about net art

Hi everybody on the rhizome list,

Here are some thoughts about net art.

I'm teaching this course on it:
http://www.lab404.com/373/

It's less of a history course and more of a studio course.

You can see that most of what people think of as net art I've lumped
under "network." That comprises 1/4 of the class. The rest is about
narrative more or less.

I use Manovich's "open/closed interactivity" distinction because I
find it instructive. Everything is interactive, so "interactive" is
a useless term in and of itself. Everything is probably also
narrative depending on your definition.

It seems unless something is labeled as a movement and
self-consciously referenced to some prior 20th century art movement,
it gets taken less seriously. So nn gets to ride in on the
situationists, jodi on the dadaists, tactical media artists come in
under the fluxus rubric, etc.

With that in mind (and for no other reason, since the works stand
regardless), let me try to map some heretofore mostly ignored net/web
work to 20th century art movements.

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1. Under "linear comics / animation," under the "not comics" section,
is work that might be dismissed as "screen art" or "experimental
design." Unless something is non-linear, folks reflexively dismiss
it as "non-new media." Conceptualism is the given, hence few folks
groove on visual aesthetics anymore. But there is a lo-res web art
aesthetic that low bandwidth limitations have birthed. It's a kind
of visual minimalism that suggests the use of iterative symbolism,
but moves beyond early-amerika-esqe code poetry and attempts
something more visual/painterly. Geoff Lillemon's
http://www.oculart.com is a prime example. Tie it in to Freudian
surrealism. Heck, tie it in to Bosch's triptychs. Whatever you need.

True, put it on a CD-ROM and it doesn't lose anything. But how long
will the "put it on a CD-ROM" test remain a criterion for the
"legality" of net art? Who would make such thin shockwave files for
a ROM anyway? The internet is driving more than just identity
spoofing and selling immaterial concepts on ebay. The network (with
its bandwidth restrictions and multimedia capacity) is driving a new
minimalistic visual narrative aesthetic. 14K modems led to art so
minimalistic it could only be conceptual. But need we remain there?
cable modems are leading to this.


2. Under "open interactivity," under the "generative software"
section, levin and reas get props because they've got the programming
chops (and they do), but at the end of the day, lia (
http://www.turux.org etc.) is the one who most rocks my world. Lingo
may be less sexy because it's less "from scratch," but experience the
results. lia's has been a neurotically thorough exploration of
reactive visual aesthetics (pacing, spacing, texture, line), and she
shows no signs of letting up. Map it to Breton's surrealistic
automatism where the machine is the automaton. Map it to Pollock
where the machine is the gravity. Whatever you need. Again, it
doesn't lose anything when transferred to a CD-ROM. Again, so what?


3. Under "network," under the "outsider art" section, and this is
probably my biggest beef. The web let anyone be an artist, several
eastern europeans decided they would use it to be artists back in the
day, and now there's still this residual manifesto-politico /
wacko-anarcho vibe that somehow legitimizes something as net art.
Meanwhile, there are people from all over the world "unharmed by
artistic culture" (to use Dubuffet's slamming phrase) cranking out
stuff that more than qualifies as interesting/valuable net art. A
prime example is http://www.zefrank.com . (Several "graphic
designers" qualify as well).

I did this project a while back ( http://www.lab404.com/data/ ) where
I had known entities from all over net culture submit their browser
histories and their visitor logs. Many wily net artists and new
media pundits were represented, but guess whose logs revealed the
most site traffic? ze frank's.

I guess outsider art is outsider art by definition, so what am I
bitching about anyway? Tie it in to Art Brut, and you open up the
"net art canon" to all sorts of whimsical, fun, and refreshingly
un-reflexive, un-scene-aware work.

Art Brut designates "works executed by persons unharmed by artistic
culture, in which mimesis, in contrast to what happens in the case of
intellectuals, has little or no part at all. Consequently, the
authors draw their inspiration (themes, materials, the means of
transposition, rhythm, different styles of writing, etc.) from their
resources and not from the cliches of classical or fashionable art."
- Jean Dubuffet

The net is the perfect many-to-many medium to allow such work to
surface from the backwoods, and yet a good portion of the people
reading this email all live on the same island.

All that to say, we're probably a lot closer to finding the next net
art Howard Finster than we are to finding the next net art Cezanne.
(All that stands in the way of the nascent folk.net.art curator is
those danged Angelfire pop-up windows!)


Finally, not as an artist or even a critic, but as a patron/surfer of
net art, I move for more net art about something other than net art,
technology, computers, networks, surveilance, corporations, and ebay.

More Dubuffet, because I just can't get enough:
"Art speaks to everyone. We should not try to isolate it. To cut it
from its roots, from its sources. Everyone should speak about it
freely and give his opinion! And first of all the writers who know
how to express themselves. Beware of the specialists!"

check out the hook while my dj revolves it,
curt
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