Re: [-empyre-] upgrading downtime?



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




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