Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: re: citizen king


> I think it's the state more than the pros. Computer education
> must be socially enriching, not just a freebie for future
> employees. Beware freeing up money for pay-TV or vending machines
> by volunteering. :-( I think we need to start thinking of
> education and social support as something that people can (and
> must) do rather than states.

Teachers have their hands full, certainly, and work hard just to stay
afloat. And there aren't enough of them, they aren't payed enough, etc. A
brave bunch, as far as I'm concerned. I agree that "computer education must
be socially enriching, not just a freebie for future employees." I think
that states must continue to play the largest role in education--and put
more money in it and make it more possible for poor people to be
well-educated--but I agree that people who aren't professional teachers need
to pass on what they know to the kids at schools, whether that's through
actually working in the schools or paying more attention to the schools in
things like art materials for study or whatever.

One could (and it has undoubtedly already been done well) do an interesting
piece of art that consisted of activities for kids concerning net.art and
computing more broadly.

http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/000633.php is an engaging
sequence of "theses" on art by Alain Badiou; yes, he seems quite
interesting. I look forward to your thoughts on the book of his 'Handbook of
Inaesthetics'.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: re: citizen king


> Handbook of Inaesthetics
>
> Alain Badiou, Translated by Alberto Toscano
>
> This volume presents a new proposal for the link between
> philosophy and art. Badiou identifies and rejects the three
> schemes of didacticism, romanticism, and classicism that he sees
> as having governed traditional "aesthetics," and seeks a fourth
> mode of accounting for the educative value of works of art.
>
> - Rob.

Thanks, Rob. I can't find much on the Net about this book except
http://www.sup.org/cgi-bin/search/book_desc.cgi?book_idD08%204409

How did you come to this book?

there's usually some educational dimension to art. it usually isn't made for
the classroom though. not that it necessarily should be. but it's an
interesting option both in terms of art and education possibs.

also, there are generally schools close by that need help with their
computer set up and with how computers are approached, used, etc.

i guess schools are trepidatious about involving a lot of volunteers. but
education can't really be just left to the pros. though the education
systems do need more money for pros and other resources. it seems that
people who know what they're doing (in any sense) with computers
(technically or imaginatively or socially or concerning business etc) are in
short supply and schools should increasingly be open to volunteer efforts to
help kids get a sense of what's up and how to do stuff, particularly in the
fundamentals, since the teachers are bound to be very much in the dark
themselves except in the most fundamental of fundamentals, perhaps, the
blandest and most basic things.

ja

DISCUSSION

re: citizen king


art isn't necessarily particularly didactic or at all didactic, of course.
it isn't so much about teaching lessons as creating challenging experiences.
still, such experiences are important in schools and there's great scope for
art in education. i take it that part of what we're about as net.artists is
to help society use computers imaginatively and wisely. so that they become
extensions of our humanity even as we move into the 'post human' (which is
the human extended by technology). that requires people experience
imaginative and wise use of computers, and it also requires that they be
able to find their way to their own imaginative and wise use of computers.
the art provides the former. but artists can help with the latter too, in
their projects.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

citizen king


i watched a pbs tv show tonight on martin luther king. i was familiar with
most of the material already, but it was well put together and there were
interviews with people close to king that i hadn't seen before. mostly what
i (re)learned was that king worked not only for the civil rights of black
people but also worked more generally for a more just redistribution of
wealth, whether for black or white or whomever, and he also stood strongly
against the vietnam war.

anyway, i suspect all of us net.artists have occassion to wonder what more
we can do than the art itself to help this poor old world a bit. I went to
the http://pbs.org site, and the show on king was linked from the homepage,
though even if it weren't, there's a good on-site search engine that
would've let me or a kid find it. i was wondering what sort of experience
this would be in relation to the documentary. and it's really pretty
interesting. I've seen this before with pbs stuff: the show is great and the
Web site is inspiring and opens onto a wealth of material both onsite and
elsewhere on the web and in books and audio files and videos.

also, they're thinking of the kids and their teachers. which i think is
really important in a project like this one and also in some of ours.
there's a "teacher's guide" link with proposed activities. like building
time lines concerning the civil rights movement. when you poke around on the
site itself there's actually a few timelines that would help the kids with
this sort of project. i see the activities are divided into groups like
history, geography, civics, and economics.

i think it's pretty cool to see the broadcasters making such inspiring use
of the net. and in integration of media: tv and the net. and there's all
sorts of books listed as well. maybe the artists can take a lesson or two
from the broadcasters at pbs.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: artport gatepage January 05: C-SPAN x 4 by Barbara Lattanzi


Hi Barbara,

Could you tell me a little about the differences between the web versions
and the downloadable versions of this work?

Have you selected particular video clips, or do the apps search certain
locations for video clips and work with whatever they find?

If the latter, how did you arrive at the texts? It's interesting to think of
that, erm, cross-product, ie, consider a video * text work where the videos
are selected randomly from an unknown pool of videos (though they are all,
in this case, concerned with politics) and the texts are drawn somewhat
randomly from a pool of pre-composed texts by the author. Annotated video,
yes, but also possibly a literary work.

This work of yours is quite strong in the possibilities it suggests and its
meditation on video and political process.

ja

artport gatepage January 05

features

C-SPAN x 4 by Barbara Lattanzi

http://artport.whitney.org

Barbara Lattanzi's C-SPAN x 4 consists of 4 different variations on video
clips of current news made available by the C-SPAN Network: