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<br class=""><div><div class="">On Sep 9, 2016, at 12:24 PM, Craig Saper <<a href="mailto:csaper@umbc.edu" class="">csaper@umbc.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi Colin et. al.,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">[trying to assuage the listserv automated routing that this post is not “suspicious” (as it continues to mark all of my responses with that warning) at the same time I am arguing that deciding on “suspicious” materials is part of the reader-function, a kind of OCD-detective trying to know if the net-art is worth it.<br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Picking-up on your suggestion that we might need to develop "a whole new set of critical-analytical categories to talk about reader/user/viewer experience of net-art” — we might include in that list “electracy” (a puncept that combines electricity, electronics, literacy, illiteracy, and trace) and p-bot (a suggestion of the non-human "person-bot,” and, in contemporary slang, a term for someone who seeks control). Colin mentions Heath Bunting, and his work intervenes in the public systems of control and management — to tell us, for example, on how to escape from Bristol UK in case of a environmental catastrophe (with links to air pollution statistics, for just one example) — Is Bunting the reader (if we argue that Heath is a reader, then it impacts our notion of literacy, reading, and allows for an openness to <strike class="">literacy </strike> [my term under erasure might cause the listserv to mark my note as “suspicious” and prevent it from going through — as it has for at least three of my posts — So, it functions as a reader/censor).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Colin, you can see why my preference is to mark the usual performer-author function as a reader to intervene in conceptualizations about literacy. You ask is it is "a valid means of engagement?” And, that could be stated as does it have value, is it “worth” pursuing (or in German/French/Spanish is it rentable). You also wonder that "As networks increasingly engage non-human actors, is the position of a single (human) reader more and more marginalized?” In that scenario, the reader becomes analogous to a translator, musician, and transposer sometimes — although the bot-net-art the bot-as-reader is serving the function of an archivist, curator, trans<i class="">poser</i>. — sort of a Uber-librarian and compiler.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Instruction #6</div><div class="">Net-Worth</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In much of the discussion, and especially in Colin’s articulations of the situation in terms of readers, the issue of net-art’s value (Is it profitable or worth the effort to read it — nevermind write it — is it <i class="">rentable</i> (which is something we might say in German, French, or Spanish, but in English it sounds like we are subletting access to the network): is the network rentable? With <b class="">readers renters in net-art</b>, net-worth, and access-economies, reantders weigh the net-works’ imagined value: is it worth it? is it rentable or condemned?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">///\/\/\\\\/\/\////\/\/\\\///\/\/\\\\/\/\////\/\/\\\///\/\/\\\\/\/\////\/\/\\\</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class="">On Sep 9, 2016, at 10:31 AM, Colin Post <<a href="mailto:colincpost@gmail.com" class="">colincpost@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Hello Craig, Murat, et al.,<br class=""><br class="">I just wanted to chime into the discussion by pushing our notions of what constitutes the author and reader positions in net-art. Craig, you've articulated one author-position as a kind of clockmaker/writer-of-the-network into which the reader steps as another player in the protocols of the network. You've certainly also problematized and qualified this position—often the artwork will parody or serve to demonstrate the strictures of the net; the network may also work against the author's intentions as messages drift or spread, perhaps a counter-logic of the net that the author had not anticipated beginning to take over.<br class=""><br class="">However, I also wanted to think of ways that we might qualify or problematize the position of the reader. What are some works that enable the reader to claim authority/authorship? Are there works that encourage the reader to break or work against the intentions of the net (I'm thinking of much of Heath Bunting's work), even if only in a stance of parody. Is breaking a net-art work (hacking it, dismantling it, rooting out holes in the established protocol of the work) a valid means of engagement? As networks increasingly engage non-human actors, is the position of a single (human) reader more and more marginalized?<br class=""><br class="">I don't have any ready answers for these questions, but wanted to stimulate discussion in the direction of thinking about the reader/user position. There has certainly been a wave in art historical criticism the last couple decades to think about reader-reception. I think this critical stance is especially applicable for net-art, but I wonder if we need to develop a whole new set of critical-analytical categories to talk about reader/user/viewer experience of net-art.