:: Saturday, July 17, 2004 ::

On July 10, Eduardo Navas published here an update on Steve Kurtz's situation, the strange case of an excellent artist and co-founder of one of the most important art collectives of the last decades- the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) - who was arrested under suspicion of bioterrorrism.
 
Unfortunately, we tend to forget what is not 24/7 in our faces... and this one won't probably be on the 9 o'clock Fox News. And if you have seen Outfoxed -coming up at a theater near you... hopefully- you'll guess why...
 
For all of the above I want to follow Eduardo's thread, and ask you to keep Steve very present in your mind, even after his release. That is hardly the core of the matter in this whole story... 
 
We all know what happened to Steve. I just wanted to point out some interesting facts/postings. It's mind boggling how googling "Steve Kurtz" in several combinations (+CAE, +Buffalo) all I got were references to the FBI  investigation. For the first 8 pages, there was not a single one devoted solely to his work. And while this is proof of the power this medium has in creating true social networks of *action*, still, I thought we could devote a little of our time to know Steve's work and why he should not have been arrested.
 
So, and although I feel odd about it, I want to post this link to Steve's resume It is online after all, and since the FBI matter has obfuscated online info on his work (it's just the way search engines work...), it may be important for us to know Steve's academic and artistic endeavors.
 
Other interesting links on Steve, the CAE and this case:
 
One June 3 2004 Jennifer Crowe posted on the nettime discussion list an email where she expressed well founded concern about the silence around Steve's case within certain art communities; she thought it might be due to the very nature of CAE's work, which might be confusing people and leading them to dismiss the case as a hoax (a la rtmark's spoof type of work). Jennifer stressed the importance of posting widely that it was all really happening, in spite of how incredible it all might sound.
 
I hope Jennifer is right and that that was the only reason some art communities were/are not talking about it... In spite of the several pages in Google that I saw before getting to true focus on Steve's work, I am still baffled at how llittle we hear about this case in the main media...
 
For a curious take on the whole thing read this posting on what distances Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensembe from other anti-globalization critiques that are common in the contemporary art world: the specificity and the non-specificity of the movement. The author notes that CAE is very specific in the proposed subversive responses to the structures of power, which include hacking, and genetic reverse-engineering but non-specific in that is is "conspiratorial".
 
Ana Boa-Ventura

:: ana boa-ventura [+] ::
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In my ever continuing quest to find out more about net art as collectors object a new piece that can be added to the list of sold netart pieces. Yesterday Geert Lovink noted on nettime that Exonemo's netart piece Natural Process(NP) was bought by Google Inc. for $5000. I think though that in this case it's important to note that Exonemo's piece uses Google's image as a starting point so a purchase by Google Inc. isn't that suprising. What I unfortunately don't know is if Google Inc. has an art collection or if this a one of a kind purchase, but what of course is clear is that they bought a netart piece.
Also Interesting to note is that our own Garrett Lynch wrote a quite critical review of this piece some months ago. An older and extensive writing about sold netart works can be found here: http://www.netartreview.net/ logs/ 2004_02_01_backlog.html check the entry: Tuesday, February 03, 2004.

:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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More on the IE browser security holes. This time on viruses.

Video-game console wars are coming: Microsoft and Sony will go at it.

What's up with napster and the court? Also here.

And this news is so important that it has to be included here, even though it has very little in common with net art or new media: Steven Hawking has lost a bet and will have to give an encyclopedia to theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. Hawking has lost a bet on his theory on black holes. A second take.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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A reminder for all interested parties:

21st Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival
November 9 - 14, 2004
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
LAST CALL FOR ENTRIES
Deadline: August 1st, 2004
Reglement & Application Download: www.filmladen.de/dokfest

Specific to media work:
The festival presents current documentary films and videos, the media art exhibition MONITORING, as well as the interfiction symposium. The exhibition MONITORING deals with the current room-related positioning of media art. During the festival, it displays approximately 15 media installations and sculptures, which will be selected from the entries.

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I would like to highlight a project that is deep in the foundations of net_art, the 12hr_ISBN_JPEG Project by Brad Brace. Launched on 30 December 1994 as an online extension of Brace's printed ISBN-Books, the project provides a continuous sequence of hypermodern photo-art, posted or emailed every 12 hours. For its purposes the hypermodern is defined as that which, "minimizes the familiar, the known, the recognizable; it suspends identity, relations and history. This discourse, far from determining the locus in which it speaks, is avoiding the ground on which it could find support. It is trying to operate a decentering that leaves no privilege to any center." Brace offers a comprehensive, and yet, obtuse project description -- click here.

For my part, the compelling issue in this project is its leap from printed to electronic media; that Brace recognized nearly a decade ago the potential of networked artmaking and communication. By posting sequentially or inviting viewership via email, the project is inherently performative and as such interactive, at its basic level. Since the inception of 12hr_ISBN_JPE, its prophesy and relevance are somehow substantiated by the pursuant cavalcade of projects that serve as recepticles for imagery and e-flotsom. However, there is a purity of intention in Brace's piece that is lost in other projects that merely scavenge the net for site-foder.

