[-empyre-] "The Psychiatrist, Net.art/Web.art and other stories"

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

> She makes
> a rereading of literature masterpieces: in "The White and the Black,
> Reflections on Fog" (1999), we can admire an electronic and
> visual narrative
> of Sthendal's work "The Black and the Red"; in "Book of Sand"
> (2001), it is
> a visual narrative from Borges'short story with the same title; in "The
> Psychiatrist, Net.art / Web.art and other stories" (2002), we can see a
> rereading of Machado de Assis's novel, which treats about the limits of
> madness and sanity, from several points of view; in "The Newest Song of
> Exile: Sabiá Virtuality" (2003), we can see the Song of Exile in
> an updated
> and expanded interpretation, since the original Song of Exile (Canção do
> Exílio), by the Romantic poet Gonçalves Dias; and in "Viewing Axolots"
> (2004), we have metamorphosis of images and words in the electronic and
> digital media, from the inspiration of Julio Cortazar.
>     Regina is giving us a significative sample of a good relationship of
> Literature and Art in digital media.

Thank you, Jorge. This is helpful in an overview of the works in Regina's
The Library of Marvels at http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm . The
literary works are apparently quite relevant to Regina's works and
understanding the literary works she refers to, not so much in detail as in
broad outline helps quite a bit.

Turning from "Viewing Axalotls" to "The Psychiatrist, Net.art/Web.art and
other stories" at http://www.iis.com.br/%7Eregvampi/alienista/entrada.htm we
read, among others, this excerpt from Machado de Assis's The Psychiatrist
and Other Stories:

"From all the towns and villages in the vicinity came the violent, the
depressed, the monomaniacal ? the mentally ill of every type and variety. At
the end of four months the Green House was a little community in itself. A
gallery with thirty-seven more cubicles had to be added. Father Lopes
confessed that he had not imagined there were so many madmen in the world
nor that such strange cases of madness existed. One of the patients, a
coarse, ignorant young man, gave a speech every day after lunch. It was an
academic discourse, with metaphors, antitheses, and apostrophes, ornamented
with Greek words and quotations from Cícero, Apuleius and Tertullian. The
Vicar could hardly believe his ears. What, a fellow he had seen only three
months ago hanging around street corners!"

This is an aspect of the net and its art that is perhaps familiar to us all,
so the parallel is quite well drawn. Regina's own text then says

"From all the cities and little places lost in the world artists have flowed
to the Green House. In the beginning there were those who wanted to exhibit
their traditional creations: paintings, prints, sculptures?. . Some saw in
the web a window to the world, others were furious with the difficulties and
barriers in being part of traditional art circuits. After some time, the
Green House became a settlement. They were not content in just creating
virtual galleries. They began to use the net as a stand for art. I myself,
hence imagining that I was a pioneer, created "Cyber Circus" in 1998 - a
circus which did not have a ring but whose attractions were everywhere.
Shortly after however, I discovered the existence of more "madmen* in the
world, and I dived in, fascinated by the inexplicable pleasure of
experimenting and inventing a new language. A friend of mine that I met and
who had not seen me for a while just could not believe it. What! An artist
that he had seen, three months earlier, painting in acrylics on canvas?

* The word madness is ambiguous. In dealing with art, I use it here as the
curiosity that human beings have and which makes them search for reason,
invention and truth for their existence."

So "the Green House" in the Parcheesi game is a metaphor for Machado de
Assis's Green House and also the art space/forums of the Net, and the piece
proceeds partly through this parallel.

When I first viewed this work in, what, 2002 (?), I did not understand the
approach to game in it and, though I am familar with Parcheesi, having
played it as a child, Regina's game did not advance the pieces through the
game as a normal computer game would, and so I became confused as to what
was going on and didn't get too far into "The Psychiatrist, Net.art /
Web.art and other stories". Now I see that, as in "Viewing Axalotls", the
notion of 'game' is used both metaphorically and as a kind of navigational
motif, ie, the green squares present a kind of map of the nodes of the
hypermedia, and one can navigate to them as one sees fit without being
constrained, as in a regular computer game, by the programming logic. It is
a kind of 'play mode' game rather than a 'game mode' game.

So, in part because of our discussion, I am now able to understand this
piece much more enjoyably. And to see it in relation to "Viewing Axalotls"
concerning the general structure of the works in The Library of Marvels, ie,
they all involve a parallel of some sort with a literary work, this is very
satisfying.

So perhaps communication is possible, Regina, but it takes time and a desire
to understand one another and each others' works :-)  -- OK, I'm back to the
Green House.

ja