RE: [-empyre-] Size matters?

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Charlotte Frost wrote:

> Thanks, I will look into this, but I am more concerned with the list  text
> and process as contemporary art historical tools, how they simultaneously
> create and evade the archive - or more specifically the archive as we have
> known it within art history thus far, and how the list is generating the
> bones of a net art criticism that is both an integral part of the validation
> of net art, but also a more synchronized way of creating a language of net
> art and new media...do you know of references for this???
I'm not sure what the difference is, between a list archive and an archive 
'within art history thus far'? Almost every list I'm on concerns itself 
one way or another with archiving, and how the archive functions. I've 
also written on 'list aura' - centrifugal casts from list per se - for 
example my anthology Being on Line was generated in part from Cybermind - 
there are also conferences, fleshmeets, etc. Everything blends; Stelarc 
performed at a Cybermind conference in the late 90s; that was within and 
without the list in a sense.

Does net art need validation? Does it need this? Certainly there are all 
sorts of venues/types of net art, from BMW films thru shockwave ads, Jodi, 
ascii art, etc. Finally, you mention 'a language of net art and new media' 
- but there isn't one, not even a Wittgensteinian language game of one. 
Instead there are confluences and dispersions of discourses of all sorts.

There are also lists that might in themselves be considered art projects, 
although not within the aegis here - for example FutureCulture and 
Netdynam, not to mention Leri.

And lists meld into and through newsgroups; wryting is also a newsgroup, 
and some newsgroup-generated lists such as the old alt.soc.neutopia or 
alt.fan.dirty-whores had many of the characteristics of lists.

- Alan