<nettime> Useless NetArt: Interview Harwood(Mongrel)&DrTafnus

[William Blake <W.Blake@scotoma.org>]

Disintegrate everything

Painstakingly printed, hand-trimmed Microsoft Word menu items.
Matthew Fuller's impressive 'A song for occupations' installation  at
the Lux Centre(London) got off to an intriguing start as he gathered
around him some of the notables from the London NetArt scene and
supervised them individually to paste 2,500 colour prints onto the
largest wall of the gallery. This work reminded me again of the
tendency toward a kind of meta-formalism that seems to be creeping
into the better work I see around me in the NetArt genre.

This is not the formalism of the lame, wowie-technology lobby but the
graphic formalism of precise thought abstracted to the point of
process and very little else.  While I understand the scene's pull
toward this meta-formalism and avantgardism, when no one else is
listening, do we really need to enter into such a territory? Or is
there another strategy?