[-empyre-] Patrick Lichty: Resolution for Digital Futures

[Timothy Murray]

Resolutions

Resolution 1: Resolve to take the "Long View"
Technology, and the art that comes from it, has often tended towards the
flashy and less towards the contemplative. This is seen in the current Jenny
Holzer show at the MCA Chicago, and with the opening of the EMPAC Arts
Center in Troy, NY, but recent "Long Now" - like projects spurred on by
Zero01 set the other end of the bell curve. There are many aspects of the
"Long View" that come into play - are cuurent projects in technological art
extensions of projects such as EAT (Kluver, Rauschenberg, et al?), what
function do these works/spaces serve in helping us reflect on the impact
technology has upon culture & society?

As technological culture tends toward the ahistorical (although Grau et al,
ZKM, Hertz are   making great strides in efforts in media art histories),
has electric/electronic/digital become mature enough to truly weave itself
into global art history?

*Consider the long-term  function of technological art as "marker" of points
in cultural time.

Resolution 2: Resolve to consider the "General Welfare" and technology's
role in this.

Technology is currently creating seas of toxic landfill around the world,
and power used by chargers and electronics in "standby mode".  Balanced with
the good new technologies are creating through access to information, more
open discourse, communication, etc., can humanity resolve to consider the
balance between utility, innovation and desire?

*Make work that thinks about the future while thinking of future
generations.

Resolution 3: To question if the concept of "Art" is important in creating
critical media.

For example - lately, I have been very involved in the critical discussions
on art in virtual worlds, especially Second Life at Brooklyniswatching.com
and the see-through blog run by Amy Wilson.

I also think of something that my collaborator Mike Bonanno has led me to
believe.  I always felt that he thought that "Art" (sic) is more trouble
than it's worth, and it often gets in the way of what you're really trying
to do by locking it in white cubes.  In trying to look at what's happening
in activism, and virtual worlds after getting more involved in the "Art
World" in the last couple years, I'm coming to agree.  Many times, calling
something "Art" really is more trouble than it's worth, and the best "art"
is the stuff outside the cube. But free-range "stuff" doesn't live in a
vacuum, either.

*Make work that lives best off the reservation without solipsism.

Resolution 4: One that I learned from my friend Viola Van Alphen in
Amsterdam - Be nicer; more open, freer.  Things probably aren't going to be
easy again for a long time.

*Be excellent to one another.  Share.

Patrick Lichty (US)  is a technologically-based conceptual artist,
writer, independent curator, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men,
and Executive Editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. He began showing
technological media art in 1989, and deals with works and writing that
explore the social relations between us and media. Venues in which Lichty
has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the Whitney &
Turin Biennials, Maribor Triennial, Performa Performance Biennial, Ars
Electronica, and the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA).
He also works extensively with virtual worlds, including Second Life, and
his work, both solo and with his performance art group, Second Front, has
been featured in Flash Art, Eikon Milan, and ArtNews.
He is  an Assistant Professor of Interactive Arts & Media at Columbia
College Chicago, and resides in Baton Rouge, Louisianna.


-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University