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.
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DISCUSSION

detourn this concept: The Godzilla News Network


detourn this concept: The Godzilla News Network

"There is finally no ordinary argument at all, only an unstoppable
recontextualization of anything an argument might touch. The
analysis is irrefutable not because it is true, any more than it is
refutable because it is false, but because it so happily use[s] a
private language to distort a public world."
- G.M. on the S.I.

"Don't need a cure / Need a final solution"
- Pere Ubu

PRECEDENCES

The Situationist International dismissed former member Alexander
Trocchi because he instigated Project Sigma and in so doing wound up
rubbing elbows with Allen Ginsberg, Colin Wilson, Timothy Leary, and
other "mystical cretins" (Debord's term).

CONCEPT

Detournement as practiced by the SI was never didactic. Its goal was
not to advocate the "right side" of the spectacle by ridiculing the
"wrong side" of the spectacle. Detournement was a means of
collapsing the entire spectacular society. To the SI, playing golf
at the club and marchin' in the peace rally were simply two sides of
the same spectacular coin.

In 2005, we are offered a watered-down, liberal guerilla media remix
culture with a formalistic sheen of detournement but none of its
underlying radicalism. Michael Moore, OutFoxed, flash mobs in
Wal-Mart, and of course The Guerilla News Network (
http://gnn.tv/videos/ ). GNN's "radicalism" is characterized by
Berkeley academicians propounding conspiracy theories over hip hop
breakbeats cheezily silhouetted in front of newsreel footage altered
by rave-ish, off-the-shelf After Effects filters. To Debord, these
kind of guerilla news scoops would be equivalent to blowing the
whistle on someone stealing from the cookie jar, when the real story
is that all the cookies have been poisoned. To me, the cheeky
didacticism of most GNN "media recontextualizations" -- loops of Bush
stammering Bushisms set to a soundtrack of "Dueling Banjos" -- makes
Adbusters seem subtle. Compared to Bruce Connor's film "Report" -- a
simultaneously sympathetic, humorous, subtle, and profound
remix/collage/cut-up/deconstruction of the JFK assassination footage
--, GNN is simply part of the spectacle.

The following excerpt from the GNN FAQ is deliciously telling.

"GNN was co-founded by Stephen Marshall and Josh Shore in the summer
of 2000. The partners first joined forces at MTV (Josh had brought
Stephen in to consult on some radical television ideas for the
station) when they finally realized that the mainstream networks
would never allow their hi-impact brand of television content and
design to reach prime-time."

"Radical," "hi-impact brand" indeed! Read "Detournement Lite (TM) --
twice the taste at half the calories!" But Detournement Lite is no
detournement at all.

INSTRUCTIONS

Remix and reappropriate the videos at http://gnn.tv/videos/ in a way
that truly makes them disruptive. Shake them loose from their
didacticism, their preachiness, their morality, their context, their
sense, until they are turned in on themselves and glimpses of the
spectacle are revealed. In other words, detourn them. Put your
remixes on the web at a site called "The Godzilla News Network." Use
reamweaver ( http://www.reamweaver.com )to appropriate the design of
the GNN site and recontextualize it as you have the videos. Titling
is crucial.

+++++++

Hints:

1. Remix in footage from "Gorrilaz" videos ( http://www.gorillaz.com
) , because, you know, gorilla - guerilla.

2. Remix in footage of "King Kong vs. Godzilla," because Godzilla
rhymes with guerilla and gorilla, and King Kong is an ape. Also, the
monsters will be crushing the whole city, tearing it up. Focus more
on the collateral damage than on either King Kong or Godzilla. It's
not about the liberals vs. the conservatives, it's not about the
democrats/republicans vs. Noam Chomsky, it's not even about your new
Godzilla News Network vs. their old Guerilla News Network. It's
about the ashes from whence a phoenix may rise and begin its
spiralling slouch toward Bethlehem.

