RE: [-empyre-] [copy/hack/bend] it right

["patrick lichty" <voyd@voyd.com>]

Hello, everyone.

Sorry to be such a lurker.  IA has kept me somewhat busy, and we're
getting ready to get The Yes Men Movie released in August.  It's been a
little hectic.

But regarding Jon's commentary about the bending/hacking community; I
think that this has spoken to my sense of criticism of tech determinism
that I've had for the last half decade.  Just turned around and realized
that I have a room full of Atari 800's, 2600's, hacked Speak & Spells, a
tweaked PXL2000 (Fisher Price cam), etc.  

I feel that the tech art community is in a schizmatic state.  Sure I did
print in the arly 90's net art in the late 90's but now I feel a need to
consider the fundamental nature of the work that I'm doing that has a
more formalist bent.  That means going minimal; hardware, tech
infrastructure, and so on.  It's become an obsession with $50 widgets to
control an army of automatons halfway across the world via the
Net(probably powered with steam!), but I'm being incoherent.

The tech artist is tired of being on the hamster wheel; she wishes some
control over her creative process, and is tired of having it defined by
the 'machine'.  In this way, I think that the minimal, the hacked,
'junkborg', and the open sourced will become major threads for the tech
artist.

I hope this isn't too incongruous;  it's merely saying that I think that
there is a lot of dissent in regards to the agendas that industry
inscribes on the tech artist, and it will be seen more as the years go
by. 

Patrick Lichty
Editor-In-Chief
Intelligent Agent Magazine
http://www.intelligentagent.com
355 Seyburn Dr.
Baton Rouge, LA 70808

On May 22, 2004, at 4:04 PM, Barbara Lattanzi wrote:
> Then it occurs to me that the technique I saw was "copied right".   
> This means that not only was the technique treated as "copy left",  
> open source material, but that the videos made with this appropriated

> technique (updated on 1990s analog equipment) did not bother to point

> to Woodstock Community Video as the source and inspiration.

// jon.satrom writes //
this happens quite often in an art_world focused on forward momentum.  
as we have already defined {as a global} : criticalartware strives to  
[pull/link/bring.awareness2/rmx] these [events/occurrences] to bring a  
history to this (often) non-historical discourse.

i was hoping to drop some more [hardware hacking/circuit bending]  
relations on empyre this month. it is an interesting community that is  
gaining art_world attention; more and more planz are available on the  
globalinterweb for copying. it seems that when the art_world and  
communities like this re:mix the history is [stripped/denied/rejected]  
in leu of opportunism. this community in particular has very close  
_roots to the early dayz of video where ppl konstructed their own  
hardware to xperiment+develope+use, however it is not often noted.