<br class=""><br class="">Thanks for a great start to the discussion.<br class=""><br class="">Best<br class=""><br class="">Colin Post<br class="">Doctoral Candidate<br class="">School of Information and Library Science<br class="">University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill<br class=""><br class="">On 9/8/2016 10:00 PM, <a href="mailto:empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" class="">empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Send empyre mailing list submissions to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br class=""><br class="">To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre" class="">http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre</a><br class="">or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""><br class="">You can reach the person managing the list at<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>empyre-owner@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""><br class="">When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br class="">than "Re: Contents of empyre digest..."<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">Today's Topics:<br class=""><br class=""> 1. Re: Week One on Through the NET: Net Art Then and Now<br class=""> (Murat Nemet-Nejat)<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 1<br class="">Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2016 13:50:09 -0400<br class="">From: Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn@gmail.com><br class="">To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Week One on Through the NET: Net Art Then and<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Now<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CAC0TkuZiKGU=L4C9UQ9h4jK2meWyAjF_bN9RsU5HDJvEBfpmfQ@mail.gmail.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br class=""><br class="">Craig,<br class=""><br class="">I like the indirect way you respond to my question about parodying an<br class="">algorithm.<br class=""><br class="">"An important effect of net-art may involve this productive<br class="">misunderstanding -- so, works that seek to challenge directly social<br class="">science and public policy as the dominant and domineering explanations and<br class="">implementations of networks and net-works. "<br class=""><br class="">In the word "internet-art," by shifting the focus from "inter" to "net,"<br class="">are you net engaging exactly in that kind of "productive misunderstanding"?<br class="">Yes, kudos to you! Yes, "misunderstanding" is exactly the virus, the<br class="">parody, the kick in the balls -- the sand in the well-oiled wheels -- the<br class="">internet as a super-efficient method of authoritarian control needs.<br class=""><br class="">I think a most radical case of such "misunderstanding" would occur<br class="">exploring the network of words; in other words, an exploration of network<br class="">as digital art becomes an exploration of poesies-- a critique of the<br class="">digital from its antithesis, the verbal. My last two poems *The Spiritual<br class="">Life of Replicants* and *Animals of Dawn* (to come out in a few weeks) deal<br class="">exactly with words as a medium of disruption and revolt. Interesting, an<br class="">essay on translation I wrote in 1991 "Translation and Style" asserts that<br class="">every good translation that affects changes in the language starts with a<br class="">misreading of the original text, breaking down its autonomy.<br class=""><br class="">Ciao,<br class="">Murat<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 9:57 AM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">Instructions #4<br class=""><br class="">Whisper down the lane.<br class=""><br class="">Although the constraints of this discussion include the focus on one<br class="">particular media technology, "internet" art, with "tools such as email,<br class="">listservs, web sites, databases, software, and hardware," the prefix, net-,<br class="">may include an "internet of things," art for the bots or non-human persons,<br class="">and other as of yet un-thought formations beyond one particular technology.<br class="">More importantly, these sets of instructions suggest that the net- of<br class="">net-art has to do with a set of effects and functions rather than a<br class="">specific medium. If you are an administrator, then you might worry to keep<br class="">net- in a medium specific category so it does not spread with virality into<br class="">the social sciences, urban planning, or public policy. You, now playing the<br class="">role of an administrator and manager of a networks, may worry that<br class="">Bourriaud's "relational aesthetics" may escape from the confines of art,<br class="">gallery-systems, and ... begin to form what Saper has called "sociopoetics"<br class="">(a term he borrows and re-functions).<br class=""><br class="">During the 72-day Paris Commune of 1871, the revolutionaries used a<br class="">communication technology that perhaps prefigured the internet; they used balloons, carrier<br class="">pigeons, or letters packed in iron balls and floated down the Seine. All<br class="">three communication-systems had a similar quirk (not calling it a flaw --<br class="">although it was a mortal flaw for the "commune-ists") that meant that the<br class="">messages were not guaranteed to reach their intended destinations: drifting.