Dear Jeremy, dear Rhizomers,

It is interesting to add that:

"Quixotes and sheep"
is a collaborative, copyleft and interactive net.art piece.
The creation is the result of works made by several artists
in different countries:

1- Alexandre Venera (Brazil)> the Author of the project and also his
programmer.
2- Babel (Canada)
3- Edward Picot (UK)
4- Joeser alvarez (Brazil)
5- Isabel Aranda Yto (Chile)
6- Isabel Saij (France)
7- Jeremy Hight (USA)
8- Juliana Teodoro (Brazil)
9- Miguel Jimenez "Zenon" (Spain)
10- Muriel Frega (Argentine)
11- Regina Celia Pinto (Brazil)

The works of each artist and the net.art piece itself are placed
under a copyleft license: the "free art license".
the text of the license is available at the following adress:
http://artlibre.org/licence.php/lalgb.html

"Quixotes and Sheep"
was inspired by the project "Big Sheep", a collaborative
and copyleft project: http://bigsheep.blogspot.com by Isabel Saij and Regina
Celia Pinto.
Some of the original or derivative creations of "big sheep" and new works
dedicated to the theme are used in "Quixotes and Sheep"
which interactively includes movies, stills, texts and sounds.
simultaneously displayed in 3 areas of the screen.
The project is open and new collaborations are welcome.
"Quixotes and Sheep"
is based on the chapter 18 of Cervantes' book.
The general theme is a simple scream/question to
"sick Quixotes" and "gluton Panzas": we are sheep??!!

Ingenio400: http://www.ingenio400.com

Quixotes and Sheep: http://arteonline.arq.br/quixote/

best regards,

Regina Celia Pinto

http://arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm
http://bigsheep.blogspot.com (A NEW Blog - The Big Sheep! Big What?)
----- Original Message -----
From: <hight@34n118w.net>
To: <list@rhizome.org>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 5:51 AM
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: ingenio 400 international exhibition

> The collaborative copylefting project "Quixotes and Sheep"
>
> has been included in INGENIO 400
>
> (ingenio400.com)
>
> an international juried online exhibition commemorating the 4th centennial
> of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" sponsored by ministry of culture of Spain
>
>
>
> artists in the project include:
>
> aLe
>
> Babel
>
> Isabel Sais
>
> Jeremy Hight
>
> Regina Celia Pinto
>
> Edward Picot
>
> Juliana Teodoro
>
> Muriel Frega
>
> Isabel Aranda
>
> Miguel Jimenez Zenon
>
>
>
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
>

July, 19th 2005

Dear Friends,

Today is the Museum of the Essential and Beyond That's anniversary. It is its third anniversary and it has grown a lot since its lauchment in 2002. It is a quite dynamic structure well known in the whole cyber-world. We have much to celebrate!

The comemoration of this year involves a virtual cake created by the artists Muriel Frega (http://murielfrega.com.ar/) and Zaida Frega. A very sweet gift this one which we received from Muriel and Zaida. You are invited to eat a slice of this cake with us at:

http://arteonline.arq.br/cake/

Visiting the cake you will know about a surprise gift you should receive, the gift is comemorative of the museum's third anniversary.

Regina Celia Pinto

http://arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm
http://bigsheep.blogspot.com (A NEW Blog - The Big Sheep! Big What?)

1- The collaborative review just finished the first part- the review on The Spork' s World - with a very interesting debate:

http://arteonline.arq.br/newsletter/reviews2005/english_niss.htm

Questions:

I- Do you agree that to make Art has a regenerated function to mentally ill
patients?

II- Do you classify the works produced by mentally ill patients as Art?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Some interesting fragments of answers for those questions:

"We are all mental patients in a way. Some of us living locked up in the psychiastric system, other being able to survive on their own, with other crutches: meds, drugs, alcool, tics, obsessions, the great feeling of being a so wellbalanced mind... and so on. To make Art has always a regenerating function in my opinion. It canalizes pulsions, a large spectrum of emotions and sometimes very disturbed or sad personnal experience which can make life unbereable if not softened through creative/intellectual activity or interesting jobs, which arenothing else than an occupational therapy for everybody in allday life..."

(Isabel Saij)

"We are all mental patients in every way.
Earth is one big mental hospital... "

(David Daniels)

"When mental patients are artists, they should be treated like any other artist, and they should be respected just as much, or even more than artists who do not have so many obstacles to overcome. Mentally ill artists should not be expected to make art only out of mentalillness material; they should be allowed the same choice of themes as any artist."

(Millie Niss)

"Hazards for mentally- ill artists are not limited to medications, however. Talk therapies can also create hazards unless the therapist genuinely understands the mentally ill artist's creative processes.For example, deep probing into painful experiences in the artist's lifecan overwhelm the artist to the point that work is impossible. A mentally ill person may be able to go through deep and painful "talk therapies" and still be able to be a college professor or a truck driver, forinstance, but not be able to generate art. So, pacing in talktherapy and frequent check-ins with the artist are crucial."

"I agree with others who have said that Art should be evaluated on its own merits, not on the basis of the maker of the art or thecircumstances of that person."

(Martha Deed)

"You explained your ideas with much wisdom. Then, I would like to conclude the current debate with a homage for the Brazilian psychiatrist Doctor Nise da Silveira(http://www.museuimagensdoinconsciente.org.br/silveira.htm ) who not conformed with the violent treatments used in Psychiatric Hospitals, found in Art an Occupational Therapeutics for the treatment of schizophenics.

