Net Ae 2.0 postmortem

Also here: http://www.mtaa.net/mtaaRR/news/twhid/net_ae_2_0_postmortem.html

+++

I was more obnoxious than I meant to be and I came off old and cranky.

All around a fine evening.

It was a bit of a set-up between artists of the older generation (T.Whid, <a href="http://www.mccoyspace.com/">the McCoys</a>; artists who took part in 'net art 1.0') and artists of a younger generation (<a href="http://www.petracortright.com/">Petra Cortright</a>, <a href="http://www.damonzucconi.com/">Damon Zucconi</a>) with Tom Moody thrown in to prove that you can be over 30 and also a member of a surfing club.

But seriously, I was fairly bombastic at one point and it went something like this: "It seems like the artists that were involved in earlier stage of net art have given up on it to a certain degree, my question to the younger artists on the panel: why haven't you figured out that it's a dead end?"

This little rhetorical bomb was tossed specifically to spice up the discussion a tad. I'm going to try to expand and clear it up.

Before I get into it I need to make clear that when I talk about net art, I'm using the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net.art">classic definition</a>: "art that uses the internet as its medium and that cannot be experienced in any other way." To me, this definition shouldn't be diluted, it just leads to confusion. I use the term web art for art on the web that can exist entirely in one browser session. Note that I think blogs (including photo, video, or other media blogs) fulfill the classic definition of net art.

First, MTAA hasn't given up on net art entirely. We're working on a small piece currently that fits the classic definition of net art and our latest large piece, "<a href="http://mtaa.net/want/">Want</a>", has, at the very least, the possibility of fitting the ole skool definition. So my assertion that we've 'given up' on net art isn't really true. Jenn McCoy also mentioned after the panel that she and Kevin haven't given up either, she likened it to trying to get pregnant but it just won't happen for whatever reason.

What we're 'giving up' is the idea that this 'pure' sort of net art will ever enter the gallery in a way that makes any sense. Many net artists have come up with hybrid net art that does make sense in the gallery space. Examples of MTAA's efforts in that direction are "<a href="http://endnode.net/">Endnode (AKA Printer Tree)</a>" and "Want."

Second, the 'dead end' comment is a red herring. The younger generation never entertained these grand and flawed ideas of a 'pure' net art. The artists on the panel made it very clear that their work comprises video, looping animations, photography, holography(!), web sites, etc. I believe that Damon's first comment was that his work is multi-disciplinary. The earlier generation of net artists learned the hard way that transitioning the 'pure' form of net art into the gallery is very problematic. The current generation of digital artists seems to have side-stepped this problem entirely.

++

A few words on surfing clubs (<a href="http://www.ramocki.net/surfing-clubs.pdf">PDF link</a> to Marcin Ramocki's thorough essay on the genre)…

Mail art is to net art as graffiti art is to surf clubs.

The panel discussion bogged down considerably during the surfing club portion in my opinion. I'm guessing that since the clubs are by their nature somewhat insular and 'insider-y,' the audience felt it. There were 3 practitioners of the genre discussing it without a real thought to making it very accessible to the audience. During my live-twittering of the panel, I made a couple of comments to this regard (<a href="http://twitter.com/twhid/statuses/828772963">1</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/twhid/statuses/828772277">2</a>).

Apologies to anyone that was insulted by my tweets. It was a rather rude way of offering my criticism.

Comments

, Tom Moody

Just to be clear, Marcin Ramocki's notes on surf clubs don't say anything about graffiti.

I had some afterthoughts on the panel here:
http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2008/06/07/internet-aware-art-emotions-in-net-art/

, T.Whid

+++

re: graffiti
Oops. Yeah, that was my own little analogy, a bit pessimistic of course. I guess we'll see :)

, Damon Zucconi

re: the dead end:
i think we are already well aware of the fact that anything which aspires to any sort of aesthetic purity is a dead end from the start. i, personally, make no claims to wanting a title with such a definition; so i don't think you have to worry about me muddying up the term.

, T.Whid

++

Yeah, in hindsight it's pretty easy to dismiss. But at the time we were very excited about a truly new medium – not video, not photography – something new. We wanted to explore that medium and part of doing that was to cut everything else out, give oneself some restrictions to develop a rigor around that medium.

