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
