dot.com implosion killed net art?

Hi T.Whid & all,

>Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
seem to be happening.

As long as one has a computer that is connected to another computer, or
network, or Internet - net art will go on, no matter what other so
called 'knowing' individuals would prefer us to think.

The idea of net art and the death of it has come up so many times on
this list, one would have to think - how many times can it die if it
did, which of course, it is not dead - it's mythology and political to
want it to…

marc

> Hi all,
>
> re: the discussion about net art being
> weakend/not-as-interesting/killed/whatever-you-want-to-call-it
>
> There has been several assertions made that the dot.com bust poured
> cold water on the movement but I wanted to look at it a little more
> closely.
>
> As some of you know, M.River and I were very much involved with the
> net art movement from 97 onward. I was also working within the dot.com
> bubble at the time and was very attuned to its movements.
>
> I remember knowing there was trouble with the bubble in mid-'00. Then,
> by late 00/early 01, it was obvious to everyone that the burst had
> happened. (See this graph of the nasdaq:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NASDAQ_IXIC_-_dot-com_bubble_small.png).
>
>
> I was out of work in early/mid 00 and it was super-easy to get a
> dot.com gig at the time due to the fact that the forward momentum of
> companies isn't as easily stopped as the rise of their stock price.
>
> Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
> throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
> seem to be happening.
>
> Probably due to the fact that museums and art institutions are even
> slower moving than businesses, it took a good year or two after the
> dot.com burst for the net art fad to fizzle in the art institutions.
> Not to say that the dot.com collapse didn't help cause it, but it took
> a while for it to be felt.
>


–
Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org
HTTP - http://www.http.uk.net
Node.London - http://www.nodel.org

On 7/30/06, marc <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi T.Whid & all,
>
> >Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
> throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
> seem to be happening.
>
> As long as one has a computer that is connected to another computer, or
> network, or Internet - net art will go on, no matter what other so
> called 'knowing' individuals would prefer us to think.

Well sure that's inarguable. People will always find ways to express
themselves in whatever media they like. IMHO, the important question
is whether or not net art will be *relevant* in the future. By
relevant I mean, relevant to collectors, art-thinkers, other artists,
curators, gallerists, etc etc. After all, isn't that what people mean
when they speculate whether or not a certain art form/medium/technique
is 'dead?'

IMHO, mail art is more-or-less irrelevant. I don't want that to happen
to net art.

As far as the dot.com boom went. The art establishment got as caught
up with the hype as everyone else so you saw more interest in net art
during and right after the boom. I think that's pretty obvious. I
guess I could do some research to prove my point, but I'm too lazy :-)
I have anecdotal evidence however. Two of the biggest names in net art
were earning a living at it during and after the boom but since have
had to take on day gigs.

Hope all is well Marc! You guys do good work :-)

Best

>
> The idea of net art and the death of it has come up so many times on
> this list, one would have to think - how many times can it die if it
> did, which of course, it is not dead - it's mythology and political to
> want it to…
>
> marc
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > re: the discussion about net art being
> > weakend/not-as-interesting/killed/whatever-you-want-to-call-it
> >
> > There has been several assertions made that the dot.com bust poured
> > cold water on the movement but I wanted to look at it a little more
> > closely.
> >
> > As some of you know, M.River and I were very much involved with the
> > net art movement from 97 onward. I was also working within the dot.com
> > bubble at the time and was very attuned to its movements.
> >
> > I remember knowing there was trouble with the bubble in mid-'00. Then,
> > by late 00/early 01, it was obvious to everyone that the burst had
> > happened. (See this graph of the nasdaq:
> > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NASDAQ_IXIC_-_dot-com_bubble_small.png).
> >
> >
> > I was out of work in early/mid 00 and it was super-easy to get a
> > dot.com gig at the time due to the fact that the forward momentum of
> > companies isn't as easily stopped as the rise of their stock price.
> >
> > Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
> > throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
> > seem to be happening.
> >
> > Probably due to the fact that museums and art institutions are even
> > slower moving than businesses, it took a good year or two after the
> > dot.com burst for the net art fad to fizzle in the art institutions.
> > Not to say that the dot.com collapse didn't help cause it, but it took
> > a while for it to be felt.
> >
>
>
> –
> Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org
> HTTP - http://www.http.uk.net
> Node.London - http://www.nodel.org
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>


–
<twhid>www.mteww.com</twhid>

> IMHO, mail art is more-or-less irrelevant. I don't want that to happen
> to net art.