Plus, you have to remember how much confusion there was about it, especially in the art world. One way to drive home the differences from other media was to have such a (pure is a bad adj) rigorous/severe definition and work to that definition.

That was my point in saying net art is over – you and your peers are ample proof that it's over – net art 2.0 doesn't need to worry about that sort of thing.

, Damon Zucconi

no, i don't think it easy to dismiss at all.

the problem i have is deciding whether or not this becomes a kind of medium-specificity (are protocols material conditions?) or works within the idea of a "technical support"…

i understand that "net.art" is tied to a specific "movement" of course, but why wouldn't we have to worry about historical precedents and procedures?

, T.Whid

+++

To be clear, I'm not talking about netDOTart (net.art). My net art definition is quoted in my original post above. The link leads to the net.art section of wikipedia so I understand that it could be misinterpreted.

I didn't mean 'don't worry' as in 'be ignorant of.'

There was a point where it became clear that pursuing solely the rigorous definition and practice of net art didn't make a lot of sense any longer. My point with "don't worry" is that this point is past, so you don't need to worry about coming to that realization, you got on the train after that stop. But I'm not trying to be prescriptive, I'm just describing what I'm seeing. The majority of artists dealing with the net currently, aren't making net art (as I've defined it) their sole practice.

Even though I proclaimed "it's over" many times, I would be very happy to be proven wrong.

, x-arn

my post does not appear, so i re-post it:
about: http://www.ramocki.net/surfing-clubs.pdf
just to mention that "Group blogging as a form of artistic practice appeared around 2005/06,
simultaneously with a shift toward Web 2.0." is totally wrong.
check for example: http://2balles.cc/voir_venir/week.php
i guess you can find other examples.
What is obvious with this kind of texts is the lack of 'historical approaches' in net art, leading young practioners to believe they invent the wheel.

, Frederic Madre

well, yann, when we started 2balles.cc in '99, with you, it was for me a time when blogging was really taking over the whole internet and I certainly thought that blogging was already a dead practice. there was nothing new happening there, it was frozen and it is now pretty much what it was then, even. so it was a reaction against that and also trying dialectically to present another way of doing it. that's where the art, if any, happens (this is how I disagree to the well-publicized diagram out there). probably also in the group thing, at the time blogging was an individualistic practice and I resented that very much. then there was the thrive for hits which blew out of proportion with the appearance of comments… comments are always superfluous, I find.

as for finding other examples of that… if there were then 2000 would have been 2008. alas, it only sunk in around 2003 when jimpunk became THE big follower of 2balles. and I mean follower in all senses of that word.

, ed halter

Like the invention of cinema or television, there's no reason why a new practice can't have multiple beginnings. I would see your comment more as an amending of Ramocki's argument rather than a negation.

, Frederic Madre

"I would see your comment more as an amending of Ramocki's argument rather than a negation."

that's what it was

, marcin ramocki

x-arn, tom and everybody else:
you are absolutely right 2005/06 is a mistake, and I stand corrected..
The reason I wrote 2005/06 is because in the first version of this document I specifically referred to "surf clubs" and then I realized that the introduction section needed to be more inclusive, so I changed it to "group blogging" … without adjusting dates. I will correct my PDF accordingly, thanks!

, Tom Moody

Good God, the humility on this thread is overwhelming.
"There was this terrible idea that we started as a joke out of contempt for a practice that we hated. Young people imitated us and did not add anything new. They are fools and have no sense of history and believe they invented this practice that meant nothing to us (until other people started doing it and taking credit for it)."
…is how this reads to me.

, T.Whid

+++

Tom,

Are you referring only to F. Madre? Or to me as well?

, Frederic Madre

T. Whid, answering your tweet #1: surfing clubs are really currently the most interesting development of net art. it is their epiphany and it's good to revel in it for several minutes.
also they are a testground for people who also work on their own practice and sometimes are able to mesh it all together. I'm thinking of jpegmess, specifically. I also am interested to see what Ilia Ovechkin is doing and what about 3d-aids who are also doing performances ?

