Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[James Wallbank]

Hi Bronac,

I've always believed in the truism "ars longa, vita brevis". You only 
really see what an artwork is in time.


Lev is right that some artworks become hopelessly outdated, or just of 
interest as an experiment - a record of a moment. But some are still 
highly relevant.


Now, in 2020, I'm seeing, thanks, in part, to COVID19, propositions like 
"TTTP (Technology To the People)" and "Teledildonics" become not simply 
provocations, but actual products. The idea that the homeless should 
accept payment by contactless credit card machine is "Big Issue" policy. 
The idea that you might use devices to have remote sex over the network 
has become standard operating procedure for sex workers in lockdown!


The digital artworks of the '90s were often forward-looking. But, for 
me, the ones that still resonate were consciously backward-looking as 
well, and often had a kind of wistful, critical quality. At the time I 
railed against works that I saw as little more than "product 
demonstrations". Some of them (I'll name nobody!) were very high 
profile, and had spectacular sponsorship and hype. Those works do now 
seem laughably dated and irrelevant - but even so, they may have been 
interesting experiments at the time.


All the best,

James
=

On 21/09/2020 16:43, bronac ferran wrote:

Dear James

Fascinating, but inevitably some thoughts arise

I'd already been viewing Lev's cri de coeur as his Hamlet moment, or 
better still, his anthropophagic minute: Tupi or not Tupi, as our 
Brazilian forefathers warned us. How to breathe life into old stuff? 
To regurgitate the swallowed? To unearth the only recently buried? To 
undigest the consumed? To tikkik the contemporary back into the retro?


And why?

Oh why. The glamour of the nineties. A fin de millennial revival to 
distract us from wherever we are now: a reaping of those whirlwinds 
now that they have ceased to be gyres.


Ah-but.  Might we then tilt at digital windmills even further? Might 
certain long winded ramblings practiced so long on nettime channels 
find a place of solace in extensive articles in print about why the 
nineties mattered?

But that is only half the question.
The other bit missing is why Lev told us the truth about the matter? 
Was Hamlet mad, or simply grieving?


B

--
Bronaċ


On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 at 16:16, James Wallbank > wrote:


Hello Nettime!

This conversation is simply *too* *interesting*!

I'm a bit busy right now, but just want to register that I have
loads of responses.

What is "digital art"? Where is the boundary between digital art
and art that engages with the digital?

The artworks that I and my friends made in the mid 90s, under the
banner "Redudant Technology Initiative" were always embodied in
physical computers - they were installations and objects. If you
make objects (as I do), you know that they change over time.

Sometimes I think that the "prank", the "intervention" or the
"interactive" that characterises much of how Lev describes digital
art doesn't quite do this - it's more performative and of the
moment. It isn't meant to have a presence over time.

I think that the theme of RTI artworks was redemption, the
reclamation of objects from the universal process of decay. Philip
K Dick called this "kipplization". The tendency of all things to
degenerate into trash. We used then ancient computers to make
installations, in the knowledge that we were already working with
the semi-functional, the antiquated, the obsolete. We weren't just
advocating recycling, and exploring our software skills, we were
also raging against entropy - the "accelerated decrepitude" of the
digital age.

That feeling of sadness, or tragedy  that Lev identifies was
ALWAYS AN INTENDED PART OF THE WORK.

Before making those artworks, one of my earliest "digital"
installations was a complete list of identified computer viruses,
painted in clear varnish onto 1m x 2m sheets of raw steel. (Eight
of them, I think - maybe 10!). Visitors to the gallery were
invited to spray the steel with corrosive liquid (water, salt and
vinegar) which made the piece decay, and the image appear. (The
varnish protected the virus names.) I knew that this process of
decay was unstoppable. The piece would slowly rust into oblivion.

Similarly, each time we exhibited the "Lowtech Videowall", we
resisted careful packing and cleaning, so the installation
(comprising 36 25-33mHz computers, and a powerful 66mHz server!)
accumulated dents, scratches and grime. We conceded that it was
legitimate to clean the screens.

Now here's a thing. I have stored those artworks for the last 20
years. They have become even more antiquated. The 486s that were,
at the time, obsolete, have now become antique. The '80s styling
of the cases has become fascinating in a way that it wasn't at th

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[bronac ferran]

Hi James

Points taken.

