As an empyre moderator I can assure everyone it isn't disappearing. During August it has been on holiday. At the start of ISEA and the Istanbul Biennale it will be spluttering back into life on the theme of festivals and gloablisation, moderated by Tim Murray and Renate Ferro.
However, list serves aren't as well populated and dynamic as they once were. To a large extent they have been displaced by social media like Twitter and Facebook. On one level that's not a problem. On another it is. Unlike other platforms the list serve facilitates thoughtful posts rather than throw away one liners. In a way the more popular and accessible social media platforms (like Facebook) are to internet discourse what iPads and Androids are to computing - promoting a more mediated and distanced engagement. This is part of the normalisation and commodification of the net. best Simon On 9 Sep 2011, at 15:19, Ana Valdés wrote: > I remember I was subscribed to Syndicate as well but I never heard about NN > and never participated, I felt Syndicate was more a list for announcements of > events, maybe I only subscribed to the events list. > But it's interesting to discuss the validity of the mailinglists today, as > forums for discussion or for sharing information. > I have been participating in the Australian list -empyre for many years and > now I feel the list is slowly dissapearing. Some of you (Patrick Lichty was a > briljant moderator for some month's ago) are members of -empyre too. Do you > feel the same as me? It's not strange, the list has been on the net for ages > and the moderators do a terrific job but the most of people are freelancing > artists or teachers with very little time to spare... > I tried today to reach their arrchives and the links were broken. > It would be a real loss if -empyre is gone. > Ana > > On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 3:54 PM, marc garrett <marc.garr...@furtherfield.org> > wrote: > Hi Ana, > > Thanks for the link to 'Doctress Neutopia', very interesting... > > Yes - I remember on the (once brilliant) Syndicate list years ago, where > Netochka Nezvanova, N.N., antiorp, integer dominated, causing all kinds > of upset... > > "The net entity nn (Netochka Nezvanova, integer, antiorp, etc.), a > pseudonym used by an international group of artists and programmers in > their extensive and aggressive mailing list-based online-performances and > for other art projects, had been subscribed to the Syndicate list in 1997. > It was, as the first of less than a handful of people ever, unsubscribed > against its will because it was spamming the list so heavily that all > meaningful communication was blocked. In January 2001, nn sent an e-mail > asking to again be subscribed to the Syndicate mailing list. (What nn > never bothered to realise was that subscription to the list had always > been open so that, at any point, it could have subscribed itself - we have > always wondered why Majordomo is such a blind spot in this technophile > entity's arsenal.) After getting assurances from nn that she was not out > to misuse the list, we subscribed it to the Syndicate list. > > Naively, as we had to realise. nn went from one or two messages every day > in February to an average of three to five message in April and up to > eight and ten messages per day in May and June - and that on a list which > had a regular daily traffic of three to five messages a day. The > distributed nature of the nn collective makes it possible for them to keep > posting 24 hours a day - great for promoting your online presence, > irritating for people who have a less frantic life rhythm. nn's messages > are always cryptic, sometimes amusing, often tediously repetitive in their > quirky rhetorics and style, and generally irritating for the majority of > people. Its activity on the Syndicate - like on many other lists it has > used and terrorised - soon came to look like a hijack. But the sheer mass > of traffic nn was generating, the sheer amount of nn's presence, was > overwhelming. Perhaps this phenomenon could be compared to SMEGL, short > for super mental grid lock, a term that was developed to describe traffic > jam situations in NYC back in the eighties (or was this term coined in > Berlin-Kreuzberg's famous Fischbuero? Who knows, the boundaries get > blurred...). > > In the spring of 2001, nn's and other people's activities who use open, > unmoderated mailing lists for promulgating their self-promotional e-mails, > triggered discussions about 'spam art', on Syndicate as well as on other > lists. Actually, given the extreme openness and vulnerability of a > structure like the Syndicate it remains quite astonishing that this > structure survived for such a long time. What happened in the course of > 2000/2001 (not only to Syndicate, but also to several other mailing lists) > was that the openness of these lists, i.e. the fact that they were > unmoderated, was massively abused, and, finally, destroyed, by relentless > 'creative' spamming. One of the basic principles of the Internet - its > openness - suddenly seemed to become a mere tool for attacking this very > principle. 