Question: does social media further erode art’s distinctiveness?

Michael Schwab Editor of JAR journal for artistic research asks this important question.

While initially the Research Catalogue, the software framework that supports JAR, was simply meant to host uploaded media files and to allow for the designing and publication of practice as research, it has – by demand of those communities – quickly turned into what is known as ‘social media’ [...]

One may be inclined to say that we have put social media to good use were there not a line of reasoning that links social media with a ‘further erosion of art’s distinctiveness’ (Griffin 2012: 144) and thus with an argument also used in relation to art as research, which by some is accused of doing the same. So it is time to address the stance we take in relation to (such) technologies. To do so, I will focus on Tim Griffin’s recent article ‘Notes on an art domain’ (2012), which reports from the ‘Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts Advancement Initiative’ conference held in 2011 in New York and discusses e-flux’s recent bid for the .art domain.

The Wicked Witch Is Dead

A no brainer really. Specially if the BBC is hell bound on playing politics with their so-called independence. Now it is the wicked BBC who loves her so much that they decided to play the song  I’m In Love With Margaret Thatcher  for the full length. What am I saying. This dinosaur of an institution is going the same way as the witch? This is giving witches a bad reputation. Lets just sideline that what stands in the way and do it ourselves.

 

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – Meet your Real Neighbours again! – Sign out forever!

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – Meet your Real Neighbours again! – Sign out forever!.

In the past artists like Baldessari would burn all their art to start a new page. Now it seems a service like this one can assist me to stop my online habit of dispersing my stuff at nauseum. That is one thing I discovered: disperse your art and you inevitably become dispersed in public yourself.

So, burn not only the art but the artist as well. Now I can stop being a public person, and regain my privacy again… If I would like to do that sort of thing…

Making Books Conference

Wednesday I am going to the conference ‘New Art of Making Books’. See website http://www.book-lab.org/programme.html Should be good after my book making stint. The book has not changed that much, but the way it is made and used has. The e-book on the other hand has changed substantially. It only became popular after the ipad introduced the page swipe, which copies the behaviour of paper and our use of the book.
(See also the Transmediale)

So what is a book in today’s culture and how have the Web and digital technologies transformed and expanded the book? The becoming digital of the book is not as straightforward as a linear change, but a complex intertwining of technological, aesthetic and cultural habits and tendencies. The book does not just become digital, but the digital becomes book-like with the growth of such platforms that remediate the book such as Kindle, and yet, the book is on some levels disappearing as a physical object.

The title of this event references Ulises Carrión’s provocative series of aphorisms on his definition of a book from the 70’s. But how have new technologies shaped a very different perspective for the book since this time? How have these changes crafted an alternative reading experience? This conference will explore the current transformation of the artist book and examine the connections that exist between the physical and the digital.

The main thematic areas covered are the printed and electronic books. Themes and research questions would include: the convergence of traditional craft skills with digital technologies in the making of books; how has the book transformed across space and time; how have artists used new forms of communication to create a different reading experience; and how do we archive and collect in the digital world? Disciplines discussed within this include: typography, printing processes, electronic publishing, text-image relationships, illustration and narrative, motion graphics, sequence and performance, design and navigation for screen, e-book interface design and visual ergonomics. Buy Tickets now!

VVVR @ the Winchester Gallery

VVVR is at the Winchester Gallery on Tuesday from 10:00 till 17:00.

The plan is to record a life reading, a performance if you like…

Just so you know, You’re invited.

More info and images will appear on my website www.symbiotext.net

Reading at the Winchester Gallery.

TITLE(date) at the Winchester Gallery

Winchester Gallery-PGR exhibition 2013

Photograph and design: 2013 Jane Birkin

 

 

The Winchester Gallery: Exhibition of practice-based research by Postgraduate Research students at Winchester School of Art. Jane Birkin, Rima Chahrour, Jason Kass, Pancheva-Kirkova, Walter van Rijn. 13-20 February 2013

I am delighted to invite you to the not so private view on Wednesday 13 February (after the conference) at 5 pm.

For more information and downloads about the 2013 Postgraduate Research Conference (13th February) and exhibition go to: 2013 Postgrad Conference.

via Art | Walter van Rÿn |symbiotext.net.

Add-Art – REplacing ADs with ART

I just discovered an add-on for Firefox browser called Add-Art, which replaces ads within web pages with art (see below for a link to what is shown). It looks like a remix but I think it is more a symbiosis. It is an example of exploiting the modular and dynamic structure of web pages, which means that these pages are not one thing but a collection pulled together from different sources. The webpage is not changed but only the unwanted ads are being blocked. This leaves a space open to be filled with art. A symbiotic concept par excellence. Like any symbiotic relationship it needs constant work and adaptation to sustain a presence. Now that Firefox has ‘upgraded’ Add-Art needs to adapt and eek out their niche again.

http://add-art.org/shows

Screenshot from Add-Art website as example.

