Open experience sale

So my teasing is not ok, yours is? Perhaps I find yours as nasty as you find
mine. Perhaps the reason I bark is there is no such thing as innocent teasing
in public. Notice your sentence "somebody else (besides just me) had fun" - the
question, at the expense of which person?

If your going to do some innocent teasing, then start out with a compliment and
a disclaimer like:

"Joseph, I think your experience sale is a clever idea, however, I think you
might find a little fun in this ditty I wrote because of all the promotion you
do"

As far as I can tell, you think I am an asshole. And from pretty much most of
your posts, you seem to think you are smarter then everybody. Which in my book,
makes you delusional. So why should I be nice to you?

–
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]

>Is that the best you can do? Your a sweet little man, but so inept
>at sarcasm.
>
>Thanks for the advertising.

ok now i'm curious. (different subject)
what's up?

sure i teased you, but hopefully somebody (besides just me) had fun.
but how come you always reply with something really nasty?
obviously, i'm not TOO heart-broken if you really don't like my
jokes. but it's not at all just me, in fact you bark at most folks
much worse.

just say "I don't like being teased."
no big deal.
or tease back. I don't care.
(if it's a good one though I'll laugh too)
but this ends up sounding like having a tense day every day.

hey everybody! go to Joe's sale!
Ok, more advertising.
I still don't get why that's hurting me though.
But just be nice and you won't end up needing those nintendo karate
chop lessons.

i'll cc a list, so somebody can bawl me out if I'm way off.

judson


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PLASMA STUDII
http://plasmastudii.org
223 E 10th Street
PMB 130
New York, NY 10003

She was a spam machine
kept my inbox from clean
she was the fastest poster that I'd
ever seen.

on Art Forum's chat
or with a baseball bat
she'd get make that ad sink in
right through any hat

The lines started shakin
my modem was bacon
dot com's all taken
and hope Thing's rakin in

you! spammed me aaall night long
I stopped counting these at 5
you! spammed me aaall night long
fillin up my hard drive


judson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PLASMA STUDII
http://plasmastudii.org
223 E 10th Street
PMB 130
New York, NY 10003

Is that the best you can do? Your a sweet little man, but so inept at sarcasm.

Thanks for the advertising.

–
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]

Hey Karl! You have great insight.

Flames are not much different that when men (on occasion women, but rarely)
used to get into fistfights (before guns/knives) and became good buddies
afterwards.

Anybody remember that John Wayne movie where he goes back to Ireland and to his
roots, only to have to fight his way to respect and friendship at the end?

I liked that movie.

–
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]

I also like the recent movie "The Fast Runner" - at the end, the hero didn't
kill the community members who killed his brother, but the community did exile
them. So, controlled fighting, without bloody ending - best.


Quoting "Joseph Franklyn McElroy Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]"
<[email protected]>:

> Hey Karl! You have great insight.
>
> Flames are not much different that when men (on occasion women, but rarely)
>
> used to get into fistfights (before guns/knives) and became good buddies
> afterwards.
>
> Anybody remember that John Wayne movie where he goes back to Ireland and to
> his
> roots, only to have to fight his way to respect and friendship at the end?
>
> I liked that movie.
>
> –
> Joseph Franklyn McElroy
> Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]

hello and contrariwise,

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 [email protected] wrote:

> I also like the recent movie "The Fast Runner" - at the end, the hero didn't
> kill the community members who killed his brother, but the community did exile

antigone ?

> them. So, controlled fighting, without bloody ending - best.

colonus. stormclouds stormclouds. hammer. nail.

and the films i see, are mostly about amoralists who strive to betray
and out-fantabulate each other. which might by my ideal world, havent
analysed that.

> Quoting "Joseph Franklyn McElroy Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]"
> <[email protected]>:
>
> > Hey Karl! You have great insight.
> >
> > Flames are not much different that when men (on occasion women, but rarely)
> > used to get into fistfights (before guns/knives) and became good buddies
> > afterwards.

that's right, and now – wish to avoid flaming myself. too many.

> > Anybody remember that John Wayne movie where he goes back to Ireland and to
> > his
> > roots, only to have to fight his way to respect and friendship at the end?
> >
> > I liked that movie.

not begrudged.
but bizarre.
"is father roots or rhizomes ?"

Judson, pay attention to the words you use - logic is not the only thing to
communicate with, there is empathy as well.

Jokes are always at somebody's expense. You either take or pay. I like to Pay
(respect).

