Dear Geert, Lev, nettime...ok, I take the bait...!!!
On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 12:38 AM Geert Lovink <ge...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> URL or not but this is too good, and too important for nettimers, not to
> read and discuss. These very personal and relevant observations come from a
> public Facebook page and have been written by Lev Manovich (who is “feeling
> thoughtful” as the page indicates).
>
LOL smile....anything for a good debate...
>
>
> My anti-digital art manifesto / What do we feel when we look at the
> previous generations of electronic and computer technologies? 1940s TV
> sets, 1960s mainframes, 1980s PCs, 1990s versions of Windows, or 2000s
> mobile phones? I feel "embarrassed. "Awkward." Almost "shameful." "Sad."
>
I am sorry. Are you ok? Have you been in self-isolation too long and are
going stir crazy? Why do you feel that? Those were just displays-of-yore.
Now we have slick flat screens, and small projectors, and Arduino boards,
and thin, very thin...on a diet thin, laptops.
Nam June Paik pieces are as great as ever. What was he trying to do? He
wasn't shameful! But he did not live in the LED era. It's the artist who
dies in a body which is obsolete after so long traveling around the
planet...
> And this is exactly the same feelings I have looking at 99% of digital
> art/computer art / new media art/media art created in previous decades.
>
After the newness of the 90s we may have had some lack of vision...
And I will feel the same when looking at the most cutting-edge art done
> today ("AI art," etc.) 5 years from now.
>
You could say this about paintings made in the 80s. Julian Schnabel
paintings with broken plates are maybe temper tantrums, and are maybe
embarrassing? The question is why does digital media art get the short end
of the critical stick...everyone loves to bash it!
> If consumer products have "planned obsolescence," digital art created with
> the "latest" technology has its own "built-in obsolescence." //
>
Has that all the "point" of making digital art has been about - being "the
latest tech"? I don't think so...I am going to stick up for a project I was
deeply involved in from 2013-2015, 'waterwheel.net' - maybe you know it? We
may have been avoided by purists because we didn't communicate via the DOS
interface and an autonomous server network - rather we used Facebook,
email, Google docs, Twitter, and an artists-designed performance "platform"
called The Tap, which allowed for synchronous, real-time performance and
panels through webcame. I will plug its inventors at Igneous. I will brag
about our involvement with World Water Day , 5 years before the climate
became a properly acknowledged (has it yet?) crisis.
I will also brag about the 30 curators involved, the 120 artists projects
we reviewed; the week-long Symposium in which we programmed live talks,
panels, screenings and performances around the time-zone clock...and I will
brag about the curation of Hot Water - Water and War as part of Balance &
Unblance Environmental art festival and the 300 page e-book we made out of
all of our research. This was not dead digital art...this was many artists
and curators meeting up across the world to talk about WATER...So many
great people and great ideas were exchanged and if you tuned in you might
see a fantastic performance by someone on the other side of the world.
> These feelings of sadness, disappointment, remorse, and embarrassment
> have been provoked especially this week as I am watching Ars Electronica
> programs every day. I start wondering - did I waste my whole life in the
> wrong field?
>
LOL. C'mon...Lev Manovich? Why I just had my students looking at Vertov's
film using your syntax...although they seem to have some "new" terminology
such as "collision edits" for montage...
> It is very exciting to be at the "cutting edge", but the price you pay is
> heavy.
>
No comment. Just because a work of art is done digitally does not mean it
is "cutting edge" by a long shot...imho
> After 30 years in this field, there are very few artworks I can show to my
> students without feeling embarrassed.
>
That is tragic! There are so many that are classics - and still useable,
wonderful, stimulating...(I semi-avoided Ars E this year, even though I
could go to all of it without getting in an airplane...because I spend so
much time on screens, sometimes it just all goes flat and gets boring)
> While I remember why there were so important to us at the moment they were
> made, their low-resolution visuals and broken links can't inspire students.
> //
>
True. But, not to be shown then...
> The same is often true for the "content" of digital art. It's about
> "issues," "impact of X on Y", "critique of A", "a parody of B", "community
> of C" and so on. //
>
??? I think just as much as painting, sculpture, or other media ever
were...no more, no less...
It's almost never about our real everyday life and our humanity. Feelings.
> Passions. Looking at the world. Looking inside yourself. Falling in love.
> Breaking up. Questioning yourself. Searching for love, meaning, less
> alienated life.//
>
It is false. It is not all just a remediation of another medium.
After I watch Ars Electronica streams, I go to Netflix or switch on the TV,
> and it feels like fresh air. I see very well made films and TV series.
