[-empyre-] blogs as a new net art--resending

["Tom Moody" <tommoody3rd@comcast.net>]

I'm resending this from Outlook Express, set for plain text with a
76-character wrap. Also, I have attempted to change my display name to
tom moody rather than tommoody3rd. Don't know if that will work.
Sorry I'm having logistical issues. --tom
*****

Hi, thanks for inviting me to post to this list. For those of you in 
Australia,
I am not the retired cricket player turned coach--but I have learned a bit
about him since we share each other's google hits.

Linkoln has posted already on the topic of whether blogging is a (mere)
artist's journal or an (ideal) vehicle for online improvisation. For him and 
jimpunk
it is certainly the latter. I have written about how their work differs from
traditional "net art" practice and would like to put that series of posts
before the group.

The instigating event was a wishy washy New York Times article declaring
that Net Art was dead, except to the extent it wasn't. My series of posts in
response is here:
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/comment/26709/
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?26735
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/comment/26771/
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?26806


The following excerpted paragraph addresses Linkoln's and jimpunk's
practice:

"There has been a sea change that the [Times] writer completely missed--an
influx of artists redefining the medium, not so much through
browser-dismantling code a la Jodi.org, but testing the limits of how much a
window can hold,  like turning an amplifier up to 11. These largely basement
producers handle Net graphics in a painterly or expressionistic way, cocking 
a
half-appreciative, half-horrified eye on all the weird content out there on 
the Internet.
The phenomenon isn't about marketing (yet) but rather thrives within the 
Net's
potlatch or "gift economy" of upload exchange. Artists put up simple
animations made with .GIFs or Flash, with sound or without, as well as 
appropriate,
resize and mutate found .GIFs and jpegs, attacking visual phenomena the way 
a
junglist attacks sound (to make an electronic music analogy). Rebellious 
defacement
and smartass humor trump the tedious academic-cum-Sol LeWittoid pallette of
earlier net practice. In the Times thread [
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/comment/26709/ ]
Sally [McKay] sums up the first generation of self-defined Net Art as 
'long-loading,
find-the-place-to-click-me narratives packed with theoretically correct
reference to the body or lack  thereof.'" [I then go on to discuss the more
immediate browser to browser model that I think SCREENFULL and its precessor
WebTV represent]

These issues also relate to my work, but SCREENFULL and Chris Ashley have
been out front from the beginning about the blog as a means of pure content
delivery, perhaps  the vanguard of a "new net art." (And yes I value art for 
art's
sake as a subversive or problematizing force over overt,  self-declared 
political
work, although my blog is strongly political.)

I started my weblog  to document my studio practice but increasingly look to
it to deliver the goods themselves. I am doing more animation and music 
these
days and find they are well suited to the blog environment.