Nettime nominated for Golden Nica

I must say, I think that's pretty hip. nettime should be given the award for the way in which they responded to the request for participation, although I wonder if the prix ars jurors will "get" the net-centric/community-ness of nettime's response approach.

One wonders, "What-Would-Rhizome-Do?" Actually, one doesn't have to wonder, because a 2001 prix ars net vision honorary mention went to "Mark Tribe, Alex Galloway / Rhizome.org (USA)."

A lot of artists are into whatever post-hierarchichal conceptual approach they are into until it gets them recognition within normal art world confines, and then they are more than happy to temporarily shed their approach, come out of character, and stand in line with the rest of the standard contenders to receive their award. That would be like the Sex Pistols donning tuxedos to receive their grammy award.

To their credit (or mental demise), the following artists have yet to abandon their kooky holistic tactical integrity:
NN
The Museum of Jurassic Technology
the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince
Frank Zappa
Daniel Johnston
(that's just off the top of my head. There are obviously more.)

"punk is like a prank that's gone too far, yet hasn't even begun."
http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/623/
http://www.akayism.org
http://www.joynk.com/cdg/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Rachel Greene wrote:

>
> > —– Forwarded
> >
> > Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 15:22:34 -0500
> > From: "nettime's_mod_squad" <[email protected]>
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: <nettime> RFC: nettime nominated for Golden Nica
> >
> > Dear Nettimers –
> >
> > Because nettime-l an email address, pretty much like any other, it
> gets
> > lots of exciting offers each day. Every once in a while, an
> > interesting one
> > comes along – for example, a solicitation from MS VP Nathan
> Myhrvold
> > to
> > hold a meeting at his company's headquarters[1] or an accidentally
> > poetic
> > announcements about ways to shrink or grow some part of our
> collective
> > anatomy. Most of these ask us to make some kind of financial
> > investment;
> > however, the latest interesting one to come in only asks for a
> little
> > bit
> > of time and thought. Ars Electronic has invited (whatever this
> means)
> > has
> > invited www.nettime.org to apply for its new "digital communities"
> > award.
> > Maybe this is the final sign that some of the list's most noted
> critics
> > ("krikits") are right when they represent the list as too big, too
> > bloated,
> > too old; maybe not; maybe something else.
> >
> > [1]
> > http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9804/msg00001.html
> >
> > Nettime's moderators take a bit of pride in having refused numerous
> > chances to "represent" the collective, ephemeral individuals and
> > networks
> > that collectively form the group of lists called "nettime" (-ann,
> -bold
> > [RIP], -fr, -l, -lat, -ro, -see, -zh, and, in a way, the
> > "neighborhood" of
> > lists). Thus, for example, when Eyebeam approached us last year with
> a
> > proposal to work with nettime, we were insistent that they would
> have
> > to
> > present their proposal to the list rather than negotiating with
> what
> > they
> > imagined to be some presumed "executive" contact.
> >
> > And so with Ars Electronica. The mail they sent is appended for you
> to
> > read. We encourage you – any of you, all of you, some of you, in
> > whatever
> > configuration(s) you like – to submit a statement that expresses,
> in
> > some
> > way, your views on the various questions they ask: about what
> nettime
> > is,
> > its history, and/or whether it deserves a Golden Nica.
> >
> > We think nettime deserves an award (why not?), and we ourselves may
> > file
> > our own personal statements, as time permits. However, in the
> > interests of
> > clarity in advance, we make two requests of Ars Electronica. First,
> > they
> > should weigh equally all statements they receive. And, second, any
> > revenues
> > stemming from the award should go to thing.net, which for years has
> > generously supported nettime-l and many other vital people and
> > projects.
> > For that reason, we registered nettime with the following contact
> info:
> >
> > Name: Nettime Nettime (c/o The Thing)
> > Street: 601 West 26th St
> > ZIP Code: 10001 New York
> > State: NY
> > Country: Vereinigte Staaten
> > E-mail: [email protected]
> > Telephone: 1.212.937.0443
> >
> > Appended are:
> >
> > (1) letter from AEC to nettime-l
> > (2) checklist for submission
> > (3) text of online entry form (slightly different from (2)?)
> >
> > Regards,
> > the nettime-l mod squad (Andrea, Felix, Martin, Ted)
> >
> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> >
> > Subject: Prix Ars Electronica - Welcome to participate!
> > Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 16:05:40 +0100
> > From: "Communities" <[email protected]>
> > To: <[email protected]>
> >
> > Dear Nettime Team,
> >
> > We would kindly like to invite you to participate with
> Www.nettime.org
> > in this year's Prix Ars Electronica, the foremost international
> prize
> > for computer-based art. To mark Ars Electronica's twenty-fifth
> > anniversary in 2004, the Prix Ars Electronica has expanded its
> > international competition for cyberarts to include a new "Digital
> > Communities" category singling out for recognition projects of great
> > sociopolitical relevance.
> >
> > This new category encompasses the social consequences of the
> Internet
> > as
> > well as the latest developments in the domain of mobile
> communications
> > and wireless networks. For a detailed description of the category
> and
> > about Prix Ars Electronica in general, please see the attached PDF
> file
> > or our website http://prixars.aec.at.
> >
> > Prizes
> > Two Golden Nicas will be awarded with 10,000 Euro each and
> > 4 Awards of Distinction with 5,000 Euro each and up to 14 Honorary
> > Mentions.
> >
> > The closing deadline for the entries is March 12th, 2004.
> >
> > If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to come
> > back
> > to us.
> >
> > Looking forward to your hopefully positive reply!
> >
> > With best regards
> > Clara Picot