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">An important effect of net-art may involve this productive<br class="">misunderstanding -- so, works that seek to challenge directly social<br class="">science and public policy as the dominant and domineering explanations and<br class="">implementations of networks and net-works. What if the moderators' focus<br class="">set out at the start of these discussions were misunderstood by the host(s)<br class="">who took off on a line of flight drifting off the intended course toward a<br class="">p-bot -empyre- building. What are the works of net-art that use this<br class="">"whisper down the lane" effect? Do any of your works use this effect? Is a<br class="">listserv a whisper down the lane formation?<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\\\\\/\/\/\/\\\\\\/\/\///////<br class=""><br class="">On Sep 7, 2016, at 4:54 PM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">Hi Murat ?<br class=""><br class="">Thank you for picking up my winking-nod to the 18th century as my<br class="">Instructions below will continue (and although beyond the scope of this<br class="">exchange and series of instructions, the net- and net-art seems like a<br class="">sub-category of the epistolary and the squib [the squib is given short<br class="">shrift]. Nevertheless, look at Sheryl Orings? work, for example, where she<br class="">types, stamps, and sends letters to presidents and presidential candidates;<br class="">her work performed and set in Berlin or around the World Trade Center is<br class="">particularly interesting in this regard of sending letters as part of<br class="">?Collective Memory.? In any case, I can?t take that up here. Another point<br class="">that I cannot elaborate on here is the 18th century philosophers (Murat<br class="">mentions Locke; K.A. Wisniewski examines Hopkinson?s hoaxes and stunts<br class="">around the time he was signing the Declaration of Independence) as amateurs<br class="">in a time of upheaval and revolt. The net-art and ?conceptual [or<br class="">medium-less] art? in general suggest where the best ?philosophy" is<br class="">happening.<br class=""><br class="">Instructions #3<br class="">When the artist Ray Johnson produced net-art he sent a half-completed<br class="">collage, scribble, or his iconic bunny-doddle to a ?reader? (to borrow<br class="">Murat?s term below) he would include a simple instruction to complete (or<br class="">at least continue) the work and send it on to a name and address. The name<br class="">was usually a celebrity among the readers ? like the librarian at MoMA,<br class="">Clive Phillpot, or Andy Warhol ? and the address accurate. It was known<br class="">that someone like Phillpot would, against the wishes of his administrators,<br class="">save and archive all of these ?on-sendings.? So, the ?reader? would be<br class="">stuck in a desirous network ? send it on and be ensnared in clock-maker?s<br class="">scheme (Ray Johnson would manipulate you as reader-as-part-of-the-work) ?<br class="">It was like a Lacanian paranoid phantasmagoria where the subject or reader<br class="">is a part of the poem (not a poet).<br class=""><br class="">So, become a reader by yielding to the initiative of the network.<br class=""><br class="">That said, the net-art already discussed often mimics, parodies, or spoofs<br class="">the pernicious notions of the network as the new locus of surveillance (see<br class="">Hassan Elahi?s work that surveils himself as if working for the NSA),<br class="">terror (see Ricardo Dominguez?s work), control of contested spaces and<br class="">borders (see J. Craig Freeman?s augmented reality interventions), and<br class="">public interactions (see many of the social action artists ? or<br class="">scholar-artists like Lone Koefoed Hansen or S?ren Pold) ? I include Pold in<br class="">this short list because he has put poem-making and reading machines in<br class="">libraries throughout Denmark. The Pirate Party also Beuys' the many<br class="">political organizations (and including manifestoes that led to the origins<br class="">of the Green Party).<br class=""><br class="">So, instruction #3 is to borrow the network and systems ? perhaps with a<br class="">parodic tone ? as an element of net-art.<br class=""><br class="">Ciao and thanks,<br class="">Murat! ? an important name in the 18th century ? especially in Naples.<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Sep 7, 2016, at 1:31 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn@gmail.com> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Craig,<br class=""><br class="">Thank you for the clarity and boldness of your first gambit.<br class=""><br class="">"Often, though the artist-function is algorithmic and instructions for an<br class="">open-system, the artist function is both more controlling (see the<br class="">definition of a p-bot) -- watch-maker like -- and less (once it is out<br class="">there among the undefined networks of other p-bots). In celebrating early<br class="">work on rhizomes.org, there is a discussion of Petra Cortwright's explicitly<br class="">unintentional artwork on YouTube that emphasized her amateur status. The<br class="">amateur is not a professional."