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: asheville


Hi Regina,

I'm finishing up a piece now about places that all mean something to me personally. The piece uses collage, photography, and autogenerative code to try and represent the pieces more as I sense them and less denotatively/journalistically.

I'll post the link when it's done.

"I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything! Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is."
- david byrne, 1986

peace,
curt

PS. Here is a silly (but gorgeously executed) brazil piece by mk12, describing a stereotypical view: http://media.mk12.com/quicktime45_html/machobox.html [11.3 MB]

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Regina Celia Pinto wrote:

> Hi Curt,
>
> Thanks for send us your place on Earth. It is wonderful to know other
> places and cultures for me. I do not know if you have realized that I
> am
> sending a small report of my city / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Earth to
> Rhizome
> list too.
>
> I am doing this because I have studied Anthropology / Ethnography of
> Art. So
> that my interest in cultures and cities > my city. The city is the
> place
> of the movement, the place where we come and go. The modern city
> is each day more the place of comunication, alliances, changes, and
> reciprocity. It is a space of Art. However, the ethnographical
> narrative
> is just like life, it is never perfect. The question is to try to do
> the
> best. Theories come and theories go. Under this point of view, some
> critical have been being done about anthropological narrative.
> Clifford
> (CLIFFORD, James. Of l'ethnographie with fiction. Etudes Rural)
> interrogates, for example, the existing difference between Malinowski
> who
> wrote "Western Pacific's Argonautas " and Malinowski of the "Journal
> d'
> Ethnographe". I am trying to do a "true" narrative and because of
> this I am
> using lots of images - the majority of them photos of the "Naked City
> Queem"* (until now)- although I know that photos can lie, specially
> digital
> photos...but I am passioned by digital photography and my English is
> bad and
> I think is important to show my city and my country and my culture to
> people
> of other countries, just like you have thought.
>
> I think Brazil and Rio de Janeiro are seen as an exotic country / city
> by
> foreigners and it is not true. We have a very interesting culture, mix
> of
> black, white and indian culture. My intention while doing a work about
> my
> city is to show the reality and diversity of a small part of it. It is
> impossible to work with all Rio de Janeiro, it is one of the
> largest cities of the world. (By the way, do you know that until now I
> am
> only walking by Ipanema and Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, which has a
> portion
> in Ipanema ? ). I would like to show with Art that we have a perhaps
> "exotic" culture but that we are very civilized people and that Brazil
> is
> not only the land of carnival and football. You will realize that in
> the
> next reports.
>
> *Caetano Veloso sings that the King is much more beautiful naked, the
> modern
> anthropology / etnography of Art thinks like him. It is the aim of my
> narrative - I try to show the truth, although I know that it is really
> impossible, perhaps if the narrative has more than one voice, but this
> one
> is only my voice and my VIEW! I think that the traditional Internet
> links of
> my city have not the view of the Artist and the Ethnograph, but at the
> end
> of this report I will include some of this links.
>
> Yours,
>
> Regina

DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION

a day in the life [bare_midriff remix]


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DISCUSSION

stuff/matter[s]


An artist starts with an inspired IDEA, usually by mixing a current
perception with a past experience or tradition. The artist finds
meaning in his excitement to make something new from these two
elements.

The initial inspired IDEA is a very fuzzy image, even if it's from a
still life object right in front of you. The IDEA can only be
realized by giving it form through a proper choice of materials and
techniques that will best convey the original vision. At this point,
the artist's understanding of the nature of the chosen materials
mixes with, and starts to change, the perception of the original
IDEA. So even before the artist starts to transform matter, the
materials start to transform what really matters - the internal
nature of the artist. At this point the original IDEA is altered, but
starts to become more tangible through the evolving vision of its
manifestation in matter.

We'll call this modified vision of the original IDEA the "IDEAL". The
IDEAL is a mix of the artist's vision with their passion for the
materials. It's a combination of both the essential nature of the
artist and the materials.

