:: Friday, October 01, 2004 ::

We are delighted to announce that _arc.hive_, the mailing resource for "net.wurkers" which we announced was shutting down as of August 30th has a new home at anart.no. The list owners say ....

_arc[texture.eyes].hive_ seeks to fill the gap][ing hole][ left by those lists previously d.voted 2 the e.volut][ion, discussion, practice, & slippage of all actions oriented around the net/web. _arc[texture.eyes].hive_ will try 2 jab ][@][ buttoned boundaries & ][create a space where x.perimentation & de.ba][t.e regarding any label u care 2 stick on/ova creative practices involving the network [ie new media art, code poetry, net.art, e.literature, content alteration poetry, web art, electronic art, hackerese, digital projects, net.wurks, programmer writing, spam art, incremental texts, theory/hybrid factions, software art, performative interactions, werdwurk, calls 4 applications & submissions, gamer rhetoric, technical info/details, net-linked announcements etc etc] is 2 b x.pected & n.couraged.

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...

Rosalind, (named for geneticist Rosalind Franklin), is a dynamic [new media art] lexicon that developed from a private project called GEST@TION. The endeavor, begun in January 2004, is the accumulation of words and their definitions over a period of nine months by its originators, a small network of independent collaborators who sought to “evolve a new shared textual vocabulary for communicating what they are, what they do and the worlds they are creating.”

In September 2004 the lexicon and the ability to add one’s definitions to it were made public. The intent being that multiple users would submit terminology, jargon and colloquialisms from their areas of interest and expertise – “Feed Rosalind with your own words and definitions to express and declare what you are, what you do and the worlds you create, on your own terms.” Guidelines for additions are as follows: Submit words that describe something very particular to your life/experience/work; that have been invented in a moment of desperation; that arise in conversation with others; or that are already in circulation. Any entity submitting a term should embed the definition in a web page on its own site, so the term can then be referenced in a public location.

In its descriptions, Rosalind has been characterized as a sort of being, whose development follows the life cycle of a human being. Terms such as “conceived,” “gestation,” “nascent,” and “born” belie the fact that this project is very much the baby of its collaborative team. As such I will try to be careful. However, if it is our goal to “help Rosalind to maturity,” then there will need to be some growing pains in the process. I am a lover of language. I love words and the playful slippages that allow for elided forms to convey more meaning in their collision than in their discrete totalities. I am, however, suspicious of lexicons and catalogs, which despite their inclusive and egalitarian intentions can become fascistic by virtue of their [necessarily] formal structure. However, this practice can often become opaque, burying any useful discourse under a barrage of semantics and word play.

My further concern is that there is a historical tradition [Western] that ties the concept of “naming” to the process of legitimization. For illustration, a child that was born out of wedlock was denied the use of his father’s name and was thus bastardized or considered illegitimate. By extension, language has become a way of legitimizing any object or idea by creating sharable context and meaning. Further, areas of thought that find their authority on the margins, often a have a directed desire to produce the language that will tell the story of their movement, rather than produce the movement itself. I find a disconcerting trend in new media to coin terms and claim ownership of their origination. This seems more a means of marking intellectual territory than in developing the field of study. Nor do I understand why there is such eagerness to assume the same processes and forms of traditional media, which we could manage to avoid and surpass, (at least for the purposes of our own field).

Rosalind is tentatively pleasurable, but many of the definitions it has gathered to date are so highly subjective that they are limited to a single, momentary use. Some are simply jokes in the form of structural puns derived from the project itself. Others are totally meaningless. Yet a few are truly inspiring and relevant, and I plan to use them often. A few favorites terms are: aeremonial; Alpha Revisionism; anti-archive; catechstrophy; decontentdrated; defuge; emulationism; intertwingle; leibor and loiber; miscourse; multivating; and wapathy. (You will need to visit Rosalind for these and other definitions.)

My hope is that as the Rosalind database develops, it will function as a significant and comprehensive linguistic reflection rather than gesturing towards catalog, and that its dynamism will be actual, not theoretical.

:: [+] ::
...

Selected News

Wondering about Microsoft's bluesceen of death lately? Got security in blue?

More on JPEGs and antiviruses.

Users accessing Hotmail accounts via Outlook may have to pay for the convenience in the near future.

Microsoft and open source.

Broadband keeps expanding in the UK.

UK tries to get ahead on e-mail security.

Yahoo implements RSS into the site--seamless feeds.

Linux in Munich: check the patent.

Palm technology on the move again: Where is the mobile phone going?

Considering lag time in virus alerts.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

The traveling exhibition "I love you [rev.eng]" considers the relation of Hacker Culture to Digital Art, Code Aesthetics and Viruses.

The exhibition examines: What actually is a computer virus? Who creates them, and why? What sort of world is hiding behind these everyday phenomena?

Even though it is impossible for me to review the actual traveling exhibition, the website does provide an excellent set of links dealing with the chronology of the virus, interviews, video files and hacker manifetoes, that are complemented with a set of stills from some of the actual artworks.

The site makes the most of the aesthetics of modularity; this is obvious in the presentation of interviews. The user can either read through the content by question or by artist. I found it more interesting to go by question, this way the artists' personalities stand out unexpectedly as they all "line up" to give very unique and often detailed answers to stock questions like "who are you?" or "How did you get into computers?" or even the more expected, "What programing language do you use?"

The manifesto is really well written, giving way to the true spirit of the egotistical hacker. Part of it reads: "My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for."

This is actually one of the few websites for a travelling exhibition that can stand on its own, as an online resource worth bookmarking to reference the aesthetics of hackerdom.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...