[NetBehaviour] Code & Art & Reviewers [was - Re: a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed']

Rob Myers rob at robmyers.org
Mon Jul 6 22:34:02 CEST 2009


On 03/07/09 22:52, Alan Sondheim wrote:
> 
> I must say first I really like the review; 

Thank you!

> I have to take issue, however, 
> with a couple of points which may be central to you -

Thank you for your detailed critique.

> "I, and others, have claimed that artists who use computers need to be 
> able to program."
> 
> - I strongly resist this (not because I can't program - in fact I've 
> programmed in basic, pascal, vb, perl, unix scripting - I just don't have 
> well-developed skills in these) because I think that 'need' or 'should' 
> have to be taken out of critique almost a priori. 

I use the weasel phrase "have claimed" in the review because I do know
that other people strongly disagree with this claim. And I'm careful to
open it up at least a little -

"There is the question of at what level this mastery needs to be
demonstrated, though."

The examples of Acconci and of student practice you mention give one
answer to this question.

> For example I do 'stuff' 
> in Second Life that involves programming - which for me also involves 
> copying, kludging, cheating, hacking, etc. I work with available tech and 
> my available knowledge as do most people I know. As far as impressionist 
> painters go - they might have to know nothing at all.

I do ask -

"If one wishes to be an Impressionist should one master colour theory
while using pre-mixed oil paint in tubes or does one need to master
molecular chemistry?"

Which mapped back onto art computing covers cludging, copy-and-paste,
and so on.

> You say "But mastery of tools is a prerequisite for competent expression."
> What is a tool? What is competency? What constitutes expression? For that 
> matter, what constitutes prerequisites? 

A tool is an affordative resource used instrumentally for some purpose.
A competence is a particular set of abilities that can be exercised to
realise some purpose. Expression is related to the idea of emotional
communication or to the externalisation of some set of mental indices. A
prerequisite is something that == true on entering a function, or
something like an ingredient for a recipe that you cannot proceed in the
absence of.

> One of my favorite artists is Vito 
> Acconci who had very little of this sort of mastery, if any. I could give
> other examples but the point for me is critical and something I've con- 
> cretely fought for at every school I've taught at - mastery is in the eye 
> of power, the eye literally of the _master,_ and that's a stranglehold. 

But this will always be true in an educational institution. To move the
requirement of mastery to the level of rugged individualism and
self-directed project-based work still makes a demand of the students to
conform to a particular model and we can still evaluate them against
that model.

> The two best teachers I've ever seen (with records of students doing 
> amazingly well for that matter) taught no 'skills' of this sort at all - 
> I'm thinking of Lutz Presser in Australia and David Askevold at NSCAD. 
> David's classes were free-for-alls - you learned what you wanted to learn 
> and learned enough to do what you wanted to do, and that was it. Some of 
> his students were showing at Dokumenta.

How do the students know when they have learnt enough to do what they
want to do, and how do they know what they want to do? How do we know
that they know?

Presumably they are competent in self-directed study, project
management, and art direction. Presumably we can recognize and evaluate
the signs of this. This applies to Acconci as well.

> You mention "A hacker and free software activist I know asked me what 
> exactly makes the Microcodes code listings art (interestingly, they didn't 
> ask why they are code) - but why would they be art in the first place?" 
> Part of your answer is "Firstly, the text of each program listing is 
> short enough to be taken in as a single visual composition. When presented 
> under the claim that they are art they therefore fall into the tradition 
> of conceptual text-as-art." - well there's a lot of cnoceptual art that 
> worked from the beginning with dispersed texts - this was important in 
> feminist work such as that of Nancy Kitchel, not to mention groups like 
> the N.E. Thing Co. which had a conceptual basis.

Yes you are right. I'm a big Art & Language fan so I do recognise that
there are various ways conceptual artists used text. I should have said
something like "the tradition within conceptualism of presenting texts
for contemplation". It's one tradition among many and I didn't mean to
imply otherwise, although I did clearly fail at this.

> I feel you're drawing all sorts of distinctions; where you might see these 
> as openings to work, I see them as barriers. I really appreciate your 
> analysis of the microcodes - it's brilliant - and your description of the 
> environment they're produced within - but the idea that a particular level 
> of knowledge is necessary to create a 'valid' work of {x}-art, fill it in 
> as you please, is really anathema to me. 

I am drawing distinctions. All critics, teachers and artists do. This is
true of institutions and practices that strive for structurelessness as
well.

I do think that a particular level of knowledge is necessary to make art
*that will be of broader interest*. If we remove this criterion we don't
liberate people, we expose them to social or economic rather than
aesthetic or technical requirements on making and experiencing art.

> The great thing about the net is 
> how open it is; the idea, for example of net.art always seemed behind the 
> times with its exclusivity. 

I am in favour of aesthetic and technical exclusivity because they
scupper social and economic exclusivity.

> I think programming can be anything from 
> machine language to somebody typing 'date' at the prompt 

This excludes visual programming languages. ;-)

> - what's 
> important is how it means to a viewer, whether the viewer's moved by it, 
> and so forth.

I agree. But the viewer is more likely to respond to more competent
artwork, and more competent artwork is more likely to come from some
kind of technical mastery.

I may have done Pall a disservice by inserting an idee fixe of mine into
a review of his work, and if so I apologize.

- Rob.

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