Olson has served as Editor & Curator at Rhizome, the inaugural curator at Zero1, and Associate Director at SF Camerawork. She's contributed to many major journals & books and this year Cocom Press published Arte Postinternet, a Spanish translation of her texts on Postinternet Art, a movement she framed in 2006. In 2015 LINK Editions will publish a retrospective anthology of over a decade of her writings on contemporary art which have helped establish a vocabulary for the criticism of new media. Meanwhile, she has also curated programs at the Guggenheim, New Museum, SFMOMA, White Columns, Artists Space, and Bitforms Gallery. She has served on Advisory Boards for Ars Electronica, Transmediale, ISEA, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, Creative Capital, the Getty Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the Tribeca Film Festival.
Olson studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric & Film Studies at UC Berkeley. She has recently been a visiting artist at Yale, SAIC, Oberlin, and VCU; a Visiting Critic at Brown; and Visiting Faculty at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and Ox-Bow. She previously taught at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' new media graduate program (ITP) and was Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY-Purchase's School of Film & Media Studies. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at Eyebeam & is currently Visiting Critic at RISD.
Manifesta 6 School, Call for applications
The Manifesta 6 School is the central project of Manifesta 6, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, which will take place in Nicosia from 23 September to 17 December 2006. The School is both the site and the content of the Biennial, and is its sole activity. Conceived and developed by the curators of Manifesta 6, Mai Abu ElDahab, Anton Vidokle and Florian Waldvogel, the School will offer three thematic transdisciplinary departments comprising lecture series, publications, screenings, performances, exhibitions, radio and TV programmes, workshops and other activities.
[More....]Prix Ars Electronica 2006 - Participants Welcome!
iris mayr:
Prix Ars Electronica 2006
International Competition for Cyberarts
The Prix Ars Electronica - International Competition for Cyberarts is being conducted for the 19th time in 2006. In addition to the classic categories-Interactive Art, Net Vision, Computer Animation / Visual Effects and Digital Musics-Digital Communities and [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant competition that debuted last year will be reprised.
Prix Ars Electronica 2006
Start of Online Submissions: January 10, 2006
Online Submission Deadline: March 17, 2006
Details about entering are available online only at http://prixars.aec.at
Total Prize Money: 117,500 Euro
6 Golden Nicas
12 Awards of Distinction
Up to 12 Honorary Mentions in each category
For further information please contact Iris Mayr: info@prixars.aec.at
COMPUTERANIMATION / VISUAL EFFECTS
The "Computer Animation / Visual Effects" category has been part of the Prix Ars Electronica since its very inception. It recognizes excellence in independent work in the arts and sciences as well as in high-end commercial productions in the film, advertising and entertainment industries. In this category, artistic originality counts just as much as masterful technical achievement.
DIGITAL MUSICS
Contemporary digital sound productions from the broad spectrum of "electronica" come in for consideration in the "Digital Musics" category, as do works combining sound and media, computer compositions ranging from electro-acoustic to experimental music, or sound installations. This category's programmatic agenda is to expand horizons beyond the confines of individual genres and artistic currents.
INTERACTIVE ART
The "Interactive Art" category is dedicated to interactive works in all forms and formats, from installations to performances. Here, particular consideration is given to the realization of a powerful artistic concept through the especially appropriate use of technologies, the innovativeness of the interaction design, and the work's inherent potential to expand the human radius of action.
NET VISION
The "Net ...
GAME as CRITIC as ART. 2.0. (Part III)
Episode III of the summary/translation of Laura Baigorri' essay for GAME as CRITIC as ART. 2.0. (see Part I and II.)
Educating with games. Against the simplification proposed by the game industry
The works previously mentioned explore the three main strategies adopted by the creators for the creation/modification of computer games. The following games, although they are game mods using weapons, elude explicit violence to show the player a multiple and exhaustive vision on an aspect of the everyday life of a population.
- Nina Czegledy and Maia Engeli's Medieval Unreality (2003) is a project aimed at initiating an artistic discourse on Albania’s "Blood Feud" by editing the first-person shooter game "Unreal Tournament". In the '90s, Northern Albany faced a series of kidnapping and murders between families, due to an ancestral code of conduct. Although it was abolished during the Socialist Period, the economical collapse of the the State in 1989 gave free way to the re-introduction of the archaic rules and social relationships, but also rancors and vengeances. That year, about 1500 families (800 children) wouldn't venture out of their house.
Medieval Unreality wanted to use games to re-establish the contact between barricaded families and the rest of the world by using virtual media: art, culture and new technologies. The first phase called "E-mail from the Medieval Ages": providing isolated families with 100 computers with Internet connection.
