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.
Voices of the C64
There’s a nice piece by Karen Collins in Soundscapes, discussing Commodore 64 game music: “Loops and bloops.” The article delves into the SID (Sound Interface Device) in some technical detail, but the thing I found most interesting was the discussion of the influence of another contemporary platform later in the C64’s retail life. The tendency of the Nintendo Entertainment System to have music during gameplay (as opposed to just during the introduction or upon completing a level) is seen to influence the way music was used on the C64. Ben Daglish and Martin Galway (famous C64 composers) are quoted in the piece, looping is discussed at length (as the article’s title suggests), and the freewheeling use of cover songs is described. Thanks to Jesper for mentioning this one.
Fans of such things should check out the blog C64 Music, which covers things like the 2006 tour of Welle:Erdball, a C64-based musical group. The photograph, via this blog, is of this group and was taken by sml!
Dial The Sun
Texas based artist, Max Kazemzadeh’s "Sun.Dial" project is a "an internet-based installation project that fosters a sense of shared global space and time. The principle system consists of twelve LCD displays suspended from an overhead apparatus in an outward-facing ring. This circular display is the hub of a world-wide input system. Each screen displays the information from one of twelve webcams located at intervals around the world. Each camera faces upward, capturing only the sky in each location. This creates a light gradient ring that displays the current state of the sky's light at points around the globe. When it is dawn in one screen, it is noon a few steps over, and nightfall a few steps down from that. A connection is created between the hosting site, where sun.dial is located, and the locations capturing the light of the sun. The piece is in a way a digital incarnation of the astrolabes and orreries that were the beginnings of technology's global perspective..." Looks cool - haven't seen it in person yet, but I like the idea of using networked, web-cam images as a unified real-time display clock.
Geeks in the Gallery: An Interview with Artists Tom Moody and Michael Bell-Smith (Part One of Three)

Introduction
"Geeks in the Gallery" is a three part discussion with artists Michael Bell-Smith and Tom Moody , which will run on Art Fag City from Monday June 12 - Wednesday, June 14, 2006. A recurring theme of the talk is how technology informs artistic production, as both artists have individually exhibited work usually described as New Media, yet also seem somewhat skeptical of "tech art." Moody's "Room Sized Animated GIFs" at artMovingProjects in Brooklyn is comprised of animated GIFs projected or displayed on variable sized CRT monitors/tube televisions, plus a looping movie of the artist performing a computer-fabricated (but realistic-sounding) "guitar solo." The show dates are May 5th - June 25, 2006; it can also be viewed online on the artist's site. Bell-Smith's exhibit "Focused, Forward," closed last week at Foxy Production Gallery and included digital animations steeped in the aesthetics of '80s and '90s video games, a print depicting collaged patterns that create a virtual Tower of Babel and a game table-like video sculpture with a simulated radar graph of birds circling over the White House. Show dates were April 27 -June 3, 2006; it can be viewed online at foxyproduction.com . Comments this series are welcome, and will be hosted on Tom Moody's blog. [More....]
Heath Bunting + UBERMORGEN.COM
(former) net artists
OVERGADEN Institute of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Artnode will open two solo exhibitions by Heath Bunting and UBERMORGEN.COM as well as a special exhibition that joins the work of the two artists. Heath Bunting and the duo UBERMORGEN.COM. Two pioneers, rebels and stars of net art. This is the first time they exhibit together. Almost without computers!
Curated by Jacob Lillemose: June 15 - July 16, 2006; Private view: Wednesday June 14, 2006, 5 pm - 8 pm; Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 1 pm - 5 pm.
Cutting, Climbing, Crossing will present a number of Heath Bunting's recent works which deal with issues of borders, identity and physical space. Central to the exhibition will be the world premiere of Bunting's ongoing project "The Status Project," a mapping of the multi-layered logic of the mobility and legal routes of the social system. The work will be presented as wall-mounted diagrams, an interactive database and a 4,200-page manual!
[F]originals: Authenticity as Consensual Hallucination is the third and closing part of an international joint venture between OVERGADEN - Institute of Contemporary Art /Artnode, [plug.in] and Hartware MedienKunstVerein. The exhibition will be a classical painting show, consisting of 6 large square canvasses with digital prints of the official seals from UBERMORGEN.COM's projects from the last five years. The paintings are "[F]originals" - originals and forgeries - and refer to the ambiguous status of the 'documents' that UBERMORGEN.COM produce through their dealing with issues of our technology-based culture.
dayplandrugblog. two ways to live your life as a (former) net artist features another world premiere or actually many works that deal with diaries. Heath Bunting will show 365 of his daily what-to-do maps (one for each day of 2005) drawn by hand on paper, while UBERMORGEN.COM will show ...
Geo-tagged musical graffiti
Third project from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea final show (see dedicated category).
Chia Ying Lee's Sonic Graffiti invites urban artists to collaborate and create music together, while allowing the passersby to enjoy it as well.
A system of devices enables graffiti artists to create and geo-tag music in the urban space with real spray cans:
- The sound cap has to be snapped on the top of spray cans to spray out sounds and do simple sound manipulations with gestures. Users create music by overlaying/remixing various paint/sounds from the caps. Each cap can store up to 4 sounds in its memory card. They can be loaded from computers or portable devices like iPod, mobile phone, etc. Gestures to manipulate sound include fade in/out and scratch. Several artists spraying at the same time can create a sound composition.
- The controller is used for listening to the music with earphones when creating, and positioning sounds. It also comes with a recording part can be used for collecting sound samples from the city.
- The Boom box provides a shared listening experience for a group of creators in the public. Collaborations can be achieved both synchronously and asynchronously.
- Audiences can download a dedicated software player to install in mobile devices. Each graffiti is a small radio station. The player tunes into the music of the nearest sonic graffiti automatically while you go through the city. You can also mark the locations of music you like, hence make a personal sonic graffiti map.
This project gives graffiti audio meanings. It may change people' viewpoint about graffiti. The music can also serve as the soundtrack reflecting the vibes of the city.
More details on Chia-Ying Lee's thesis blog. My images of her installation.
Related: spatial graffiti, Wearable inkjet printer for street ...
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.