<snip>

Unfortunately, I don't think nettime's approach to the application is
kosher with the rules. The entry rules (at
http://www.aec.at/en/prix/registration/index.asp?nocacheY6157 ) say:

"The submitter can be the author or artist of a work or the
representative of a community project, either personally or through
some authorized agent acting on their behalf (e.g. press spokesperson,
officer of an institution, faculty member of a university)."

Does it matter? Well, it does in a very boring, pragmatic way. Jurors
are human beings with finite amounts of time, and none of them are
going to want to filter through 500 entries from one community, whether
that community is Nettime or Slashdot or Rhizome or whatever. They want
a summary, just like everybody else in this busy world.

Summaries are necessarily lies: No matter what map you draw of Denmark,
I can always tell you the coastline isn't detailed enough. Arguably the
problem is much worse with a digital community than it would be with an
individual artist, since with that many more people involved their
views of the thing grow exponentially. To take an easy example: How
many movies have been made about New York City? How many different
things do they say?

It's definitely fair to say that nettime is much less centralized in
its decision-making and development than Rhizome is. It's a valid and
provocative strategy, though I also suspect it's one that wouldn't
scale to an org like Rhizome, which has office space and gives out arts
commissions and has to apply for NEA grants and pay for health
insurance. As the nettimers write below, part of their method has been
to let even the act of self-definition fall to individual members,
which seems to be something that nettime members prefer and feel is
valuable. Personally I'm not so into it, largely because I don't think
self-definition is that important. (Which might have something to do
with my own Buddhist-existentialist leanings, but that might be reading
too much into it.)

All of which is to say that I'm the one writing Rhizome's application
for the Prix Ars, and I'm not writing it to prove any sort of point –
I'm writing it because I want to win. Not so I can add another notch to
my C.V., but because I want that money so we can spend it on making
this website and community better, in our continuing quest to be the
most ass-kickingest new media arts community evah! My name will be on
it, but what does that mean, especially given that I haven't been
around for very long? Writing this application is sort of a privilege,
I guess, but it's also sort of a chore. But, you know, if you want
something done right …

For those who are interested, the application I'm writing focuses
mostly on Rhizome's structural qualities, and the compromises it makes,
than on making any grand manifestos. I'm not using Mark's formulation
of Rhizome as a "social sculpture", largely because that was his thing
and not mine – and I never really liked Beuys, anyway. I am spending a
little ink explicating just how anti-internet the rest of the art world
still is – not in terms of what gets put up in museums, but in terms
of how discussion moves and value is assigned – which I can't assume
the jurors will know.

It'll be interesting to see how it all ends up. In spite of the Prix
Ars imprimateur, much of the Digital Communities jury has little or no
background in the arts world. Both Joi Ito and Howard Rheingold, for
example, are A-list celebs in the frothy firmament of the social
software community. Dare I say it, they're naturally much more
interested in blogs, wikis, and Friendster/Orkut/LinkedIn than they are
in a bunch of net-artists, and the competition won't just be between
new media spaces like Rhizome and nettime. I know that Sunir Shah is
applying for his fascinating meta-community wiki Meatball (
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl ), and I wouldn't be surprised to see
the folks at FOAF, the Atom project, and others jump in too.

F.

