Rachel Greene
Since the beginning
Works in New York, Nebraska United States of America

BIO
Rhizome is friends and family for Rachel, who has been involved with the org. in one capacity or another since 1997 when it was rhizome.com!!
Rachel wrote a book on internet art for thames & hudson's well-known WORLD OF ART series: it was published in June 2004. She was a consultant and catalogue author for the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has also written for publications including frieze, artforum, timeout and bomb.
Discussions (824) Opportunities (20) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Fwd: G R A V I T Y - once again about scrolling and starbgs


Begin forwarded message:

> From: olia lialina <olia@profolia.org>
> Date: Tue Jun 10, 2003 3:51:40 PM US/Eastern
> To: rachel@rhizome.org
> Subject: G R A V I T Y - once again about scrolling and starbgs
>
> G R A V I T Y
>
> http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/GRAVITY/
>
> Since January 2003 Dragan Espenschied was the Art.Teleportacia
> artist in residence.
>
> He was really involved in gallery life and participated a lot in
> intensive discussions we usually have here about starry night
> and outer space backgrounds, horizontal and vertical scrolling,
> modern linking strategies. He literally brought new colors to
> Art.Teleportacia windows and scrollbars and forced us to rethink
> and remake the structure of the gallery. And it was a great
> pleasure to collaborate with him on Zombie & Mummy[1] episodes
> which were warming our networked community through the winter.
>
> Today I am happy to present Dragan's new work GRAVITY[2]. It is
> made at our gallery, and also for it.
>
> And my first question is: Why Art.Teleportacia?
>
> I thought that scrolling and space, the main topics of my
> new work, had always been among the main fields of
> competence and activity of this gallery.
>
> How could it happen that in the year 2003 you made such a simple
> project that is just using HTML rendering as introduced by
> Internet Explorer version 3[3]?
>
> Due to the fact that i didn't have to write a proposal and
> to enumerate advanced technologies i would be using to make
> this piece I was completely free to make what i think is
> meaningful and beautiful.
>
> The pressure to be up to date with technology appears
> insane to me. It doesn't bring any more beauty or pleasure.
> Instead it creates things that are hard to understand and
> impossible to handle. So nobody can actually experience
> them beyond reading the artist's concept.
>
> You are right. Net art works become groundless complicated
> nowadays. It looks more and more that net artists are here not
> to explore the net, but to invade it with new products. Not to
> entertain online people, but to make them feel that their
> computers are not fast enough, software is not new enough and
> education they got was wrong.
>
> In case of GRAVITY[2], the user is not asked to install
> anything, no need to start it with "about", "how it works",
> "register here", "Version 6 and higher" ... one should only
> follow links, or better to say, to follow the logic of the page,
> which will bring you to the link.
>
> But what do you think, how far can you go with scrolling?
>
> Scrolling is an important part of nowadays graphical user
> interface and at the same time a powerful means of
> expression and involvement.
>
> It can for instance be used to tell stories, create the
> impression of space and movement, to change not only the
> position of the scrolled object but also of the spectator.
> I consider the diverse resolutions of monitors, scrolling
> and resizing windows a natural environment of computer and
> internet usage.
>
> But scrolling is slowly vanishing. Software like Flash
> erases the need for scrolling by its possibility of
> arbitrarily scaling and fixing the size of any graphical
> object ... it evokes the lust of designers and artists to
> produce fitting formats, like on paper or video.
>
> And the Open Source HTML rendering engine Gecko ignores
> width and height definitions relative to the window size
> that are higher than 100%.
>
> Search engine culture is also very much against scrolling.
> Only the things at the top of a web page are considered to
> be important, people that scroll down are already
> considered to be computer nerds.
>
> When in 1996 I was making "If you want me to clean your screen
> scroll up and down"[4], scrollbar and scrolling was the main
> content for me. In "Some Universe"[5] I wanted the audience to
> scroll instead of clicking, to make them stay long on a long
> page. In Art.Teleportacia[6] itself, scrolling is the basis for
> the whole design. In their new work "000 TEXT"[7] JODI use
> scrolling because it won't help you anyway. Scrolling in "When I
> Am King"[8] tells the story. What is the dramaturgy of the
> scrolling in GRAVITY[2]?
>
> It is about lifting things, traveling space and revealing
> connections that will lead to the next part of the piece.
> The midi music encourages the user to adopt a stylish
> navigation practise: If you do it right, by moving
> scrollbars in a certain speed, clicking links in time and
> using back and forward buttons, it becomes an HTML music
> video.
>
> What kind of material you used to make GRAVITY spectacular?
>
> I used images i found on the web, a large part of them i
> had to manipulate quite a lot so they work as objects in
> the piece. For example NASA offers many pictures of rockets
> and astronauts, so do private pages of people interested in
> space travel. These sometimes huge photographs have to be
> sized down and cutted correctly to work on top of
> background images. Classical image collection sites are
> also still useful. They have all kinds of flags, lines,
> fire.
>
> The music is an amateur adaption of Rozalla's 1992 UK hit
> single "Everybody's free to feel good" which can be found
> on many midi file collection sites.
>
> Who exactly made all these files i composed GRAVITY of is
> not traceable. Most of these files have already been copied
> and used a thousand times on the web.
>
> All together, the piece is 242832 bytes. With a special
> frameset construction i have all images preloaded so
> switching pages becomes smooth. The music is also put into
> this frame that stays there all the time, so it keeps on
> playing.
>
> I tried to keep out any form of scripting from the code,
> but couldn't avoid it completely because of compatibility
> issues.
>
> Do you believe that online art projects should work in any
> browser on any platform?
>
> It's not about the market, but about the artistic
> challenge. I tried to include a little reward for each of
> the different browsers i was testing the project on. For
> example Internet Explorer on Windows gets a transition
> effect, Mozilla some nice page icons.
>
> A year ago I devoted to you Some Universe[6] - The Most
> Beautiful Webpage made of star backgrounds - because i thought
> you share my passion for them. Half a year ago you answered to
> it with quite a critical Letter of the Cosmonaut[9]. Now you
> make GRAVITY[2] where you work with outer space thematic and
> aesthetic again. So, what outer space means for you?
>
> In the early days of the amateur WWW you could see space
> backgrounds everywhere. They served as illustrations for
> the vastness of the new medium and the fascination its
> users had with it. This sort of page design is not widely
> spread anymore, instead the clear white color of business
> dominates. But i am still fascinated by the vastness.
>
> Why is there no email link in GRAVITY[2]?
>
> From our own experience with Zombie & Mummy[1] we know that
> in general the audience doesn't seem to be interested in
> communication with the creators a website, even if it is
> popular.
>
> Perhaps people are not writing in general because they think
> that artists are sort of professionals. Kind of Pro web culture.
> And you can't simply drop a short note: "Thank you, nice page!"
> Another explanation can be that to write an email to somebody
> you don't know personally can turn back on you as a flood of
> newsletters.
>
> Additionally i have the impression that the communities
> around weblogs are building borders in the net. Weblog
> readers would rather write something about a web site they
> have seen in the discussion facilities of their favorite
> weblog instead of writing a message to the author. And the
> poor authors have to wade through all the referrers in
> their access statistics to find out what people actually
> think about their work.
>
> And the last question. Your plans for the future?
>
> Future? Why future? I thought I could stay and work here.
>
> Yes. Sure.
>
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>
> [1] http://www.zombie-and-mummy.org/
> [2] http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/GRAVITY/
> [3] http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/32bit/3.0
> [4] http://www.entropy8zuper.org/possession/olialia/olialia.htm
> [5] http://de708.teleportacia.org/~james.larin/stellastar/
> [6] http://art.teleportacia.org/
> [7] http://text.jodi.org/
> [8] http://www.demian5.com/
> [9] http://a-blast.org/~drx/Letter_of_the_Cosmonaut/
>