i guess such a concept depends on the understanding of both "mail
art" and "irrelevant" though… personally, i always had a hard time
thinking about "mail art" as defined by the medium, and the same is
true for me when thinking about "net art."
Thinking about both within a larger process that could be called
"networked" (ala Saper) makes more sense to me. Interesting "mail
art" IMHO is not reducible to the medium, although it's not separable
from it either.
in my amateur opinion, the expansion of net art reflects a
recognition of "net" as short for "network" not "Internet." Don't get
me wrong, there's lots of formal and conceptual specificity to the
Internet (and down into its widely used components of the web, email,
IRC, etc) that HAS to be considered and can't be overlooked, at least
not in a formal, political and historical context. But i would also
propose that the Internet occurs within an even larger context, so
does the art happening because of it - as twhid's account of the dot
com boom/bust anecdotally assumes.
Of course, there is a lot to be critical of here, especially as it
relates to the conditions/demands of the "market" and notions of
scarcity.
The most interesting/relevant net art work for me, is that which
situates the specificity of network technology within the systems
that give it value (whether that's idiosyncratic, Political,
tactical, sexual, whatever).
So i can't see claiming that "mail art" is irrelevant… in some ways
that project by Mandiberg that won a RHZ commission brings together
"mail art"
and "net art" by engaging the ecological politics of the virtual
economy. In an updated anthology of mail art, i would include that
project, even though it doesn't USE mail, it is dependent on it.
no one asked what i thought, but there it is anyway :)
ryan

Hi T.Whid,

>the important question
> is whether or not net art will be *relevant* in the future. By
> relevant I mean, relevant to collectors, art-thinkers, other artists,
> curators, gallerists, etc etc. After all, isn't that what people mean
> when they speculate whether or not a certain art form/medium/technique
> is 'dead?'

Regarding collections and commissions - I know that the Tate Gallery in
the UK collect various net art works. Which is a positive step in
respect of on-line archiving and getting it seen to a wider audience out
there. Also, groups like V2, have been supporting media art and net art
in various ways.

I am not so worried about net art as some, and think that net art is
alive and kicking and that it is moving into different areas, networked
and through different activities that may not immediately look like net
art but, has its spirit and is influenced by what it still is and was,
possessing contexts that work to inform this contemporary creativity.

A good example is Node.London http://www.nodel.org/, which was a
decentralized, networked, consensus based (most of the time) and used
regions (areas, places) as nodes around the whole of London -
representing net art and media arts for a month. To be honest - we were
not prepared for the amount of people who would get involved to show
their work - in the end we had too many venues and far too many events,
artists through the month. On one hand, certain 'sack-heads' would go
for the obvious and unimaginative retort and say 'hey - there was too
much and you were not able to deal with the overload', my retort would
be 'calm down and breath the creative air - you have just experienced a
change in culture, and the doors were opened and now we are seeing more
media art and net art than what we all thought was actually there.'

By exploring open source, using its methodology and practise, which is
strongly connected to D.I.Y culture and social contexts - London
experienced something special and different for a change, and it was a
change. There are some who would rather that it did not happen, they are
the people who would prefer such creativity to stay contained, and not
be seen. So that they could provide their own limited canon, regarding
what it is that we are all involved in - by taking control of our own
culture, we create more outlets for others to be let in and get more
involved, which can't be bad thing…

And of course, net art in its pure form is still being made.

Such as:
Slippage - http://slippage.net/

OneSmallStep - http://flawedart.net/files/nospacelikemyspace

Oil Standard - http://turbulence.org/Works/oilstandard/

The Danube Panorama Project -
http://www.danubepanorama.net/en/Main/About?from=Main.Index

Glitchbrowser - http://glitchbrowser.com/

There's loads more I could mention and probably should do but do not
possess time to do so, but in other projects…

I am not worried about history, only that in the recent past that the
wrong people have been writing about it - if we make sure that we are
doing our best to change things by either creating it, showing it,
writing about it, talking about it, using it and getting on with it -
then we can let history look after itself, for we are making history
right now.

I feel that sometimes (including myself here) that, we are actually more
in control of our own histories than we originally may have thought. I
mean, we are the 1st generation to have such networks at hand to help us
contact others outside of our nations, to promote, explore dialogue and
present and share our creative endeavours.

If net art does die, it will die not because it is dead or killed by
anyone (they are not worth listening too) but more because it lives via
mutation, beyond its original forms/medium and reliving its essence
through our own influencing agency.


> Hope all is well Marc! You guys do good work :-)

Shucks - watch out or i'll come over there and give you a big hug…

Seriously, we work our socks off here and it's nice to get respect - it
helps.