<br class=""><br class="">I like your 18th century reference. Then, the net-artist becomes the<br class="">Newtonian god or, more precisely, the job (that of the clock-maker who then<br class="">disappears) assigned to god in that universe.<br class=""><br class="">What happens to "the reader" in that net-universe then. One should not<br class="">forget that in Newtonian metaphysics (science) one can not change anything;<br class="">but only "discover" the laws governing events, fact. If so, there is<br class="">nothing open-ended in net-art. The "reader" (any interacter with the<br class="">work) can only discover the depth (the digital wisdom, you might say) of<br class="">the algorithm. Making the net-artist through his/her programing basically a<br class="">god, are you not making him/her infinitely powerful, the very opposiye of<br class="">the open-endedness you suggest net-art creates? Can we not say the opposite<br class="">is as true? The reader (ultimately I would claim the artist<br class="">himself/herself) is helpless.<br class=""><br class="">Ciao,<br class="">Murat<br class=""><br class="">On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Instructions #2<br class="">Zooming in on our opening gambit to turn -empyre- into a net-art<br class="">experiment (or a set of instructions that could potentially do so in some<br class="">theoretical future), then we can appreciate the shift from demarcating to<br class="">listing/using a series of functions and effects.<br class=""><br class="">Two attributes in art that use the situation of a network as a canvas.<br class="">The first is to "write" the work as an open-constraint set of instructions<br class="">(either algorithmic or listing). One can send/apply the instructions either<br class="">to bots, people, or (in the case of listserv) to an unknown identity (let's<br class="">call ourselves p-bot effects). We see this in Fluxus works (precursors to<br class="">net-art? or an example of it?) and in the twitter-bot experiments like<br class="">Helen Burgess' "Loving-Together with Roland's Bots" and Anna Coluthon<br class="">(@annacoluthon), Tully Hansen?s team-powered bot @botALLY retweets and tags<br class="">bot-generated tweets, ?NRA Tally (@NRA_Tally)? or?Save the Humanities<br class="">(@SaveHumanities)? by Mark Sample, ?Pizza Clones (@pizzaclones)? by Allison<br class="">Parrish.<br class=""><br class="">The second (closely related to the effect above) is to notice that,<br class="">unlike other arts, dependence on a singular virtuosity and aesthetic<br class="">innovation, net-art appears to have another notion of the artwork; the<br class="">genius is distributed in the system -- throughout the network, and the<br class="">amateur and hack are nodes in that system. Often, though the<br class="">artist-function is algorithmic and instructions for an open-system, the<br class="">artist function is both more controlling (see the definition of a p-bot) --<br class="">watch-maker like -- and less (once it is out there among the undefined<br class="">networks of other p-bots). In celebrating early work on rhizomes.org,<br class="">there is a discussion of Petra Cortwright's explicitly unintentional<br class="">artwork on YouTube that emphasized her amateur status. The amateur is not a<br class="">professional.<br class=""><br class="">What are the instructions?<br class=""><br class="">//\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\/<br class=""><br class="">On Sep 6, 2016, at 10:28 PM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Tim, Thanks for the introduction ? and although we didn?t get to Ithaca<br class="">this summer ? fond memories. It seems fitting to have the theme this week<br class="">correspond to the 20th anniversary of Rhizome.org <http://rhizome.org/>.<br class="">Congratulations to Mark Tribe and the network of folks who transformed a<br class="">listserv (like -empyre -- just sayin') into something else for networked<br class="">art (putting that notion of transformation of a listserv into something<br class="">else ("commissions, exhibits, preserves, and creates critical discussion<br class="">around" net-art) as the implicit instruction/open-constraint for our<br class="">discussion) . . . . still having a difficult time defining networks? Ten<br class="">thousand books with ?network? in their title, subtitle, or series title<br class="">have appeared since my Networked Art appeared in 2001, and reading just a<br class="">few of these titles begins to sound like a conceptual poem: Networks of<br class="">Outrage and Hope; Network Forensics; Understanding Social Network; How<br class="">Networks are Shaping the Modern Metropolis; Virality: Contagion Theory in<br class="">the Age of Networks; Disrupting Dark Networks; Network Like an Introvert;<br class="">Network Marketing; Network Management; The Network; Actor-Network Theory<br class="">and Tourism; Charles Dickens's Networks; Social Network Analysis; Nomads<br class="">and Networks; Networked: The New Social Operating System; Networks Without<br class="">a Cause ... (with thanks to K.A. Wisniewski for digging up some of this<br class="">list). Network is networked in every conceivable publisher's category:<br class="">Computers & technical manuals. Science. Art. Photography. Biographies &<br class="">Memoirs. Literature, Graphic novels, and literary criticism. Education.