epic net art

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Another question raised on the Net Ae panel of a few weeks back was the idea of an 'epic' net art. Where is it? Is it possible? Who would want to do it?

Is Pseudo.com an example of epic net art? Did we not know that we were in the midst of the most epic work of net art ever as it went on?

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/26/josh-harris-pseudo-w.html

The first piece of net art that MTAA ever did, BUYING TIME: The Nostalgia-Free History Sale was done in conjunction with G. H. Hovagimyan's ArtDirt streaming video show on Pseudo.com. (We didn't know what the hell we were doing at the time.) There was a lot of art happening at pseudo's offices (as well as really great parties). Jeff Gompertz (of Fakeshop) was heavily involved as well.

I'm bringing all this up as a way to help bolster Harris' claim that pseudo.com was a 'fake' company and an elaborate piece of 'performance art.' Perhaps it was. Did he out-etoy etoy but not tell anybody until now? Can something be an art work if no one knows it's an art work? Is he simply a revisionist fraud?

Comments

, joseph mcelroy

Most companies during that time were fake. When I was raising capital I used to tell people first we would be an entertainment company, then a service, then a utility. And how many companies are a success by accident (Burt's Bees, Mark Levinson, Craigslist etc) To claim after the failure that it was fake and performance art is ridiculous. If true, probably a crime. But to put in the domain of Art, someone has to know beforehand. Send a letter to yourself, notarize something, put a note in a public forum.

Josh likes attention.

"I vant to be a genius"

2000
joseph

, billy

i made this with epic in mind.

http://loshadka.org/billy/huge

, t.whid

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I've never seen the marquee tag used so well.

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, ed halter

deep and ponderous

, M. River

Ha…Woah, Billy that is HUGE

I think the "epic" question was joined to the “can it make you cry?” question. I understood the question as being more about “can art on the web be operatic?” Sparse, quick, minimal, cleaver, abstract work (like Billy’s above) is what net art can do quite well. Artist like entropy8.com / zuper.org (Auriea Harvey and Michael Samy) use game space to build work with an operatic of scope. In general, large scale narrative works are rare gems on the net. Olina Lialina’s "My Boyfriend Came Back From the War" is a good example used by the panel. I would guess that someone will jump in here and say that their blog they have been working on for X number a years can be thought of as epic but I think that would be shoe-horning a bit. Just because it’s personal, does not mean it will have any resonance to a larger public.

Along this line - I kinda promised myself that I would not write anything about the panel. I think I’m still pissed off about that the whole mess. The after panel chat on the net is making it worse. So, I’m just going to toss this out because it’s been on my mind. I think this subject is also kicking about on another Rhiz. post. Ed asked about political art on the net and the whole panel just shrugged. That is except for Tom who went on for some time about how he blogged about 911 (Helen hissing with rage in my ear that night “Oh…that was you? You’re that guy? You’re THE guy that blogged about 911? What the FUCK.”)(I think was right before she started to heckle Tim.)

Anyways - Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project, Hasan Elahi, 2006, RSG's Carnivore 2001, Ricardo Dominguez - EDT / Floodnet, Michael Mandiberg’s Oil Standard 2007, Yes Men, obn.org (Old Boy Network), Kenneth Tin-Kin hung…and on and on

Direct action, agitprop, social contentions/ dialogue - just plain art and things that seem like art but may have different goals. It’s occurred in the past on the net and continues to be a possibility on the net now. It’s just may not be what the people on the panel are interested in making at this moment. And that is fine and good. I just do not want the subject and the possibility to be dismissed.

end note - Tim, who was on the panel, started this rant with a slap on the hand to the forehead moment afterwards. As in “ Doh. Why did I not say something?”

, Vijay Pattisapu

Joining the "epic" question to the "cry" question is probably not a good idea.

The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Genji, Heike, Gilgamesh, and Shahnama do not deal with interior states. For the most part epics recount exterior actions over and above interior psychology.

, Tom Moody

M.River,
Re: Helen being mad about something I said, she should have spoken up, instead of this after-the-fact sarcasm from you.
You missed my point, which is that a blog is a way for art and politics to exist side by side. They may occasionally spill over into each other but generally agitprop art is too simplistic to be of much interest. I've written on my blog about Stuart Davis's position of being political without making overtly political art, in the context of the contentious art of the 1930s.
And yes, the long form of a blog (combining art, writing, and media) can be the "epic" Ed was talking about, a point I also made in the panel.
Re: the panel and aftermath making you mad.
Tim did a "post mortem" the morning after that attempted to spin what happened, how the audience reacted, etc. I don't think it was very accurate.
I think the evening was fun, argumentative but notably free of acrimony, and the 2.0 discussion was good. The postpanel spin by the old guard Net artists has been angry and I would say threatened.
This anecdote about Helen is a good example.

, Rob Myers

The postpanel spin by the old guard Net artists has been angry and I would say threatened.

That's your spin on it. ;-)

, Vijay Pattisapu

"…the long form of a blog (combining art, writing, and media) can be the 'epic' Ed was talking about…"

Size is a necessary but not sufficient indicator of an epic.

Epics are typically authored by multiple anonymous authors working in thematic unity. I haven't yet found a blog with a number of authors comparable to the dizzying spatial and temporal range of authors epics usually have.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, in which case I'd love for someone to link or recap the 'epic' Ed was talking about for us.

[I'm assuming you're not using "epic" in the chan senses general (i.e., "epic thread," "epic fail," etc. … where it just means "big") or specific (i.e., in the triumvirate values of the chans, where people do things for either 1) the lulz, 2) the epic, or 3) the win).]

, M. River

Yes, volume is not the same as epic but give it (both blogs and net art in general) some time. As my friend pointed out, the net is still on pre-heat.

Also, I'm not sure that I would equate “epic” with “good” in art. Some of my favorite artworks are small and fleeting - yet they stay kicking around in my mind.

, Vijay Pattisapu

give it (both blogs and net art in general) some time.
True. Blogs and other net art can be epic - it’s just that size alone doesn’t indicate whether this is the case or not.

Some epic features of net art emerging:

1.Photoshop-jam memes resemble Parry-Lord style composition, e.g., Lolcatz, Shoop Da Whoop…
2.Place in popular culture
Problem: The epics we are familiar with consist of stories that we pass on to our children - they are / were the core of education.

We may be conflating epic and folk. The discussion here calls to mind the 19th century Folk Renaissance in Europe, a key component in the development of Romanticism (imo), where the Grimm Brothers, Walter Scott, Ossian (Macpherson) et al. tried to align national literatures with the Homers and Virgils. The problem is that the Homers and Virgils, as part of the classical tradition, were more international and wider in historical perspective. The same problem of scope may be here wrt the Internet. Do lolcatz matter to some farmer in Uganda? Epics, even when national, are seldom so locally appreciated.

But yes, we should give it time.

Also, I'm not sure that I would equate “epic” with “good” in art. Some of my favorite artworks are small and fleeting - yet they stay kicking around in my mind.

Yep.

, Tom Moody

You want examples?

, t.whid

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Yes.

, Tom Moody

–"hipsters /= artists"

–"It's basically the same thing large groups of teenage goth nerds were doing with their liveJournal group blogs back in 2001, except now there's something forward-looking and radical about it having to do with pop culture, memes, semiotics, and the promotional skillz of Marisa Olson"

–"I think what may have upset some of the more process oriented artists who see computer language knowledge as a key to expression was being told they were an older version of something they really had no desire to be a part of"

–"ironically posting links to existing media with your friends on a group blog"



, twhid

LOLz p4wn3d

, Rob Myers

ironically posting links to existing media with your friends on a group blog

[img]http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/128340458413437500ohigetitdi.jpg[/img]

, abre

get it

, Tom Moody

And let's not forget

–"You’re THE guy that blogged about 911? What the FUCK."

, twhid

LOLz p4wn3d!

, M. River

I disagree with you that there is anything wrong about making overly political work. I would also not call any of the work I disagree with you that there is anything wrong about making overly political work. I would also not call any of the work I cited above simplistic. If your path is making art on your blog and adding in your thoughts on the world and culture at large now and then. Great. Keep it up. But that is not the only path.

What I wrote was not, nor is this sarcasm Tom. Your comment was naïve, if not insulting. In the context of 911 and in the context of other artist who create artwork with a belief in social change, the comment on the panel came across as, to be somewhat polite, - strange.

Which brings me to “The postpanel spin by the old guard Net artists has been angry and I would say threatened”

I find this completely dull Tom. In the end, that’s what bothers me. Threatened? No. Just disappointed. With the million interesting things going happening in art and the net right now, the us vs. them conversation is uninteresting. Write about your work. Write about work around you that compels you. Listen to questions take the criticism with a grain of salt. I’ll buy you a beer and you can tell me I’m wrong if that helps.

, Eric Dymond

Tom, I don't know if it's vanity, or simply a misunderstanding, but,
–"I think what may have upset some of the more process oriented artists who see computer language knowledge as a key to expression was being told they were an older version of something they really had no desire to be a part of"

means….

apples don't want to be oranges.

It's not meant to be insulting, but you did imply that your art practice (and by your own definition a form of Net Art 2.0 ) on the net somehow inherits and replaces art made by internet artists who aren't interested in blogs or social networks.
Once again, the network isn't a monarchy, noone is waiting for a coronation here.

, Tom Moody

M.River,
"If your path is making art on your blog and adding in your thoughts on the world and culture at large now and then. Great. Keep it up. But that is not the only path."

That's pretty reductive (and patronizing), but I understand things have gotten personal between you and me. (Tim, too, who's reduced to little "pranks"–pitiful.)

As you noted, no one else mentioned any of these "other paths" the night of the panel, including you. I put in my two cents and you don't agree with it. But fabricating comments you say I made ("I was the only one blogging on 9/11" or whatever) and saying artists were insulted by this is pretty low.

, Rob Myers

Tim, too, who's reduced to little "pranks"–pitiful.

[img]http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/drivingcarefully.jpg[/img]

, M. River

"but I understand things have gotten personal between you and me"

lord. it sounds like a line from some lame cowboy / cop film.

Nope, this is not personal. This is just a conversation in a public fourm. I'll stand by what I wrote. If you don't get it, that's not my problem. Later.

, t.whid

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I know Caitlin is out there somewhere and I know what she's thinking. "Boring!"

M.River, you pissed in the pool, now you have to swim in it.

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, M. River
, Caitlin Jones

I think maybe I'm being called out here. So finally, after weeks of lurking I'll respond.

First off. Yes. the ongoing snark/sarcasm/animosity between tom, tim and mriver is super/totally/unbelievably "boring."

Secondly. And this is somewhat off topic on this particular string, but I think this entire net.art 1.0 v. net.art 2.0 conversation is, while not exactly boring, maybe a red herring. To be very simplistic about it, I don't really perceive much theoretical distance between the work of 'the old guard' and the work of the current "3rd generation" net artists. I think both were/are responding to the web as it existed at the time. In the late 1990s people wrote their own html, they 'view(ed) source,' and things were for the most part text based. And the art of the time responded accordingly, creating work about language, translation and disrupting the emerging systems that the general public was so quick to accept unconditionally.

Now, the web has obviously evolved into the web 2.0 (and all that comes with it). You don't need to code to be an internet artist because no one really needs to code to use the web anymore. You just need a myspace or facebook page, access to youtube or flickr, or a blogger address and you are 'actively' participating in the web (obviously a lot of people have written about the deeper implications of this type of migration - notably Olia in her Vernacular Web 2) http://www.contemporary-home-computing.org/vernacular-web-2/). So if internet artists are now making work that is a collection of links, a series of other people's youtube videos? Fantastic. As far as I can tell most of this work is doing so as a means to question the ease with which we are living our most intimate moments online.

The web is a different place, and so obviously the art that comes out of it is going to be different. But I think, at its very core, it is the same. Internet Art responds to the web, its development, and how we use it, regardless of whether it was made by MTAA or Guthrie Lonergan. Like I said, very simplistic, and not a fully formed argument at this point, but I think looking at why this work is so different is far less interesting than exploring its shared characteristics.

Caitlin

ps. This is just an aside. All the muttering about the 'newer generation' of Internet artists having more gallery success is also a bit of a distraction. I guarantee that Vuk, Olia, Thomson and Craighead alone have sold/exhibited more work in the past three years than all of the newer generation put together.

, Paddy Johnson

I'm not sure why nobody responded to this – perhaps because it answers so many questions so clearly, but I think Caitlin's comment is extremely insightful.

, Rob Myers

I agree with Caitlin that:

The web is a different place, and so obviously the art that comes out of it is going to be different. But I think, at its very core, it is the same. Internet Art responds to the web, its development, and how we use it, regardless of whether it was made by MTAA or Guthrie Lonergan.

I was trying to make and open up a similar point here:

http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/37731

But I agree with Paddy that Caitlin is much clearer. :-)

The question I'd ask is whether saying "Internet art responds to the web" implies technological or social determinism. I don't think that it does, at least no more than for any other kind of art, but I think that some attempts to differentiate old and new net art that fail to account for the continuities that Caitlin identifies will have problems avoiding it.

