[-empyre-] other meandering thoughts in response to promises (Deanne_cg2)

[<info@furtherfield.org>]

BlankDeanne,

I found your answer rather intriguing, mainly because I feel that you have
refered to the function of the displaying of art/information/visual & sound
creativty & its physical limitations on the Net/using technology. Yet there
is emotion in information, there is emotion in intention, there is emotion
in the process of exploring context/content via net art. For instance a book
is an object but what is inside can change one's perceptions, life and
circumstance depending on who you are, where you are, what you percieve and
how one reacts. Therefor there can be an intimacy via a box, television for
instance. The determining of is a lie, could be an over simplification, and
definately a valid emotional reasoning - yet surely is much to do with what
one is demanding from any medium - if something does not satisfy a personal
yearning (criteria) surely it is very much to do with the psychology of the
individual at the time. For I see that the challenge is trying to create
something of worth out of this mayhem of virtual limitation, via the process
of communication, connection, sharing of ideas, potential friendships,
future adventures in collaborations and much more. I believe it is to do
with the limitations of our imaginations and block us from accepting certain
systems, especially external ones. Plus - why should everything be made
easier for us? Design has created cause and effect, using the process of
tech progressions, but that is a minor part of the picture. In respect of
being a creative individual, like any tool one has to adapt and find out
what it can do for us. Being mediated by it is called 'interaction', catch
word. Yet the true excitement of it is what people are really getting out of
it as a tool for exploration, potentially liberation outside of traditional
insitutional frameworks that riddle our everyday lives with nitpicking
bureaucratic remits. Yeah I know, you get those macho tech gurus going on
about the net as if it's a utopia. The truth is it serves them well, and
funders are impressed by it. But there is a more, dare i say it [worthy]
function with the net that has much more to do with empowering everyday
people that does not make interesting press or riveting funding
applications.

For instance, flashy tech is not necessarily the most important thing about
the net, I've worked with many homeless dudes, teaching them how to design
their own web sites. They got a genuine kick out of empowering themselves
learning a new medium and of course connecting to many other people
somewhere else in the world, and finding missing family connections. For me,
how this modern medium can be in fantastical way, is a distraction, a
diversion from what is happening already. Possible futures are a fetish, and
could be a blind spot, denial of the now. Another example is that some
friends of mine have made the effort to network a small villages,
communities in Mexico, eastern Europe so they can be independent and
broadcast their own ideas and music, stories, declaring their human wealth
on their own terms, escaping from the usual bland, suffocation/mediation
imposed by the state or corporate controlling television companies, and Nike
owned territories. To me, this is a radical and imaginative way of using
technology that supersedes aesthetic function and appropriation of
convenience. Also, limitations of a medium often can force one to focus more
on the motive of creating and reassess the concept of the artwork.

There are also, artists, musicians who are consciously creating lotech
music, 8 bit based music that is defying the idea of over produced decadent
type expressions via the medium of technology. Some one recently termed a
lot of flash art as a new Baroque, due to the over production and generalist
use of such a program. I personally have no probz with flash, but it does
highlight over issues that could arise, creating new movements defying over
technologies production. I remember visiting a Bill Viola exhibition, the
medium itself seemed to very distracting to the content that he suggested.
People seemed more impressed with the technology (kind of fetishist), and
distracted from the issues, or should I say its lack, that could of been
expressed more economically. The problem with over production is that
content driven work gets pushed aside, whilst better funded art gets noticed
via logo orientated branding, impressive funding for expensive technology.
Even though my group furtherfield are about to embark on a large project
that explores virtual planes on the net via independent and imaginative
creativity. I do have a feeling of whether or not that we are doing the
right thing, or just contributing to an over bloated void that can only
serve to contribute to reperesent the lack/void of our selves, using
technology as a portal to escape initmate touch, loving, embracing the world
physically. My eyes do hurt sometimes...and I am very aware that I am being
mutated by this computerized object that I am using at this very moment.

Carp like qualities - limit our attention span also, therefor it makes us
more irritable when spending too much time watching a screen...


marc




> I've expressed these same thoughts myself to students or folks who aren't
> sympathetic to net-art. But I think in rhapsodizing about the
immateriality of
> the web, we always forget about the box of delivery.  The box is what is
> limiting, what perhaps people [audience and makers]  are frustrated and
> dissatisfied with. It is an object.  So is the monitor.  And the keyboard.
And
> these objects can be beautiful, but often are pretty mundane, even ugly
and
> strongly mediate our experience of the ephemeral web work.
>
>  >>We do not yet know where the sacred lie in "things" created through
> technology. But think about it:
>  Why should technology be deprived of the "mysterious"? ...But netart
exists,
> grows  and multiplies in an different world, where richness of experience
is
> not measured by how the senses are being provoked, but by how the brain is
> being challenged to create new connections, new associations, new
> understandings. This is where the richness, the spirituality and the «
> sacredness » of  netart lie. <<
>
> I think this is the same question I always ask, only with a different
spin.
> "Can we experience the visceral through a computer screen?"
> I say yes, but lots of people disagree with me.
>
> Thanks, Ollivier, for your thoughts.
>
> Cheers
> Deanne
>
> ========================
> Deanne Achong
> http://www.crankygirl.com/archive