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

["arteonline" <arteonline@arteonline.arq.br>]

Ha Ha Ha

Quite good review Jim! I am glad to know that finally I am winning your
resistance to my work.
;-) Thanks Empyre! ;-)
I will see you in the Green House, with champagne and a big cake to
celebrate this amazing ocasion!

Warmest regards,

Regina

>
> 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
>
>
>
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