Pau Waelder
Since 2002
Works in United States of America

BIO
Graduate in Art History by the University of Barcelona, currently studying for a PhD on digital art. Works as a freelance curator and art critic. Consulting professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in Barcelona, he has coordinated and written teaching materials for several courses on art and digital culture. He is also an editor of the blog "Arte, Cultura e Innovación" supported by the Open University of Catalonia and Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Gijón, Spain), and the Media Art editor at art.es contemporary art magazine (Spain).
Website: http://www.pauwaelder.com

<nettime-ann> Call for Proposals Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
24th Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival 2007
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Deadline: August 1, 2007
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ANNOUNCEMENT
The 24th edition of the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival is going to take place from November 13 to 18, 2007. On six days the festival presents about 220 international documentary films as well as experimental and artistic works. Moreover, the media art exhibition MONITORING, the DokfestLounge with audiovisual performances and the interfiction symposium do top off the festival program. Having this profile the Kasseler Dokfest annually attracts both a regional audience as well as professionals of the film and media industry from Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. We invite all artists, filmmakers, distributors, gallery owners, universities or institutions to submit latest works and projects to the different sections of the festival program. Deadline for entries is August 1, 2007.


Kati Michalk / Gerhard Wissner
phone: +49.561.707 64 21
fax: +49.561.707 64 41

http://www.filmladen.de/dokfest
dokfest@filmladen.de

mail:
c/o Filmladen Kassel e.V.
Goethestrasse 31
34119 Kassel
Germany
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

READ ON »


at second glance


at second glance

Most persistence of vision projects I have seen involve moving a strip of leds fast enough that our eye perceives it to be an image. Make magazine has covered many projects of this type.

Jens Wunderling, a student of the Digital Media Class at UDK Berlin, has created at second glance, an alternative approach to POV. Instead of moving the LEDs, Wunderling has them fixed in position, but plays with saccades (our eyes never look straight, but always make fast tiny movement around an area).

So if you happen to glance past the work, you may notice something unusual. On second glance, if you shake your head, you will be able to clearly see the symbol. Created as a “guerilla messaging device, made to place hidden critical messages within the abundant medial environment in the city”.

Developed using Arduino and Processing, the source code of which is available on his site, and 32 ultrabright LEDs.

Watch video
Development blog

More from Jens Wunderling
loopArena at Cybersonica, Building a multitouch, loopArena multitouch

READ ON »


John Cage performs Water Walk


cage.jpg John Cage performing Water Walk on TV game show I've got a secret in 1960, while being set up as something of a freakshow the presenter still goes to great lengths to convince the audience that Cage is 'serious'. Cage handles the occasion with a light touch and a good sense of humour, when the presenter warns Cage that while the audience are nice people ... some of them are going to laugh, is that alright he replies with a winning smile of course I consider laughter preferable to tears.

via WFMU

READ ON »


<nettime-ann> Call for Entries: Gameplay: Video Games in Contemprary Art Practice -- Chicago


Via: Mason Dixon

Call for submissions: Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice

The word gameplay refers to the creative, resistant, or artful manipulation of video games by users. It can be said that "gameplay" relates not only to the strategic, but also emotional framework of play, as it is a unique reflection the individual's meaningful bond to the game itself. According to Sid Meier, a world-renowned designer, a game is a "series of interesting choices." If art can also be considered a "series of interesting choices," what happens when the realms of art and video game intersect?

Around the Coyote is seeking submissions for our July 2007 group show, Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice. For Gameplay, we are looking for artists who use video games in a myriad of ways: Do you use video games or its software to explore your own identity or place in this world? Do you use it politically, as a site of resistance? Do you use it as a tool for interactivity or collaboration with other artists or subjects? Do you see virtual worlds as a site of meaning? Does your video game work result in art objects such as photographs, installations or performances?

If your practice is related to video games, and you would like to be considered for Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice, please apply in accordance with the following application procedures. For questions, please contact jessica@aroundthecoyote.org.