<br class="">History. Politics. Sociology. Law. Humor. Religion. Philosophy.<br class="">Self-help. ... Trade publishers. University, or Small presses.<br class="">Self-published. Television or Internet. ... Networks, Networking, Networked<br class="">. . . Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Or, read as both or neither. Something<br class="">else? It's a one-word clich? either disliked and pernicious or liberating<br class="">and utopian; it is a network of control in the "capitalocene" (the complex<br class="">networks that have transformed lives for everybody on this planet whether<br class="">they like it or not) or the anarchist rhizomatic hacktivists' web. Not in<br class="">the same ways, but deeply still. Instead of it's meaning, what are it's<br class="">moods, textures, poetics, amateur-hack-artist function, and visceral<br class="">affects? That's what I hope we can explore here.<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Sep 6, 2016, at 10:08 PM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1@cornell.edu><br class="">wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------Welcome back<br class="">everyone from summer or winter, depending on your location.<br class="">Renate and I have enjoyed the quiet of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca after<br class="">returning from Shanghai where we opened a new Summer School in Theory<br class="">between Cornell University and East China Normal University. Our time off<br class="">in August gave us an opportunity to think about anniversary nodes of the<br class="">net and net.art, just as I was being challenged in keeping various pieces<br class="">of 1990s net.art online for my exhibition, Signal to Code: 50 Years of<br class="">Media Art in the Rose Goldsen Archive<br class="">(http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/signaltocode/). So we thought it might<br class="">be<br class="">interesting to open September with a discussion of Net Art Then and Now.<br class=""><br class="">This week, I will look forward to the opportunity to think back on the<br class="">excitement of curatorial projects in net.art when the community imagined<br class="">that the challenging artworks of the net might reach a broader audience<br class="">than now seems to have been the case. I will be joined by Craig Saper, a<br class="">challenging thinker of the network. Craig Saper (US) is Professor in<br class="">the Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral Program at UMBC in Baltimore,<br class="">Maryland, US. Craig published Networked Art and, as dj Readies, Intimate<br class="">Bureaucracies ?<br class="">both about net-art then (and now). His work on net-art also appears in the<br class="">Whitechapel Gallery's Networks, in their Documents of Contemporary Art<br class="">series and forthcoming in Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory,<br class="">Practice and Instruction. Hisrecently published "cross between an<br class="">intellectual biography ? and a picaresque novel,? and "a biography of a<br class="">lost twentieth century," The Amazing Adventures of Bob Brown, tells the<br class="">comic story of a real-life Zelig and the ultimate networker. He has also<br class="">edited or co-edited scholarly volumes including Electracy: Gregory L.<br class="">Ulmer Textshop Experiments<br class=""><http://www.thedaviesgrouppublishers.com/ulmer%20electracy.htm> (2015), a<br class="">special issue of the scholarly journal Hyperrhiz on mapping culture<br class=""><http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz12/> (2015), special issues of Rhizomes on<br class="">Posthumography <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue20/saper/index.html>(2010),<br class="">Imaging Place <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue18/saper/> (2009), and Drifts<br class=""><http://www.rhizomes.net/issue13/> (2007), and many other volumes since<br class="">1990. Craig?s curatorial projects include exhibits on ?Assemblings?<br class="">(1997), ?Noigandres: Concrete Poetry in Brazil? (1988) and ?TypeBound<br class=""><http://www.readies.org/typebound/>? (2008), and folkvine.org<br class=""><http://folkvine.umbc.edu/> (2003-6). In addition, he has published two<br class="">other artists?s books On Being Read (1985) and Raw Material (2008).<br class=""><br class="">Over the weekend, Renate and I enjoyed a lakeside lunch at a casual<br class="">restaurant on Cayuga Lake, and recalled that our last meal there was in<br class="">the pleasant company of Craig Saper. So, Craig, we are very happy to be<br class="">back in conversation with you here on the network rather than the lake.<br class="">We look forward to receiving your opening post.<br class=""><br class="">Tim<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Timothy Murray<br class="">Professor of Comparative Literature and English<br class="">Taylor Family Director, Society for the Humanities<br class="">http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/<br class="">Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art<br class="">http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu<br class="">A D White House<br class="">Cornell University,<br class="">Ithaca, New York 14853<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><default[2].xml>_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote>_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class="">On Sep 7, 2016, at 4:54 PM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Hi Murat ?