On Mar 9, 2004, at 9:19 AM, curt cloninger wrote:

> I must say, I think that's pretty hip. nettime should be given the
> award for the way in which they responded to the request for
> participation, although I wonder if the prix ars jurors will "get" the
> net-centric/community-ness of nettime's response approach.
>
> One wonders, "What-Would-Rhizome-Do?" Actually, one doesn't have to
> wonder, because a 2001 prix ars net vision honorary mention went to
> "Mark Tribe, Alex Galloway / Rhizome.org (USA)."
>
> A lot of artists are into whatever post-hierarchichal conceptual
> approach they are into until it gets them recognition within normal
> art world confines, and then they are more than happy to temporarily
> shed their approach, come out of character, and stand in line with the
> rest of the standard contenders to receive their award. That would be
> like the Sex Pistols donning tuxedos to receive their grammy award.
>
> To their credit (or mental demise), the following artists have yet to
> abandon their kooky holistic tactical integrity:
> NN
> The Museum of Jurassic Technology
> the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince
> Frank Zappa
> Daniel Johnston
> (that's just off the top of my head. There are obviously more.)
>
> "punk is like a prank that's gone too far, yet hasn't even begun."
> http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/623/
> http://www.akayism.org
> http://www.joynk.com/cdg/
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Rachel Greene wrote:
>
>>
>>> —– Forwarded
>>>
>>> Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 15:22:34 -0500
>>> From: "nettime's_mod_squad" <[email protected]>
>>> To: [email protected]
>>> Subject: <nettime> RFC: nettime nominated for Golden Nica
>>>
>>> Dear Nettimers –
>>>
>>> Because nettime-l an email address, pretty much like any other, it
>> gets
>>> lots of exciting offers each day. Every once in a while, an
>>> interesting one
>>> comes along – for example, a solicitation from MS VP Nathan
>> Myhrvold
>>> to
>>> hold a meeting at his company's headquarters[1] or an accidentally
>>> poetic
>>> announcements about ways to shrink or grow some part of our
>> collective
>>> anatomy. Most of these ask us to make some kind of financial
>>> investment;
>>> however, the latest interesting one to come in only asks for a
>> little
>>> bit
>>> of time and thought. Ars Electronic has invited (whatever this
>> means)
>>> has
>>> invited www.nettime.org to apply for its new "digital communities"
>>> award.
>>> Maybe this is the final sign that some of the list's most noted
>> critics
>>> ("krikits") are right when they represent the list as too big, too
>>> bloated,
>>> too old; maybe not; maybe something else.
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9804/msg00001.html
>>>
>>> Nettime's moderators take a bit of pride in having refused numerous
>>> chances to "represent" the collective, ephemeral individuals and
>>> networks
>>> that collectively form the group of lists called "nettime" (-ann,
>> -bold
>>> [RIP], -fr, -l, -lat, -ro, -see, -zh, and, in a way, the
>>> "neighborhood" of
>>> lists). Thus, for example, when Eyebeam approached us last year with
>> a
>>> proposal to work with nettime, we were insistent that they would
>> have
>>> to
>>> present their proposal to the list rather than negotiating with
>> what
>>> they
>>> imagined to be some presumed "executive" contact.
>>>
>>> And so with Ars Electronica. The mail they sent is appended for you
>> to
>>> read. We encourage you – any of you, all of you, some of you, in
>>> whatever
>>> configuration(s) you like – to submit a statement that expresses,
>> in
>>> some
>>> way, your views on the various questions they ask: about what
>> nettime
>>> is,
>>> its history, and/or whether it deserves a Golden Nica.
>>>
>>> We think nettime deserves an award (why not?), and we ourselves may
>>> file
>>> our own personal statements, as time permits. However, in the
>>> interests of
>>> clarity in advance, we make two requests of Ars Electronica. First,
>>> they
>>> should weigh equally all statements they receive. And, second, any
>>> revenues
>>> stemming from the award should go to thing.net, which for years has
>>> generously supported nettime-l and many other vital people and
>>> projects.
>>> For that reason, we registered nettime with the following contact
>> info:
>>>
>>> Name: Nettime Nettime (c/o The Thing)
>>> Street: 601 West 26th St
>>> ZIP Code: 10001 New York
>>> State: NY
>>> Country: Vereinigte Staaten
>>> E-mail: [email protected]
>>> Telephone: 1.212.937.0443
>>>
>>> Appended are:
>>>
>>> (1) letter from AEC to nettime-l
>>> (2) checklist for submission
>>> (3) text of online entry form (slightly different from (2)?)
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> the nettime-l mod squad (Andrea, Felix, Martin, Ted)
>>>
>>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>>>
>>> Subject: Prix Ars Electronica - Welcome to participate!
>>> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 16:05:40 +0100
>>> From: "Communities" <[email protected]>
>>> To: <[email protected]>
>>>
>>> Dear Nettime Team,
>>>
>>> We would kindly like to invite you to participate with
>> Www.nettime.org
>>> in this year's Prix Ars Electronica, the foremost international
>> prize
>>> for computer-based art. To mark Ars Electronica's twenty-fifth
>>> anniversary in 2004, the Prix Ars Electronica has expanded its
>>> international competition for cyberarts to include a new "Digital
>>> Communities" category singling out for recognition projects of great
>>> sociopolitical relevance.
>>>
>>> This new category encompasses the social consequences of the
>> Internet
>>> as
>>> well as the latest developments in the domain of mobile
>> communications
>>> and wireless networks. For a detailed description of the category
>> and
>>> about Prix Ars Electronica in general, please see the attached PDF
>> file
>>> or our website http://prixars.aec.at.
>>>
>>> Prizes
>>> Two Golden Nicas will be awarded with 10,000 Euro each and
>>> 4 Awards of Distinction with 5,000 Euro each and up to 14 Honorary
>>> Mentions.
>>>
>>> The closing deadline for the entries is March 12th, 2004.
>>>
>>> If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to come
>>> back
>>> to us.
>>>
>>> Looking forward to your hopefully positive reply!
>>>
>>> With best regards
>>> Clara Picot
>
>
> <snip>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

