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.
“The Networked City”, a presentation by Manuel Castells
Some notes from "The Networked City: Information and communication technologies, spatial structure, and urban dynamics," a presentation by Manuel Castells at EPFL today. He addressed the transformation of urban/spatial forms due to IT and transportations systems. The presentations was in french, I took notes in english but it might be a bit rough.
Networks are a fundamental transformation in the last 20 years, not due to technology, but intrinsically connected to it. If we say "network," we think globalization and no boundaries because they are organized around exchange that goes beyond institutions. These network have a specific dynamic: inclusion/exclusion.
Predictions done by "futurists" has proven to be wrong: the end of the city (due to IT transformations). We are seeing the most important urbanization phenomenon we have ever seen (50% of the earth population lives in cities today, 75% in 2050; Earth is not overpopulated, it's true for Belgium but not for Russia or Africa, 90% of california has village with less then 1000 inhabitants).
Analyzing the socio-spatial transformations due to IT, studies at his lab in UC Berkeley showed that there is no concentration and no decentralization: but there are both at the same time. This is a fundamental characteristics of networks: concentration and deconcentration. The point is to know what is concentrated and what is not (+ which sort of spatial constructions).
They found a huge processus of concentration in metropolitan regions (more than areas), and inside there is a big decentralization of fonctions with polycentric structures. See "The polycentric metropolis": constitution of macro-regions in europe (Tokyo-Nagoya, Paris-Lilles-Bruxelles, Ruhr, North of Italy, Lyon-Grenoble-Torino, Greater Shangai, San Paolo, Buenos Aires, LA).
Articulation/Interconnections of those regions thanks to transport and communication technologies. Those mega-metropolis are articulated in world networks: the Global City (Saskia Sassen). BUT this does ...
Expanded Cinema
Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood is a classic in the field for its time. Published in 1970, it describes state-of-the-art cinema effects and techniques to speculate upon the incredible emerging possibilities in film, video art and cybernetic cinema. The book could be termed visionary, particularly in respect to what has happened to cinematic technology in recent years, also in its critique of the falling of commercial television and mainstream cinema. Mostly the book reveals how abstract cinema, without narrative, can take us to visual poetic spaces that anticipated laptop production, Vj'ng, Installation works and even generative art. Subchapter titles from the book reveal the terrain, Cathode Ray Videotronics, Computer Generated Holographic Movies, Teledynamic Environments, Synaesthetics and Kineasthetics: The way of experience.
The book examines the work of all the key filmmakers of the time, The Whitney Brothers, Stan Vanderbeek, John Stehura and Lillian Schwartz to name a few. The book even has a whole dedicated section to the extraordinary work of Jordan Belson, probably the only detailed commentary on Belson's work. Stills of these works are hard to find on the web so your be happy to know the book contains quite a few.
A PDF of the book can be found at two sources which is great as the out of print editions are very difficult to track down, at least without paying a price.
http://www.ubu.com/historical/youngblood/youngblood.html
http://www.vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_Expanded/Expanded.html
The latter is broken down into chapter PDFs. (Thanks the Peter for pointing me to this link).
In Digital Age, Advancing a Flexible Copyright System
An unusual alliance of artists, scientists and lawyers has been working to forge a "creative commons" that allows artists to decide which rights they want to retain and which they would rather share.
Exhibit Hits Repeat
Histories of new media often attribute its lineage to 'time-based media,' which is in turn a phrase generally used in reference to film, video, and photography. Time Frame, an exhibition at New York's P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, expands these genres and histories in its presentation of ten artists work. The show brings sculpture and installation art into conversation with film and video, and meditates on numerous temporal contexts, including duration, frequency, meter, rhythm, narrative, nostalgia, memory, and reflection. The artists--Cory Arcangel, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Nancy Holt, Roni Horn, Paul Pfeiffer, John Pilson, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Robert Smithson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Andy Warhol--also hail from different generations. The underlying comment made by this assemblage is one about history and perception. The work of older artists is recontextualized in light of younger artists' work, and many in the group deal with the historical reception and post-historical engagement with various cultural ephemera. It's all more approachable than this heady critique might imply, and locals can approach it through 18 September. - James Petrie
http://www.ps1.org/ps1_site/index.php?option=com_content&task;=view&id;=191&Itemid;=63
Public Domain Blog
Mitch Featherston’s daily public domain image blog is a wonderful treat. Each image Mitch posts tells a story or gives a taste of a different time, and many are useful resources for artists and designers. It’s one of my favourite blogs and I recommend it highly.
Take a look here:
http://opendomain.blogspot.com/
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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.