, patrick lichty

Wow, what a great thread…

Well there are a lot of very complex threads coming out of this, and I wish that I had been able to go to this as well as the "Art in the Age of Terrorism" at Eyebeam, but I'm on semi-hiatus for the summer.

A couple points - to historicity.
To reply to Tom, despite interpretations of anyone else, I don;t think the current gen (I most definitely emerged in the MTAA/McCoy/Shulgin/RTM etc period from 1995-2000, which I call the "Net.art & DIY New Media era") are fools at all. However we're in a point where we have numerous effects ramming into one another. There is the gap of history of 90's tech art practices that simply has not been written much, and is only being taught by those of the period who are in the academy. There is the sheer speed of net culture that almost defies history to keep up (is this really an "end to/of history"?). There is also the lack of acculturation in regards to basic curiosity that I see that comes from the rhizomatic skipping around through subjects. For my students, no one has heard of anything before 1970, or it's pretty rare.

Current generation? Pretty brilliant at fast, light, fun, plugging into the system, pop, punk, etc. with a lot of art world savvy. Pretty much a realization of two threads - Tech art integrating with academic art practice, and NM into the trendiness of the contemporary art world. Really amazingly good at making those strategic moves. I feel like I learned a little of this when Second Front came around, but nothing compared to the current gang.

My only concern with the New Media art world crowd is just an ongoing question in regards to conceptualism & media art's challenging of the gallery - maybe that's been abandoned for now. Is that cynicism, a desire to go and get theirs before the world goes to hell, or something else?

Reinventing the wheel? Who doesn't? I have always said that it's taking a readymade and throwing it into a new context and putting the right spin on it. Popular consensus states that Shakespeare appropriated… Maybe it might be nice if the current wave had some desire to engage with the previous generation, but for many, it just does not seem to be a high priority, and that's ok. Hey, that's a belief that the generation previous to me (Rubin, Nappi, Verostko, Nake, Sandor, etc.) seems to have, and I'm _interested_, although I'm not continuing their threads.

I look at it as a conversation, but I can understand when there isn't an attribution/tip of the hat due to lack of exposure or cooptation, the latter being a little rude, but the art world can be rude. However, although I liek to get lively on panels, I still have basic respect, as much as I can. Some of the trollishness I see in contemporary practice here and there is just something I don't prefer, but I'm no doormat, either. That's all.

Beyond this, I see a pretty linear progression of history, and it's great to see Paperrad as Punk 3.0, perhaps.
Great!

, ed halter

to quote Patrick:

– My only concern with the New Media art world crowd is just an ongoing question in regards to conceptualism & media art's challenging of the gallery - maybe that's been abandoned for now. Is that cynicism, a desire to go and get theirs before the world goes to hell, or something else? –

I think the current generation's answer to the market is a "yes, and…" rather than a "no" – meaning that Cory, Paper Rad, Paul Slocum et al all have a significant practices outside of galleries and almost universally preceding their involvement in the market. If galleries disappeared tomorrow, these artists would still continue.

, Lee Wells

If the galleries all disappeared tomorrow only the true artists would still continue. It would be great.

Remove the market and/or the possibility of creating a market from the equation and I imagine a good percentage of artists practicing in the art world would stop producing and move into more lucrative careers. Design, illustration, advertising, architecture, etc…. A true artist has no choice but to create. Then figure out how to pay the bills.

[size=200]Paint or Die.[size=200][/size] [/size]

, abre

bad code

, Lee Wells

If the galleries all disappeared tomorrow only the true artists would still continue. It would be great.

Remove the market and/or the possibility of creating a market from the equation and I imagine a good percentage of artists practicing in the art world would stop producing and move into more lucrative careers. Design, illustration, advertising, architecture, etc…. A true artist has no choice but to create. Then figure out how to pay the bills.

[size=200]Paint or Die.[/size]

, x-arn

@Tom Woody: no need to refer to the "Good God" in order to quote yourself arguing about humility! ;-) may be this is just a misreading.
@patrick lichty "Reinventing the wheel? Who doesn't? " ok, but reinventing the wheel is not exactly believing that you invent it. when you take a readymade, you know it is allready made. When you believe you're creating something from nothing, it's not like changing a context for something.
"Beyond this, I see a pretty linear progression of history", may be not really, i'm just reading this:
"For some readers these pages will echo feelings of the past. It may be remembered that in the fall of 1920 an ideological schism ruptured two factions of the Moscow Constructivists."(…) Jack Burnham - Systems Esthetics
http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/courses/202/current/gallery/burnham.pdf
History may have some hiccups?