DISCUSSION

[Fwd: Shu Lea Cheang at the 50th Venice Biennale]


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Shu Lea Cheang at the 50th Venice Biennale
From: "Julia Friedman" <info@juliafriedman.com>
Date: Sat, June 7, 2003 6:12 pm
To: info@juliafriedman.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, June 7, 2003
Julia Friedman Gallery, 118 N Peoria, Chicago, IL 60607 USA
For further information contact: Lisa Williamson, (312) 455 0755 or
Info@juliafriedman.com

Garlic=Rich Air 2030
Shu Lea Cheang

AFTER THE CRASH. AFTER THE NET.
CATCH GARLIC MANIA at http://www.rich-air.com

50th Venice Biennale
Limbo Zone - Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209, San Marco
June 15 - November 2, 2003

Whitney Museum of American Art
Artport
July, 2003

Julia Friedman Gallery
June 20 - August 2, 2003

Shu Lea Cheang's most recent net-installation, "Garlic = Rich Air" will
open at the 50th Venice Biennale, June 15 and continue through November 2,
2003. Cheang's "Garlic = Rich Air" large-scale installation will be
exhibited at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209, San Marco and
online at http://www.rich-air.com. "Burn" and "Richair2030", two other
new works by Cheang, will also be presented at the Venice Biennale, in
"Zone of Urgency", curated by Hou Hanru.