<br class=""><br class="">Thank you for picking up my winking-nod to the 18th century as my<br class="">Instructions below will continue (and although beyond the scope of this<br class="">exchange and series of instructions, the net- and net-art seems like a<br class="">sub-category of the epistolary and the squib [the squib is given short<br class="">shrift]. Nevertheless, look at Sheryl Orings? work, for example, where she<br class="">types, stamps, and sends letters to presidents and presidential candidates;<br class="">her work performed and set in Berlin or around the World Trade Center is<br class="">particularly interesting in this regard of sending letters as part of<br class="">?Collective Memory.? In any case, I can?t take that up here. Another point<br class="">that I cannot elaborate on here is the 18th century philosophers (Murat<br class="">mentions Locke; K.A. Wisniewski examines Hopkinson?s hoaxes and stunts<br class="">around the time he was signing the Declaration of Independence) as amateurs<br class="">in a time of upheaval and revolt. The net-art and ?conceptual [or<br class="">medium-less] art? in general suggest where the best ?philosophy" is<br class="">happening.<br class=""><br class="">Instructions #3<br class="">When the artist Ray Johnson produced net-art he sent a half-completed<br class="">collage, scribble, or his iconic bunny-doddle to a ?reader? (to borrow<br class="">Murat?s term below) he would include a simple instruction to complete (or<br class="">at least continue) the work and send it on to a name and address. The name<br class="">was usually a celebrity among the readers ? like the librarian at MoMA,<br class="">Clive Phillpot, or Andy Warhol ? and the address accurate. It was known<br class="">that someone like Phillpot would, against the wishes of his administrators,<br class="">save and archive all of these ?on-sendings.? So, the ?reader? would be<br class="">stuck in a desirous network ? send it on and be ensnared in clock-maker?s<br class="">scheme (Ray Johnson would manipulate you as reader-as-part-of-the-work) ?<br class="">It was like a Lacanian paranoid phantasmagoria where the subject or reader<br class="">is a part of the poem (not a poet).<br class=""><br class="">So, become a reader by yielding to the initiative of the network.<br class=""><br class="">That said, the net-art already discussed often mimics, parodies, or spoofs<br class="">the pernicious notions of the network as the new locus of surveillance (see<br class="">Hassan Elahi?s work that surveils himself as if working for the NSA),<br class="">terror (see Ricardo Dominguez?s work), control of contested spaces and<br class="">borders (see J. Craig Freeman?s augmented reality interventions), and<br class="">public interactions (see many of the social action artists ? or<br class="">scholar-artists like Lone Koefoed Hansen or S?ren Pold) ? I include Pold in<br class="">this short list because he has put poem-making and reading machines in<br class="">libraries throughout Denmark. The Pirate Party also Beuys' the many<br class="">political organizations (and including manifestoes that led to the origins<br class="">of the Green Party).<br class=""><br class="">So, instruction #3 is to borrow the network and systems ? perhaps with a<br class="">parodic tone ? as an element of net-art.<br class=""><br class="">Ciao and thanks,<br class="">Murat! ? an important name in the 18th century ? especially in Naples.<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Sep 7, 2016, at 1:31 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn@gmail.com> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Craig,<br class=""><br class="">Thank you for the clarity and boldness of your first gambit.<br class=""><br class="">"Often, though the artist-function is algorithmic and instructions for an<br class="">open-system, the artist function is both more controlling (see the<br class="">definition of a p-bot) -- watch-maker like -- and less (once it is out<br class="">there among the undefined networks of other p-bots). In celebrating early<br class="">work on rhizomes.org, there is a discussion of Petra Cortwright's<br class="">explicitly unintentional artwork on YouTube that emphasized her amateur<br class="">status. The amateur is not a professional."<br class=""><br class="">I like your 18th century reference. Then, the net-artist becomes the<br class="">Newtonian god or, more precisely, the job (that of the clock-maker who then<br class="">disappears) assigned to god in that universe.<br class=""><br class="">What happens to "the reader" in that net-universe then. One should not<br class="">forget that in Newtonian metaphysics (science) one can not change anything;<br class="">but only "discover" the laws governing events, fact. If so, there is<br class="">nothing open-ended in net-art. The "reader" (any interacter with the<br class="">work) can only discover the depth (the digital wisdom, you might say) of<br class="">the algorithm. Making the net-artist through his/her programing basically a<br class="">god, are you not making him/her infinitely powerful, the very opposiye of<br class="">the open-endedness you suggest net-art creates? Can we not say the opposite<br class="">is as true? The reader (ultimately I would claim the artist<br class="">himself/herself) is helpless.