[-empyre-] Re: if bricks could talk...

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

Hi Jon + everyone,

> in what way(s) do you mean that Life Sharing:
>
> http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/life_sharing/
>
> is or involves "elitist aesthetics?"

specifically with that piece, it's the subject position embodied by 01 
for "life_sharing," and their relationship to concerns of "privacy" and 
"surveillance" that i discuss in the txt. in a more general sense, i 
think most Art operates through elitist aesthetics, but i don't mean 
that in the sense of "elitist" v. populist. i mean specialized and 
professionalized. perhaps one of those words would have been a better 
vocab choice...

> ++ in terms of the "esoteric and hidden web site" you mean the
> Contextin' Art mini-portal that hosts your:
> so i don't understand how  or why you are positioning your
> Gift(Wrap)ing New Media txt or the Contextin' Art project as
> "hidden"...

good question, and maybe i was/am a bit hasty to make such judgments. 
when mark cooley and i made those 2 issues of contextin', we both felt 
that they were sooooo not being read by anyone, as response was nil. 
so, some of my statements should be attributed to the personal 
experience of trying to start a conversation and not getting one. i 
know that we both were disappointed by the number of responses to the 
calls we put out.
 though i did get an interesting email from barbrook, who called me out 
on my interpretation of one of his texts, after posting it to nettime.
> what remains open for me is your positioning of Contextin' Art as
> esoteric + this loops bak into my question of how Life Sharing is or
> involves "elitist aesthetics". i am wondering + curious about how + why
> you are positioning these network oriented works [+/or] New Media art
> projects as "esoteric" [+/or] "elitist"...

it's certainly not the network-ness of these examples that i'm 
responding to. and i don't necessarily mean to use "esoteric" or 
"elitist" as forms of slander, but rather descriptives in a more 
generous sense. i'm not against internal communications or specialized 
knowledge per se, but i think to leave things there is not so 
interesting.
i don't know that these responses are really satisfactory... as the 
elite/populist art discussion isn't one i've spent much time on.
best,
ryan