Rob Myers
Since 2003
Works in United States of America

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.
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DISCUSSION

Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology


On 7 Oct 2004, at 21:53, bensyverson wrote:

> That's an interesting way to look at it -- I look at Impressionist
> work and see a radical protest at the dawn of the machine age. If you
> think their work was a joyful expression of how wonderful it was to
> take the train and paint flowers, you're missing the only thing in
> those paintings of interest to me.

Yet they did paint flowers (well, fields). Without the technology of
the train, tube paint, and state-sponsored colour theory we would not
have those images. If this is the extent of it then it is problematic
contrasted with...

> What I admire about them is the furiously angry assault on the
> blackened industrial wastelands their cities had become -- so angry
> that even their brushstrokes rebelled against being used as fully
> representational marks (like they were in the assemblyLine of
> quick-cash portrait painting).

...the fact that these often politically active yet bourgeois artists
were urbanites during the industrial revolution and political unrest in
France. To look at the Impressionists as mere formalists or prettifiers
is indeed a mistake of chocolate box proportions.

When chocolate boxes have LCD screens printed on them, will those
screens show FF?

>> Of the abstract expressionists, artificial mediums and individualism.
>> Form follows function.
>
> The AbExers were not formalists either.

Absolutely. Yet they made forms. Ones that the unreflective can hang in
their living rooms. A Pollock or a Rothko in the flesh is a
breathtaking, powerful aesthetic experience. This doesn't mean that the
work doesn't have or effectively communicate ideas. Far from it, the
form allows the work to perform (fnarr) its function. And those forms,
and that function, were informed (fnarr) by the ideology and technology
of the day.

>> These pseudo-chaotic structures and seemingly ordered systems are our
>> lives rendered for us to see, the space we live in (or that is
>> dictated to us). This is how it is. This is keeping it real. The
>> mapping is defensible.
>
> That's about half of an idea, but not nearly enough to warrant the
> fullScale rejection of intellectual discourse and conceptualism.

Nonono. I'm not rejecting discourse or conceptualism. I am asking for
it to be generated rather than illustrated or applied.

> The important thing to keep in mind is that all art is conceptual,
> whether you like it or not,

I collect Art & Language monographs... :-)

> because it "happens" in the brain. If no one will step up to the plate
> and talk about this art, it's because not very much is happening in
> anyone's brain as they ingest it.

Possibly not. And very possibly it is minor. But it may be realistic,
or necessary. And it is historically precedented.

>> It'll grow on ya. ;-)
>
> Hopefully some of deesMemes will grow on you too :)

This is the best thread for ages. :-)

- Rob.

DISCUSSION

Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology


On 7 Oct 2004, at 22:26, bensyverson wrote:

> On Oct 7, 2004, at 3:29 PM, Rob Myers wrote:
>
>> There's a difference between abstraction, aesthetics, and vacuous
>> prettiness. Critic beware. :-)
>
> Yes, but no one will flesh out for me why FlashFormalism isn't vacuous
> prettiness. I'm eager to know. We've heard the TooMuchInformation!
> explanation, but to me it rings hollow. Bueller?

It isn't vacuous prettiness because it is realistic. It is descriptive
of contemporary experience. That experience is aesthetic and systemic,
yet chaotic for the individual. This is not an age where it's possible
to paint on ceilings or floors.

An obviously acute social commentary or deconstructive narrative would
not be realistic. It would be a fantasy of critical engagement and
import, a mere illustration or placebo.

FF is realistic to the social conditions of its production. As I say,
don't shoot the messenger.

> Read more closely -- I'm not trying to import newMedia into the
> "pre-existent" criticalModels used in contempArt, I'm trying to point
> out that there's NO critical discourse happening around this work,

Possibly that's because the discourse is happening within the work.

>> Feed them "Emigre". ;-)
>
> They're too busy kerning ad copy for Starbucks at $100/hr to sit down
> and read about the [implications/hystories/theories] of typefaces...

Ew. :-(

> I think you may have just taken the Ridonculous Award from curt.

Cool. I'll hang it next to my bowling low score certificate. ;-)

> Fuck cultural studies. I'm asking this group, this meeting of the
> minds, what is [critical/challenging/progressive] about
> FlashFormalism,

However the examples you give and the language you use indicates
certain pre-existent (and commonly held) ideas about what to be
critical/challenging/progressive is. That is, the challenge must be one
we can join, rather than one directed at us, and must be renderable in
language.

> This is devastatingly depressing. There are so many discussions that
> have been woven together to form newMedia,

Discussions in the work or around the work?

> and now you want to pretend not to see them and start over with new
> language.

Beware of confusing the discourse around the work with the discourse in
the work (the discourse of the work).

> As if the cybernetics discussion in the earlyVideo moment isn't still
> relevant.

It's very relevant because it is exactly the kind of socially engaged
formalism that it is important not to be aspect-blind to in FF.

> As if the hypertext discussion of the earlyHypermedia moment isn't
> still relevant. As if "interactivity" and "cybernetics" are unrelated,
> and unrelated to what's happening now. This is one of the main reasons
> I built liken into criticalartware.net; from the very beginning we
> wanted to be sure that we were connecting with and expanding upon
> existing discussions that were directly relevant to the discussion of
> newMedia.

Which is great, but slots very easily into the academic/commercial
artworld. It's engages in existing discussions rather than revealing
gaps in the language of that discussion.

> Make up your own language if you like -- have fun reinventing the
> wheel and calling it something else. I'll keep working hard to
> [continue/reexamine/revive/extend] the discussions you're so eager to
> cast off.

