RE: [-empyre-] we-blog introduction

[Chris Ashley <chrisashley@yahoo.com>]

Hi Rich,

> great work and great questions.

Thank you very much.

> problems of originality in net.art. archive of this
> work can be seen
> here http://www.counterwork.co.uk/create/remove/.

I will do my my best to look through this in the next
few days.  Thanks for this.

> the idea that the work is not complete until viewed,
> thus making the
> artwork the file that appears on the browser?

I'm feeling this way, too, though I think for me the
work exists in two ways, much like the difference
between how a painting in the artist's studio can be
different- in appearance and in meaning- from when it
enters a more formal context.  I view the drawing as
WYSIWIG and in the browser, and most viewers only see
it in the browser.  The potential, however, for the
viewer to see it raw, as code, is important to me, and
why I argue that a GIF of one of my images is not the
same as a browser-made image.

> help?) there is no room for 'the hand of the
> artist'.

Well, what is "the hand?"  Often people ask of digital
artists- I've been asked this a lot- is how can
drawing in code be really like drawing, but there is a
physical aspect to the work.  When I make these
drawings they don't feel machine made.  There really
is an adding and taking away, a strecthing and
fitting, and trying something out and erasing it, that
is very much like drawing.  It is a physical process,
and it is problem solving.  There is a hand and eye in
that.  And in imagery like mine I think there is some
kind of "hand," though certainly it isn't obviously
gestural, there isn't what we commonly call "touch." 
But there are gestures, and space and color can be
personal- is this touch?  This is worth discussing
more, I think.  If you look at the work of my fellow
panelists there are aspects there that I would think
to call touch or their hand.  Let's talk more about
this.  Tom?  Abe?  jimpunk?  What do you think?

>
http://www.counterwork.co.uk/create/remove/create/README001_originalityindigitalart.htm.

Great, more to read.  Thanks.

Chris