This list is petering out i think. . .but i should reply to chris byrne's?
-yes, thanks, there is a lot I did not qualify. It was meant with a little
irony, which doesn’t travel well. As an artist who’s not a critic, I’m
indulging in exploration of medium to end of questioning/mediating
experiences. But I do look forward to works engaging a viable critique of
systems of control. In my posting I anticipated hacking as the thing that
introduces a viable critical tool in mobile wireless media, in the same
way that hackers introduced tools for critique for NetArt practitioners.
Hacking can engage a meaningful critique, whereas employing the medium as
a platform for critique is questionable in the context of a small
homogeneous audience. RE: NetArtists in the 1990’s attempts undermine
systems of control - Maybe JODI succeeded in undermining expectation when
surfing online, and Critical Art Ensemble denial of service attacks
succeeded in proving we could fuck with authority, and RTMark and
irrational prove that we can utilize corporate strategies and tools for
subterfuge, for pranks, but their success ultimately did not go beyond
exposing weaknesses, insuring a fix for these gaps or oversights, and in a
general sense ensure the public and governing powers remember that these
evolving telecom technologies offer unpredictable opportunities for
infiltration and disruption, as well as for organization and info
distribution. But maybe the latter two successes are better attributed to
activists or to accidents, for example the distribution of image of Iraqi
prisoner abuse, taken by amateurs who did not intend its distribution to
the public.
Regarding ineffectiveness of other art movements in undermining systems of
control:
Conceptual art: if duchamps toilets (is that picture true or false?) or
his other found object exhibitions declared the first FU to the art
authorities, and michael asher’s minute displacements of gallery
architecture asked us to look closer at the house of art, and baldessari
succeeded in selling printed texts for $tens of thousands (i really like
his work, actually) ultimately this game of biting thehand that feeds, and
Do you get it?, played very well into a need for just enough intellectual
engagement and provided a safe venue for social criticism.
Coopting feminist movement tactics of subterfuge: Look at the media image
installations of Robert Heinekin. Unlike his male counterparts in earlier
times, hausmann, Grosz, Ernst, heartfield, Heinekin engages a gender
specific critique, a la Hoech, but he exploits the subjugation and excess
more than he questions it. Vito Acconci’s visceral bodyworks and
performances succeeded in garnering him fame that eluded his feminist
counterparts, whose insertion of body into artwork and use of body as art
tool came well before (he has since grown up and become an architect). Its
not just the timing-yves klein beat everyone to the punch - but more
importantly the context. A room full of nakes beautiful women under a male
director doesn’t make the same statement as a female performer, alone,
introducing her naked body into an artwork (Schneeman, EyeBody series).
Contrast with gilbert & george, whose performances were inclusive more
than exclusive, accessible to a wider audience, and extended beyond
theimmediate experience- although asking similar questions.
At issue here is the use of tactics and language of anarchy and rebellion,
without a genuine need to change things, the misapplication or thoughtless
application of criticality within contexts that preclude effectiveness.
Regarding freedom from jurisdiction of art world politics-
For me the critieria is that for now the concepts, aesthetics, and tactics
employed in locative media are not dictated by the preferences of
curators, gallerists, and museum directors, as established art forms often
are. I have not read a proper review of this type of work in a major art
publication – or anywhere, for that matter! The audience differs from the
museum or gallery public – one is likely to encounter hobbyist or
specialists in GIS and mapping, archaeology, history, education,
performance, urban studies, naturalists, tech aficionados, etc. The lack
of a targetable audience, the close affiliation of the medium with the
infrastructure and function of commercial interests, its site-specificity,
taints the medium for an elite and conservative art system. Again, the
environment I find myself in is, I think, acute in some of these
tendencies. I believe art audiences elsewhere are more diversified, and
that artists elsewhere who can attach themselves to a support structure
(almost nonexistent here) are not as likely to feel pressured to create or
fit into a commodifiable image.
Unclassifiable: in formulating a way to frame this work and in creating a
language with which to do so, I think there is sometimes an assumption
that what we are all talking about is understood. And it is not! I have
been oriented lately toward interactive works employing environmental
sensing and environmental data sets, which for me undermines an emphasis
on location and mobility, and frames the work as environment-aware. And
there are many flavors floating around, in the way of technologies used,
goals, and ways of framing the work. In the same way that computing arts
erased or questioned boundaries between formerly distinct types of work or
media, I think mobile media opens our perspective regarding how
experiences are understood or hierarchized. So, my concern is about
forcing a medium into a limiting framework. I don’t really believe it is
unclassifiable, is anything unclassifiable? - rather I would like to
challenge practitioners question how it is being classified.
