Re: nettime Your question
Re: 9/18/03 23:17, Peter Lunenfeld [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Good question, wrong example. One of the things I've always liked about Lev Manovich's work is precisely the fact that he doesn't quote the same texts over and over again. There's a posse full of academics happy to download Benjamin, Baudrillard or Deleuze all over you at the drop of a bitform, but Lev's not one of them. As for self-serving agendas, love the sinner, hate the sin. Transparently Yours -- Peter Lunenfeld (received off list with CC to Lunenfeld) Re: 9/19/03 06:55, geert lovink [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Sure, I don't see Lev doing that either. Are is unclear in what he is trying to say. (received off list) Re: 9/19/03 06:42, ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED]: very interested in your comment on lev manovich's take on ars electronica 2003. . . . but don't know where to find the manovich text itself, of great interest since i was there and shared the view, in some dimensions. did i erase it thinking it was spam on a list that i do see (eg, nettime)? or was it elsewhere? Anachronistically yours, then, since email filters in mysterious ways on and around nettime. I did not set the example, only reapplied it without an address (I guess return to sender is the obstinate default). Judging by the response, also from a rare appearance on nettime (how long has it been?), it did strike a note among the dearly departed digirati. Lev, of course, notoriously bowed out of nettime postings during one of the great attempts at a catfight, initiated after soft cinema premiered at ZKM. PP quite pointedly called the new-media-emperor's clothes then, but it was, apparently, way too much nudity to handle. Exile was preferable. On the strangely defensive note taken up here, then, is it possible to discuss the writings of Lev Manovich in such general terms, talking of what he does, his work, as both Ls above seem to suggest? Wouldn't we be taking on far too many presumptive commonalities about his contribution to discourse, which, sort of, brings us back to the commons of his originality. My bounced query is crucially not personal; it rather readdresses how individuals behave and perform, and what they must become, under the profitable spell of a field or a label. The artifice of the edifice extends much further than the walls Lev tentatively knocks down around elevated digital art at AE. Read his book-jacket gushing for Fuller and the up-and-coming domain of software art/culture, practiced, as he says, by the very best, and the ubiquitous nature of the computer as a dismantler of peoples and categories (AE's leaky frontier) gives in to blushing, exclusionary promo for what also happens to be the subject of his next book. Here the up-and-coming ramparts of the budding field are protecting the category's treasures, so the very obvious answer to the original question Lev asked, a question, incidentally, asked around art countless times before, is no, it is not possible. Something tells me he already knew that before asking. As Deleuze plainly noted about Baudrillard's take on Benjamin, ibid. Just to clarify, Lev's essay was posted to Rhizome, not nettime. Which is anecdotally interesting right now, due to a thread called News Flash currently expanding for days on that list. The forwarded lesson is that widely distributed rhetorical questions are best met with silence. -af # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Your question
Am Donnerstag, 18. September 2003 um 16:06:30 Uhr (+0200) schrieb Are Flagan: Final sentence from: Lev Manovich, Don't Call it Art: Ars Electronica 2003 Today, when pretty much every artist and cultural producer is widely using computers while also typically being motivated by many other themes and discourses, is it in fact possible that digital art happens everywhere else but not within the spaces of Ars Electronica festival? Good question. But likewise, today, when pretty much every theorist and writer on digital culture is widely quoting the same texts, while typically also being motivated by quite transparent, self-serving agendas, is it in fact possible that new media theory happens everywhere else but not within the claustrophobic spaces of events and writings thus headlined? I would like to share your optimism, but at least in the realms of academia, cultural journalism/criticism and contemporary arts, I don't see it happen. The cultural ubiquity of computing and the Internet which Lev writes about in his piece is one thing, computer literacy and awareness of cultural and political issues of digital technology quite another. The mainstream of academic cultural studies of the Internet, for example, is roughly ten years behind what we discuss here and still bragging about cyber-this, virtual-that, visual-xy. And it seems to get worse: It is hard to find people these days who don't mistake the Microsoft Windows desktop - which has mainstreamed Internet user interfaces (through its default, standard browser and E-Mail clients) radically in comparison to the situation ten or even five years ago - for the computer in general. I might be wrong, but I don't see much cultural computer literacy outside either hacker camps - which are weak at theory - or the net cultures organized around a number of old-fashioned mailing lists (such as Nettime) and festival gatherings. -F -- http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/ http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA, finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Verisign
