[-empyre-] (A) FEW HYPERTHREADS

Fri Apr 20 02:57:54 EST 2012

hi yawl!

sry to just be typing now but i was involved in an
organizational/curatorial project myself the last couple weeks (running an
open Dirty New Media / Glitch Art aspect of a demoscene party @ a hacker
conference (1))

ARAM! ONLINE GALLERY PLAYSET is wonderful on so many levels! a totally
Digital<>Analog papercraft playground, ONLINE GALLERY PLAYSET invites a
playful interaction w/the worlds we live in. this project also acts as an
invitation, a instruction set on how to participate via a DIY papercraft
template that interlocks into a DIT network of other ONLINE GALLERY PLAYSET
players

as i wrote in my essay for ARAM's recent book, THE SPEED BOOK, (2) even
when he is not dealing directly with Game Cultures, ARAM's work is often
playfully funny, ludic + gaming our expectations. we are in the magic
circle (3) of the art / work / project + invited to play. games +
playfulness are relevant to ARAM's practice in specific + more generally
are deeply important as a features of New Media Art, as Christiane Paul has
written. (4) ARAM excels + is excessively skilled in bringing game worlds
out into art worlds + public spaces, translating between these modes +
mediums. && as w/ ONLINE GALLERY PLAYSET as well as his development +
initiation of the SPEED SHOWS (5) + DEAD DROPS (6) platforms / projects, he
is also bringing art / works / worlds out of gallery / museum spaces +
gallery / museum spaces out of  art / works / worlds && into each others

i believe Nate, that yr committed to similar experiments in the contexts of
caves :) yr choice of caves or of the specific cave yr working in is super
interesting to me + i would love to hear / read more onList about how + why
you've made those choices...

also Nate, i wonder, in my own projects as well as yr Apache Projects,
about selections of alternative spaces for curating / organizing that are
intentionally outside of traditional systems of authentication
/ legitimization via artworlds (i.e. galleries + museums). a disdainful way
to talk about this would not be selection but rather 'willful forms of
obscurity', a critique i have heard about my own projects. but now i also
wonder if && when 'obscurity' can exist @ all anymore in our social
networks mediated friendships + lives. in other words, yr Apache Projects
may be literally difficult to access on a physical level by those exhibited
but vry available via documentation + also available by those who are
unaware of the project (i.e. those who are visiting the cave for the sake
of the cave). how does that issue of access (purposefully crafted in a
cave) effect yr curatorial practices?

(A) FEW other HYPERTHREADS

Tim, about "audience" when you wrote that the "suggestion that audience
can, in itself, alter the dynamics of choice is extremely provocative." +
invoked the "notion of seeking an alternative audience for conceptual art"
i was reminded of a tumblr i follow, "YO, IS THIS RACIST?" which is
described as "YO, ASK ME IS SOMETHING IS RACIST AND I'LL TELL YOU." in this
Tumblr project, anonymously posed questions are answered by the person
running the project. they received the following question once: "Anonymous
asked: I realized earlier that, while I find the idea of Nicki Minaj to be
excellent, I find the reality of her to be overwhelming. Am I recast,
sexist, just too old, or correct?" to which the person running the Tumblr
replied: "Yo, you’re probably just old, don’t get too sad about it." but
then posted an update from the resulting comments: "UPDATE: Great follow-up
comment from the inbox - “what the fuck is the ‘idea of Nicki Minaj’???”
(7) this is how i feel about the 'idea of audience'

i seldom find myself in that imaginary position of the passive audience @
all anymore. mayhaps when i goto a Hollywood-produced movie or a
major-label distributed band's concert i am in sumthin of traditional
'audience' position. but these events seldom occur in my life. i am mostly
going to Media Art screenings / exhibitions / events or experimental /
Noise musics shows in which i am a part of a community. + those are IRL
experiences. when i am online i never feel as if i am an 'audience'

+ as an artist/organizer/curator i am not seeking to connect w/ or
construct 'audiences'. i am activating + engaging communities. this is the
same energy as ARAM's SPEED SHOWs operate from

