Quoting Alexis Turner <subbies@redheadedstepchild.org>:

> We make money, not art.

So how much do I have to pay you to agree with me?

> I hadn't realized that all artists had to have the same intentions
> and beliefs for their work to receive a stamp of artistic merit.

I'm not quite sure how we got here, but I do not particularly care what
artists
think. Unless they think "I'm going to kill Rob in three, two...", in which
case the fact that they are an artist is a secondary consideration.

What interests me are artists' actions and the effects of those actions,
particularly the unexamined, glossed-over, or dissonant effects of those
actions.

This is a separate issue from the work's merit as art, unless that merit rests
in part on such issues.

> Many atrocities and wrongs
> have been committed throughout history with the aid of artists, but
> that doesn't make
> their work any less art.

I'm not sure about that. Thomas Kinkade's shops would be a good
counter-example.

> It makes a call for those who disagree to respond with
> their own work rebuking the first.

If you see a mugging in progress, mugging someone else is not always the best
way of reporting the incident.

> But that requires action, balls, and
> creativity, each of which this project has in spades.

So, given this, its promotion of RFID is unproblematic? Or is it the
presence of
RFID that gives the work its "balls" and creativity?

> Enough, at any rate, to
> get a write up in Wired, ensuring a lot more people than those on this list
> will hear (about) it.

I'll take the audience of Rhizome over the audience of Wired any day.
Unless I'm
trying to sell an SUV, in which case obviously I'll take the conde nast
option.

> So. Do you want to make a whimper, or a bang?

I want to ask why the rash of RFID cheerleading in contemporary art.

- Rob.