Hi, Well, last week, Verisign, the company that in the end is responsible for translating domain names ending on .com and .net into ipnumbers, i.e. machines on the Internet, decided to redirect all non existent domains to their sitefinder site. The company that was given the task of running the root of the domain name system by the Internet community, is now making money off our misspelling by putting paid links on these pages. This is a bad for a number of technical reasons, it bothers spam fighters because they can no longer distinguish between real and fake email addresses for example. Email send to misspelled domains will end up at Verisign, which is never good. Verisign was supposed to manage the domain system by giving domains out to whomever paid for it. Now they've said: any domain that hasn't been claimed is ours. But to manage is not supposed to mean to own. Visiting the http://our-integrity-so-we-went-for-the-money.com link presents you with the described page, declaring that: We didn't find: our-integrity-so-we-went-for-the-money.com i.e. making the site describing itself. There is of course something else at stake here. Slowly we're losing the right to name our environment. Trademarks, copyrights etc are invading our language with legal backup. It is one thing when one company sues another because they have similar names. It is quite another when a company tries to block a new word in everyday language (Google trying to stop the word to google by writing seize and desist letters to journalists) There are alternatives in this case: the OpenNic is an democratic system for distributing names. Maybe this incident will make more people go their way. In the end we should realize that on the Internet the user decides which name service to use. Verisign is not a given, it is a choice (and maybe not a very good one). Douwe Osinga http://douweosinga.com # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime ivogram x6: blame, extravagance, travel, croatia, and soros vs shrub
[digested @ nettime] Ivo Skoric [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blaming the Mirror Extravaganze Travel Report More from Croatia George Soros Funds Plan to Block Bush Croatian Economic Woes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Ivo Skoric [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 04:40:00 -0400 Subject: Blaming the Mirror How best to answer the merchants of dismay who are against our occupation in Iraq, asks William Safire? By staying the course and reporting our accomplishments, he concludes. But is it prudent to stay the course? And what accomplishments are out there to be proudly reported? A country brought to chaos? Looted artifacts from museums? Daily deadly toll? Destroyed road, power, and water infrastructure? Reduction of the role of women to 'more appropriate' Arab-Muslim levels? Escalation of Israeli-Palestine conflict (that was supposed to abate in wake of Saddam's fall)? Having everybody hate you? Not a single drop of oil was extracted and exported from Iraq under the American occupation. There is no functioning, democraticaly elected government, and a couple of dozens quislings appointed by the occupiers have to be guarded 24/7. He is talking of military victory, calling himself a realistic optimist. Optimist, maybe, but with no connection to reality. 138 Americans died in the assault on Iraq. 149 died since Bush declared the end of major hostilities... US is mired in a guerilla insurgency of ex-saddamist plus the hodge-podge of suicidal islamist militant volunteers who are flocking to the place to fight the infidel. It is less of a victory than Nazi Germany had in France in 1942... One thing Bush is right - bringing the war to them: it may be better that they flock to Iraq and kill US soldiers there, then that they come to the US and kill US civilians. But is that a victory? Now, however, he asks for aditional $87B to continue his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's on top of the present $4B/month spending on those wars, already approved by Congress (total of $79B). US budget deficit is already larger than India's GDP. Now it will go to $600B. Where are the IMF and World Bank to rein them in, like they do with the 'lesser' countries? Furthermore, Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat and presidential candidate, said tonight on the CNN program Larry King Live. That's [$87B] more than the federal government will spend on education this year. Again, is it really worth, in a long run, to stay such a course? And that in the country (USA) where 35 million people - larger than the entire Iraqi population - already live in poverty. That's 12% of all Americans - a sad figure for a hyper-power. And what kind of shity empire is pushing its retirees to go shop for prescription medication in Mexico? 1.3 million more Americans fell into poverty last year almost half of them children -- as government officials continue to simplistically trumpet the drop in the welfare caseload. That drop occured because under new rules less of the poor are eligible for aid -- so that government has more money to pay for waging wars in hard- to-pronounce places, bringing more hate against the U.S., and requiring more police-state measures to protect domestic security from those haters. It is a sadly vicious circle that may destroy the world's most revered democratic society. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Ivo Skoric [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 04:32:55 -0400 Subject: Extravaganze After President Bush requested $87 billion more for war and occupation, peace advocate, ice cream entrepreneur and Kucinich supporter BEN COHEN (no relation) explained what America could get for that amount of money: We could solve the school budget crisis in every community in America. Or we could provide health insurance for every uninsured American child for 15 years. Or we could feed all 6 million children who die from hunger worldwide for the next 7 years. On the other hand, by giving that money to the military, we can just prolong the agony of an elephant trapped in the sand, because neither American troops nor Iraqis will have their quality of life improve as a result of this collosal throwing of money into the wind. What's next? Selling off national parks? That look increasingly like what Eastern European post-communist governments do: sell their national treasures to meet the budget... ivo ps - $87B is slightly more than annual GDP of Colombia, and slightly less than annual GDP of Malaysia ...Bush is talking about it like this is some sort of pocket money, and Congress is prepared to shell it over to him like it is his birthright... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Ivo Skoric [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 17:50:14 -0400 Subject:
