[-empyre-] Week One on Through the NET: Net Art Then and Now

Thu Sep 8 03:31:44 AEST 2016

Craig,

Thank you for the clarity and boldness of your first gambit.

"Often, though the artist-function is algorithmic and instructions for an
open-system, the artist function is both more controlling (see the
definition of a p-bot) -- watch-maker like -- and less (once it is out
there among the undefined networks of other p-bots). In celebrating early
work on rhizomes.org, there is a discussion of Petra Cortwright's
explicitly unintentional artwork on YouTube that emphasized her amateur
status. The amateur is not a professional."

I like your 18th century reference. Then, the net-artist becomes the
Newtonian god or, more precisely, the job (that of the clock-maker who then
disappears) assigned to god in that universe.

What happens to "the reader" in that net-universe then. One should not
forget that in Newtonian metaphysics (science) one can not change anything;
but only "discover" the laws governing events, fact. If so, there is
nothing open-ended in net-art. The "reader" (any interacter with the work)
can only discover the depth (the digital wisdom, you might say) of the
algorithm. Making the net-artist through his/her programing basically a
god, are you not making him/her infinitely powerful, the very opposiye of
the open-endedness you suggest net-art creates? Can we not say the opposite
is as true? The reader (ultimately I would claim the artist
himself/herself) is helpless.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Craig Saper <csaper at umbc.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Instructions #2
> Zooming in on our opening gambit to turn -empyre- into a net-art
> experiment (or a set of instructions that could potentially do so in some
> theoretical future), then we can appreciate the shift from demarcating to
> listing/using a series of functions and effects.
>
> Two attributes in art that use the situation of a network as a canvas. The
> first is to "write" the work as an open-constraint set of instructions
> (either algorithmic or listing). One can send/apply the instructions either
> to bots, people, or (in the case of listserv) to an unknown identity (let's
> call ourselves p-bot effects). We see this in Fluxus works (precursors to
> net-art? or an example of it?) and in the twitter-bot experiments like
> Helen Burgess' "Loving-Together with Roland's Bots" and Anna Coluthon
> (@annacoluthon), Tully Hansen’s team-powered bot @botALLY retweets and tags
> bot-generated tweets, “NRA Tally (@NRA_Tally)” or“Save the Humanities
> (@SaveHumanities)” by Mark Sample, “Pizza Clones (@pizzaclones)” by Allison
> Parrish.
>
> The second (closely related to the effect above) is to notice that, unlike
> other arts, dependence on a singular virtuosity and aesthetic innovation,
> net-art appears to have another notion of the artwork; the genius is
> distributed in the system -- throughout the network, and the amateur and
> hack are nodes in that system. Often, though the artist-function is
> algorithmic and instructions for an open-system, the artist function is
> both more controlling (see the definition of a p-bot) -- watch-maker like
> -- and less (once it is out there among the undefined networks of other
> p-bots). In celebrating early work on rhizomes.org, there is a discussion
> of Petra Cortwright's explicitly unintentional artwork on YouTube that
> emphasized her amateur status. The amateur is not a professional.
>
> What are the instructions?
>
> //\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\/
>
> On Sep 6, 2016, at 10:28 PM, Craig Saper <csaper at umbc.edu> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Tim, Thanks for the introduction — and although we didn’t get to Ithaca
> this summer — fond memories. It seems fitting to have the theme this week
> correspond to the 20th anniversary of Rhizome.org. Congratulations to Mark
> Tribe and the network of folks who transformed a listserv (like -empyre --
> just sayin') into something else for networked art (putting that notion of
> transformation of a listserv into something else ("commissions, exhibits,
> preserves, and creates critical discussion around" net-art) as the implicit
> instruction/open-constraint for our discussion) . . . . still having a
> difficult time defining networks? Ten thousand books with “network” in
> their title, subtitle, or series title have appeared since my Networked Art
> appeared in 2001, and reading just a few of these titles begins to sound
> like a conceptual poem: Networks of Outrage and Hope; Network Forensics;
> Understanding Social Network; How Networks are Shaping the Modern
> Metropolis; Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks; Disrupting
> Dark Networks; Network Like an Introvert; Network Marketing; Network
> Management; The Network; Actor-Network Theory and Tourism; Charles
