Re: [-empyre-] experience Vs commerce

[Brandon Barr <barr@mail.rochester.edu>]

de-lurking here b/c i see this as a very difficult issue.  i'm all 
for open-standards as well, and find that i  have to continually 
defend proprietary creation tools and languages like actionscript and 
flash.

open standards like VRML and HTML provide a certain amount of safety 
from commerce--but only a certain amount.  Look at HTML-based web 
design.  A designer who is concerned with the details of the physical 
presentation of his or her work is practically constrained by at 
least 4 proprietary structures of browsers: IE for Mac, Netscape for 
Mac, IE for Windows, Netscape for Windows.  All these structures have 
multiple versions, and new digital technology is adding more to the 
mix--new OSes for PDAs, for example.  A not-so-recent project of mine 
was abandoned b/c I would have had to develop and test it in 6 
different environments, not all of which i had ready access to.  With 
Flash, my poems display across browsers on different platforms and 
OSes with consistency (I also depend upon preloaders to ensure that 
the time-in-poem is relatively controlled no matter the technology 
used to view it.)  Yes, I am slave to a proprietary system: 
Macromedia.  But before, I was slave to at least two: Microsoft and 
Apple.

It's really hard to escape commerce, even with ideal standards in 
ideal conditions.


Brandon Barr
University of Rochester


---
Holger Grahn wrote:
> Hi Melinda,
>
> I think public, open  standards like VRML
> are the best way for Net-Artists to publish work,
> and to be a bit safe that a piece work can be experienced in 10 
> years from now.