And given the example of Olia's essay I'd say that the similarities between old and new net art extend to its criticism. Semiotics was big in cyberculture and cyberfeminism and if it's being applied to Web 2.0 culture and art then I think that is another continuity.

, M. River

super/totally/unbelievably "boring."…
word. nuff said.

I don't really perceive much theoretical distance between the work of 'the old guard' and the work of the current "3rd generation" net artists

I agree that both are responding to the net at the time. And, for the one millionth time, I will preface what I’m about to write by saying that I’m interested / into the work being done by "3rd generation" net artist. But…I think a theoretical difference exist between “net art” and “web art”. A quick time video or gif is most likely web art and “surf club” structure is most likely net art. For me, this difference has been the underlying current here. This is the same conversation we had from the get go. Yes, net artist in 90’s walked back and forth across this line. And yes, 00's net artist are doing the same. I’m not trying to place a hierarchy on the two approaches, but I think difference should not be pushed under the table for the sake of the genera.

I still don’t want net art to be or be thought of as “like painting/film/videos art…but on the internet”. I want to think of posting a collection of yourtube videos as a socially contented act not a presentation choice. Tim got some flack for pointing out the difference (ok, yeah, it might be the way he said it.) but… I think it needs to be talked about every once in a while.

, M. River

“like painting/film/videos art…but on the internet”.

just to be clear, I'd like to change that to

“like painting/film/videos art…but on or about the internet”

Again, I like the idea of a "internet informed artworks" but they tick in a diffenet than net art.

, MANIK

There's ambivalence in understanding of term*epic*.Is that something ‘outside’, or it’s something from ancient times where borders between outside and inside were on right place…which mean without strictly define place/line between?
Is *our* culture under epic or under lyric influence? And what’s *our*culture? West culture- globalism-or some culture without name…Local culture???But ‘local culture’ in Foucault interpretation is only way to fight against global power…to be precise-local discourse could be means to reach universal effect. In our case we are faced with some form of ‘global’ discourse which pretends to be universal. Good example is Moody’s writing…Such full of empty and stupid smugness. Isn’t it rude to ask about Duchamp? It’s so colonial…
What could we doo if is one or another?
Imagine Native American “Indians” legend and also native Serb legend about Kosovo (; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian\_epic\_poetry ,
http://home.earthlink.net/~markdlew/SerbEpic/
is that some kind of primitive history(proto-history)without legal value, not confirmed and supported in right side of power/USA/ ?Or just myth -blur in time?
Both are ruined by capitalism, both are issue not very welcome in today’s politics discussions.
In beginning of XIX century epic poetry was popular around the ‘culture’ of West world’, something like ‘world music’.
Goethe was familiar with Serb epic poetry. Mallarme translates this poetry phonetically, like words without strictly meaning, like verse symmetric and universal in their own rhythm.
Now I have trouble to understand what the main problem in perception of epic is.
Is that arbitrary, non-hystoric aura, is it fact that epic could be good enough in Homer’s verse but not in other regia? After Serbs lost Kosovo these days… is epic serial from XIV century about Kosovo some kind of forgery? Wasn’t it just joke about Serb in Kosovo from XIV century? Serbs fuck bad and rarely and punish is to take them away this piece of their own country? Shiptars from Kosovo are fuck good, they have at least teen child from one woman and they deserve Kosovo? Is that fact or epic projection?
If is that so…isn’t USA epic about Iraq forgery, isn’t it just equivalent to Moody’s question about Duchamp?
Really:”Do you know Iraq? Do you know MANIK? Do you know Kosovo?”
You are one who shouldn’t know. You are out of epic, out of main stream, out of main road, out of history and culture. You should listen to your Moody’s and other Manowich’s…That’s new epic, that’s why Moody take part of Rhizome space…He personally, mmmaybe, don’t need that…it’s small and insignificant for his ambitions but it’s good for *HISTORY*, epic history of USA.Tom’s going to be part of NMA history no meter how bad artist he is…And all that *Via Rhizome*.After all: Rhizome prefer UK or USA artist than some Serbian motherfucker…MANIK.
Isn’t it so? So many friends from Rhizome wrote us personally but it’s dangerous to make ‘case’ about MANIK in public?!?
Our existence in global history (epic? lyric) depend on kindness of some Tom Moody or something insignificant like he/she is.
MANIK
PS:First divide between epic and lyric in theory was Schiler’s essay about naïve and sentimental poetry…



, Vijay Pattisapu

“Serbs fuck bad and rarely and punish is to take them away this piece of their own country? Shiptars from Kosovo are fuck good, they have at least teen child from one woman and they deserve Kosovo? Is that fact or epic projection?”

For all of your declamations against territorialism and racism, this is a strange thing to see you write. Your statement reminds me of how white Texans complain about how they don’t have as many kids as the Mexicans do, so they feel like they’re losing their land. Pat Buchanan made a similar complaint about how immigrants are reproducing too fast and eroding “American” (=White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) values. Gallic French make similar complaints about their fellow citizens of African descent. The list goes on.

Nevertheless, I cannot be so politically correct as to ignore the fact that dhimmi is barbaric (they did the same thing in India, Southeast Asia, etc.). But that’s a separate issue.

, Michael Szpakowski

Hi Manik
as you know I'm an admirer of your work in general and also I'd agree with a good deal of the content of your post, which also has the great merit of taking the discussion beyond a tiny, over excited & over heated fragment of the New York art world.
But then you go and fuck it up by your resort once again to crude anti Albanian stereotypes and to racist language which disfigures & corrupts both your political & artistic points.
A shame.
best wishes
michael

, Vijay Pattisapu

MANIK,

Thank you for reminding me to reopen Schiller. It is easy to forget how much his work influenced Goethe and Scott, the two fathers of Romanticism, and you are right to point to “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry” http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/naive_sentimental-1.html as A root of the (Western) historical discussion on the place of the epic with respect to the rest of art. It may or may not be the first theoretical division of the matter (his sense of naïveté is rooted in Kant’s analytic of the sublime, for example). It’s a historiographical fallacy to name historical firsts, especially with ideas.

Vijay

, patrick lichty

Emerging from my summer vacation from everything for a minute…

Epic… Interesting that we are interested int hese things. Wonder why.

I think that there are elements of what was called the theatrical in art, the grand.
I remember seeing the huge install by the Piotr Uklański in Gagosian. These massive, sweeping pieces. That was epic.

The cry factor didn't make it for me. I'd be more for awe…

First off - Yael Kanarek - World of Awe. Good lord - this thing has morphed so many times, is so huge,,,
MTAA, 1 Year Performance Video) - another wonderfully mad piece. Its time factor.
The whole of Manik's word interventions.
Lialina's My Boyfriend…
ETOY Vault, Toywar

I think time is a factor here…



, t.whid

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"Epic… Interesting that we are interested int hese things. Wonder why."

It was brought up by Ed Halter at the Net Ae panel. I believe he's trying to question whether or not net art is somehow short form. Is that the best way it works? My answer is no. One of the web's chief strengths is it's ability to create an on-going relationship with individuals. Blogs are the most obvious example of how this works. But, are there ways to create this on-going relationship that don't accept all blog conventions? MTAA's 1ypv was one attempt at examining this question.

My opinion is that 'epic' isn't quite the right word for this. "Long form" perhaps is more clear?

, t.whid

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oops, to be clear…

"I believe he's trying to question whether or not net art is somehow short form. Is that the best way it works? My answer is no."

My meaning is that it isn't the ONLY way net art works. There's obviously lots and lots of great short and to-the-point net artworks out there.

, Vijay Pattisapu

Thanks for the recap on Ed's discussion point.

I agree that "epic" probably isn't the right word for this, because it involves a great deal of critical, historical, and national baggage. But trying to answer the question, even in the negative, is turning up some interesting points for net artists, critics, and curators to answer – specifically, the epic-tradition-associated historical, critical, and national baggage.

"Long form" doesn't really say much as a term, no?

, t.whid

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I'd be interested in exploring the idea of the epic in net art. I'm not so sure the examples given thus far qualify, except for World of Awe.

1ypv is not epic (it's just long)
toywar – maybe epic
World of Awe – I think that could definitely fit the definition – it's epic
My Boyfriend… – not so sure it's epic
pseudo.com – was it *really* art? I'm leaning heavily toward "no"

I'm sure there's other stuff… It's mostly older stuff, things that were more narrative/cd-romish.

, Vijay Pattisapu

World of Awe – I think that could definitely fit the definition – it's epic

Really? It's so first-person (though highly mediated). More Borges or Proust than Homer, eh? The assemblage calls attention to itself as such (e.g., filesystem interfaces, sidebar-equivalents-of-the-plaques-in-museums-next-to-the-paintings-telling-you-how-to-interpret-what-you're-looking-at, etc.) – something very different from bardic grafting.

Vijay

, Vijay Pattisapu

And if it be objected that the Commedia is an example of a first-person epic, I'd say look at the first line: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita … The poet stands in for all human beings.

Cf. the Everyman in the Anglo-Saxon tradition …

, ed halter

My memory of what was said on the panel is as blurry as anyone's, but focusing on the single word "epic" is definitely a distortion. Here's the original question I sent around to the group beforehand, so they could ponder in advance how they might respond:

- Internet art today often feels “minor” in its mode—momentary, ephemeral, and attuned to elements like satire, parody, historical referencing, rather than grand statements. So, can internet art (by its nature perhaps) produce a “major”, longform work of art? What would be the online equivalent of the novel, the symphony, the epic poem?

after that, the idea of "making you cry" was ad-libbed on the panel. I was specifically thinking to a similar idea often bounced around in videogame design: that videogames will be art only when there is a videogame that can make you cry (as opposed to simply being scared, reacting, etc.) I'm not necessarily endorsing that claim about games and art, but it is a rather interesting challenge.

To Vijay: you're correct that classical premodern epics didn't employ much interiority, but there are many modern epic poems as well that do: Whitman's Song of Myself for example.

, ed halter

As another note on this particular question. I know some people thought my use of "minor" was somehow meant to denigrate, but it absolutely was not. It's meant as a description of scale, not one of importance or quality.

For example, in discussions of experimental film, that mode is often called "minor cinema," not in negative sense but rather in contradistinction to "major", longer-form, bigger-budget Hollywood and parallel world cinema. For example in the title of David E. James' recent book The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles

Regarding the political question–it was meant to provoke a discussion that I agree didn't really happen. Perhaps it came too late in the evening and people were getting worn out.

, MTAA

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Hey Ed, thanks for clearing this up. The distortion wasn't intentional, your original question makes much more sense than focusing on the 'epic' word :-)

, Vijay Pattisapu

To Vijay: you're correct that classical premodern epics didn't employ much interiority, but there are many modern epic poems as well that do: Whitman's Song of Myself for example.

True. Louis Zukofsky's A also comes to mind.

And to be fair, even though classical epics don't employ much in the way of interiority, they can still make you cry, e.g., the death of Achilles in the Iliad or the story of Ekalavya in the Mahabharata.

, billy rennekamp

zelda: ocarina of time made some friends of mine cry

, Matthew Mascotte

this little video by Scott Blake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4YN_sr2GrE

and Lambert's add-art.org project are pretty
epic.

thanks,

matthew

, Tom Moody

MANIK makes a good point here, which is that political art usually means political art acceptable to the US liberal left.
Since 9/11 (if I can mention that date) I've been reading more writing by the non-Interventionist right.
One of their tenets is that the US Kosovo war was a warm-up for the Iraq war and that the liberal hawks provided cover for BushCo by supporting the idea of humanitarian war.
I was appalled by the bombing of Belgrade (I'm sure other bloggers were, too, Mike) but if I'd made some "political art" that said in effect "US Out of Kosovo, the Serbian Homeland" (and let's say it was fantastically clever and not just a slogan) would it have gotten to square one with any US arts funding entity?
What if I wanted to make political art saying "keep immigrants out of the US?" (The opposite of my belief–just a hypothetical.)
Because of this bias, and the simplicity of political art generally, I'd rather deal with such issues in written form, where a nuanced view can be developed. Sorry if that is insulting to anyone.
Duchamp was mentioned because he is the lingua franca of the International Gallery Art scene (which I'm told is now centered in Europe). "Do you know who Duchamp is?" is a litmus test all who would be artists must take. (I also happen to think he is more relevant than, say, Broodthaers, to 2.0 practice)

, Frederic Madre

what about making art without funding ?
let's call it craft or whatever…
just an idea! tee hee hee

, curt cloninger

Hi Tom,

When you say Duchamp is more relevant than Broodthaers to 2.0 practice (whatever 2.0 practice is), that is a potentially interesting assertion, but I'd like to know which aspects of Duchamp – the full trajectory of his life's practice, his writing, his painting, his chess, the large glass, the green book, the readymades, the fountain as institutional critique, his cross-dressing, his correspondence with Joseph Cornell? I don't read your blog. I don't live in your city. If we are to have a discussion, it will have to happen here. From my brief encounters with you in this forum this summer (you've still only indirectly addressed me), it seems like you are none too interested in the possibility of a dialogue that might lead to a place neither of us have been yet.