> Dickens's Networks; Social Network Analysis; Nomads and Networks;
> Networked: The New Social Operating System; Networks Without a Cause ...
> (with thanks to K.A. Wisniewski for digging up some of this list). Network
> is networked in every conceivable publisher's category: Computers &
> technical manuals. Science. Art. Photography. Biographies & Memoirs.
> Literature, Graphic novels, and literary criticism. Education.  History.
> Politics.  Sociology. Law.  Humor. Religion. Philosophy. Self-help. ...
> Trade publishers. University, or Small presses. Self-published. Television
> or Internet. ... Networks, Networking, Networked . . . Nouns. Adjectives.
> Verbs.  Or, read as both or neither.  Something else? It's a one-word
> cliché either disliked and pernicious or liberating and utopian; it is a
> network of control in the "capitalocene" (the complex networks that have
> transformed lives for everybody on this planet whether they like it or not)
> or the anarchist rhizomatic hacktivists' web. Not in the same ways, but
> deeply still.  Instead of it's meaning, what are it's moods, textures,
> poetics, amateur-hack-artist function, and visceral affects? That's what I
> hope we can explore here.
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 6, 2016, at 10:08 PM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------Welcome back
> everyone from summer or winter, depending on your location.
> Renate and I have enjoyed the quiet of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca after
> returning from Shanghai where we opened a new Summer School in Theory
> between Cornell University and East China Normal University.  Our time off
> in August gave us an opportunity to think about anniversary nodes of the
> net and net.art, just as I was being challenged in keeping various pieces
> of 1990s net.art online for my exhibition, Signal to Code: 50 Years of
> Media Art in the Rose Goldsen Archive
> (http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/signaltocode/).  So we thought it might be
> interesting to open September with a discussion of Net Art Then and Now.
>
> This week, I will look forward to the opportunity to think back on the
> excitement of curatorial projects in net.art when the community imagined
> that the challenging artworks of the net might reach a broader audience
> than now seems to have been the case.  I will be joined by Craig Saper, a
> challenging thinker of the network.  Craig Saper (US) is Professor in
> the Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral Program at UMBC in Baltimore,
> Maryland, US. Craig published Networked Art and, as dj Readies, Intimate
> Bureaucracies ‹
> both about net-art then (and now). His work on net-art also appears in the
> Whitechapel Gallery's Networks, in their Documents of Contemporary Art
> series and forthcoming in Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory,
> Practice and Instruction. Hisrecently published "cross between an
> intellectual biography Š and a picaresque novel,² and "a biography of a
> lost twentieth century," The Amazing Adventures of Bob Brown, tells the
> comic story of a real-life Zelig and the ultimate networker.  He has also
> edited or co-edited scholarly volumes including Electracy: Gregory L.
> Ulmer Textshop Experiments
> <http://www.thedaviesgrouppublishers.com/ulmer%20electracy.htm> (2015), a
> special issue of the scholarly journal Hyperrhiz on mapping culture
> <http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz12/> (2015), special issues of Rhizomes on
> Posthumography <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue20/saper/index.html>(2010),
> Imaging Place <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue18/saper/> (2009), and Drifts
> <http://www.rhizomes.net/issue13/> (2007), and many other volumes since
> 1990. Craig¹s curatorial projects include exhibits on ³Assemblings²
> (1997), ³Noigandres: Concrete Poetry in Brazil² (1988) and ³TypeBound
> <http://www.readies.org/typebound/>² (2008), and folkvine.org
> <http://folkvine.umbc.edu/> (2003-6). In addition, he has published two
> other artists¹s books On Being Read (1985) and Raw Material (2008).
>
> Over the weekend, Renate and I enjoyed a lakeside lunch at a casual
> restaurant on Cayuga Lake, and recalled that our last meal there was in
> the pleasant company of Craig Saper.  So, Craig, we are very happy to be
> back in conversation with you here on the network rather than the lake.
> We look forward to receiving your opening post.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>
> Timothy Murray
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> Taylor Family Director, Society for the Humanities
> http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
> A D White House
> Cornell University,
> Ithaca, New York 14853
>
>
> >
>
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