It doesn't matter what you say Francis, we all know you're simply a
sucking supplicant greedily grubbing at the heels of your overlords,
"The New York Art World Honchos," waiting for your few scraps to fall
and pawing everyone else out the way with your vicious little claws.

(j/k)



On Mar 9, 2004, at 4:37 PM, Francis Hwang wrote:

> Unfortunately, I don't think nettime's approach to the application is
> kosher with the rules. The entry rules (at
> http://www.aec.at/en/prix/registration/index.asp?nocacheY6157 ) say:
>
> "The submitter can be the author or artist of a work or the
> representative of a community project, either personally or through
> some authorized agent acting on their behalf (e.g. press spokesperson,
> officer of an institution, faculty member of a university)."
>
> Does it matter? Well, it does in a very boring, pragmatic way. Jurors
> are human beings with finite amounts of time, and none of them are
> going to want to filter through 500 entries from one community,
> whether that community is Nettime or Slashdot or Rhizome or whatever.
> They want a summary, just like everybody else in this busy world.
>
> Summaries are necessarily lies: No matter what map you draw of
> Denmark, I can always tell you the coastline isn't detailed enough.
> Arguably the problem is much worse with a digital community than it
> would be with an individual artist, since with that many more people
> involved their views of the thing grow exponentially. To take an easy
> example: How many movies have been made about New York City? How many
> different things do they say?
>
> It's definitely fair to say that nettime is much less centralized in
> its decision-making and development than Rhizome is. It's a valid and
> provocative strategy, though I also suspect it's one that wouldn't
> scale to an org like Rhizome, which has office space and gives out
> arts commissions and has to apply for NEA grants and pay for health
> insurance. As the nettimers write below, part of their method has been
> to let even the act of self-definition fall to individual members,
> which seems to be something that nettime members prefer and feel is
> valuable. Personally I'm not so into it, largely because I don't think
> self-definition is that important. (Which might have something to do
> with my own Buddhist-existentialist leanings, but that might be
> reading too much into it.)
>
> All of which is to say that I'm the one writing Rhizome's application
> for the Prix Ars, and I'm not writing it to prove any sort of point –
> I'm writing it because I want to win. Not so I can add another notch
> to my C.V., but because I want that money so we can spend it on making
> this website and community better, in our continuing quest to be the
> most ass-kickingest new media arts community evah! My name will be on
> it, but what does that mean, especially given that I haven't been
> around for very long? Writing this application is sort of a privilege,
> I guess, but it's also sort of a chore. But, you know, if you want
> something done right …
>
> For those who are interested, the application I'm writing focuses
> mostly on Rhizome's structural qualities, and the compromises it
> makes, than on making any grand manifestos. I'm not using Mark's
> formulation of Rhizome as a "social sculpture", largely because that
> was his thing and not mine – and I never really liked Beuys, anyway.
> I am spending a little ink explicating just how anti-internet the rest
> of the art world still is – not in terms of what gets put up in
> museums, but in terms of how discussion moves and value is assigned –
> which I can't assume the jurors will know.
>
> It'll be interesting to see how it all ends up. In spite of the Prix
> Ars imprimateur, much of the Digital Communities jury has little or no
> background in the arts world. Both Joi Ito and Howard Rheingold, for
> example, are A-list celebs in the frothy firmament of the social
> software community. Dare I say it, they're naturally much more
> interested in blogs, wikis, and Friendster/Orkut/LinkedIn than they
> are in a bunch of net-artists, and the competition won't just be
> between new media spaces like Rhizome and nettime. I know that Sunir
> Shah is applying for his fascinating meta-community wiki Meatball (
> http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl ), and I wouldn't be surprised to see
> the folks at FOAF, the Atom project, and others jump in too.
>
> F.
>
> On Mar 9, 2004, at 9:19 AM, curt cloninger wrote:
>
>> I must say, I think that's pretty hip. nettime should be given the
>> award for the way in which they responded to the request for
>> participation, although I wonder if the prix ars jurors will "get"
>> the net-centric/community-ness of nettime's response approach.
>>
>> One wonders, "What-Would-Rhizome-Do?" Actually, one doesn't have to
>> wonder, because a 2001 prix ars net vision honorary mention went to
>> "Mark Tribe, Alex Galloway / Rhizome.org (USA)."
>>
>> A lot of artists are into whatever post-hierarchichal conceptual
>> approach they are into until it gets them recognition within normal
>> art world confines, and then they are more than happy to temporarily
>> shed their approach, come out of character, and stand in line with
>> the rest of the standard contenders to receive their award. That
>> would be like the Sex Pistols donning tuxedos to receive their
>> grammy award.
>>
>> To their credit (or mental demise), the following artists have yet to
>> abandon their kooky holistic tactical integrity:
>> NN
>> The Museum of Jurassic Technology
>> the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince
>> Frank Zappa
>> Daniel Johnston
>> (that's just off the top of my head. There are obviously more.)
>>
>>