I mentioned Broodthaers because he seems very relevant to a kind of art making that is not just "finding," but collecting, re-taxonomizing, re-contextualizing, and re-distributing along alternate/disruptive axes. Contemporary heirs might be http://mjt.org , Haim Steinbach, and Fred Wilson. It is not necessarily curator as artist (surface time), but archivist as artist (deep[er] time). The art lies in the implicit connections drawn between the things. I make a go of it at http://deepyoung.org In 2002, Ann-Marie Schleiner called it "filter feeding" ( http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol3_No1_curation_schleiner.html ). Thus I mention Broodthaers.

Regarding "epic" terminology, I like "Wagnerian" (alluding to Packer/Jordan's "Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality"). Wagner's own term is "Gesamtkunstwerk." Yael's "World of Awe" would also top of my list. And http://titler.com

Regarding "political art," I think it is an easy straw-man term to attack. It is a tough term to defend, because one thinks of something like Keinholz's http://www.artchive.com/artchive/k/kienholz/war_memorial.jpg , which is not doing much for me. Instead of "political," I would offer "rigorous, purposeful, work that matters." I understand that certain formal experiments can contain implicit cultural critiques (as did Judd). When you begin dealing rigorously with material, then it's always going to matter. Play can also be part of it. It seems simplistic to pit pop art against political art. The best pop art is always going to have some aspect of cultural criticism.

Best,
Curt

, michael Connor

I prefer 'Wagnerian' as in Meat Loaf's Rock n Roll Hero. Net Art, where is your Paradise by the Dashboard Lights?

, t.whid

+++

hahahahahaha

If only I could think of a good example… would kdm100 count?

+++

, Tom Moody

Just so it's clear, this whole thread was based on T.Whid's and M.River's not listening to the moderator's questions.

, Pall Thayer

Although it's good to see a new topic here, I really don't see why or how it matters if any netart may or may not be "epic". Actually, I don't think that truly "epic" work would go over very well today. Contemporary culture isn't epic in the sense that it doesn't allow for heros, reverence or "epic" moments. It's fast, fleeting and quickly forgotten.

, t.whid

+++

"Contemporary culture isn't epic in the sense that it doesn't allow for heros [snip]"

What about Batman and the rest?

;-)

, Vijay Pattisapu

Bump for Batman.

On an unrelated note: Why did Marvel webcomics fail so hard? Was it because they tried it in the 90s with unimaginitively done up HTML and JavaScript such that the web-ness of it was just light ornamentation to what was otherwise the equivalent to the paper comic, i.e., the only thing you could do was mouseover a "POW!" sign and it would get bigger or make a <POW!> sound.

With stuff like Marvel, DC, and most mangas, people still buy paper comics at brick and mortar joints or torrent the scans.

Seems like all the webcomics are independent.

Have I missed something here? Have the big commercial comics houses put out any interesting work on the web since?

I guess all the money in comics these days is in movies. :|

, patrick lichty

This is a general note rather than a poke at Tom, but when I read;
"Duchamp was mentioned because he is the lingua franca of the International Gallery Art scene"
- that struck a chord with me about something I've been thinking about. For the past year or so, I've been thinking about the gallery, collectors, museums and the "International Gallery Art Scene". The Holy Fire show was great research, so was Art Brussels, AB Miami, and a lot of other points of intervention "inside the scene".

But "epic art" transcends this.

Although I work in it part of the time, there are times when I find the gallery/museum/academy etc. ecosystem solipsistic and boring as hell. We have a bunch of very well-regarded people talking, largely, to a very narrow niche - no one's been saved, and in the end, what's been gained? Perhaps chasing some inspiration. About it.

Perhaps it's a crisis of faith, but I think that this is why I have never called myself an artist, because this ecosystem is about art as self-fulfilling tradition, and I don't like being that confined, although I'm part of it. But obsessing about how one is going to get positioned here or there or make the next piece or whatnot - it's just onerous.

And this is why I liked Duchamp - because he was one of the biggest wrenches in the gears of the art machine of the 20th Century. From the Armory Show to the Larrge Glass to (pretty much) going off and playing chess for decades while making the Illuminating Gas (Now that's EPIC!). I think that this is why there is a hate/reverence relationship to Duchamp. He played both sides of the chessboard with a skill that infuriated and amazed the world, playing both inside and throwing boulders at the art world with an unparalleled undeniability. He both refuted the art world while creating work that we're still wrestling with.

I think in many ways, this open contradiction, rather than today's cool irony, is what I love about Duchamp, and (from my research) he was a charming fellow all the while.

But I'm not addressing Web 2.0…


, Vijay Pattisapu

The epic pre-exists the colonialist/Orientalist episteme. This thread’s proposed intersections between the two are a product of retrospective projection.

Let’s take as a modest baseline Jameson’s definition of colonialism:

“Colonialism means that a significant structural segment of the economic system as a whole is now located elsewhere, beyond the metropolis, outside of the daily life and existential experience of the home country, in colonies over the water whose own life experience of the home country, in colonies over the water whose own life experience and life world—very different from that of the imperial power—remain unknown and unimaginable for the subjects of the imperial power, whatever social class they may belong to. Such spatial disjunction has as its immediate consequence the inability to grasp the way the system functions as a whole…. Daily life and existential experience in the metropolis … can no longer be grasped immanently; it no longer has its meaning, its deeper reason for being, within itself.” (“Modernism” 50-51)

In the days of epics, conquering meant something different than it did, say, before the 17th century (roughly around the time that the above definition of colonialism kicks in with the maritime mercantilist prefigurations of modern imperialism). After a war, when Country X had conquered Country Y, country X’s people would move into Y and mix with the populations there (e.g., the Angles’ and Saxons’ takeover of Celtic Britain, the Aryan conquest of the Dravidian countries of the Subcontinent). It was not really a case of a distant cultural metropolis from the subjugated countryside. War was a merger of territory, populations, and capital (see Marinetti on the history of rape). The great colonizers gave to and took from the arts of the conquered (not necessarily isomorphically, but definitely dialectically).

The Hittites, for example, incorporated Sumerian, Akkadian, and even Vedic arts of sculpture, cuneiform, calligraphy, law, horsemanship, religion, technology, and literature. “Hittite culture” is no monolith, being itself a bricolage of Anatolian, Near Eastern, Proto-Indo-European, and Eastern Semitic cultures. In this culture there was no truly solar element toward which other cultural organisms in the Hittite tableau had to attach to to survive (as in, for example, Turkish court culture in India under Babur, or Chinese court culture in Silla Korea).

In our mindest of the Internet or postmodernism we sometimes forget how “cosmopolitan” many ancient civilizations were. In fact, postmodernism’s values are largely late reactions to colonialist demarcations amplified by maritime separations of metropolis and country - Modernism’s celibate machines.

The Internet has the potential to tap into the positive/formative values of that ancient cosmopolitan outlook, as opposed to postmodernism’s negative/reactionary values. The former is “positive” in that different arts, regions, and discourses can merge or complement each other organically, as opposed to postmodernism’s exhausted irony of reductive duplication, collage, reframing, hypersurface, etc.

So I disagree with MANIK and Foucault that the local is the only available antithesis to colonialist power. The authenticity of the “local” is unverifiable, ever suspect, and subject to propagandic mutilation and manipulation. The semantics of the local are so unstable that Team Goebbels could hack three different German histories, Icelandic saga, Norse mythology, Sanskrit symbols, and other cultural bits toward a German aesthetic.

These are a few but not all the reasons why Internet may be a capable platform for the epic.

I should've explained the main point of my goofy Hittite epic / net art analogy:

The Hittites were culturally unified by common technological practice. I'm speculating that technologically defined communities can be by that fact culturally centrifugal.

I think the Internet is like this, and so I see no obvious impediment to the emergence of epic net art.

Vijay

, kid

er, and that common technological practice is that they were the first recorded to mine / craft / weaponize iron in the bronze age …

ok I'll shut up now really

, Zach

this is epic net art:
[img]http://blog.al.com/techcetera/2008/04/vikingart.JPG[/img]

, patrick lichty

Heroes? They're just obscured by the noise.
I see Rem Koolhaas everywhere, Eno. Gore, Gates, Oprah, Madonna, Koons.
Maybe not heroes, but we have stars again.

Batman! Yeah! Batman!

Actually, I propose a net art piece where we all submit an MP3 or video clip reprising Michael Keaton's epic line, I'm BATMAN!

Kilmer, Clooney, hell, all of us are BATMAN!

, eryk salvaggio

1.
Because I am an asshole, I like to read The Believer. There was a quote I read this morning that has stuck with me all day and I don't know why; it's from novelist Tom McCarthy:

"One of the real structural understandings of great literature is that it's an event. It's not something you can contain and narrate but it's like this seismic set of ripples that goes on throughout time, backward and forward. Contemporary novelists don't really understand that, but contemporary artists do."

Seems like that would be the most pertinent definition for "epic" net.art that I could ever muster; we focus a lot of our efforts (in web-based whatever-making) on ripples outward, but not the art itself as one ripple in a time line. Not sure if that is for the better or the worst, but it's an observation.

2.
Regarding this old-guard net.art stuff, Tom, I'm sure the 2.0 is a distinction that makes things easier on a marketing/strategic level, but at the same time, this discussion - intended to build up a generation gap of some sort - is failing. From my perspective, it reminds me of my own annoyance with the Fluxus old guard that were resistant to embracing new work without some kind of distinction. "Fluxist," I believe they settled on, which I'm pretty sure we can all agree is totally stupid.

But I guess it goes to show the value of the "brand names." Net.art has left a rather tired legacy, in hindsight, and that's something that the handful of still-working artists are also struggling with, because, to be fair, a lot of them are solid artists who got put on the burned-out end of a hype-wick. The energy has been sucked out of net.art because it was so over-amplified in its infancy. I almost shudder to think how many artists in the first net.art section of the Whitney Biennial are still making work; I would not be shocked if the net.art bubble's burst left a lot of very awkward crow being eaten by those who went to bat for it; the result is a kind of net.art fatigue, and I don't blame anyone who wants to reboot the franchise.

That said, you've yet to answer a single question I've asked regarding why you think the "2.0" is valid or earned, but then, I have no idea if you even wanted the "2.0" in the first place, so, whatever. The point is, I guess, that the "old guard" isn't doing this just to be a bunch of pricks. I, for one, would be glad to jump on the 2.0 bandwagon if it could be properly defined as something that hasn't already had the marrow sucked out of its dry bones, and I have yet to see that in any of these discussions.

So why does it matter?

, Vijay Pattisapu

Hey asshole,

"We focus a lot of our efforts (in web-based whatever-making) on ripples outward, but not the art itself as one ripple in a time line" is a pithy observation, one that both defines and goes beyond discussing the epic.

Time is one of the most important aspects of the epic. When reading an epic as a whole, epic time often alters one’s sense of scale, number, causation, reproduction, consciousness, destruction, space, capital, and many other things we consider(ed) axes or basic facts of nature. These basic changes in turn affect our values, desires, fears, willpower, esprit de corps, etc.

Epic time, like time in net art, is not always experienced linearly. Recursion, nondeterminism, process forking, various degrees of infinity, metempsychosis, and other funky complexities pop up in many epics.

Some examples:

When Hanuman flies south over the jungle carrying Rama’s ring as a token to Sita imprisoned in Sri Lanka to tell her that Rama is alive, he accidentally drops it into a lake. He lands to get it out, looks into the lake, and finds an infinite number of rings in the lake. The Ramayana has happened an infinite number of times, and it will happen an infinite number of times again.

Odysseus goes to the underworld and finds his mother in the underworld, who died of grief waiting for him to return to Ithaca. The chapter hops around various time tracks of various planes of existence that yet answer to each other through language. Foucault talks about the language of this chapter in his essay on parrhesia.

Dantean contrapasso involves a (frequently perverse) “sampling” ethic not unlike Curt Cloninger’s “Pop Mantra” series (and just as punishing).



Vijay

, MANIK

Different between facts and humanistic believe is insurmountable.
Vijay,if you have something to say first check around,use Internet-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthrate
http://www.wluml.org/english/pubsfulltxt.shtml?cmd\%5B87\%5D=i-87-2631
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article\_1373467.php/BACKGROUNDER\_Kosovo\_-\_Europes\_highest\_birth\_rate\_smallest\_GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo#Demographics

Michael…is fact that somebody have teen children and other just one racism? When MANIK talk about something important,he/she always use facts.You are one who melted facts in ideology no matter of price.It’s not our fault you have strong feeling about Shiptars.After all…there’s nothing to be shame of.
We can’t see rolle of Internet in your life.Just tell us that you never heard for Afganistan-Kosovo *drugs road*?You’ve never heard for Shiptars hospitals for taking Serb prisoners organs… from live Serbs?Where have you been all that time.Walking around in countryside?
Bondsteel?…Nothing!( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp\_Bondsteel )
http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/02-04-2008/104752-Carla\_del\_Ponte-0
Isn’t it just like Nazi project,eugenica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics ?
MANIK is racist when he/she said ’Hitler ordered to kill six billion Jews?'

Extremly high natality come after sex,so in best case Serbs should be angry on MANIK because of his/her observation about their sexual potential,not Shiptars, not you…Vijay and Michael.