marc



>
>> Hi T.Whid & all,
>>
>> >Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
>> throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
>> seem to be happening.
>>
>> As long as one has a computer that is connected to another computer, or
>> network, or Internet - net art will go on, no matter what other so
>> called 'knowing' individuals would prefer us to think.
>
>
> Well sure that's inarguable. People will always find ways to express
> themselves in whatever media they like. IMHO, the important question
> is whether or not net art will be *relevant* in the future. By
> relevant I mean, relevant to collectors, art-thinkers, other artists,
> curators, gallerists, etc etc. After all, isn't that what people mean
> when they speculate whether or not a certain art form/medium/technique
> is 'dead?'
>
> IMHO, mail art is more-or-less irrelevant. I don't want that to happen
> to net art.
>
> As far as the dot.com boom went. The art establishment got as caught
> up with the hype as everyone else so you saw more interest in net art
> during and right after the boom. I think that's pretty obvious. I
> guess I could do some research to prove my point, but I'm too lazy :-)
> I have anecdotal evidence however. Two of the biggest names in net art
> were earning a living at it during and after the boom but since have
> had to take on day gigs.
>
> Hope all is well Marc! You guys do good work :-)
>
> Best
>
>>
>> The idea of net art and the death of it has come up so many times on
>> this list, one would have to think - how many times can it die if it
>> did, which of course, it is not dead - it's mythology and political to
>> want it to…
>>
>> marc
>>
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > re: the discussion about net art being
>> > weakend/not-as-interesting/killed/whatever-you-want-to-call-it
>> >
>> > There has been several assertions made that the dot.com bust poured
>> > cold water on the movement but I wanted to look at it a little more
>> > closely.
>> >
>> > As some of you know, M.River and I were very much involved with the
>> > net art movement from 97 onward. I was also working within the dot.com
>> > bubble at the time and was very attuned to its movements.
>> >
>> > I remember knowing there was trouble with the bubble in mid-'00. Then,
>> > by late 00/early 01, it was obvious to everyone that the burst had
>> > happened. (See this graph of the nasdaq:
>> >
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NASDAQ_IXIC_-_dot-com_bubble_small.png).
>> >
>> >
>> > I was out of work in early/mid 00 and it was super-easy to get a
>> > dot.com gig at the time due to the fact that the forward momentum of
>> > companies isn't as easily stopped as the rise of their stock price.
>> >
>> > Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
>> > throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
>> > seem to be happening.
>> >
>> > Probably due to the fact that museums and art institutions are even
>> > slower moving than businesses, it took a good year or two after the
>> > dot.com burst for the net art fad to fizzle in the art institutions.
>> > Not to say that the dot.com collapse didn't help cause it, but it took
>> > a while for it to be felt.
>> >
>>
>>
>> –
>> Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org
>> HTTP - http://www.http.uk.net
>> Node.London - http://www.nodel.org
>>
>> +
>> -> post: [email protected]
>> -> questions: [email protected]
>> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>> +
>> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
>> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>>
>
>


–
Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org
HTTP - http://www.http.uk.net
Node.London - http://www.nodel.org

> IMHO, the important question
> is whether or not net art will be *relevant* in the future. By
> relevant I mean, relevant to collectors, art-thinkers, other artists,
> curators, gallerists, etc etc. After all, isn't that what people mean
> when they speculate whether or not a certain art form/medium/technique
> is 'dead?'
>
> IMHO, mail art is more-or-less irrelevant. I don't want that to happen
> to net art.

Here is something I wrote in 1998 about the relation of Web art and mail
art:
http://vispo.com/guests/ClementePadin/ClementeIntroToOptionsOfMailArt.html ;
this is an introduction to an essay called "The Options of Mail Art" by the
Uruguyan poet, mail artist and net artist Clemente Padin who is still active
in these arts. Or, rather, is still active in what is happening now, which,
for some, is a mixture of both mail art and net art. In his essay, Padin
argues against accepting the notion that what is relevant and what isn't is
decided by collectors, curators, gallerists, etc.

ja
http://vispo.com

i wonder how economic factors affect art in different places. for instance,
in large cities, where everything is so expensive, i wonder if the 'value'
(in the broadest sense) of something like net art is more inflected with
economic associations than in smaller places. if an art does not or cannot
establish an explicit economy of the art object and, further, the economic
culture (dot com industry in this case) tanks, people in larger cities may
find the art increasingly difficult to fund even indirectly, and this
diminishment in the economic value of the whole activity results in less
involvement all round in the art. which brings about also not simply a
diminishment in the economic 'value' of the activity but a subjective change
in the perceived 'value' of the art or activity.

whereas in smaller places, where it's sometimes more possible to do things
that aren't necessarily funded (if anything at all is to be done), the
economic state of the art is not as influential. and people in smaller
places can mistake the influence of economic imperative in larger cities for
shallow, fickle fashion-mindedness whereas it's mostly people going where
there are at least a few dollars to pay the rent and get paid for work in
places that are outrageously expensive and, even at the best of times,
artists have to spend more time paying the rent than making art.

and, in smaller places, the big city collectors, curators, publishers,
patrons and gallerists etc are more or less out of reach anyway, ie, that
'economy' is 'irrelevant' to getting on with things, is no help. and,
similarly, in the big cities, notions of the value of art that are not
predicated on some sort of pseudo economic market value are insupportable by
the above logic.

or am i all wet on this?

also, compare the 'economy' of visual art with literary art. ezra pound once
remarked 'It's true there's no money in poetry. But, then, there's no poetry
in money, either." the ragged 'economy' of poetry trades in things like
teaching positions and who publishes your work and who writes about it, not
at all in the monetary worth of the work itself, because everybody is
penniless in that regard.

ja
http://vispo.com

I think you make some nice conncetions here. I especially like how you conflate to some degree economic value and perceived aesthetic value.

> this diminishment in the economic value of the whole activity results in less
> involvement all round in the art. which brings about also not simply a
> diminishment in the economic 'value' of the activity but a subjective
> change in the perceived 'value' of the art or activity.

As far as your statement on the lack of an economy of the art object whereas net art is concerned it might be interesting to look at conceptual art and early performance work as a way to understand how they were brought into the major art institutions and what was gained and lost in the process. i think there is an uneasy alliance that happens here. If we are talking conceptual and performance of the 60's and 70's (as an example) much of the work resisted the aesthetics, politics and economics of the modenist art museums, but found itself being absorbed into those same institutions eventually anyway. Artists were able to support themselves and the genre gained widespread acceptence as "Art", yet much of the original point of these works was hidden or lost and replaced with an institutional narrative. It is now possible, for instance, to open an art book and see Kosuth's One and Three Chairs discussed with a formalist vocabulary. I think I may have taken this off in another direction. Sorry. It would be nice to see more written along the lines that you have laid out here.