3. Move in the opposite spirit. To detourn a "hi-impact brand," you
need a slow impact pace. Leave in 5-minute-long periods of silence
and blankness (a la Debord's "Hurlements en faveur de Sade"). Eschew
hip-hop. Incorporate doo-wop. I'm partial to the Platter's "Only
You," but "Earth Angel" is perfectly acceptable.

4. Don't fall into the easy dis Bush trap. Draw your horns on the
head of Warhol soup cans; paint your pitchfork into the hands of
Ozzie Nelson. Bush is the quintessential iconic bogey, luring
millions of potentially disruptive heads into an almost involuntary,
hypnotic, knee-jerk vilification of himself. He is the polarizing
agent that coaxes "radical artists" into the spectacle. We become
that upon which we gaze. To oppose Bush above all else is not to
oppose the spectacle. It is to participate in the spectacle at a
most ramped-up, self-deluded level. (If even now you feel disdain
rising up in you and an irresistable desire to write a scathingly
indignant response to this post, it's probably too late for you.) He
who has ears, let him hear.

5. If your piece reads like a didactic critique of the GNN, you've
failed. If your piece reads like a holiday in the leopard cage
(replete with a ransom note from Leopold of Austria), your compass
begins to point Northwest.

+++++++

bon voyage,
curt

DISCUSSION

join this concept: The "_ This Concept" Project


join this concept: The "_ This Concept" Project

"I'm an idea man Chuck, I get ideas, sometimes I get so many ideas
that I can't even fight them off!... Wait a minute! Why don't they
just mix the mayonnaise with the tuna in the can... HOLD THE PHONE!
Why don't they just FEED the tuna fish mayonnaise! Call Starkist!"
- Bill Blazejowski (_Night Shift_)

"Those who can't do teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym. And,
of course, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to
our school."
- Alvy Singer (_Annie Hall_)

++++++++++

PRECEDENCE:

The Fluxus Performance Workbook:
http://www.performance-research.net/documents/fluxus_workbook_screen.pdf

++++++++++

CONCEPT:

Why waste your precious energies "making" conceptual art when you
can simply explain your conceptual art projects in the form of
instructions posted to an art mailing list? Crank out twice the
concepts in half the time!

In their heyday, performance artists flooded the commodified market
of the art object with implemented concepts, thus critiquing and
"devaluing" the art object. We aim to flood the commodified market
of the implemented concept with unimplemented concepts, thus
critiquing and "devaluing" the implemented concept. (At least,
that's our concept.)

++++++++++

INSTRUCTIONS:

Stop making conceptual art. Instead, explain your conceptual art
projects in the form of instructions posted to an art mailing list.
Post lots! Make a series:
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread111&text4621
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread066&text4539
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread616&text3617
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread569&text3615
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread231&text'185

Always cite some prior art precedence, that way you are more likely
to be taken seriously by people who take ciiting prior art
precedences seriously. Always explain your concept, that way youare
more likely to be taken seriously by people who take explaining
concepts seriously. Finally, list your instructions, just in case
anybody ever wants to "do" it.

++++++++++

chicken in the breadpan pickin' out dough,
curt


DISCUSSION

bake this concept: Pschocyberographic Memoirs > Let Your Fingers Do the Drifting


Pschocyberographic Memoirs > Let Your Fingers Do the Drifting

"travelers in a labyrinth revealed by their wish to find it"

PRECEDENCES:

1.
Situationists, implementing the concept of verite/drifting, walk
around "the city" guided by voices so to speak, creating new
idiosyncratic paths through the city, a new subversive/subjective
narrative in negation of the imposed modernist grid: psychogeography.

2.
recent implementations include using a map of one city to navigation
another, using a set of fluxus instructions (turn left, go until you
see a woman wearing blue, follow her three blocks, turn right, etc.),
and the brilliant confab of generative programming and
psychogeography known as generative psychogeography, drifting per
code ( http://socialfiction.org/psychogeography/dummies.html ).

