I *was* pretty splenetic about Data Diaries - a few things came together on that but the gist of my position was that it was a one liner - essentially fairly disposable conceptualism with some almost optional visuals and sounds ( and way too many of them, in that I felt then that they were there just to *illustrate the point*) that came with the "idea". Furthermore Alex Galloway in his intro piece made a big point, indeed a virtue, ( and of course it was entirely unfair of me to take this out on the work itself) of that fact that it stemmed from a clever but essentially very quick hack.
I would want to say that I find the one liner culture in general a depressing thing & that I see lots of work that gives me no reason to feel any more charitable to it than I did then. The artistic one liner currently comes, as you know, almost inevitably with some sort of explicatory statement, usually by the artist her/himself although in this case the honours were done by Alex Galloway. In general, its something I'm pretty uncomfortable with since the pairing of one liner and usually theory laden explanation is often at kindest banale.
Nevertheless I was wrong about Data Diaries ...
Originally posted on Rhizome.org Raw by Michael Szpakowski