I'm not suggesting we cast off history, far from it. I'm suggesting
that we look at history to recover a current of resistance to the
unreflective textual formalism of a criticism that FF is obviously
anathema to.

- Rob.

DISCUSSION

Re: Too Much Information!!! j/k, LOL


On 7 Oct 2004, at 22:29, bensyverson wrote:

> On Oct 7, 2004, at 3:43 PM, curt cloninger wrote:
>
>> Perhaps the goal of every B/MFA student is to make a powerful
>> statement, but this too shall pass.
>
> Okay, but if the goal of FlashFormalism is not to be provocative and
> engage with ideas, then lets stop talking about them that way. Until
> someone gives me a reason not to, I'll refer to the purveyors of
> FlashFormalism as FlashArtisans, and consider their intellectual
> weight to be on a par with painted pottery.

Leave the Turner Prize out of this. ;-)

- Rob.

DISCUSSION

Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology


On 7 Oct 2004, at 00:54, bensyverson wrote:

> So if you find aesthetic discussions titillating ("ooh, more brown!"
> ... "too many boxes!"), by all means, keepOnRawxin'InTheFreeWorld.

There's a difference between abstraction, aesthetics, and vacuous
prettiness. Critic beware. :-)

> I'm just trying to publicly raise the issue of whether this is how we
> want to let newMedia come to be defined. If it nM does become
> pigeon-holed as nice-looking clickable data pictures, I won't be a
> part of it, and neither will a lot of people who are currently engaged
> with this discussion.

Well nor will I but I don't think that's the issue here. Demanding
pre-existent cultural/critical/textual import of digital art is
demanding that it normalise itself with the entrenched values of the
academic/commerical artworlds. Illustration is not the opposite of
insignificance.

> Given the radical artistic, conceptual and social hystorical
> hyperthreads that make up the area-of-activity we delineate (for
> economic reasons) as "graphicDsign," I find myself dismayed that the
> graduates of these programs are more excited about software upgrades
> than the ideas they're working with.

Feed them "Emigre". ;-)

> Of course -- to be flip, that's all part of the blender we call life.
> In liken, the system I put in place on criticalartware.net, those
> partially digested chunks present themselves as part of
> hyperConnextive informationSuperTrails. The piece I'm missing is how
> to understand this pureFormalist newMedia in relation to those
> hyperChunks. Pall gave us the "TMI" model, but I don't think that's
> adequate to fuel or sustain this much discussion. If there is more
> intellectual life to FlashFormalism, someone please fill me in!

Inasmuchas it is not simply illustrating and confirming the
unreflective critical demands of cultural studies departments, ff is
potentially more critical than anything that simply mirrors
pre-existent "critical" virtues.

We may have work to do if our language is not sufficient for the task.
That would be exciting for a critic, surely?

> Have you ever heard of "anti-marketing marketing?" This is the
> strategy where you position yourself as against the system in order to
> catch the anti-marketing demographic in your audience. Take for
> example the Sprite ad campaigns of the past few years, which for the
> most part position themselves as beyond the hype -- the message is
> "drink whatever you want to! Just obey your thirst!"

All those early conceptual art pieces, just words and ideas, are highly
collectible now. ;-)

> I'd like to see more criticism and debate happening in our community.

Definitely.

> If anyone here is interested in real ideas, we need to get
> criticality back, and start raising a ruckus about all this
> technoPositivism and intellectually bankrupt abstraction!

I'm more concerned about asserting the supremacy of entrenched
critical/artworld values and textuality over digital art. There *is*
something there, or if there isn't, it's failure on terms that aren't
fully captured by a signification/prettiness opposition.

- Rob.

DISCUSSION

Re: Thinking of art, transparency and social technology


On 7 Oct 2004, at 03:57, bensyverson wrote:

> I absolutely agree (except for the part about art about ideas tending
> towards the unartistic). I'm not suggesting that art must be *about*
> ideas (although there's plenty of good work that's about ideas), but
> that art should at least *have* ideas or at least be the product of
> intellectual pursuit.

In order for art to have ideas, for it to be critically interesting, it
must have some degree of autonomy and it must be problematic for
criticism (and language), of which it is the object. Critics (as we are
being here), must look at it and curse the artists' name because they
can see that there's something there, but they're going to have to
work out what it is rather than reel off
DeleuzeGuattariBaudrillardDerrida and go to bed early.

This is not the difficult art argument. This is the good art argument.
;-)

There are definite ideas in Flash formalism, and it is a definite
social product, more so than the dreary new media weekend marxism of
politically engaged net.art. The fact that FF defeats our critical
language yet is striking, engaging, is healthy for all concerned.

Imagine a world in which formal, algorithmic, visual art was realistic,
necessary, even urgent. Now work back from that world to our own.

Think of the impressionists, their tube paint and the new railroad
network that took them from Paris to the nearby scenery they painted.
Of the abstract expressionists, artificial mediums and individualism.
Form follows function. Art has a social function. Cue jokes about
recursion and currying.

These pseudo-chaotic structures and seemingly ordered systems are our
lives rendered for us to see, the space we live in (or that is dictated
to us). This is how it is. This is keeping it real. The mapping is
defensible. Don't shoot the messengers. ;-)

>> Pollock's work isn't about paint any more than Kruger's is about
>> feminist semiotics or Cezanne's is about apples and crockery.
>
> This business, I'm not so sure about...

It'll grow on ya. ;-)

- Rob.