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.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Burning Down The House
On Thursday, May 27, 2004, at 03:56PM, Ivan Pope <ivan@ivanpope.com> wrote:
>> Just because I dare say some art is aesthetically "better"
>> than some other art,
>
>It is very brave of you, but it does not make it true.
Nor does pointing that out make it false. Aesthetics is concerned with value. Suspension of aesthetic value judgements is a historical wart of Cultural Studies (CS) expansionism. It is still a value judgement: everything has equal value, and that value is positive (art has the value of being a useful subject excuse for poststructuralist essays). So every artwork becomes a masterpiece (maximum possible value), CSers are happy, and, disturbingly, the market is happy.
>Do you mean it's anti-art _because_ it laughs at craft? Can't art laugh at
>craft? Can't art question the practice of assigning aesthetic value? Isn't
>that part of the job of art?
In much the same way that the job of commerce is to maximise shareholder value. By which I mean that "questioning" is only a virtue to a particular entrenched and self-serving current view of art that has little to do with art itself and provides little value to the people actually doing the work.
>Or - whose aesthetic value do we want to assign to artwork? Yours? My dads?
>George Bush's?
Definitely George's. If you think Saatchi's outhouse burning down isn't funny, George on art would be a riot. "Uhhhhhh. It's a face?"
Seriously, artworks have value, otherwise why are people protesting? Discussing why we believe works have value can be illuminating. Conforming to the position that "all artworks are equally useful for the writing of essays" is not very useful for art, and is not avant-garde, being decades old in any educational institution.
- Rob.
>> Just because I dare say some art is aesthetically "better"
>> than some other art,
>
>It is very brave of you, but it does not make it true.
Nor does pointing that out make it false. Aesthetics is concerned with value. Suspension of aesthetic value judgements is a historical wart of Cultural Studies (CS) expansionism. It is still a value judgement: everything has equal value, and that value is positive (art has the value of being a useful subject excuse for poststructuralist essays). So every artwork becomes a masterpiece (maximum possible value), CSers are happy, and, disturbingly, the market is happy.
>Do you mean it's anti-art _because_ it laughs at craft? Can't art laugh at
>craft? Can't art question the practice of assigning aesthetic value? Isn't
>that part of the job of art?
In much the same way that the job of commerce is to maximise shareholder value. By which I mean that "questioning" is only a virtue to a particular entrenched and self-serving current view of art that has little to do with art itself and provides little value to the people actually doing the work.
>Or - whose aesthetic value do we want to assign to artwork? Yours? My dads?
>George Bush's?
Definitely George's. If you think Saatchi's outhouse burning down isn't funny, George on art would be a riot. "Uhhhhhh. It's a face?"
Seriously, artworks have value, otherwise why are people protesting? Discussing why we believe works have value can be illuminating. Conforming to the position that "all artworks are equally useful for the writing of essays" is not very useful for art, and is not avant-garde, being decades old in any educational institution.
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Burning Down The House
On Thursday, May 27, 2004, at 04:16AM, twhid <twhid@twhid.com> wrote:
>It all comes down to book-burning IMO...
No books were burnt. There was no intentionality. It does not come down to book burning. It comes down to shadenfreude.
>If this was fundamentalist christians/muslims burning Burrows/Rushdie
>we wouldn't have so many self-identified artists on this list gleefully
>dancing around the fire.
You seem to be demanding that the sanctity of "art" be protected against the threat of fascism by appealing to fear of religious groups.
>Of course (i'll assume) this was an accidental
>fire, but it seems many on this list would have willingly tossed the
>match.
I would not. I would rugby-tackle anyone holding a match anywhere near anything that claims to be art. I was an intern at the ICA when Jake & Dinos Chapman installed their f***faces. I didn't even say anything negative to the camera shoved in my face, let alone have any accidents with matches.
>the NYTimes fills us in on what was destroyed, which includes paintings
>-- gasp! yes -- paintings, one-of-a-kind paintings, and even -- yikes!
>-- sculptures.. but who cares?
Video and installation are the State Art of New Labour Britain. They get the funding, they fill the galleries, they win the awards. You are appealing for totalitarian art, not against it.
>they suck and their old media anyway..
What does media have to do with suckiness? The only piece I liked in the last Turner Prize was the video.
And what's new media about stitchwork (Emin), painted metal figures and carved wood (Chapmans) and ceramics (various)? Video and computer are 40-50 years old, installation older. I can't think of any "new" media in the Saatchi collection.
Oh, I tell a lie. There was that frozen blood head that defrosted when Nigella's kitchen was being put in. Which was also funny.
>the artists will just make more, right?
Tracey Emin says she's more concerned about children dying in Iraq.
>And again I ask myself, why do so many artists seem to hate art?
This is precisely the kind of art that Saatchi collects, art that hates art.
I will volunteer that I love art, but it's a sincere and deep love, not an ostentatious, conformist, sentimental, neurotic, desperate love. It would seem this is a love that dare not speak its name.
- Rob.
>It all comes down to book-burning IMO...
No books were burnt. There was no intentionality. It does not come down to book burning. It comes down to shadenfreude.
>If this was fundamentalist christians/muslims burning Burrows/Rushdie
>we wouldn't have so many self-identified artists on this list gleefully
>dancing around the fire.
You seem to be demanding that the sanctity of "art" be protected against the threat of fascism by appealing to fear of religious groups.
>Of course (i'll assume) this was an accidental
>fire, but it seems many on this list would have willingly tossed the
>match.
I would not. I would rugby-tackle anyone holding a match anywhere near anything that claims to be art. I was an intern at the ICA when Jake & Dinos Chapman installed their f***faces. I didn't even say anything negative to the camera shoved in my face, let alone have any accidents with matches.