High natality is and it always was Shiptars national and state project.Just compare numbers from 80-es and end of 90-es.You could see there high expanding of Shiptar population and reduce number of Serbs and others(just look at link here,you don’t have to add nothing,just read …).
Vijay-MANIK newer conect *power*in wider sense of that word with ’colonial power’.It’s bit naive to make that kind of tautology.Power IS colonial,imperial,destructive,ugly,best,left and right,power’s everywhere and fight for power start local,just like Foucault said.Or to make you easier to understand-is Texas place where you fill sorry for emigrants and fight for their rights?And by the way:do they demand Texas to be part of Mexico like Shiptars already make Kosovo in close future part of Great Albania?MANIK’s not interested in questions about natality, here’s question about how some ethnic group use this natality in politics purpose.

All MANIK have to say is on Serb.We are going to publish our articles on Rhizome.That’s our gift to Rhizome members.As we could see even with Internet some of you are lazy to check out what’s going on.
MANIK’s sure that language couldn’t be obstacle for local,Rhizome prophets

After essay:“About indifference“,published on Rhizome\_Raw
(http://hansbernhard.com/TEXT/2000\_2002/2002\_MANIK\_DIALOGUE/manik\_ptt\_yu\_003.html )






MEDIJI
ILI ESTETIKA OGRANIČENOG SUVERENITETA
(MEDIUM,OR AESTHETIC OF LIMITED SOVEREGNITY )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium\_\%28communication\%29

Interpretacija uloge kulture je temeljni zadatak svakog ljudskog drustva jer je to i uslov njegovog nastanka i opstanka.Nedovoljno teorijski objašnjena(+ osmišljena+konceptualizovana)s obzirom na strateške potencijale kultura svojim pojavljivanjem ,gledano istorijski ,ipak 'a priori' gradi svoja znanja kroz svoj diskurs i tako reprezentuju i uslove za ostvarivanje sebe kao proizvoda svojih imanentnih mogućnosti u određenoj epohi.Oblast kulture,a tu za ovu priliku izdvajamo specifično društveno polja razmene ideoloških i mentalno-kreativnih resursa-*umetnost*-prolazi kroz promene izazvane i izazivane tehničkim performansama novih medija i tehnologija zasnovanih na vodećoj ulozi kompjutera.

Moguće je da smo u procesu kada već osećamo nove relacije između teorije i prakse.Jedno vreme praksa je bila razmatrana kao aplikacija teorije,kao konsekvenca teorije;nekada je praksa inspirisala teoriju,bila je neizbežna u kreiranju teorijskih formi.U svakom slučaju ta relacija je bila razumevana u terminima koji su se koristili u procesima totalitarizacije.Međutim ovaj odnos teorije i prakse se može sagledati i na drugačiji način.Njihova isprepletanost je daleko više parcijalna i fragmentarna:sa jedne strane teorija je uvek lokalizovana i uodnošena na jedno limitirano polje pa se potom kao takva projektuje na druge sfere,manje ili više udaljene od početne(od polja početnog razmatranja).Veze koje se sadrže u aplikaciji teorije nikada nisu stvar slučajnosti.Kada se teorija premesti sa svog odgovarajućeg položaja(domena)ona počinje da stvara prepreke,zidove,blokade prema drugim tipovima diskursa.Praksa je set relacija od jedne teorijske tačke do druge,dok je teorija relacija od jedne prakse do druge.
"Nema teorije koja bi se razvijala bez eventualnog susreta sa zidom,preprekom,a praksa je neophodna da bi prošla kroz taj zid."(Gilles Deleuze)

U tom smislu teorija ne izražava,prevodi,ili služi da bi aplicirala praksu:ona jeste praksa.Ali to je lokalna i regionalna praksa,to je borba protiv moći,borba koja se koristi da bi se moć otkrila tamo gde je najmanje vidljiva.To nije 'probuđena svest' za koju se treba boriti(jer mase su ponekada svesne da je svest forma znanja,da je svest baza za subjektivnost,da je to prerogativ koji preuzima buržoazija …Ali preuzimanje moći je dirigovano nezavisno od onih koji se bore za moć i nije u službi njihovog prosvetljavanja sa sigurne distance.*Teorija*je regionalni sistem borbe.
Mada je primena kompjutera u svim vidovima birokratske infrastrukture već uhodana praksa ipak postoji određeno distanciranje kada je u pitanju aplikacija kompjuterskih tehnologija na umetnost.Jedan od glavnih argumenata protiv kompjuterom generisane umetnosti je da umetnikova ruka ima još toliko mnogo da 'kaže',da to ne može nikakva mašina da uradi,da je rad na komjuterskoj umetnosti tek mehanički odnos sa mašinom …itd. Geteova opaska kako ne postoji 'potpuno originalan rad' već da je sve rezultat i proizvod čitave množine uticaja ostaje suštinska za razmatranje moguće teorijske obrade New Media Art(kasnije NMA) i klasičnih medija kroz sagledavanje svih nivoa i stepena njihovih među/uticaja(inter-relacija) tokom istorije.New Media Art je mesto proizvođenja specifične socijabilnosti.Ovde se može primeniti fukoovski shvaćana istoričnost kao proces zbrajanja,upoređivanja i klasiranja mnoštva 'malih' pritočnih istorija,istorija koje su došle sa strane('teorija gosta' u filozofiji Deleza i Gatarija na primer),istorije pisane iza društvenih rubova,sa one strane,u sivim zonama… Znanje o uticajima i razvijanju plastičkih ideja u specifičnom poimanju vremena i prostora koje se formira putem upotrebe kompjutera je moguće klasifikovati kao specifično(NMA tada ima i svoju istoriju?).To je znanje koje još nisu oblikovale velike ideološko-estetske čistke,to je nastajuća istorija jedne manjinskosti,ta istorija se upravo zbog toga zbraja kako u svojim etabliranim,tako i u sporednim ili tek razvijajućim formalizacijama bez bojazni što nas očita razlika između standardnih plastičkih objet d'art(slika,crtež,skulptura)i npr.radova koji koriste HTML na prvi pogled ubeđuje da je to nemoguć zadatak.

Sada smo u tranziciji od 'prema -objektu-orijentisane' prema 'sistemski-orijentisanoj' kulturi.Ovde se promene kreću ne 'od' stvari već od načina na koji su stvari urađene.Takođe,važno je a i nezaobilazno sa tom reči 'važno' reći i ključnu reč-*informacija*-.Kada su kompjuteri u pitanju to je reč koja će nas uputiti na esencijalno ovog medija-/'informacija je medijum'!/ Kompjuter je,naravno, medij koji prenosi informacije pa ga u tom smislu i prepoznajemo kao nešto što ne pripada tek novoj tehnološkoj generaciji kao varijacija…slikarske boje su,na primer, u svojoj dugoj istoriji imale nekoliko markantnih i revolucionarnih pomaka;prelazak sa jajčane tempere na uljane boje a zatim na akril i…t…d.Sve što pripada oblasti umetnosti kompjutinga već je deo suštinski drugačijeg sistema razmene robe i dobara koji se razvija kroz različite stilove disperzije ili distribucije informacije.Način na koji se informacija prezentuje određuje njen kvalitet i domet.Možda bi se moglo govoriti pre o osećanju za *cyber tajming* nego o nečijem poznavanju hardvera ili softvera,možda je upravo cyber tajming ili neka vrsta još neadekvatno imenovanog osećanja za dubinski strukturisan smisao u novim medijima a ne aplikativnost nekog rada iz novih medija u potencijalnu istoriju NM po kriterijumima tradicionalne estetike ono odlučujuće za format i doseg informacije.Materija generisana kroz kompjuter se koristi efektima i sinhronije i dijahronije ,što znači da se potencijal odaslane informacije prepušta jednom semiotičkom ruletu u kojem 'kuća uvek dobija'.Pri tome 'kuća' jeste zbir ideološki koncipiranih odstupnica/metafora pre nego akcionih strategija koje bi vodile prema *novom*.Reč je o distribuciji senzacija:u ovom slučaju informacija je prva i ona preuzima na sebe specifičnu ulogu označujućeg.Ukoliko dozvolimo da se između informacije i primaoca desi 'semiotički metež' vrata za heuristiku novih medija su odškrinuta.Kompjuter je ekstenzija kreativnog uma jer koristi informacije a te informacije mogu da se kreću od reklamnog materijala,preko informacije o izgledu nekog umetničkog dela do ilustrovanog uputstva kako napraviti razorni eksploziv u kućnoj radinosti.Napokon-informacija može da preuzme i formu nečega što će biti nazvano 'umetnost novih medija' -NMA-pa će i pored estetskog impulsa ili instinkta da se takav -cyber-objet -d'art- gleda kao prostiranje podložno estetskom rekognosciranju uvek biti jasno da u pozadini takvog zahvata u tkivo estetskog stoji diskurs nastao iz bazičnog koda (01).Temeljnu pometnju u nastajuću teoriju novih medija unosi njihova neestetička suština.Kod u svojoj intenciji nije izmišljen da prenese estetičku poruku,on prenosi informacije kao takve.Razrada koda i njegova strateška upotreba dovode do aplikacije estetskog na jednu estetici sasvim ravnodušnu materiju kao što je to informatički kod.Programer piše program koristeći kod.On piše tekst mašinskim jezikom koji će biti interpretiran od mašine.Kod je mašinski jezik kao što je francuski govorni jezik u Francuskoj.Onaj koji piše kod govori isti jezik kao i mašina.Strateški potezi u okviru jedne specifične umetničke prakse menjaju se radikalno kada se promene neko od temeljnih načela koji su tu praksu uspostavljali('teorija sistema',Niklas Luhmann/Luman).Promene u umetnosti mogu biti skokovite i naizgled 'revolucionarane' ili tektonske koje idu u dubinu i sporo se razaznaju dok njihovi efekti ne dođu do punog izražaja.Pri tome je remiks vrhovno sintaksičko načelo kojim se mnogi,ako ne i većina NMA(New Media Art/ists)rukovode.Remix ovde ima funkciju razrade i formalizacije informacije a ova pak kao anamorfoza sebe same,kao zamumlani eho sabira se i re-aktuelizuje u kontekstu komjutera kao sredine (enwironment) ili posrednika … u delove,čvorove nekog auratičnog 'DNK' prepleta,uvrnute dvostruke spirale genoma informacije da slikovito oglasimo ovu dijalektičku dinamiku u prostoru episteme novih medija.Primiče se čas kada će biti "dokazano" da je jedno NMA *umetničko delo* ili delo koje pripada svetu umetnosti.Za sada ta mogućnost luta cyber svemirom kao meteor tražeći idealni oblik okolnosti da se tu uzglobi.Ovo uzglobljenje je i objava da je postajanju kraj i da počinje Istorija Umetnosti Novih Medija.Ništa,međutim, nije unapred određeno-polje informacije koja postaje delo iz umetnosti je odraz egzistencije umetnika koja se kreće nomadski od tačke do tačke u prostoru medija(misao je prostorna kategorija)…Kretanje je,pri tome, ekstenzivno a brzina intenzivna.Mada vreme kao fenomen implicira ekstenzivnost(ili mehanizme dijalektičkog strukturisanja realiteta,u oba slučaja zamišljamo hronološki proces u kojem je samo kretanje uslov bez kojeg se ne može):intenzitet je apsolutna kategorija bivstva u bivstvujućem,čisti intenzitet koji svojim pojavljivanjem osvetljava trenutak svoje prolaznosti.Na mestu modernističkog projekta koji se dugo razvija pojavljuje se fluks,namesto koncepta koji se razvija u fazama sada se ispoljava dijahronija… iznenađujuća je nepredvidljivost energije gesta.Postmodernističko slikarstvo otkrilo je energiju koja slavi disperziju,koja se ponaša fraktalno i bez etičkih je etalona.Biti jeste etično…Ne-biti takođe… Informacija je u svom fenomenološkom obliku takođe izvan etike ili estetike.Odlučujuće za aplikaciju informacije koju kompjuter generiše u umetničko jeste intenzitet svesnog ili impulsivnog shvatanja specifične razlike ovog medija u odnosu na sve što je pre njega postojalo.Ili,drugačije;ono što se može očekivati kao 'doprinos' NMA jeste u definisano u specifičnom segmentu koji pripada samo procesu koncipiranom i sprovedenom tako da sadrži ono specifično i neponovljivo,ono što NMA čini posebnim.Pošto kružimo oko nečega što još nije etablirano kao specifično znanje,ponavljamo da je NMA posebna koliko smo u stanju tu posebnost da ekstrahujemo iz jedne standardne istorijske akumulacije specifičnosti(mislimo na ono specifično u NMA).