, Frederic Madre

I wish there were more people having a go at the same "wheel" than all trying to find their own wheel to invent and be first at something and then move on to something else when the possibilities have only been lightly brushed with…

, Rob Myers

Inventing dozens of different coloured wheels that all spin in the same direction is a product of the academic base of net art. There's nothing wrong with project-based work, but there is something wrong with the culture of the monetization of trivial differences that art threatens to share with mass culture.

, Lee Wells

Its one of the unfortunate effects of the 21st century art world.
Lost souls seeking Art-stardumb without ever becoming an artist.
[img]http://www.perpetualartmachine.com/images/news_images/artstar.jpg[/img]

, x-arn

i don't think that's the point (being an artist, a star, the first, the last, the best, the worst, etc…). i think more about perpetuation of the schism between formalisms, well accepted in art world as a market, and practices searching to transform the essence of art in itself (like Burnham for example).

, Tom Moody

I was beseeching, not citing, the Deity.

Patrick: "Maybe it might be nice if the current wave had some desire to engage with the previous generation…"

Damon Zucconi, of the current wave, had some pretty good questions that got lost in the usual swamp of the previous generation obsessing about the galleries and monetization:

"The problem i have is deciding whether or not this becomes a kind of medium-specificity (are protocols material conditions?) or works within the idea of a 'technical support'…

i understand that "net.art" is tied to a specific 'movement' of course, but why wouldn't we have to worry about historical precedents and procedures?"

, x-arn

I was kidding, not trolling after a misreading
+ i love swamp/marsh:
http://www.laboratoire-aleatoire.com/lab/LocalContextRemoteData
+ "the galleries and monetization" is neither an obsession, nor a sufficient context to make or define art, especially when talking about internet art. For art, 'medium-specificity' and 'technical support' can make sense from a socio-technical perspective, not from a strictly technical one.
That's why these issues are not opposite, but intricate (swamp + pretty good questions).

, mez breeze

net art 2.0?

this very tendency 2 wrap a label around a cohesion of "artistic" practices can actually dampen the curiosity, creativity, exploration + play loadings gestating there. codification starts to creep in. that's y places like 4chan works, tho those that *want* 2 reappropriate it have 2 work out their value-hierarchies 1st. most ppl who perpetuate divisions according to verifiable worth [think low-hi, valid-invalid, professional-amateur] miss the assignation boat initially + then [feel the need 2] scrabble 2 catch up. or worse:

"The process of multivariate data absorption creates serial flagging of emergent concepts [ie tipping-points]. These concepts create information bottlenecks via repeated flaggings. Entities may target-mine these areas in line with capitalistic reappropriation. Current examples of this phenomenon are Corporate “Social Media Experts” who mask their synthetic participation so as to claim individuated authorship of such aggregated concepts."

-mez
augmentology.com




, Eric Dymond

http://www.netarts.org/webmuseum.html has a different take on net 2.0 practices, and this was an international show, with net art 1.0 artists jurying (Mark Amerika was a juror numerous times),
I doubt that many have taken a look at this but I found it problematic in too many ways.
The filtering of the new through the old was easy to decipher.
That said, the fact that You Minowa engaged the museum this way was refreshingly different.
Look at the archives for some classic net 1.0 pieces, you can almost track the change in temperature after 911 and the Bush influence on freedom of expression.
Go through the years(1996-2007) and snaps of change form in the experience. Not many archives can compare to the reality of artmaking on the net.
That said, does it even relate to surf clubbing and practices that avoid leaving artifacts and detritious trails?

, b'l't

The reading wheel : Le diverse et artificiose machine del Capitano Agostina Ramelli : 1588 !

http://cnum.cnam.fr/GIFS/fDY3/0650.T.317r.744.1327.gif


…. what else ?

