Re: RHIZOME_RARE: RHIZOME RAW: "We are all ready for a change". Interview with Steven Sacks

here i am!

>I don't try to persuade you that such artists as Casey Reas, Lia & Golan
>Levin are great artists: many people in this list can do it better than
>me. I just make you notice that when you say that kids can do a better
>job you remind me my mum when, in front of a Pollock, she says that
>everybody can do it better. That's quite strange said by you, an artists
>who is working with generative codes and software automata
>(http://www.artisopensource.net/home.html)

That's exactly the point.
I do the same stuff. And that's the reason why i know that if you sell art
like that you might as well sell the kiddes' stuff, or commercial
screensavers,
because it wouldn't change a bit.
We're in a time in which there's a lot of people leveraging on other people's
ignorance on new media and on technology (not only in art). I don't know how
right/wrong this is. What I know is that i would love people having a choice.
If media-powerful (or, simply, institutional or institutional-like) voices
declare "X is art!".. well someone might believe that it's true without even a
doubt.

And, btw, i deal with software automas in the same way that a painter deals
with pigments and brushes: they're instrumental to expression, but they're not
the center. I wouldn't like what i produce to be distributed as at software
art
space, because i don't think that it dignifies artworks, as it turns them to
screensavers.

>You can call art whatever you want - even kids' and fools' stuff, as
>Dubuffet did. But you always need a group of people who share the same
>vision, and who believe that this specific artifact has an aesthetic,
>spiritual and even economic value.

There are at least two ways of dealing with art.

Production and commerce.

Art history is about production. Magazine covers are about commerce.

Both are important. But one of them is clearly more significant and
fundamental.

Strangely, the other one rules the way people perceive reality in a more
powerful way.

>I don't discuss here if this is the right thing to do. New media art is
>a confortable niche. It lived for years without looking for the respect
>of the contemporary art world. But if you choose to follow this path,
>you have to take into account the codes, rules and languages of that
>world - maybe in order to break them from the inside in another moment.
>The limited edition (of software, of videos, of prints) is one of this
>codes. Maybe not the right one for new media art: this is a good point
>of discussion…

The whole deal is about people being afraid of loosing power, on one side,
and, on the other side, about people aiming at objectives that are just so out
of our time, significant no more. These two, combined, allow for the latter
ones to become tools for the former ones.

>The art market is a middle-aged world, built up - from Duchamp onward -
>on alchemical rules. A good seller can turn everything into gold. The
>problem is: are you discussing the art market or the way some people are
>trying to break into it?

This is not about people trying to break in the art market. It's about making
significant actions, and it's about telling stuff the way it is. Wired
magazine
is a conservative techno-yuppie magazine. They use language to reach media
targets, they're a superficial, conservative evolution of Mondo2000 and the
like. I'm not surprised about their consideration on steven sack's initiative.
Do you really think that his "software art space" is for artists? It's just
trying to sell something people don't understand in a way through which they
can think that it's something else.

It takes me hours every time i setup an installation or a performance.
Lighting conditions, sound environment, user interaction and perspectives,
tuning, adjusting… we all know it: it's not bout the software! The product
is
not there, but in a vision/theory, on one side, and on a sensorial experience,
on the other side, and on the emotional relationship that it creates.

What is left of all this when a user grabs a CD and sticks it in a PC attached
to his plasma sceen in the living room?
everything happening in unspecified environemntal conditions?
without creating the correct level of attention?
without explaining what is going on?
without giving any dignity to the work of art?
Is there something more than what he could download for free from runme.org
with a better description, with comments, with the possibility to study the
source, to download another one or to freely search for related information or
for other stuff from the same artist?

Why is the guy asking money? :)

>>But I find it an interesting experiment.

That's the point, too: it's not an experiment

>Something happening
>outside another "conceptual jail", the one that confines new media art
>in such contexts as Ars Electronica, Transmediale and so on.

I actually think that those festivals are useful if you *really* have
something to say. If you don't.. well, you just go there, bring your stuff
and
cross your fingers hoping that someone notices you for some reason, so that
you
get the attention.

>I like when something happens.

i like it whan something nice happens.

my bests to you too!