simon et al
too bad we have gotten off on this avant guard tangent
(or at least i hope its a tangent in the book)
one of the things thats interesting is the massification
of digital culture/art making= when i think of the "movement'
of computer artists that Leonardo published in the 1960s and
1970s they certainly were in contact with each other and aware
of each others work and often were shown in group shows
= and there was a sense of working against
the dominant fine art culture= but surely what distinguishes
new media culture is that almost none of in happens in the
fine art world institutionally and most of it is in other contexts
the art and holography artists could be seen as a 'art movement'
since their work was clearly targeted at the instutional art world
and the artists exhibited together in group shows etc= this is
certainly no longer the case with the various forms of new media art=
perhaps what is distressing is the "technology specific' initiatives
like "locative media" which seem to re iterate a technocentric definition
of what the art making is about
the discourse of the avant guarde really does seem romantically
inappropriate= especially at a time when most new media work is
happening on other cultural contexts than those which seek to establish
canons= and as emphasised by the refresh and forthcoming re:place
conference in berlin= we need multiple historical grids to make sense
of what is going on= after all one persons avant guarde is someone
elses derriere guard..context matters...
i heard an interesting talk by Elie During last night on the idea of
the prototype in some artists work as an anti romantic assertion
and he decries the hidden romantic aspirations of many technological
artists= in Durings case he analyses 20th century art ( not necessarily
technological art- through the lens of the prototype as an iterative
work always incomplete and always at risk of failure= but also as work
that an be continuously re appropriated by other artists= he looks at
artists as diverse as Duchamp, Lewitt, panamarenko, tinguely
i would certainly put software art , net art, serious games in this kind of
grid
and certainly not in any context of avant guarde
roger
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