Executive director of Rhizome Lauren Cornell and Christopher Pappas responding surprisingly well to having had their picture taken four times.

I missed the VIP portion of Rhizome’s benefit last night, which means I have nothing but second hand reports on the honoring of artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and the founder of del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter. It’s too bad because I hear Lynn Hershman Leeson delivered an incredibly moving speech, though I do have this great photo essay in it’s place. I’m not much of a photographer, so my pictures weren’t taken with any objective in mind, though I hope by some fluke they capture the high spirits of the evening, and general convivial vibe. Photographs after the jump. MORE »

Heather Rasley, Block Me, screencapture AFC

I suspect I have at least a few readers who won’t be sold on Heather Rasley’s webpage multiplying the above [resized] screen capture, but I think it’s hilarious. For one, there are no links on the page, so HeatherRasley is the block herself, but additionally, any replication of that weird duck has to be a good idea. I don’t understand if its expression is fearful-sad or simply cute, and I don’t know why it’s an ecofriendly green, but whatever. It’s perfect.

Some forms, another web page by Rasley with something of a Miranda July feel to it, consists of a multiple choice in which a drop down menu allows the user to view fragments of the sentence I thought, that, I, was, in love with, you. Following this, a viewer can also only check either; but i, and i, which precedes another choice, was wrong, was right. In this case, the confusion expressed in the sentiment reiterates itself in the visual aesthetics of the page. At no point can a viewer read the whole sentence, and at the choices while fixed can indefinitely be changed. Additionally, unlike traditional questionaires and fill in the blanks, designed to give a result, Rasley offers no findings past your own experience.

Other favorite Heather Rasley projects include this politically minded animated gif and two particularly funny collaborations with Zac Davis; a response to net artist Borna Sammack’s statement that he prides himself in having the worst website on the internet first published on Rhizome , and Special Moments, a small sampling of the hundreds of screenshots the artist has taken over the past six months. According to Rasley, ubernerds checking out the PHP, will find the following;

#my name is heather rasley, and i’m online a lot.
#these are special moments, loosely defined.
#zac davis wrote this code to help me show them to you

Let me be the first to attest to the fact that Heather E. Rasley is indeed online a lot; I found her work due to her exceptionally active twitter feed. Though she doesn’t post daily, I also like her blog a lot. Ironically however, it was through her website that I learned she is for hire. I haven’t met Rasley, but I recommend her for anything web related based on the fact that I like her art, and she’s reliably online.

Image copyright GTA IV

A little over a week ago I responded to a few blurbs I’d seen on the web about Grand Theft Auto IV without actually having played the video game. Now you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that issuing an opinion about the poor sexual politics of GTA IV without actually having played it probably won’t lead to the most informed opinions, but that didn’t stop all kinds of commentary from occurring across the web including my own. On a slightly more positive note, these missteps inspired this great bit of feedback on my own blog from artist Joe McKay which I’m republishing as a means of correcting my own post, which incorrectly suggests there’s the same gross level of moral depravity directed towards women as was seen in the GTA III. Also, the game actually sounds quite good. Don’t miss McKay’s full review.

To confuse sex in GTA with a real sexual experience is pretty outrageous. I like the line “if you get through the trailer” - try actually playing the game maybe? I’ve seen 3 types of sexual encounter in the game so far.
- you can get a lap dance in a strip club.
- you can have sex in your car with a prostitute
- you can have sex with the woman you are dating.
I don’t know what constitutes graphic, but there’s no encounter here that shows anything you wouldn’t see on a prime time tv show.
The lap dance is absurd and over the top. Yes, you could commit violence after the dance but there are lots of security in there and you’d never make it out alive. The sex with a prostitute is accompanied by your character talking about how degraded and cheap he feels for doing it. It’s not sexy or romantic, it’s uncomfortable and awkward. It does not glamorize prostitution in any way. Yes, you could be violent towards her after the act, but there is no indication that this is what you should do, and in truth it would be out of character for Niko to do it.
The sex with your girlfriend is done off camera and you have no opportunity to be violent with her. SPOILER - It is you, in fact, who ends up getting heartbroken in the long run.

Niko is closer to Tony Soprano than any other character. He’s a despicable man who does despicable things. He’s also, funny and has his own messed up ethics and values that you come to appreciate. Rockstar isn’t say that Niko isn’t a jerk, they’re saying he’s an interesting complicated jerk. And like Tony Soprano Niko is not you, even though for an hour you may empathies with him.

