for the mere fact that we exist? It's pretty cold (but not at all uncommon) to reduce play and celebration and worship to unconscious self-serving activity. I object.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Net Art Market


Hi Jeremy,

A well-known ongoing, grand scale net art piece:
http://www.worldofawe.net

It's kind of like saying, "maybe garage rock hasn't attracted the
attention of top 40 radio yet because ..." When garage rock and top
40 radio are largely incompatible. Maybe net art and
contemporary/future art collectors are largely incompatible. I don't
see it as a problem to be solved. Can an art movement be
historically legitimate, culturally relevant, and
intellectually/aesthetically rewarding without ever finding a market?
Might it be all the more so without a market?

peace,
curt

_

At 2:46 PM -0400 4/24/05, jeremy wrote:
>is it possible that there has yet to be a net art project that is
>large enough or grand enough to call the attention of a collector?
>I know things dont need to be large to be good, but in order for
>people to begin to look at net art, dont we need to start looking
>larger than the average site? or extending beyond the computer in
>ways?
>
>-jeremy
>
>
>curt cloninger wrote:
>
>>It seems like the first (and perhaps only) altoids-sponsored net
>>artist was Mark Napier, but I can't remember. I think Diesel
>>sponsors similar stuff, but it's more in the form of contests, and
>>it's more filmic/motion design.
>>
>>ryan griffis wrote:
>>
>>>hasn't Altoids and Nintendo also sponsored similar net-based
>>>projects? i tried to find the Altoids projects again, but only
>>>found promotion
>>>of their investments in contemporary art. i know that they had a
>>>net art-based project...
>>>ryan
>>>
>>>On Apr 22, 2005, at 12:21 PM, curt cloninger wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi Jason,
>>>>
>>>>Sony PlayStation 2 sponsored such an "online gallery" a while
>>>>back, curated by hi-res.net and commissioning/hosting work by
>>>>various experimental designers. The space is archived here:
>>>>http://archive.hi-res.net/thethirdplace.com/
>>>
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