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 Mechanized Eccentric Performance Series
Louis-Philippe Demers is a multidisciplinary artist using machines as media. He has worked on the conception and production of several large-scale interactive robotic installations, so far realizing more than 225 machines. 'In a more pronounced way than traditional theatre, mechanical theatre becomes a space for a collective consensus of the acceptation of simulacrum (even more surreal). The level of abstraction of the mechanical theatre enables a multiplicity of interpretation, it is an open ended work where each person sees a reflection of its own feelings.' (See Video)
The Mechanized Eccentric Series is a collection of several installations and performances united together in a large spectacle.
The Series regroups:
L'Assemblee, 48 robots layed out on an arena;
Colony 001, 8 robots and 1 central robots, a comment on nanotechnology;
Colony 002, 8 robots caught in cages;
The robotic characters of Armageddon (an operetta for robots) and a choir of 12 members;
and the two main robots of Le Proces.
Each robot is equipped with speaker(s), light(s) and motion(s) enabling the whole environment to become a vast surround soundscape. Namely, the performances include 6 voices of ambient sound plus a range (8 to 32) of independent robot sounds.
This is (Not) a magazine - Click to go forward, never go back
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This is (Not) a magazine
An Irregular Periodical Project
This is (not) a Magazine proffers
the new 2-bit-good-for-nothing Issue
compiled entirely from animated GIFs
made or found by artists working
in and around the internet today.
This is (Not) a Magazine Issue 18:
Click to go forward, never go back.
http://www.thisisamagazine.com
http://www.thisisnotamagazine.com
Rhizome seeks Curatorial Fellow
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JOB OPPORTUNITY: Curatorial Fellow (part-time, unpaid) RHIZOME.ORG
Rhizome.org is a leading new media arts organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Currently celebrating our tenth anniversary, Rhizome's programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. These include online publications and discussion lists, exhibitions (online & offline), performances, screenings, public talks and events, the ArtBase archive, artists' commissions, and other educational programs. For more information about Rhizome, visit:
Rhizome seeks a Curatorial Fellow to assist with the research, planning, and production of exhibitions and public programs, as well as writing and editing content for Rhizome's website and publications. This position is a unique opportunity for a person interested in pursuing a career in the new media arts field to further their engagement with the community and hone their professional skills.
The Curatorial Fellow must be based in New York and must be able to commit to 15 hours of work per week, for an academic year, beginning in September 2006 and ending in the summer of 2007. These hours may include occasional evening and weekend events. This position is unpaid, but academic credit may be arranged.
Reporting directly to Rhizome's Editor & Curator, the Curatorial Fellow will work on all phases of the exhibition and editorial processes, including researching new projects, writing copy, and assisting with the implementation of current programs. The Curatorial Fellow will also develop crucial experience in development and communications. The Fellow's primary responsibilities may include:
Becoming a Site Editor and assisting with the management of reBlog content
Writing and editing occasional Rhizome News articles and other texts
Researching editorial ideas and writers
Liaising with artists, public program participants, and venues
Assisting ...
Daniel Liss - Sixth Map
Sixth Map (2006, 17.3MB, 3.44 min.)
When filmmaker/videoblogger Daniel Liss challenged himself to make 7 videos in 7 days,
he also challenged his online audience to collaborate with him in the process. His daily assignments came from viewers of his videoblog who determined
where, about what and how he should make each video.
Each day, they posted an assignment and each day Daniel posted a video in response. Then came praise and criticism in the comments of each day's videoblog post.
The process took him miles from home, he told personal stories, invented new narratives, and played more than a few tricks on his guiding/goading audience.
For this video he was given the assignment,
'oday, you are a local. Trick us into believing that you are a local.
Tell us a story about your history.'
The entire Seven Maps series can be seen here : http://pouringdown.tv/sevenmaps
'Irational' Net Art Skewers Systems
The year 1996 seems to have been a magical one in the world of internet art. A number of key arts organizations, discussion lists, and artist collectives were founded, at that time, and highly influential among the latter is irational.org. Founded by Heath Bunting and expanded to include Daniel Garcia Andújar/ Technologies to the People (E), Rachel Baker (GB), Kayle Brandon (GB), Minerva Cuevas/ Mejor Vida Corporation (MEX), and Marcus Valentine (GB), the group's actions often entail activist-oriented political maneuvers, parody-rich 'pseudo-ventures,' and the development of strategies for rethinking socio-political norms and 'corporate aesthetics.' By tackling prohibitive trademark laws, immigration policies, surveillance networks, cartography, language, and other systems of power, irational.org have demonstrated the efficacy of parasitic media and other modes of interrogating systems from the inside out. As pioneering net artists who've since expanded their scope, their work questions geographic boundaries as well as art-world ones, and whether operating in or outside of the gallery, they have always been noted for their sharp humor and ironic wit. Irational.org's projects are documented at their eponymous website, but now an exhibition entitled 'The Wonderful World of irational.org: Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006,' at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Germany, provides a context for surveying ten years of significant art production and for expanded public interaction. Programs continue through the end of October, so do hop the fence into the area, if you're able. - Marisa Olson
http://www.hmkv.de/dyn/e_program_exhibitions/detail.php?nr=1757&rubric;=exhibitions&
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.