Jim Andrews wrote:

> i wonder how economic factors affect art in different places. for
> instance,
> in large cities, where everything is so expensive, i wonder if the
> 'value'
> (in the broadest sense) of something like net art is more inflected
> with
> economic associations than in smaller places. if an art does not or
> cannot
> establish an explicit economy of the art object and, further, the
> economic
> culture (dot com industry in this case) tanks, people in larger cities
> may
> find the art increasingly difficult to fund even indirectly, and this
> diminishment in the economic value of the whole activity results in
> less
> involvement all round in the art. which brings about also not simply a
> diminishment in the economic 'value' of the activity but a subjective
> change
> in the perceived 'value' of the art or activity.
>
> whereas in smaller places, where it's sometimes more possible to do
> things
> that aren't necessarily funded (if anything at all is to be done), the
> economic state of the art is not as influential. and people in smaller
> places can mistake the influence of economic imperative in larger
> cities for
> shallow, fickle fashion-mindedness whereas it's mostly people going
> where
> there are at least a few dollars to pay the rent and get paid for work
> in
> places that are outrageously expensive and, even at the best of times,
> artists have to spend more time paying the rent than making art.
>
> and, in smaller places, the big city collectors, curators, publishers,
> patrons and gallerists etc are more or less out of reach anyway, ie,
> that
> 'economy' is 'irrelevant' to getting on with things, is no help. and,
> similarly, in the big cities, notions of the value of art that are not
> predicated on some sort of pseudo economic market value are
> insupportable by
> the above logic.
>
> or am i all wet on this?
>
> also, compare the 'economy' of visual art with literary art. ezra
> pound once
> remarked 'It's true there's no money in poetry. But, then, there's no
> poetry
> in money, either." the ragged 'economy' of poetry trades in things
> like
> teaching positions and who publishes your work and who writes about
> it, not
> at all in the monetary worth of the work itself, because everybody is
> penniless in that regard.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>

Our meditations about interlaced,influence and connections between state in
society and it's reflection on "Art Computing"so unmistakable ignored on
Rhizome_Raw that we've finally came closer to trap/mistake we made in our
own praxis.If we talk about difficulty to see and accept something
obvious/close/near(that hurt!)how could we ask exactly the same from other
people.Other words:Arno Becker and parallel with Nazi and contemporary West
art (with special turn on"Art Computing")was wrong,same way it was wrong to
transfer whole world guilt on Eskimo and Amazonian tribes.Now we have proof
of their innocent and we could kill some children(today three years old girl
from Lebanon good train and indoctrinate could endanger American interest
on 'East'.)
What's our point?Our point's that if you couldn't,or if you refuse to
'take'our opinion about things(you are so high that our'words'hardly reach
even close to you,and if we are lucky it happen that's just mumble of
something alien,dangerous and threaten for you?But what about "Freedom of
speech"?Isn't it same time right to be listen and visible?We're free to
scream in prison America(that mean your responsibility is undoubted)make of
our,and many other countries around the world,so we suppose that's only
voice you expect to hear from,outthere-nowhere.Oh,yes,you have some employee
philosopher(Zizek for example),or artist(Cosic for example),mainly from
small countries anxious to reach West by short way.That's why Zizek take(it
was few years ago hundreds thousand of $,to "criticize"American politics,but
not so hard,it's like sado-mazo game,not snuff…).We don't want to waste
our precious time on other one.
So,Soros(George or Georgy)make ""our"" art scene in Serbia with his money
and our 'people',same as in many country in region.It'(or should we said
'he')is American product,and your responsibility for people like Soros is
undoubted.You could say what's wrong with donation for art?Nothing except
that it wasn't 'art',it's always ideology,and influence on main strategic
processes in some country.Soros,now,have concession on biggest cable net in
Serbia.And there's some money even for you-undoubted.Same as you drive with
stolen oil, my money's in your pocket(Twid know that very well).So,lets open
cart:Rhizome.org loose essence and basic idea of rhizome in(D&G)sense,which
mean that everywhere,in every place could growth something
big,small,extraordinary or average,but it can growth and our reason for
being on Rhiozome.org is that fact,this trace of freedom.
Now Rhizome.org is one of instrument of American hegemony more open than
ever.Manager of org.Lauren Cornel in her interview mentioned only two names
from Europe,which is proof that she have mission to destroy idea of
Rhizome in America,or she's just (politically) naive…We doubt in second
option.
Delleuse&Guattari idea is not something untouchable and sent.actually it's
good to discus about basic thing in their philosophy,but let us from other
countries be at lest fair treatment.Rhizome.org is big and it's
infrastructure is good and strong enough to hold out artist and other people
from all around the world.Rhizome.org don't need to be one more toy in
bloody hand of American administration.
MANIK

Hi Jim,

These are very good points. They were sort of drifting around in the back of
my head as I wrote the post about the relationship of the dot.com frenzy to
net art's development.

