Hello All,
I'm happy to announce the website is up for the Genius 2000 Conference 2008: Shakespeare at
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/main2008.html
I'll be on list for the next week to discuss any questions or issues that may seem appropriate, though overall I am much more into quiet meditation lately, inner contemplation, personal growth, and the like.
Best regards,
Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Conference 2008: Shakespeare
-
Type: discussion
Comments
Hi Max,
given the thread regarding epic net art, do you feel that Genius 2000 is epic and why or why not?
Eric
Another factor is that if we are in a new art-historical period, that would change the situation of all past art and all forms in the new context. It could be we are not in a holistically new period, but are merely dealing with some new technology-materials aggregating as the internet. That is the primary issue for aesthetic evolution at a point in time, what are the general conditions. These may be postmodernism plus the internet, or a new period with characteristics and meaning more critical than the internet, cell phones, robots, or what have you. One's current engagement with the past, present, and future depend on that question.
I'm not really sure! On balance it is more fragmentary and theoretical than epics seem to be. Possibly there is a slim comparison to Bertolt Brecht's idea of "epic theater," which I found interesting in college in 1987 from reading his play "Galileo." Maybe some pseudo- or quasi-epic elements or references but overall not an epic.
One idea also was to see if the network could be a genre, as in Norman Mailer's idea of "history as the novel, the novel as history." This question would hypothetically be a question with relevance to whether or not there was a new art-historical period succeeding postmodernism. I guess I see this genre as a different genre than the epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, essay, lyric poem, or short story, but with potentially some aspects of each at times.
Which I think ties in to the idea of the "epic" as a function of written, non-editable art whose medium serves as a metaphor for fate and inevitability (taking a cue from McCluhan). Wikiality cancelled the epic in net.art. So the "novel as history" metaphor becomes … what? The network isn't history, because it is too malleable. So what is it? If we find that out, we might be able to rebuild a new kind epic within the network.
"The network as present" is as close as I can get.
In your work Max I think Eryk really nailed it on the head with "written, non-editable art whose medium serves as a metaphor for fate and inevitability "
There is the accumulative aspect to the work, but that was never central to me, but it does frame the work (esp. after 9 years).
I see the Mailer reference too, but like the idea that the projects fate is bound to a volatile network yet at the same time contains the heart of the project, and that can't be disconnected.
It wouldn't work as print, or in any other medium.
You do however have the Genius 2000 video and I wonder how you see that fitting into the network model you define as networkism.
I'm not sure if I understand how this will appear due to the nesting rules. I'd say the videos are part of the content of the network, some of the content, along with other content. Similarly the conferences are part of the attributes or generic structure of the network as well as having content and being content so to speak. Also, I would like to reiterate I have set myself a limit of one week onlist, so will just post until the 11th and then go off list again until the conference, which is Sept. 1-15 as usual.
Max, if I'm not wrong, this is the ninth year of the project.
Is that correct?
Yes, year number nine, quite a long time.
Hello All,
Not sure where this will nest but today is my last day to post until the conference. I'll post a couple more remarks later this evening, to sum up some other conference issues, then will be offlist till September.
Best regards,
Max Herman
http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html
I think Bartleby.com is a very relevant website. You could wonder if people read the great works of English literature more, now that they are on the internet for free, or less, because other very habit-forming activities are also available, which studies now show cause the brain itself to be less inclined toward reading. We could look at all cultural activities in the age of computer networks with a recognition of this puzzling situation.
T.S. Eliot, for all his shortcomings, addresses some interesting points in this essay I think. I don't see anything extremely difficult about it, and I imagine the observations in it would be refreshing to most people. For example, he writes "what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it." I think this is a good observation in showing that even before computer networks, all works of art in the tradition or storehouse are connected.
I have also long been fond of this passage on the poet as artist proper: "he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period." There is a causality or a too-directly causal connection that will never do. You've got to think about the overall picture and not be too keen on success by a false mold. Just like marginal utility decreases as you get more and more production in a mature pattern, there's a correction phase too.
I suppose the interesting question of "what to do in the circumstances" is a pervasive theme, and goes to Hamlet's famous speech about "to be or not to be" as well as Buddha's reflections, the Heisenberg principle, and many other interesting thoughtful contemplations. Eliot says many things in this essay which strike one as having some of the less admirable tendencies of the 20th century, but his criticism of Wordsworth can't be completely dismissed. "And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living."
This is a similar idea to what Benjamin says about the present in which some aspect of the past comes to life, or as Eliot might say wonderful messages from the past are not ignored but rather appreciated properly. This is a type of network that gets overshadowed by technical equipment, but is very central when you observe like Medawar that our evolutionary material is fragile and destructible (books and statues) not all-permeating like a gene pool.
For these and other reasons, I think it's proper to look back a little bit on the very wonderful person of Shakespeare, and think "By gum how does this relate and inform today, me and my life?" So that's the topic for this year!
Best regards,
Max Herman