[-empyre-] List aesthetics

["Charlotte Frost" <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>]

>>>>>>Do You Dig List-Serve Culture?


nettime-l-digest Friday, April 9 2004 Volume 06 : Number 8182

Table of Contents:

<nettime> re: Charlotte tell me about lists!

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 11:31:37 +0200
From: "Charlotte Frost" <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>
Subject: re: the start of list culture?

In 2003 the artist Jonah Brucker Cohen launched his project Bumplist, a
fully functional electronic mailing list or 'list-serve', which subverted
existing list protocol. It had a finite space for subscribers so that each
new subscription would cause an existing subscriber to be removed or
'bumped'. Should the 'bumped' subscriber like to continue participating in
the list, they would have to re-subscribe, thereby bumping another. It was a
game of 'survival of the fittest' which showed how a list community actively
shapes its lineage and how list content is created by an ever-evolving
collaboration. Brucker Cohen called Bumplist, 'an email community for the
determined' and with the resistance of the mainstream art world to net art,
it was perfectly directed at a community famed for their unfailing
determination. By exaggerating existing list-serve processes Brucker Cohen
highlighted some of the traits of list communities, showed the developing
character of the list, and unearthed the bones of an emergent culture of
list-serves.

>What artwork do you think first highlighted the unique list-serve culture?

----- Original Message -----
From: "charlotte frost" <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>
To: <list@rhizome.org>
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 6:29 PM
Subject: what is a list?

Lists are not the sole property of net artists and are utilised by all sorts
of communities, political and parochial alike, but they are particularly
favoured by new media artists and theorists because they are the most
available, if not the most appropriate method for discussing and
disseminating net art. The methods of list-serve interaction are closely
allied with those of net art. Both are Internet based and therefore use the
hyperlink as a navigational tool, both are produced collaboratively, and
both are supposedly non - (or at least less) hierarchical than offline
methods of information distribution.

>What ties list-serves to net art?

+ ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
-> post: list@rhizome.org
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There is one message totaling 15 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

1. when is the list-serve like an art gallery?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 11:33:51 +0000
From: Charlotte Frost <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>
Subject: lists

>------------------------------

Whilst net art claims to be free of such art validation systems as the art
gallery, in the absence of physical institutions, and in the exaggerated
presence of text, the text itself could be said to become the art gallery of
the Internet. This is visually described by the process of list
participation where threaded or thematic critical texts are sprinkled with
hyperlinks, perfectly mirroring the gallery scheme of juxtaposing vast
paintings with informational hints. On a list however the text hangs huge,
with the artwork in a smaller frame, or hyperlink. It is further described
by the fact text houses the meanings and creates the context for net art
works, whilst transmitting their significance to audiences. This is not to
say that art galleries or curation are not features of net art, but that
text holds the most dominant position.


>>So why does text become so important to net art?

End of NEW-MEDIA-CURATING Digest - 10 Mar 2004 to 11 Mar 2004 (#2004-29)


Ms Charlotte Frost
77 Millers Common
St Albans
Herts
AL11 4QT

22nd October 1999

Dearest Charlotte, 

Are there other areas of list interaction which are deeply familiar? 

The announcements, which litter lists, are like direct marketing, borrowing
their successful strategy from net culture's neighbour, the commercial side
of the web, as well as offline business mail-outs. The candid discussion and
critique on list-serves closely resemble an endless art school 'crit' and
the openness of information exchange means artists work almost as though
they have physically adjacent studios. The formats of lists are familiar
too. 'Digest format', which packs all the days postings into one email, has
a newspaper quality, but without the columns, and the singular emails which
ping in your mailbox all day long, although featuring the voices of many,
are like intimate correspondences - could they be the contemporary version
of the letters of Marx and Engels, Adorno and Benjamin, Brecht and Lukacs?

Yours sincerely

Ms C.L.Frost 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-undercurrents@bbs.thing.net
[mailto:owner-undercurrents@bbs.thing.net]On Behalf Of coco fusco
Sent: 31 August 2002 15:50
To: undercurrents@bbs.thing.net
Subject: [undercurrents] list limitations

The list offers an environment free of hierarchies, with multiple voices,
where geography is bridged and literature enlivened with perpetually moving
debate. However this apparent utopia, like much of the web, is in fact
closely controlled. List-owners or moderators rule the space alongside the
most prolific posters, who are often Western, academic, males with enough
money to afford the prerequisite technology and time. Lists are affected by
foreign as well as academic language barriers - not to mention time zones
which can cause a debate to tire when subjected to its own form of jetlag,
and in the global village, another country's political woes become your own,
as everyone is implicated now information is so accessible. Thus the list is
a deeply political space, filled not only with offline politics, but also
with its own concerns.

> Do lists create their own sets of politics?

________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]On Behalf Of Melinda
Rackham
Sent: 9 July 2003 02:57
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] RE: list banter

As well as it's own politics, the list has its own communicative conventions
too. Although the critiques are nonetheless frequently enlightening, the
un-styled style of hastily written posts, in a variety of approaches from
academic to colloquial, littered with typo's or code is creating a plethora
of new methods of writing and discussion and sometimes even giving rise to
new art terms themselves. For example the name net.art arrived on the net
art scene via a garbled ASCII email received by Vuk Cosic, where some of the
only readable text was the phrase 'net.art' and which provided him with a
seemingly perfect title for his art production. Similarly it is also on
lists, as well as in SMS text messages, that time-saving abbreviations are
generating whole new vernaculars through shorthand intro's like: IMO (in my
opinion), POV (point of view) and the ever important LOL (laugh out loud),
but often these conventions seem to suggest they don't require timely
analysis just because the are time-savers. Debates themselves are usually
quite intense and almost perversely rigorous, which means list newcomers
often stand out with their politeness and careless posting will be ripped
apart as it is put through the paces of list protocol. 

