Re: <nettime> Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism

[Tilman Baumgaertel <tilman_baumgaertel@csi.com>]

Hi!

It seems that we had this discussion a couple of times already on this
list, didn't we? 

I find it a little narrow-minded and most of the arguments, that were put
forward, simplistic and with little regard to specific works. Plus, I
think it is a bit early to get fundamentalistic about what qualifies as
net art and what doesn't. Most of the projects that are being put down
here were mere experiments, and as such they are legitimate.

If net art is supposed to be specific to the net, than why is what was
called "browser art" not net-specific? After all, there would be no
"browsers" and not HTML to mess around with, if it wasn't for the net, to
begin with.

Also, one can't generalize that all web-based art would work in any other
computer-based format. A lot of sites that work with perl change everytime
they are accessed by different people, and every copy cat would have a
hard time downloading a piece like www.irational.org/x. 

Even a piece like the original "Agatha appears" by Olia, where Agatha
hopped from server to server, wouldn't make very much sense on a CD-Rom
(even though it was released in this format). Also, in Olias "Great
Gatsby"  the internet-download-time of certain files mattered, that also
goes for most of what has been created by Jodi. 

Of course, these web pieces don't take full advantage of all of the
capacities of the net, and there are probably a million other art-things
to do with the internet than creating web sites. Then again, net art is a
very young genre, and these experiments were necessary before moving on to
other, more challenging projects. I also don't want to justify evey boring
art website, and as far as I am concerned, my need for HTML-/Browser-Art
is completely fullfilled by Jodi.

I think the best thing about the whole net art thing might have been, that
it encouraged artists to work on computers and programming. Not on huge,
ZKM-style "interactive" installations, that make eveybody yawn, but on
actual software that deals with the specifics of the computer, instead of
hiding it liek 99 percent of the interactive art of the 90ies. 

The "WebStalker" is one example for this kind of artist's software, Jodis
"OSS"-CD-Rom is another, Mongrels "Heritage" and "Linker" are yet another
one, and "Earshot" might be another one if I only would ever get it to
work.

Something similar happened in Video art, by the way, when people started
to build their own hardware, "videosynthesizer", effect boxes etc.

So creating actual applications could be an interesting direction the
whole thing might take. After all, software is the ultimative multiple...
;-) 

Yours, 
Tilman 

PS: Of course, if that really happens, somebody has to come up with
another name than net art.



At 03:26 20.11.99 +0100, you wrote:
>Dear Craig,
>
>you wrote:
>
>> Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net> writes:

<....>



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