Back in the dot.com days corps were flush, over-staffed & poorly managed.
This led to a good environment for working on one's own creative projects.
One would have lots of time on one's hands while in the office, lots of
resources (computers, bandwidth, software) and no one keeping an eye on you
:-)


On 7/30/06, Jim Andrews <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> i wonder how economic factors affect art in different places. for
> instance,
> in large cities, where everything is so expensive, i wonder if the 'value'
> (in the broadest sense) of something like net art is more inflected with
> economic associations than in smaller places. if an art does not or cannot
> establish an explicit economy of the art object and, further, the economic
> culture (dot com industry in this case) tanks, people in larger cities may
> find the art increasingly difficult to fund even indirectly, and this
> diminishment in the economic value of the whole activity results in less
> involvement all round in the art. which brings about also not simply a
> diminishment in the economic 'value' of the activity but a subjective
> change
> in the perceived 'value' of the art or activity.
>
> whereas in smaller places, where it's sometimes more possible to do things
> that aren't necessarily funded (if anything at all is to be done), the
> economic state of the art is not as influential. and people in smaller
> places can mistake the influence of economic imperative in larger cities
> for
> shallow, fickle fashion-mindedness whereas it's mostly people going where
> there are at least a few dollars to pay the rent and get paid for work in
> places that are outrageously expensive and, even at the best of times,
> artists have to spend more time paying the rent than making art.
>
> and, in smaller places, the big city collectors, curators, publishers,
> patrons and gallerists etc are more or less out of reach anyway, ie, that
> 'economy' is 'irrelevant' to getting on with things, is no help. and,
> similarly, in the big cities, notions of the value of art that are not
> predicated on some sort of pseudo economic market value are insupportable
> by
> the above logic.
>
> or am i all wet on this?
>
> also, compare the 'economy' of visual art with literary art. ezra pound
> once
> remarked 'It's true there's no money in poetry. But, then, there's no
> poetry
> in money, either." the ragged 'economy' of poetry trades in things like
> teaching positions and who publishes your work and who writes about it,
> not
> at all in the monetary worth of the work itself, because everybody is
> penniless in that regard.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
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–
<twhid>www.mteww.com</twhid>

but what killed video art?
Eric

DVD


On 7/31/06 11:29 AM, "Eric Dymond" <[email protected]> wrote:

> but what killed video art?
> Eric
> +
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>

ART

>DVD
>
>
>On 7/31/06 11:29 AM, "Eric Dymond" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>>but what killed video art?
>>Eric
>>+
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–
Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org
HTTP - http://www.http.uk.net
Node.London - http://www.nodel.org

the net art boom might not have been as loud as everyone remembers:
http://209.32.200.27:8080/read?390,20

> but what killed video art?

Video never died, it merely became assimilated into canon.

With all this discussion of things getting 'killed'…things dying, dead, crashing, busted, taken over…I'm beginning to get scared. This art world surely is a dangerous place.

But seriously…

Would be interesting if a correlation did exist. Thesis/Essay anyone?

I think artists didn't want to be 'limited' anymore to the set of materials commonly used for net art (browser interfaces and languages). Not that these materials are anywhere close to exhaused. But I have to admit that the 1990's HTML and Flash toolsets were/are fairly limited. We live in a world of meta-meta-tools. Tools creating layers and layers of more tools. Conforming to toolsets that allow for viewability via http is limiting yet still challenging, like painting or writing. This is one reason I love net art.

I remember putting terminal-browser-based net art into galleries on monitors. Most people I don't think could engage with it very well. People who leave their desk and enter a gallery want something different from what their desk had to offer. Thus, as mentioned by others here, gallery-net-art-whatchamacallit has evolved into new directions that reflect its present canonization and integration. I still think plenty of desk-net-art is still coming out though, whether its called net.art or screen art or desk art or cubicle art.

I remember VRML as being super cheesy. What ever happened to that?

-Stevie

The impotent questions

With all this crap if you're into conceptual art discussion of things
getting 'killed'…things dying, dead, crashing, busted, taken over…I'm
beginning to get scared other artists,
curators, gallerists, etc etc. . This art world surely is a dangerous
place.Video never died, it merely became assimilated into canon.

But seriously… is still active in what is happening now?

Would be interesting if a also makes these ideological demands correlation
did exist. Thesis/Essay anyone? History and cannons, and institutions.
Everyones hands at home where as ten years ago you still needed access to an
Avid, Media 100, SGI machines that, unless rich or in school made it a
the 1990's HTML and Flash toolsets were/are fairly limited. We live in a
world of meta-meta-tools. Tools creating …
But seriously… is still active in what is happening now?
Conforming to toolsets that allow loud as everyone remembers: ART! Why? I
feel that what you are really looking for.What their desk had to offer?
Remember puttingsome degree economic value I am not so worried about and
perceived aesthetic value.
terminal-browser-based net art into galleries on possessing contexts that
work to inform this contemporary creativity.I too disagree with such a call.
It's here every day. p2p, rss, flickr, myspace, google ads, multi player,
remote viewing, blog, vlog, blah, blah, blah. monitors.
Most people I don't think could engage with it very well. People who leave
their desk and enter a gallery want something different .Thus, as mentioned
by others here, gallery-net-art-whatchamacallit has evolved.
Net.art,different genres and fusions.
Genres pop up every day, or screen art or desk art or cubicle art.Sorry to
be so silent - have been working on a very large (132 pp.) among other
things. I understand the frustration of being.