Thank you.

B

On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 at 17:16, James Wallbank  wrote:

> Hi Bronac,
>
> I've always believed in the truism "ars longa, vita brevis". You only
> really see what an artwork is in time.
>
> Lev is right that some artworks become hopelessly outdated, or just of
> interest as an experiment - a record of a moment. But some are still highly
> relevant.
>
> Now, in 2020, I'm seeing, thanks, in part, to COVID19, propositions like
> "TTTP (Technology To the People)" and "Teledildonics" become not simply
> provocations, but actual products. The idea that the homeless should accept
> payment by contactless credit card machine is "Big Issue" policy. The idea
> that you might use devices to have remote sex over the network has become
> standard operating procedure for sex workers in lockdown!
>
> The digital artworks of the '90s were often forward-looking. But, for me,
> the ones that still resonate were consciously backward-looking as well, and
> often had a kind of wistful, critical quality. At the time I railed against
> works that I saw as little more than "product demonstrations". Some of them
> (I'll name nobody!) were very high profile, and had spectacular sponsorship
> and hype. Those works do now seem laughably dated and irrelevant - but even
> so, they may have been interesting experiments at the time.
>
> All the best,
>
> James
> =
> On 21/09/2020 16:43, bronac ferran wrote:
>
> Dear James
>
> Fascinating, but inevitably some thoughts arise
>
> I'd already been viewing Lev's cri de coeur as his Hamlet moment, or
> better still, his anthropophagic minute: Tupi or not Tupi, as our Brazilian
> forefathers warned us. How to breathe life into old stuff? To regurgitate
> the swallowed? To unearth the only recently buried? To undigest the
> consumed? To tikkik the contemporary back into the retro?
>
> And why?
>
> Oh why. The glamour of the nineties. A fin de millennial revival to
> distract us from wherever we are now: a reaping of those whirlwinds now
> that they have ceased to be gyres.
>
> Ah-but.  Might we then tilt at digital windmills even further? Might
> certain long winded ramblings practiced so long on nettime channels find a
> place of solace in extensive articles in print about why the nineties
> mattered?
>
> But that is only half the question.
> The other bit missing is why Lev told us the truth about the matter? Was
> Hamlet mad, or simply grieving?
>
> B
>
> --
> Bronaċ
>
>
> On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 at 16:16, James Wallbank  wrote:
>
>> Hello Nettime!
>>
>> This conversation is simply *too* *interesting*!
>>
>> I'm a bit busy right now, but just want to register that I have loads of
>> responses.
>>
>> What is "digital art"? Where is the boundary between digital art and art
>> that engages with the digital?
>>
>> The artworks that I and my friends made in the mid 90s, under the banner
>> "Redudant Technology Initiative" were always embodied in physical computers
>> - they were installations and objects. If you make objects (as I do), you
>> know that they change over time.
>>
>> Sometimes I think that the "prank", the "intervention" or the
>> "interactive" that characterises much of how Lev describes digital art
>> doesn't quite do this - it's more performative and of the moment. It isn't
>> meant to have a presence over time.
>>
>> I think that the theme of RTI artworks was redemption, the reclamation of
>> objects from the universal process of decay. Philip K Dick called this
>> "kipplization". The tendency of all things to degenerate into trash. We
>> used then ancient computers to make installations, in the knowledge that we
>> were already working with the semi-functional, the antiquated, the
>> obsolete. We weren't just advocating recycling, and exploring our software
>> skills, we were also raging against entropy - the "accelerated decrepitude"
>> of the digital age.
>>
>> That feeling of sadness, or tragedy  that Lev identifies was ALWAYS AN
>> INTENDED PART OF THE WORK.
>>
>> Before making those artworks, one of my earliest "digital" installations
>> was a complete list of identified computer viruses, painted in clear
>> varnish onto 1m x 2m sheets of raw steel. (Eight of them, I think - maybe
>> 10!). Visitors to the gallery were invited to spray the steel with
>> corrosive liquid (water, salt and vinegar) which made the piece decay, and
>> the image appear. (The varnish protected the virus names.) I knew that this
>> process of decay was unstoppable. The piece would slowly rust into oblivion.
>>
>> Similarly, each time we exhibited the "Lowtech Videowall", we resisted
>> careful packing and cleaning, so the installation (comprising 36 25-33mHz
>> computers, and a powerful 66mHz server!) accumulated dents, scratches and
>> grime. We conceded that it was legitimate to clean the screens.
>>
>> Now here's a thing. I have stored those artworks for the last 20 years.
>> They have become even more antiquated. The 486s that were, at the time,
>> obsolete, h