<br class=""><br class="">Ciao,<br class="">Murat<br class=""><br class="">On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Instructions #2<br class="">Zooming in on our opening gambit to turn -empyre- into a net-art<br class="">experiment (or a set of instructions that could potentially do so in some<br class="">theoretical future), then we can appreciate the shift from demarcating to<br class="">listing/using a series of functions and effects.<br class=""><br class="">Two attributes in art that use the situation of a network as a canvas.<br class="">The first is to "write" the work as an open-constraint set of instructions<br class="">(either algorithmic or listing). One can send/apply the instructions either<br class="">to bots, people, or (in the case of listserv) to an unknown identity (let's<br class="">call ourselves p-bot effects). We see this in Fluxus works (precursors to<br class="">net-art? or an example of it?) and in the twitter-bot experiments like<br class="">Helen Burgess' "Loving-Together with Roland's Bots" and Anna Coluthon<br class="">(@annacoluthon), Tully Hansen?s team-powered bot @botALLY retweets and tags<br class="">bot-generated tweets, ?NRA Tally (@NRA_Tally)? or?Save the Humanities<br class="">(@SaveHumanities)? by Mark Sample, ?Pizza Clones (@pizzaclones)? by Allison<br class="">Parrish.<br class=""><br class="">The second (closely related to the effect above) is to notice that,<br class="">unlike other arts, dependence on a singular virtuosity and aesthetic<br class="">innovation, net-art appears to have another notion of the artwork; the<br class="">genius is distributed in the system -- throughout the network, and the<br class="">amateur and hack are nodes in that system. Often, though the<br class="">artist-function is algorithmic and instructions for an open-system, the<br class="">artist function is both more controlling (see the definition of a p-bot) --<br class="">watch-maker like -- and less (once it is out there among the undefined<br class="">networks of other p-bots). In celebrating early work on rhizomes.org,<br class="">there is a discussion of Petra Cortwright's explicitly unintentional<br class="">artwork on YouTube that emphasized her amateur status. The amateur is not a<br class="">professional.<br class=""><br class="">What are the instructions?<br class=""><br class="">//\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\/<br class=""><br class="">On Sep 6, 2016, at 10:28 PM, Craig Saper <csaper@umbc.edu> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">Tim, Thanks for the introduction ? and although we didn?t get to Ithaca<br class="">this summer ? fond memories. It seems fitting to have the theme this week<br class="">correspond to the 20th anniversary of Rhizome.org <http://rhizome.org/>.<br class="">Congratulations to Mark Tribe and the network of folks who transformed a<br class="">listserv (like -empyre -- just sayin') into something else for networked<br class="">art (putting that notion of transformation of a listserv into something<br class="">else ("commissions, exhibits, preserves, and creates critical discussion<br class="">around" net-art) as the implicit instruction/open-constraint for our<br class="">discussion) . . . . still having a difficult time defining networks? Ten<br class="">thousand books with ?network? in their title, subtitle, or series title<br class="">have appeared since my Networked Art appeared in 2001, and reading just a<br class="">few of these titles begins to sound like a conceptual poem: Networks of<br class="">Outrage and Hope; Network Forensics; Understanding Social Network; How<br class="">Networks are Shaping the Modern Metropolis; Virality: Contagion Theory in<br class="">the Age of Networks; Disrupting Dark Networks; Network Like an Introvert;<br class="">Network Marketing; Network Management; The Network; Actor-Network Theory<br class="">and Tourism; Charles Dickens's Networks; Social Network Analysis; Nomads<br class="">and Networks; Networked: The New Social Operating System; Networks Without<br class="">a Cause ... (with thanks to K.A. Wisniewski for digging up some of this<br class="">list). Network is networked in every conceivable publisher's category:<br class="">Computers & technical manuals. Science. Art. Photography. Biographies &<br class="">Memoirs. Literature, Graphic novels, and literary criticism. Education.<br class="">History. Politics. Sociology. Law. Humor. Religion. Philosophy.<br class="">Self-help. ... Trade publishers. University, or Small presses.<br class="">Self-published. Television or Internet. ... Networks, Networking, Networked<br class="">. . . Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Or, read as both or neither. Something<br class="">else? It's a one-word clich? either disliked and pernicious or liberating<br class="">and utopian; it is a network of control in the "capitalocene" (the complex<br class="">networks that have transformed lives for everybody on this planet whether<br class="">they like it or not) or the anarchist rhizomatic hacktivists' web. Not in<br class="">the same ways, but deeply still. Instead of it's meaning, what are it's<br class="">moods, textures, poetics, amateur-hack-artist function, and visceral<br class="">affects? That's what I hope we can explore here.