j bosma on Sun, 16 Mar 97 19:48 MET |
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nettime: net.art and art on the net |
This is a piece of writing that gives you my personal reflections on net.art. You could very well have different ideas about it, and I try by writing this here right now to avoid the thought in your head that I claim to be an expert on the subject. What I like so much about art and new media and net.art is the fact that it is not defined yet. I have been a bit annoyed therefore by some writings recently on Nettime. I will try to let my definitions be as open as possible, but in my opinion, more touching as to what the term net.art does to me then that academic lingo, that by no means has the ability to cover the subject, simply because of the slippery nature of net.art. Where to start when talking about net.art or art on the net or whatever it is these people make on the net? I will just try to write some thoughts down I had the last couple of days, and who knows it might become a coherent piece. Hard though, with this subject. Undesirable maybe even. I read a statement in the newspaper the other day, that was part of an article about Wim T. Schippers, Hollands most famous Fluxus artist. It said that a good art work is prepared like murder: one has to be very precise and perfectionist and work in utter secrecy. This reminded me of net.art very much. It is almost betrayal to write about some aspects of it, because it is probably at this moment one of the few art forms that still have a potential of subverting and surprising in the way art has been seen to do in the past. The first thing that came to my mind after reading both Davids and Carey's mails was: What are they talking about? Which art on the net? What net-art? As most of the Nettimers might know there seems to be this group called net.art that operates and organises around the Nettime perifery a lot. I have tried to find proof of this group claiming the name net.art this morning, but didn't find any. Maybe tiredness of surfing, I don't know. I thought it would be easy, but forget it. Somehow the term net.art is connected to this group however and it is confusing, especially in discussions like the one on Nettime recently about art and the Internet. The reaction of Olia Lialina for instance to this discussion is a very personal one. She is one of the people of this net.art group. She does not understand a discussion about net.art when this discussion leaves her friends out completely. I have the same feeling, for several reasons. The net.art group has been very active and has produced many works that I cannot place in the discriptions given by both David and Carey about types and possibilities of net.art. Not really anyway. Carey's discriptions get a bit close, but are too academic and in this way they look too much from a perspective of the old art, that was never comfortable with things like performance art or mail art, and has developed a manner of discourse about these that is choking and unsuitable mostly. The connection with video art, well, I don't really care. Video has never had the potential the net has. It had the illusion of that, and still has. With the coming of the camcorder it looked to some people as if the world of big media, of tv, could be invaded just like that. This turned out to be a Fata Morgana. The kind of technology required to transmit video in any way has always been and will stay for a while, even with the coming of RealVideo, a matter of big money, big machines and bureaucracy because of this. RealVideo might finally put an end to this in the future, but we don't know how the Internet will develop from the top down (restructuring I refer to). Video however has never had a real chance to become a medium like the net. It would be much wiser to compare the development of the net to the early days of radio, which is done by some people outside(?) this list, Siegfried Zielinski for instance. The problem when talking about net.art is always that the people that do so come from two opposite groups, the Artworld and the net.artworld, with exceptions like Robert Adrian, who could tell us much more then he does unfortunately. Last november for instance I was at a conference called Objects and Pixels, in the Balie, Amsterdam. This was organised by a good dutch art magazine called Metropolis M, to investigate and discuss the problem of the 'vanishing object' of art in new media. The conference was a total embarrasment. The reason for this was the incompetence of people in the 'normal' artworld to see certain types of art. Conclusions in this conference were for instance that art in new media had not reached beyond advertisement yet really and therefore could not be discussed properly in a high art discussion (can you imagine the reactions of for instance Alex Adriaanse of V2 in the audience, laughing all the time, perplexity) and that it might be time to see art as purely visual (the last remark made by the moderator, right before the last performance of the conference by sound artists David Toop and Scanner). Now I don't think this was all due to a lack of information that these people obviously also had. It is something much deeper and complex, which is the lack of understanding, maybe even a lack of will to understand, a way to deal with art in a non material but conceptually still very 'real' way. Real being that it touches and plays with media usage as we know it, with the world as it is around us. It makes new couplings, not just of machines, but also of meanings, using communication tools in any shape as a medium, preferably in unusual combinations or contexts. Its roots seem to lie more in things like mail art and performance art then telematic art, which is too easily connected to this artform because of its use of electronic media. Somebody told me that Kathy Rae Huffman has tried to bring the term communication art up for this. I like to call it media art, because in my eyes it is media art in its purest form. But unfortunately this term has been in use for everything that moves and breaths electronically. Communication art (lets adapt this term for now) plays with social contexts. It invents escape routes for ideas and human needs that get crushed in increasingly narrowing discourses of fashion, money and political correctness of any type. It is one of the types of net.art that is completely ignored in most discussions about new media art. If anybody needs an example I'ld still say Heath Buntings work is a a good one. He combines the communicative aspects of grafiti and signs in public spaces with the Internet, or plays with the image of corporate identities, leaving them naked and sensitive as the public property they are but don't admit to be. This description is not covering his work completely though, as it has many invisible layers that make it so interesting. It makes you see the world differently and gives ideas and inspiration to do similar things. One could be locked up for that in some countries. That is why that statement about the connection between murder and art made me think of net.art. Whenever I come across discussions about new media art or art in the net, I wonder why he or others like him are not mentioned there. This is enough about the 'normal' artworld and net.art I think. Leaves me with a question towards the net.art group that has been bothering me for a while. How can you call your group by this name? Isn't it like some group would call itself the paint.art group, or the video.art group? You seem to be claiming this name, as if it were a new brand to merchandise. There are many outside your group that work in the net, in similar ways. This leads easily to confusions like we just had here on Nettime. I know some of you use this term tongue in cheeck, or play with the notion of being a group yes or no, but to the outside world you appear to be a group. I like the term net.art, especially because of that little dot in it. Can't you rename your 'group' and stick to making net.art? be good * -- * distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission * <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, * collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets * more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body * URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de