, patrick lichty

Something fun -
In 2002, in a slight haze (I was having profound problems with panic with public speaking that year), I stated on a panel at CAA that net art was a dead as "your dear ol' Aunt Edna" after Net.condition and the Whitney Bi 2000, as the form had a conon, and thus become much more defined.

I also feel that in regard to the avant, New media is also "rather dead" as it has 'canons'. But it's great when things pop open, new forms, ill-behaved works, etc. There are things like social media (I refuse to say "Web 2.0"), virtual worlds, retroNet.art, etc, that keep surprising me.

To Tom…
I hope I can get a chance to hear Damon's questions. As for monetization, etc. I'm just curious about it as a cultural effect at this point, as it's a strange turn from Media art's history. And, looking at the shift between the 95-00-ish sort of crowd, the 00-ish, 05-ish crowd, and the current "clubs", there seems to be a big shift to the traditional art world. I'm not passing judgement, I just find it really curious as something that is a change in sensibility that is at odds with media art's traditions.

But I think that it's important to ask people who came up in certain eras how their practice is responding to culture. THere are painters who just get known for a "thing" and just stay there (Marden or De Kooning, for example). It's why I like musicians like Johnny Cash or David Bowie who have really been chimaeric at times.

But funny, in an interview for a position, I was asked "you're into a great deal of subjects and approaches, why wouldn't we call you a dilettante?" I think that's a really academic attitude, and a big problem with the academy and the gallery/museum ecology as well. You would like to think that a continually shifting, exploratory approach would actually be preferable, especially in teaching rapidly developing things like tech & art.

The other thing that I like to say is that if there's a class about something, you've gotten there too late, because it's been formalized and the person teaching you is probably one of the vanguards or a student of same.

In regards to the last paragraphs, the common thread is fluidity and stasis, as I think you really have to be open to change, but institutions tend to try to lock one into a position.

An honest question: I wonder whether the previous gen's sort of engagement with the gallery is a: a natural outgrowth of mid-career practice, b: a reaction to seeing this shift to the gallery and saying, in effect, "WTF?", or c: a social experiment, or d: an unforeseen hyperdimensional phenomenon.

, x-arn

To Patrick Lichty: it's quite funky you speak about 'panic with public' because these days, i allways converge to jack burnham , and last time was from

http://del.icio.us/neural
Security Aesthetic = Systems Panic:
http://www.global-security-alliance.com/research/695801

i guess smurfin club's (= surfing club + wheel systems) should quote pathways to targets.




, eryk

I'm a bit confused about why we are calling surf clubs new in terms of phenomenon or practice. I think this is a very tree-for-a-forest approach. The shift from something like 7-11 or even anarchic-period-Rhizome to a blog is just a medium shift, the process is identical. I'd also like to beat the 4chan horse again and mention that this surf-club phenomenon is identical to the 4chan riffs. In that context, surf clubs are, in my opinion, more of a sketchbook or exquisite corpse phenomenon than an emergent media or method.

As for the next-gen net-artists: where are these people? Who are you talking about? Because as far as I can tell, the only new-generation net-artists are Loshadka, and while I love the blog, I don't see it as the radical, version-number-changing revolution this thread seems to pretend it is.

, the NIEI
, eryk alohomora salvaggio

I also looked at the "next generation" of artists that were on the panel, and I don't see why what I am looking at is any different from net.art 1.0.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I really do think the 2.0 designation needs to refer to the actual phenomenon of Web 2.0, and not just a catchy name for a bunch of young people doing the same stuff we were doing.

And I want to reiterate that as the Harry Potter of the Digital Vanguard, I may even be younger than some of these "young people," and so would many of the 1.0 artists I know [kalx, oculart, in particular] so this age/rank designation is even more irrational, imho.

, Lee Wells

Harry Potter is Dead.

, T.Whid

+++

But it sure sounds like the Harry Potter of the Digital Vanguard is very much alive!