'Netiquette' did not seem to be of much value anymore and was > sacrificed for the egotistical self-expression of (distributed) artist > egos. The irony of this process is that, like any good parasite, this > artistic practice depends on the existence of lively online communities: > it not only bites, but kills the hand that feeds it. - These parasite > nomads will find new hosts, no doubt, but they have over the past year > helped to erode the social fabric of the wider net cultural population so > much that communities have to protect themselves from attacks and hijacks > more aggressively than before. Their adolescent carelessness is partly > responsible for the withering of the romantic utopia of a completely open, > sociable online environment. However educational that may be, we despise > the deliberation with which these people act. > > nn got unsubscribed from the Syndicate without warning on a day when there > had been nothing but ten messages from her. After some days of silence and > sighs of relief, angry protests by nn came through. On the list, > accusations of censorship and/or dictatorship were made. A small but noisy > faction denounced unsubscribing nn as an act against the freedom of > speech. They called the administrators fascists, murderers, and > 'threatened' to report the case to 'Index on Censorship'. While some other > list members welcomed the departure of nn on and off the list and the > admin team again and again explained their move, the ludicrous allegations > and vociferous insults continued. > > The real shock for us was that the majority of list subscribers did not > participate in the discussion and thus silently seemed to accept what was > going on. It was personally hurtful not to receive more support against > the insults raised against us, but more frustrating was the indifference > that made the whole process possible. Within few days, the alienation from > the atmosphere on the list was so great that we admitted defeat, > re-subscribed nn and began to withdraw from the Syndicate. The list was > moved to a different server and is now administered by other people at > anart.no/~syndicate. We wanted to avoid further verbiage and conflict and > therefore gave up the name, but we insist that from our perspective the > Syndicate project that was founded in 1996 ended in August 2001. What > remains under its name is a zombie kept alive by misconceptions about what > the Syndicate really was. Maybe we should have stopped the project > altogether in the summer? > > Filtering has, in a way, done us in. Before there were effective e-mail > clients that could filter out lists and other mail communication, > everybody on the list got everything more or less instantly, which also > meant a higher level of social awareness and social control of what goes > on on the list. Today, many people filter the lists they subscribe to and > only look at the postings at irregular intervals - some mailboxes don't > get opened for months. Like this, people consume the list passively and do > not even notice a fiasco like the one that we experienced on the Syndicate > list in the summer. I guess that some people who remain subscribed to the > Syndicate list still have not noticed that anything has changed. For a > social community, that kind of behaviour - automated deferance - can be > fatal." > > <nettime> Rise and Decline of the Syndicate > http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0111/msg00077.html > > wishing all well. > > marc > > > > > Interesting, it reminds me about doctress Neutopia, > > > http://projectwhitehouse.wordpress.com/democrats/libby-hubbard-aka-doctress-neutopia-free-the-slaves > > a selfnamed prophet and the founder of a new religion at the > beginning of the Net, around 1995. > > She terrorized many online communities and was expelled from many forums. > > Ana > > > > On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 3:25 PM, marc garrett > <marc.garr...@furtherfield.org> wrote: > > > > Netochka Nezvanova. > > > > One of the most famous and infamous EccentricCharacters in > > turn–of–the–21st Century Western artistic NetworkCulture, Netochka > > Nezvanova (aka N.N., antiorp, integer, Irena Sabine Czubera) > remains an > > enigma to many. Widely believed to be an IdentityCollective?, > Netochka > > Nezvanova is a PenName named after the title character in [an early > > unfinished Fyodor Dostoevsky novel] whose name means "nameless > nobody" > > in Russian. The identity always presents itself as female, though > it may > > not be in reality. Despite the meaning of her moniker, N.N. has > coveted > > attention and recognition like few others on the Internet. > > > > http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/NetochkaNezvanova > > _______________________________________________ > > NetBehaviour mailing list > > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > > > > > > > > > -- > > http://www.twitter.com/caravia15852 > > http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/ > > http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia > > http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/ > > http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/ > > http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/ > > http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0 > > http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/ > > > > mobil/cell +4670-3213370 > > > > > > "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth > with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you > will always long to return. > > — Leonardo da Vinci > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > NetBehaviour mailing list > > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > > > -- > http://www.twitter.com/caravia15852 > http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/ > http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia > http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/ > http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/ > http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/ > http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0 > http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/ > > mobil/cell +4670-3213370 > > > "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your > eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long > to return. > — Leonardo da Vinci > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Simon Biggs | si...@littlepig.org.uk | www.littlepig.org.uk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk | Edinburgh College of Art | University of Edinburgh www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.co.uk
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