ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (2)
BIO
Rob Myers is an artist and hacker based in the UK.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
Mail Art
Mail art is art that is sent through the postal system. The experience
of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of receiving aesthetic ephemera
delivered with the rest of the mail.
This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
gourds and spears it can be presented in an anthropological context. But
like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been removed from the
world it was created in and given a new context.
Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does exist. It's a
substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and not a successful
one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the seriousness of the museum
survive the encounter.
The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail art in the gallery
is that the viewer can make an imaginative projection into the world of
mail art. Or that the work has enough formal qualities or content to
make its own small context, transcending both mail art and the museum.
What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience of mail art, its
mode of consumption, its social relations, into the gallery. It is like
trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright lights so people can
see them better.
of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of receiving aesthetic ephemera
delivered with the rest of the mail.
This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
gourds and spears it can be presented in an anthropological context. But
like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been removed from the
world it was created in and given a new context.
Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does exist. It's a
substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and not a successful
one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the seriousness of the museum
survive the encounter.
The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail art in the gallery
is that the viewer can make an imaginative projection into the world of
mail art. Or that the work has enough formal qualities or content to
make its own small context, transcending both mail art and the museum.
What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience of mail art, its
mode of consumption, its social relations, into the gallery. It is like
trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright lights so people can
see them better.
Re: regarding the On Colaboration reblog on the Rhiz front page
Jim Andrews wrote:
>> But if we're programming a
>> work of art, we don't have to worry about generally accepted
>> coding principles. We don't have to worry about our programs
>> using resources efficiently. We don't have to worry about our
>> code being easily readable to others and we don't have to worry
>> about our programs being extensible. We can be messy, sloppy,
>> inefficient. It only has to do exactly what that particular work
>> of art requires. Nothing more.
>
> Artists don't have to study programming for years, it's true.
They should. ;-) I studied programming in C and Java intensively on the
Compiting In Art & Design course at MDX in the mid-nineties, and have
continued learning since.
> However, if you try to create a large program, you will be bonked on the head repeatedly by your own work until you learn the value of the principles of encapsulation, extensibility, good documentation, etc. You simply won't be able to do it without this sort of knowledge. It will be mental torture. You will cry for your mama. Been there, done that! And the work will die with you, certainly, because other programmers will gasp and cross themselves upon gazing at the code. Even if you were taught these principles, their value only really emerges, is evident, when you find yourself with a big project.
This is very true. It's like not knowing composition, colour mixing,
fat-over-lean or paint drying times when painting.
> Which is to say that the *scope* of what you can do without studying the principles and methodologies of programming is limited to the one-off or the two-off, to the one-liner or the two-liner.
There are useful one or two line programs, but to really engage with the
medium takes a depth of knowledge, as with any medium.
- Rob.
>> But if we're programming a
>> work of art, we don't have to worry about generally accepted
>> coding principles. We don't have to worry about our programs
>> using resources efficiently. We don't have to worry about our
>> code being easily readable to others and we don't have to worry
>> about our programs being extensible. We can be messy, sloppy,
>> inefficient. It only has to do exactly what that particular work
>> of art requires. Nothing more.
>
> Artists don't have to study programming for years, it's true.
They should. ;-) I studied programming in C and Java intensively on the
Compiting In Art & Design course at MDX in the mid-nineties, and have
continued learning since.
> However, if you try to create a large program, you will be bonked on the head repeatedly by your own work until you learn the value of the principles of encapsulation, extensibility, good documentation, etc. You simply won't be able to do it without this sort of knowledge. It will be mental torture. You will cry for your mama. Been there, done that! And the work will die with you, certainly, because other programmers will gasp and cross themselves upon gazing at the code. Even if you were taught these principles, their value only really emerges, is evident, when you find yourself with a big project.
This is very true. It's like not knowing composition, colour mixing,
fat-over-lean or paint drying times when painting.
> Which is to say that the *scope* of what you can do without studying the principles and methodologies of programming is limited to the one-off or the two-off, to the one-liner or the two-liner.
There are useful one or two line programs, but to really engage with the
medium takes a depth of knowledge, as with any medium.
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Conference Report: Where Art Thou Net.Art? On Zero One/ ISEA 2006
Quoting Erika Lincoln <fur_princess@yahoo.ca>:
> As for Randall's quote of the blogger
>
> "I found an insightful comment by
> Molly Hankwitz, who said, "I think the process of
> interaction must be done very carefully. The
> worst thing is the mainstreaming of situationism
> into a middle class playground."
Molly Hankwitz may be working class, but her disdain for the bourgeousie is
misplaced. The mainstreaming of situationism is the fault of academia.
- Rob.
> As for Randall's quote of the blogger
>
> "I found an insightful comment by
> Molly Hankwitz, who said, "I think the process of
> interaction must be done very carefully. The
> worst thing is the mainstreaming of situationism
> into a middle class playground."
Molly Hankwitz may be working class, but her disdain for the bourgeousie is
misplaced. The mainstreaming of situationism is the fault of academia.
- Rob.
Re: Charlie puts NMA's down...
Quoting "T.Whid" <twhid@twhid.com>:
> He's right about one thing. Artists aren't at the cutting-edge of
> technology. The technocrats and scientists will always be ahead...
> with the technology. (Though Golan Levin is working with one of the
> top people in eye-tracking and face recognition at Carnegie-Mellon.)
This is a historically unprecedented situation. Early computer artists begged,
borrowed, stole or remortgaged for access to computer technology at the same
time as the pioneers of AI research and mathematical simulation. If they'd
stuck with tabulators we wouldn't be here now. Painters have always availed
themselves of technological and theoretical developments. Even fire was new
once, and cave artists didn't stick with twigs and berries.