3.
1957: Debord constructs a fragmentary record of the Lettrist
International in his _Memoires_, consisting of cut-up text and images
collaged as a form subjective detritus archeology.
http://www.lardanchet.fr/ecommerce/anciens/photos/article--Debord-John.jpg

CONCEPT:

Verite applied to the web is simply called surfing. The web surfer
as flaneur. This concept was overworn as early as 1998. Generative
psychogeography is easy enough to apply the web. It's called a
linkbot (or an "intelligent agent" for those more anthropomorphically
inclined). Search engines send them out in droves to harvest pages
for their databases.

The problem is, merely automated psychocyberography is missing the
point of psychogeography. The point is not for a robot to re-map the
city. It's not the non-euclidian path in and of itself that
transforms the city; it's the fact that you as a subjective person
are walking the path, experiencing the ride along the way. Your
subjective experience is the transformative factor. Even if a bot
could cull images and text from its web journey and randomly assemble
them into a collage similar to Debord's _Memoires_, they would just
be the memoirs of the bot. Feel free to steal this tangential
concept and implement it. Entitle the piece "Memoirs of a Bot."

As incidentally transformative as reading Debord's _Memoires_ may be,
it can never be as transformative as experiencing the LI and
collaging _Memoires_ was to Debord himself.

META-INSTRUCTIONS:

Create a set of instructions for surfing the web (the web being
analogous to the modern city). Instead of saying "go down three
lights and turn left," the instructions might read "tab forward three
links and click." Instead of saying "follow a woman in a blue," the
instructions might read "click on the next linked image of a woman."
You may create these instructions with generative software, or simply
write them out the old school analog way (cf: non-digital
programming, Sol Lewitt's instruction-based drawings, John Cage's
aleatoric dice music). Whatever you do, don't let the software do
the actual surfing. Return the instructions to your human
user/patron/collaborator/pschocyberographer/margin walker and let her
do the actual surfing per your instructions.

///

Some suggested approaches:

1.
Begin the whole journey at google. Get the user to search for a
phrase of her choosing. Once the results of the search are returned,
she can begin surfing down her path per your instructions.

2.
Begin the whole journey in a blank browser window. Get the user to
choose a single word and type in her word plus ".com" in the
browser's URL field. verite.com, modern.com, booger.com, etc. Once
the site comes up, she can begin surfing down her path per your
instructions.

3.
Include instructions that occur off the web involving word
associations in the mind of the user. Incorporate search engines,
http://dictionary.com, http://thesaurus.com, and http://wikipedia.org
-- key word search sites which allowing the user to map these
semantic connections to online content. Semantic associations
between alchemy, chemistry, allergy, disease, and leisure, for
example, will yield much more interesting results than instructions
that say, "click on link 3. next, click on link 2." Thus the
surfing process becomes less a deconstruction of the web as an online
version of Madison Avenue, and more a deconstruction of the web as a
library of human knowledge.

4.
Have contingent instructions for dead-ends and unorthodox site
architecture. The corporate web is much less contiguous and uniform
than the modern city.

5.
Write instructions that allow the user to make her own subjective
choices. "Click on the link that seems most dangerous." "Click on
the link that most reminds you of your father."

6.
Write instructions that occasionally force the reader to peruse the
text of the page, potentially banal as it may be. "Count the number
of indefinite prepositions on the page. If the number is odd, click
on the page's last link. If the number is even, click on the page's
first link."

7.
Don't start the journey at a net art site like http://superbad.com .
That would be like going on a cybergeographic walk in an amusement
park funhouse. The "regular" experience is already disruptive as is.
(Although you are certainly free to steal this tangential concept and
implement it. Entitle the piece "Funhouse Cybergeography: Mirroring
Mirrors.")

