Re: What is netart ;-)? by Joachim Blank (Tue, 22 Apr 1997) - h...

In a message dated 5/16/2002 8:26:24 AM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:


> Netart functions only on the net and picks out the net or the "netmyth" as a
> theme.

A great example of what has changed in netart in five years is illustrated by
ESMOML and the Six Rules for a New Net Art.

I say this by way of background for my new theory I'm developing about
cartoonisation in website art.

But don't take my word for it. Check the articles, in which Blank wrote that
netart should take the netweb, the structure, as a theme–but in the Six
Rules the net per se is prohibited as a theme.

I guess my new theory is about truth in representation, and how it is
mathematically possible. The background here comes down to
utopianism–freedom from history–as seen in art like Eryk Salvaggio's. ES's
reputation in Netart circles, for there are circles, has changed a lot in the
last five years. Also NN's and mine have.

Anyway Dmitri, I know my collaborator McElroy has called you a pigfucker, and
you're lately perfumed with male chauvinism. But I have been to Athens, do
not know you in any way, and as an artist I should tell you that Genius 2000
is based in some ways on the Acropolis. I am a serious student of the math,
design, and narrative of the Acropolis. Also of the Pelopennesian War.

Genius 2000 is compositionally, I think, a radical cognitive syncresis
demanding democratic genius.

So I study what I think is similar, and the structure of the net is just not
my topic. I think now you have an emphasis on where exactly this structure
ends if at all. In this sense I think Blank is worth a listen, when he
mentions the mythic aspect of the structure, the netmyth. Most of the best
net art now is doing this as well and fast as they can. Notable are Mark
America in narrating real-time brainwaves; hell.com about the myth of hell
(mid-nineties), NN about the vegetative myth, e8z about consummation.

But that is a question about "the net art world," which you keep mentioning.
What's the mythic valence of that? Yet it's no deal-breaker because while
you have netart that gets awards and press, you have just as much that
doesn't. I agree it is a good thing to ask about the myths or submyths that
operators create to negotiate the netmyth.

Citation, for example, on the net is a maddening headache for MLA now. The
articles they quote are all more transient than old-fashioned print. It's
even biting into productivity. So you have the myth of evanescence in
avatars, for example. Semi-anonymous personas are still brand standards.
Natalie Jeremienko says that "artist's collectives are as real as it gets."

Essentially I agree with Blank that you have to think in terms of myth.
Everyone's doing it. RtMark and Rhizome are even myths. Hell they even have
myths about myth like C5, and they're heavy computer masters.

I know for a fact that Bill Moyers would do a show about Genius 2000 (if he
isn't already, what does "Now" mean?). My personal take on the mythic genre
is, to be fair, the myth of infinite productivity. Cannetti called it the
myth-ritual of the pack of increase.

Maybe humans are practicing canid mythos and denying the feline, the
guardian, the inscrutable?

The good news is that people are doing a lot more interesting stuff with myth
than that. You have myths of Daphne, Argus, Jupiter, the language is cliche
enough to merit satire.

Another great idea, what about the Socrates/Plato myth? In a way that's the
myth of cellular automata. Perhaps.

Best,

Max Herman



> It often deals with structural concepts: