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: most serial killers don't get that way on accident


The Joker in Batman tells the beautiful photo-journalist, in an effort to
impress her, that he is "the world's first practicing homicidal artist."
And wants to enlist her in the "new avant garde".

Conferences of practicing homicidal artists. Symposia. In rat holes. On
luxury liners. In Afghanistan. The White House. Slideshows. Long slide
show. Knocks em dead. The discussion periods get a little out of hand.

A movie just isn't a movie these days without a good psycho. My favorite
is "American Psycho". It doesn't cop out by assuming the 'one rotten
apple' philosophy.

Now he's Batman.

Immaculate realities. Yeesh.

The book "Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers" (
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/096503240X/104-5619644-5198341
) is mostly pretty boring because all but one of them can't write worth a
damn. Sick puppies with rabies. But it contains the writings of Carl
Panzram. Writing was the only thing that kept him remotely human. Too bad
he didn't start it earlier, when he was a kid. His voice reminds me of the
writing of William S. Burroughs. Who also was a killer.

That people become serial killers for attention says less about them than
it does a society that does indeed pay fascinated attention to them.
Murder and mayhem has been a staple of drama for eons. Medea. Oedipus. The
Orestiea. Macbeth. Hamlet. But those are all tragedies. The onus is not on
violent spectacle but on what it means to be human. And tragedy has also
been called "an affair with the gods", ie, these works have strong human
and cosmic significance. The moral and human issues are not glossed over
in spectacle but are dealt with centrally.

"American Psycho" is not a tragedy but a satire. A satire on USAmerica in
the Reagan era. It's brilliant. It could as well be set in Canada or
Britain etc in many ways, ie, the psychosis is not truly peculiar to the
USA, though it may be most dramatically pronounced there. The 'American
dream' is metonymic of 'the capitalist dream'.

Yes, that people should be permitted their dignity and listened to is much
to be desired, I agree.

Also, art *can* be humanizing. Metaphor of 'me and you'. There's more than
one person who has been on the edge of violence who found their balance in
metaphor, in the possibility of the multi-perspectival view of 'me and
you'. I had a daydream once of Cain and Abel. The knife was coming down.
But there it stayed. Metaphor was there to save the day. He stopped not
out of fear of punishment but identification with the other.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Report From SIGGRAPH 2005


> This year's main event was the keynote address by acclaimed filmmaker
> and special effects innovator, George Lucas. Widely considered as the
> "father of digital cinema", Lucas proclaimed himself as a storyteller
> before anything else. In order to realize the worlds he envisioned he
> turned to computers as an enabling technology. He calmly stated that
> he was "not a computer person" and had "no idea what SIGGRAPH people
> do." He referenced Akira Kurosawa as a filmmaker who triumphs in
> creating an illusion that fantasy worlds exist and proclaimed the
> secret to this as "immaculate reality." Lucas's humble moment was
> when he admitted to the audience, "I don't know how you do this
> stuff, but it allows me to tell a story so I'm happy you're doing it."

It is certainly reassuring to know that a humble storyteller can be the main
event at SIGGRAPH.

He *is* a humble storyteller, right?

Is this an "immaculate reality"?

ja?
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: beer delivery


> well I don't think there is a "pure" web art anymore. Online
> video is as relevant as flash, javascript games and java based AI
> interaction.
> if it can be networked then it is.
> "it's all for fun you know,
> share a little joke with the world"
> Eric

Using the Web simply as a distribution channel for pre-digital media is
something that happens with print, video, recorded sound, etc.

Whether it is 'web art' or not turns out to be somewhat less interesting a
question than whether it is interesting at all and, if so, how.

Something can have elements of web art and elements of shovelware.

Doron Golan's online videos are this way--as are just about anyone's videos
on the net. But no one cares, in the case of Doron's work, that they are
part shovelware because the videos are so good, and this is true independent
of whether they are seen on the Web or not.

Though I suppose that Doron's intelligent engineering and design of them for
the Web so that they stream well and aren't inappropriately artifacted and
are a goodly size and so on allows perception of the quality of the
immaterial material of them better. He has made every effort to present the
work seriously on the Web. And the look and approach is distinctive not only
technically but otherwise.