> But be nice to people you don't like in general. Nothing to win,
> nothing to lose. but seeing everything as gain/loss is bad for your
> blood pressure. (joke or not, it's true). save barking for actual
> threats.

This is a choice, I like to fight to either get to the point of resolving
differences and being friends, or have them leave me alone.

> here's a poster from a documentary somebody made a few years ago when
> I thought you still loved me. (oh well) …

Now this is funny.

–
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]

> sure i teased you, but hopefully somebody (besides just me) had fun.

i did, thanks, because spam art is healthy and fun.
genius squad is excited about their expanding actions.

reading, i delete the ephemerals and duplicates. move the rest. basic.

i flamed joseph in 7-11 a while ago. was pretty productive:
http://mail.ljudmila.org/pipermail/7-11/2002-April/002721.html

flames are good, with maturity the worst is that two people
who hate each other, will ignore each other.
a mind is a terrible sense to avoid speaking to.

> but how come you always reply with something really nasty?

today someone tried this rapid general fallacy on me:
"why do we have to be against ANY attempt .. "

>Notice your sentence "somebody else (besides just me) had fun" - the
>question, at the expense of which person?

nobody. There's no "expense"? people lose what they want to lose.
we can enjoy a joke or not. even if something we do is the subject.


>So why should I be nice to you?

don't like me. I'll just have to live with it. Too bad for me.

But be nice to people you don't like in general. Nothing to win,
nothing to lose. but seeing everything as gain/loss is bad for your
blood pressure. (joke or not, it's true). save barking for actual
threats.


>this ditty I wrote

I didn't write it. Altered some ACDC lyrics.


here's a poster from a documentary somebody made a few years ago when
I thought you still loved me. (oh well) …


judson

In a message dated 6/14/2002 4:09:05 AM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:


> Altered some ACDC lyrics.
>

And then what?

http://wwws.sun.com/software/gridware/
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/abadmistake.JPG

I really value this discourse, and the projects by Jogging have addressed some key issues for a new generation of artists who use web publishing as their primary medium. But I am struggling to understand something fundamental about it's tenets (ie/ immateriality). Is a computer not physical, a server, even a jpeg is something that lives somewhere as a string physically written to a drive. If you take the physical world away, the virtual goes with it. If you keep the physical world, but you turn the power out, the virtual world is stored, it is written. Therefore, the virtual world is not purely virtual, or immaterial, but physical by extension, a different type of physical. Consider it offshore. But ultimately, fundamentally physical nonetheless. When online art is spoken of in terms of immateriality, I can't help but feel it is somehow ignoring this fundamental quality which anchors it to the world, to history, to it's true disposition. In this way the ideas of immateriality in art appear overly idealistic perhaps, harbingers for a failed democracy. Just like the physical world it suggests to differ from, online space is itself a gated western community that costs to access in many ways, the computer and the monthly bill are not the free democracy they are touted as being. Someone is always paying, even for 'free wifi'. Very few art galleries in the physical world cost to access, are they not free and for everybody in much the same manner of contradiction? Of course this is all problematic and needing to be further explored.

What this sense of 'immateriality' does address though is the cost of producing work as an artist, and that what has happened in an art world awash with magazines and the like full of documentation and installation shots, increasingly primary experiences, artists have become so influenced by these 'primary secondary' formats, a perceived 'establishment' in the language of gallery installation views, that they recreate their own novel versions with the use of contemporary software collage and montage effects, a kind of hi-culture photobomb. This may be in response to the economy of such a model, what cannot be afforded in the material world, can be created as an effect in the virtual world to mimic and convey, very similarly for little cost (assuming the artist has purchased a computer, software, peripherals, internet connection, camera etc). The carry on effect is a doubling trompe l'oeil. As much as it speaks of getting things done without the prohibitive expense to produce a very similar end, it also expresses a desire to assimilate, on easy terms. A desire that is very much based on photography and contemporary photographic effects. This visual double is a classic component of the fantasy space that has always marked the virtual, it's resonance is always an altered form of the physical in both senses of the term and without doubt a key feature of the present day artist. It may appear to be weightless and cost nothing and be openly accessible, but it is not. It is very reliant on an underlying architecture not only in the physical world but in the privilege of the developed world. The search for truth, the subjective lie bound within the camera in documentary photography is steeped in it's own tradition and discourse. All of which are currently being addressed in a form that is distinctly computer centric and for that reason, vital. Could it be possible that it is not immateriality that is being addressed, as this implies denial of a physical world it clearly cannot exist without, but an abstracted material phenomenon. One which has enabled among other things, increased artistic output. Critical system feedback. More material, and faster. Altered terms. Collision. Collusion. Decision. Illusion. Confusion. Fusion.