"Oko voli da vidi novo!"
kineska je poslovica a to novo treba shvatiti kao nešto što nastaje na mestu onoga što je bilo.Zamena.Posteriornost određuje 'umetničku realnost' koja postaje dopisujući se u Istoriju Umetnosti dok se dešavanja u ovom trenu aktuelnosti odupiru sistematskom imenovanju.Vidljiva je grčevita potreba da se praksa,bar u MNA, čim pre teorijski utemelji kao rezultat novih poietičkih/od grčkog poiesis/ postupaka ali i kao odustajanje od starog i neupotrebljivog u svojoj ne-aktuelnosti,od diskursa sveta koji više *nije tu*.Promene u umetnosti oduvek su bile indukovane kretanjima u okviru društva ali su i odražavale promene u tom društvu.Najzad;ako je samo postojanje smisleno kao takvo,čemu gomilati suvišna pitanja,čemu se ne zadovoljiti stalnim i ponovnim potvrđivanjem istog?(ponavljanje paterna u tetovažama ili ukrasima u primitivnim društvima,neke od njih traju neizmenjene vekovima što pokazuje da se radi o izdvojenim društvima čvrsto strukturisane ideologije i hijerarhije).

Granica između NMA i 'klasične' umetnosti je rastresita,fluidna i više inspiriše na prelaze/transgresije/nego na razdvajanje.Slikarstvo se sve više bavi samo sobom kao rezultatom određenih procedura često dovedenih do virtuoznosti kao što je to slučaj sa novom generacijom kineskih umetnika koji dominiraju na svetskom slikarskom tržištu.Na drugoj strani efekti i uticaji kompjuterske,ekranske slike(image)posebno u tehnološki naprednim društvima sve više fiziognomišu recentnu svetsku likovnu scenu(prožimanje 'klasičnih'i novih medija,objet d'art sa ekranskom slikom,projekcija i projektibilnost sa odrazom i 'auratičnom'(u smislu kako je Benjamin shvatao)likovnim senzacijama.Ako se uporedi broj kompjutera i Art vašara(Art Fair) jasno je da Internet tu u nominalnoj prednosti(što ne govori ništa i o prednosti u smislu 'kvaliteta'). Baza Google Images podataka beskrajna je riznica prizora.Tu se nazire i moguća demokratičnost novih medija,ili bar njena populistička potencijalnost.Sama mogućnost da se za svako raspoloženje i svaku misao,reč, nađu po nekom sistemu odabrane slika,dijagram ili neka druga plastička ekranska senzacija koja se može preneti na slikarsku podlogu neminovno uvodi nove elemente u sam korpus slikarstva.Discipline sa specifičnim zahtevima i pravilima koje nastaju u interrelaciji između najnovijih tehnologija štampe i kompjutera već je unela promene u diskurs o slikarstvu.Printovi koji su tehnološki toliko usavršeni da mogu da oponašaju akril ili ulje na platnu čine novi prostor u okviru plastičke umetnosti koji tek treba razotkriti u njegovoj složenosti.Da proces nije jednostavan dovoljno je prisetiti se sudbine fotografije i vremena koje je bilo potrebno da se ona počne tretirati kao umetnost.Mada postoji svest o tome da se zaista događa nešto epohalno novo u umetnosti ,nešto što još nema ni konačnu formu a ni ime i da će to novo za duže preuzeti stvarnost 'sveta umetnosti' čini se da teorija uspeva da svojim sredstvima prepozna i imenuje ovu praksu u nastajanju,ali da ne može da se odvoji od ideološkog i ideologizirajućeg tereta koji nosi iz prošlosti.Teorija promišlja net. art ili NMA kao što je to činila sa 'klasičnim'umetničkim disciplinama i to samo u sferi estetičkih konvulzija ove nove discipline vizuelnog i verbalnog iskazivanja estetičkih stavova,dakle samo i kada je 'dokazano'da se tu zaista radi o NMA…a to dokazivanje zavisi od nasleđa klasične estetike pa se stvara privid kruženja bez impresivnih rezultata.Češće je pitanje o tome šta je to specifično što čini jedan arte fakt delom iz NMA nego pitanje o tome šta to konkretno delo/objet d'art donosi u smislu estetskog.Za delo iz kompjuting umetnosti je ,dakle,važnije da ga prvenstveno poznamo i priznamo kao takvo nego da se raspravlja o njegovoj estetici(ako i dođe do takve rasprave ona se dešava a posteriori kada se konsenzusom odluči da se tu zaista radi o NMA ).

"Kraja nema i opasno je izmisliti ga"(E.Kaneti)

MANIK



And:

TEHNE ILI SOUND OF SNOWING

MANIK je fenomen koji sebe oblikuje kroz rizomatičko multimedijsko nastajanje. Svoj rad MANIK naziva *tehne*.

Po Fukou(M. Foulcaut):

”…tehne/tecne/ implikuje epistemu koja podseća na poznavanje principa pojavljivanja određenih formalizacija.Kao rezultat znanja i opredmećivanja tog znanja indukovan je novi sistem razumevanja. Distribucija i tehnologija tog razumevanja je-tehne.

Tehne predpostavlja znanje o razlikovanju između pravljenja i/ili činjenja kao opozita”bezinteresnom razumevanju”koje je uobičajen opis kada se govori o ‘epistemi’pa se tako bolje razume distinkcija između epistema.Tehne ,gledano istorijski ,‘a priori’ gradi svoja znanja i svoj vlastiti diskurs i tako reprezentuje i*uslove za ostvarivanje sebe kao proizvoda svojih imanentnih mogućnosti*u jednoj određenoj epohi.”



~ ~ ~ ~ ~



Od početka svoje istorije filozofija razdvaja tehne ( tekhné ) od episteme (épistémé).Ta distinkcija još nije bila sačinjena u Homerovo vreme.Odvajanje je determinisano političkim kontekstom kada je grupa filozofa optužila Sofiste za instrumentalizovanje logosa, retorike i logografije za sticanje moći a za odricanje od znanja.



U hajdegerijanskom vokabularu tehne (techné) kao projekat Zapada ili 'Zapadne civilizacije' jeste instrumentalizovanje,preuzimanje,zaključavanje,utamničenje,ili definisanje želje kao okvira za manipulaciju ili opstrukciju.To je 'Gestell',sistematizacija principa razloga u tehničkom procesu koji predpostavlja racio,ispitivanje znanja. Ovako definisanoj upotrebi tehnologije Hajdeger(Heidegger)suprotstavlja očito stariju tehne koju su Grci zvali poezija(poesis).On tako dovodi u pitanje uobičajeno shvatanje istine koje se očito nalazi kao prepreka na putu otkrovenja…istine bića ili suštine.Kao proizvodnja, 'poesis' tehnički jeste vid otkrovenja.Kao što je Hajdeger rekao u svom ogledu"Pitanja koje se tiču tehnologije"

;"Suština tehnologije nije nešto tehnološko."



Tehne se prevodi kao ~umetnost~,ali to značenje precizno određuje aplikaciju određenog znanja u svrhu proizvođenja specifično koncipiranog produkta.Aristotel piše:"Svaka umetnost (tekhne)u svom nastajanju razmatra nešto što se pretvara u biće(postojanje),traži tehnička i teoretska značenja tog proizvođenja stvari koje pripadaju kategoriji mogućeg i čiji razlog(aitija,causa) leži u onome koji proizvodi a ne u onome što je proizvedeno."Za Aristotela tehne sebe smešta između prirode i ljudske zajednice kao kreativnu medijaciju a da bi kreirala ono što sama priroda nije u stanju da sačuva kao svoj trajan proizvod(nije u stanju da arhivira svoju pojavnost).



Maks Veber(Max Weber)vidi ovako instrumentalizovanu racionalnost kao deo modernizacije procesa,kao 'slobodno vrednovanje' iz-računjive efikasnosti kakvog administrativnog procesa.Racionalnost predstavlja fenomen nesavladive ekstenzije ovih vidova socijalnog subjekta na kriterijume racionalnog odlučivanja koje je u korelaciji sa industrijalizacijom rada.To karakteriše kapitalizam.Markuze(Marcuse)ovoj ideji dodaje da je racionalizacija u stvari skriveni sistem dominacije(što je za neke femističke mislioce rodovsko ponašanje,deo muškog projekta dominacije,rađanje poricanja međuzavisnosti u supstituciju kontrole i posedovanja.Instrumentalizovana racionalnost je "normalizovana" i "disciplinovana" racionalnost.



"Racionalizacija" i "instrumentalizovani razlog"korišćeni su za opis organizacionih principa socijalnih formacija,za vrednovanje orijentacija personalnosti i značenja kulturnih struktura.Za 'frankfurtsku školu' tehnologija je forma "instrumentalizovanog razloga" koji je u isto vreme i *reifikacija tog razloga*,ali i reifikacija kao razlog*koja suspenduje presuđivanja na njihovu unutrašnju logiku.Habermasova kritika 'instrumentalizovane racionalnosti' je da sistem racionalnosti,a ekonomska i birokratska racionalnost posebno prete komunikativnim procesima u *živom svetu*.Aplikacija tih sistema u živi svet čine funcionalnim paterne zamišljanja funkcionalnim.Oni služe za legitimisanje imperativa samog sistema i za zamenu moralno-praktičnih razmatranja za tehnička pitanja.



Za neke autore praksis(praxis) je mesto na kojem mišljenje koje izbegava nihilizam referiše na instrumentalizaciju ali i na tehne.To je koncept integracije teorije i prakse.



MANIK formalizuje svoj rad kroz medijaciju među medijima u ovom slučaju galerijskih izložbi i radova ‘galerijskog tipa’ i medija nove umetnosti-NMO(New Media Art) ili ‘ computing art‘-a koje služe kao polja za razradu opštijih i strateških poduhvata u prostorima intermedijskog delovanja.Tehne se ovde pojavljuje dvojako : sa jedne strane kao upis ili urez u tkivo društva(estetsko,političko,kao simulakrum ekonomskog…itd.) i sa druge strane tehne se formalizuje kroz rezultate poznavanja zanata,slikarskog odnosno vajarskog (u slučaju MANIK-a).

Na MANIK-ov način shvaćena tehne novim je iščitavanjem premeštena u dugo ne-dopisivano polje delovanja.Istorijski tehne se reaktuelizuje kroz procese reinterpretacije,ponekad nadgradnje a ponekad izostavljanja čitavih značenjskih blokova koji su oblikovali tako-nazvani *modernistički subjekat*u umetnosti.Tehne je ultra-retro-introspekcija a etabliranje činjenica/kao procesa i/ili objekata/ koje proizilaze iz takvog procesa zauzimaju u odnosu na umetnost,ali i estetiku(u čija se polja po automatizmu smeštaju silnice tehne)specifično mesto,mesto koje MANIK re-aktuelizuje,na koje ukazuje i praktično i teorijski. Rezultati ovih procesa jesu formalizacije koje mogu da se imenuju kao:slika,skulptura ili crtež…ali takođe i HTML,ili pisana izjava na blogu,događanje ili predstavljanje u fizičkom obimu performansa ali i rad na komjuteru, on line,koje može da se shvati i kao svojevrsni performans.Tehne predpostavlja i izložbu u celini sa svim pripadajućim delovima:postavka,katalog,izjave i iskazi u vezi sa izložbom,najzad i sama odluka da se izlaže baš na ovom specifičnom mestu,izbor sam, deo je tehne procedure.

Percepcija “arte fakata”,međutim,koji proizilaze i proizvod su činjenja tehne nemoguća je bez poznavanja teorijskih premise na kojima se tehne zasniva.

Tumačenje intencija koje predpostavlja tehne a koje bi se mogle smatrati za prolegomenu u razradi episteme koju tehne ptredpostavlja odvija se na nekoliko nivoa:

a./ odluka da se disciplina rada u umetnosti preimenuje u rad na tehne.

b./u skladu sa ‘odlaganjem očekivanja da se delo gleda kao delo *iz*umetnosti’

donose se odluke koje su konceptualno vezane za sprovođenje tehne.

Na primeru slike koja predstavlja okean može se videti kako se isti prizor varira od slike do slike,kako od ‘deskriptivnog’kolorita ista geografska odrednica-okean-postaje crno bela slika,a zatim se isti prizor transformiše u sliku u varijacijama različitih crvenih boja…Tako pokazujemo da se na samo jednom segmentu može razvijati složeni proces menjanja kodova,asocijativnih i ‘ideoloških’nivoa slike što u razradi tehne predpostavlja da se ne vodi striktno računa ko je od MANIK-a naslikao koji deo na nekoj od slika.Ovo je jedan ilustrativni primer koji upućuje na tehnologiju u sprovođenju tehne,odnosno na etiku koja je imanentna tehne( shvaćene na MANIK-ov način).

c./dela koja su proizvod tehne eksplicite upućuju da se gledalac oseća ‘kao da se akcija ne događa u dobro poznatim i uhodanim mentalnim prostorima koji su svojstveni i pripadaju/samo/ klasičnom poimanju umetnosti’,već se prostiranje u okviru tehne nadaljuje i grana,pojavljivanje jednog rada je često tek uslov da se pojavi čitava serija radova koji će imati veze među sobom.Te veze nisu hijerarhijske već rizomatične ,to jest:pojavljuju se ne kao *komad*/’arte fakat’ u klasično shvaćenoj tehnologiji proizvođenja umetnosti i objektizacije umetničkih intencija već se u svom pojavljivanju vezuju za unutrašnju logiku koju tehne predpostavlja(to su pitanja o delotvornosti nekog prizora,načina kako je on preveden iz latentnog u vidljivo,koji su specifični razlozi doveli do toga da se jedan prizor slika na određeni način,i dalje-pošto je tehne jedan zatvoreni i nikad završivi sistem(episteme)pitanje varijacija jedne teme postaje jedna od ključnih celina u okviru tehne .Dela nastala u tehne jesu rizomatična,ona su ideološki decentrirana(nemaju ‘korektno’,dakle po uzusima nekih od važećih main stream estetičkih struktura odabrane niti poređane kodove proistekle ,uvek kada se radi o kodovima te vrste iz *ideološki korektnog*).Veze unutar jedne episteme koju tehne ima integrisanu u sebi jesu skokovite,asinhrone,superpozicijske/kao da i ne koji u spinu nisu niti da,niti ne već su to istovremeno-da/ne/ne/da…itd.

d./*uslovi za omogućavanje*(Bedigungen der Moglichkeit)kao filozofski koncept postali su popularni zahvaljujući Kantu.Uslovi za omogućavanje neophodan su okvir za moguće pojavljivanja određene liste ‘entiteta’.To se obično tumači kao koncept unilateralne kauzalnosti ili čak kao načelo interakcije(grčka reč aitija koja je prevedena na latinski kao causa sadrži u svom značenju i pojam moralne odgovornosti za učinjeno što nije slučaj kod causa .Ovo je važno jer aitija potiče iz epohe kada je u /antičkoj/Grčkoj umesto umetnosti postojala tehne…”).

