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.
Interview of John Klima
John Klima's work is probably one of the most curious, challenging and fascinating i've ever read about. He has exhibited all over the world his remote-controlled fiction piece, a bunch of "robugs" that think they are the new Jackson Pollock, a kiddie ride inspired by the conflict in Afghanistan, a pre-Google-Earth installation, his coin-operated arcade game which puts at risk the life of a real golden fish and some maliciously user-unfriendly interfaces.
Klima is currently a research scientist in the Mathematics department at New York University, and adjunct Professor of Digital Media at the Rhode Island School of Design.
His bio states that: "Consistently connecting the virtual to the real, Klima builds large scale electro-mechanical installations driven by 3d game software he programs from scratch. The virtual computer imagery mirrors and extends the potential and agency of the physical components to produce cohesive worlds that are both humorous and sinister." Well, as you'll read in this interview, if one had to choose between "sinister" and "humorous" to define Klima, the latter adjective would by far be the most appropriate.
What's your background?
When I was a kid, I always messed around with electronics and computers. I built lots of kits, and I had a TRS-80 model II, with 4k ram, we eventually upgraded to a whopping 16k. The TRS-80 was essentially the very first PC. Back then (1978?), I taught myself programming in BASIC. At that time, bootlegging software essentially consisted of typing in the code from a book or a magazine, or doing an audio tape-to-tape copy. Those were the days. I wrote a bunch of games in BASIC, the most complex being a rodent control simulation in an urban setting I wrote as project for my biology class. The teacher refused to believe ...
BLACK TIME is not a BLACK BOX modernising a WHITE CUBE
perfinstallation
Abstract preview: BLACK TIME is not a BLACK BOX modernising a WHITE CUBE :: Following the completion of a cycle of 5 communications for 5 continents at the end of 2005, "from Scenography to Planetary Network", via a wi-fi internet link from an aeroplane in flight between Shanghai and Munich, and on being invited by criticalsecret, we are now proposing a 'perfinstallation' during the inauguration of the 2006 Salon de la Revue in Paris. This show's name gives a nod to a contemporary play, but does not permit communication with the other. It simply tries to transform a mobile into a sort of awareness machine with an editorial line that is set where the Dream Machine stops. This show is made up of images gathered from the internet and a sound track, as a first revue for mobiles (as a 3gp file) transmitted only between 21:00 hrs and 22:00 hrs via the number +33677804966 (via Mms) from my mobile (Nokia 6233).
Thus, this creation-action is actually giving real expression to another 'sound-image' which the artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy had already thought up in the last century. Nevertheless, from then on, technological performances set up an empty space in a post-mediatic universe that was not emerging but converging, which can still be freed of meaning simply by linking up with our lives, as experienced in plays by Dan Graham X or John Knight "Site displacement" 1969 during the mass media age. As part of setting up the transmission of a "Theater of Utopia" digitised animation, which will take place in honour of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux on the bicentenary of his death, on 19 November, we are going to test it on Friday 13 October, using a wi-fi link for a live streaming, from zero convergence, via the Internet and viewable ...
Variations V - John Cage
Variations V (1965, 7.5MB, 2:22 min)
";John Cage made Variations V in 1965 for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
He and David Tudor settled on two systems for the sound to be affected by movement.
directional photocells aimed at the stage lights, so that the dancers triggered sounds as
they cut the light beams with their movements. and a series of antennae.
When a dancer came within four feet of an antenna a sound would result.
Cage, Tudor, and Gordon Mumma operate equipment to modify and determine
the final sounds." -from
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[CHINA -- the sonic avant-garde]

POST 005 2xCD digipak
This first-ever, 2-hour survey of the current experimental music and sound art scene in Mainland China features 15 artists mostly in their twenties from all over the country. The double-CD set shows what is really happening today on the Chinese new music cutting-edge. No more symphonies or string quartets with self-Orientalizing titles and pentatonic motifs. In fact, you won't hear one Chinese instrument here. The incredibly wide range of styles cover everything from plunderphonics, musique concrete, experimental electronics, ambient, sample collage, plug-in modulation, text-sound, sound poetry, mixer feedback improv, hardcore noise, radio art, political satire, to post-concrete recording art documenting a family karaoke scene. This is only the beginning of something unpredictable. No to be missed.
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.