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[Max Herman]

Hi Brian,

In 2007 I proposed that Postmodernism was over, and the new art-historical 
period should be called Networkism.  Think of this as just a random comment, 
but meant as a prompt to thought.  I received one reply that I can recall, 
stating that Networkism wasn't a good name, and that Meta should be the name.

I bought the domain for Networkism at that time, as part of a novel I was 
writing about a philosopher-poet, Thomas Kroner, named in honor of the year I 
spent living in a Copenhagen suburb in my sixth year, attending kindergarten.  
Kroner was interviewing people about what they thought the new art-historical 
period should be and integrating their replies into his own new idea, which he 
called Networkism.  I thought I might create a website which would be the 
protagonist's website, yet outside the paper pages of the novel, which was 
titled Le Cafe and unpublished.  So the idea was the hypothesis of a character 
in a novel in the sense that I understood it.

However I didn't decide to carry on with the domain and stopped paying for it.  
In the last couple of years I looked it up again, and the term has been used by 
several others, probably independently.  One of the main exponents is Manuel 
Lima, for whose 2011 book (which I haven't read, for obvious reasons) Lev 
Manovich wrote the introduction.  Lima now owns the domain but I'm not familiar 
in detail with his work.  I don't know what Lev wrote in the introduction.

There are several other manifestos about Networkism on the internet -- it might 
be worthwhile to make a list of them and a map so to speak, sequencing in time, 
who references whom, but perhaps most interestingly to look at where the "idea" 
was formed independently by different people, to see what is most commonly 
included, what the main points are, and what is least frequently included but 
perhaps important.  What might be missing from all of these philosophies of 
Networkism?  What is Networkism?  If it is indeterminate, where might it be 
going?  Can its course be guided, and if yes, should it be, and if so, how?  
Far be it from me to say that I know.

+

One problem that always faces art, both visual and verbal, is the age-old 
conflict between property rights and voting rights.  These two value systems 
always seem to be at odds to some degree.  Most political conflict seems to 
derive from their antipathy, and 2020 is no exception.

Does the atmosphere of human political conflict affect art?  Some would say no, 
that art transcends politics and should be "spiritual" or removed from the 
temporal world, an ecclesiastical sphere as it were.  Others say that only the 
temporal world matters, and that art should never and cannot ever be removed 
from it in any degree at all.  Warhol may have meant something to do with this 
question when he said "art is commerce and commerce is art," and much of Marx 
says something similarly economic (though differing from Warhol on economic 
policy prescriptions).

Networkism as a way of thinking creates a problem of control.  Networks are 
decentralized, and can't be controlled top-down the way that hierarchies are.  
Network control has to take different shapes, and those are the power moves we 
see today among both individual people and nation-states:  how to dominate the 
network space.  Domination of the traditional hierarchies is also still a very 
contested space, and perhaps this has led to a hybrid model of geopolitical 
conflict.  I have no real expertise in this type of political theory at all, 
just a layperson's hunches and fragments of familiarity.

I mentioned the term "Networkism" to a friend recently, who is a retired 
professor of political science who studied mainly Chinese economic history, but 
also the tradition of anti-intellectualism in the US, and he said "that term is 
horrible!  That the worst word I've ever heard."  Which I think is OK, it 
should be ugly and boring.  As you quoted Clay someone, about the boredom 
needed to use a technology, Benjamin said a similar thing: "boredom is the 
dream bird that hatches the egg of the imagination."  What happens when boredom 
is the enemy of capitalism, and the imagination does not hatch, and cannot be 
allowed to?  Seems to me that might be expedient short term, for purposes of 
manipulation and control which are most eminently not "free market" but 
utilized ironically in a bizarrely schizoid concept of self-defense.  However 
in the longer term, Smith himself said that without moral conscience free 
markets will not create good things.  He also said that as people perform 
automated labor and consume automated products their faculties will become 
degraded "as much as can be imagined."