"U prevodima su se izgubile čitave civilizacije.”M.Heidegger)

Na primer-razmotrimo kocku načinjenu nečijom rukom;sve kocke su trodimenzionalne.Ako je objekat trodimenzionalan tada je to objekat u ekstenziji.Ali ta ekstenzija je nemoguća bez prostora.Zbog toga je prostor *uslov za omogućavanje* ove ekstenzije jer on jeste neophodan /uslov za omogućavanje/ da kocka postane.Dakle taj prostor nije prouzrokovao kocku,to je uradio onaj koji ju je načinio, ta kocka i prostor su entiteti koji se razlikuju,među njima postoji distinkcija a sam prostor nije deo definisanja kocke.

Ovim smo se približili razmatranju odnosa između tehne i efekata tehne-objekata označavajućih za tehne ali i označenih od tehne.Sama tehne je prostor:konceptualni,istorijski,povesni,estetički,društveni,kulturni i biološki koji u novim uslovima distribucije značenja(u dijalektici označenog i označavajućeg)zauzima mesto *uslova za omogućavanje*same sebe,to jest *tehne*.

(“…tehne stvara uslove za ostvarivanje sebe kao proizvoda svojih imanentnih mogućnosti.”)

e./interakcija(u našem slučaju između tehne i objekata kao rezultata tehne pri čemu se pojmu ‘objekat’daje najšire značenje koje se proteže sve do ‘ideološkog objekta’pa do ‘kulturne činjenice’ ili ’činjenice iz fizičkog sveta)obuhvata posebnu vrstu akcije između dva i/ili više objekata koji emaniraju jedan na drugog neki efekat.Ideja o dvosmernom efektu je esencijalna u konceptu interakcije,a kao opozit jednosmernom efektu kauzalnosti.Termin koji se usko vezuje za interakciju je ‘interkonekcija’a taj termin barata sa interakcijama interakcija u okviru nekog sistema;kombinacija množine jednostavnih interakcija mogu da dovedu do pojavljivanja iznenađujućih fenomena.Jer svi sistemi su u isto vreme i povezani ali i nezavisni(pa tako i sistem u kojem su tehne i proizvodi tehne najuže povezani ali i razdvojeni).Svaka akcija predpostavlja konsekvence.

f./Peter Korning(P.Corning)piše:”Mora li takva sinergija da bude opažena/posmatrana u poretku značenja svojih pojavljivanja ?Ne nužno.

Sinergija asocira na hitnost i merljivost,realna je i merljiva čak i kada nema nikoga da je posmatra.

g./u socijalnim naukama(ovde ćemo opet pažnju obratiti na delo Mišela Fukoa(Michel Foucault)na diskurs se gleda kao na institucionalizovani način razmišljanja,socijalnim ograničenjima je definisano šta se sme reći o specifičnoj temi,ili,kako bi to rekla Džudit Batler(Judith Butler)da su to”limiti prihvatljivog govora” -ili moguće istine.Diskursi su ovde viđeni kao efekti naših pogleda na sve stvari;nemoguće je umaći diskursu.Na primer,dva potpuno drugačija diskursa mogu da budu upotrebljena da bi opisala gerilski pokret i to u prvom slučaju kao ‘borbu za slobodu’,a u drugom kao ‘terorizam’.Izabrani diskurs oslobađa vokabular,ekspresiju pa i stil potreban za komunikaciju.Diskursi su povezani sa različitim teorijama moći i države,najzad dokle je diskurs sposoban da nastaje gledamo na njega kao na nešto što će definisati i samu realnost.

U svojim ranim radovima Fuko razvija zapažanja o diskursima-definiše diskurse kao sisteme mišljenja,ideja,stavova,pravaca akcije,verovanja i prakse koji sistematski konstruišu subjekt i svet o kojem on/subjekt/ govori.Fuko prati ulogu diskursa u širim socijalnim procesima legitimisanja moći,ističe konstruisanje važeće istine,kako se ta istina održava i koje relacije u okviru moći ta istina nosi sa sobom.

Diskurs je medijum kroz koji relacije moći proizvode ‘govoreći subjekat’.Fuko tvrdi da su moć i znanje u inter-relaciji pa se zbog toga međuljudske relacije u stvari borbe i pregovori oko i o moći.Moć je uvek prisutna u diskursu i može da proizvodi ali i da opstruiše istinu.Diskurs je prema Fukou povezan sa moći tako što rukovodi pravilima isključivanja.Diskurs je tako kontrolisan od ‘objekata’u zavisnosti od toga o kakvom i kojem to objektu govori,šta se o njemu može reći,koji rituali su mu svojstveni,gde i kada neko može govoriti i tako biti privilegovan…Ko može da govori!

Odmeravajući frazu ‘moć znanja’ Fuko kaže da je znanje kreator ali i proizvod moći.

U "Filozofskom diskursu modernosti" Habermas razvija shvatanje intersubjektivnog vrednovanja i istine da bi učesnicima('korisnicima') diskursa označio pet ključnih tačaka koje su neophodne kao uslov da bi se diskurzivni proces zadržao u okvirima etike.

1./Habermas primećuje da diskurs po sebi ne može da osigura da će se u njegovom okviru desiti i demokratičnost i etičnost.Ali diskurs o diskursu etike jeste ono što Habermas nudi.Ovo je temeljna ideja u njegovom razmišljanju:on opisuje za nas utopiju komunikacijske racionalnosti ali ne i kako da je sprovodimo.Habermas pominje nedostatak 'krucijalnih institucija',nedostatak 'krucijalne socijalizacije' i 'siromaštvo,izrabljivanje,degradaciju' kao barijere u formiranju diskursa i eventualnih odluka koje bi takav diskurs mogao da sugeriše.

2./svi učesnici treba da imaju jednake mogućnosti da predstave i kritikuju validnost tvrdnji sažetih u diskursu(autonomija)

3./učesnici treba da budu 'voljni' da shvate i sa-učestvuju u vrednovanju tvrdnji iznesenih u/o diskursu(idealna uloga govorenja)

4./postojeća moć koja se ogleda u različitosti među učesnicima (u njihovoj 'moći ubeđivanja')ne treba da utiče na kreiranje konsenzusa(neutralnost moći)

5./učesnici u formiranju diskursa treba otvoreno da iznesu svoje ciljeve i intencije i da sa tih pozicija objasne svoje strateške akcije(transparentnost)

Tu je i šesti uslov-neograničeno vreme.U društvu koje sledi ovaj model političari i građani(ili u našem slučaju teoretičari i oni koji sprovode tehne) zajedno učestvuju u javnoj debati.Participacija u ovakvoj debati je *diskurzivna* participacija. Ta participacija je nepristrasna i kao takva odgovara kriterijumu"komunikacijske racionalnosti".Komunikacijska racionalnost priziva stariju ideju logosa koja je tu dovedena u ravan sa konotacijama sile izgrađene na konsenzusu diskursa u kojem su učesnici izneli svoje na subjektivnosti izgrađene poglede na racionalno motivisan sporazum.

Poenta je transformisanje kritike rukovođeno neophodnim ograničenjima u jednu praktičnu kritiku koja preuzima formu mogućeg prestupa.Ili kako bi to Fuko rekao:"Kriticizam neće više biti praktikovan u iznalaženju formalnih struktura sa univerzalnim vrednostima već pre kao istorijsko istraživanje."

Moguće je da smo u procesu kada već osećamo nove relacije između teorije i prakse.Jedno vreme praksa je bila razmatrana kao aplikacija teorije,kao konsekvenca teorije;nekada je praksa inspirisala teoriju,bila je neizbežna u kreiranju teorijskih formi.U svakom slučaju ta relacija je bila razumevana u terminima koji su se koristili u procesima totalitarizacije.Međutim ovaj odnos teorije i prakse se može sagledati i na drugačiji način.Njihova isprepletanost je daleko više parcijalna i fragmentarna:sa jedne strane teorija je uvek lokalizovana i uodnošena na jedno limitirano polje pa se potom kao takva projektuje na druge sfere,manje ili više udaljene od početne(od polja početnog razmatranja).Veze koje se sadrže u aplikaciji teorije nikada nisu stvar slučajnosti.Kada se teorija premesti sa svog odgovarajućeg položaja(domena)ona počinje da stvara prepreke,zidove,blokade prema drugim tipovima diskursa.Praksa je set relacija od jedne teorijske tačke do druge,dok je teorija relacija od jedne prakse do druge.Nema teorije koja bi se razvijala bez eventualnog susreta sa zidom,preprekom,a praksa je neophodna da bi prošla kroz taj zid.(Gilles Deleuze)



U tom smislu teorija ne izražava,prevodi,ili služi da bi aplicirala praksu:ona jeste praksa.Ali to je lokalna i regionalna praksa,to je borba protiv moći,borba koja se koristi da bi se moć otkrila tamo gde je najmanje vidljiva.To nije 'probuđena svest' za koju se treba boriti(jer mase su ponekada svesne da je svest forma znanja,da je svest baza za subjektivnost,da je to prerogativ koji preuzima buržoazija …Ali preuzimanje moći je dirigovano nezavisno od onih koji se bore za moć i nije u službi njihovog prosvetljavanja sa sigurne distance.*Teorija*je regionalni sistem borbe.

Počinjemo da razumevamo prirodu eksploatacije i do sada bi trebali da do kraja shvatimo samu prirodu moći.Moguće je da Marks(Marx) i Frojd(Freud)ne mogu mnogo da pomognu i da zadovolje našu želju za razumevanjem te enigmatične stvari koju mi nazivamo moć,koja je u isto vreme i vidljiva i nevidljiva,prisutna i skrivena,sveprisutna.
“Teorije vlasti i tradicionalne analize njihovih mehanizama ne iscrpljuju polja gde se moć ispoljava i gde ona funkcioniše.” (Foucault)

MANIK,MAJ 2008.

(Napomena:Tekst čiji naslov "Tehne ili sound of snowing"napisan je kao uvod u MANIK-ovoj aplikaciji za konkurs za izložbu.
Ovaj tekst je povezan sa tekstovima koji su pratili ranije MANIK-ove izložbe i sa njima sačinjava 'teoriju u nastajanju'koja je integralni deo MANIK-ove tehne.Tekstovi koji predhode 'Tehne ili sound of snowing';
BUDUCNOST SLUTI prelazni oblik
ili
kako ne biti covek
MANIK,THE MISSING PEOPLE
MANIK-FULL SIZE IMAGE
( http://www.seecult.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=890&start=0 )
*Tehne* se pominje u ranijim tekstovima bez odgovarajućih objašnjenja a pošto je upravo ovaj termin označujući za razradu ukupnog MANIK-ovog rada i to od samog nastanka MANIK-a 1999 smatramo da je sa objašnjenjem i interpretacijom ovog drevnog termina za ovu priliku dekonstruisanog i dekontekstuelizovanog načinjen značajan pomak u teorijskom razumevanju celokupnog MANIK-ovog radnog opusa.




, Michael Szpakowski

Hi Manik
well, as people as smart as you should know, one defining feature of racism is imputing negative characteristics to an entire race solely on the basis of that race. Hence:

<High natality is and it always was Shiptars national and state project>

It's a classic racist trope.

So, I have no problem with
"Some Albanians ( for material and explicable reasons) are drug dealers"
in the same way as I would have no problem with
"Some Serbs are war criminals" or "Some US presidents/former UK Prime ministers are war criminals" or indeed , "some ethnic Albanians are war criminals".

Your polemical posts are Janus faced.
Your critique of capital and imperialism and the drive to war looks towards the future; the nationalist and -yes- racist elements look towards the past.

" In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the same mode of thinking and acting. We are all conformists of some conformism or other, always man-in-the-mass or collective man. The question is this: of what historical type is the conformism, the mass humanity to which one belongs? When one’s conception of the world is not critical and coherent but disjointed and episodic, one belongs simultaneously to a multiplicity of mass human groups. The personality is strangely composite: it contains Stone Age elements and principles of a more advanced science, prejudices from all past phases of history at the local level and intuitions of a future philosophy which will be that of a human race united the world over."
Antonio Gramsci, Prison notebooks.