>the NYTimes fills us in on what was destroyed, which includes paintings
>-- gasp! yes -- paintings, one-of-a-kind paintings, and even -- yikes!
>-- sculptures.. but who cares?
Video and installation are the State Art of New Labour Britain. They get the funding, they fill the galleries, they win the awards. You are appealing for totalitarian art, not against it.
>they suck and their old media anyway..
What does media have to do with suckiness? The only piece I liked in the last Turner Prize was the video.
And what's new media about stitchwork (Emin), painted metal figures and carved wood (Chapmans) and ceramics (various)? Video and computer are 40-50 years old, installation older. I can't think of any "new" media in the Saatchi collection.
Oh, I tell a lie. There was that frozen blood head that defrosted when Nigella's kitchen was being put in. Which was also funny.
>the artists will just make more, right?
Tracey Emin says she's more concerned about children dying in Iraq.
>And again I ask myself, why do so many artists seem to hate art?
This is precisely the kind of art that Saatchi collects, art that hates art.
I will volunteer that I love art, but it's a sincere and deep love, not an ostentatious, conformist, sentimental, neurotic, desperate love. It would seem this is a love that dare not speak its name.
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Burning Down The House
On 26 May 2004, at 20:43, t.whid wrote:
> On the other hand, a conceptual gesture in the cause of art doesn't
> equate to accidental (or purposeful if it was an insurance scam)
> wholesale destruction of one-of-a-kind artworks which are now lost
> forever.
But the whole point is that they are *not* one-of-a-kind artworks.
And if something being art makes it OK, I'm dreading an increasingly
desperate Bush Jr. redescribing the Iraq debacle as an artwork.
> of course! destruction of art you don't like doesn't really matter,
> such an obviously rational position.
OK, OK. I'll pretend to like the work. Maybe I can fake a tear or two.
I'm not sure deception is more rational than schadenfreude, though.
> You don't see the danger in that sort of thinking? Seems fairly
> obvious to me. To bad there weren't any 'bad' books on the blaze
> either, aye?
I thought that accidental destruction didn't equate to a conceptual
gesture? I am amused in this one instance by the former, it does *not*
follow that I am an enemy of the people.
You are equating "bad" as in quality (Tom Clancy) with "bad" as
identified by the Adolf Schickelgruber Marching Band (any art that
isn't totalitarian dross). Before I invoke Godwin again, let me point
out that the Saatchi collection is not the poor, defenseless,
avant-garde "Degenerate Art" of our time, it is the totalitarian state
art dross .
- Rob.
> On the other hand, a conceptual gesture in the cause of art doesn't
> equate to accidental (or purposeful if it was an insurance scam)
> wholesale destruction of one-of-a-kind artworks which are now lost
> forever.
But the whole point is that they are *not* one-of-a-kind artworks.
And if something being art makes it OK, I'm dreading an increasingly
desperate Bush Jr. redescribing the Iraq debacle as an artwork.
> of course! destruction of art you don't like doesn't really matter,
> such an obviously rational position.
OK, OK. I'll pretend to like the work. Maybe I can fake a tear or two.
I'm not sure deception is more rational than schadenfreude, though.
> You don't see the danger in that sort of thinking? Seems fairly
> obvious to me. To bad there weren't any 'bad' books on the blaze
> either, aye?
I thought that accidental destruction didn't equate to a conceptual
gesture? I am amused in this one instance by the former, it does *not*
follow that I am an enemy of the people.
You are equating "bad" as in quality (Tom Clancy) with "bad" as
identified by the Adolf Schickelgruber Marching Band (any art that
isn't totalitarian dross). Before I invoke Godwin again, let me point
out that the Saatchi collection is not the poor, defenseless,
avant-garde "Degenerate Art" of our time, it is the totalitarian state
art dross .
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Burning Down The House
On 26 May 2004, at 17:45, t.whid wrote:
> HAHA, destruction of art -- really funny!
The Chapmans have defaced Goya prints to make publicity -er- their art.
How funny was that?
> Good thing it was the degenerate art which got destroyed and not the
> good stuff.
Straw man and premature intrusion of Godwin's law aside, it isn't much
of a loss. The works are all series or recycled one-liners. That
adman's latrine has stunk out British art for far too long. I'm just
worried some Raes, Caulfields or early Hirsts may have been lost as
well.
- Rob.
--
"If record companies sold bottled water they'd demand that poison be
added to your taps.
> HAHA, destruction of art -- really funny!
The Chapmans have defaced Goya prints to make publicity -er- their art.
How funny was that?
> Good thing it was the degenerate art which got destroyed and not the
> good stuff.
Straw man and premature intrusion of Godwin's law aside, it isn't much
of a loss. The works are all series or recycled one-liners. That
adman's latrine has stunk out British art for far too long. I'm just
worried some Raes, Caulfields or early Hirsts may have been lost as
well.
- Rob.
--
"If record companies sold bottled water they'd demand that poison be
added to your taps.
Re: Re: new work: gloriousninth flaming
On Wednesday, May 26, 2004, at 07:25AM, Rob Myers <robmyers@mac.com> wrote:
>On 26 May 2004, at 00:42, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
>
>> What the fuck does wit(h)nessing mean?
>
>Have you tried f***ing thinking about it?
It was early. I was rude. I apologise. I meant to protest at your choice of words, not be an unfunny git.
Sorry.
- Rob.
>On 26 May 2004, at 00:42, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
>
>> What the fuck does wit(h)nessing mean?
>
>Have you tried f***ing thinking about it?
It was early. I was rude. I apologise. I meant to protest at your choice of words, not be an unfunny git.
Sorry.
- Rob.