===
<twhid>http://www.mteww.com</twhid>
===

Hi Francis,

I didn't mean it as a personal dis. I was just observing the
difference between the two communities.

The cool thing about the nettime response is, rather than changing
their paradigm to fit the competition, they just proceed with their
paradigm. If it fails to comply with the rules of the competition,
they don't really care. If nothing else, such a tactic perfectly
exemplifies/embodies their egalitarian emphasis, much more so than
had Wolfgang or somebody else written a summary entry on behalf of
the community describing their egalitarian emphasis. I just think
it's cool when organizations and artists take what they profess all
the way to extremes, even if it means they "suffer professionally."
Sadly, such behavior seems almost as rare in art circles as it is in
commercial design circles.

As an organization, prix ars seems pretty loose with their own rules.
Linus Torvalds and Neil Stephenson win Net Excellence awards for
which they didn't even apply (and to which they hardly pertain). The
fact that net time got invited to apply means somebody on the jury
has them in mind. The other jurors in that category are the
benneton/fabrica guy, who is pretty hip, and NN (of all things). Who
knows. They'll probably pick metafilter.

peace,
curt




>Unfortunately, I don't think nettime's approach to the application
>is kosher with the rules. The entry rules (at
>http://www.aec.at/en/prix/registration/index.asp?nocacheY6157 )
>say:
>
>"The submitter can be the author or artist of a work or the
>representative of a community project, either personally or through
>some authorized agent acting on their behalf (e.g. press
>spokesperson, officer of an institution, faculty member of a
>university)."
>
>Does it matter? Well, it does in a very boring, pragmatic way.
>Jurors are human beings with finite amounts of time, and none of
>them are going to want to filter through 500 entries from one
>community, whether that community is Nettime or Slashdot or Rhizome
>or whatever. They want a summary, just like everybody else in this
>busy world.
>
>Summaries are necessarily lies: No matter what map you draw of
>Denmark, I can always tell you the coastline isn't detailed enough.
>Arguably the problem is much worse with a digital community than it
>would be with an individual artist, since with that many more people
>involved their views of the thing grow exponentially. To take an
>easy example: How many movies have been made about New York City?
>How many different things do they say?
>
>It's definitely fair to say that nettime is much less centralized in
>its decision-making and development than Rhizome is. It's a valid
>and provocative strategy, though I also suspect it's one that
>wouldn't scale to an org like Rhizome, which has office space and
>gives out arts commissions and has to apply for NEA grants and pay
>for health insurance. As the nettimers write below, part of their
>method has been to let even the act of self-definition fall to
>individual members, which seems to be something that nettime members
>prefer and feel is valuable. Personally I'm not so into it, largely
>because I don't think self-definition is that important. (Which
>might have something to do with my own Buddhist-existentialist
>leanings, but that might be reading too much into it.)
>
>All of which is to say that I'm the one writing Rhizome's
>application for the Prix Ars, and I'm not writing it to prove any
>sort of point – I'm writing it because I want to win. Not so I can
>add another notch to my C.V., but because I want that money so we
>can spend it on making this website and community better, in our
>continuing quest to be the most ass-kickingest new media arts
>community evah! My name will be on it, but what does that mean,
>especially given that I haven't been around for very long? Writing
>this application is sort of a privilege, I guess, but it's also sort
>of a chore. But, you know, if you want something done right …
>
>For those who are interested, the application I'm writing focuses
>mostly on Rhizome's structural qualities, and the compromises it