Deadline and Application procedure:
If would like to be considered for this exhibition, please submit the following to the Around the Coyote Gallery no later than May 5, 2007 at 6pm.
1. Digital documentation of each submitted piece - artists can submit a maximum of six images on CD. All submitted images must be of work that is available ...

READ ON »


Mal Au Pixel: Koelse.org [Video]


http://pixelache.ac
Video in Google

Kokeellisen elektroniikan seura Society of experimental electronics At Mal Au Pixel, Paris 2006 Video by Christina Kral.

sin-titulo-1.jpg

READ ON »



Discussions (23) Opportunities (12) Events (42) Jobs (0)
EVENT

*Jess Loseby : Eating Canvas*


Dates:
Tue Mar 01, 2005 00:00 - Mon Feb 21, 2005

Next at HTTP://
======================
*Jess Loseby : Eating Canvas*

We invite you to the opening of the exhibition to view the work and to meet the artist in person.

Artist's Private View 7pm Tuesday 1st March 2005
then open 1st - 27th March 2005, Friday- Sunday 12 -5pm

Getting to HTTP
Unit A2, Arena Business Centre,
71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY
Tube: Manor House, Buses: 341, 141,
Car: free parking facilities

for further information contact: info@http.uk.net
tel: +44 (0) 208-8022827

=============================

HTTP presents Eating Canvas by UK digital artist Jess Loseby. A new media installation of digital paintings on a range of canvas: fabric, screen, paper and televisions.

This warm and evocative cyber domestic work is a convergence of personal and political aesthetics that is reflective and declares a conscious subjectivity. Loseby's internationally recognised net artworks always demonstrate a keen alertness to her's and her viewers' positioning in physical, virtual and political space.

In this exhibition visitors are offered another experience of these relational dynamics. A bank of newspaper-covered TVs loop 10 video clips of meal-times in the artist's house. Viewers are invited to interact with the same video loops using a touch screen to display a large scale digital painting overlayed with headlines streamed live from online news networks.

*Artist's Statement*

"digital aesthetics can be said to position the spectator on the threshold of the virtual and actual..." - Digital Incompossibility: Cruising The Aesthetic Haze Of The New Media-Timothy Murray

"My work is political in nature; I sit in the relational space between the world of family domestic politics and the national domestic politics of a country in flux. "Eating Canvas" continues my fascination with borderlands and 'beautiful seams' between apparently juxtaposed worlds: domesticity and technology and the politics of home and country.

Over domestic scenes the "paintings" call live RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) from freely available, online, mainstream public news sources. These feeds are made up of headlines and abstracts of current events. Because the feeds are streamed directly from an external news site they are updated at least every 24 hours (but can be updated every minute dependant on "breaking news"). Particular feeds have been chosen to reflect UK domestic news and politics which creates an evolving and fluid textual layer over the images of domestic politics of the home.The feeds have been further augmented by the use of css styles to disrupt and re-present the information, literally feeding the "paintings" as their subjects eat.

My journey into digital art began with a laptop on the kitchen table from which I could operate a limited artistic practice whist chasing my eighteen-month old son around the house. Thus, the kitchen table became my portal to digitality, a significance that not only became the hub of my digital practice (as it is the hub of my domesticity) but the centre of my desire to outwork my thematics - the cyber-chick - sitting somewhere between the microwave and the modem."- Jess Loseby

Credits: This work would not have been possible without the assistance of ACE and the open source code "feed2js" of Alan Levine (Maricopa Community Colleges).

*About Jess Loseby*

Jess Loseby is a digital artist from the UK whose main medium is the Internet. Her work ranges from small and intimate online installations to large-scale digital projections and video. She has exhibited in digital festivals and exhibitions internationally: such as Siggraph, Split Film Festival, Pixxelpoint and FILE. Her work crosses a variety of media and platforms: from intimate interactive installations in national touring exhibitions such as Spectrum 2003 to creating digital sets for the production of 'The Dadaists' at The Met Theatre in Hollywood. She is currently the commissioned Digital artist for Babylon Gallery, Ely.