What ever happened to that?
Yes - I understand the frustration of being caught in a bonsai trap.
But seriously… is still active in what is happening now?

> As far as your statement on the lack of an economy of the art
> object where net art is concerned it might be interesting to
> look at conceptual art and early performance work as a way to
> understand how they were brought into the major art institutions
> and what was gained and lost in the process. i think there is an
> uneasy alliance that happens here. If we are talking conceptual
> and performance of the 60's and 70's (as an example) much of the
> work resisted the aesthetics, politics and economics of the
> modenist art museums, but found itself being absorbed into those
> same institutions eventually anyway. Artists were able to
> support themselves and the genre gained widespread acceptence as
> "Art", yet much of the original point of these works was hidden
> or lost and replaced with an institutional narrative. It is now
> possible, for instance, to open an art book and see Kosuth's One
> and Three Chairs discussed with a formalist vocabulary. I think
> I may have taken this off in anot!
> her direction. Sorry. It would be nice to see more written
> along the lines that you have laid out here.

Well, one thing that can be said for the galleries is that they are in advance of the publishers, for the most part, concerning net art and the digital more broadly. I'm basically a writer and fled with gratitude to the Net when the Web opened up. Because I had little company in the sort of art where I live. Because I also work with the visual and publishing such material is difficult for publishers. And expensive. Because I also am a programmer and audio guy and can attempt to put it together. Because I can publish my work as well as I have the skill to do on the Web at relatively little financial cost. Because books in Canada have a hard time getting outside Canada or having more than 300 copies printed whereas the Net is widely international. Because neither Borges nor Burroughs could have been Canadian writers. Because the other artists I'm interested in tend to be interested in the Net and their work is on it, often. Because it's possible to take poetry in directions on the Web that poetry has rarely suffered. Because it still thrills me occassionally. Because we are creating a world wide web of art and ideas accessible to increasingly large portions of the world and we have the opportunity to make that worthwhile for people now and perhaps for the future. Because my daddy taught me there's nothing better for the world than communication between people where before there was ignorance and fear of the other and the unknown. Because we need to learn how to feel and think with this technological extension of our voice and writings and cognitive abilities so we can create something other than grasping, poking claws with it. Because computers should expand our humanity, not simply diminish it. Because I like books but my work usually doesn't fit well inside of them. Because, as a writer, my focus is on publishing, mainly, rather than performance or installation, etc.

It seems that net art has typically had more involvement from visual artists than from writers though, of course, it tends to turn visual artists toward writing and writers toward some involvement with the visual. But publishers aren't quite sure what to make of digital literary art if couldn't fit in a book. And will remain that way while they focus singly on print.

If net art is 'out of fashion' in media art/visual arts now, perhaps the writers are still in some sort of process of exploration of it. Perhaps the net is more frequently apt for writers than for visual artists. In that there are all sorts of visual arts that don't fit on the screen well or at all, whereas the screen is more accomodating to wide ranges of approaches to writing. Computers are language/logic machines. They are implicated in language down to the machine language and theoretical level (computer science students study a course sometimes called 'language and the theory of computation').

I've read some of Kosuth's writing. He's a strong writer. He said the concrete poets were stupid about language. He isn't a visual poet but a visual artist of conceptual art. Which is to say he isn't so much interested in the 'shadows on the wall' as the concepts that eddy mysteriously among the shadows. And it seems, reading his writing, that he is/was also rather formidably Marxist. But my whole knowledge of his work is within the last eight years, so I'm not sure what has been lost in the process you describe. I have read his collection of writings Art After Philosophy and After, but it's been a while. Does he condemn formalism of some type?

ja
http://vispo.com

The dot.com was a toin-coss in order to generate energy.
Net.art is for the most part a complete and total failure.
There is no recollection of a single intelligent use of
computers in the past decade. Isn't that sad?

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, T.Whid wrote:

> Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 10:18:11 -0400
> From: T.Whid <[email protected]>
> To: rhizome <[email protected]>
> Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: dot.com implosion killed net art?
>
> Hi all,
>
> re: the discussion about net art being
> weakend/not-as-interesting/killed/whatever-you-want-to-call-it
>
> There has been several assertions made that the dot.com bust poured
> cold water on the movement but I wanted to look at it a little more
> closely.
>
> As some of you know, M.River and I were very much involved with the
> net art movement from 97 onward. I was also working within the dot.com
> bubble at the time and was very attuned to its movements.
>
> I remember knowing there was trouble with the bubble in mid-'00. Then,
> by late 00/early 01, it was obvious to everyone that the burst had
> happened. (See this graph of the nasdaq:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NASDAQ_IXIC_-_dot-com_bubble_small.png).
>
> I was out of work in early/mid 00 and it was super-easy to get a
> dot.com gig at the time due to the fact that the forward momentum of
> companies isn't as easily stopped as the rise of their stock price.
>
> Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it *would*
> throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn't
> seem to be happening.
>
> Probably due to the fact that museums and art institutions are even
> slower moving than businesses, it took a good year or two after the
> dot.com burst for the net art fad to fizzle in the art institutions.
> Not to say that the dot.com collapse didn't help cause it, but it took
> a while for it to be felt.
>
> –
> <twhid>www.mteww.com</twhid>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
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> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
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>

o
[ + ]