?

Here are some thoughts related to this post. I couldn't manage to string them into one coherent statement, so, numbered paragraphs instead.

1.

Are the art world's power structures the most – only – important thing about art? Media fascination with the expense of fine art ("art journalism") and the ready dismissal of commercial art ("art criticism") have made it almost impossible to avoid. Which is too bad, because it's far from the most interesting thing about art.

Jogging's insistence on "immateriality" makes it seem like the artists' primary concern is rebuking the market. That impression is affirmed in Jacob's exposition here, and confirmed beyond any doubt in Free Art, the manifesto that Jogging posted last week.

I'm interested in how visual art has become more like poetry or music in the way it's circulated and appreciated. I'm interested in art that belongs to this process. But I'm not fond of art that makes this process its subject. More often that not, artists who obsessively make work about art's institutions and systems are obsessed with their own positions in them, which means their work is self-concerned, narcissistic.

2.
On his Post Internet blog, Gene McHugh responded to the Free Art manifesto by challenging the validity of the political and philosophical positions that Jogging set forth therein. His first argument was that the power relationships responsible for the availability of Tumblr and Facebook – and by extension, responsible for Jogging's activity – are just as besmirched by capitalism as the art world, and therefore Jogging can't claim to occupy a space that is more "pure" than the art world. I'm not going to refute that, but I think his second argument – that Jogging's description of their work as "immaterial" is unjustified – is less persuasive. Gene wrote:


2. Second of all, Jogging’s insistence on the so-called immaterial or de-materialized quality of the work is also rehearsing an old fallacy (one which, it should be noted, Jogging themselves acknowledge and grapple with in their text).
For the sake of argument (and it is debatable), let’s say that—yes—a virtual .jpeg of a sculpture is immaterial—free of the problems of aura and material commodification which the sculpture depicted in the .jpeg itself affords.
But, what about the hardware displaying this content?
The notion that the Web has accomplished some sort of Hegelian transcendence is precisely what, say, Steve Jobs wants consumers to believe:
Go on, keep chatting with your friends, watching videos, listening to music—it’s all fluid and immaterial now and that’s great—just so long as you do so through the iPad.
These devices which display the work which Jogging thinks of as lacking aura, are, in fact, highly susceptible to aura or, from a slightly different angle, fetishism.

[end quote]

While I'm skeptical about the value of immateriality as a subject of artwork for the reasons stated above, I'm not convinced by Gene's critique of immateriality as an aspect of Jogging. If you're talking about computer-made artwork being displayed in a gallery on a computer, then talk of fetishism might be relevant. But it's remote from the way I view Jogging on my dusty laptop.

Jogging can't be equated with Steve Jobs – I am sure the artists don't care about the makes and models of our viewing devices. The equivalence Gene draws between Jogging and the hardware environment for viewing Jogging is also dubious. The array of possible visual and physical surroundings for looking at Jogging – from the choice to access it through the Tumblr dashboard vs. an RSS feed aggregator to the type of device – excludes object fetishism as a relevant topic in discussions of Jogging.

(Can you reconcile Dziga Vertov's excitement about the mobility and speed of the movie camera with the static act of sitting in a dark room and watching his films? Does it matter?)

2.5
Gene tacitly acknowledged the problems of immateriality by choosing to make Post Internet text only. He uses the medium that can most easily be transferred from one vehicle to another, eschewing moving and still images (which browsers can be picky about displaying) as well as links, which can die.

2.6
Can I just say I don't like the idea of the material/immaterial binary but I'm just trying to stay within the terms of the discussion as they currently stand, because I'm not presently prepared to offer a better alternative. Thanks.

3.
With Jogging, hardware doesn't matter, but software does. Susan Sontag: "Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow . Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again." Tumblr is between the two – a flow of discrete images. So is Google Image Search, and so is YouTube, which files moving images as discrete entities. I'd even say that the internet as a whole occupies the space between Sontag's poles of photography and television, but Tumblr is the most concentrated distillation of that quality*: the ongoing selection of memorable images that keep canceling each other out.

(*or maybe dump.fm is now, whatever.)

