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: Deconstruct the Narrative = Protocolian positioning.


Hi Dyske,

If I want to convince you of something (particularly if it's
something about art), I can appeal to your emotions as well as your
intellect. There is a type of critical prose that does both (I need
not resort to poety nor flaming).

Lev Manovich and Marshall McCluhan are both sharp fellas, but
McCluhan is infinitely more appealing, simply because he is the
better writer. There is a craftiness to his critical prose that
qualifies it as art. His form often carries his argument. You dig
what he's saying well before you intellectually "get it." McCluhan
once said of his own method, "I have no theories whatever about
anything. I make observations by way of discovering contours, lines
of force, and pressures. I satirize at all times, and my hyperboles
are as nothing compared to the events to which they refer."

This difference in critical approach (dry vs. fly / allusive vs.
intuitive) is why I prefer rhizome to thingist.

it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing,
curt

At 12:41 AM -0500 2/23/03, Dyske Suematsu wrote:
>Hi Curt,
>
>I guess I should not discount the possibility of such use. However, when you
>simply post something artistic for others to read or see, what follows
>commonly is an ordinary (logical) discussion. The advantage of this medium
>lies more in the interaction, not in the pushing of information. You can
>respond to a piece of poem with another piece of poem, but this sort of
>practice is not common. One example of emotional exchange that can go on
>forever is when an insult is followed by more insults, which is probably a
>bit more entertaining than a compliments followed by more compliments.
>
>When someone writes something that is emotionally beautiful, moving, or
>powerful, I do not directly respond to the writer other than to compliment
>him/her. For the latter, I don't see the point of using this particular
>medium.
>
>Regards,
>Dyske
>
>
> > dyske wrote:
> > >This email list is a place for discussion. It is not
> > >an effective medium to accomplish anything at an >emotional level.
> >
> > hi dyske,
> >
> > your assertion sort of sticks in my craw
> > http://www.playdamage.org/23.html
> >
> > i find that words shared in this medium
> > http://www.playdamage.org/37.html
> >
> > can have extraordinary emotional effect
> > http://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/deadmetheney/monologues/deadflag.htm
> >
> > especially when specifically referencing
> > http://www.neuralust.com/~curt/whorl/
> >
> > other media
> > http://www.turbulence.org/Works/arcangel/movies_color/19.mov
> >
> > I'll go on to say that truly great art crit differentiates itself from
>philosophical discourse or political debate by its very willingness and
>ability to traffic in the emotional. Lester Bangs approached rock + roll as
>confessional literature, and his critical texts read like confessional
>literature as rock + roll:
> > http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/reviews/astral.html
> >
> > everybody is smart; not everybody is brave.
> >
> > hold you in his arms and you can feel his disease,
> > curt
> > + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> > -> post: list@rhizome.org
> > -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> > -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> > -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> > +
> > Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> > Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
> >

DISCUSSION

Re: Deconstruct the Narrative = Protocolian positioning.


dyske wrote:
>This email list is a place for discussion. It is not
>an effective medium to accomplish anything at an >emotional level.

hi dyske,

your assertion sort of sticks in my craw
http://www.playdamage.org/23.html

i find that words shared in this medium
http://www.playdamage.org/37.html

can have extraordinary emotional effect
http://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/deadmetheney/monologues/deadflag.htm

especially when specifically referencing
http://www.neuralust.com/~curt/whorl/

other media
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/arcangel/movies_color/19.mov

I'll go on to say that truly great art crit differentiates itself from philosophical discourse or political debate by its very willingness and ability to traffic in the emotional. Lester Bangs approached rock + roll as confessional literature, and his critical texts read like confessional literature as rock + roll:
http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/reviews/astral.html

everybody is smart; not everybody is brave.

hold you in his arms and you can feel his disease,
curt

DISCUSSION

Re: DATA DIARIES by CORY ARCANGEL on Turbulence


chris asks:
>Anyone other data junkies notice that the quicktime >movie downloads
> superfast because it is simple, easily-compressed
> data?

yep. this screenshot:
http://www.deepyoung.org/current/hardwired/cory.gif
is 2k and a 15 color gif (it's not been reduced by me in any way). viva-la-non-anti-aliasing.


DISCUSSION

Re: DATA DIARIES by CORY ARCANGEL on Turbulence


Michael,

I agree with everything you say. McCloud also mentions artists that at some point in their carreer were more focussed on #1, and and at other times were more focussed on #2. And it's never and either or. Furthermore, it's not even anything you can split out like -- now this artist is 72% focussed on exploring form, and 28% focussed on exploring idea. It's more like incarnational math, where Jesus was 100% divine and 100% human.

My point is that both Picasso and Davis were genre pioneers. They each forged several new genres. They were restless in their exploration of form (of course, all the while expressing their ideas along the way). So that's why they go in the #2 camp. It's not a dis by any means.

And to say Coltrane is into idea, this doesn't mean that he's unaware of form. On the contrary, he probably knows his single flavor of "avante-garde" form more deeply than Miles knew either the cool or electric fusion or hard bop or... But Coltrane in the end pushes his form to the limit, almost in an attempt to minimalize it in order to transcend it. He breaks up the quartet, and in the end it's just him and rasheed ali. He's not genre hopping. He's drilling down.

I agree that the genius of Davis and Picasso both is that they were able to express their ideas so well within each genre they established. But what can I say -- to me none of thier technical mastery quite matches the intensity of either Van Gough or Coltrane. I love ESP too, but it's not Meditations.

This is why the first wave of punk rockers eschewed guitar solos. They didn't want to have to mess with any of that. They wanted to drill down and concentrate on the angst. Still, when Husker Du came along and they did use guitar solos, it was angsty and then some.

I see in net art a precedent for constantly pushing the medium/genre, either both conceptually or technichally. In many ways,the person who chooses a form and sticks with it is often overlooked. For example, Margaret Penney at Dream7.com is still drilling down into the territory she's mapped out. She's added some technical skills and some collaborators to her arsenal, but she's still exploring the same topics. Her explorations, although they occur within a genre, are topically driven.

peace,
curt