+ + +


| '|' |
_________________________________________
`, . ` `k a r e i' ? ' D42

> The dot.com was a toin-coss in order to generate energy.
> Net.art is for the most part a complete and total failure.
> There is no recollection of a single intelligent use of
> computers in the past decade. Isn't that sad?

if that is really how you feel, it's sad for you.

also, success and failure, in matters of art and life, are ambiguous.
there's winning and losing, but which is which is sometimes confusing.

ja
http://vispo.com

Jim Andrews wrote:

>
> > The dot.com was a toin-coss in order to generate energy.
> > Net.art is for the most part a complete and total failure.
> > There is no recollection of a single intelligent use of
> > computers in the past decade. Isn't that sad?
>
> if that is really how you feel, it's sad for you.
>
> also, success and failure, in matters of art and life, are ambiguous.
> there's winning and losing, but which is which is sometimes confusing.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>
most of the art I remember for the past 10 years is Net Art… was there something else going on? Is there a new painting, film, video that I somehow missed?
Nope , I checked, the new and interesting stuff was net art, and it came in large undulating waves.
Eric

Jim Andrews wrote:

>
> > The dot.com was a toin-coss in order to generate energy.
> > Net.art is for the most part a complete and total failure.
> > There is no recollection of a single intelligent use of
> > computers in the past decade. Isn't that sad?
>
> if that is really how you feel, it's sad for you.
>
> also, success and failure, in matters of art and life, are ambiguous.
> there's winning and losing, but which is which is sometimes confusing.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>
most of the art I remember for the past 10 years is Net Art… was there something else going on? Is there a new painting, film, video that I somehow missed?
Nope , I checked, the new and interesting stuff was net art, and it came in large undulating waves.
Eric

Quoting manik <[email protected]>:

> Everyones hands at home where as ten years ago you still needed access to an
> Avid, Media 100, SGI machines that, unless rich or in school made it a
> the 1990's HTML and Flash toolsets were/are fairly limited. We live in a
> world of meta-meta-tools. Tools creating …
> But seriously… is still active in what is happening now?

Yes, net.art has not disappeared, it has just become universal. Anyone
can make
it, and make it well, it is not exclusive any more. And for all the populist
noises that the artworld makes, exclusivity is what fine art is about.

> It's here every day. p2p, rss, flickr, myspace, google ads, multi player,
> remote viewing, blog, vlog, blah, blah, blah. monitors.

Yes, net.art is not a frontier any more. Painting an empty landscape
when there
are skyscrapers as far as the eye can see is unrealistic. You either have to
start sketching glass and steel or "get your motor running, head out on the
highway" to find a new frontier.

It would be an amusing irony if, for net.art, that frontier is the gallery.

> Most people I don't think could engage with it very well. People who leave
> their desk and enter a gallery want something different .Thus, as mentioned
> by others here, gallery-net-art-whatchamacallit has evolved.

Like an aging music fan the gallery system needs cool in a way it can
understand. This is "stadium net.art". The crossover will look distorted to
those who don't make it, they will be left grumbling about how the authentic
scene has been corrupted by AOR men, like punk rock in LA in 1982.

- Rob.

netart is not dot.com

dot.com's existence might have helped by making new media more visible, by
making technologies available, by enabling other communication channels

netart sits there as the proof that humans need to express themselves through
art, just as they need a mystical dimension, just as they need love, hate,
feelings…

the media doesn't matter, after all… humans always used the media they
had available, no matter what it was.

internet's still alive? so will be netart.

at least one programming language exists? software art will be there,too.

etcetera..


s


>– Original Message –
>From: "Jim Andrews" <[email protected]>
>To: <[email protected]>
>Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: dot.com implosion killed net art?
>Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 22:42:00 -0700
>Reply-To: "Jim Andrews" <[email protected]>
>
>
>
>> The dot.com was a toin-coss in order to generate energy.
>> Net.art is for the most part a complete and total failure.
>> There is no recollection of a single intelligent use of
>> computers in the past decade. Isn't that sad?
>
>if that is really how you feel, it's sad for you.
>
>also, success and failure, in matters of art and life, are ambiguous.
>there's winning and losing, but which is which is sometimes confusing.
>
>ja
>http://vispo.com
>
>
>+
>-> post: [email protected]
>-> questions: [email protected]
>-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>+
>Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
>Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

> > Manik said:
> > Everyones hands at home where as ten years ago you still needed
> > access to an
> > Avid, Media 100, SGI machines that, unless rich or in school made it a
> > the 1990's HTML and Flash toolsets were/are fairly limited. We live in a
> > world of meta-meta-tools. Tools creating …
> > But seriously… is still active in what is happening now?
>
> Rob said:
> Yes, net.art has not disappeared, it has just become universal. Anyone
> can make
> it, and make it well, it is not exclusive any more. And for all
> the populist
> noises that the artworld makes, exclusivity is what fine art is about.

