[-empyre-] the self and the (machinic) other / a post-systemic condition or a post-art condition?

[Johannes Birringer]

hi everybody
when not shoveling snow at the moment, i've tried to catch up with this month's debate,
and appreciate the threads i was able to read, on game subcultures, immersion/playing
and gaming experience, especially the posts on game preservation (fascinating)......

now am puzzled by the question of the frameworks and whether one can move beyond them
and where would you move?  I gather Adam Trowbridge opens up some difficult areas for
discussion: 

>>The really new media, as featured in games and on Youtube and endless
dark corners of the Internet, highlights how self-involved and
tiresome the visual art world can be when it chooses to remain stuck
in (or worse, attempts to colonize really new media for) Twentieth
century theory and practice. Radical, exciting culture is happening
far outside the existing art world, as it always has. Hopefully we can
find inspiration in these new emergences as examples of really new
media art and interesting art cultures (or cultures engaging in
activity we can recognize as similar to art) rather than attempting to
select the most art-like elements to drag back into or onto white
boxes.
>>

and so i tried to follow there and went to the (dark) corners to watch
the "chatroulette" video or “performance” No Fun, which Menotti references,
and admit of not having the vocabulary to quite frame this piece for myself
(or others i might talk to), it's neither a performance nor a game, it seems
to me; and so if that is an example of "irrational interaction" (Trowbridge),
or playful fun house stuff in online culture, where does it take us?
one commentator to the video suggests:

<<The reaction of some of the people is shocking. However.. chatroulette users are conditioned that things are funny, 
fake or acted on chatroulette. Nobody takes chatroulette seriously. 
It is a Gaga-platform where people go bananas, which is why many people do not take seriosly either...
>>

and so one might see why gaga platforms and art museums or theatres are not likely to mix gently yet,
but surely someone will want to study or explain the phenomenon, even if, as Adam argues, that is what the producers
might like to avoid (not sure about that, given the Mattes' exhibition record), or so i understand his proposition:

>>[we] are moving towards irrational
interaction based on anonymous collaboration and action in order to
escape from the overproduction of media, marketing, messages,
branding, surveillance, study, investigation, knowledge and, most of
all, information>>

this is a lot to escape from; more or less you want to escape culture 
or (critical) frameworks as such?    what am i misundestanding?


with regards
Johannes Birringer


Menotti schreibt: 

>>
About this, another work by the Mattes comes to mind: the
“performance” No Fun. [1] Does it have ethical or aesthetical
implications any stronger than other performances done within
chatroulette subculture (e.g. the batman guy [2], piano improv [3],
tits or chicken die [3])? Or its particular meaning and value arises
from the fact that it is framed as art – and therefore deserves a
critical consideration that these other performances don’t (it is
reviewed in certain websites, etc)?

It is telling that, for the performance to be framed (i.e. circulate)
as art, it has to become a video piece. In what is this different from
a speedrun or machinima, who become actual works only after they are
recorded? How does the Mattes’ piece incorporate this mediatic
translation into its strategies? Is the performance any different from
a candid camera prank because it depicts death? Is it any different
from a “faces of death” episode because it includes the reactions to
it? And what can we say about the reactions to the performance's
recording?

Best!
Menotti

[1] http://vimeo.com/11467722
[>.