> Perfectly lighted, color graded, art directed.
>
LOL. Lev, Netflix is the appartus of state power as it has globalized into
"european" shows shown in USA - the bland gen x backdrops of tourist
destinations as "landscapes" for detectives with midlife crises...and CIA,
and guns...like more guns than a mountain of guns, although "european"
shows use fewer guns and tend to bring in the baddies by reason...and
enlightened discourse...
> I see real people,
>
No real people. All characters.
> not "ideas" and meaningless sounds of yet another "electronic music"
> performance,
>
It's true, some genres and ideas can be stale!
> or yet another meaningless outputs of a neural network invented by
> brilliant scientists and badly misused by "artists."
>
Hmmm. Is it really that bad?
> New media art never deals with human life, and this is why it does not
> enter museums.
>
It does. Tamiko Thiel, Zara Houssmann, Ian Cheng...Claudia Schmuckly
although she was preempted by COVID
> It's our fault. Don't blame curators or the "art world." Digital art is
> "anti-human art," and this is why it does not stay in history. //
>
> No comment. Art is what it is and if it is not human enough, then maybe
supercomputing labs where you hang out can help?
The mystery of why some technology (and art made with them) has
obsolescence and others do not - thinking about this for 25 years.
Something else is cheaper to produce and looks more contemporary. Check out
Spectre with Daniel Craig, a makeover of the styling of Bond.
We are fascinated by 19th-century photographs or 1960s ones. They look
beautiful, rich, full of emotions, and meanings.
Yes. Auratic!
But video art from the 1980s-1990s looks simply terrible, you want to run
away and forget that you ever saw this.
Eyes glazed by special effects...but Dara Birnbaum rocks...so does Bruce
Nauman for recording himself walking...so does Ana Mendiata for recording
with a video camera her earthworks...sometimes you need 2 -3 versions to
get a better sense of what happened and a healthy attitude towards "being
there" or not.
Why first Apple computers look cool, cute, engaged?
Use friendly
But art created on them does not?
It's still kind of cool that someone tried? Is it always about the screenal
appearance of the artwork...the final delivery? The display...if it is all
about display to please the viewer then research grants should be amply
available to create display-invention labs...you can be the judge...there
is low-res, glitch, etc.. and uber-high res...its like hotels.
And so on. I still have not solved this question.
Well that's good! Who would want it solved...
> Perhaps part of this has to be with the message that goes along with lots
> of tech art from the 1960s to today -
>
They believed in what they were doing...especially the feminists.
> and especially today. 19th or 20th-century photographs done by
> professional photographs or good amateurs do not come with utopian,
> pretentious, exaggerated, unrealistic, and hypocritical statements,
>
Hmmm. I think some did...
> the way lots of "progressive art" does today.
>
An artwork has to be really progressive to be progressive...that's all.
Some is bad. Some is extraordinary. For instance, Transborder Tool by
Electronic Disturbance Theater and b.a.n.g. lab...very unpretentious tool -
very clever remix of the android interface...programming...very good
intentions...very high concept/low tech...(best buy phones)...VERY big
social and political impact esp on those who don't understand electronic
media...and the virtues of HACKING.
Nor do their titles announce all latest tech processes used to create
these photographs.
Well, maybe, but there was a time when 19th and 20th century photographs
were also presented as magic new technologies...bought because they were
the latest print, no doubt...or the latest technology...
I think, perhaps, you are fed up with the artworld and probably have every
reason to be. When "new media" started heating up back in 1998, I was at
Ars E in person and artists were talking about how everything seemed a
"gimmick" - artists I respected!!! At the same time, this festival was
translating lectures and talks into 4 languages with audio translation
tools, the same used in the San Francisco school district for meetings
where parents speak anything but English. To me that symposium effort at
Ars was fantastic! A fantastic event to participate in and it was "new
media" - I also met people...which we don't do now that we are in
self-isolation, as much...Perhaps Art needs to focus on getting with the
problem-solving collaborators who are working to define and address the
many many social ills of our ill-fated 21st century. We cannot look at our
20th c navels any longer, that is certain. Maybe digital art should be
placed inside the deeply secured "cloud" data farms and launched on flag
poles to declare itself. I do not know.
Feel better soon. Zoom fatigue is real. The loss felt of "not actually
being there" is real. Still its useful.
I hope you write another book about supercomputers.
Molly
--------------------
> Ars Electronica 2020:
> https://ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/en/
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>
> --------------------
> Video illustration: Japanese robot at Ars Electronica 2010 -
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmabKC1P51A
>
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