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.
"Random Access Poetics" coming on March 16th
VertexList space has the pleasure to present 'Random Access Poetics'
featuring new media projects by:
[dNASAb], Ernesto Klar, Prize Budget for Boys and Lance Wakeling.
'Random Access Poetics' focuses on the processor-based new media work dealing with exposing invisible aspect of information. This exhibition brings together young Brooklyn new media artists and the Harlem/Toronto based collective Prize Budget for Boys.
The reception will take place on Friday, March 16th 2007, 7pm - 10pm.
In conjunction with the reception party Ms. PacMondrian will perform "Trance Dance Seance" at 8.30pm
The exhibition will be on display until Sunday, April 22th 2007.
[More....]
farmersmanual
“pop music for the year 4000.”
“Formed in Vienna in the mid-1990’s, the farmersmanual collective represents media art at its most anarchistic. While being best-known for their recordings, in recent years the group have shifted their emphasis towards extensive live performances, in which imaginative computer animation, synchronized with ‘chaos-particle-accelerating’ music, and the overall ambience of uncontrollable technology form a seamless whole. This globe-trotting group with a fluctuating line-up of four to five members hail from the same Mego label roster as last year’s Avanto visitors Fennesz, Pita and Hecker. […] ‘Our performance at Gloria will not be open to remote interaction. Our presentations at Aula will discuss a lot of these issues and demonstrate some, but the main issue here is a human interface: a more intensive contact with us for a smaller group of people. Our project is a work in progress and at Aula we want to reveal the process behind it that drives us and could possibly also drive other people. Honestly, it’s also a process of understanding our own contributions to a project that has no clear definition/target. No decision, no corporation." (Hiaz via e-mail, 19.9.2001).’” [Anton Nikkila]
farmersmanual (1), farmersmanual (2), farmersmanual wiki, Mego 777
On Visual Culture and Bioscience
via National Academy of Sciences :
Virtual Symposium
On Visual Culture and Bioscience
March 5-13, 2007
This virtual symposium is made possible through the generous support of Ralph S. O'Connor and the Marian and Speros Martel Foundation. It is sponsored by the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Experts from around the world will discuss the intersections between the visual arts and the life sciences at this international event, which will take place on the Internet. A group of 30 participants -- comprised of artists, scientists, historians, ethicists, curators, sociologists, and writers --will present a variety of perspectives on topics such as artists in the lab, imaging in art and bioscience, and the sociological implications of the growing connections between the two fields. A complete list of participants is accessible via the link below.
Suzanne Anker, a visual artist and theorist working with genetic imagery, will moderate the discussion. She is the co-author of The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004). She curated 'Gene Culture: Molecular Metaphor in Contemporary Art' (Fordham University, 1994), the first exhibition devoted entirely to the intersection of art and genetics. Anker teaches art history and theory at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she is chair and editor of ArtLab23. She is also the host of BioBlurb on WPS1 Art Radio.
Links:
Visit the Symposium
Symposium Schedule
List of Panelists
Poetic Terrorism and Guerrilla Art in the 21st Century
by Jane Crayton aka JanedaPain
"Art as crime; crime as art." Hakim Bey
One of the most relevant statements made about art by a man who walked the line of expressionism. Hakim Bey, did he see the future, or did he contemplate the past, a combination of both I would guess.
The word guerrilla is a word of Spanish descent (guerra, meaning war) first used to describe the Spanish-Portuguese guerrilleros (insurgents). Guerrilleros have existed through out time often in defense of some wrongs imposed to a group of less represented and defended peoples. They often fight a foreign invader or a ruling government and crimes against humanity. In the modern world we have seen these same groups and individuals come out in a new form of guerrilla tactics that is often non-violent and thought provoking art. Unfortunately in the post 9/11 era we are now limited in our expressions, for fear that they may be considered terrorism and not art. Mind you some of these artist push the line, evacuating neighborhood and closing down cities, all in the name of their art projects and political views. But is it the over reaction of our post 9/11 era that has taught us to react with such eager and violent haste, and condemn the works of these political artist?
Is it the art or the tactics, that deliver the fear that resonates in the unaware and suddenly captured audience? That sudden and captured audience today can be an over alerted citizen or government workers. With the heightened threat of terrorism and the orange security levels at the airports, we are all being programmed that we are never to be safe again. And what a great subject for an art project, huh? Artist around the world are finding them selves in ...
Kate Pemberton; Endfile
Endfile the website of Kate Pemberton lists a wide selection of her work, some for sale, some not. The work largely:
electronic and textile based contemporary art
draws on computing / new media and it’s visual / language based culture. It references programming, protocols, iconography, acronyms to name a few which are represented as traditional art objects such as embroidery (image above) or unusual artifacts such as the Vacuum Filaments and Cardboard Networked (image below left and right). The work:
addresses the cultural effects that technology has on society, by examining the influence of the machine and of digital technologies. Art pieces range from interactive electronic installations, to canvas based work and textiles. Ideas stem from the status of craft objects in an age of electronic consumerist culture. Crossovers are identified between computer graphics and craft techniques, these are explored in the creation of tangible art objects.
For those of you interested in Kate's work but find some of it out of your price range make sure you have a look at the Edition Message Samplers (EMS) which have some free patterns to download, cheap mobile phone wallpapers and very reasonable embroidery kits.
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.