///

After the actual surfing is done, the project may proceed in a number of ways:

1.
The user posts her surfing history for that session (resident in her
browser's "history" tab, complete with active links) to the web (cf:
http://lab404.com/data/ ). This way others can follow her bread
crumbs.

2.
The user revisits her surfing history and culls text phrases and
images from the journey. She collages these phrases and images in
photoshop, saves them as jpegs, and posts them on the web to create
her own pschocyberographic memoirs. Or she makes the text and images
into a printed book, or even a DVD.

3.
The user revisits her surfing history and culls text phrases and
image URLs from the journey. She pastes these phrases and URLs into
an email, and posts them to rhizome to share her own
pschocyberographic memoirs. (might look something like:
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread838&text"796 ).

4.
The user revisits her surfing history and culls text phrases, images,
and URLs from the journey. She then builds a non-linear web site
from these fragments. In addition to the pages of the site
interlinking, they may also link offsite to the "source" pages from
her journey where the original images and text fragments were first
discovered. (might look something like:
http://www.silverladder.com/links/badscary/badscary.htm )

5.
All of the above.

6.
The user simply has the experience and produces nothing but having
had the experience.

REFERENCES

As an interesting aside, Noah Wardrip-Fruin's "Impermanence Agent" (
http://hyperfiction.org/agent/ ) is almost the exact opposite of the
project I'm proposing. In "Impermanence Agent," the human (as
opposed to a bot) constructs a surfing path through the cybercity,
and the bot (as opposed to a human) does all the non-euclidian
recontextualizing.

SUMMARY

These are instructions for you to create your own instructions so
that someone can follow your instructions and create a piece of work
based on their following of your instructions that someone else can
experience.

William Burroughs cryptically observed, "When you cut into the
present, the future leaks out." He was talking about randomly
cutting-up and reassembling audio media. Applied to the modern city,
Debord might have said something like, "when you cut into the grid,
your own story leaks out."

Pschocyberography asks, "When you cut into the web, what leaks out?"
It doesn't ask this question of a bot. A bot can do the cutting, but
a bot can't know the answer. Your act of knowing creates the answer.

"travelers in a labyrinth revealed by their wish to find it"

happy trails,
curt

DISCUSSION

steal this cocept: LOWSRC -- progressive interlacing


Also present, is the sometimes overriding, delight-in-the-process of
_acquiring_ the data. I've often had the distinct impression that I
was reading/retaining information as I was photo-copying or scanning,
or downloading files -- particularly the earlier interlaced gifs.
Their apprehension conceptually blends with their comprehension."

- brad brace ( http://www.aec.at/fleshfactor/arch/msg00127.html )

++++++++++

PRECEDENCE

net artists have historically exploited the peculiar limitations of
the net's formal protocols to their own conceptual ends.

Alexei Shulgin used html forms to critique formalism:
http://www.c3.hu/collection/form/

Eryk Salvaggio used ascii art to commemorate 9/11:
http://anatomyofhope.net/wtc/2/
cf:
http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/
http://turbulence.org/spotlight/ASCII_BUSH/

MTAA used the lossiness of jpeg compression (actually, they used
vector animation software simulating the lossiness of jpeg
compression) as an analogy for the lossiness of the mediated self:
http://www.mteww.com/five_small_videos/sliding_compression/index.html

But nobody's used progessively loading web images to make a
conceptual statement... yet.

++++++++++

TECHNOLOGY

Back when everybody was on a dialup modem, nobody wanted to wait for
your fat image file to load into their browser page, so you could
solve this problem in several ways:

1. create a thin, quick-loading low source version of your fat,
hi-res image and code it (via the "lowsrc" attribute of the "img"
tag) to load prior to your fat image. This gave viewers an
approximation to look at while your intended image was loading.

2. create a progressive jpeg, which initially loads blurry, and then
gets progressively crisper in waves, giving your viewer a blurry
image that gradually comes into focus.

3. create an interlacede gif that gradually gains resolution as it
loads, but without the characteristic jpeg lossiness (since gifs are
a lossless compression format).

