"Scholars need terms," yes. But it's also clear that media have proliferated tremendously as electronic technologies turned digital. We're not just in flux, now, we're in recombinant media chaos. I wonder if the scholars can hope to keep up.
The shamanic move has always been that "an object is whatever it becomes under the impulse of the situation at hand" as Jerome Rothenberg put it. A media is whatever it becomes... -- Paul On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Joel Weishaus <[email protected]> wrote: > It seems to me that terms are paradigmatic, and always on the brink of > shifting. > One remembers net art, web art...we were looking to stablilize what is > naturally in flux. > Scholars need terms; artists don't. When they're the same person, there are > shamanic moves to be made. > > -Joel > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Alan Sondheim" <[email protected]> > To: "NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity" > <[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 2:59 PM > Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] defining "network/ed" in art (Rob Myers) > > > > > Hi - I think it might be different in the US. For example early on we had > Radical Software and Raindance Corporation, neither of which were > concerned with materiality as far as I know; either was my work or > Acconci's for example. > > On a larger issue, I absolutely don't understand media specificty; when I > think of cinema/film for example, I think of practices involving every- > thing from from maybe 10 film formats to maybe 5 different chemistries (at > least) to performance art, film installation, film/video installation and > video/film film/video transfers to filmless projectors and projectorless > films to indoor and outdoor theaters, slide projections indoors or > outdoors on buildings (Red Slider), etc.; when I think of venues I think > of traditional (NBC for example) networks, network hacking or interrupts > (Chris Burden, pirate television), galleries, lensless projectors, hand- > held projectors, ganzfeld experiments, etc. And film is one of the more > conservative "media". My own work involved videoing film of slit-scan > oscilloscope projections, live performances, wimhurst generator things > that would 'spark' the tape or film, film portraits maybe accompanied by > texts and photographs, 4-dimensional hypercube projections made out of > string accompanied by film of crt displays, and so forth. And I wasn't > alone in this of course. > > Higgins (who I knew) it seems to me in relation to Fluxus which is in > relation to Facebook and _that_ is the true intermedia, which is > ultimately epistemologically messy and irreducible. At the time there was > also Richard Kostelanetz, Alison Knowles, Benjamin Patterson, and tons of > other people smearing boundaries all over the place. To me it's the > boundary itself that's in question, and the question is that of violating > previously considered inviolate media. > > Media also tends to drag with it notions of genre/canon/connnoisseurship - > Nam June Paik for example as the 'first' video artist, whatever - when > this is truly a ridiculous stance, ignoring Ernie Kovacs - but then he was > (somewhat) 'popular' - there were a lot of other people as well, including > ham operators who were doing slowscan (along later with N.E. Thing > Company) and all sorts of video experiments. > > I don't understand media, specificity of media, media history, nomencla- > ture, etc. - it seems obscuring to me. > > This is particularly true in terms of 'dance,' 'performance,' 'theater,' > 'choreography,' 'mime,' 'x-games,' contemporary comedia del arte, etc. > Then there's new media, postmodern media, intermedia, mediation, > remediation, medical attention. Argh! > > The joy to me is basically that definitions _don't_ hold, any more than > discussions about what is or isn't art were fruitful in the 70s say or > 80s. > > I remember WCW going on about back to the things themselves, things of > course being processes, the buzzing world. > > - Alan > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- ----- |(*,+,#,=)(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#)| --- http://ignotus.com _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
