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.
RE: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: on bad digital art
> I'm not going to address any responses just yet. I'm going to
> wait a bit and see
>
> what happens. Part of what I'm interested in is seeing how people
> interpret my
> original post. However, I just want to clarify one thing so that
> the discussion
>
> doesn't veer off into outer space. By "using utility of
> technology", I'm not
> referring to utility as opposed to non-utility. Rather, I'm
> referring to the
> public conception of the way any technology was or is meant to be
> used. "Art
> that uses technology as a medium" can still have utility but that utility
> doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the
> technology's intended
> or perceived utility.
I met a famous avant garde poet and we talked a little about technology and
art. If I understood him correctly, his feeling was that he was really only
interested in technology in art when the artist did things with the
technology that it was never intended to do. The idea being resistance and
subversion as well as expansion of the possibilities, I presume.
I'm not sure how well he grasped programmability. I mean, in a sense, you
can write programs to do things that the software was never intended to do
without hacking at all. DHTML, having been initially a Microsoft initiative,
was almost certainly not intended for digital poetry, for instance. But very
little DHTML digital poetry does things that are not 'supported' by DHTML.
And even when it does, in itself, I don't see much to recommend it as art.
Because it's a technical consideration, primarily. We don't really care
whether it was intended or not. We care more about whether what it does is
interesting. We don't care whether the behavior is supported or not. We care
about whether the behavior is interesting, insightful, perspicuous,
entertaining, enlightening, etc, rather than whether it is supported.
ja
http://vispo.com
> wait a bit and see
>
> what happens. Part of what I'm interested in is seeing how people
> interpret my
> original post. However, I just want to clarify one thing so that
> the discussion
>
> doesn't veer off into outer space. By "using utility of
> technology", I'm not
> referring to utility as opposed to non-utility. Rather, I'm
> referring to the
> public conception of the way any technology was or is meant to be
> used. "Art
> that uses technology as a medium" can still have utility but that utility
> doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the
> technology's intended
> or perceived utility.
I met a famous avant garde poet and we talked a little about technology and
art. If I understood him correctly, his feeling was that he was really only
interested in technology in art when the artist did things with the
technology that it was never intended to do. The idea being resistance and
subversion as well as expansion of the possibilities, I presume.
I'm not sure how well he grasped programmability. I mean, in a sense, you
can write programs to do things that the software was never intended to do
without hacking at all. DHTML, having been initially a Microsoft initiative,
was almost certainly not intended for digital poetry, for instance. But very
little DHTML digital poetry does things that are not 'supported' by DHTML.
And even when it does, in itself, I don't see much to recommend it as art.
Because it's a technical consideration, primarily. We don't really care
whether it was intended or not. We care more about whether what it does is
interesting. We don't care whether the behavior is supported or not. We care
about whether the behavior is interesting, insightful, perspicuous,
entertaining, enlightening, etc, rather than whether it is supported.
ja
http://vispo.com
why i don't read too many novels anymore
novels are marvelous and i read them from time to time, have read many in
the past, but it occurs to me that the reason i don't read too many these
days is because the net and its 'characters', as written to the lists and in
their other work on the net, constitute the main written narrative i have
been reading for the last eleven years.
and one of the main things about this 'narrative' is the struggle by many of
these people to create or understand or develop or curate etc net art.
ja
http://vispo.com
the past, but it occurs to me that the reason i don't read too many these
days is because the net and its 'characters', as written to the lists and in
their other work on the net, constitute the main written narrative i have
been reading for the last eleven years.
and one of the main things about this 'narrative' is the struggle by many of
these people to create or understand or develop or curate etc net art.
ja
http://vispo.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: dot.com implosion killed net art?
> > Manik said:
> > Everyones hands at home where as ten years ago you still needed
> > access to an
> > Avid, Media 100, SGI machines that, unless rich or in school made it a
> > the 1990's HTML and Flash toolsets were/are fairly limited. We live in a
> > world of meta-meta-tools. Tools creating ...
> > But seriously... is still active in what is happening now?
>
> Rob said:
> Yes, net.art has not disappeared, it has just become universal. Anyone
> can make
> it, and make it well, it is not exclusive any more. And for all
> the populist
> noises that the artworld makes, exclusivity is what fine art is about.
