RE: [-empyre-] participants and the critical blog

["maurice benayoun" <mb@benayoun.com>]

>From Tim's question:
>I'm wondering, to follow up, how you understand the related role of 
>your participants: those of 'the dump' and those of your interactive 
>environments.  Do you anticipate or stage a difference in critical 
>solicitation or interpellation?  Is this related to spatial practice, 
>itself.

I think we can make a difference in the public participation between an
installation in an art space, a c-fusion installation in the public space
and a blog online. 

_In the exhibition space I use to consider that the reception of the work
passes by two different stages:
	-Interacting with the work: here I consider, for my works, the
"visitor" to be an eventual part of the work
	- The newcomer watching the scene including the work and the
visitor: as the spectator. This is a very important time because it is a
distant watching that allows to figure out how to interact (understanding
the interaction process) and to perceive the global thing.

_In the public space (street, outside space...) the c-fusion work has to be
part of the phenomenological environment. So it status in terms of presence
is the same of any object/fact in the street. The two above mentioned stages
are relevant but without the intentionality, the intention to get the
aesthetic experience of the work. This come or not from the quality of the
experience. The artwork is not considered as such because of the frame of
the art space but because of the efficiency of its symbolic dimension.

_On line, on the Dump, the metaphor of the Dump allows to me significant
interpretation of visitors' behaviour and actions.
We have to distinguish the Dump (www.the-dump.net) and the Opendump
(www.opendump.org). 
The Dump allows only the visitor to add comment, to give an evaluation
(stars), to take a concept and to use it for a personal project. There is
another kind of related interaction that comes before the writing process
when I talk with people read a book, see an exhibition, mentioned as
"players" on the blog. 
The Opendump is the same but allows visitors to produce projects at the same
level than mines. Interaction is production. 

For me, following the logic of the Dump, online visitors work like bacteria,
contributing to the evolution of the creative material of the Dump.
Destruction of bad projects by underrating, recycling of possibly good
projects by doing them, converting bad project in good ones by commenting. 

Many projects are born from comments: Like this comment about "the line"
project that help me to understand that it already exists (or a very similar
one). After, I proposed to create a category of projects (artist career
design) called AMA (Already Made Art) that includes the possibility to redo
and pre-existing work like interpretation of pre-existing music scores that
can produce better music than the interpretation by the author.

Of course when I say "good" or "bad" projects I don't mean either
qualitative or ethical appreciation, but what determine one's decision of
promoting or discarding a project.

This process is probably close to the general natural selection process of
the web that doesn't exclude the possible action of curators wanting to
finally present one of the dumped projects (that happened many times).

For me this ois a way to make visible the process of project selection made
by individuals and groups in the global producing of art research. And very
often I'm more exciting by discovering what is discarded, trying to
understand why, than by projects getting easily to a global consensus.

I would appreciate to know how this distinction between the 3
situations/attitudes sounds to you, and if you think they are more relevant
understanding of the interaction/alteration process.

Maurice
  


 




-----Message d'origine-----
De : empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] De la part de Timothy Murray
Envoyé : jeudi 20 septembre 2007 01:15
À : soft_skinned_space
Objet : [-empyre-] participants and the critical blog

>Thanks, Maurice.  There's something particularly intriguing about 
>this site's relation to the detritus of your own practice, 
>particularly since detritus itself seems to provide both the content 
>and form of critical practice here.

I'm wondering,  to follow up, how you understand the related role of 
your participants: those of 'the dump' and those of your interactive 
environments.  Do you anticipate or stage a difference in critical 
solicitation or interpellation?  Is this related to spatial practice, 
itself.

I think the same questions would pertain to Alice's movement between 
her Chernobyl practice and her blog.  Would would you say about this 
Alice?

Best,

Tim

>This is a relevant question about how a practice online affect our spatial
>practice. The Dump (www.the-dump.net) is about the project left in an open
>Dump because either I'm not sure to want to realize them, I don't feel this
>project belong to my practice, this project has been refused, it was
>conceived a long time ago and has never been actualised because of
>economical, ideological or technical matters.
>For me the Dump is good way to escape the authorised perimeter of practice.
>When people want me to be a media artist, as they wanted me to be a
computer
>artist, a film director, a 3d animation director, a professor, a
>businessman, an architect... When you want to escape from tags, stickers
and
>other authorised categories you have to find a space of freedom where you
>can pretend or accept to be what you could do, that always exceeds what you
>are supposed to do.
>Some projects of the Dump, performing arts, concept art (I define the terms
>there) sculpture, relays on the question of space. As samples of that kind
>of project:
>Quiet!
>http://www.the-dump.net/?p=4&lang_view=en
>Art Total (in French)
>http://the-dump.net/?p=175
>Inside Out
>http://www.the-dump.net/?p=218&lang_view=en
>SASed Art, Secure Automatic Selection (in French)
>http://www.the-dump.net/?p=123
>In this series of project, most of them will never exist, that I'm dropping
>as often I find time they are project that are eventually picked up by
>passers by and will be done:
>COBA Coming out Bag Art (click on the flag for the English)
>http://the-dump.net/?p=54
>and on the picture for the video.
>Stolen Life (in French)
>http://the-dump.net/?p=98
>L'essence de l'Art Contemporain (Contemporary Art Spirit)
>http://www.the-dump.net/?p=209&lang_view=en
>...
>I decided to post only projects, whatever the topic I would like to dive
in.
>This is supposed to be my job.
>
>Maurice

-- 
Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video Studies
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
285 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
_______________________________________________
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http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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