Thematically, her projects continue her fascination with borderlands and 'beautiful seams' between the ubiquitous worlds of computing and the 'real' (domestic). Loseby's unashamedly low-tech approach to new media builds comparisons of the network and digitally (in its frustrations, attention to triviality and repetition) as absurdly compatible to the female domestic routine.

Jess Loseby has 3 children, 2 wheels, 1 husband and 0 time
=============================

Gallery URL - http://www.http.uk.net/

Getting to HTTP
Unit A2, Arena Business Centre,
71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY
Tube: Manor House, Buses: 341, 141,
Car: free parking facilities

for further information contact: info@http.uk.net
tel: +44 (0) 208-8022827

 
Press release for print (322k)  http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib3/eating_canvas.pdf
Gallery website http://www.http.uk.net
Getting to HTTP http://www.http.uk.net/docs/gettingto.htm

HTTP:// is a non-profit organisation run by artists and curators of Furtherfield.org & Dosensos
http://www.furtherfield.org
http://www.dosensos.org


OPPORTUNITY

International Videoart Festivals


Deadline:
Mon Feb 21, 2005 05:00

International Videoart Festivals
 
Dear artists and friends,
 
I'm selecting all interesting video/short.films to include in the next ArtExpo 2005 Video.Exhibitions:
 
- International Videoart Festival “EROS + FOOD” - April 2005, Sala Estense - Ferrara, Italy. A Jury, at the end of the International Festival "E+F", will select the ten best videos that, with a successive contract and with formality to define, will be distributed in the italian home video market.
 
- International Video Art Screening "URBAN FLESH AND BLOOD" organized by the Kaliningrad Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts - September 2005, cinema "Barricade" and on the outdoor video screen ("City Vision" company) in the centre of Kaliningrad, Russia. A DVD catalogue will be produced and kept in the archives of the KB NCCA. The project focuses on interpretations of urban life, its phenomena and problems.
 
All works must be on DVD, no matter what the original source medium. The duration may be any, with a preference given to a max lenght of 15 minutes. The deadline for applications is March 20, 2005. If you are interested, please send your video submissions  - with a CV/biography, videography and an introduction about the piece to:
 
Luca Curci
via Casamassima, 75
70010 - Capurso (Bari) - Italy
 
Thanks for your time,
Luca Curci - art director
phone. +39.338.7574098
e-mail. lucacurci@lucacurci.com
web. www.lucacurci.com/artexpo
ArtExpo > Next Short Films
 
Dear friends,
we are working on new short films and videoart works which will envolve a great number of artists from all over the world. If you wish to participate in this 2005 video.projects (like a partner, actor/actress, artist, musician, dancer, producer or other), please write me to: video@lucacurci.com and send all details about you.
 
International ArtExpo is a not for profit organization that provides a significant forum for cultural dialogue between all artists from different cultures and countries. We depend on the support of you. ArtExpo is grateful to all of the institutions, corporations, and individuals who support our efforts. If you are interested in supporting our mission please write to: artexpo@lucacurci.com
 
We work with a number of national and international galleries as well as publishers, museums, curators and writers from all over the world. We help artists through solo and group exhibitions, gallery representation, magazine reviews and advertisements, press releases, internet promotion, as well as various curatorial projects. If you are interested please write to: lucacurci@lucacurci.com
 
ArtExpo Official Site: www.lucacurci.com/artexpo


DISCUSSION

Pornographic Coding


Pornographic Coding

Florian Cramer and Stewart Home

Crash conference paper, Feb. 11, 2005

   Program code is like pornography. It has linear logic, but no meaning.
   There is an accumulation of things already known. The focus is always
   on the same explicit facts. Repetition and boredom rule.
   (Adapted from a Neoist slogan)

   Art is sanctioned pornography.
   (Neoist slogan)

1  We demand a shamanic pornography

Capitalist ``progress'' destroys the imagination through a frenzy of the
visible. What we see we no longer need to imagine. A a famous zero from
the popsicle academy was once moved to write that every time a man had an
erection it was a triumph of the imagination. Power to the imagination,
and to sex - for they are one and the same thing. Pornographers of the
world close your eyes. You have nothing to lose but your bodily fluids! It
is time to decondition ourselves by going beyond the known world.