nettime the 80s revival
it had to come back sometime. popular american culture is throwing back what was once a few years ago the 70s revival(and that admittedly wasn't all to bad), for the 80s revival which is showing stronger ahistorical similarities of the changes in american society a generation ago then the tacky fashion fad of the late 90s. i have a pet theory of how it all started: it all started with those damn electric scooters. overnight -bam!- kids everywhere wanted one. you had to admit, they looked cool, drove fast, and turned heads. when was it century's ago, back in 99-00, parents everywhere looking to appease their kids cool-fetish and at the same time the checkbook bought the next cheapest (and way less cool thing): scooters you need to push. as always kids are forced to adapt to parental biddings(for better or worse) if it wasn't a radio flier or right pair of sneakers, and quickly became bored of scooters. after all, scooters were just designed as a kind of training wheels for skateboards. it didn't take long for kids to figure out that skateboards were much more cool then scooters, and in fact a subculture has been dedicated to the sport for 2 decades that peaked in the early 80s and there are plenty of old skaters around to show off there tricks. remember how cool micheal j fox looked being pulled by trucks on his skateboard in back to the future? the 80s as i remember it, hip, punk, and indie was the style of the day, wearing different clothing styles, indirectly all taking place in an ultra conservative political climate in the country is a few more interesting parallels to reflect on and see the similarity's. and think, all lead at the helm by a president everyone has something strong to say about(sound familiar generation x-er's?). depeche mode was the most innovative time of all time to this very day. the pc was the rage for hobbyists and social outcasts. a lot was happening. the 80s ushered in the great leap forward in consumer technology in the 90s on the crest of the internet to whoever can afford a $500 iPod, laptop, cell phone, fast internet access, chic car(at least the 80s revival isn't influencing car design-- yet), and a lazaee-faire attitude in adults disillusioned(or at least) unqualified to develop a marriage, or competently use the great technologically advanced cool stuff yuppies buy. gated community's, 24 hour security, bullet proof bmw's, it would appear that the upwardly mobile class had all it needed to protect itself from the storm that affected blue collar jobs being sent to mexico or india. indeed, it would appear a tame portrayal of william gibsons sprawl in neuromancer would be closer to fact then fiction, 20 years since publication, if you were white, middle class, and had assets to mortgage. the PC in the 80s was largely embraced by the outcasts of teenage society to white middle class nerds and geeks. we have seen a big reversal to that by 2003, when lots of those geeks earned multimillion IPO's that was suddenly very cool and very sexy. i think there was even a article in people or some other drivel on the sexiness of bill gates. for the cool people in there 20s and 30s that didnt get into computers, they bribe those that do know something to get the things to work, or take great pains to pretend to know more then they do. besides, everybody(in this demographic) in the wave of the future points and clicks their way through the internet for email, web browsing, streaming video(read: porn), and downloading music which is very hip. all brought to you by aol and dell computer. everyone uses the windows XPerience of computing, quite commonly referred to in some circles as the fisher-price operating system. apple has once again been sidelined to the status of a fruit. the cultural after effects of the iraq invasion is that no one really minds what reasons are valid for going to war, even if suspected of being lies(what only a hundred days after victory?). only spineless liberals a full year after the series of events started to unfold in a position to pick up the pieces started to rattle the sabre for the great superbowl of stupidity: political office. this is almost as bad as the reaction to the gulf of tonkin incident but at least a few networked people(i will refer to as the anti-left) organize through the internet to do something about it which consists of making signs and vowing nonviolent protest(!!). any sophisticated questioning that looks beyond political differences to solving social problems, or even better, looks outside politics to solve problems of the human condition, is scorned for not taking a serious stance on terrorism or the outrage of allowing mr universe run for governor. americans have never been known for defying puritanism for long and simple american people need simple reasons(that saddam bastard deserved it any how). XPerience users have shown that viruses can't be stopped, so why worry, its a part of the package. right?
