2008 Fall: Theoretical Constructions in Contemporary Art

I just noticed that the Make Magazine link is incorrect. The URL should be: http://makezine.com/

Thanks, now fixed.

I want to mention that all the information Ali provided was interesting and probably only a small portion of what exists on the World Wide Web. I as an artist may take advantage of some promotional tools online, and look up things to further my research and of course I can’t live without my email, but I don’t spend much time on line, nor do I want to.

I know there are big things happening, but sitting in front of a screen, surfing, is something I try to avoid. This is the reason for not wanting an office job, for not being a drafter and for not being a graphic designer. I am a person of dirty hands and materials all over my clothing. I don’t mean any disrespect to the world of the web, but it is not my priority to spend my time there. Personal communication is hard enough, why displace my body and gestures to communicating on line with people I will never see. I know I am cynical, but this is my view for this particular paragraph.

I did look into some of the mapping websites, and it was fun for a bit, but I don’t think I ever “need� to go to that sight. I want to check out the making sights but that is in my free time, which I have none to spare between reading, directed research, I do squeeze in some surfing, but usually not much, I start to go numb in the brain after awhile.

I am grateful for the tool of the internet. It has changed my world as well as everyone’s. It is what is shrinking the globe to a point where people can be everywhere at once and that is a crazy, awesome thing.

I love how all these websites are 100% for the sharing of information with the masses, the idea that all this new technology is a gift to be shared and spread around. I hope this new media's attitude bleeds into all the other traditional arts and shakes the dust off old ways of thinking. Its about time to start breaking some rules. The only trick is to get people to take these ideas shared on the world wide web and actually physically apply them to their everyday life and local community. I have faith that this new technology will start to become more and more accepted and people will warm up to it and start applying to their everyday life.

The site that I got the most out of was the "yesmen". If you haven't checked out the Exxon's Climate-Victim Candles story yet, please do. Amazing.

I unfortunately missed the presentation about Art and Technology when I was in NYC last week, but I am excited to keep checking out these links and spending more time on them. thanks for posting them.

I really enjoyed this list of links to search through and play around in. There is something intimidating about having access to so much information. Sometimes as an internet user I don’t even know where to start looking, so I stick with browsing through the same 5-10 websites daily. It is amazing how by being given a list of just thirty or so links led me into so much information and to so many different directions within the web.

Some of the portals, like We Make Money, Not Art and Rhizome almost seem to take the role as the “curators� of the internet. Each page is a compilation of videos, links and articles specifically put together for us as the user to view, choosing what we want to see and what we want to ignore.

Like Sam, I enjoy the idea of the 100% sharing, but knowing that so much information is available to anyone is both exciting and daunting. Sites like Make Magazine and Instructables seem extremely useful/helpful but at the same time the Hack-a-Day site makes me aware of how many pages there are out there (not just hacking sites) that could instruct people how to do potentially harmful things to others. As with anything, this democratic system of information sharing can have both its positive and negative aspects.

Manovich says, "The internet, which can be thought of as one huge distributed media database, also crystallizes the basic condition of the new information society: over-abundance of information of all kinds." The internet is like a cup that is running over with information of all kinds and qualities. I read today that the internet has just reached one trillion pages of information. In some places, if you have the means, you can put yourself through college by sitting in front of your computer and typing on the keyboard. My own artwork is heavily informed by the internet -- not just by the wonderful images just a search away, but the great ideas, communities, and art that surround me when I explore.

However, the internet seems to bring a lot of information together into one place, but I wonder if it really brings people closer together, or if it perpetuates and enlarges their distance? When people communicate over the internet, there is a sense of protected, unassailable anonymousness -- there are no faces, no vulnerability, no visible behaviors or emotions, only words to read and more words to read. Even as facebook and myspace increase our capacity to meet new people, text-messaging and emailing seem to distance us from each other -- even while we're communicating with other people, we're communicating in a distant way. I imagine that Banksy would be someone who would thrive in this internet-saturated environment -- he can stay connected with the world, and communicate with other people with ease, but without giving away his identity.

"Strange Maps" is, as Ali put it, "an intellectual community involved in studying maps," and it is an amazing site. There you can find maps which allow us to see the world through different lenses -- some of these maps are based in reality, and some of them in fantasy. The world can be seen in terms of Olympic medals won, in terms of what to call carbonated beverages (the North says "pop," the East and West coasts "soda," and the South "coke"), in terms of contemporary or historic cannibalism, in terms of currency, America in terms of obesity rate, and Europe in terms of genetic differences. It's interesting that we've been reading about Eurocentrism, because there's also a map that is purely "Paris-centric," in which, through the eyes of a Parisian, England is seen simply as a "rainy area," Australia is a speck on the map with "kangaroos," Italy is just a place where you should "lock the car," and Japan is only known for its "copy machines." Ali spoke of the "objectivity of maps" as an attractive aspect to them. Maps carry an aura of the "official" and the "objective," even if they may be fantastical or just for fun. Besides simply being beautiful things to look at, maps may provide people with a sense of psychological direction, stability, and objectivity in an otherwise random, unpredictable life. Maps may also give people a sense of escape -- a "simulation of reality" as Baudrillard might put it. Speaking of maps, there's an amazing map -- a map I would call "art" -- on the front page of the New York Times of November 6th, indicating that a vast part of America is shifting toward the Democratic side, even places like Idaho and Utah.