The shamans of old ingested psychedelic mushrooms, and today we are
further armed with a battery of chemically synthesised drugs including
ecstasy and LSD. These psychedelics are psychic elevators that can power
us through the seven levels of human consciousness. The first four levels
of consciousness can be reached in ordinary everyday life. Level Five
requires either chemical assistance or long hours of arduous interaction
with your computer, and when you hit this level sexual activity is vastly
enhanced. Once you go above Level Five consciousness you don't necessarily
need coitus. Indeed, at Level Six you are telepathic and sexually combined
with your fellow hackers, and this integration is even greater at Level
Seven (aka total fucking zero and one pornography).

Drugs and code are the ancient and modern tools with which we can
investigate our own minds while turning our bodies into one vast erogenous
zone. Our message to purveyours of representational porn is HANDS OFF
(OUR) EJACULATIONS (both male and female). WE WANT TO CUM IN ALL THE
COLOURS OF ALL THE FLAGS OF ALL THE CONSULATES. As an initiated shaman
Jean Cocteau was able to come through the sheer power of his imagination,
he could do this without using his hands to manipulate his genitals. Let's
keep our hands free to imput date on our computer terminals and use the
convulsive power of codes to bring us to orgasm.

2  Pornography as popular computing

The effectiveness of art is generally hard to judge. Pornography as one of
the arts creates ecstatic perception, triggering arousal only through
symbolic codes. Cybersex is by no means new, porn is its oldest device.
Computation and programming have likewise been known in pornography for
centuries. In the 120 Days of Sodom, Sade imagines a ceaseless execution
of coded game rules. There is no single point of originality, but only
combinations computed out of a set of sex partners and their organs. Porn
as speculative programming has been long neglected. Along the lines of
.walk by socialfiction.org, we demand psychogeographical computers built
from pornographic imagination and shamanic sex acts.

Carl van Bolen, author of The History of Eroticism (1966) and Eduard
Fuchs, author of The History of Erotic Art, coin a programming language of
Greek-Latin terms for those combinations. But only with modern day
commercial pornography do those exhaustive computations became real. A
mainstream porn video shop like Erotic Video Service in Berlin with its
24,000 tapes and DVDs for rent [http://www.evs-video.de] could be called a
pornographic Library of Babel, based on a brute force algorithm of sheer
masses of data. The poets of the French Oulipo group, the ``workshop of
potential literature,'' which from the 1960s onwards explored algorithmics
and formal restraints in writing, announced a chapter for pornography,
Oupornpo, but this seems to have remained a dirty old man's joke.
Contemporary writer Simon Strong makes up for it in his forthcoming novel
66mindfuck99 for which he created ``a list of criteria defining legal and
extra-legal sex acts,'' arranging them with help of a spreadsheet to what
he calls ``an optimal set of erotic episodes.''

Does the potential of pornography exhaust itself in the simple mechanics
of sexual combinations? Surely not, although we want to show that it is
too easy to sweepingly denounce this approach. Through its minimal
variations in endless repetition, it is clear that pornography has become
purely parodic, in other words, that each pornographic coupling, scene,
image becomes the parody of another, or the same in a deceptive form. Ever
since pornography started to circulate, an effort at total identification
has been made, because each pornographic detail ties one operation to
another. All pornography would be visibly connected if one could discover
at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of Ariadne's thread
leading pornographic codes into their own labyrinth. But their coupling is
no less irritating than the copulation of bodies. And when I scream I AM
PORNOGRAPHIC, an integral erection results, because the mere verb ``to
be'' is the vehicle of sexual frenzy.