The struggle of transformation begins! As any artist will tell you,
the materials always have a mind of their own. They will, or will
not, allow you to do certain things to them according to their
specific properties -- or inner nature. As the artist works, the
strengths and weaknesses of the materials begin to take over, further
changing the IDEALized version. One might think that it's simply a
matter of skill that controls the materials, making them fall into
step with the original vision. But it can't be that simple, because
the artist is trying to express a new IDEA, something never seen
before. If the artist wanted to merely replicate something else,
something without any original idea behind it, it wouldn't be art.

If the intended work is really meant to be art, the artist's passion,
his psyche or soul, becomes more involved in the work. When this
happens, the artist experiences one or more "crisis points" as the
material and the artist are both transformed. Each crisis point
occurs when the newly transformed material, or IDOL, no longer
matches the initial IDEA. The IDOL now replaces the source of the
originating thought and becomes the primary inspiration.

At this point some artists give up, they think they have failed to
live up to their first IDEA. Their only failure, really, is in not
letting the materials play their part in the process of creation.
Alchemists have said that their materials "talk" to them while they
meditate, whispering secrets about their true nature, their strengths
and weaknesses. If artists listen, they'll hear the same secret
mutterings urging them on. This is where the magic happens in both
art and alchemy, because it allows both the art and the artist to
change and grow, to transform themselves.

After a number of crisis points the artist will consent to what he
and the materials have done and call the project finished. Of course,
the completed piece will not be a copy of the artist's original
experience or initial vision of what it could become. It will be a
shared compromise between the nature of the materials and the
artist's inner nature -- a combination of both their hopes, wishes,
and dreams.

What? Are we really to believe that materials such as clay, paint,
lines of poetry, or the vibration of a musical string have hopes and
dreams? An artist would say these things have a will of their own, an
intent. An alchemist would add that they had the same wishes and
desires as we do -- to evolve or become better. This is a very
mysterious notion, but if you believe there is a reason and purpose
for the world that we have yet to understand, then it might not seem
so strange after all. Is there a difference between mind and matter?
Alchemists see no distinction between the two, and a growing number
of quantum physicists agree.

- From "How is Alchemy like Art", Issue #10 of the "Guide to Lost
Wonder", Jeff Hoke, 2002.

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DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Question for artists who seek commissions


My proplem isn't with themes per se, but with the type of themes that most "new media" grants and shows are about:
1. gaming
2. telepresence
3. identity
4. globalization
5. code
6. surveilance
7. data visualization

They're all so geekily techno. Like using computers to make art means that the art you make will always be about computers. Like using a network to make art means your art will always be about the network. As if sculpting is about clay and photography is about lenses. Chalk the problem up to a nascent/emergent medium ever staring self-consciously at itself in the mirror like a pre-pubescent girl waiting to see what develops; compounded by a kind of Wired-esque, extropian techno-utopianism; compounded by the post-structuralist obligation to have all one's art in hyper-aware dialogue with its own context; compounded by some implicit politically correct morality that says a work of art has to engage in some heavy-handed, issues-oriented dialectic for it to be worth commissioning as imporant.

On the other hand, themes like "intimacy" or "ephemrality" or "whimsy" or "culture shock" or "wilderness," etc. don't force any specific genre or approach. They are topical, not procedural or process-specific. And refreshingly, they don't really have anything to do with technology per se, or even current events.

The problem is, most contemporary new media artists aren't encouraged to pursue their work along such "personal/human" lines. Being personal and human is not the next new thing, and it may even be part of a bourgeois plot to keep us subversive artists from contaminating the political arena with our wack-wack-wacky tactical stunts.

I find myself agreeing with T. Whid. Better to drill down and pursue whatever [off-]topic themes you are personally into and stay true to those things. Then if a themed commission arises that lines up with your interests, lucky you. If not, you've still got your day job. You didn't quit it, did you?