Re: intrinsic value of experimental mobile wireless works: I was thinking
of economic value, and not what it brings us as an experience. One of the
major realisations of the dotcom era is the discovery that people will not
pay for internet-based cultural content. I can remember a discussion
regarding (one of ) the first interactive novel online, delirium, 1995.
Sony was hosted this work on an experimental basis. The concern of the
sony people was the payment model – should it be pay per view, per work,
by subscription, etc. What none of us comprehended at the time was this
was a moot point. Payment schemes for most online content would involve
advertisers and the collection of personal information, both of which
remain largely unregulated here, as well as the drastic reduction in
quality and quantity of content. I can’t imagine that experimental content
delivered on mobile wireless will be any different, although it point the
way to viable commercial applications.
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> Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 16:45:04 +0100
> Reply-To: Chris Byrne <[log in to unmask]>
> Sender: "Curating digital art -
> www.newmedia.sunderland.ac.uk/crumb/"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> From: Chris Byrne <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: LOCATIVE
> Comments: To: Naomi Spellman <[log in to unmask]>
> In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed
>
>
> On 14 May 2004, at 23:24, Naomi Spellman wrote:
>
>> The point is, for artists at least, there is a very good reason right
>> now
>> to resist creating works that are critical without a very good reason
>> to
>> do so, and that is the risk that criticality for now at least all too
>> easily becomes surface ornament, an easy way to equate a work with
>> intelligence, hipness, or awareness. I think my allergy to this kind of
>> positioning has a lot to do with the environment I am in.
>
> I take issue with this stance. It seems you are advocating critical
> disengagement as a form of radicalism, a kind of 'otaku' of wireless
> networks. This would appear to place the artist in the role of earnest
> supplicant, feeding quietly on the scraps from corporate culture. If
> you are saying that any critique expressed through
> wireless/mobile/locative media is essentially meaningless, that implies
> the artists making work with these tools are complicit in the systems
> they utilise, and also that they necessarily should not be concerned.
> This seems somewhat technologically determinist.
>
>> One thing locative media has going for it, it stands for now
>> completely
>> outside the jurisdiction of art world politics, and exploits
>> existing
>> or developing infrastructures and protocols. It is decentralized,
>> unclassifiable, and has no intrinsic value – although reading the
>> dialogue
>> floating around some of these lists makes it clear that “value” is
>> being
>> actively constructed. But unlike contemporary art, locative media
>> practitioners are in a position to do what contemporary art never
>> could
>> – directly employ and affect the system of control with which it is
>> complicit, in a way that is grounded in the here and now unlike
>> internet.
>
> Locative media can only stand "completely outside the jurisdiction of
> art world politics" if there is no art made using these media. That is
> clearly not the case. Even if no art were to be made using locative
> media, "art world politics" might still have something to say about the
> media involved.
>
> I can't quite believe the inflated claims you make for the technologies
> you identify as locative media. Your loose usage of terms such as
> "unclassifiable", "no intrinsic value", "grounded in the here and now"
> is frankly spurious. You are not defining why or in which way you think
> these terms apply uniquely to locative media. I suggest you will need
> to supply more convincing arguments in order to make such claims. Or is
> this just unquestioning ideology rather than argument?
>
>> One more comment from drew’s essay, on utopianism in locative media
>> operating as a radical element, in that it emphasizes the enabling
>> capability of the medium. I agree and would add that for me, the
>> optimism
>> itself is radical! There is a lot to be optimistic about. In locative
>> media, one does not have to design interpretations of the work – our
>> public helps to shape and interpret. One is not obligated to formulate
>> and uphold a genre, as mobile technologies preempt creation of an
>> immersive predetermined construct. One does not pursue traditional
>> venues because the world– not the museum–is the stage. One does not
>> structure the interface - the interface rather is the urbanscape, or
>> the
>> topography. Right now, possibilities afforded by mobile technologies
>> have so much to teach the artist/engineer and the public. I think this
>> notion of opening ourselves up to inquiry and keeping ourselves open
>> is a
>> valuable and important endeavor, and that includes in how we frame and
>> promote this type of work.
>
> I'm all for a spirit of enquiry, openness and optimism in artistic
> practise. However I think you fundamentally misunderstand the concept
> of 'interface' as it relates to locative media, particularly in its
> current incarnations. Society does not require locative media to
> 'interface' with the urbanscape or topography, but it does (mostly)
> require portable device technology to interface with locative media (as
> it has thus far been defined, at any rate).
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Chris Byrne
> New Media Scotland
> P.O. Box 23434, Edinburgh EH7 5SZ
> Tel. +44 131 477 3774
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.mediascot.org
> --------------------------------------------------
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