All these hacks are moot now for anyone surfing via a high speed
connection. The high speed surfer simply sees your high resolution
image loaded immediately, since there is no wait time, and hence no
reason for the her browser to load your image gradually.

++++++++++

CONCEPT

All sorts of things in the world appear one way upon first
examination, and then on closer examination, our perception of them
changes. There is often an even more dramatic difference when the
first examination is mediated and the closer examination is in real
life. It's not too tricky to see the conceptual correlation between
this aspect of real world apprehension/comprehension and the
"LOWSRC-progressive jpg-interlaced gif" technology.

++++++++++

INSTRUCTIONS

First, choose some before and after images that resemble each other visually.

Since the 21st century conceptual media artists is obliged to be
cynical and depressed, the before image will probably be hopeful and
the after image will probably be gloomy. The challenge is, there has
to be some sort of visual correlation between the initial low res
image and the final high res image.

For example, you could start off with a low res image of a happy
poodle, and then as it gradually loads it could reveal a high res
image of an abu ghraib prisoner on a dog leash. You get the idea.
You may have to tweak the images a bit in photoshop to get them to
align with each other in size and shape so that the transition
between one and the other is seamless rather than abrupt. It should
look like the same image gradually coming into focus. Remember, the
concept has to do with the viewer's gradual perception, so the art is
in the process of the reveal.

Since the actual "LOWSRC / progressive jpeg / interlaced gif"
technology is invisible on all the slowest connections, you'll have
to simulate it. Make your progressively loading "image" an animated
gif, that way your can force it to load gradually at a speed of your
choosing. You can simulate either the LOWSRC effect, the progessive
jpg effect, the interlaced gif effect, or a cobination of all three.
Emulate whichever technology is most visaully appropriate to the
subject matter of each particular animation. Here is one example of
the tech:
http://playdamage.org/42.html (That particular piece is merely the
same image fading in and out. Your piece will, of course, have a
happy low res image fading into its ironic high res doppleganger.)

Make a series of these gradually loading images (actually
animations), and give each animation a provocative, double entendre
title which will serve as the animation's caption. The caption will
appear on the page below the animation before the animation fully
"loads," serving as a king of teaser. For example, with the
dog/prisoner animation, the title could be "The Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." The more smarmy and irreverent,
the darker the import when the final hi-res image is revealed!

The effect should be like in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World
when you're in that room with the portraits, and then the room
stretches to reveal a malevolent and heretofore hidden portion of the
portraits (
http://www.doombuggies.com/media/wallpaper/dynamite_800.jpg ). Or
like the Edward Gorey animated introduction to Mystery on PBS (cf:
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.04/5.04pages/lambgorey.php3 ).

++++++++++

MARKETING

retro low res emulation is modish (pun intended).
cf:
http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?pageIndex=1&rid550
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/play.html?pg=5
http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/Exhibitions/
http://www.lust.nl/lust/mtv/

With that in mind, you should really play up the "progressive jpeg
emulation" angle in your press copy (aka artist statment/grant
proposal). Otherwise, the piece risks being misconstrued as a series
of horribly crude transformer animatics with cheeky captions.

Fortunately, angsty irony is always en vogue, so you should have no
problem pimping it to your desired art cartel.

++++++++++

PEDAGOGY [an aside]

The next time I teach my net art class ( http://lab404.com/373 ),
I'll probably make this concept an assignment.

I currently have my students make a collaborative quilt:
http://mmas.unca.edu/~cloninger/373/2005s/quilt/
And a collaborative alphabet (a la piotr szyhalski):
http://mmas.unca.edu/~cloninger/373/2005s/abc/index.html

So this assignment will be like a combination of the two.

Steal this concept before I teach it, and I'll be obliged to allude
to your work in my syllabus. Your work will then have had a marked
influence on my pedagogical methods!

++++++++++

Happy implementin'!
curt