 

Introduction to Add-Art from Steve Lambert on Vimeo.

Screencast introduction to Add-Art, the Firefox Extension that replaces ads with art. Now compatible with Firefox 3.

If you have any problems, check out our forums at http://forum.add-art.org To download, go to http://add-art.org

Learning From Evil Media

Transmediale Exhibition Conference Wed 30.01.2013 – 16:00

via Learning From Evil Media | transmediale. and Evil Media Distribution Centre

The panel is discussing the installation project Evil Media Distribution Centre by Graham Harwood (uk) and Matsuko Yokokoji (jp/uk) (YoHa).

The installation is an artistic response to the recently published book Evil Media (2012) by Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, in which the two authors argue for an expanded notion of media or forms of mediation and a deeper, more complex understanding of their effects on how we act, perceive and think in our daily lives. They focus on the pervasive presence of so-called “gray media,” whose mediations “facilitate and amplify the creation of troubling, ambiguous social processes, fragile networks of susceptible activity, opaque zones of knowledge—the evil of media.” The argument takes the form of a series of stratagems that, “rather than simple recipes to be followed, might better be understood as operative constructs in the sense that they have to be taken up, used, worked with …” It is this anticipation of the stratagems’ involvement in experimental practices beyond the pages of the book that YoHa meet. The artists have invited 66 contributors to choose and write a short text about a gray media object, and these texts and objects are then presented in the setting of a curiosity cabinet designed as a distribution center (the presentation media—the pallets, forklift, plastic bags, clipboards and projectors—are also accompanied by a text). With this close proximity between text and object, ideas and materiality, the installation demonstrates a mindset and method where the amalgamation of theory and practice is not a point in itself, but becomes a working condition for developing reflective engagement with the evil of media.

In the panel, the two authors discuss the notion of “evil media,” their “stratagematic” approach, the areas of focus that structure the book (Intelligence, Togetherness, Algorithms, Structures, Technicalities, Productivity, and Excellence), as well as respond to YoHa’s response to the book. Moreover, using examples from the book and installation, discussion addresses the question of the complex cultural significance of media beyond its straightforward instrumental value.

Participants: Jacob Lillemose is the curator of the transmediale exhibition program. He lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen. Andrew Goffey is a Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture, and Communication at Middlesex University, London. Graham Harwood is the artistic director of the UK artist group Mongrel. His main interests are in the networked image and helping other people set things up for themselves.

Paper @ transmediale

transmediale 2013 Berlin

with 4 thematic threads: Users, Networks, Paper, Desire. The paper thread has an interesting intro:

Paper

BWTGGWAG – Back When The Gutenberg Galaxy Was A Galaxy: In the post-digital and networked world, printed matter is no longer the exclusive factor that defines literacy as a cultural imaginary. Theorists such as Katherine N. Hayles have suggested that the new digital culture of reading and writing ultimately makes us think differently. The writer Kenneth Goldsmith proposes eternally repurposing “uncreativity” as the central cultural practice of networked literacy. However, instead of a sharp break with the past, the contemporary situation of reading and writing is informed by hybrid states in between the analog and digital, forming a post-digital print culture. Paradoxically, a seemingly obsolete material entity haunts these hybrid practices: paper. It is not so much the book or any other specific publishing format that acts as a mediator, but paper itself has taken on the role of a persisting material. This thread investigates different facets of post-digital print culture, extending into new forms of DIY publishing that refashion analog forms into the digital and vice versa. It also looks into historical conditions of this culture, tracing important socio-cultural histories such as the history of paper as a transcendent cultural form and its various artistic appropriations in mail art, concrete poetry and artists books. By taking paper as its starting point, we are both signaling interest in the technical materiality that allowed such experiments to take place and suggesting that we perceive paper as a powerful cultural imaginary informing print culture, beyond the material as such. From this perspective, we are also moving into the (at times unruly, at times code-based) poetical territories of fiction.

via Paper | transmediale.

In other words paper performs a cultural function that transcends the analog_digital divide. It persists alongside the new media, or even better it is so good that the new media gravitates towards it. See for instance the new material of the 21 century Graphene, which might become the new paper. It is a carbon sheet one atom thin, that is very strong and is a good electrical conductor. Looking at the images of possible applications (made no doubt to secure more research funding) made me realise this. The digital screen is becoming more and more like paper.

Website about film titles

Amazing collection of title design for films. Shown on key frames and video seq. with description/interview about the title. See for instance this one from Hitchcock

North by Northwest (1959) — Art of the Title.