It was her who founded, in May 1946, the Service of Occupational Therapeutics in the ancient Centro Psiquiatrico Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. And it was through the artistic activities as painting, modeling and wood engraving that arose in 1962 the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente ( http://www.museuimagensdoinconsciente.org.br/abertura.htm - Museum of the Unconscious' Images).

The museum's collection has nowadays about 350 thousand works. In its gender it is one of the largest and more differentiated collections of the world. http://www.museuimagensdoinconsciente.org.br/expvirtu.htm
and http://www.museuimagensdoinconsciente.org.br/frank/frankger.htm "

(Regina Celia Pinto)

Now the review continues with "Oulipoems":

On Oulipoems:

Oulipoems at http://www.sporkworld.org/oulipoems/ was a collaboration between Millie Niss and Martha Deed. Oulipoems contains an introduction which explains how the electronic
interactive poems relate to the Oulipo Movement in French literature, at http://www.sporkworld.org/oulipoems/intro.html

Oulipoems represents a later and different thread in her work from Spork. There is nothing personal in this work, other than her "personal" intellectual interests and political opinions. There is no mention of mental illness therefore. The work is also much more technically sophisticated, using HTML, Flash, sound software such as ACID, Photoshop, PHP, etc. The sound should be turned on for the whole thing because there is sound on the main menu page, but some pieces use sound and some don't. Oulipoems is a collection of electronic poetry experiments where the goal was to make poetry interactive in a new and different way in each piece. Millie Niss was experimenting with user interface design, and her goal was to have a unique user interface and programming in each poem. For that reason, she did not make any traditional hypertext poetry where you click on words in thepoem to get to new sections. Instead, each piece has its own kind of interaction.

To join the museum newsletter, send an email to
arteonline@arteonline.arq.br, subject: I want to be a member of the museum's newsletter.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

2- A new work at the Gallery Electronic Poetry of the Museum of the
Essential and Beyond That: 'Evoking Presence in Organic Absence' by Sonya Nielsen - Australia

http://arteonline.arq.br,

search for New Works (Electric green colour), Sonya Nielsen and click 'Evoking Presence in Organic Absence'

or go directly to:

http://www.arteonline.arq.br/museu/poesiadigital/sonya/opening.html

Sonya Nielsen's Bio:

Currently a creative art student at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, she creates artwork in the digital realm however it always connects back and draws on traditional methods such as drawing or painting. Her work explores and delves into the worlds of the ephemeral, mysterious and organic that haunt her imagination. She thinks this resonates from her continuing contemplation of that what lies in the mysterious is what human beings survive on. If the mystery was gone so would the reason for existence. The internet holds this idea of mystery close to its roots. She can see it in the form of a non linear gallery and medium, which is an element which makes her want to continue to make art.

Statement:

'Evoking Presence in Organic Absence' is about creating an interactive
artwork that grows and changes each time the viewer types on the page. The reader creates their own individualised perspective and art when interacting with the work, unfolding a world of chaotic and organic imagery in a machine.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Regina Celia Pinto

http://arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm
http://bigsheep.blogspot.com (A NEW Blog - The Big Sheep! Big What?)

The "Museum Newsletter"
(http://arteonline.arq.br/newsletter/reviews2005/english_niss.htm) is
analysing "The Spork World" (http://www.sporkworld.org/spork/) by Millie Niss:

"Why Spork is a cartoon?

I wanted to make a site about a mentally ill person going through all the troubles with the system and with the illness that mentally ill folks have to endure -- hospitalizations, trouble with Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare, voices, depression, mania, paranoia, stigma from friends,employment discrimination, etc., but then it seemed that the story would be either horrendously depressing (not in the clinical sense, of course) or nastily uplifting (if the character successfully surmounted all difficulties). I wanted humor in my website, and yet needed a place from which to launch serious ideas. Also, I didn't know how I would get a non-mentally ill audience to read the story." (Millie Niss)

"Then there's Spork's antenna. "Spork's History" makes it clear that his antenna is virtually the same thing as his identity, at least in his own mind: "My antenna is ME!" he screams when his teacher, Ms Meddling, explains that it will be a disadvantage in later life and ought to be surgically removed. But the fact that the curious wobbly looking appendage on top of his head is always referred to as an "antenna" seems to imply that it allows him to pick up information which other people (or birds) cannot hear. At times Spork hears voices - "The voices continued even when he plugged his ears. From that time on, Spork was tormented by cruel voices..." - and the mere use of the word antenna leads us to wonder, without anything explicit ever being said, if these voices are coming from somewhere outside him rather than being purely delusional. But the antenna doesn't just convey material into Spork's head: it grows out of his head like a mad idea - oversized, brightly-coloured, wobbly and eccentric. It seems symbolic ofSpork's thoughts, his compulsions, his inner life. It makes him what he is, it gives him his peculiar abilities, but it also marks him out, like the mark of Cain." (Edward Picot)

Reading Spork's Stories and knowing previously some texts on madness, one verifies that Spork's cartoons own a strong theoretical basement. Niss offers that knowledge in an extremely creative and well humored way, so that it becomes easy to anyone understand Spork's problems. Then one realizes that the Spork character is made of Millie Niss' thoughts and dreams and humor and that the madness of Spork cartoon is extreme lucidity.

Much more at: http://arteonline.arq.br/newsletter/reviews2005/english_niss.htm

Regina Celia Pinto

http://arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm
http://bigsheep.blogspot.com (A NEW Blog - Big Sheep!)