>makes, than on making any grand manifestos. I'm not using Mark's
>formulation of Rhizome as a "social sculpture", largely because that
>was his thing and not mine – and I never really liked Beuys,
>anyway. I am spending a little ink explicating just how
>anti-internet the rest of the art world still is – not in terms of
>what gets put up in museums, but in terms of how discussion moves
>and value is assigned – which I can't assume the jurors will know.
>
>It'll be interesting to see how it all ends up. In spite of the Prix
>Ars imprimateur, much of the Digital Communities jury has little or
>no background in the arts world. Both Joi Ito and Howard Rheingold,
>for example, are A-list celebs in the frothy firmament of the social
>software community. Dare I say it, they're naturally much more
>interested in blogs, wikis, and Friendster/Orkut/LinkedIn than they
>are in a bunch of net-artists, and the competition won't just be
>between new media spaces like Rhizome and nettime. I know that Sunir
>Shah is applying for his fascinating meta-community wiki Meatball (
>http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl ), and I wouldn't be surprised to
>see the folks at FOAF, the Atom project, and others jump in too.
>
>F.

No worries, Curt. I didn't take it personally at all. I just felt like it brought out differences between the two communities that are pretty interesting to draw out and compare. Any comparison between Rhizome and nettime can be instructive as opposed to competitive … One question to ask is: How does change happen? Do bold gestures do more by inspiring others and capturing their energy, or is it just all about the details?

You raise good points about Prix Ars. I'm very curious to see who's going to get picked.

F.



curt cloninger wrote:

> Hi Francis,
>
> I didn't mean it as a personal dis. I was just observing the
> difference between the two communities.
>
> The cool thing about the nettime response is, rather than changing
> their paradigm to fit the competition, they just proceed with their
> paradigm. If it fails to comply with the rules of the competition,
> they don't really care. If nothing else, such a tactic perfectly
> exemplifies/embodies their egalitarian emphasis, much more so than
> had Wolfgang or somebody else written a summary entry on behalf of
> the community describing their egalitarian emphasis. I just think
> it's cool when organizations and artists take what they profess all
> the way to extremes, even if it means they "suffer professionally."
> Sadly, such behavior seems almost as rare in art circles as it is in
> commercial design circles.
>
> As an organization, prix ars seems pretty loose with their own rules.
> Linus Torvalds and Neil Stephenson win Net Excellence awards for
> which they didn't even apply (and to which they hardly pertain). The
> fact that net time got invited to apply means somebody on the jury
> has them in mind. The other jurors in that category are the
> benneton/fabrica guy, who is pretty hip, and NN (of all things). Who
> knows. They'll probably pick metafilter.
>
> peace,
> curt
>
>
>

Francis Hwang wrote:
>One
> question to ask is: How does change happen? Do bold gestures do more
> by inspiring others and capturing their energy, or is it just all
> about the details?

I'm not opposed to art as a change agent, but I don't think it's necessarily obliged to change anybody in any overt way. Art can just hang brightly and then be gone.

Some of the best evenings of live music I've ever enjoyed have been down the road at Canton Municipal Park, just impromptu acoustic bluegrass bands made up of local musicians playing songs they didn't write and never will record. Sometimes three or four different circles of musicians will form, barely out of earshot of each other, and you can spend all night wandering from one circle to another. They knock off around midnight, go home and work all week at the mill, then come back next Friday evening and pick up where they left off. All summer long. The utter ephemerality and total anonymity of these events just makes the music that much more sweet.