[NetBehaviour] New Article/Review - Data-Driven Artists And Their Critics
Alan Sondheim
sondheim at panix.com
Fri Nov 22 15:50:06 CET 2013
things aren't staged as physical, things are as such - it's what Rosset
somewhere called 'the idiocy of the real.' none of the painters for
example i've known talked about the physical as a staging; more likely
they've been concerned about transportation. -
On Fri, 22 Nov 2013, Bj?rn Magnhild?en wrote:
> Regarding physicality, I'm not sure what it is, or rather what isn't.
> What bothers me is a 'staging' of physicality, which then suggests it
> didn't have much physicality in the first place. It's somehow treating
> existence as a property. The artworld saying "The thing about this
> thing is that it exists." The situation is already thingiverse.
> And things are not necessarily fragile, even my clothes will survive
> me, not to mention plastic gadgets, which makes you wonder how much
> this material stress has to do with death. On the other hand, man's
> creative nature... it uses whatever medium, physical or not... But in
> this virtual world, staging something as physical seems all the more
> compensatory, like a metaphor.
>
> On 11/22/13, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Absolutely agree with you here; however in music, there are all sorts of
>> issues ranging from digital / analog reproduction technologies through the
>> connotations of musical composition in relation to jazz or other
>> improvisations. One interesting thing that emerges in the phenomenology of
>> improvisation - is that most of it can't be notated (for a lot of reasons
>> not germane here); it's not codifiable but exists as ikonic (I think)
>> within the realm of the uncanny. On the other hand, composition is also a
>> form of programming, in an odd way maybe related to cat or echo commands
>> (maybe not).
>>
>> People do attempt reproductions by the way, for better or worse - I've
>> heard ancient musical notations revived through what might be dubious
>> archeological processes...
>>
>> I agree about the frailty btw, and found years and years ago that my vrml
>> creations no longer worked!
>>
>> - Alan
>>
>> On Thu, 21 Nov 2013, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>
>>> Alan, I don't think you're contradicting yourself. I think you're
>>> displacing
>>> the hand of the artist in coded work. The presented work doesn't truly
>>> present the artist's "fingerprint" as would be the case in a painting or
>>> moulded sculpture. Computer programmed work is inherently frail because
>>> of
>>> changes in technology. Look through Rhizome's archive of work. Much of it
>>> is
>>> non-functional because the technology has changed. If the original source
>>> code is available, the work can be "re-interpreted" in the same way that
>>> music is re-interpreted based on the notation. In code-based work, art
>>> has
>>> entered into the same realm as music where instructions exist but their
>>> reproduction is dependent on the interpretation of the person who
>>> re-interprets the work for contemporary hardware. If the original
>>> instructions don't exist, the likelyhood that anyone would attempt a
>>> reproduction are slim. No?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Not necessarily better - the porousness of media work ensures
>>> its
>>> dissemination and occlusion of traditional notions of authorship
>>> -
>>>
>>> On Thu, 21 Nov 2013, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oops... I just noticed that I suggested but didn't make my point.
>>> The point
>>>> is.... release your code. Tag a GPL license on to it and let it go.
>>> Don't
>>>> worry about someone "stealing" your ideas... if they do, you're
>>> documented
>>>> as being there first (the inspiration). If someone uses your code
>>> and
>>>> produces amazing work that elevates them to a superstardom that you
>>> never
>>>> had... be proud... not jealous. The fact is that they did it better.
>>> C'est
>>>> la vie.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Pall Thayer <pallthay at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> I agree that the physicality of art is necessary. Not
>>>> necessarily for its physical properties (depends on the media)
>>>> but rather for its conservation, its continued affect on
>>> future
>>>> generations of art. Art that has no physical property, be it
>>>> through the work itself or documentation, will most likely be
>>>> forgotten. No matter how important it was in its time. The
>>>> physicality of code based art lies in the code. It is the only
>>>> embodiment of such pieces that can potentially live beyond the
>>>> technology they were created for.
>>>> Pall
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> For me the physicality of much of the artworld is good and
>>>> necessary; it
>>>> reminds us we're flesh and blood, however prosthetic, that
>>>> the world is
>>>> physical and fragile and so much is close to extinction.
>>>> It creates
>>>> situations of face to face sociality which otherwise might
>>>> not exist. When
>>>> I've taught at art-schools I always looked towards the
>>>> painters and
>>>> ceramicists - not for the 'art' necessarily, but for their
>>>> immersion in
>>>> the substance of the planet, which seemed at times eerily
>>>> more real than
>>>> the hyperbolism of the media players, including myself.
>>>> I'm tired of this
>>>> ignoring of flesh and blood, the rare earths in our
>>>> goodies that are
>>>> killing people on other continents, the violent and
>>>> virtual umbrella of
>>>> structures like Google, Apple, Facebook, etc., as if our
>>>> world was
>>>> constituted by benign ghosts whose greatest sin might be
>>>> spying on us for
>>>> commercial gain.
>>>>
>>>> End of rant -
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *****************************
>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>> artist
>>>> http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
>>>> *****************************
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *****************************
>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>> artist
>>>> http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
>>>> *****************************
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> ==
>>> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552
>>> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
>>> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/sf.txt
>>> ==
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *****************************
>>> Pall Thayer
>>> artist
>>> http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
>>> *****************************
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ==
>> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552
>> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
>> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/sf.txt
>> ==
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==
email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552
music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
current text http://www.alansondheim.org/sf.txt
==
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