The second step was to start a debate on Albania’s "Blood Feud", through the modification of Unreal Tournament. The game environment was plain geometry and behaviour, all white without decoration. The participating artists had to add images, costume players, and edit the game space itself. The goal was to achieve an artistic expression in this quite unusual format.
- Escape from Woomera (2003): a Half-life mod designed ...
Volte-face

Volte-face (QuickTime) [Reynald Drouhin]
Volte-face represents one type of videomosaic: each frame of the video clip is composed of smaller images within a grid that come together to resemble a larger image. Here, two rotating faces and heads are represented using a mosaic of clouds. See Nuages-Visages for photos and information on an installation version of Volte-face.
[....] It's a deliciously fitting representation of watching clouds float by and seeing fleeting, formless faces among them.
Check out Reynald Drouhin's works. You can see his other videomosaics as well as web-based mosaics such as Des Frags and Timescape.
Biomediale
Contemporary Society and Genomic Culture
In order to find its autonomy, Bio Art (a term described by Jens Hauser, curator of the "L'Art Biotech" exhibition, as an "etymological disgrace") is passing through the necessary evolutionary phases towards a complete definition, conquering a conceptual autonomy independent from the means used. The image that comes to mind is that of a 'chimera', a hybrid creature that is a mix of different species, which expresses a peculiar compositive coherence, both paradoxical and efficient. The facets implied by dirtying one's own hands with the basic elements of organic material (genes, cells, proteins, etc.) are many, as is analyzing the female body as a contemporary technological laboratory (in the performances by the subROSA collective), conceptually challenging the current eugenic development models, or the application of the usual schemes of knowledge hoarding, as is done by Eugene Thacker with his Open Source DNA.
The ferment created by the Critical Art Ensemble and Eduardo Kac can now be recognized by filtering the media flow of relevant announce(ments) by the industry, made here by Ricardo Dominguez, or reconstructed through the reflections on clones and their mediatic reproductions by Birgit Richard. This way, it's possible to feel the pulse of the silent conflict surrounding these subjects. In times when human intervention on organic creatures is as big as what nature does in decades, and building life is a fact, the definition of shared critical positions becomes the social fulcrum the cultural development of these technologies revolves around. (edited and curated by) Dmitry Bulatov, The National Publishing House "Yantarny Skaz"
ISBN 5740608537 [via NEURAL]
Rhizome Today: A critic, with opinions about postinternet art
My own effort in talking about Postinternet, at least in those early instances, as on the panel, was to (a) expand Rhizome's mission--I was then Editor & Curator--to cover and support a wider variety of practices; and (b) just to describe my own work and how a project like my Monitor Tracings (totally "offline" drawings) could be contextualized as internet art, or art 'after' the internet (i.e. In the style of & made after I log-off.) I think Michael puts it *perfectly* when he says, "we should understand all our gestures, 'online' and 'offline,' as actions in a network that is mediated and administered by computers." Perhaps this is obvious, but I'd say this applies to all of waking life, not just art production+reception.
I've personally moved from discussing Postinternet Art as "art after the internet" toward discussing Postinternet as "the symptoms of network culture." I am less interested in discussing PI Art specifically/exclusively, now that people have brow-beaten and/or branded the term into something far different than what I originally meant, and much more interested in discussing the social affects around the production of postinternet conditions and their manifestations. And, meanwhile, I have said (particularly in the Ullens catalogue & also in an interview in the Art and the Internet book put out by Black Dog) that, to me, Postinternet is just a 'placeholder' term around which to convene in having conversations around the latter symptoms. (I've started working on spelling these out more explicitly in recent & forthcoming writing-- including the keynote lecture I just gave at Pratt's UPLOAD conference, entitled "Postinternet is Dead. Long Live Postinternet.")
Likes/Dislikes around the word, aside, I hope this very long-running conversation around art and the internet can continue to incorporate careful consideration of the affects of network culture, as networks themselves evolve.
Breaking the Ice
Like most of the folks above, I too am a "forever member," from the days of the Rhizome Communications ascii RAW listserv and, later, fancy Dreamweaver/Flash "Splash Pages," to the present. Reena Jana and I were the first two paid writers (poached from Wired!), when Alex Galloway was running "content," which at that time meant programming and editorial--though Rhizome was declaratively non-editorial, so they just commissioned book & exhibition reviews, and some interviews from us that were fed into the RAW stream and included in the Digest as Features. Oy vey, I can still remember the cross-eyed weekly ritual of trying to untangle parallel conversations to reassemble them into a coherent thread for the Digest, when I was editing it--and the race to get it out by noon one day each week!!
I've seen Rhizome go through so many changes, and I've been a part of the back channel conversations on years of them, including huge ones that we decided not to go through with. I have to say that it's always hard to serve a membership-based organization, which is what Rhizome has always thought of itself as. But I can say that every change in content or form has been discussed critically, at length, and typically not without a degree of passion.
