Re: [-empyre-] upgrading downtime?

[//jonCates <joncates@criticalartware.net>]

On Nov 22, 2005, at 3:09 AM, feralysis@earthlink.net wrote:
> >can you identify some of the ways in which 'artware' is " a deeply  
> important" and "dynamic"
> >[personally/artistically/academically] both discursively and from  
> your own perspective?

sure abs'ly. sorry for the delay in my reply, mini offLine events  
prevented me from writing sooner.

as Dan Sandin says of the early proto Video Art moment (prior to this  
moment existing as "Video Art") in the interview that criticalartware  
recently released w/him:

"Now at the time, in the early 70s, there really was a video revolution  
going on and alot of people doing video art and video politics. Alot of  
that had to do with the realization that T.V. was the dominant  
communication media of the time, and even more so today. Having access  
to the means of production for a variety of goals was revolutionary.  
There were video groups that were interested primarily in community  
organization and political speech. There were other groups like the one  
here at the UIC and the School of the Art Institute who were interested  
in personally expressive art or personal transformation through  
technology, which was really our idea of it."

title: Dan Sandin interview
dvr: criticalartware
date: 2003.04.09
uri: http://criticalartware.net/VKNKK_2K5/int/dS/

+ so video as art was a response + provocation to this condition. @ the  
same moment in the late 1960's + early 1970's groups such as RainDance:

http://www.radicalsoftware.org/e/history.html

++ Radical Software:

http://www.radicalsoftware.org

in NYC NY .US were also developing open, distributed + decentralized  
projects that worked w/similar issues, concepts + concerns. w/Sandin's  
development of the Sandin Image Processor (a patch programable analog  
computer optimized for processing video signals) + his collaboration  
w/Phil Morton in the creation of the Distribution Religion (the open  
source documentation + plans for building Sandin Image Processors), *  
video was positioned as an informational system [+/or] set of processes  
that could function counter to dominant cultures + enable "personal  
transformation through technology". RainDance + Radical Software were  
also exploring + developing the nascent area of activity we now regard  
as Video Art (which was the New Media of that time) as informational,  
ecological + cybernetic systems. in other words, info economies,  
revolutionary struggles, software, hardware + artware (as intersections  
of codes, concepts + systems) were very much @ play in these artists'  
work, poltics, lives + collaborations.

as far as i am concerned [personally/artistically/academically] those  
intersections are _very_ dynamic + compelling. mini artists (incl'ing  
those i mentioned above) are working + playing in these areas of  
activity in order engage w/various possibilities enabled by these  
approaches + uproot destructive expectations of dominant cultures.

Matthew Fuller writes in Behind the Blip: Software as Culture on the  
possibilities of + for artware or software as an artistic  
theorypractice:

"What characterises speculative work in software is firstly to operate  
reflexively upon itself and the condition of being software. To go  
where it is not supposed to go, to look behind the blip. To make  
visible the dynamics, structures, regimes and drives of each of the  
little events which it connects to. Secondly, it is to subject these  
blips and what shapes and produces them to unnatural forms of  
connection between themselves. To make the ready ordering of data, of  
categories and of subjects spasm out of control. Thirdly, it is to  
subject the consequences of these first two stages to the havoc of  
invention."

title: Matthew Fuller
dvr: Behind the Blip: Software as Culture
date: 2002.01.07
uri:  
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0201/ 
msg00025.html

Matthew Fuller:

http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdma/staff/mfuller/

discusses these issues more + continues to connect them to  
considerations of art in + as informational [codes/economies/cultures]  
in an upcoming interview w/criticalartware (to be released in April of  
2006). i find Fuller's personal + collaborative work amazing +  
inspirational in these regards. I/O/D:

http://www.backspace.org/iod/

Mongrel:

http://www.mongrelx.org/

Graham Harwood:

http://www.scotoma.org

+ Harwood's Nine9:

http://9.waag.org

are directly connected {in|to} this conversation, have made [+/or] are  
making deeply important contributions + provide crucial reference  
points for this discussion.

these links + nfo are just a few focused + intertangled examples of the  
importance of artware in the context of our conversations, computer  
cultures [+/or] New Media as an area of artistic activity, critique,  
social justice movements + efforts of cultural resistance to  
destructive expectations, exploitation, oppression, imperialism, etc...

hope that helps clarify + contextualize my previous statements.

* fyi, criticalartware has digitized the former deadTree version of the  
Distribution Religion + now freely offers the Distribution Religion as  
a shared cultural resource along w/other related materials +  
interviews:

http://criticalartware.net/VKNKK_2K5/rsrc/

// jonCates
# Assistant Professor - Film, Video and New Media
# School of the Art Institute of Chicago
# http://www.filmvideoandnewmedia.info
# criticalartware - core.dvr
# http://www.criticalartware.net
# r4wb1t5 - [organizer/curator]
# http://www.r4wb1t5.org