, C Pappas

Net art, at this moment, is a practice that's developing along the same lines that science once developed in –that is, the moment when governments realized that the less they interfered with science the more interesting the results, the practice became much more than just research and application. With that said, I think everyone is, in general, looking in the wrong place. (Kevin and Damon both seemed to understand this very well, and even began to discuss it, until the topic turned to the ever-present, spent subject of "surfing" blogs.) The demands of proficiency in a rapidly advancing technical sphere, the economic opportunities for research, and the intellectual stimulus surrounding many, many work-places encloses an enormous number of people who would have otherwise been described as self-professed artists; as "technicians" they and their ideas are being overlooked, and by bringing in terms such as "the gallery" you're further removing yourself from where the greatest pieces of art will ultimately will end up.

, T.Whid

+++

"With that said, I think everyone is, in general, looking in the wrong place. (Kevin and Damon both seemed to understand this very well, and even began to discuss it, until the topic turned […]"

Where is the right place? Office cubes? For real? Is there really so much creative genius hiding away? Seriously, I'm not really getting what you're saying.

I'm blanking on when this was brought up during the panel.

, michael Connor

First it was cool to be New Rave, and then a short time later it became cool to make fun of it, even if you didn't completely know what it was.

Originally, Ravers were not that cool, but when New Rave became popular, they became extremely cool. Now, I'm not sure if they are still cool or not, but some of us always thought they were cool.

, x-arn

just to test the op & down at
http://rhizome.org/discuss/


[size=120]think about self-reference
as net.art premium engine[/size]

, Erika Lincoln

One of the best ways to get pregnant when you are having trouble conceiving, is to go on holiday with your partner and just have fun. this involves running around, playing games and having drinks then fucking like a bunny for the sake of fucking not for conceiving.

Thinking too much about the outcome ruins the moment.

, Burak Arikan

Patrick Lichty:

"I wonder whether the previous gen's sort of engagement with the gallery is a: a natural outgrowth of mid-career practice, b: a reaction to seeing this shift to the gallery and saying, in effect, "WTF?", or c: a social experiment, or d: an unforeseen hyperdimensional phenomenon."

Olia Lialina (from the Holy Fire thread http://rhizome.org/editorial/fp/blog.php/590 ):

“For a long time it did not make sense to show net art in real space: museums or galleries. For good reasons you had to experience works of net artists on your own connected computer.

Yesterday for me as an artist it made sense only to talk to people in front of their computers, today I can easily imagine to apply to visitors in the gallery because in their majority they will just have gotten up from their computers. They have the necessary experience and understanding of the medium to get the ideas, jokes, enjoy the works and buy them.”

Today there are new artworks that can't fit into galleries or museums, probably because as Olia Lialina says to get the ideas, both visitors and patrons have to have the necessary experience and understanding of the medium. However I guess they will eventually fit when the market learns.

, mez breeze

"Fiction and non-fiction classifications are designed to map to boundaries of known forms [think: cinema, literature, television and music]. They are so designed to provoke audience responses introspectively and externally. Current synthetic practices are refashioning this entertainment base via the perpetuation of types of unintentional and deliberately augmented recreation. These recreation types are reliant on immediacy of response, play, and Pranksterism. They employ Sandboxing, Gonzoism and spontaneous engagement. This type of entertainment is termed _Presencing_.

Presencing involves loose clusters of pursuits that evolve in, or are associated with, synthetic environments. Examples include the Streisand Effect, Supercutting, Flashmobbing, the Slashdot/Digg Effect, acts by the group Anonymous, Image macro generation and Internet meme threading. Less defined examples include: MMOG guild interactions [think: user generated games-within-games], Virtual World involvements, and Social Networking via application adoption and creation. These instances illustrate how Presencing pushes recreation beyond a fictionalised/non-fictionalised framework."

, raoul

[size=30]4-1
the market will learn
that you live in an another galaxy
my love[/size]

, maxime

Either that user id does not match a Rhizome user, or that user has elected to keep his/her information private.

you will not nest this level

[size=200]ahhahahahhaha[/size]

, Erika Lincoln

Oh yah thats the stuff[size=150][/size]

, raoul

[size=1]purefake[/size]

, Burak Arikan

maxime I guess Rhizome ate my profile.

, x-arn

no hate on rhizome

profiles are fakes

, MARIJA VAUDA PILIPOVIC

BRB
MANIK,JUN 2009.

, Johann Schnitzel

wtf people