But maybe "Netflixism" should be the next art-historical period.  These are 
just words, and each of us can make up our own and post them online.  Maybe to 
be ignored, maybe not, one can never say for sure.

It's not easy to predict what will happen in politics, such a

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[bronac ferran]

Dear James

Fascinating, but inevitably some thoughts arise

I'd already been viewing Lev's cri de coeur as his Hamlet moment, or better
still, his anthropophagic minute: Tupi or not Tupi, as our Brazilian
forefathers warned us. How to breathe life into old stuff? To regurgitate
the swallowed? To unearth the only recently buried? To undigest the
consumed? To tikkik the contemporary back into the retro?

And why?

Oh why. The glamour of the nineties. A fin de millennial revival to
distract us from wherever we are now: a reaping of those whirlwinds now
that they have ceased to be gyres.

Ah-but.  Might we then tilt at digital windmills even further? Might
certain long winded ramblings practiced so long on nettime channels find a
place of solace in extensive articles in print about why the nineties
mattered?

But that is only half the question.
The other bit missing is why Lev told us the truth about the matter? Was
Hamlet mad, or simply grieving?

B

-- 
Bronaċ


On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 at 16:16, James Wallbank  wrote:

> Hello Nettime!
>
> This conversation is simply *too* *interesting*!
>
> I'm a bit busy right now, but just want to register that I have loads of
> responses.
>
> What is "digital art"? Where is the boundary between digital art and art
> that engages with the digital?
>
> The artworks that I and my friends made in the mid 90s, under the banner
> "Redudant Technology Initiative" were always embodied in physical computers
> - they were installations and objects. If you make objects (as I do), you
> know that they change over time.
>
> Sometimes I think that the "prank", the "intervention" or the
> "interactive" that characterises much of how Lev describes digital art
> doesn't quite do this - it's more performative and of the moment. It isn't
> meant to have a presence over time.
>
> I think that the theme of RTI artworks was redemption, the reclamation of
> objects from the universal process of decay. Philip K Dick called this
> "kipplization". The tendency of all things to degenerate into trash. We
> used then ancient computers to make installations, in the knowledge that we
> were already working with the semi-functional, the antiquated, the
> obsolete. We weren't just advocating recycling, and exploring our software
> skills, we were also raging against entropy - the "accelerated decrepitude"
> of the digital age.
>
> That feeling of sadness, or tragedy  that Lev identifies was ALWAYS AN
> INTENDED PART OF THE WORK.
>
> Before making those artworks, one of my earliest "digital" installations
> was a complete list of identified computer viruses, painted in clear
> varnish onto 1m x 2m sheets of raw steel. (Eight of them, I think - maybe
> 10!). Visitors to the gallery were invited to spray the steel with
> corrosive liquid (water, salt and vinegar) which made the piece decay, and
> the image appear. (The varnish protected the virus names.) I knew that this
> process of decay was unstoppable. The piece would slowly rust into oblivion.
>
> Similarly, each time we exhibited the "Lowtech Videowall", we resisted
> careful packing and cleaning, so the installation (comprising 36 25-33mHz
> computers, and a powerful 66mHz server!) accumulated dents, scratches and
> grime. We conceded that it was legitimate to clean the screens.
>
> Now here's a thing. I have stored those artworks for the last 20 years.
> They have become even more antiquated. The 486s that were, at the time,
> obsolete, have now become antique. The '80s styling of the cases has become
> fascinating in a way that it wasn't at the time. At the time, the Lowtech
> Video Wall was something of a demonstration of technical prowess. Should I
> show it again, it will be so again. The effort and skill required to revive
> 30-year-old machines will be, if anything, greater than it was to repair
> and reuse them in the first place. Perhaps it's impossible, and entropy has
> already won.
>
> The rusting artwork I mentioned of is still in storage. Whether the list
> of virus names that was first applied to it is still legible, I don't know.
> All was predicted, and all has come to pass.
>
> If anyone ever wants to help me break open the digital pyramid, to exhume
> and reanimate the works for exhibition, I'd love to talk.
>
> Best regards,
>
> James
> =
> On 17/09/2020 08:37, Geert Lovink 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).
>
> —
>
>
> https://m.facebook.com/668367315/posts/10159683846717316/?extid=fWYl63KjbcA3uqqm&d=n
>
> 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."

