Well, you usually take the opposite view to mine, that's why we're friends.
-Joel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Sondheim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 12:00 PM Subject: Re: State of new media from strawberry fields forever - On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Joel Weishaus wrote: > -Of course many artists are forgotten. How many artists must have been in > Paris during the first half of the century of whom we've never heard, some > of them must have been as talented as the ones we know. But, they > contributed nonetheless. And even now sometimes another is suddenly > "discovered." And what about the anonymous artists before the signature > became identified, the tribal artists. Are they less important? What I'm > saying is that being attached to your name is valuable when you're alive, > the ego spurs one on. But after you're gone, if you're known or unknown, > what's important is that your work seeped into the culture. > Again, bringing up tribal artists; at least for me, we're living in a very different time. I honestly don't feel connection; I assume you do. I also don't think that work _does_ seep - I'd like to believe that, but there's really little evidence. Perhaps in advertising, design, but certainly not in terms of edginess/philosophy... > -As for the Art World. Maybe in New York something interesting is happening, > but where I live I don't see it. What I do see is what's on the web. I see a fair amount that's interesting to me, out here, in NY, etc. Not a huge amount, but enough. > > -Science and technology are kissing cousins. Nuclear weapons, for example, > were, are, developed by physicists, chemists, and engineers. Medicine, NASA, > there are many joint projects. The line between them is scumbled. > I have a very different reading of science - a reading which is neo-platonic and rather complex, and would be good for an evening. It's too long to write here; needless to say, I don't agree, although of course the line between scientists and technologists/engineers is blurred. > -By not paying attention to wars I don't mean to ignore them. I mean, don't > feed them. Work instead on developing a network of human cooperation, not > competition, which is what feeds capitalism, and the hellfires of war. > That's what Bohm tried to do - and fell into a suicidal depression at the start of the Gulf War... > Can postmodernism finally mean the end of modernism's competitive, > combative, spirit? The dark side of Picasso. The internet seems to at least > open us to this possibility. It would be nice to think that at least the > Experimental Arts--and this should be a genre in itself--can aspire to an > alternative to capitalism, and thus war. Well, this isn't my reading either of postmodernism - but the Net seems to me to be just as competitive and arrogant as anything else. Artists coops do work for a time, both online and offline, but even they tend to decay. - Alan > > -Joel >