So here we have a case of video succeeding not simply as art on the Web but
surely also as Web art.

Not to say you see this very often.

But what I want to point out is there is a sort of continuum between
shovelware and webart, rather than two clearly demarcated zones. And there
are many variables. How heavily does the work rely on pre-digital media like
print, video, recorded sound, etc? To the exclusion of programming, network
processes, etc? Are there aspects of the work that can't be reproduced in
other media? How much does the social context of it amid the email lists and
so on influence the work? Would the work be better as a book or an offline
critter of some other sort? Does the work have some burning connection to
the Net?

If it doesn't burn, the rest is chatter.

Also, I think there's lots of poetential to take cinema in all sorts of
unanticipated directions on the net. It needs new directions. Not for the
sake of novelty. But because cliches do not burn. Art within an established
form eventually can only go through the motions and perpetuate the status
quo. A late bardo. Yeah ok, I'm wrong, there will be good sonnetts forever.
Truly. New stuff. But a form has its formal range, nonetheless.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Interactive Futures, Victoria Canada, Jan 26 - Jan 29 2006: AUDIO VISIONS


INTERACTIVE FUTURES 06: Audio Visions
Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival - http://www.vifvf.com/
Co-sponsored by Open Space Artist-Run Centre - http://www.openspace.ca/
Parallel event

DISCUSSION

Re: re: The Universal Computer


should it be the case that human cogitation is explicable in terms of
algorithms, this would not demean or lessen the wonder of thought and
feeling. on the contrary, the notion that all we are of mind and emotion is
the product of agencies of *this* world suggests to me that the material
world is almost unfathomably rich in possibilities for mapping into mind and
emotion, thought and feeling. and that it is all in front of us to be
explored. if we do not shut down the exploration. if we keep valuing the
open and inquiring mind.

it seems to me that what separates us from the other animals is the richness
of language of which we are capable. other animals are not incapable of
language. it is simply a matter of degree, of richness of language--and,
correspondingly, we are capable of greater logical complexity in our
reasoning and information storage and retrieval.

i have a cat. she is a thinking, feeling, sentient being. she lets me know
what she needs me to know. she walks in front of the monitor when i miss the
point. she knows how to communicate with me. i think she probably has me
quite well-trained, actually.

ja
http://vispo.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-list@rhizome.org [mailto:owner-list@rhizome.org]On Behalf Of
> Plasma Studii
> Sent: July 29, 2005 10:38 AM
> To: Jim Andrews; list@rhizome.org
> Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: re: The Universal Computer
>
>
> what a great point!
>
> apparently, their reasoning is like this:
> 1. for many, staplers (and many other tools at the office) are mysterious!
> 2. mysterious things are scary and should be avoided.
> 3. but our brains can't be scary. they're us.
> 4. therefore, all newtonian physics must be wrong because it
> tries to describe aspects of
> both staplers and brains (which obviously can't be similar
> because one's really scary and the
> other i like).
> 5. thus, staplers can no longer be mysterious, especially if we
> think of them as paper weights
> and ignore the mechanics.
>
>
>
> a puppet show has a director. the only real difference in
> programming is that for strings,
> they use thread, we use quote marks. everything's a tool of some sort.
>
> wonder if people who think that animals and machines are
> fundamentally different, that
> algorithmic functions are somehow "less" than natural, also
> believe such vocabulary literally
> as "lower" species. it's like thinking "queen" ants have any
> authority over workers?
>
> there is obviously no objective way to measure complexity or
> success. humans just calibrate
> the criteria to put humans on top. it can equally be said that
> while other species function
> without much language or invention, we rely on it. we could just
> as easily be the weakest,
> form of life. (if we had to swing our fastest from trees all the
> time, we'd think for a split
> second and wind up dead. whereas if monkeys depended on picking
> stocks in order to get
> food, they'd do better than most investment experts.)
>
> in fact, given the rarity of our enlarged cortexes (the
> consciousness that humans alone are
> saddled with) , as opposed to a ubiquitous yet intricate organ
> like the stomach, one could
> easily draw the conclussion, so much awareness was a big mistake.
>
>
> no one need agree. it's simply common sense that the human brain
> is hardly an ideal judge
> of which neurological methods are superior. it's like asking
> george bush who he voted for.