Required Reading
Re: "turning MySpace Intro Playlist into video-art":
To get this out of the way -- I think putting a computer with a mouse in the gallery/museum is rarely a good solution to exhibiting Net Art physically. The experience of going up to a monitor and clicking around in a gallery looks and feels silly -- it becomes a little like "interactive media art", or using an ATM... Not that I don't appreciate the bold nerdiness of a computer in a gallery, but it would fall so flat next to non-Internet work (sometimes a whole mini-computer-lab in the context of a specifically Internet art show seems to look okay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsqDvomS8QM#t=00m31s.) You can never bring that private computer viewing experience into a gallery/museum, anyway, and attempting to do so would mislead viewers into thinking that they have experienced the online version. So, I think it's always going to be a problem of translation for Internet Artists when we go into the gallery -- sometimes its more like documentation of an online performance.
I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the wall text right next to my piece mentioned the original YouTube context, and I know that all of the New Museum text about me emphasizes that I work on the Internet, and talks about Nasty Nets, etc.. Regardless of the confusion, I think the piece is interesting in a gallery/museum. The Intro-ers point off the sides of the monitor encouraging you to read more about them -- a joke that many of them came up with independently, thinking ahead to their video being embedded inside of a Myspace profile -- but now they are pointing to things inside of the gallery/museum.
I agree that the original online Myspace Intro Playlist on YouTube is the better version of the piece (though I am biased towards the online experience) -- because it is such a simple one-click computer user action, and because the artist is at the same online "user" level as those speaking in the intros (though burning DVDs isn't that much more technologically advanced than sharing a video online?) Showing things "live" off the Internet vrs. recorded on a DVD -- I worry that this kind of distinction is too technical and lost on most viewers anyway? John Michael Boling has shown his 53o's YouTube pieces as looping YouTubes embedded in a web page in a web browser running on a computer hooked up to the Internet -- perhaps people can still grasp how this is significant in a gallery context? I know that I really appreciate it as an Internet art fanatic. (However, it is not a solution that works for an entire playlist... And does it become about showing the interface? What about a recording/screenshot including the interface? This isn't always very interesting..)
Many of the Intro videos are slowly being taken off of YouTube -- this is what happens to "live," linked pieces like this -- and unlike with JMB's weddings, funerals, guitar shredders, etc., I won't be able to replace the videos (until they come back in fashion after whatever post-Facebook networking site lets you embed videos on your "info" page again!) So this DVD version is a more permanent documentation of a "live," linked YouTube playlist piece that will slowly disappear.
"professional gear"/"nice screens" -- I'm sure other Internet artists do things differently, but I often think of monitors and DVD players as part of the institution rather than part of the piece (is this naive?).. I would not suggest that the New Museum use crummier equipment than usual for my piece so that it could look more "Lo-Fi" or anything like that. (I hoped it did look a little like the New Museum found some guy on the Internet and then he put a couple of burned DVD-Rs in the mail -- which is not far from the truth.) The two-screens thing is primarily just to make it more watchable for someone walking through -- you can see more of the videos in a shorter amount of time, at half attention, and the pairings are more random -- making it more of a database than a sequence.
I think the bigger issue bugging us/you here is institutional endorsement (even by Rhizome?) of an art practice based on being a normal Internet user -- the surf club vibe. I don't think Internet art should just be online... I think it needs to be thrown into the physical mix with the offline art sometimes to be a part of the larger Art discussion -- rather than be ghettoized the way "Media Art" often is (..which breeds bad art.)
To get this out of the way -- I think putting a computer with a mouse in the gallery/museum is rarely a good solution to exhibiting Net Art physically. The experience of going up to a monitor and clicking around in a gallery looks and feels silly -- it becomes a little like "interactive media art", or using an ATM... Not that I don't appreciate the bold nerdiness of a computer in a gallery, but it would fall so flat next to non-Internet work (sometimes a whole mini-computer-lab in the context of a specifically Internet art show seems to look okay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsqDvomS8QM#t=00m31s.) You can never bring that private computer viewing experience into a gallery/museum, anyway, and attempting to do so would mislead viewers into thinking that they have experienced the online version. So, I think it's always going to be a problem of translation for Internet Artists when we go into the gallery -- sometimes its more like documentation of an online performance.
