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.
Landscape music
LocoSound is a work in progress that aims to synchronize an FM audio experience with the landscape viewed from a train window.
Through a system of GPS tracking, the audience can tune into a radio frequency when boarding a train wagon and become part of an audio visual experience that is based on a sound experience created for a specific train visual (the landscape between Zurich and Basel for example.) The system that is to be developed will be sensitive and responsive to any delays, unexpected stops or other real-time changes in the train ride.
The experience is therefore not linear but interactive and responsive, taking into account the singular experience of a particular train ride.
A more sophisticated version of the project might include sound variations that depend on the external light or the train speed. The GPS system and any additional sensor would be linked to a central computer via a midi interface. The data and the sound will be managed through Max/MSP (or Pure Data)
LocoSound will be available in only one carriage. Travelers will tune in via an FM stereo receiver or via the tunner FM available on many mobile phones.
A project by Alain Bellet.
Related: Sonic City, a jacket which enables people to compose music in real time by walking through the city.
Via netzwissenschaft.
Feeling the Influence?
Within contemporary media culture, there is a breed of 'stars' that either acquire or fabricate their celebrity through an exploration of the conventions of fame, public relations, and discourse networks. Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) have given these people a name: The Influencers. From July 6-8, Barcelona's Center of Contemporary Culture will play host to a 'festival of media action and radical entertainment' by this title. In a sense, the moniker is perfect. The seven presenters they've selected for this third 'episode' of the program (Vuk Cosic, Paul D. Miller/ DJ Spooky, Molleindustria, Irwin/ Neue Slovenische Kunst, Vencenzo Sparanga, Oscar Brahim, and Chicks on Speed) have been highly influential in both their investigations into the influence of pop media on peoples and cultures and in influencing that media--in intervening in it. Appropriately, the festival will be organized in the format of a talk show: ' The live talk show you won't see on TV!' The event's press release promises that these icons will 'take us into stories of collective hallucinations that turn into reality and vice versa.' If you can't be present in Spain, visit the festival's website for a video highlight reel from previous 'episodes.' - Marisa Olson
Yoon Lee, Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Awardee presents at the luggage store
Solo Exhibition, Yoon Lee, at the luggage store, sf, ca
Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Awardee
YOON LEE, large scale computer generated paintings
Dates of Exhibition:
July 7 - August 5, 2006
Opening Reception:
Friday, July 7, 2006 6-8pm
Venue:
The luggage store
1007 Market Street (nr 6th)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Telephone:
415. 255 5971
Website:
www.luggagestoregallery.org
Gallery Hours
Wed-Sat. 12-5pm and by appt.
At first glance, Yoon Lee's paintings appear
exuberant, as if her gestures capture the moment when
chaotic forces transform into ordered systems. She
squirts vividly colored acrylic paint out of plastic
bottles to create slick, tactile surfaces filled with
dynamic swarms of abstract shapes. Her bold yet
graceful forms seem swept up in their own fast-paced
trajectories, often set against traces of industrial
architecture. When viewed more closely, however, it
becomes evident that Lee's seemingly spontaneous marks
are actually computer generated and painstakingly
executed. She predetermines her formal vocabulary by
scanning and "mixing" popular media images, drawings,
and photographs of freeways, railroads, and
engineering structures taken along the Port of
Oakland - visual sites and by-products of global
capitalism that the artist experiences on a daily
basis. Her monumental paintings mesmerize with their
synthetic materiality, ultimately evoking the
ambivalent desire we feel when confronted by colorful
plastic consumer goods, beautifully crafted
confections, or successful advertising campaigns. We
are seduced into believing that these glossy,
overdetermined objects possess the power to comfort
us. As the artist explains, "his connection between
the work and consumer goods reflects my interest in
consumption as a strategy to assuage urban anxiety. My
work addresses the relationship between this anxiety
and the speed in which information and signals travel
through space."
Born in 1975 in Pusan, Korea and raised in San Diego,
California, Yoon Lee attended the University ...
The Computer Hood into context
Ten days ago, the Design for technology addicts post generated a lot of attention. The project was sometimes taken out of context and therefore misunderstood. As i felt guilty to have contributed to the "computer hood hysteria" i asked Joe Malia if he could send me a statement to clear this up. I'll just quote Joe:
"The computer hood is one object in a series that plays a small role in the 'Design for the Computer Obsessive' project but has really dominated the whole thing.
I wanted to characterise the behaviour of people engrossed in computer bound activities by illustrating it through the functionality of an object. The computer hood facilitates an amplified engagement between user and the computer, secluding them in a digital enclosure where the outside world is a memory and attention undivided. Those enjoying this hooded sanctity can relegate communicative interactions with the outside world to nothing more than an 'on demand' service. People outside are encouraged to 'SPEAK' towards a marked area on the back of the hood. Anything they say will be recorded and saved as an mp3 audio file on the computer desktop for perusal at the computer users leisure.
The project stemmed from an interest in the often turbulent relationship between people and technology. I began considering a series of questions. Can these relationships sometimes become dysfunctional and get out of hand? Can people become obsessed with, or even addicted to a technology?
Particularly now with the Internet and online social software, people can exist in a virtual world where they have complete control over the way they live and present themselves - would this ever appear more appealing than the responsibilities faced in modern life and would people ever neglect real world relationships in favour of virtual ones.
I felt it was ...
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.