Concurrently Cheang's "Garlic = Rich Air" will be presented at the Whitney
Museum of American Art's Artport, during the month of July and at Julia
Friedman Gallery, June 20 - August 2, 2003.

"Garlic = Rich Air", dated 2030, anticipates a post-capitalist society
where the global economy and currencies have collapsed and network media
has nearly crashed. The work envisions organic garlic as the new social
currency - bought, sold, and traded to establish a new and free media
trading system. "Garlic = Rich Air" sets forth a monetary relationship
between URL information and virtual garlic. Visitors are invited to
participate online at http://www.rich-air.com and submit various URL
addresses in return for virtual garlic, "G", as Cheang puts it. At the
close of the G-Mart, virtual "G" is cashed in for real farm-grown organic
garlic; a commodity that is desired and wholly revered in the year 2030.

Shu Lea Cheang has previously exhibited in two Whitney Biennials, Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York; InterCommunication Center (ICC), Tokyo;
Walker Art Center, Minneapoli, The Project, New York and recently at
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FACT, Liverpool and Public Netbase, Vienna. She
created the Guggenheim Museum's first web based art project, entitled
Brandon.

--
Julia Friedman Gallery
118 N Peoria
Chicago, IL (60607)
T: 312 455 0755
F: 312 455 0765
E: info@juliafriedman.com
http://www.juliafriedman.com/home.html

--

DISCUSSION

Fwd: Molyneaux review of Sherman's I-Bomb book


Begin forwarded message:

> From: twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu
> Date: Sat Jun 7, 2003 9:46:48 PM US/Eastern
>
> Subject: Molyneaux review of Sherman's I-Bomb book
>
>
> "Before and After the I-Bomb: an artist in the information environment"
> by Tom Sherman, edited by Peggy Gale, Banff Centre Press 2002,
> ISBN 0-920159-94-X; 6.5 x 8.25, 384 pages, paper: $29.95 CDN / $20.50
> US
>
> A review by Dr. Brian Leigh Molyneaux
>
>
> Tom Sherman's "Before and After the I-Bomb", a collection of more than
> twenty-five years of public and private muses, performance texts and
> internet pieces, represents a lifetime's seduction by technology.
>
> Sherman makes his passion clear at the outset. He likes to "negotiate
> reality with instruments". This is not a surprise for someone born
> immediately after World War II. Sherman's earliest childhood was a time
> when the masses were encouraged not only to fear the A-Bomb and its
> technology but to love it as a protector. Many kids born in the
> aftermath
> of World War II were like Tom and me. Deep in blue collar/middle class
> North America and wary of protection, we pressed our ears against the
> speakers of vast old radios, moving through fantastic jungles of noise
> in
> search of distant, dangerous new worlds. We grew up, of course, and
> lost
> our naivety during the VietNam war era, but we remained faithful to
> technology as a vehicle for exploration and enchantment.
>
> Sherman's first public act of techno-seduction was a subversive reverie
> for a British communications journal that he published in 1974. His
> modest
> proposal was to process Western art history into a "concise history of
> painting" and create an Art-Style Computer-Processing System so that
> television viewers could translate broadcasts in the "period vision" of
> their choice ('let's watch the State of the Union address as Surrealism
> tonight, dear'). Between this early bravura - 1974 was also the year of
> the first personal computer - and his twenty-first century Epilogue, a
> somber reflection on our current "techno-existentialism", he provides
> an
> artist's perspective on the I-bomb. The I-bomb stands for the
> "thunderous
> explosion of advertising, entertainment, voice and data" that heralded
> the
> late twentieth century information age. What makes this book essential
> reading for anyone interested in contemporary art and society is that
> Sherman saw the bomb develop, got caught in the blast, and has a strong
> vision of the world in its wake.
>
> Sherman's narratives begin in a 1970s Toronto still resonating from
> Marshall McLuhan's radical ideas about mass media. McLuhan's notion
> that
> electronic media extended the central nervous system outside the body
> into
> "a global embrace" had an especially strong impact on people already
> mulling over Norbert Weiner's cybernetic theory. Weiner held that the
> dynamics of communication and control were similar for humans, other
> living things, and machines. Unconventional artists like Sherman saw
> this
> new way of thinking as a challenge not only to contemporary art, but
> also
> to traditional ideas of human nature. While realtime communication
> devices
> eliminated the distance between people and vastly increased their web
> of
> relationships, it did so at the sacrifice of a body-centered mind. In
> various places in the I-bomb we read his complaint: "I worry about
> losing
> my sense of self"; "my nervous system is not so central anymore". By
> 2002,
> the courtship is over: "we are embracing technology itself as the
> significant other in our lives".
>
> The vision of a new bionic nature emerging out of the disembodiments of
> the information age is not simply an intellectual conceit. The
> integration
> of human and machine through multimedia extensions poses a threat to
> the
> balance of nature. The problem is that this new adaptation is largely
> untested. Nature had millions of years to sort out primate development
> and
> create human animals well adapted to their natural environments. Since
> the
> new information age has developed so quickly, it has become a
> cybernetic
> problem, a world out of control. So, while the internet seems to be
> moving
> us ever closer to McLuhan's ideal of the global village, we are not
> only
> being "overrun by our own technological inventions", as Sherman writes,
> but running ahead of our own evolution! The result is a chaos of
> choices,
> like the fantastic array of experimental creatures produced millions of
> years ago in early Cambrian seas near the origins of life. In Sherman's
> words
>
> "There is no collective idea of where we are headed. The future is
> multidirectional. With no collective vision, the individual is at the
> center of the universe again".
>
> Such obvious disquiet at social fragmentation may seem odd coming from
> an
> artist. Sherman knows, however, that the freedom that technology gives
> to
> individual expression comes at a price: the architectures of software,
> hardware and delivery systems are logical, highly structured and under
> corporate control. No wonder videocams and computers are "the preferred
> tools of authoritative organizations". In the techno-environment, we
> are
> reduced to the level of our primate ancestors, feeding an information
> economy, and "harvested like trees or minerals or fish". The effect of
> this expanding multimedia world on creativity is clear, as anyone
> thinking
> about the pathetically narrow window of their monitor must surely
> realize:
> "Industrially produced architectures of thought generate imaginative
> uniformity", making change, over time, "the same as endless
> uniformity".
> We cannot escape our memes any more than we can our genes.
>
> Sherman is always concerned with his own engagement with a world where
> nature and culture, animal and machine, are all part of integrated
> information systems. It is perhaps inevitable, then, that he devotes
> the
> last part of the book to our problematic relationship with the natural
> world - symbolized, in the last sentence in the closing text, by the
> disturbing image of a manicured cedar tree in a Burger King entrance -
> Nature firmly under capitalist technological control. While some
> readers
> might assume that his clear love for the vicissitudes of nature is
> simply
> nostalgia for a living system that worked, he clarifies his view in the
> Epilogue. We are stuck with what we helped create; Nature is now our
> responsibility.
>
> Sherman's resolution is elusive, even evasive: cracks of light, hope,
> memory, novelty. There is clearly no easy way out of our dystopia. In
> my
> reading, however, there is refuge and inspiration in a subtle bit of
> text
> that may reveal Sherman's personal approach. In "Nothing Worse"
> (2000), we
> find his persona in his artistic hermitage, the man who does not want
> to
> move.
>
> "If you want to go with the flow, you've got to be streamlined;
> you've got to be smooth.
>
> I don't fit in. The world spins around me. Everything I touch
> seems
> to stop in its tracks. I get ideas. I move on these ideas. I make
> things.... Somewhere, out there, there are other people who sit still
> and
> watch the world spin around. They are like me. They, too, make
> information
> that doesn't move."
>
> Franz Kafka wrote: "the fact that our task is exactly commensurate with
> our life gives it the appearance of being infinite" (Third Notebook,
> January 19, 1918). Sherman's best writing - simple, lucid description,
> contrived and yet free, paced at the rhythm of an ordinary
> conversation -
> conveys the simple beauty and dreadful wonder that are the contraries
> of
> life in a technological maelstrom. If we are to survive the effects of
> the
> I-bomb, perhaps we too need to stop, take a few breaths, look away from
> our monitors and listen.
>
> -----
>
> Dr. Brian Leigh Molyneaux <moly@usd.edu> is an archaeologist, writer
> and
> photographer. He is a specialist in art and ideology, the human use of
> the
> landscape, and environmental approaches to technology. At the
> University
> of South Dakota, he is Director of the Archaeology Laboratory, and
> Co-Director of the Missouri River Institute. He is also a Research
> Associate of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. He received
> his MA
> in Art and Archaeology from Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, in
> 1977 and his PhD in Archaeology at the University of Southampton,
> England
> in 1991.
>
> -----
>
> Tom Sherman's book, "Before and After the I-Bomb: An Artist in the
> Information Environment," is available through Printed Matter, Inc.; or
> directly from the Banff Centre Press.
>
> Individuals can order via the WWW from Printed Matter, Inc.:
> http://www.printedmatter.org/
>
> To order directly from the Banff Centre Press, send an e-mail to:
> press@banffcentre.ca -- or call 403-762-7532
>
> This book is also available on-line at: www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca,
> www.barnesandnoble.com, www.borders.com, www.artmetropole.com,
> www.chapters.ca/
>
> Bookstores or libraries should contact:
> LPG Distribution
> c/o 100 Armstrong Ave
> Georgetown, ON L7G 5S4
> Tel: 905-877-4411 toll-free 800-591-6250
> Fax: 905-877-4410 toll-free 800-591-6251
> Email: orders@lpg.ca
>
> [note: bookstores in the U.S. can order through Ingram and Baker &
> Taylor]
>