>what are some of the emergent intrinsic features of lists?

______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


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Today's Topics:

1. mailing lists (Charlotte Frost)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 22:52:38 +0000
From: Charlotte Frost <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>
Subject: Re: lists
To: faces-l@lists.servus.at
Message-ID: <a06002024bc77ef474ec8@[192.168.2.4]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

Many writers find that it is through the actual act of writing that a deeper
understanding is obtained. Although lists offer abundant content, active
participation offers the ability for participants to develop understanding
through the process as well. The list becomes a way of practicing perceptive
prowess. We shape our thoughts through language, in fact language is the
creator for the way we think thoughts and so by writing we are thinking. On
the list however we are thinking in tandem with a collective of other
thinkers. It becomes clear therefore that it is not the increased access or
enhanced methods of self-publication which offer the perfect use of the web
for developing writing skills, but the practice obtained in thought and thus
writing production that are provided by the list. Perhaps the list is the
first collective, cyborg brain?

>>>What are some of the emergent processes fueled by lists?

_____________________________________________
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faces-l@lists.servus.at
http://lists.servus.at/mailman/listinfo/faces-l

End of faces-l Digest, Vol 7, Issue 6
*************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-list@www.netbehaviour.org
[mailto:owner-list@www.netbehaviour.org]On Behalf Of Charlotte Frost
Sent: 13 April 2004 08:13
To: list@www.netbehaviour.org
Subject: Re: list as net art collaboration

Despite this close relationship between networked art and networked text,
paradoxically we are still lacking in a coherent language of new media.
Perhaps this is because quantity over shadows quality, or because text is in
constant flux. However in a realm where writers often do not have the luxury
of shaping their comments over years, or even days, but sometimes have mere
minutes to throw their hat into the ring, an acceleration of writing methods
is simultaneously accelerating the time it will take to form a coherent
language of new media. Where we have waited centuries for systems to change,
there is now the potential to produce a paradigm shift in the time it takes
to send an email. Already we have had primitive computer art, the heroic
period of net.art and with the widening of the genre, and the loss of a dot,
we are perhaps well into a renaissance, even though net art is barely 10
years old. 

>>Is there any historical benefit to the pace of list critique?

netbehaviour is an open email list community for sharing ideas,
platforming art and net projects and facilitating collaborations.
let's explore the potentials of this global network.
this is just the beginning.

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: LIST CULTURE

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2004 11:54:35 -0700
From: charlotte frost <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>
Subject: Re: LIST CULTURE
To: L Fiberculture <fibreculture@lists.myspinach.org>
Message-ID: <0CC7D903-6C7B-11D8-BB57-000A957E8B3A@web.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; delsp=yes; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

The language of net art is in a unique position. Its new and unformed state,
but close proximity to technologically induced writing innovation, offers
writers and artists the ability to form a language of net art very
consciously. We can allow new media art and new media text to develop
concurrently, and close the historical and linguistic gap that has defined
disciplines for so long. List-based net art critique can become a medium for
collaboratively thinking, communicating and evolving which will produce new
types of criticism. We can move on from new media, and focus on 'new
criticism'!

>>>Can lists change offline culture or disciplines?

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End of Fibreculture Digest, Vol 16, Issue 2
******************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-list@trace.ntu.ac.uk[mailto:owner-list@ trace.ntu.ac.uk]
On Behalf Of Trace
Sent: 01 01 2008 08:13
To: list@ trace.ntu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: list as net art collaboration

However there is also a whole new informatic aesthetic we must come to terms
with before we can unveil all that the list has to offer. The limited
textual format (a result of peoples various email capacities and
preferences) means even HTML emails are unable to formally reflect the art
to which they pertain, whilst list aesthetics either filled with ASCII code
or >'s often connote a more primitive communication than supposedly cutting
edge textual debate. Yet these very aesthetics remind us that the discovery
and analysis of data on a list is more like a complex archaeological dig
through the multiple layers of meaning making. The list is visual and
virtual information mining, where the process is just as important at the
product.

>Is there an archaeology of the list?

trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce
trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce trAce 

The trAce list connects writers and readers around the world in real and
virtual space. We promote an accessible and inclusive approach to the
internet with the focus on creativity, collaboration and training. This is
where writers meet to experiment, create new work, and expand the potential
of the global literary community. 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-list@www.charlottefrost.org
[mailto:owner-list@www.charlottefrost.org]On Behalf Of Charlotte Frost
Sent: 30 April 2004 08:13
To: list@www.charlottefrost.org
Subject: lists futures

With Rhizome commanding a subscriber's fee, Geert Lovink historicizing
nettime in his book Dark Fiber , and art historians such as Julian
Stallabrass quoting once ephemeral list-serve banter in art historical
tomes, it is clear that there is a burgeoning culture of and respect for
list-serves. What the list offers however is itself multiplying at in
incredible rate. It is both critical content and creator. It is an art
historical tool, and a process by which we can analyse the production and
effects of such tools. Like Brucker Cohen's art/list, perhaps soon there
will be lists on lists, or sites explaining and expanding list culture or
conventions and one day there might even be disciplines dedicated to list
analysis. Right now, whether you spectate or pontificate, in the quest to
discover more, we must both dig and be dug!

>>>Will there be list historiography, list disciplines, list lists?

________________________________________________________
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Charlotte  ;-)