<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Sep 6, 2016, at 10:08 PM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1@cornell.edu><br class="">wrote:<br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------Welcome back<br class="">everyone from summer or winter, depending on your location.<br class="">Renate and I have enjoyed the quiet of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca after<br class="">returning from Shanghai where we opened a new Summer School in Theory<br class="">between Cornell University and East China Normal University. Our time off<br class="">in August gave us an opportunity to think about anniversary nodes of the<br class="">net and net.art, just as I was being challenged in keeping various pieces<br class="">of 1990s net.art online for my exhibition, Signal to Code: 50 Years of<br class="">Media Art in the Rose Goldsen Archive<br class="">(http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/signaltocode/). So we thought it might<br class="">be<br class="">interesting to open September with a discussion of Net Art Then and Now.<br class=""><br class="">This week, I will look forward to the opportunity to think back on the<br class="">excitement of curatorial projects in net.art when the community imagined<br class="">that the challenging artworks of the net might reach a broader audience<br class="">than now seems to have been the case. I will be joined by Craig Saper, a<br class="">challenging thinker of the network. Craig Saper (US) is Professor in<br class="">the Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral Program at UMBC in Baltimore,<br class="">Maryland, US. Craig published Networked Art and, as dj Readies, Intimate<br class="">Bureaucracies ?<br class="">both about net-art then (and now). His work on net-art also appears in the<br class="">Whitechapel Gallery's Networks, in their Documents of Contemporary Art<br class="">series and forthcoming in Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory,<br class="">Practice and Instruction. Hisrecently published "cross between an<br class="">intellectual biography ? and a picaresque novel,? and "a biography of a<br class="">lost twentieth century," The Amazing Adventures of Bob Brown, tells the<br class="">comic story of a real-life Zelig and the ultimate networker. He has also<br class="">edited or co-edited scholarly volumes including Electracy: Gregory L.<br class="">Ulmer Textshop Experiments<br class=""><http://www.thedaviesgrouppublishers.com/ulmer%20electracy.htm> (2015), a<br class="">special issue of the scholarly journal Hyperrhiz on mapping culture<br class=""><http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz12/> (2015), special issues of Rhizomes on<br class="">Posthumography <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue20/saper/index.html>(2010),<br class="">Imaging Place <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue18/saper/> (2009), and Drifts<br class=""><http://www.rhizomes.net/issue13/> (2007), and many other volumes since<br class="">1990. Craig?s curatorial projects include exhibits on ?Assemblings?<br class="">(1997), ?Noigandres: Concrete Poetry in Brazil? (1988) and ?TypeBound<br class=""><http://www.readies.org/typebound/>? (2008), and folkvine.org<br class=""><http://folkvine.umbc.edu/> (2003-6). In addition, he has published two<br class="">other artists?s books On Being Read (1985) and Raw Material (2008).<br class=""><br class="">Over the weekend, Renate and I enjoyed a lakeside lunch at a casual<br class="">restaurant on Cayuga Lake, and recalled that our last meal there was in<br class="">the pleasant company of Craig Saper. So, Craig, we are very happy to be<br class="">back in conversation with you here on the network rather than the lake.<br class="">We look forward to receiving your opening post.<br class=""><br class="">Tim<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Timothy Murray<br class="">Professor of Comparative Literature and English<br class="">Taylor Family Director, Society for the Humanities<br class="">http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/<br class="">Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art<br class="">http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu<br class="">A D White House<br class="">Cornell University,<br class="">Ithaca, New York 14853<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><default[2].xml>_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote>_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote>-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20160908/b43fde86/attachment-0001.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre mailing list<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">End of empyre Digest, Vol 141, Issue 4<br class="">**************************************<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class=""><a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br class=""><a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br class=""><br class=""></div></div></div></div></div><br class=""></body></html>