RE: [-empyre-] Designing Contexts/Social space, art practice, network structure

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> But I, like Kathy, would have been interested to hear more about
> what people
> would like to get from lists, and perhaps what they do get. I still think
> that lists are a foggy area and perhaps that is why so many of
> the questions
> go unanswered or end in flaming.

hi charlotte,

i recall reading that walt whitman penned a few reviews of his own work
under a different name. his excuse was that nobody understood what he was up
to so it was necessary to tell them.

some of the more interesting 'new media' art is in something of the same
position in that people don't know how to approach it, how to 'read' it, how
to 'play with it', how to 'view' it, etc. and might not know the work it's
related to, if it is in some sort of dialogical relation with other work. so
lists help us be able to talk about work and think through it, think with
it.

also, i'm interested in lists that help build an international dialog that
puts us in touch with people from other cultures and arts around the world;
new media is often synthetic of arts/media/programming and we see people
from around the world on different lists taking up common/different
approaches to the creation of work for the net, for instance. so art lists
are, in part, toward furthering international communication about the arts
and with each other.

also, being from a writerly background but being mostly interested in
creating work for the net, publishing there, lists help us change the notion
of what it means to publish, toward something that is far less dependent on
traditional print publishing mechanisms and limitations econonomically, and
in terms of distribution, and in the types of art it supports.

different types of lists further these things in different ways. lists like
netbehavior or rhizome raw are good both for discussion about issues and
also things like technical info. how do you create a playlist for mp3's, for
instance, or stream them, or how do you get a cow out of a bog? whereas
other lists are moderated and the idea is to provide a forum for dialog on
non-technical issues, themes and issues of a more general nature. and of
course there are all sorts of other differences between art lists besides
these. as there should be. i don't think all lists have to operate in the
same way.

ja
http://vispo.com