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.
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DISCUSSION

response to Flash flood of messege passing


Well it seems we've hit on a few nerves. Apologies if anyone was offended. I ask questions and
take positions on matters of art like others do and sometimes it's about contentious things in
net.art/web.art and away we go.

Curt said:

"I'm always amazed at the sort of patronizing, look-what-the-cat-dragged-in reaction that net
artists have toward Flash. The tenor of the dialogue usually runs like, "Could this be art? Do
you think so? Really? No! Could it be?"

Yes, that progress is evident on previous discussions about Flash and net.art on some other
lists.

The pity is it rarely gets beyond this relatively inconsequential phase of the issues involved.

But there was some depth in some of the responses.

So rather than responding to about a dozen emails, I'll take a different route and respond to
the lot at once.

I would have wished for more urls to the work people with opinions on these matters hold up as
exemplary. Arguing about these things without pointing to the work in question by a simple URL,
at least doing this constantly, never bringing the URLs into it for direct inspection, is
unfortunate and does not help the advocates of Flash work. Part of the dialog is toward direct
experience of the work. That can also be part of criticism now--criticism can call the work in
question up on the screen. That is a boon to the relation between art and criticism. It also
ties the remarks to a very solid context.

Of course one does not want to include a URL on everything one says. But asking for URLs to
works involving Flash that people hold up as terrific works is not unreasonable. A shame they
were not particularly forthcoming.

Many people argue about Flash/Director/Java/whatever work without actually experiencing the
work. That isn't so prevalent on rhizome, which is good--there are lots of people here who do
take the time to surf a lot of work--but it happens rather widely nonetheless. That is among the
worst of criticism. Willful ignorance of the work and judgement of it and its kind all the same
is rather fearfully prejudicial. Providing URLs helps to minimize this.

I liked t.whid's point about message passing, and art as 'information'.

one can imagine software as being about message passing, also. The object-oriented methodology
of programming addresses issues of message passing centrally. One could say that the methodology
was developed to address the problems of message passing in software architecture. And yes, it
is also true, as t.whid points out, that net.art is, in a certain sense, all about message
passing between people.

i have been working on a game for a couple of years on and off. one of the observations about
the code of the shoot-em-up i started with is that the code itself has not much to do with a
shoot-em-up. Much more to do with strong message passing. And the code is also 'about' data
structures and structures, on a higher level, between scripts. And is about the way that
different media types are handled and even (o that dreadful word) managed. And about the
behaviors associated with the media entities. Levels of 'aboutness' rise from there into the
airy realms of art, even. The political. The frame in the world. The song. The artistic contexts
and types.

One of the interesting things about art is that it comprehends all the levels of meaning.

It is an architecture that stretches through all that is and is imagined and imaginable, through
all fields, through private and public experience, through the subjective and objective, the
abjectly personal through to the heavens above and beyond.

'Art as information' is interesting because it is somewhat mysterious. Information?

t.whid says:

"the visual has been in the mainstream of art since at least the 80s. but you'll find more
conceptual art in net art, i agree. why is this? it's because it suits the medium. the original
conceptual artists thought of their work as *information art*. they reduced their practice down
to simply passing information from artist to viewer and it was a very radical notion for the
time. Passing information between computers is the essence of the 'Net. no wonder artists use
conceptual strategies via the net."

We can think of many things other than art that can be conceived of usefully as paradigmatically
involving message passing, ie, being coded as information and having a process of message
handling/generation/disposal. One can think of this at the assembly language level or concerning
the political dynamics of a list. Etc.

I agree with t.whid that we may then inquire into the nature of the permissable/possible types
of messege passing that can transpire over the net, and this question is entirely relevant to
net.art. Matters of bandwidth shape net.art. So do processing power and refresh rate. They don't
necessarily 'determine' many aspects of net.art, but to view them as inconsequential to the form
of the message passing--and therefore the messages themselves--is to miss the obvious. The
phenomenology of net.art is usefully viewed as a superstructure which has embedded in it the
phenomenology of the net. But software on the net, such as Flash and Director, have their own
protocols, additionally. And the nature of these tools and their possibilities shape net.art
also.

It's also clear that spirit can come even in the form of a short koan, something that when
contemplated opens into understanding and mystery.

So the spirit of the discovery is not proportional to the size of the message or its media type.

I also admire compression, which in art is necessarily lossy, like a jpg rather than a bmp, and
the recovery and reading of the work is utterly dependent on the person reading it.

I certainly enjoyed Kosuth's book 'Art After Philosophy and after'. And yes, as someone noted,
from an American Marxism intent on questioning the object involved in the message passing and
the message and the object.