I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the wall text right next to my piece mentioned the original YouTube context, and I know that all of the New Museum text about me emphasizes that I work on the Internet, and talks about Nasty Nets, etc.. Regardless of the confusion, I think the piece is interesting in a gallery/museum. The Intro-ers point off the sides of the monitor encouraging you to read more about them -- a joke that many of them came up with independently, thinking ahead to their video being embedded inside of a Myspace profile -- but now they are pointing to things inside of the gallery/museum.
I agree that the original online Myspace Intro Playlist on YouTube is the better version of the piece (though I am biased towards the online experience) -- because it is such a simple one-click computer user action, and because the artist is at the same online "user" level as those speaking in the intros (though burning DVDs isn't that much more technologically advanced than sharing a video online?) Showing things "live" off the Internet vrs. recorded on a DVD -- I worry that this kind of distinction is too technical and lost on most viewers anyway? John Michael Boling has shown his 53o's YouTube pieces as looping YouTubes embedded in a web page in a web browser running on a computer hooked up to the Internet -- perhaps people can still grasp how this is significant in a gallery context? I know that I really appreciate it as an Internet art fanatic. (However, it is not a solution that works for an entire playlist... And does it become about showing the interface? What about a recording/screenshot including the interface? This isn't always very interesting..)
Many of the Intro videos are slowly being taken off of YouTube -- this is what happens to "live," linked pieces like this -- and unlike with JMB's weddings, funerals, guitar shredders, etc., I won't be able to replace the videos (until they come back in fashion after whatever post-Facebook networking site lets you embed videos on your "info" page again!) So this DVD version is a more permanent documentation of a "live," linked YouTube playlist piece that will slowly disappear.
"professional gear"/"nice screens" -- I'm sure other Internet artists do things differently, but I often think of monitors and DVD players as part of the institution rather than part of the piece (is this naive?).. I would not suggest that the New Museum use crummier equipment than usual for my piece so that it could look more "Lo-Fi" or anything like that. (I hoped it did look a little like the New Museum found some guy on the Internet and then he put a couple of burned DVD-Rs in the mail -- which is not far from the truth.) The two-screens thing is primarily just to make it more watchable for someone walking through -- you can see more of the videos in a shorter amount of time, at half attention, and the pairings are more random -- making it more of a database than a sequence.
I think the bigger issue bugging us/you here is institutional endorsement (even by Rhizome?) of an art practice based on being a normal Internet user -- the surf club vibe. I don't think Internet art should just be online... I think it needs to be thrown into the physical mix with the offline art sometimes to be a part of the larger Art discussion -- rather than be ghettoized the way "Media Art" often is (..which breeds bad art.)
General Web Content
removing vocals is easy:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=editing&i=remove-vocals
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=editing&i=remove-vocals
When you go surfclubbin', don't forget your hat.
youre rite , J, that came out all wrong -- was just trying to quickly establish a context for my impassioned whining (which I feel silly about now..i think im done with web boards..) -- I really loved what we created with NN, but i'd still rather your work get talked about than nasty nets, i feel like the "surf club" thing is overshadowing something much more important which is going on -- do you disagree? p.s. im in my room but going to breakfast, skype me
When you go surfclubbin', don't forget your hat.
no??
i'm going to email you a million questions about your website, i actually wrote a short paragraph about it a couple days ago
i'm going to email you a million questions about your website, i actually wrote a short paragraph about it a couple days ago
When you go surfclubbin', don't forget your hat.
just thought it was a more interesting topic than surf clubs and hipsters:)
writing in forums makes me anxious, i've never done it -- i have this weird fear that everything im writing will be interpreted as sarcastic ??
writing in forums makes me anxious, i've never done it -- i have this weird fear that everything im writing will be interpreted as sarcastic ??