Universal? In what sense?

"Anyone can make it, and make it well…"

This requires some scrutiny, doesn't it. Certainly there are many ways to
approach net art. For instance,

> > It's here every day. p2p, rss, flickr, myspace, google ads,
> multi player,
> > remote viewing, blog, vlog, blah, blah, blah. monitors.

plus shockwave, flash, java, processing, dhtml, or desktop-based c++ or
delphi etc apps that are wired to the net. programmer net artists usually
produce apps using these tools, and often use the former quoted bunch as web
services, ie, the app may use google to get images or texts or videos etc.

once you say 'programmer net artist', you're not talking about 'anyone'.
being able to program and program well, concerning art, is quite rare.
usually it requires several years of study in computer science and many more
of practical experience, though school is not always the way artists (or
even professional programmers) learn their theory, their data structures,
theory of computation, OOP methodology, etc. Programming is like
architecture in that you have both to get your head around quite a technical
body of material and be able to *feel* with those technical languages.

going the way of the non-programmer net artist is not as technically
forbidding, but i imagine it is also extremely challenging. there is quite a
bit of stuff that 'anybody can do' and is as common as spam. to distinguish
one's work when it is brother to spam is a job. even when the work is not
spam. anything that 'anybody can do' is going to be done at mass-spam-media
levels and is going to be common as spam. this is where 'early adoption' of
technologies such as blog, vlog, etc becomes important to non-programmer net
artists. not so much 'to be first' as to strike before people become numbed
by the approach having been done to death.

then there are those–programmers or not–who do not seek to innovate but to
either approach it tactically or otherwise find/create the depth of a form.

so, in a sense, yes, 'anyone can do it and do it well'–in the sense that
you don't need a gallery or expensive hardware or a big budget–but like any
art taken seriously, it is a life to do it really well.

i took a detour in 2003-2005.5 in that i did a lot of non-net art
programming as an employee. for performance. for installation. lots of
expensive hardware. and that was interesting. i learned a lot. but it also
gave me a renewed sense of the value of net art. net art is for the world.
whereas the work i helped make in that detour was intensely local. small
audience. not extrordinarily well-connected to what is going on elsewhere in
the same field. often re-inventing the wheel. net art has to run on all
sorts of other computers around the world. non-net art usually runs on at
most a few dedicated machines and there are so many ad-hoc technologies
involved that the work is going to need those particular machines and that
particular hardware five years down the road. whereas net artists look at
work they did years ago and try to keep it running in the new environment
(new versions of browsers, new versions of plugins etc). also, programming
interesting net art is as challenging as programming offline. in net works,
the programmer has to get her head around network operations and all that
opens up. that's a brilliant challenge. all that asynchronous stuff that can
go down or fail in any number of ways. conditional callback structures. o
there's lots of frontiers there still.

ja
http://vispo.com

Quoting Jim Andrews <[email protected]>:

>> Rob said:
>> Yes, net.art has not disappeared, it has just become universal. Anyone
>> can make
>> it, and make it well, it is not exclusive any more. And for all
>> the populist
>> noises that the artworld makes, exclusivity is what fine art is about.
>
> Universal? In what sense?

In the sense that:

> "Anyone can make it, and make it well…"

;-)

> once you say 'programmer net artist', you're not talking about 'anyone'.
> being able to program and program well, concerning art, is quite rare.

Many people can do a bit of Actionscript or Javascript, many more people than
could do Lingo a decade ago. I find the net a limiting medium for the display
of code (I've only done 2, maybe 3 pieces of net.art in ten years because of
this), and I am not convinced that struggling with udp is of great interest to
end users / viewers if they cannot see it on their screen. I agree that depth
of engagement with code is rare, though, and you are *absolutely* right that
there is more to be done in code-based net.art .

My point, which in many ways is congruent to this, is that YouTube distributes
video in a way that would have required root access to a server a decade ago,
that anyone can generate a website for poems or images using WordPress (and/or
flickr), and that streaming media is now if not easy then at least attemptable
using webcasting . Net publishing and display has been democratised,
many tasks
that were previously coding challenges are now free commodities.

So net.art needs to move beyond commodified forms, which means moving into
deeper engagement with code. But there is a tension here, as coding is not per
se artistic. And not every net.poet or streaming video artist may want
to code,
and possibly they should not have to. How they will stand out against the
background radiation of an intenet now utterly saturated with media I don't
know, though.

- Rob.

I don't see how the Net Art crisis is any different than the crisis facing every art form. All art forms are under siege, and every art form requires bandages and a bed in the county hospital.
But the patient keeps wanting to get up and leave.

Eric

On Sat, 5 Aug 2006, -IID42 Kandinskij @27+ wrote:

> The dot.com was a toin-coss in order to generate energy.
> Net.art is for the most part a complete and total failure.
> There is no recollection of a single intelligent use of
> computers in the past decade. Isn't that sad?

Specifically abuse of "wound" as a form of quasi-communication,
as referent to St. Peter / Tyr miscommunication abuse generated
during WW2.

_________________________________________
`, . ` `k a r e i' ? ' D42