:: Saturday, June 07, 2003 ::

We have a special treat for our readers this week. To the left you will notice an article by our newest contributor, Francesca de Nicolò (Welcome Francesca!).

Also, we have two double header reviews, which means that two contributors wrote about the same net-piece. Double headers will be featured from time to time. One more is coming up next week as well. Double Headers are published because Net Art Review thrives on personal opinions, and as the reviews will show, the contributors often disagree on some aspects of the work being discussed. Difference of opinion is encouraged, and readers are encouraged to contribute their own opinion from time to time. If you are interested in contributing writing, please look over the guidelines.

Net Art Review will be making both design and information architecture changes throughout the Summer. Stay tuned.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here are the latest additions to the New Media Fix:

World Wide Review, which was previously mentioned on this log, offers a chance to write about any art medium. Log on and contribute.

Springerin is an offline and online magazine offering great articles on Net Art and New Media. Some articles are written in German.

The recommended fix for this week is digitalcraft.org, focusing on webdesign and games.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Winner of the Webby Award 2003 in category net art is Listening Post, winner of the people's voice is Penny Arcade. What the last has to do with net art is totally unclear to me.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Here's an in my eyes essential addition to Eduardo Navas's article about mailinglists from last wednesday.

When I hear spam and mailinglists I immediatelly think Fredric Madre and Palais-Tokyo. The last was a totally unmoderated list (sometimes also called "Spammers Paradise") by the first. One of the "side effects" of this list was the rise of the spam engine (especially amongst French netartists). A very insigthful text about this subject was written by Jean Philip Halgand called "After The Storm : about Spam Art and related practices à la française". Furthermore the interview Josephine Bosma did with Fredric Madre is a must read for anybody interested in issues like spam and mailinglists.


:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Anyone ever thought of google as a readymade? Well, the Hub indirectly proposes this approach to web surfing. Log on and scroll up and down this link intensive resource, and click, click, click at random is my best advice. The "I feel lucky" Google quote may be applied here with a flair of "good taste" -- choose disinterestedly. The hub has a nice set of preselected material available at the click of your mouse-button. Some of the terms might never come to mind. Readymade searches, what else could Duchamp ask for?

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Creative capital recently launched a special section on their website where updates on their grantees are periodically posted. Also, those of you who had previously visited the website might notice the new look. Outproduction or constant change does not necessarily mean a change in the actual design.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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And for those who like their HTML *completely* dynamic, there's YAST (Yet Another Sizing Tool), a Python/Zope artware page completely dependent on its users for content. Users upload or link images and text to the page and voila!--YAST collages this input together, forming a disjunctive jambalaya of images, text and links from its own audience. The contents of YAST are cleaned every so often, and the archived YAST state is emailed randomly to net.art museums that users suggest via the site.
YAST is a project by vnatrc.net, and is part of this year' s readme festival (2.3), run by runme.org.
For me, a project like YAST is what net.art is all about. It resists the trend of subsuming web-based works under the rubric of cinema by actively *using* the network to manifest itself. It can't be reproduced anywhere else other than the network, and depends on user-interaction for its manifestation.
The only drawback to the piece is that, after a while, it begins to have the look and feel of a screen-saver, and, divorced from its network roots, it would be.
:: Lewis LaCook [+] ::
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ipPainting, a project by b-l-u-e-s-c-r-e-e-n.net, who we have reviewed before generally, is a work using designed compositions of code.

The artists have designed compositions or scripts formulised to certain rules much like the paintings of Mondrian, Malevich or Kandinsky. Scripts composed to a grid structure or only using four-sided shapes of aesthetically pleasing colours. Each script is activated on the site for a certain period of time allowing users to visit the composition and allowing the composition to register the users ip address as a contribution to its evolution. The numerical values of each ip are used (depending on the composition) to interpret the positions, forms or colours to be used, allowing the composed work to be both a net.painting dispersed in time and virtual space but also a collective unconscious work.