I, like most everyone else, enjoyed spending a bit of time perusing the links Ali provided. Most of the sites are entertaining and enlightening, and gave me more of an idea of what is going on in the world of new media. We can all agree that it is important for artists to push conventional ideas of what is an artistic medium and in what manner and on what terms the public interacts with art. This is how art is expanded, as well as thinking in general. Therefore, I can feel some of the excitement that Sam feels when he goes exploring with this links page.

However, I also lack a feeling of true enthusiasm for much of it. As Jennifer said, there are things that I enjoyed spending time with and will even send others to check out, but there is nothing that i “need� to go back and revisit. There are many people who really enjoy finding things on the internet, but I am, unfortunately, not one of them. As Bourriaud said, “We now know that computer science, image technology and atomic energy represent threats and tools of subjugation as much as improvements to daily life.� I believe that he was speaking of technology being used irresponsibly or for weapons development, but I also see it as a potential barrier to real time relationships. When people are always staring into the eyes of their laptops, it is difficult to live a rich version of daily life, let alone to find the time for physical experiences with art, music, and community.

I am very interested, though, in this idea of sharing information with the masses. Why is this inherently good? Despite a lot of thinking on the subject, I’m not sure I have a well formulated opinion about this. I began thinking about this when someone in class (Jenny, maybe?) started talking about the democratic quality of printmaking. I’m still not really sure what that means. I’m all for sharing everything with everyone, but what is it about this attitude that is so attractive to everyone? Sam, when you talk about this “attitude� bleeding into the more traditional art forms, what do you mean by that? “Shaking the dust off old ways of thinking� is always a great idea, but I want to know how you see that happening. I certainly don’t mean this as a challenge; I am interested in understanding more clearly what you mean by this. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this topic?

I find a lot of the art projects in the links to be energizing and original. It's nice to know the sites that curate work on the web, like We Make Money Not Art, and I'm sure I'll refer to them again, but the links I spent the most time on were the map art and map-making projects. I love maps-- I love the visual elegance with which they show information. The primary purpose of many of the maps doesn't seem to be for art's sake, but for learning and understanding the world, like The Gapminder. Jonothan Harris's projects display less obvious data, less quantifiable bits of information, such as the 'I Want You To Want Me' and 'I Feel Fine' projects, which both tap into the available information on the web about people's emotions.

On the Visual Complexity site, I loved the "Natures" project. It's a beautiful and medetative representation of the movement of plants. The dots and lines connecting the plants seem arbitrary at times, but this ambiguity was compelling, suggesting that there is more complexity than meets the eye.

Nina Katchadourian has done some wonderful pieces using the map format/language. The use of the family tree format to critique culture is really effective in 'Genealogy of the Supermarket' and also in 'Airplane Family Tree.' Her work doesn't use technology in the ways the others do, it has more of a warm handmade feel to it.

Some of the sights (infosthetics.com, we-make-money-not-art.com, createdigitalmotion.com...) have an annoying amount of pop up ads for being progressive art related sights. If it's part of a larger idea then it could be interesting but if it's purely a money making scheme then I find it to be counter productive. It doesn't make me want to go back to the sight even though I find the content interesting.

Sights like instructables.com are a perfect example of the democracy of information that the internet promotes. Having gone there myself, to attempt to build a vacuum former, I can attest the usefulness of this site. The way in which they explain how to make virtually anything, is quite impressive. When trying to get plans for building a vacuum former, I found page after page of instructions. Granted some of them were better then others, but collectively they really helped to clarify what needed to be done. Sites like this help to make up a communal knowledge base that is easy to access and ever expanding. When ever I have a question I just look it up online.

I am definitely interested in the online world as whole. It is so dynamic and ever changing. It is helpful to get recommendations of good sites due to the fact that the net is so vast it's hard to know where to look. Over the summer, when I actually had free time and could surf a little bit, I started using stumble upon. For those of you that haven't used it, it is plugin for your firefox browser that, with a push of a button, randomly takes you to sites that fit your pre-specified interests. The more you use it the more it learns about what you like. It is pretty amazing. I ended up finding some super interesting sites with it. Granted with the glut of websites out there vying for our attention, it is a fine line between truly being useful and being huge waste of time that further detaches us from the physical world.