3  Pornography in Stewart Home's fiction

I included large chunks of repetitive pornography in novels such as Blow
Job and Cunt because few publishers would consider putting out books of
fiction that were less than sixty thousand words long. By including
essentially the same pornographic scene on every other page I only.needed
to write about thirty thousand words. Bergson claimed that repetition was
the basis of all humour and I certainly found using it as a device to
expand my books to a length that was acceptable to the publishing industry
side-splittingly funny. I was also convinced that if anyone was sexually
aroused by my pornographic material (some of which was lifted directly
from out-of-copyright sources) then that was a tremendous achievement.
It's a demonstration of shamanic power to be able to laugh and have an
orgasm at the same time. The imagery I used in my early novels was
shamanic too, it was conceived as a revelation of the true nature and
scope of the unconscious, a sudden shift away from the standpoint of the
atomised individual to the point of view of the entire cosmic movement: a
`timeless psychedelic moment' in which the universe is experienced in the
act of waking up and becoming aware of itself. One could find the
beginnings of the cosmic metaphors I used in pulp fiction, where
characters having sex might be described as no longer in control of their
bodies because `the DNA had taken over'. I sought to extent such imagery
until it was on a par with the visions of the shamans of old. In order to
do this I would write about DNA codes being scrambled and unscrambled
across the muscular structure structure of my bulk, about the sexual act
leading me to imagine myself as the first amphibian to emerge from the sea
and feel the warmth of the sun on my back, about genetically encoded
memoires of the first star exploding and about being out on the mudflats
of pre-history...

4  The eroticism of boredom

I.I.I.I am. My identity. Mine. I exchange it with another and step outside
where the sun is shining. Another person walks up to me and gives me some
words. I respond by giving her some pleasure I have with me.

If you use words often enough they become interchangeable. Infinity,
limitation, enthusiasm, depression, imagination, concretion. Give me back
pleasure. I need to get more words with it. Chasing your mind's tail, the
back of your image unfolds into warm breeze. Throaty sound and smell of
petal marshland. Five minute stare into eyes of another being. Breaking
the silence, I say ``I wanna go down on you.'' Stepping back and removing
pleasure, giving words. Is this porn?

Pornography. The mind is pornographic. I shape the word ``cunt'' in it,
only to prove to myself that there is obscenity. Cities, streets, romantic
dreams of the perfect dirty image flickering like a single frame of film.
Slow down the projection and blink while you watch it.

5  Pornography in dreams

   Pornography in dreams
   Pornography in books
   Pornography in cars
   Pornography in advertising
   And everywhere repression
   Repressed living as the expression of everyday life
   Free your mind and your ass will follow
   Pick it up, let it move, make it happen
   Go with the code
   Arm yourself with drugs, magic and computing
   Fuck with fucking and drift into abstraction
   Zeros and ones turn me on

6  Pornography in computing

Computing has been sexual ever since John von Neumann, the creator of
modern-day computer architecture, conceived of self-replicating automata.
Nowadays, they translate into computer viruses and the rhetoric of
preventing infection uses the same concepts and terminology as rhetoric
about preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Computer users know that
the electronic message ``I love you'' is just as true as its
non-electronic equivalent, meaning in reality ``I want to fuck with you.''

If codes can fuck your computer, where's the porn that depicts them?

Porn, of course, flows through computers in abundance, and software has
been adapted to it. The Linux-based image and video display program
``pornview'' is, according to its manual, optimized ``for unattended
presentation of images for hands-free viewing.''

DVD videos can have multiple camera angles, a technical feature created to
cater to the porn industry and its customers. The image rendering
component of the free Mozilla browser originally was called ``libpr0n,''
``pr0n'' being hacker code speak for ``porn.'' Another GNU/Linux program,
``driftnet'' taps into a local computer network and displays all images
that co-workers are currently browsing. The developers of the program
recommend that ``if you are possessed of Victorian sensibilities, and
share an unswitched network with others who are not, you should probably
not use it.''