Executive Director Brian Newman and some of this year’s Media Arts Fellowship recipients 

The Tribeca Film Institute announced the recipients of its 2008 Media Arts Fellowships yesterday at their cocktail gala.  Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, many artists may better recognize the granting organization name Renew Media, which no longer reads in the announcements because it joined the Film Institute earlier in the year.

I attended the reception yesterday, not only because the program awarded $715,000 to film makers and media artists, but because this year I had the pleasure of being a panelist.  This year’s new media grantees include Sharon Daniel, Joe Davis, Josh On, C.E.B. Reas, Michael Rees, and Paul Vanouse. Film and video fellows are Julianna Brannum, Andrew Bujalski, Daniel Carrera, Cherien Dabis, Jacqueline Goss, Judith Helfand, Braden King, Billy Luther, Shirin Neshat, Hugo Perez, Laura Poitras, Dee Rees, Jennifer Reeves, Naomi Uman, Lauren Woods, and Jessica Yu.

On a more personal note, I’d like to thank the Tribeca Film Institute for providing such good lunches while we deliberated over the grantees.  As someone who undoubtedly does think better with a pastry in hand, i’m happy to report that the review process was never hindered by a lack of sugar intake.

Bennett Williamson of the Double Happiness surf blog wrote the following to me last night an email exchange about April 18th’s summation of the Futures of the Internet panel.

I am interested in the question of the internet leveling things vs. the internet having hierarchy, but less politically and more (in a slightly Convergence Culture way) technically. Less interested in the search engines organizing what is supposed to be an “open playing field” and more interested in how our actions/expectations change as ease of information and exposure to a variety of mediums all gets presented through the same browser screen.

Cultural convergences as I understand it typically discusses the intersection between the commercial and amateurism, a popular point of interest for many surf bloggers. I pull it from the quote above if for no other reason than it’s useful to name. Of course, for me, what an artist does with that material in the process of finding it or after seems to be the point at which art happens, an aspect I think many people find confusing simply because there isn’t enough history and discussion about the practice for many viewers to feel comfortable labeling what works for them and what doesn’t.

Adding to Williamson’s comments about the browser, I’d like to begin by noting that medium specificity has always created unique viewer relationships. People experience sculpture differently than painting for example, because there is a different physical and spatial relationship to the object. In many ways these concepts remain the same when viewing art on a computer even if the variables change. So for example, unlike a photograph or a sculpture, a net artist has less control over a viewers interaction with its framing mechanisms. The size of screen or the color of the browser a user choses to view their work in, vary from household to household, and there’s very little an artist can do to customize that experience. Other aspects remain constant — viewers will experience work on a flat screen, images will be always seen at 72 dpi, they will always be framed by a browser, in all likelihood the smallest screen size will be 800 pixels which informs how an artist works.

All of this of course is old hat to designers and net artists, who have been working with this set of problems for a while. However, for those who don’t think about these concerns all that often, it’s worth remarking that a large part of an artist’s web practice — whether they think too much about it or not — is implicitly concerned with image file management and display. In other words, decisions about the size and placement of a jpg or video file are always being made. In this way, I see a lot of aesthetic similarities between net art to collage and photography, because frame, composition, and layering, are always a concern. This of course, doesn’t speak to the element of interactivity or the conceptual concerns of the artist, but since we’re just talking aesthetics here, those topics are beyond the scope of this post.

A series of posts I really enjoy from Loshadka. Check the blog out regularly - there’s usually something good up.

I like that this jpeg is damaged. Image link.

Image link

museumofthevoidafteracidaftersmithsonafterafterrainbowroad.jpg

Cory Arcangel, Image via: Holy Fire

Ed Halter’s brief discussion of Holy Fire, Art of the Digital Age, an exhibition exploring New Media’s entrance into the art market has generated 67 comments to date on the Rhizome blog, undoubtedly the longest and most invested I’ve read to date on the site. To provide a bit of background, Holy Fire’s website divides the concepts of this show up into three parts:

• Art of Our Time (let’s stop labeling ourselves as New Media artists because the medium is familiar to everyone now)

• Collectible Artworks (Holy Fire may be the first exhibition to show only collectible new media artworks already on the art market!)

• New Economy for Autonomy, (The art market can give us freedom, and this show may be the first to help build the “new economy”!)