Virtual objects are files and the things coded in information in them.

I think a good part of these discussions is that different approaches to art and their value is
revealed.

Well the post is already long so I'll end it with a URL to a Flash work by Dan Waber. It's a
suite of 'poems' at http://vispo.com/guests/DanWaber called "Strings". These eight Flash pieces
have more to them than meets the eye and subtlely comment on digital writing, the possibilities
for poetry in Flash work, and the place of the hand in digital art.

This suite has been quite successful since launching and is studied in many courses on digital
writing around the world.

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: software art and flash art


>i've been thinking about ur criterion for
> referencing the terms "good" + "great"...could u say more about these purrhaps?

ha. let's get out the meanometer emometer and undecidable proposition detector. it is a figment
of one's imagination, of course. let's be clear about that.

what rocks your world. what has the most significant meaning or song or narrative or contextual
nexus or verbo-voco-visuo-tacti-tocktoe. what brings you back. what brings you home. what takes
you away. what bumps you up. what you see as work that is relevant widely, or wider than a small
group, work that you see as significant international art. what leaves you with a sense of
having been expanded by. what uses the net/web/whatever its context easy in its skin or at least
knowlingly skinned and if bodied then at least swimming there, not cast in the current of
unknowing media adrift as in dementia not knowing where it is unknowingly skinned and bleeding
alas it may bleed anyway, however 'good' or 'great'.

a dream for awakened minds as the philosopher said.

or where the generosity of the universe flashes out...

> >and this work generally has no aspiration to be an art app, to define/push
> >the edge of the art
> >app.
>
> ....+ if it does this may lie in a type o conceptual latency.........

care to clarify that, mez?

> >when the flash work i've seen has an edge, its edge is elsewhere. often
> >the edge is more
> >related to the intersection of, say, writing or poetry and the digital. or
> >other arts and the
> >digital. or journalism and the digital. not really a 'software art' edge,
> >which has more to do
> >with defining the edge of the art app. 'software art' puts a stress on the
> >software. on the
> >programming. on the role of programming. whereas most of the good flash
> >work i've seen does not.
>
>
> fair enuff.
>
> jim, wot wood ur dream flash wurk n.tail?

all of the above plus skin.

and you?

what are your favorite flash pieces, mez? i've posted links. one doesn't want to speak of these
things in their complete absence; it is bad criticism when they are a URL away.

Here is a form I thought you might find interesting, Mez. The rectangular configuration is of
text positioning, as is the name levTextSphere, and one imagines process additional to what we
see currently on mouseover, perhaps: http://levitated.net/daily/levTextSphere.html . Some
transformation of the language as it flare out resettles. A different reading. A kind of 'base
class' mutable flash literary form.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: software art and flash art


Did you read that in 'How to create a net.art star?'

No, i recall Oro Bouros from a previous few posts of yours, Eryk, come to think of it.

He was afraid of art scenes, if I recall correctly, and judged them from afar.

Seriously though, Eryk, I read that you don't like Flash/Shockwave work.

Don't pull an Oro B and judge from afar.

ja

> I think Oro Bouros, famous Outsider Net.Artist, once said something about
> how the best net.artists never mention thier work to anyone. In fact, they
> might never even bother to put it online. That's how good it is.
>
> -e.

> > > How about we talk about good playstation commercials?
> >
> > or art ads/self promotion?
> >
> > that's a bit closer to home, isn't it?
> >
> > ja

.

DISCUSSION

Re: software art and flash art


> How about we talk about good playstation commercials?

or art ads/self promotion?

that's a bit closer to home, isn't it?

ja

DISCUSSION

software art and flash art


have been thinking about the good flash work i've seen.

in addition to the work i've sent links to, i think of work by reiner strasser, regina celia
pinto, ana maria uribe, peter howard, mez, and some others. and there's some interesting work at
born magazine, for instance.

and this work generally has no aspiration to be an art app, to define/push the edge of the art
app. when the flash work i've seen has an edge, its edge is elsewhere. often the edge is more
related to the intersection of, say, writing or poetry and the digital. or other arts and the
digital. or journalism and the digital. not really a 'software art' edge, which has more to do
with defining the edge of the art app. 'software art' puts a stress on the software. on the
programming. on the role of programming. whereas most of the good flash work i've seen does not.

it stresses, instead, the synthesis of arts, the dipping of the arts into the digital flux, and
its anchors/reference points are generally art prior to the digital.

sound reasonable?

ja
http://vispo.com