Ana + pedro, about txts being like exhibitions +/or writing being like
curating, i wanted to connect these points to the work of KURATOR.ORG +
CONT3XT.NET. Magda Tyzlik-Carver (8), (whois mayhaps still onList? && was)
an invited guest in FEB 2012 (9), speaks directly to these issues.
CONT3XT.NET's TAGallery + their PUBLICCURATING projects also directly open
/ activate / engage these theorypractices. Jake Elliott's folksonema
screening series at the Flowershop in Chicago (10) also utilized
folksonomic inclusivity. (11) these events are/were social IRL or rather
AFK  as well as being socially constructed online via social media /
networks

of course, those above ex.s are just a few that have been inspiring to me
or that i have been directly involved in. Beryl Graham + Sarah Cook have a
chapter on these types of approaches (Chapter 5: Participative Systems) in
their important recent book Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, a
book which i would think/feel would be of particular relevancy to everyOne
onList this month

// jonCates
Associate Professor
Film, Video, New Media & Animation dept
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
http://systemsapproach.net

1. ⚡ Critical Glitch / Artware presents (A) Dirty New Media Glitch /
Artware Dungeon Party Environment Party! @ NOTACON && PixelJam:
http://systemsapproach.tumblr.com/tagged/NOTACON
http://criticalartware.net
http://www.notacon.org
http://www.pixelj.am
2. ARAM BARTHOLL: The Speed Book - Aram Bartholl, edited by Domenico
Quaranta (2012)
http://usshop.gestalten.com/aram-bartholl.html
3. the 'Magic Circle' is a (slightly contentious) term from Game Design,
Game Studies + Art Game Studies. the phrase refers to the fact that play is
consensual, social + takes place inside Magic Circles, which are themselves
socially constructed though play as temporary spaces in which the rules of
games apply + are followed by players in order to play games. for more nfo
see:
The Magic Circle and the Puzzle Piece - Jesper Juul (2008)
http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/2455/pdf/digarec01_03.pdf
+/or
Jerked Around by the Magic Circle - Clearing the Air Ten Years Later - Eric
Zimmerman (2012)
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6696/jerked_around_by_the_magic_circle_.php
4. "Participation and collaboration are inherent to the networked digital
medium, which supports and relies on a constant exchange and flow of
information, and are an important element in multiuser environ- ments,
among them chat rooms, 3-D worlds or massive multiplayer games that allow
their inhabitants to extend and ‘‘build’’ the virtual space. Owing to the
modularity of the digital medium, the plethora of available tech- nologies
and softwares (commercial or open source) can also potentially be
manipulated or expanded. As a result, there are numerous potential points
of intervention for artistic practice and cultural production in general.
Digital technologies and networks have opened up new spaces for autonomous
producers and DIY culture—through the process of copying, sharing, and
remixing—as well as for the industry of market-driven media." - Christiane
Paul
from: The Myth of Immateriality: Presenting and Preserving New Media -
Christiane Paul, in MediaArtHistories, edited by Oliver Grau (2006)
5. http://speedshow.net
6. http://deaddrops.com
7.
http://yoisthisracist.com/post/20845342755/i-realized-earlier-that-while-i-find-the-idea-of-nicki
8. http://www.magda.thecommonpractice.org
9. http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2012-February/004788.html
10. the Flowershop as photopgraphed by Jake Elliott:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/racter/558834625/ was home to various
projects, events + people including but not limited to Jake Elliott, Tamas
Kemenczy, Nicholas O'Brien, Jonathan Rafman, etc...
11. folksonema was a bi-weekly screening event organized by Jake Elliott.
every two weeks, Jake Elliott propagated information online about a certain
tag to use (ie “ravepartyinaspaceship” or  “thatrobotatemysandwich”) on
sites like youtube, del.icio.us, flickr,  etc. for each screening, Jake
Elliott scraped the tagged media (images, mp3’s, exe’s, videos, web pages,
txt’s, etc.) from those  sites && screened them in the greenhouse of the
Flowershop, a space  inhabited by various artists, projects && public
initiatives: "folksonema == folk  + taxonomy + cinema" - Jake Elliott (2006
- 2007)
12. Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media - Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook
(2009)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12071
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