I am also biting my tongue because I *really* do not want to put words in any staff member's mouth (past or present), but I can say that I believe everyone who's ever worked there has taken their position as a labor of love, with users/reader/members/community (everyone has their favorite self-identification; semantics trolls please don't hate today!) in mind, and everyone has collaborated with the staff to bring a unique take on how best to serve you in the current creative and technological climate. For instance, I remember that my big objective coming in the door was wanting to change the mission statement to reflect not only net art and not only highly technological art, but also art that "reflects" on technology in a meaningful way. In fact, I think contemplating this change was very much a part of my conceptualizing Postinternet.
There is so much to say here, but I think I'd best sign off. This is not my soap box, and in some way, it feels weird to comment so much. I used to be a Superusing Megaposter, but as soon as I became Editor & Curator, I stepped back to focus on trying to facilitate and amplify other voices, which I do believe every Rhizome Editor has done in their own way.
I'll end with this, then. I'd be surprised if every reader, writer, or editor loved everything that ever appeared (structurally or content-wise) in their newspaper of choice. I'd be surprised if every curator or museumgoer loved every artwork shown (or every exhibition design decision) in their favorite museum. But it's the day we stop reading, stop going to look at art that disappoints me. It's the day Rhizome stops experimenting that scares me. And I wish them well on this new experiment.
Conference Report: NET.ART (SECOND EPOCH)
Thank you for these points of clarification. I actually tried to convey (and forgive me if I failed) that your presentation was unique in identifying multiple generations of networked artists, and I particularly liked the way you talked about artists working before the internet in ways that anticipated network culture.
You also made that great point (via Hal Foster) about the ways in which critics' work is influenced by what is/ was happening at the moment they entered the art world. I admire how you helped pioneer new media criticism and yet have continued to stay on the pulse of new work. This is what I had in mind when recalling your point about your relationship to a previous generation of net-dot-artists, versus the artists of the era Inclusiva was calling the "second epoch." I just really liked the way you fleshed out more than two epochs and I wanted to highlight your catalyzing role in the net-dot-art scene, in particular.
In my own presentation, my intent absolutely was not to dismiss any previous artists, movements, practices, etc. It was simply to flesh-out one niche of new media art practice. In fact, I really liked the pointed questions that the audience asked afterwards, because it helped us have a really meaningful discussion about the problematic relationship of pro surfer work to art historical discourse, and my calls to action revolved around getting those artists to participate in learning about their own pre-histories and writing historiographies that situate their own trajectories on their own terms.
So I don't think we're in disagreement. But I appreciate your call to fine-tune my articulation of these scenarios.
Go Ahead, Touch Her
Go Ahead, Touch Her
I'm sorry that you found my article objectionable. I didn't intend to make the implications you suggest, but I believe your response cuts to the most interesting aspect of Laric's piece, which is the effect of remixing.
For those who care to review the lyrics to this song, they are here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mariahcarey/touchmybody.html
They include the refrain:
Touch my body
Put me on the floor
Wrestle me around
Play with me some more
Touch my body
Throw me on the bed
So, in fact, I do think that Carey's lyrics (and video) invite sexual fantasy, but my article doesn't say that she is asking to be violated, it says that she's asking to be remixed. Of course, the slippage between the two that you identify is what's so interesting.
In an interview with Laric, he told me that he noticed that the video takes-on an increased sexual tone when all but Carey is masked out. He was interested in how this first-person invitation to "touch my body" could be construed as an invitation to remix the visage of her body (and/or the voice emitted from it), particularly given (a) the implicit link to digital culture embodied by both the lyrics and video, and (b) the fact that the remix is now such an important part of the media ecology of pop culture.
In the last 25+ years of pop music, lining-up celebrity remixes and making singles remix-ready has been an important part of the production cycle, often preceding the release of the original recording. Almost all historical accounts of Madonna's rise to fame cite her relationship with DJs and openness to remixing as a key factor in her success. So while you may see the remix as a violent act, clearly those participating in this industry see it as an imperative.
Discussions of why a remix is or isn't violent are interesting, as they get to questions of the status of the digital reproduction. Are we remixing a person or "just" her image, and what's the difference when thinking about how a person's identity--particularly a famous person's identity--hinges upon their image? Carey's image was already manipulated before it came to us. In the interview with Laric, he pointed to a segment in the original video in which the shape of a cup becomes distorted as a result of distorting the footage to make the singer standing behind the cup appear slimmer. So this is already not her. If you listen closely, I believe there is also a question as to whether all of the voiced parts of the song are her, so the audio issue adds another layer to the phenomenological question of the brute force of the remix.
These issues of the import of the remix, the relationship to broader pop culture (rather than an insular art world), collective authorship, and the nature of Carey's invitation are what I hoped to address in this article.