RE: [-empyre-] real net art

[voyd <voyd@voyd.com>]

> So is there any hope for new people im the field?  

I think the model is going to be similar to the rest 
of the extant art world.  It took me 6 years to get 
discovered, and about ten to begin landing 
commissions, which is pretty standard from my 
experience.  Of course, net.art has not bee around 
that long; I'm talking of my experience as a 
technological artist.  There are opportunities now 
that did not exist when I began, but I think that as 
far as new artists are concerned, the potential for 
rapid recognition is there, but there is fashion to 
appeal to, and for the more unfashionable areas 
there are issues of intellectual rigor and 
reputations to deal with.

But int he short run, there are a ton of 
opportunities out there for our genre, and still a 
lot of room for growth for new artists. I think that 
hard promotion of good work will make the grade, but 
as with any art genre, one should never expect 
recognition.  

For me, that's just a good rule of thumb.

I started making wab art
> (not net art I think) a year and a half ago.  Whne 
I started, Flash was
> already big so I used it in a lot of projects and 
indeed made many
> non-interactive animations, some of which were 
vehicles for presenting
> poetry and others not.  I also used Flash in more 
original ways.  But I did
> HTML-based hypertext as well and don't think Flash 
is good for everything
> (though now it _can_ be used to program just about 
anything, particularly
> the MX version).  It's just one more tool.

Personally, I get frustrated listening to Flash, non-
flash, HTML, JAVAm,and so on.  To me, it's as if the 
Imptressionists were sitting around going on about 
differeing grades of linseed oil and cadmium oxide, 
and grades of sable for brushes.

One thing that gets utterly lost in the discussion 
here is the gestalt of the work itself.  What are 
you communicating?  What experience are you trying 
to convery?  What issues are you trying to engage 
with?

I'm going to deconstruct myself a little as I talk 
(basically, I'm about to get strident for effect, 
but not actually how I feel)...

I could care less whether you're using XYZ 
texhnology as long as you're creating a compelling 
experience - something that communicates to me what 
you want to do.  I don't care whether you use server-
side tech, streaming media, wavelets, X3D, that's 
all window dressing.  I don't care whether it's 
basic, narrative, whatever, just say what you're 
going to say and say it eloquently and with acuity.

One of the only places where I think sheer tech has 
worked well is Carnivore.

That's the problem in my estimation, there's a lot 
more work out there, and a lot of it I see either 
does not coommunicate well, claims to be something 
it's not, or is merely a cute widget that has no 
contextual frame to support it.

So to that, I can only say to the new artist that 
perhaps there are precedents for new work that exist 
for them that did not exist for us, like when I did 
my forst net.art piece in '94...

(I feel so strongly about this I may do a manifesto)