Which will it be? - backward and historically outmoded nationalism, or a vision of a future where the Serb and Albanian masses (not easily won, of course; nothing worth fighting for usually is) stand together, in defence of their common interests, against capital and imperialism…

michael





, MANIK

Michael Szpakowski wrote:

<High natality is and it always was Shiptars national and state project>

>It's a classic racist trope.

Is that mean MANIK's classic?

>So, I have no problem with
>"Some Albanians ( for material and explicable reasons) are drug dealers"

It's not like that…That's big bussines.Billions of $$$$$$$$$$$$>>>>>>>>>>>>

>Which will it be? - backward and historically outmoded nationalism, or a vision of a future where the Serb and >Albanian masses (not easily won, of course; nothing worth fighting for usually is) stand together, in defence of their >common interests, against capital and imperialism…

OK.Give us your hose and all your money than we are going to pay YOU and Shiptars to fight against capital with your own money.That's kind of help we Serbs get from West.
MANIK


, marc garrett

Hi T.Whid,

I wouldn't hold my breath regarding epic net art being spotted. Mainly because I feel that there is plenty of epic net art out there already (too tired to mention just what, right now but will do if pushed) - similar questions keep being asked over again. I think that it is a silly question and plays in the hands of those who wish to create a more hegemonic structure that hides the larger context of what net art is and could be, it is a distraction.

marc

, Matthew Mascotte

marc,

push.


, marc garrett

Hi Matthew,

I have listed just a mini-selection of my faves. But I have many more…

Thanks for asking :-)

marc
www.furtherfield.org
http://www.http.uk.net

Brian Mackern/1962/Uruguay
http://netart.org.uy

The Golden Shot (revisited) by Simon Poulter
http://www.viral.info/gs2.htm
video link - http://netartfilm.furtherfield.org/?q=node/25

The Appearance Machine by Willy LeMaitre & Eric Rosenzveig
http://www.w----e.net/appearancemachine/index.html
review
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=303

feral trade (import-export)
trading goods along social networks since 2003
http://www.feraltrade.org/cgi-bin/courier/courier.pl

The Sheep Market by Aaron Koblin
http://www.thesheepmarket.com/

Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code
http://www.http.uk.net/exhibitions/OSE/index.shtml#events

Slippage - exhibition of net.art curated by Nanette Wylde, bringing together a group of 8 artists that include: Mez Breeze; Krista Connerly; Juliet Davis; Lisa Hutton; Paula Levine; Jess Loseby, et al.; UBERMORGEN.COM; and Jody Zellen.
http://slippage.net/

live performance called Video Terraform Dance Party
Jeremy Bailey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNO0l4ppgIY

[ ASCII WMD ]
TRANSLATED FROM THE IRAQI UTF-8 TO AMERICAN STANDARD
CODE FOR INFORMATION INTERCHANGE
http://artcontext.net/act/06/asciiWMD/ascii_of_mass_destruction.html

The Status Project
Heath Bunting
Surveys and maps made to order (currently
surveying homelessness and social security).
http://status.irational.org/

Norwayweb
Bjorn Magnhildoen
http://noemata.anart.no/norgesveven/
review
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=295

The Sound of eBay an UBERMORGEN.COM project
http://www.sound-of-ebay.com/

An E-Mail-Art project on the NetBehaviour email list culminating in an exhibition at the HTTP Gallery in London.
http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib12/exhibitions12.shtml

Playful interaction and goal-oriented gaming explored through media arts practice
http://blog.game-play.org.uk/

, Vijay Pattisapu

Marc,

I'd appreciate it if you explained why and how you think these (interesting) pieces relate to the question of the epic, and what that question means for you / what "epic" means to you.

But you dismiss the very question as "silly" and, worse, accuse it of playing to "hegemonic" interests. Why? Most here haven't made value judgments on the epic; they're just trying to assess questions of genre and history. I on the other hand have let some of my horses out of the barn, but I hope you'll forgive a human failing.

If the "epic" question is a head fake for something superficial or insidious, I need an explanation.

What do you mean by these posts? For the most part the critical enterprise here is advanced in good faith; I ask the same of you.

Vijay

, marc garrett

Hi Vijay,

Always a pleasure discussing with you, good questions…

On hearing the word epic, it feels like a loaded term. It has weight, yet at the same time it is flippant. The approach of the question immediately presumes a position that, there is no net art worthy of the spurious, accolade of historical art resonance, as soon as it is asked.

The question itself, if seriously considered within a contemporary net art and media art context, can only end with one pure, single answer - this would be a 'no'.

That, there is no epic, meaning that there is no awe and that net art has failed to fulfill the demands of producing a great work of art. The question itself (perhaps not knowingly) conspires in setting up a no win situation. We are then left with a diverson rather than a thoughtful, contextual understanding of net art and related creativities. Assuming that, many artists are playing in accordance to a set of rules that possess a primary concern to create an epic, when much of the work is not from a mono-cultural intention in the first place - what about looking at the actual work itself and exploring what the artists' themselves are saying in their artwork?

The mistake that some fall into with net art and media art, is to ignore its own reasonings and invent ideas that can sometimes smother the content of the work rather than letting it breath to be what it really is. This is where the hegemonic stance settles in, an asphyxiation of the actual heart of a work can be squeezed out via such diverting concepts which do not accept what the artwork or (dare I say) 'genre' actually is.

A hegemonic culture or atmosphere, creates a pseudo market of thought, a type of economy that ignores, the more messy questions that much art, and creatively driven reflection around it explores. The term 'epic' is a heroic position, a labeling that has a lot of power - like a Hollywood film, but at the same time offers no useful ingredient or nourishment beyond its own frame-set and transient noise.

If there is an answer, surely it is not about a single (fantastical) artwork or a selection of works which are consisting of the demand of enacting out the function of being an epic - if there is an epic I feel that it would be more about the whole genre of net art itself (media art or both)…

I will respond to your questions about the work that I have suggested, once I have had some sleep:-)

wishing you well.

marc

, eryk

I agree, here. I think the idea of "epic" is missing from net.art by necessity, and by the medium's emergence at a time when the epic is considered disingenuous.

However, the key point of the epic- that sense of the work itself moving through time and history, as well as the work's content - is also dependent on the print medium's resignation to fate. The tragedy of the book is that it is written, that the history inside the pages has its history picked up at the beginning and will march you through to the end.

The web is too open - forked paths can't be epic because forked paths have too much empowerment. It is a history of time that is completely malleable, which removes it from any conception of time. Our incomplete evolution out of print culture has left us demanding that kind of resignation in our "epic art." The idea of controlling history and fate in our narratives is still probably too revolutionary to ever be satisfying.

It has little to do with the history of the institutions, or the hegemony, of individual mediums, and all to do with the tradition of hegemony that lives inside our heads.

, Vijay Pattisapu

Eryk: "… at a time when the epic is considered disingenuous."

Maybe in the West. The implied universality in the passive voice of your verb is disingenuous.

MANIK, myself, and, presumably, others on this list come from countries where epics are still alive and well, revered, makers and breakers of human beings, accounts of and instigators of wars. I've seen them put some people in office and take some people out. I've seen them put some people in college and kick others out in a twisted form of govt. affirmative action (see the story of Ekalavya from the Mahabharata and it's easy to see how it reflects class / caste tensions in India today). I've seen people starving in the streets with the words of epics on their lips. When the Mahabharata was made into a TV serial, it was the most watched TV show in the history of Indian television. People – everyday people – still find in epics guides to action, spiritual comfort, and literary beauty. The list goes on.

Epics still matter.

Vijay

, Vijay Pattisapu

Marc: "The approach of the question immediately presumes a position that, there is no net art worthy of the spurious, accolade of historical art resonance, as soon as it is asked."

I don't understand what this means.

, Rob Myers

One thing that epics often have is a foundational character: they are part of the mythology of a nation or culture. Are UNIX or GNU or Google epics? Which culture could net.art be part of the foundation of?

, marc garrett

Hi Vijay,

"The approach of the question immediately presumes a position that, there is no net art worthy of the spurious, accolade of historical art resonance, as soon as it is asked."

Seems clear to me…

I will reread it and whether I am talking nonsense ;-)

marc

, Vijay Pattisapu

Sorry, Marc – I should have been clearer myself:

"The approach of the question immediately presumes a position that, there is no net art worthy of the spurious, accolade of historical art resonance, as soon as it is asked."

What/which "historical art resonance" (accolade) is spurious, and for what reason(s)?

Do you mean

a) the historical resonance of the epic? If so, how would you discount epic influences on other areas of art in history?

b) historical resonance of art? I don't mind if you think that any accolade in art history is spurious – in that case, there's really no point in writing about art in the first place.

c) if there were a piece of epic net art, that any accolades it could/would receive for being epic would be ipso facto spurious? If this is what you're saying, then it begs the question: are any of the pieces that you've posted here in connection with "epic net art" only associable with the epic in spurious ways? If there are pieces of epic net art out there, but epic only by spurious critical hacks, then are they spurious because they pretend to goals impossible for net art to meet? Are they spurious because the epic itself is spurious?

Not necessarily challenging your position(s) here; just trying to parse it right in the first place.

Vijay

, Vijay Pattisapu

And by the way, regarding: [Eryk: "the epic is considered disingenuous" Vijay: "Maybe in the West"],

Many of us on this thread are not convinced that the epic is considered "disingenuous" even in the West!

Marc Garrett, Pall Thayer, and Eryk Salvaggio have asserted or implied that the epic is dead, dying, impossible, a lie, or a tall order for net art. I'm waiting for someone to step up to the plate on why any of that is necessarily the case, besides the flimsy absence-of-evidence-equals-evidence-of-absence form arguments I've seen so far. Moreover, there is no absence of evidence: Patrick Lichty and Tim Whidden have drawn up diverse and compelling examples that the epic is alive and kicking in Western cultures. So y'all might keep those in sight when you start swingin'.

, Vijay Pattisapu

I find Rob’s characterization of the epic as foundational more intuitive at this point than Marc’s characterization of the epic as hegemonic, because:

Foundational suggests a sort of shelf from which the artist can pick up stuff to use in generating art: that picture seems to square with the role of Homer and Virgil in the history of Western European cultures, for example, as their characters, settings, events, meters, etc. proliferated through the literary, plastic, and performing arts in rather transparent ways. Here the epic is an encyclopedic field, a common stock of symbols in the society, a language for the free artist.

Hegemonic, on the other hand, suggests the prescriptive rather than the generative, an ideal to which the a priori unworthy artist and artwork must strive to attain (like guilty until proven innocent). Though at cruder turns of history critics have taken this hegemonic stance in judging their contemporaries by the standards of the epics, I want to believe that great artists in history first understood the language of nature and the language of epics that their societies readily understood, and then plugged themselves into that matrix in order to create compelling art that could even transform that society (not really coming to the audience, nor having the audience come to them, but meeting them halfway, if that makes sense).


Vijay

, Vijay Pattisapu

Put another way, a hegemony is something you look up to; a foundation is something you look down at.

A hegemony is the sky you strive to get to some day; a foundation is the ground beneath your feet, where you came from.

Which way do you think epics are seen today?

, eryk

Let me clarify my statement: The epic, as I defined it, is a dead system, if it depends on an inflexible telling of historical certainty, in which the past and future are carved into irreversible print.

That doesn't mean it's a dead medium. The same way communism and fascism are dead ideologies, regardless of how "alive" they are in practice: regardless of how much you or I enjoy Lord of the Rings or the first three Star Wars films, the epic is a dead ideology. You can innovate in the space, but it's not a new space.

The very fact that an avant-garde has trampled over "the epic" means that it was promptly rendered "to the past" and no artist can embrace it as a means of moving the medium forward anymore. Have you read "Concerning the Spiritual in Art?" Kandinskij described the sharp, narrow end of a triangle floating over certain spaces, and as more people came into that space, the edge moved slightly forward, and soon, what was at the tip of a sharp point has been widened to the base of the triangle.

That's where epics are.

Is Kandinskij's "point" the ultimate aim for all artists? No, but it really has to be the aim of "the next great net.artist," for the same reason that a literary figure writing a breath-taking piece of modernist fiction can't beat TS Eliot, or why a new avant-garde jazz musician can't beat John Coltrane, in terms of what is being done with the medium. Certain terrains have been paved, and made familiar, and the "epic" is one of them. If you want to make the epic new, you have to break the epic, at least the characteristics of the epic I've described.

It doesn't matter, West or East, if the ground was paved by a lost tribe in Antarctica and we came in contact with it, they'd have moved the triangle forward as soon as we come in contact with it. Rites of Spring, for example: There are no more riots, because we got used to what it sounds like. We know what an epic is.

, eryk

I've re-read my explanation and annoyed myself because I am using the term "epic" in multiple ways, once as a form of narrative and once as a description of a certain quality of narrative. If you can decipher what I am saying, good for all of us, but if not, let me sleep on this discussion and clarify it tomorrow.