But in these examples, the pornography remains outside the software
itself. Obscenity on program code level exists, too, but doesn't
necessarily render the running software obscene or pornographic. The Linux
kernel, for example, contains the word ``fuck'' 56 times in its
sourcecode:

   arch/sparc/kernel/process.c: /* fuck me plenty */
   arch/sparc/kernel/head.S: /* XXX Fucking Cypress... */
   arch/sparc/kernel/sunos_ioctl.c: /* Binary compatibility is good
   American knowhow fuckin' up. */
   arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
   arch/ppc/syslib/ppc405_pci.c: * the kernel try to remap our BAR #1 and
   fuck up bus
   arch/sparc64/kernel/binfmt_aout32.c: /* Fuck me plenty... */
   arch/sparc64/kernel/traps.c: /* Why the fuck did they have to change
   this? */
   arch/sparc64/mm/init.c: /* Fucking losing PROM has more mappings in
   the TLB, but
   arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/powernow-k7.c: * Some Athlon laptops have
   really fucked PST tables.
   arch/i386/kernel/cpu/mtrr/generic.c:/* Some BIOS's are fucked and
   don't set all MTRRs the same! */
   arch/mips/kernel/irixioctl.c: * irixioctl.c: A fucking mess...
   arch/mips/kernel/irixelf.c:#if 0 /* XXX No fucking way dude...*/
   ...

But Linux hardly fucks anything in operation. Another example of
non-operational code-level pornography is the ASCII pr0n genre,
pornographic images drawn as typograms:

                       /'  `/   `.
                 .   .'      :  `. `.
                 \.'        ,  `.`  `.
                 `.     ,___/|. `.   :
                . , .'./    ' '  ,  '
                .    .  \_.~ _; ;    /'.
                ` ..._`.   :   /..   ../
                 /' _._  . ~ .'   `:
               /'.'@   `    .---.    `.
             .'  :         '   @ `..  
            /   ./`.._./ ~ .      :    `.   __
          .'   /   (        ....'  `.  .' /'  `.
     /'''   .'    `.  /       :     ;' .'    ..:
   .' ;   `;       : :    :    :   .'   :  ;    :
   :     `. `.    ;   :        .'     "  '    ;
    `.      `.   /    s    .   /       `.     .'
     `    .   `.  ` `.     ;  /'         ;___ ;
      `.   `.  `.   `         ;          ;:__..'
        `.   `. `.     :` ':    _.'    .' ;   :
          `.     `.    .x./-`--...../'   ;   :
            `. ..-:..-'                  (    :
              `---'`.                     `;   :
                `.  `,..                   :    :
                  `.    `.                  `.___;
                    `.    `.
                      `.    `;
                        `-.,'

Originally a hack to bring visual pornography into the world of
alphanumerical computer terminals, they became ironic retro chic in 1990s
net art, above all in ``Deep ASCII,'' a typographic rendering of the movie
``Deep Throat.''{1}

``Prograsm,'' which the hacker ``Jargon File'' defines as the ``euphoria
experienced upon the completion of a program or other computer-related
project,'' is another example of ecstasy outside the running program.
However, a concept of prograsm that involves the code and the process has
existed since the Middle Ages in ecstatic Kabbalah. The oldest known
kabbalistic book Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation) contains mathematical
combinatorics, and Kabbalists like Abraham Abulafia practiced
computational readings of the Torah as a sexually ecstatic technique. In
an 18th century autobiography, Salomon Maimon tells us how he learnt that

   ``the name Jehova represents [...] the person of the Godhead generis
   masculini, while the word Koh means [...] the person of the Godhead
   generis feminini, and the word Amar denotes sexual union. The words
   'Koh amar Jehovah,' 'Thus saith the Lord,' I therefore explained as
   follows: [...] an actual union of these divine spouses took place from
   which the whole world might expect a blessing.''

In other words, the Kabbalah imagines God as able to fuck himself by the
virtue of his male and female attributes, in the medium of the words put
down in the Torah. The Torah becomes pornographic writing, a code whose
execution generates divine physical arousal.

Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even can be read as
another auto-erotic obscene and pornographic mechanism, secularized
however as modern art. Still more secularized are the corresponding
technologies that exist in computing today, such as the ``Brainfuck''
programming language and program code recursion, code executing itself in
strange loops, a key structure among others in the programming language
LISP. While this code is, by its nature, a pure formalism, its coupling is
no less irritating than the copulation of bodies. When I scream I AM THE
PROGRAM, an integral erection results, because the verb to be is the
vehicle of obscene frenzy, bastardizing the formalism of the software and
my informal being to a dirty code.

Reroute via gender strippage [simple cognitive shift allocation], strip to
the violence inducer core and wipe with a pseudo stroke. Instruction:
Regenderate the Mis][s][User.

7  Towards an Open Source Pornography

Figure 1: From suicidegirls.com
Figure 2: Sample image from nofauxxx.com
Figure 3: Dahlia Schweitzer, Lovergirl photo series

   Richard Kern: SuicideGirls is a mystery to me because I thought only
   women ran the site.

   DRE: Does that make a difference?

   Richard Kern: I had heard from various models from there that my type
   was not liked there because I was a guy exploiting women and
   SuicideGirls is a feminist site. No matter what anyone says its still
   naked girls and still guys checking them out. There are girls checking
   in also but a lot of guys too. It's the same thing no matter how you
   cut it.{2}

No doubt, indie porn is the pornography of this decade, if not of the
whole century. Beyond that, it appears to be the first significant new
cultural movement of the millennium. It has replaced net.art as the
aesthetic avant-garde of the Internet. Websites like http://
www.suicidegirls.com, http://www.cleansheets.com, http://
wwww.thatstrangegirl.com and http://www.fatalbeauty.com combine the punk
styling of their models with visual punk aesthetics and do-it-yourself
punk attitude.{3} The site http://www.indienudes.com lists more related
sites and resources.{4} It thus seems as if there is finally a
non-industrial and erotically imaginative pornography for hetero- and
bisexuals, after the avant-garde of lesbian and gay pornography had
reached the same level already in the early 1990s, with magazines like
``On Our Backs'' and porn video labels like Cazzo Productions.

In reality, indie porn is just like indie pop. It pretends to be different
from the industry, but works with the same business model. Just as punk
and indie pop saved the music industry in the 1980s and 1990s, indie porn
will save the porn industry of today. It is the research and development
arm of the porn industry. An industry that otherwise would go bankrupt
because everyone freely shares its products on the Internet.{5}

Most indie porn sites are based on software and editorial formats created
in independent net cultures, most of all, weblogs. Central to the
aesthetics of indie porn is a concept of the authentic. Not only are the
models unmodified by surgery - except for tattoos and piercings - and
Photoshop. They are also accessible in chats, personal blogs and
homepages, a key feature of most indie porn sites. They thus produce a
simulacrum of the ``real'' that is no different from the popular genre of
industrial pseudo amateur pornography. The rough look and production
values of indie porn not only simulates authenticity, it also is a means
of cutting production costs and outsourcing labor when, for example on the
site http://www.ishotmyself.com, the models become their own
photographers.

Glamour and synthetic cyber pornography as well as hentai anime are more
radical than indie porn because they show sexual alienation openly and
make no attempt at clouding the fact that authentic moments can't be found
in them. Just like mainstream pop star Michael Jackson is ultimately more
subversive than The Manic Street Preachers, commercial pornography is
superior to indie porn because it offers less for the imagination to work
with. By offering more variation in the imagery, indie porn preempts and
thereby erodes imagination. A digital pornography that would strive for
true honesty and imagination should reduce rather than increase its visual
imagination. In the end, it should present itself as nothing but code,
teaching us to get off on mere zeros and ones, thus overcoming the false
dichotomy of the artificial and the authentic.