I think the value of Jogging is that its mixture of new and old, homemade and found images – and the semi-serious insistence on each image's importance (the "privileged moment" of it, to use Sontag's words) via museum labels like "Sculpture," "Installation," etc. – is a more pointed expression of Tumblr's essential features as a software service (as described in the preceding paragraph) than the run-of-the-mill Tumblr.

Jacob's post gives a good account of how Jogging operated in the framework of Facebook's software so I won't go through that again.

4.
Institutional critique and art jokes are useful for artists as ways of formulating their attitudes toward the art system and understanding their position in it, but I'm skeptical about their value beyond that – even though there's a rapidly growing sympathetic audience for them (in the Free Art manifesto, Jogging cites a statistic that art schools in the U.S. produce 90,000 graduates annually). To rephrase what I've already said, I'm less interested in artists who make work about "immateriality" as a problem of making/displaying art than I am in artists who have accepted it as a part of both art and life and moved on. Shana Moulton, for instance, takes the subjective equivalence of images, things, and thoughts as a given of contemporary life and dramatizes its consequences. I just picked Shana because I posted about her here a month ago but there are many other artists with a similar outlook. Jogging is still hung up on the immateriality of the internet and its consequence for their careers, though their exploration of it seems sophisticated enough that it has the potential to eventually yield something more substantial. Pun intended, lol.

hello…to clarify–it's not that I think Jogging or Jogging's work, in particular, has a whole lot to do with the materiality of media devices, just that anything on the Web, be it Tumblr or whatever, is always going to be viewed through some sort of hardware.
That's always going to be part of the experience.
The whole idea of immateriality is fishy–be it in the context of Jogging or anything else.
I went overboard on the rhetoric for sure, but the point I'm trying to make is basically the same as yours, Brian, and Jacob, too, I think.
This work is getting somewhere, but the terms its being framed in–immateriality and economic freedom–are tripping it up, shifting the conversation too much in a direction that get tangled in semantics and theoretical navel-gazing.
I wanted to give examples of how sticky that road becomes.
Like, do you guys really want to spend your time debating this material/immaterial stuff?
What's interesting about it is something different, something fresher.

True we could just accept and move on, contemporary life is riddled with the internet, it's not revolutionary anymore, now it's just boring. But I still think the perception of the internet, and of computing, is false. Our understanding of the digital is also pretty juvenile. Still. To this day. It is addled by discourse from the 1990's, when the internet was effectively introduced. When it was a frontier. We don't need frontier language anymore, but at the same time, how dated does the word 'Virtual' now appear, and all of its ramifications. In a way to query the 'Immaterial' is to resurrect discourse of the 'Virtual'. Although I don't buy into the particulars, I can see why this terminology needs to be continually addressed. Even now there is no adequate relationship model. Rather than staking claims as producers on the electronic frontier, as has historically been the case, now something else has happened. So called 'Virtual' or 'Immaterial' or 'Metaphysical' space or whatever has embedded itself in our lives to the extent that we are already sick of it, and this has become the new mode. The sullied 'Wow'. Which basically means we are accepting it. So for me yeah I think, right, working out a position, a relationship to the physical world, to nature, that includes the internet and software is pretty much the most important thing right now. Not to rehash the 90's, or even the 00's, because even then the worlds were split, as if there were two distinct spheres. Now that it is clear that they are not, that everything is within the same one, we need to approach it in a different manner, without the ends of language, the frontiers of new worlds, utopias and dystopias. Rightly, the overlap can be suggested in dour performances like that of Moulton, but it also needs to be addressed in language. Haven't you noticed, all the terms never quite fit? Formulating a response, or an alternative to the material/immaterial binary is uneasy, a certain indication that it is in need of furthered evaluation. No word sticks mostly because all words are predicated upon polarity, it's this or it's that. We know it's both, but we don't know how to say it. Augmented reality and mixed reality are attempts but in their own way suffer from the great split just like their theoretical predecessors. This is why we still cannot properly speak about the internet, electronic art, and the physical world as if they are just parts of the same thing, because clearly it is more or less than that. The breakdown is in terminology, and as a carry on effect, in general understanding. Perhaps as is usually the case in these areas of crossover the only way to address these issues is through the creation of works, or the passage of time. I think a lot about children born now and their relationship to the world, I doubt it will be as marked by distinctions of 'physical' and 'non-physical', perhaps less inclined to notice the medium, and focus on the message.

Ps. But even then, it would be foolish to ignore the medium. One day we will do away with the medium, the message, and the aura. And move on, but not before being able to speak about it. I may have seen some adequate works that attempt to address this but I haven't seen it written about effectively, yet.