, Vijay Pattisapu

Eryk,

I sympathize with your statement that the tragedy of the book is that it is written (we played with a parallel idea in the infinite-vs-finite-instantiation thread at http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/37748).

Have you read "Concerning the Spiritual in Art?"

Yes, and I’m grateful that you try not to totalize Kandinsky’s triangle while slogging for it (though your remark about the lost tribe of Antarctica may have derailed the effort).

But:

The very fact that an avant-garde has trampled over "the epic" means that it was promptly rendered "to the past" and no artist can embrace it as a means of moving the medium forward anymore.

I’m sorry - we’re still in avant-garde Modernism mode? Aren’t we exhausted with the -isms already, i.e., do we still need to be antagonistic to the past in order to make great art?

Is Kandinskij's "point" the ultimate aim for all artists? No, but it really has to be the aim of "the next great net.artist," for the same reason that a literary figure writing a breath-taking piece of modernist fiction can't beat TS Eliot, or why a new avant-garde jazz musician can't beat John Coltrane, in terms of what is being done with the medium.

“Beating” sounds awfully quantitative for talking about art, no?

If you want to make the epic new, you have to break the epic, at least the characteristics of the epic I've described.

Now this is an interesting idea. Looking forward to examples from you and/or Marc on how certain pieces of net art are innovating on epic notions by breaking them, with an eye to the contours of those breaks.

Vijay

, Vijay Pattisapu

er and re: Which way do you think epics are seen today?
I should've written "which way do you see epics" … I committed the same foul :(

, eryk

Vijay:

I suppose what I am trying to say, bumper-sticker-fied, is:

"Great art" is also in some respects a "great leap forward," and that "epic storytelling," by virtue of existing already, isn't a great leap forward.

I have a very, very wide car.

I have hedged enough on the statement that "the next big thing" is not what all artists are seeking to create, and I agree (and live by, and make art by) the maxim that pushing into new territory is not exclusive to making good art in existing territories.

By "beating" I meant more "beat them to it" rather than "kicking Coltrane's ass."

I want to reiterate that avant-garde museum mode is one thing (I don't believe in Museums, no one can prove to me that they exist) while expanding an intellectual/aesthetic periphery is another ball game altogether (I can say ball game, right?).

PS You are totally smart.





, eryk

Regarding the diagram:

Your diagram proves my point! The anarchy that is the web - and user-generated whatchamacallits - is far too "short-term explosion" to sustain an epic. Furthermore, there are too many points of entry: you can't rely on someone to begin at the beginning and follow it through. There is no captivity, like in cinema or literature or music. It is all on-demand, and on-demand eradicates the sense of time (and fate) required to sustain a truly epic anything.

, eryk

Now this is an interesting idea. Looking forward to examples from you and/or Marc on how certain pieces of net art are innovating on epic notions by breaking them, with an eye to the contours of those breaks.

My whole point is that it probably won't.

, Vijay Pattisapu

Eryk: word. Kudos for gently guiding me into eviscerating my own idea. :-)

, Matthew Mascotte

word. thanks marc!

The recent post about the new project
Solar Hills, a collaborative installation by British artist Liliane Lijn and Berkeley-based astrophysicist John Vallerga

and

David Ellis's current xhibition, Dozens at Roebling Hall in NYC http://www.roeblinghall.com

are

pretty epic. in terms of scale and technology. Ellis's show has been extended through July 12!!!!

video of the show here:

http://www.vimeo.com/1201340

Best,

Matthew

, Vijay Pattisapu

Fanfiction sites (based on Harry Potter, Star Wars, Tenchi Muyo, etc.) fit the notion of "epic net art" a) in the most conservative definition of "epic" and b) they're "net art" in that they continue epics that existed prior to the Internet, but their composition, sharing, and Parry-Lord-formulaic grafting & recycling could not happen without the Internet (following Pall Thayer's or T. Whid's definitions of "net art"), fleshing out characters that were minor in the original material, e.g., those sites' stories about Wedge Antilles (the early 90s had an obscenely popular cult site about him), if printed, would fill bookshelves.

, Vijay Pattisapu

MUDs et al. are epic net art where the roles of hero and bard happen to be played by the same person (like rap).

, eryk salvaggio

I see what you mean, but to be epic and to be an epic piece of art are different things. An epic can try to do whatever it wants, but to be art, it has to successfully pull the user through history. If you write that history, it's not really epic: which is, by the way, not a bad thing, from a contemporary point of view.

, Vijay Pattisapu

True. That difference is salient enough so that we can't really talk about a MUD in the same way as, say, the Harry Potter fanfiction corpus, under the rubric of epic. And I guess rap deserves its own discussion too, outside of the epic one. Still, Wu Tang Clan ain't nothin to fuck with.

, Michael Szpakowski

I was thinking about this a bit. Clearly the Epic in a precise technical sense is a product of very particular historical/economic/political circumstances.
It occurs originally around the point of the coming of literacy and often codifies the foundational myths of a tribe or people.

When we use it now, we always use it to some extent metaphorically in relation to this original notion.
(Actually that's been true since Virgil who adopted & adapted the form in a quite self conscious way)
And Dante follows Virgil .. and..and.. in the 19th Century we have an explosion of epic revival ( perhaps not by accident in a period when many nations really exist as modern unified bourgeois nations for the first time - for example Pan Tadeusz of Mickiewicz, although of course this *anticipates* the re-establishment of an independent Poland)

In the 20th century there's Brecht's epic theatre, a theatre that reaches beyond the personal or the tragic to attempt to show the unfolding and mechanics of history.
Many of the original formal qualities of Homeric poetry persist in Brecht - the broad sweep, the high purpose, even on occasions appearances by the Gods or ringers for the Gods. There’s often even an epic hero, or more usually anti-hero: Mother Courage, St Joan of the Stockyards, Schweik

( oh, Schweik! - *there’s* a twentieth century epic novel of course!)

So there's no epic template, it's contested & ever changing territory based on arguments of intent, family resemblance &c

That said I'd like to propose these two recent online video works by Robert Croma as epic. They're tiny, but there's something about their ambition, their opening out from the particular to the general, from a point in time and space to what it means to be human that strikes me as utterly in the spirit of epic -see in particular the last third of each, which rupture the time/space continuum.

‘Rules of Engagement’ reverses time and brings the dead back to life, but only after we are so brutally immersed in war we feel our own hands are bloody.

http://robertcroma.com/2008/06/21/rules-of-engagement/

‘Thibaut’ gifts us a time machine & by uniting, in one maddened & delicious rush, two quite particular moments in time somehow makes us aware of the whole temporal continuum, forgotten past to unimaginable future…

http://robertcroma.com/2008/02/11/thibaut-is-singing-on-oberstein-road/

, patrick lichty

"All the muttering about the 'newer generation' of Internet artists having more gallery success is also a bit of a distraction. I guarantee that Vuk, Olia, Thomson and Craighead alone have sold/exhibited more work in the past three years than all of the newer generation put together."

Caitlin -

As for me, I never mentioned "success". What I was interested is in regards to the gallery/art world-centric view of many of the new MFAs coming out of New Media programs. I spent time with the artists you mention this spring, and although they are being represented at the major fairs, they are far from ready to buy the Lexus.

Therefore, not a distraction at all. I think it's a good barometer of where many of the artists (that I see in Chicago, Brussels, San Fran, and elsewhere) are pointing their vector of effort. To me, this shows me what is being "seen as important", when only 40 years ago, media art was still in a mode of challenging the galley and the object itself. This is a major shift…

In an odd sort of way, and although Warhol was the height of art world hip, I feel like the shift from Warhol's Factory to Murakami's "Corporation" shows the shift from a carefully positioned, decentered object (Warhol) to a commoditized niche-production fetish (Murakami's Louis Vuitton bags).

This move to art world traditionalism, in my mind, merely becomes a marketing system for fetish objects, and is pretty boring (except for Murakami et al, who seem very "aggressive" about taking the wrecking ball to culture through the mass market, and are pretty unabashed about it.

I sometimes wonder, "whither Fluxus, Situationism, Conceptualism, the non-objective…?" I think that once the promise of money dries up, this will breathe a little life into things again.

But to my original point, before the New Media Grad programs of the late 90's/2000's the vector was pointed at festivals, guerrilla venues, etc. Now, the thrust seems much more attuned to Academy->Gallery/Museum/Academy, and I'll say that I'm part (in part) of that machine. Far from being a red herring, it's a real phenomenon.

Personally, i'm trying to figure how to find a way to derail that train, and find new ways to get art out of the "art circuit". which is always the most interesting and surprising place to work (for me).

But don't get me wrong, I'm not abandoning my gallery or bowing out of the larger ProspectOne Bi. It's just saying that that's more "the work" rather than "the mayhem". I'm a tenure-track academic, after all…
:P 9_9

, eryk

Selling and exhibiting work is a poor measure of success. Not to be too much of a fucking hippy here, but seriously, to try to quantify whether or not movement has been made on the peripheries of established ideas by counting zeros and dollar signs (euros, more likely) is counting hens with a thermometer.

, Caitlin Jones

Just to be clear, I have never once suggested that market success is a good barometer of artistic success. I was responding simply to the assertions (somewhere earlier on in the 1.0 v. 2.0 discussion - and maybe we should move this discussion back there, rather than embedded in this epic art thread) that the institution and the 'art world' have embraced the 3rd generation of net artists more than the earlier generation. I almost didn't include that ps. as I don't want the discussion to go back to this 'art market' thread.

That said…

Therefore, not a distraction at all. I think it's a good barometer of where many of the artists (that I see in Chicago, Brussels, San Fran, and elsewhere) are pointing their vector of effort. To me, this shows me what is being "seen as important", when only 40 years ago, media art was still in a mode of challenging the galley and the object itself. This is a major shift…


While I agree with you Patrick that artists are directing efforts towards marketability, I certainly don't see it as a major shift. I think many Internet Artists who are gearing a part of their practice towards the institution/gallery setting, still create work that disrupts and challenges that system. And, I'm sorry, maybe my perspective as the one time programing director for a chelsea gallery that played a role in bringing some first generation net artists into the commercial sphere, but I just don't see this as a problem. I certainly see it as a trend to follow with interest, but don't see it as a whole hearted conversion to 'art world traditionalism.'

cj


, marc garrett

Hi Vijay,

It's tough understanding things sometimes. Especially for myself at the moment because I am in the middle of setting up a show at our space HTTP Gallery for Richard Wright's 'How to Talk to Images' http://www.http.uk.net/exhibitions/HTTTI/index.shtml. The opening this evening. So it has been a bit busy at this end of the pond…

Getting back to you regarding your interpretations of a piece of text I had written to you earlier. I feel that (C) is probably the closest, or at least touching upon it some respect.

>c) if there were a piece of epic net art, that any accolades it could/would
receive for being epic would be ipso facto spurious? If this is what you're
saying, then it begs the question: are any of the pieces that you've posted
here in connection with "epic net art" only associable with the epic in
spurious ways?

I think that firstly, we probably need to admit (literally) that we are not just dealing with the idea or notion of an "epic net art", we need to know more, or at least get to grips with what epic means to us, now.

I suppose, to be more succinct when discussing my own perception of what 'epic' means for me. Is that it's meaning or context has different interpretations in accordance to where one sits in the food chain. That it may not necessarily be the idea that is the 'epic', but perhaps more the journey that many of us take in becoming who we are as creative individuals or collaborators.

For instance in one my of fave books in the early nineties written by a Turkish artist called Bedri Baykam called 'MONKEYS' RIGHT TO PAINT'. He writes about his personal journey about his big struggle against the western art Establishment's one sided history making and prejudices. " The fight of a cultural guerilla for the rights of non-western artists and the empty world of the neo-ready mades".

His struggle is different but reflects what I have felt through my own early years when dealing with more established art institutions and academics. I have always been against the term 'net.art', or at least Vuk Cosic's tactics of placing a few individuals in Internet art history, appropriating a net 'dot' art 'epic', the (supposed ironic) 'Heroic Period'. for this takes away from the many and hands over the accolade of history to but a few - they then become historical 'epics', via a modernist behaviour of creating genius's that end up as representatives above other supposed, seemingly 'bad net art'. This is a hegemonic act.

So my real heroes in net art, are those who have not been fairly represented - this my own personal position and concept of what a real 'epic' can be. It is about the struggle of becoming…

chat soon :-)

marc

, Vijay Pattisapu

Marc,

The net dot art thing is a sham, but it doesn't follow from that that the notion of the epic is itself bankrupt. The fact that you have a set of heroes, values, narratives, etc. in net art might even be commensurate with seeing epics in net art, just different ones from Vuk Cosic's.

Vijay

, Vijay Pattisapu

I mean, isn't the point of Furtherfield to bring to light a different set of heroes working in net art, and with them different notions of heroism than those presented by, say, Rhizome?

Good luck with HTTTI, btw…

, patrick lichty

THis is Epic
[img]http://iam.colum.edu/plichty/mtaa.jpg[/img]

, curt cloninger

Master Lichty, methinks you confuse the epic with the tragicomedic.

, Joe Edit

The performance was epic, but it wasn't epic net art

, Vijay Pattisapu