I feel as an art work this piece contextualises itself extremely well, but in regards to classical art i.e. painting not new media or net.art. It references where painting has been in the last century, how its progressed and proposes one solution or escape root to what is fast becoming an art form thats simply folding in on itself. To call it painting using new media and as Lev Manovich would note, painting that uses a database the most significant new media form, is just. To call it net.art possibly misses the mark.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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Jonah Brucker-Cohen's BumpList is the current Whitney Artport Gatepage. Here is the official description:

"BumpList is a mailing list aiming to re-examine the culture and rules of online email lists. BumpList only allows for a minimum amount of subscribers so that when a new person subscribes, the first person to subscribe is "bumped", or unsubscribed from the list. Once subscribed, you can only be unsubscribed if someone else subscribes and "bumps" you off. [...] The focus of the project is to determine if by attaching simple rules to communication mediums, the method and manner of correspondences that occur as well as behaviors of connection will change over time. "

The Bumplist project is released in a time when mailing lists are being reconsidered for their effectiveness as 'democratic' mediums of communication. An example of this is Nettime's decision to close the bold list because it takes too much time and effort to keep it up. The pros and cons are extensive and worth reading. The obvious debate is about who gets on the edited version of Nettime. Some of the threads that developed out of the initial e-mail and worth noting are: Nettime bold is bleep and Nettime is dead.

The nettime debate is metaphorically contradicted in Brucker-Cohen's latest project -- some subscribers get on the edited version of the Nettime list and some do not (in BumpList the opposite happens, everyone gets on the list and everyone gets bumped off). Based on this, BumpList exposes people's yearning to belong to a community -- a utopic one if possible, and the inevitable struggle that is necessary to belong. What is great about BumpList is that it strips the idea of communication itself, and pushes the activity of belonging as the actual goal -- thereby making the subdued issue of power-shifting more obvious in a real situation.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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"Renga" is "a collaboration between 11 artists based on the ancient Japanese verse form of the same name which translates as "linked verse". A work was started by one artist and passed to the next to continue and so on until each artist had contributed. No stylistic requirements or limitations were placed on the artists, each was simply required to respond honestly. The work can be viewed starting from any of the following points -

Michael Szpakowski - Lewis Lacook - Joseph McElroy - Kate Southworth - Ivan Mejia - Curt Cloninger - Mark River - Brandon Barr - Jess Loseby - Marc Garrett - Ivan Pope

and navigated linearly forwards or backwards, yet even here the navigation has been nicely interupted by Mark River's contribution which makes a hyperlink poem, in the poem and about the poem. Clever and Borges would be proud!
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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French netartist Jim Punk's latest piece ""i don't want to have a blog" is a statement about blogs.
Check out jimpunk.com for an overview of all his works.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Here is a great resource that is scheduled to become part of the fix this coming Saturday:

Worldwidereview.com. This website is completely dynamic. Anyone can contribute a review, just follow the instructions. The best part is that reviews are open to any art medium. Jasper Joffe, administrator and editor of the site, is encouraging international submissions; at the moment, most of the reviews focus on London. So dig in and write away.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Art in Motion is currently featuring New Media works right on the famous Sunset Strip. Even though there is no proper online documentation for such event at the moment, it is still worth noting for AIM's inventive presentation of unexpected works to the passing public. A particular piece worth mentioning is Verbatim by Annetta Kapon. A short description follows:

"Verbatim by Annetta Kapon will be playing on the board at 8410 Sunset Blvd. for the duration of the AIM on Sunset programming . Composed entirely of quotations from rejection letters received by the artist Verbatim includes such phrases as 'We regret to tell you that despite the strength of your materials, we did not decide to pursue your candidacy beyond this point,' and 'We had outstanding applicants, you among them, but we are forced to draw the line somewhere.' In this location – the epicenter of a notoriously competitive industry in which success is verything but rejection is the experience of most – these texts share that experience in a spirit of celebration and generosity."

Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, AIM does not have extensive documentation on their website, but Annetta Kapon did exhibit her work in the recent LA Freewaves Media Festival. I hereby provide a link to her feature for that festival: Verbatim

This AIM on the Sunset Strip event is worth mentioning as it is one of the most successful ways of presenting new media works to a wide public. If proper documentation is posted online, I will make sure to mention it on the log. For more information about the Sunset Strip event, visit the AIM website.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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