Re: [-empyre-] Re: Second Life

[Melinda Rackham <melinda@anat.org.au>]

Lovely discussion all

..I  will be facilitating a month on -empyre- quiet soon titled
"the Good the Bad and the Ugly... Being of Art in Second Life"
with guests who have been intervening  documenting and recoding SL over many
years 

So please hold those SL critiques till then.

X Melinda

On 23/4/07 9:05 AM, "Sean Cubitt" <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> smart point:
> 
> the prosumer ethic (the Economist's term) has a kind of contractual
> base - if I put the work into booking my flight online (ie doing the
> job previously undertaken by a travel agent) I get a significant
> reduction in cost.Likewise if I put time into selecting my kitchen
> design, I get just-in-time delivery of a tailor-made product
> significantly cheaper than a joiner-made one-off.
> 
> In Benkler and von Hippel's model of user-generated innovation
> there's another kind of contract. If I contribute to the development
> of Linux, I get an OS/apps that is better by the large number of
> similar increments donated by others. There's a form of trust which
> has the same function as a contract
> 
> In the (v)user concept for interaction that Joseph Nechvatal (I
> believe) originated, there's another kind of contract - In Mirek
> Rogala's formulation, the art "works" to the extent that the (v)user
> takes responsibility for its completion - ie if you invest time and
> energy learning the interface, you get a deeper, richer experience.
> 
> Whjat's depressing about commercial web 2.0 apps is that they do not
> offer any kind of connection - which at root is what the contract is,
> social contract, trust etc. They are simply publication. No doubt
> there's status to gain, or pride in a job well done, but there is no
> social re-making involved.
> 
> In the 1977 the Canadian political economist of the media Dallas
> Smythe wrote:
> 
> "The material reality under monopoly capitalism is that all non
> sleeping time of most of the population is work time  . . .Of the off-
> the-job work time the  largest single block is time of the audiences
> which is sold to advertisers. It is sold not by the workers but by
> the mass media of communication the people in the audiences pay
> directly much more for the privilege of being in those audiences than
> do the mass media. In Canada in 1975 audience members bore directly
> about three times as large a cost as did the broadcasters and cable
> TV operators combined"
> 
> the unpaid labour of attention which TV companies sold to
> advertisersd then has become the unpaid labour of content generation
> which web 2.0 corporations sell to advertisers now. What is
> significant about this kind of work is that there is no return from
> the corporation that derives profit from it - ie there is no
> contract. Even within neo-liberalism, this verges on the daft - for
> example Esther Dyson
> 
> s
> 
> 
> 
> On 22/04/2007, at 1:45 AM, G.H.Hovagimyan wrote:
> 
>> gh comments:
>> 
>> A Swiss art collector who invested $250,000 in 2nd life approached
>> me in 2004 when 2nd L was enpty. He was trying to get people to
>> inhabit the space to protect his investment. He thought I could be
>> like Warhol and open a studio. I said I'd be interested in doing
>> performance art bots that would interrupt people while talking. I
>> of course wanted to get paid to produce original art. The
>> "developers" didn't feel like paying an artist was necessary. This
>> is what I feel about all "democratic" art spaces. They exploit a
>> persons natural desire for a creative outlet while at the same time
>> they devalue a trained artists unique talents and point of view.
>> It's the same thing with you tube and all the other virtual spaces.
>> In Marxists analysis it's perfect. You the consumer produce the
>> content and pay to consumer yourself. Amazing!
>> 
>> On Apr 21, 2007, at 3:05 AM, mez breeze wrote:
>> 
>>>  have
>>> been a member of Second Life since 04 but have found it less
>>> appropriate 4 me
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> Sean Cubitt
> scubitt@unimelb.edu.au
> Director
> Media and Communications Program
> Faculty of Arts
> Room 127 John Medley East
> The University of Melbourne
> Parkville VIC 3010
> Australia
> 
> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
> Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
> M: 0448 304 004
> Skype: seancubitt
> Web: www.mediacomm.unimelb.edu.au
> 
> Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
> http://leonardo.info
> 
> 
> 
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