DISCUSSION

Fwd: WEB JAM TURNS 10


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ebon Fisher <alula@rcn.com>
> Date: Fri Jun 6, 2003 7:38:41 PM US/Eastern
> Subject: WEB JAM TURNS 10
> Reply-To: ebon@olulo.net
>
> _____________________________________________
> THE BROOKLYN "WEB JAM" TURNS 10
>
> Participants of the Organism (the first "web jam") and other pioneers
> of
>
> Williamsburg, Brooklyn's creative "Secession" from Manhattan are
> gathering for a dinner/dialogue at Streb Studios on Thursday, June 12,
> 2003. That date marks the 10-year anniversary of Organism, the last of
> a
>
> series of large multi-disciplinary warehouse events which helped to
> define the
> "submodern" spirit of Williamsburg's independent culture.
> Multimedia venues such as Mustard, Galapagos Artspace, Four Walls and
> Pierogi Gallery's community "flat files" grew out of that
> community-conscious spirit. Williamsburg has since exploded into a
> major
>
> cultural hotspot on the New York circuit with dozens of galleries,
> restaurants and nightclubs.
>
> The Organism, which followed a principle of "web jamming," pushed
> the idea of weblike co-existence to an extreme. It involved an emergent
> approach to creation, interlocking and growing the "systems" of 120
> creators and an audience of over 2000 people. Newsweek called the
> nightlong web jam "a sequel to the rave." Next week's potluck dinner is
> open to anyone who is interested in discussing the possibilities of
> environment-based culture in an age dominated by commerce, high rents,
> fundamentalist Republicans and war. Elizabeth Streb, a pioneering
> choreographer of hybrid dance systems, has kindly offered her dance
> studio as a location. Streb Studios is located on the former Mustard
> Factory site where The Organism took place.
> _______________________________________________________
>
> WHAT: THE ORGANISM "WEB JAM" TURNS 10
>
> WHEN: Thursday, June 12, 2003, 7:30 pm
>
> WHERE: Elizabeth Streb Studio, 51 N. 1st Street, Williamsburg,
> Brooklyn
>
> HOW: It's an indoor picnic. Bring everything you need to feast,
> including plates, cups, etc. Children are very welcome.
>
> CALL: Ebon Fisher (609) 894-2390 or Karen Cormier (718) 486-7652.
>
> EMAIL: <ebon@olulo.net> or <mavnpek@copper.net>
> _______________________________________________________
>

DISCUSSION

Fwd: Lecturer opportunity, Slade School of Fine Art, London


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Susan Collins <susan@inhabited.net>
> Date: Fri Jun 6, 2003 11:23:43 AM US/Eastern
> To: RHIZOME <list@rhizome.org>, rachel greene <rachel@rhizome.org>
> Subject: Lecturer opportunity, Slade School of Fine Art, London
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------
>
>
> The Slade School of Fine Art
> University College London
>
> The Slade School offers courses in fine art at undergraduate (BA) and
> postgraduate (MFA, MA, MPhil, PhD) level. The Fine Art Media area
> includes
> Film, Video, Electronic Media, Sound, Photography and Printmaking.
>
> Applications are invited for the following post:
>
> Lecturer B (0.4 pro rata full time) in Fine Art Media
>
> We are seeking to appoint a practising artist of distinction who is
> committed to making an active contribution to the research and teaching
> culture of the School.
> The successful applicant will be enthusiastic and confident working in
> a
> range of ways with students and colleagues - from hands-on practical
> workshop/group teaching to tutorials, group critiques and cross area
> seminars.
> Ideally the candidate will have expertise in two or more of the
> following:
> Interactive Media, Internet Art, 3D Animation, Digital Video and Sound.
>
> The appointments are pro rata


CURATED EXHIBITIONS (1)