Universal? In what sense?
"Anyone can make it, and make it well..."
This requires some scrutiny, doesn't it. Certainly there are many ways to
approach net art. For instance,
> > It's here every day. p2p, rss, flickr, myspace, google ads,
> multi player,
> > remote viewing, blog, vlog, blah, blah, blah. monitors.
plus shockwave, flash, java, processing, dhtml, or desktop-based c++ or
delphi etc apps that are wired to the net. programmer net artists usually
produce apps using these tools, and often use the former quoted bunch as web
services, ie, the app may use google to get images or texts or videos etc.
once you say 'programmer net artist', you're not talking about 'anyone'.
being able to program and program well, concerning art, is quite rare.
usually it requires several years of study in computer science and many more
of practical experience, though school is not always the way artists (or
even professional programmers) learn their theory, their data structures,
theory of computation, OOP methodology, etc. Programming is like
architecture in that you have both to get your head around quite a technical
body of material and be able to *feel* with those technical languages.
going the way of the non-programmer net artist is not as technically
forbidding, but i imagine it is also extremely challenging. there is quite a
bit of stuff that 'anybody can do' and is as common as spam. to distinguish
one's work when it is brother to spam is a job. even when the work is not
spam. anything that 'anybody can do' is going to be done at mass-spam-media
levels and is going to be common as spam. this is where 'early adoption' of
technologies such as blog, vlog, etc becomes important to non-programmer net
artists. not so much 'to be first' as to strike before people become numbed
by the approach having been done to death.
then there are those--programmers or not--who do not seek to innovate but to
either approach it tactically or otherwise find/create the depth of a form.
so, in a sense, yes, 'anyone can do it and do it well'--in the sense that
you don't need a gallery or expensive hardware or a big budget--but like any
art taken seriously, it is a life to do it really well.
i took a detour in 2003-2005.5 in that i did a lot of non-net art
programming as an employee. for performance. for installation. lots of
expensive hardware. and that was interesting. i learned a lot. but it also
gave me a renewed sense of the value of net art. net art is for the world.
whereas the work i helped make in that detour was intensely local. small
audience. not extrordinarily well-connected to what is going on elsewhere in
the same field. often re-inventing the wheel. net art has to run on all
sorts of other computers around the world. non-net art usually runs on at
most a few dedicated machines and there are so many ad-hoc technologies
involved that the work is going to need those particular machines and that
particular hardware five years down the road. whereas net artists look at
work they did years ago and try to keep it running in the new environment
(new versions of browsers, new versions of plugins etc). also, programming
interesting net art is as challenging as programming offline. in net works,
the programmer has to get her head around network operations and all that
opens up. that's a brilliant challenge. all that asynchronous stuff that can
go down or fail in any number of ways. conditional callback structures. o
there's lots of frontiers there still.
ja
http://vispo.com
> > Everyones hands at home where as ten years ago you still needed
> > access to an
> > Avid, Media 100, SGI machines that, unless rich or in school made it a
> > the 1990's HTML and Flash toolsets were/are fairly limited. We live in a
> > world of meta-meta-tools. Tools creating ...
> > But seriously... is still active in what is happening now?
>
> Rob said:
> Yes, net.art has not disappeared, it has just become universal. Anyone
> can make
> it, and make it well, it is not exclusive any more. And for all
> the populist
> noises that the artworld makes, exclusivity is what fine art is about.
Universal? In what sense?
"Anyone can make it, and make it well..."
