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: about hypertext
Hi Dyske,
I must admit, I'm not much of a fan of straight hypertext literature (or of hypertext criticism).
Here's my beef, written 11/2000:
http://www.spark-online.com/november00/discourse/cloninger.html
in which I conclude:
"In the final analysis, hypertext literature may prove to be the deconstructivist critic's secret fantasy realized: a literary genre better known for its literary criticism than for its actual literature."
I have been accused of underestimating the power of the linking event, and I have started to take it less for granted, but in contexts beyond merely joining text.
<rant>
a lot of sucky artists are dialoguing with a lot of sucky critics these days. It works like this -- artist and critic both learn this chic, digerati, 1993-era, well.com-derived "neato/lingo/wired/encodo" formalism. Artist makes shallow art using said "vocabulary." Critic "gets it" and decodes it using said "vocabulary." But it's all an insider's end run around actually communicating anything or criticising anything. The only thing ever hashed (and rehashed and triple-hashed over and over and over and freaking over again) is "da_nature_of_da_medium."
As for me and my house, we're taking it through another door. Viva La Lester Bangs!
</rant>
how can you laugh when you know i'm down,
curt
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dyske writes:
In similar ways to this, this field of hypertext criticism seems to be filled with concerns that are only on the surface, and at a level any deeper, it fails to see any rationale for having a discipline of its own. Any association with post-structuralism that I came across were forced in the same manner as above. For instance, drawing of an analogy between Derrida's Dissemination to the Web; this is only possible at a surface level of how the Web happens to "disseminate" in a colloquial sense of the term.
Since I was never even aware of the existence of "hypertext criticism", I have not read much of it, but the whole premise of it seems superfluous. Would anyone be interested in engaging in this discussion and illuminate me on the issue further?
I must admit, I'm not much of a fan of straight hypertext literature (or of hypertext criticism).
Here's my beef, written 11/2000:
http://www.spark-online.com/november00/discourse/cloninger.html
in which I conclude:
"In the final analysis, hypertext literature may prove to be the deconstructivist critic's secret fantasy realized: a literary genre better known for its literary criticism than for its actual literature."
I have been accused of underestimating the power of the linking event, and I have started to take it less for granted, but in contexts beyond merely joining text.
<rant>
a lot of sucky artists are dialoguing with a lot of sucky critics these days. It works like this -- artist and critic both learn this chic, digerati, 1993-era, well.com-derived "neato/lingo/wired/encodo" formalism. Artist makes shallow art using said "vocabulary." Critic "gets it" and decodes it using said "vocabulary." But it's all an insider's end run around actually communicating anything or criticising anything. The only thing ever hashed (and rehashed and triple-hashed over and over and over and freaking over again) is "da_nature_of_da_medium."
As for me and my house, we're taking it through another door. Viva La Lester Bangs!
</rant>
how can you laugh when you know i'm down,
curt
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dyske writes:
In similar ways to this, this field of hypertext criticism seems to be filled with concerns that are only on the surface, and at a level any deeper, it fails to see any rationale for having a discipline of its own. Any association with post-structuralism that I came across were forced in the same manner as above. For instance, drawing of an analogy between Derrida's Dissemination to the Web; this is only possible at a surface level of how the Web happens to "disseminate" in a colloquial sense of the term.
Since I was never even aware of the existence of "hypertext criticism", I have not read much of it, but the whole premise of it seems superfluous. Would anyone be interested in engaging in this discussion and illuminate me on the issue further?
my ninja training school
well i was moving down the road in my v8 ford,
i had a shine on my boots, i had my sideburns lowered.
with my new york brim and my gold tooth displayed,
nobody give me trouble cause they know i got it made.
i'm bad, i'm nationwide.
http://lab404.com/audio/tbomv/
http://www.neuralust.com/~curt/scott/
http://multimedia.mmas.unca.edu/~jawoosle/FrankHaynes.jpg
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i had a shine on my boots, i had my sideburns lowered.
with my new york brim and my gold tooth displayed,
nobody give me trouble cause they know i got it made.
i'm bad, i'm nationwide.
http://lab404.com/audio/tbomv/
http://www.neuralust.com/~curt/scott/
http://multimedia.mmas.unca.edu/~jawoosle/FrankHaynes.jpg
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Re: about hypertext
hey rachel,
Assuming you mean hypertext as distinguished from hypermedia, I respect mark bernstein. He is at the crux of the current discipline in a lot of respects, and seems a balanced apologist for it:
http://www.MarkBernstein.org
http://www.eastgate.com
http://www.enarrative.org
http://www.hypertextkitchen.com
http://www.tekka.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
rachel wrote:
does anyone have good hypertext resouces to suggest? think of someone whose motto is 'I hate hypertext'
Assuming you mean hypertext as distinguished from hypermedia, I respect mark bernstein. He is at the crux of the current discipline in a lot of respects, and seems a balanced apologist for it:
http://www.MarkBernstein.org
http://www.eastgate.com
http://www.enarrative.org
http://www.hypertextkitchen.com
http://www.tekka.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
rachel wrote:
does anyone have good hypertext resouces to suggest? think of someone whose motto is 'I hate hypertext'
julie
she's got a smile that it seems to me reminds me of childhood memories
where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky
now and then when i see her face it takes me away to that special place
and if i stare too long i'll probably break down and cry
http://www.playdamage.org/9.html
she's got eyes of the bluest skies and if they thought of rain
i'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain
her hair reminds me of a warm safe place where as a child i'd hide
and pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by
http://www.playdamage.org/25.html
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where do we go now
_
where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky
now and then when i see her face it takes me away to that special place
and if i stare too long i'll probably break down and cry
http://www.playdamage.org/9.html
she's got eyes of the bluest skies and if they thought of rain
i'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain
her hair reminds me of a warm safe place where as a child i'd hide
and pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by
http://www.playdamage.org/25.html
_
where do we go now
_