net art example

It's definitely dealing with the internet consciously so I'd say it reflects
de facto Networkism. On the other hand, it could certainly steer the
network elements in a postmodernist direction, such as identity
construction. The aspects of Networkism that jibe with Postmodernism are
the most popular approach to the network period I think, for clear reasons.
Calling for participation and so forth are more networkist, and the idea of
searching for stuff on the web is networkism-inflected. It has some
affinities to Eryk Salvaggio's "The God Project" from way back, searching
for God on the internet using search engines. Strictly from a workability
viewpoint I think the organizer is asking a rather lot of the contributors
however. They would need to make quite an aesthetic effort on something
from which he might get most of the heroism.

Which brings up another point I wanted to mention, as it relates to Groote
and the Preface. Network aesthetic evolution doesn't just occur on the
"information transportation infrastructure" level. Not by any means. This
misperception might be the grand delusion of low or false networkism and the
main reason people disdain what is pretty manifest. Internal personal
aesthetic evolution goes hand in hand, must go, with outer transportation
evolution. This is crucial and in it resides the mass of value that
pre-internet art retains and will always retain.

For example, Hannah Arendt argued that people join mass mob totalitarian
movements like Nazism in order specifically to lose their painful or
frustrated individuality. I think her essay on this was called
Totalitarianism. (Not that Arendt is perfectly right on everything, or that
I'm an expert on her.) But it makes sense. Nazi or mob stuff is not a true
network of interacting free healthy individuals, but a giant bulk of
glued-together uniformity–a mass. Any actual network is not a homogeneous
mass, but must consist of independent individual individuals (so to speak).

Hence the risk of false overcoming of the aesthetic-evolutionary challenges
of Networkism by something weaker or lower, such as "connectionism" or
"unificationism" or what have you. Not that such false starts are evil, not
by any means, they might often be honest hardworking attempts or necessary
compromises with the actual deficiencies of actual people, say.

This idea is reflected in the quote (from Shakespeare I think) "the city
[network] is the people."



>From: Brett Stalbaum <[email protected]>
>Reply-To: Brett Stalbaum <[email protected]>
>To: Rhizome <[email protected]>
>Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: net art example
>Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 09:54:12 -0700
>
>Every once in a while I run across a project that feels like 1990's net art
>- in that it is experimental and interested in exploring the network as a
>medium (in this case a social one) that might be made to express some
>novelty. (Or, like all good experimental art, fail, in which case,
>something was still learned…) In any case, fwiw. Max, networkism?
>
>https://post.craigslist.org/manage/418946978/n94gq
>
>–
>Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, LSOE
>Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
>UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
>Department of Visual Arts
>9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
>La Jolla CA 92093-0084
>http://www.c5corp.com
>http://www.paintersflat.net
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