For "New Media" art to be a kind of aethetic and technological conservatism
breaks the irony tag. People are building careers cannibalising the gains of
the 60s and 70s into accessible work for the usual suspects. This is kitsch;
cheaply made and heavily marketed mass-produced versions of something
that once
meant something. It ignores the historical and cultural context of the
very work
it cannibalises.
> Anyway, the 'thought-provoking" part of his statement is complete and
> utter bullshit. Google Earth is cool and thought-provoking but you
> don't need gee-whiz tech to be a thought-provoking artist. I think
> that would be abundantly obvious to everyone.
Charlie has been in New Media longer than some of us. His criticism can be
answered, but let's not try to pretend it is unreasonable.
If Google Earth had been submitted to SIGGRAPH a decade ago it would
have been a
triumph. Its gee-whiz effect is an aesthetic and conceptual effect: it
shows you
a different worldview, it makes you look at the world differently. It changes
your perceptions and adds to your range of experience of regard. It is
not art,
but it is an effective analog to art and it is more effective than much New
Media art. We would do well to ask ourselves why this is and why
*precisely* it
is not art. That might help us get a GPS lock on some tasks that New
Media needs
to start working on rather urgently if it is not to become the new
water colors.
Possibly one doesn't need gee-whiz tech to be a thought-provoking
artist. But a
New Media artist is an artist working with new media, by *definition* they are
working with gee-whiz technology. We cannot decide that time stopped in 1996
(or whenever we could first afford our own copy of Director and a QuickTime
codec). Nam June Paik's later work has a different meaning to earlier
work done
with the same technology. Charcoal does not mean the same thing now as it did
twenty thousand years ago.
IT has become pervasive. It is now landscape rather than still life, ground
rather than figure. We can work with this, turning from unpaid salespeople of
the gee-whiz to embedded reporters and critics of it in the wider world.
Or we can reaffirm the link between the new and new media (and the high
and high
art) amd pursue the new arenas for computation (wearable, mobile, massively
networked) and new levels of computing power (can I get a Beowulf cluster of
that?) that have emerged over the last decade.
Or we can regroup, take stock, look hard at where we've come from and where we
are and try to maintain that trajectory or to generate a new one. This turns
the trend that Charlie criticises into a virtue.
The current state of New Media art is revealing about changing social
relations
in western culture. This in itself is interesting and might generate some
useful work for New Media artists to do.
- Rob.
> He's right about one thing. Artists aren't at the cutting-edge of
> technology. The technocrats and scientists will always be ahead...
> with the technology. (Though Golan Levin is working with one of the
> top people in eye-tracking and face recognition at Carnegie-Mellon.)
This is a historically unprecedented situation. Early computer artists begged,
borrowed, stole or remortgaged for access to computer technology at the same
time as the pioneers of AI research and mathematical simulation. If they'd
stuck with tabulators we wouldn't be here now. Painters have always availed
themselves of technological and theoretical developments. Even fire was new
once, and cave artists didn't stick with twigs and berries.
For "New Media" art to be a kind of aethetic and technological conservatism
breaks the irony tag. People are building careers cannibalising the gains of
the 60s and 70s into accessible work for the usual suspects. This is kitsch;
cheaply made and heavily marketed mass-produced versions of something
that once
meant something. It ignores the historical and cultural context of the
very work
it cannibalises.
> Anyway, the 'thought-provoking" part of his statement is complete and
> utter bullshit. Google Earth is cool and thought-provoking but you
> don't need gee-whiz tech to be a thought-provoking artist. I think
> that would be abundantly obvious to everyone.
Charlie has been in New Media longer than some of us. His criticism can be
answered, but let's not try to pretend it is unreasonable.
If Google Earth had been submitted to SIGGRAPH a decade ago it would
have been a
triumph. Its gee-whiz effect is an aesthetic and conceptual effect: it
shows you
a different worldview, it makes you look at the world differently. It changes
your perceptions and adds to your range of experience of regard. It is
not art,
but it is an effective analog to art and it is more effective than much New
Media art. We would do well to ask ourselves why this is and why
*precisely* it
is not art. That might help us get a GPS lock on some tasks that New
Media needs
to start working on rather urgently if it is not to become the new
water colors.
Possibly one doesn't need gee-whiz tech to be a thought-provoking
artist. But a
New Media artist is an artist working with new media, by *definition* they are
working with gee-whiz technology. We cannot decide that time stopped in 1996
(or whenever we could first afford our own copy of Director and a QuickTime
codec). Nam June Paik's later work has a different meaning to earlier
work done
with the same technology. Charcoal does not mean the same thing now as it did
twenty thousand years ago.
IT has become pervasive. It is now landscape rather than still life, ground
rather than figure. We can work with this, turning from unpaid salespeople of
the gee-whiz to embedded reporters and critics of it in the wider world.
Or we can reaffirm the link between the new and new media (and the high
and high
art) amd pursue the new arenas for computation (wearable, mobile, massively
networked) and new levels of computing power (can I get a Beowulf cluster of
that?) that have emerged over the last decade.
Or we can regroup, take stock, look hard at where we've come from and where we
are and try to maintain that trajectory or to generate a new one. This turns
the trend that Charlie criticises into a virtue.
The current state of New Media art is revealing about changing social
relations
in western culture. This in itself is interesting and might generate some
useful work for New Media artists to do.
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mark Tribe's - New Media Art, book.
On 13 Aug 2006, at 05:26, Eric Dymond wrote:
> Dumber by the minute
Email is such an old-fashioned medium. Why does anyone care what
anyone says in it? Can't we just IM our opinions? etc.
- Rob.
> Dumber by the minute
Email is such an old-fashioned medium. Why does anyone care what
anyone says in it? Can't we just IM our opinions? etc.
- Rob.