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[James Wallbank]

Hello Nettime!

This conversation is simply *too* *interesting*!

I'm a bit busy right now, but just want to register that I have loads of 
responses.


What is "digital art"? Where is the boundary between digital art and art 
that engages with the digital?


The artworks that I and my friends made in the mid 90s, under the banner 
"Redudant Technology Initiative" were always embodied in physical 
computers - they were installations and objects. If you make objects (as 
I do), you know that they change over time.


Sometimes I think that the "prank", the "intervention" or the 
"interactive" that characterises much of how Lev describes digital art 
doesn't quite do this - it's more performative and of the moment. It 
isn't meant to have a presence over time.


I think that the theme of RTI artworks was redemption, the reclamation 
of objects from the universal process of decay. Philip K Dick called 
this "kipplization". The tendency of all things to degenerate into 
trash. We used then ancient computers to make installations, in the 
knowledge that we were already working with the semi-functional, the 
antiquated, the obsolete. We weren't just advocating recycling, and 
exploring our software skills, we were also raging against entropy - the 
"accelerated decrepitude" of the digital age.


That feeling of sadness, or tragedy  that Lev identifies was ALWAYS AN 
INTENDED PART OF THE WORK.


Before making those artworks, one of my earliest "digital" installations 
was a complete list of identified computer viruses, painted in clear 
varnish onto 1m x 2m sheets of raw steel. (Eight of them, I think - 
maybe 10!). Visitors to the gallery were invited to spray the steel with 
corrosive liquid (water, salt and vinegar) which made the piece decay, 
and the image appear. (The varnish protected the virus names.) I knew 
that this process of decay was unstoppable. The piece would slowly rust 
into oblivion.


Similarly, each time we exhibited the "Lowtech Videowall", we resisted 
careful packing and cleaning, so the installation (comprising 36 
25-33mHz computers, and a powerful 66mHz server!) accumulated dents, 
scratches and grime. We conceded that it was legitimate to clean the 
screens.


Now here's a thing. I have stored those artworks for the last 20 years. 
They have become even more antiquated. The 486s that were, at the time, 
obsolete, have now become antique. The '80s styling of the cases has 
become fascinating in a way that it wasn't at the time. At the time, the 
Lowtech Video Wall was something of a demonstration of technical 
prowess. Should I show it again, it will be so again. The effort and 
skill required to revive 30-year-old machines will be, if anything, 
greater than it was to repair and reuse them in the first place. Perhaps 
it's impossible, and entropy has already won.


The rusting artwork I mentioned of is still in storage. Whether the list 
of virus names that was first applied to it is still legible, I don't 
know. All was predicted, and all has come to pass.


If anyone ever wants to help me break open the digital pyramid, to 
exhume and reanimate the works for exhibition, I'd love to talk.


Best regards,

James
=

On 17/09/2020 08:37, Geert Lovink 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).


—

https://m.facebook.com/668367315/posts/10159683846717316/?extid=fWYl63KjbcA3uqqm&d=n

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." 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. And I will feel the same when looking at the most 
cutting-edge art done today ("AI art," etc.) 5 years from now.


If consumer products have "planned obsolescence," digital art created 
with the "latest" technology has its own "built-in obsolescence." //


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? It is very exciting to be at the 
"cutting edge", but the price you pay is heavy. After 30 years in this 
field, there are very few artworks I can show to my students without 
feeling embarrassed. 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. //


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

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[voyd]

 


On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 10:26:40 -0400, v...@voyd.com wrote:
 
Steve, thanks for this, and yeah, the Tactical Media Electric Kool-Aid Acid 
Test was a great trip. What a ride, and it might not be done. However.