This requires some scrutiny, doesn't it. Certainly there are many ways to
approach net art. For instance,
> > It's here every day. p2p, rss, flickr, myspace, google ads,
> multi player,
> > remote viewing, blog, vlog, blah, blah, blah. monitors.
plus shockwave, flash, java, processing, dhtml, or desktop-based c++ or
delphi etc apps that are wired to the net. programmer net artists usually
produce apps using these tools, and often use the former quoted bunch as web
services, ie, the app may use google to get images or texts or videos etc.
once you say 'programmer net artist', you're not talking about 'anyone'.
being able to program and program well, concerning art, is quite rare.
usually it requires several years of study in computer science and many more
of practical experience, though school is not always the way artists (or
even professional programmers) learn their theory, their data structures,
theory of computation, OOP methodology, etc. Programming is like
architecture in that you have both to get your head around quite a technical
body of material and be able to *feel* with those technical languages.
going the way of the non-programmer net artist is not as technically
forbidding, but i imagine it is also extremely challenging. there is quite a
bit of stuff that 'anybody can do' and is as common as spam. to distinguish
one's work when it is brother to spam is a job. even when the work is not
spam. anything that 'anybody can do' is going to be done at mass-spam-media
levels and is going to be common as spam. this is where 'early adoption' of
technologies such as blog, vlog, etc becomes important to non-programmer net
artists. not so much 'to be first' as to strike before people become numbed
by the approach having been done to death.
then there are those--programmers or not--who do not seek to innovate but to
either approach it tactically or otherwise find/create the depth of a form.
so, in a sense, yes, 'anyone can do it and do it well'--in the sense that
you don't need a gallery or expensive hardware or a big budget--but like any
art taken seriously, it is a life to do it really well.
i took a detour in 2003-2005.5 in that i did a lot of non-net art
programming as an employee. for performance. for installation. lots of
expensive hardware. and that was interesting. i learned a lot. but it also
gave me a renewed sense of the value of net art. net art is for the world.
whereas the work i helped make in that detour was intensely local. small
audience. not extrordinarily well-connected to what is going on elsewhere in
the same field. often re-inventing the wheel. net art has to run on all
sorts of other computers around the world. non-net art usually runs on at
most a few dedicated machines and there are so many ad-hoc technologies
involved that the work is going to need those particular machines and that
particular hardware five years down the road. whereas net artists look at
work they did years ago and try to keep it running in the new environment
(new versions of browsers, new versions of plugins etc). also, programming
interesting net art is as challenging as programming offline. in net works,
the programmer has to get her head around network operations and all that
opens up. that's a brilliant challenge. all that asynchronous stuff that can
go down or fail in any number of ways. conditional callback structures. o
there's lots of frontiers there still.
ja
http://vispo.com
Re: Re: [RR]: netVerse
> '*very* big'... hehe, yea pity they say size doesn't matter.
> Translating it
> into a digital image we are (potentially) talking about an image with a
> 'Megapixel' count with about 34 digits. (the dimensions are only
> constrained
> by MySQL's BIGINT data type - for the time being)
>
> The size does make it hard to navigate, I'll probably yield and add some
> unobtrusive way (maybe right-click menu) offering a guided tour
> of the more
> interesting places, or at least functionality to get and goto specific
> co-ordinates.
>
> Do you think there is merit in claiming the subtext is something
> about the
> net as really big data refrigerator? :)
>
> Thanx for the kind Canadian greeting Jim!
>
> Andre SC
> http://netverse.andresc.net
Interesting. I wasn't aware that the piece programmed such a large space
pixel space. I was just thinking of a global fridge door as very large
geographically, not in pixel size.
Once the concept of the global or at least net-wide fridge door is opened,
so too is the notion of hunger. The net gives us the large fridge door but
it does not yet literally help feed people. The food is 'for the mind and
imagination', which is wonderful, but there is deprivation and starvation
also, in many parts of the world, as we all know. Your piece could also deal
somehow with this, possibly, somehow.
Usually programmed net poetry that takes the fridge-door magnetic poetry
metaphor has already been done. Much of it is very limited. But your piece
opens up new space in that concept that I wouldn't have thought of. I look
forward to seeing where you take it.
ja
http://vispo.com
> Translating it
> into a digital image we are (potentially) talking about an image with a
> 'Megapixel' count with about 34 digits. (the dimensions are only
> constrained
> by MySQL's BIGINT data type - for the time being)
>
> The size does make it hard to navigate, I'll probably yield and add some
> unobtrusive way (maybe right-click menu) offering a guided tour
> of the more
> interesting places, or at least functionality to get and goto specific
> co-ordinates.
>
> Do you think there is merit in claiming the subtext is something
> about the
> net as really big data refrigerator? :)
>
> Thanx for the kind Canadian greeting Jim!
