manifest

the internet had list serves and newsgroups before there was a Web.

i had an internet account in those days, but a wholly textual thing it was; i was more interested in print.

it was only when the web started that i became interested in publishing online. and i'm a writer, primarily, not a visual artist.

art is not about explanations.

i've been doing some surfing recently using 'stumble upon.' you specify categories of web sites you're interested in, and then you click a button and some web site from those categories comes up. i find that the sites i stay longer than a glimpse on have something mysterious about them and they don't put too much stuff on one page. if i ask myself 'what is this?' that's good. if they then proceed to explain what it is at length, i'm out of there. i find i'm not looking for explanations or comments about anything. just for the thing itself. and not reams of information all at once. focus. in surfing this way, i find i really don't care if it's the answer to the universe and everything if it's scattered and verbose. i'm out of there if it is. there's just too much text on the planet to bother to sort it all out. maybe it's just me, though.

concerning lists and newsgroups, they're great.

do you read archives of lists?

i think that's rare. mostly the discourse is evanescent.

when movies introduced sound, silent movies died. not because all the 'talkies' were better films. sound is higher bandwidth of human feeling (mostly via the human voice) and of the world itself and its atmospheres than just text.

i know there's people who still like just text/text only. and that's fine.

print does that quite well, by the way. books. magazines. chapbooks. etc. at least 2500 years of work there.

ja
http://vispo.com


> why bother making web art, mov. files, video, etc., when you can
> explain your ideas on a listserv?
> whats the point?
> please tell me.
> couldn't we all just explain the work and then move on?
> why do we need the online manifestation?
> Big Question,
> no responses
> Eric

On 4 Dec 2005, at 03:54, <[email protected]> wrote:

> why bother making web art, mov. files, video, etc., when you can
> explain your ideas on a listserv?

Why bother asking this on a list when you could just have thought
about it in your head?

> whats the point?

The actual experience of something is different from a verbal
expression of the concept. For example, if you just think about doing
the washing up you will not have clean plates to eat off of.

> please tell me.
> couldn't we all just explain the work and then move on?

A verbal explanation of a work will only be a sufficiently substitute
for the work if the work is utterly impoverished.

> why do we need the online manifestation?

Ceci n'est pas un pipe.

- Rob.