This might seem like the biggest non-committal answer possible, but I see how 
this slices, one way or the other. I certainly channel Steve in thinking of his 
position like Kandinsky calling art "of its time". Also, looked at formally, 
old digital art can look pretty awful - but only if you look at it a certain 
way. Ok, some of the old stuff is pixelated, or, or, or, and might deal with 
the medium a bit stiffly. But one thing that I say about things like the 80's 
and 90's is that there were a lot of things we just didn't have terms for, and 
thanks, Lev for theorizing some of it, but the New Media age was at the 
crossroads of Krokerian Crash hipness and the full-on Postmodern Avant, as we 
are with the Speculative today, or something that I look to Suhail Malik with 
interest for, the Post-Contemporary.

I give things a lot of slack for being of their time. Looked at in their 
context, I really enjoy most work.

However, I think two things - neoliberalism is just the bane of art, and 
institutions can just suck the air out of things almost instantaneously if you 
let them. 
I remember here in Abu Dhabi seeing Inventing Downtown at the NYU gallery, and 
and seeing the vibrancy of the Downtown scene of the 50's, all the artist-run 
spaces and their work. And I remember Rothko talking about the fact that they 
were like Shamans; something that I hold to my heart to this day.  And yes, 
after the artworld ballooned in the 90's and the artists with New Media MFAs in 
the mid 2000's hit the artworld, there is a lot more technological media art, 
some of it good, a lot derivative and tasteless. I roll my eyes at Vaporwave 
for being a bad analogy for my Atari 5200 video games, but as Cory once said, a 
lot; of contemporary New Media hits at a false nostalgia, and the Classicist 
representation of suureal figure s in immersive media hit me as an indexical 
gesture.

As a number of books on the contemporary art scene, including Michael 
Schnayerson's "Boom", the contemporary boom of the 90's and the postinternet 
reply to Claire Bishop's contemporary disavowal of the digital merely shifts 
the locus of the work as cultural value/power instrument. We have New Media 
artists making prints in museums that can digest them. Fair enough. I also know 
that Marisa Olson argues with me that the postinternet impulse was building 
long before the mid-2000's, but my experience is that New Media's real push 
into the contemporary was definitely in the mid 2000's, to be generous.

Then, with the acceptance of technoculture  by High Culture, which is often 
bound to the agendas of status and capital, two things I have had a strained 
relationship with (as one of RTMark/Yes Men), then inevitable comes. Acceptable 
Art. the current generations ahistorical wishes to sweep the "old" away (the 
Futurist maneuver). At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly. I like art that dares 
to be a little disagreeable, and not scrape to "empty gestures of status" 
(Baudrillard), and this way it just seemed that New Media got Hoovered up.

Also, as one of the Board of the Wrong, the adoption of Kepler's Garden 
approach by Ars was too much like ours for our comfort.  Institutional ersatz 
for the four 1600+ artist grass root bienniales that, in my opinion mirror 
Malik's notion of art's exit from the Contemporary through veracity and agency 
of the artist.  I understand Lev's exhaustion with Kepler\s Gardens, they 
seemed far more heavy and staged than the Burning man -like hoedown The Wrong 
throws. And in fact, Burning Man went Virtual this year, and that seemesd to be 
super wonky.

I feel we might be at a minor Arendt-ian crisis of culture as entities scramble 
around for survival and attention, but I see the genuine doing OK.

And for planned obsolescence in medi art - I made 8 Bits or Less as an 
impossibly low resolution with the intention of the timelessness of the pixel, 
usong 40 year old Slow Scan TV devices for the sheer texture of time and grain 
on the CRT. This has flesh and blood in it, for sure.  And for my upcoming 
Confinement Spaces work, I abjectly strolled the streets of Abu Dhabi. making 
shattered landscape scans witht he now-defunct Display.Land app, conteplating 
the dreamlike state the world was in, pondering my existential crises under the 
pandemic. My work is as "fi" as I want it at the time, as I am aware of 
history, the advances of technology, and I use them in my work like texture. 
Using time like texture, I like that.