>
> Andre SC
> http://netverse.andresc.net
Interesting. I wasn't aware that the piece programmed such a large space
pixel space. I was just thinking of a global fridge door as very large
geographically, not in pixel size.
Once the concept of the global or at least net-wide fridge door is opened,
so too is the notion of hunger. The net gives us the large fridge door but
it does not yet literally help feed people. The food is 'for the mind and
imagination', which is wonderful, but there is deprivation and starvation
also, in many parts of the world, as we all know. Your piece could also deal
somehow with this, possibly, somehow.
Usually programmed net poetry that takes the fridge-door magnetic poetry
metaphor has already been done. Much of it is very limited. But your piece
opens up new space in that concept that I wouldn't have thought of. I look
forward to seeing where you take it.
ja
http://vispo.com
ERDOS X
CONCERT TO CELEBRATE THE MATHEMATICIAN PAUL ERDOS
Numbers and music by Emanuel Pimenta
Budapest. August the 13th, 19:00, at the Europa Congress Centre, in
Budapest, Hungary, in the ambit of the Symmetry Festival - an international
Meeting of Science and Art - the Hungarian composer Sandor Fekete-Kiss will
perform the world premiere of ERDOS X, a musical concert composed by Emanuel
Dimas de Melo Pimenta. ERDOS X is a celebration of the famous Hungarian
mathematician Paul Erdos (March 26, 1913 - September 20, 1996). Just after
his death, Erdos' friends created the erdos number as a humorous tribute.
Paul Erdos alone was assigned the erdos number 0, while his immediate
collaborators could claim an erdos number 1, their collaborators have erdos
number at most 2, and so on. Emanuel Pimenta took the letters of the names
of many erdos numbers and used them as the basis for the composition. Those
letters designed the musical sounds that were transformed and prepared for
new transformations in a mathematical non-intentional process, celebrating
the principle of mutual collaboration and friendship.
For more information on:
Paul Erdos - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta - http://www.asa-art.com/edmp.html
Sandor Fekete-Kiss - http://www.szferakzeneje.hu
The Concert ERDOS X - http://www.asa-art.com/erdos/1.html
The Symmetry Festival - http://www.conferences.hu/symmetry2006/
To directly contact the composer: phone - +351 919802813 or email:
edmp@asa-art.com
SYMMETRY FESTIVAL
AUGUST 13. 2006
19:00
Europa Congress Center
H-1021 Budapest,
Harshegyi u. 5-7
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta
Sandor Fekete-Kiss
Numbers and music by Emanuel Pimenta
Budapest. August the 13th, 19:00, at the Europa Congress Centre, in
Budapest, Hungary, in the ambit of the Symmetry Festival - an international
Meeting of Science and Art - the Hungarian composer Sandor Fekete-Kiss will
perform the world premiere of ERDOS X, a musical concert composed by Emanuel
Dimas de Melo Pimenta. ERDOS X is a celebration of the famous Hungarian
mathematician Paul Erdos (March 26, 1913 - September 20, 1996). Just after
his death, Erdos' friends created the erdos number as a humorous tribute.
Paul Erdos alone was assigned the erdos number 0, while his immediate
collaborators could claim an erdos number 1, their collaborators have erdos
number at most 2, and so on. Emanuel Pimenta took the letters of the names
of many erdos numbers and used them as the basis for the composition. Those
letters designed the musical sounds that were transformed and prepared for
new transformations in a mathematical non-intentional process, celebrating
the principle of mutual collaboration and friendship.
For more information on:
Paul Erdos - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta - http://www.asa-art.com/edmp.html
Sandor Fekete-Kiss - http://www.szferakzeneje.hu
The Concert ERDOS X - http://www.asa-art.com/erdos/1.html
The Symmetry Festival - http://www.conferences.hu/symmetry2006/
To directly contact the composer: phone - +351 919802813 or email:
edmp@asa-art.com
SYMMETRY FESTIVAL
AUGUST 13. 2006
19:00
Europa Congress Center
H-1021 Budapest,
Harshegyi u. 5-7
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta
Sandor Fekete-Kiss