nettime Dont Call it Art: Ars Electronica 2003: Call it Telic
In early May 2000, Lexicon Branding, finally delivered us a new name. A year earlier, tired to be called Contemporary Artists, we had order to this company, a term which would drive us to un unpredictable direction. The chosen name was Neen, a name that in old Greek means Exactly Now but in English is (still) free of meaning. Lexicon Branding proposed also some other names and especially one of those, Telic, sounded somehow significant, but a that time we didn't know why. We are now able to grasp Telic and even understand Neen in the context that Telic creates: Neen, is between other things the diamond in the dust, the Telic dust. And Telic, is all what Lev Manovich is talking about. Telic, is software art and also contemporary art. Neen, is the uncharted domain above all that, where art finds a new self, namely is not just art but also a new lifestyle. When we started Neen, we were not trying to make any new art: we merely wanted a new fashion which would make us feel different and privileged. If art was a vehicle, we were traveling on it's back just for the ride. But we disliked the academic bugs who populate the artworld and we suffered from nausea caused by the name of Marcel Duchamp and by the terms installation and exhibition. Apart of that, we didn't really care much about computer or software art and we had never heard of Ars Electronica. ( Later, when we finally found out about this exhibition, we still not understood it, because all the material, websites etc which document that show are painful and impossible to watch, similar to a university brochure.). But in Neen, we did put computing and the psychological landscape it creates in the center of our new World view. After all, the Impressionists were also indifferent to gardening but they did painted flowers. We start using computers in the same way they, ( the Impressionists) used nature: in order to create a second nature. That second nature, the one the Impressionists discovered, help delete the concept of nature itself and cleaned the place for the arrival of the real thing: the Futurism, Surrealism and Dada. As we were playing with the buttons of our keyboards and with the websites, we also happen to delete ( accidentally) the concept of technology, altogether with it's boring sisters, virtual reality, software art, electronic music etc. After Neen, a pair of Nike shoes look more infrared-enabled than any laptop and Palm Pilots have less hard drive space than the square watermelons you can find today at a Japanese fruit market. In Neen, we took cartoons and abstracted them at a point that they ceased to be funny. We created a new style out of registering domain names, ( in contrast with other artists who work with the Web, the Neenstars sell their websites to art collectors, galleries and Museums ) and finally we changed the whole concept of the exhibition practice with the ElectronicOrphanage in Los Angeles and the show AfterNeen in Holland, an exhibition that was there only if an online visitor was there(1). In Neen, we even allowed to machines to decide of how an art show should be terminated: a few days Afterneen opened, a computerized car crashed inside the space where the exhibition was taking place and destroyed everything ! It sounds like an accident, but it really was one of the first times where Machines were eager to make their point clear. In terms of working at the social arena, we succeed to stole the attention from the biggest Anerican Museum Exhibition, the Whitney Biennial with the whitneybiennial.com, a very successful show, actually more successful than the official show. Having done all that, in less than 3 years, we are ready now to dissolve the Neen Movement and return to where we came from, myself to paintings, others to fashion, music, architecture, art or design or whatever. But we cannot change or ignore the basic facts we discovered: 1. Everyone in the artworld is an artist. (including gallerists, curators, journalists, writers and even collectors) 2. Everyone who uses computers is a New Media creator (including scientists, special effect designers, the porn industry, spammers, hackers, Bill Gates, even the people who do nothing else than exchanging e-mails.) 3. Computers do their own art. (Googlism.com etc). They will not exhibit it to places such as Ars Electronica or the Venice Biennial. The thing is to discover when and how it happens and get involved. 4. Telic is everywhere: it's becoming a food coupon card in an International Art Prison where everybody has to be somehow creative if not he will be executed. 5. Neen is a fragile thing: something like the 7th spirit from the movie Final Fantasy. 6. To be continued Miltos Manetas, Sept 03 (1) the show was composed by 2 projections showing one the NeenWorld made by architect Andreas Angelidakis and the other an empty Internet browser. If someone would visit the NeenWorld online and if he/she would meet one of us in there and if we would