Against commercial indie porn we demand a truly independent, open source
pornography. Pornography should be made by all, a radically populist
pornography of collectively produced, purely formal codes. This
pornography will reconcile rationality and instinct and overcome
alienation because the codes will have to be reconstituted into sexual
imaginations by the right side of brain. Software, reconceived as a dirty
code crossbred of formalism and subjectivity, will be the paradigm of this
pornography, a code that sets processes into motion.{6}

Figure 4: An open source porn coder

Figure 5: Turning her image into code increases its shamanistic
pornographic quality

Figure 6: Further pornographic enhancement

Figure 7: Pornographic perfection
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes:

{1} by the ASCII Art Ensemble around Vuc Cosic and Luka Frelih.

{2} Richard Kern interviewed by Daniel Robert Epstein, http://
suicidegirls.com/words/Richard+Kern/

{3} http:///www.nerve.com is a highbrow forerunner of these sites,
creating ``sophisticated'' porn for an intellectual audience.

{4} The sites http://www.ishotmyself.com and http://www.beautifulagony.com
straightforwardly translate avant-garde art concepts into porn business
models; the former features models who take pictures of themselves, the
latter plagiarizes Andy Warhol's ``Blow Job'' movie by merely showing
faces of persons who have an orgasm.

{5} Richard Kern says about mainstream porn magazines in the same
interview: ``I shoot for them only occasionally now because that business
isnt what it used to be. [...] A lot of the point mags are going out of
business. They dropped the pay tremendously and its all because of the
internet. I used to go out once a month to LA and shoot for one week. Id
make a ton of money then come back to New York and do whatever I wanted.''

{6} A rare example of such dirty porn code are the writings of Australian
codework artist mez.

--

netbehaviour is an open email list community for sharing ideas,
platforming art and net projects and facilitating collaborations.
let's explore the potentials of this global network.
this is just the beginning.

to unsubscribe send mail to majordomo@netbehaviour.org
with "unsubscribe list_netbehaviour" in the body of the message

http://www.netbehaviour.org

DISCUSSION

The Eyes of Laura


Hello, I am Laura, a security guard at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Through work,
I have access to a lot of security cameras. I hacked a way to put one of these
online on my Website so you can see it and control it. I love surveillance and
keep a web journal or blog of what I see and put up video and images of things
that happen.

http://eyesoflaura.org

--

netbehaviour is an open email list community for sharing ideas,
platforming art and net projects and facilitating collaborations.
let's explore the potentials of this global network.
this is just the beginning.

to unsubscribe send mail to majordomo@netbehaviour.org
with "unsubscribe list_netbehaviour" in the body of the message

DISCUSSION

MIT Media Lab Europe closes


This is resent from another list by me - sorry to people in advance if they
got this twice...thanks
jonah

There had been speculation about MLE closing or changing its funding model
for the last year or so - therefore its not a surprise to many employees
there and others in Dublin that this was going to happen. MLE's failure to
attract sponsors was both a result of the economic downturn since 2000 and
an unclear, and unstandardized model of bringing sponsors and potential
sponsors in touch with the research and projects that were going on in the
lab. This seemed to be always fluctuating, in constant transition, and
therefore a bit unstable - esp with the current economic situation.

It saddens me that this had to happen, because I felt like MLE was
important in attracting people to Dublin who might not have ever known
about the culture and community that was happening there...Especially for
myself and the DATA group ( www.data.ie ) that I co-founded with Nicky
Gogan - there is a large, vibrant community of artists and researchers
there (working outside of the MLE community) who were very interested in
learning more about Media Art and Research in both European and Global
contexts. The closing of MLE does not signify an end for creative digital
media in Dublin, as the Digital Hub's (www.thedigitalhub.com) exhibitions
and various local colleges and universities have strong programs focused on
new media design and implementation. Some of these were strengthened by
people brought into the country through MLE, but I think they will remain
as strong even after its demise.

In the end, MLE probably lost out more because of its failure to integrate
more closely with local institutions, rather than any poor quality of
research, etc... This is unfortunate, but there is a lot to be learned by
its process and the enthousiasm and hard work some of its researchers
brought to the community of Dublin, and Ireland as a whole.

Jonah

# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net