If you're looking for media to be commodifiable, well-behaved, and fitting n a 
box well, then may I say your sales be plentiful. As for me, as with the 
unfortunate souls of many before me with names far more famous than mine, I 
reside in the "soul-work" of using the process

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[Allan Siegel]

Hello,
Thanks Molly for your Sunday post...
allan
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Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[d . garcia]

Before the digital cultures insurgency of the 1990s the previous decade 
had seen a similar burst of excitement around so called video art. Like 
"new media” or digital cultures movement the power of the video moment 
came from the breadth of its reach and multiple touch points in art, 
political activism, popular culture through MTV and (later) through 
camcorder formats like Video Diaries transformed television helping to 
normalise the idea of TV as a visual medium and participatory 
sociological medium.


Many of todays reality TV formats were pioneered by MTV. Importantly one 
of the most important (and neglected) contributions of video was to 
researchers (particularly in the behavioural, sociological a 
psychological sciences). Child Psychologists like Alison Gopnik argued 
that for the infant psychology the arrival of video was as important as 
the introduction of the microscope was for the life sciences. We can see 
the way that many of todays artist/researchers are building on video’s 
forensic immediacy notably in the work of the "evidentiary realists" 
whose broader ambitions and greater technological affordances enable 
them to escape from the gravitational pull of the art world. What am I 
getting at? That there is far more at stake in these historical 
interludes and
their momentary but powerful eco-systems than whether or not the art 
world or some influential figure remains interested or not.


Technology's shaping power is not determinism.  Like digital media, 
video had a host of specialist festivals and organisations that sprang 
up to manage the curatorial challenges of dealing with practices that 
required new forms of technical expertise and investment. People called 
themselves (or were designated) video artists and a world of video art 
galleries and curators appeared and disappeared. I remember arguing 
early in the life of nettime that we shouldn’t make the same mistake and 
so should avoid terms like nettart as it was perfectly obvious that no 
serious artist were any longer calling themselves ‘video artists’. So 
why should our milieu fall into the same elephant trap? I was probably 
wrong as the temporary and tactical adoption of labels are necessary 
communications short-cuts and useful devices in creating temporary 
whirlpools of interest. Fashion hypes have their uses and mis-uses .


It might be a useful moment artists to imagine how we might might 
usefully mis-apply Clay Shirkey’s memorable aphorism:“communications 
tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically 
boring”. If we add the words *aesthetically and* to the word *socially* 
in this sentence we might get to a place outside the circle of Lev’s 
world weary gloom.


David Garcia


On 2020-09-21 07:38, Geert Lovink wrote:

Great postings, Brian, Molly, John and so many others.

Lev or no Lev, the whereabouts of new media arts occupy us here, for a
reason.

From a political and personal perspective the opening up of a new
communication medium offers unheard possibilities. Then things close
down and the real struggle starts—in this case against Facebook,
Google and other monopolies and state actors that aim to close down
the temporary tele-commons that mutlitudes of geeks, artists and
activists built up.

Dialectics hurt. The problem is here is that, in order for electronic,
video, digital, new media net.art to reach wider audiences it has to
be become ‘normal’ (and disguise its technical knowledge) like all
other art (as defined by galleries, museums and websites with their
curators, critics, editors, journalists).

Does this also mean that specific institutions created to support the
x.art need to disappear? Or renamed? Most new media arts programs have
already been closed or renamed. There are less festivals,
publications, study (and a related rise of the history industries). Do
we still need specific niches or shoud we reinvent ourselves and just
work on the urgent issues of our times? This is not such an easy
question. If only we could just close down Ars Electronica, ZKM, ISEA
(and  our own INC first, of course) and then move on…

Take about the ‘platform’ question and its relation to current
movements such as BLM… Should we just stop discussing internet
politics and pretend that is just all a technological given? We are
all aware that digital tech, unfortunately, are not merely tools…
But who and where can we study its politics (and aesthetics)?

Lev wrote about his personal aesthetic experience in the age of the
digital default. I do not share the fascination for high-production
images. I love noise, experimentations, failures and see them a
journeys into the heart of matter: the media question, to understand
the essence of form, of the material. good art for me not only tells a
story and is political but is at the same time actutely aware of the
way in which hardware, software and interfaces and related cultures
dictate our ways of seeing.

Geert


On 21 Sep 2020, at 7:11 am, Brian Holm