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

Thu Sep 8 15:48:05 AEST 2016

Yes, Craig, I discovered I was the King of Naples once when I read *War and
Peace*. Until then I was an exile, or a refugee, from Turkey, where also I
was a stranger.

Two of my poet friends in New York had and I think still have residues of
Johnson's net-art pinned on their bathroom walls.

Craig, I have a question relating to something necessary, but not
necessarily possible. How does one parody an algorithm?

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Craig Saper <csaper at umbc.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi Murat —
>
> Thank you for picking up my winking-nod to the 18th century as my
> Instructions below will continue (and although beyond the scope of this
> exchange and series of instructions, the net- and net-art seems like a
> sub-category of the epistolary and the squib [the squib is given short
> shrift]. Nevertheless, look at Sheryl Orings’ work, for example, where she
> types, stamps, and sends letters to presidents and presidential candidates;
> her work performed and set in Berlin or around the World Trade Center is
> particularly interesting in this regard of sending letters as part of
> “Collective Memory.” In any case, I can’t take that up here. Another point
> that I cannot elaborate on here is the 18th century philosophers (Murat
> mentions Locke; K.A. Wisniewski examines Hopkinson’s hoaxes and stunts
> around the time he was signing the Declaration of Independence) as amateurs
> in a time of upheaval and revolt. The net-art and “conceptual [or
> medium-less] art” in general suggest where the best “philosophy" is
> happening.
>
> Instructions #3
> When the artist Ray Johnson produced net-art he sent a half-completed
> collage, scribble, or his iconic bunny-doddle to a “reader” (to borrow
> Murat’s term below) he would include a simple instruction to complete (or
> at least continue) the work and send it on to a name and address. The name
> was usually a celebrity among the readers — like the librarian at MoMA,
> Clive Phillpot, or Andy Warhol … and the address accurate. It was known
> that someone like Phillpot would, against the wishes of his administrators,
> save and archive all of these “on-sendings.” So, the “reader” would be
> stuck in a desirous network — send it on and be ensnared in clock-maker’s
> scheme (Ray Johnson would manipulate you as reader-as-part-of-the-work) —
> It was like a Lacanian paranoid phantasmagoria where the subject or reader
> is a part of the poem (not a poet).
>
> So, become a reader by yielding to the initiative of the network.
>
> That said, the net-art already discussed often mimics, parodies, or spoofs
> the pernicious notions of the network as the new locus of surveillance (see
> Hassan Elahi’s work that surveils himself as if working for the NSA),
> terror (see Ricardo Dominguez’s work), control of contested spaces and
> borders (see J. Craig Freeman’s augmented reality interventions), and
> public interactions (see many of the social action artists — or
> scholar-artists like Lone Koefoed Hansen or Søren Pold) — I include Pold in
> this short list because he has put poem-making and reading machines in
> libraries throughout Denmark. The Pirate Party also Beuys' the many
> political organizations (and including manifestoes that led to the origins
> of the Green Party).
>
> So, instruction #3 is to borrow the network and systems — perhaps with a
> parodic tone — as an element of net-art.
>
> Ciao and thanks,
> Murat! — an important name in the 18th century — especially in Naples.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 7, 2016, at 1:31 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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 <http://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
>>
>>
>> >
>>
>> <default[2].xml>_______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20160908/fd4524ce/attachment-0001.html>