While I don't intend for this to serve as a blanket critique of ALL achival-based work, much of which I guiltily enjoy, especially pieces that genarate their archives through elegant code. I do mean to point out the the idea is hardly new, and, for the most part, has been done most sucessfully already. I wonder if this practice still has relevance, and if so in what forms? Does mere juxtaposition create useful meaning, or are the readings now so multiplicitous as to offer no meaning? Does not cultural relevance hinder a broader reading? What drives the impulse to collect an re-present?

As I continue to ponder this, I would appreciate any thoughts our readers can offer. Email me, please.
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Turbulence.org's latest spotlight is on influences.org.

In recent months all kinds of new media resources have been launched, but influences.org is the only one that directly combines history and contemporary new media practice. The resource offers information about important artists and intellectuals from the last sixty years that are influential in new media.

The project is on its initial stage and is asking for the online community's participation. Input is really crucial at the moment. influences.org aims to become a forum for exchange of ideas for online communities, and it promises to be a resource that not only respects emerging technologies, but understands the importance of its ever-changing history.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Yet another follow-up on the security hole in Mozilla and Firefox for Window PC. It appears the flaw may be dependent on the Windows' operating system itself. As Peter already noted, Mozilla released a patch to fix the problem at their end.

Unix and Linux are becoming even more popular. IBM is releasing new servers using these operating systems.

Microsoft may be going to court once again, this time in Japan.

Online file sharing has doubled since last year.

If you work for a company that relies on e-mail, chances are your outbound mail is being read.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Opening this Thursday, 15 July is "Give Me Some Truth: Theories, Conspiracies, Politics and Art" at Suffolk University in Boston, MA. Curated by James Manning the exhibition will explore "political art in reaction to situations ranging from Nazi Germany to Vietnam to Iraq." The project features iKatun, a collective of Boston artists and technologists, who will explore the ideas of regulation by "labeling the gallery and its surroundings calling attention to the subtle ways in which architecture is instructing us as to what is possible for our behavior in a particular space."

Other participants include: Dana Chandler, Charles Giuliano, Ricco Guerrero, Gregory Miller, Mathew Nash, Eric Freeman, Lisa Lunskaya Gordon/ Piotr Parda, and Arnold Trachtman.

The exhibition runs July 15 through August 17, with an opening Thursday, July 15, from 5:30 -7:30 pm in the main gallery at New England School of Art and Design & Suffolk University.

75 Arlington St Boston 02116
For Directions/Gallery info call (617) 573-8785

Gallery Hours:
Mon-Friday 8:00 am to11:00 pm; Sat 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
SPECIAL HOURS DURING THE WEEK OF THE DNC
July 26th-31st 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

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As a reponse to Eduardo's warning of 9th of july concerning Mozilla and Firefox security hole: the problem was already fixed on the 8th. Which shows the flexibility of open source software. More info about the security hole and fix here: http://mozilla.org/security/shell.html

Also interesting to know that PC World reports that for the first time since 1999 there's a decrease in the market share of Microsoft's browser Internet explorer.

:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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JIMPUNK's image-based weblog 544x378(WebTV) will close this Tuesday morning, 13 July after a year of "reporting," (see prior NAR post for more information.)

Everyone is invited to participate in the final round and party before the project site closes. For those who are not '(WEBTV) REPORTERS' but would like to take part in the parety, please go to http://www.blogger.com, (LOGIN : error401, PASSWORD : error). "THE PARTY IS BEGINNING RIGHT NOW"


Some explanations to post in blogger.com :

To upload directly imgs from an upload path, just add: img/after (WebTV)/

Or you can link directly to a website with an img tag like: img src="http://www.website.net/blabla_img.gif"

If you want to change the background image just upload an img named : WebTV.gif, but this time directly in upload path : (WebTV)/do exactly what you want, texts , img, link, sound etc.


permanent (WebTV) reporters :
Eduardo Navas, Rico da Halvarez, doron golan, c p la.cocina, bituur esztreym, annie abrahams, jp halgand, car( )oline, various-euro, clement Thomas, m river, april may, skysan hayashi, abe linkoln, chris bruno, lewis lacook, brandon barr, un lotus , ):mµn<

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As a follow-up to Ana Boa-Ventura's post of last Thursday on copyright, I would like to add yet another link to the reinterpretation of Benjamin's text "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical reproduction." Douglas Davis wrote a short essay called "the Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction," and, like the other essays previously cited by Ana, Davis's text is quick to allegorize Benjamin's authority to write about the state of cultural production in the current digital age.

All the texts fall short of Benjamin's breadth, and end up proving what his text actually proposes in relation to mechanical reproduction, which is anything can be easily reproduced with new technology and objects lose their specificity to time and place, thus giving way to exhibition value over cult value. The result of this is a constant recycling of not only images, but also physical objects as well--not to mention ideas--that can be contextualized in ways mainly dependent on politics of culture, disregarding history.

Copyright in the age of the Web is fully dependent on "exhibition value" which means that intellectual property is prone to abuse by either plagiarism and/or ahistorical interpretation. Creative Commons has done a very good job at trying to deal with this issue as copyright laws are not always efficient for the web. However, for there to be just cultural exchange on the global network, netizens will need to understand the underlying ideologies of the gift economy that are part of the Internet's foundation. Marcel Mauss' book The Gift is a good starting point to get a grasp on this mode of exchange that has been a pivot in Academic practice, and which has now been extended onto the Internet; more recently, Richard Barbrook wrote an essay that reconsiders Mauss' ideas in relation to the web.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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