Clearly the conceit behind the exhibition has a few problems, even if its artist list, which includes Cory Arcangel, JODI, Olia Lialina and Dragon Espenchied, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and Carlo Zanni, to name just a few, suggest there will be a lot of great work. The curators themselves admit as much on the thread, Domenico Quarantax’s first response to Tom Moody’s description of the artworks-already-sold conceit as boring, being “You are right, this is a boring concept.” Naturally he goes on to defend the show, and as a curator that’s to be expected.

The discussion thread is too long to address piece by piece, but it is worth observing the reluctance of many commenters to speak substantively to the show theme of art as purchased commodity, which ultimately resulted in Moody’s visible frustration and in turn, needless hostility towards the artist, presumably for trying to push the issue. Frankly, I’m not sure why granting this point should be so difficult, after all the Joseph DeLappe comment in the thread, “Consider how uninterested we would be in a show about “paintings that sell!””, was proved this Fall with the Met’s hugely unpopular “Age of Rembrandt”. An exhibition organized by which philanthropist donated what, the Negative reviews poured in, not just for its visibly inflated institutional ego and a childish desire to awe people, but for an approach that undermines the art-historical content needed to create a successful exhibition.

In this case, a similar concern exists, because the theme of the show privileges the new materiality of an object over its content and does not provide sufficient historical background (granted, more material may become available at the exhibition, but the website is insufficient.) Perhaps the most promising aspect of the show for this reason lies in the discussion panel, because it gives the participating artists a chance to articulate this history and jump outside a set of curatorial concerns they may not share. On this thread alone, Patrick Lichty, the panel moderator has fleshed out some of this timeline and Olia Lialina, a participating artist and panelist, articulated her opposition to the integration of New Media to contemporary art, saying, “I think that position, spoken by Regine Debaty — forget media, drop new, enjoy art — is sort of reactionary. I don’t enjoy art, I enjoy some of the new media, especially WWW and I find media specificity to be the most exiting thing.”

My own reasons for opposing the erasure of New Media as a label take a slightly different approach only in that unlike Lialina, I support contextualizing New Media within the larger fine art world (I like both). However, I similarly couldn’t be less interested in a conversation that suggests giving up a means of identifying a practice significantly different than traditional mediums, while using the increased saleability of the object as the primary support for that argument. As a sales tool, it may be of some help to gallerists, but as a larger practice it does nothing to move the field forward, because it glosses over the specific skills of the artist. What’s more, the idea that sales should some how become evidence of New Media’s acceptance into the larger fine art world is erroneous. Sure, there’s been progress, some of which has been seen in the market, but it doesn’t negate the fact that when I’ve spoken to journalists this year on the subject of New Media, most begin by asking me (off the record) why well known Fine Art critics don’t know enough to even accept a cursory interview. The fact that critics are paid to know about art and yet have only negligible knowledge of the discipline, is the most basic indicator that New Media is a still peripheral practice within the art world. And Holy Fire won’t change this. Given its location, it may introduce a few attendees of the Art Brussels international contemporary art fair to New Media, but nothing more.

Screengrab AFC

I have an interview with Aron Namenwirth of artMovingProjects up at Rhizome. The teaser below.

Two years ago Caitlin Jones observed in NYFA Current that net artists working in multiple formats were increasingly finding venues to show. Today, the art world is still figuring out how to manage the practicalities of dealer and artist relationships. I spoke with Aron Namenwirth, of artMovingProjects, in an effort to better understand the challenges, and solutions, digital media presents to contemporary galleries with a focus on New Media. - Paddy Johnson

One topic that’s come up on Rhizome’s blog is the rematerialization of art (the idea, according to Ed Halter, “that innovations such as the flat-screen monitor, the digital print, and the editioned DVD, have helped transform immaterial forms like video and net.art into a new generation of physical, sellable objects”), so I wanted to talk to you about this a little. Is it critical to display new media art in the gallery?

I think new media art, like old media, needs a physical place for critical and social discourse. On the computer screen in the privacy of your home, you can do research, and email other professionals on the merits of a piece, but it’s not the same as looking at it in a real space, walking around it, and experiencing it. A lot of new media work requires interaction, and that interaction is mediated by the spectator and the user together.

Tom Moody, OptiDisc, 2007 (Installation at artMovingProjects)

It seems to me that there’s a lot to be said for going into a space, and experiencing that work with someone else too. A dialog can occur, that, as you mention, is more spontaneous. Which I think can be important for new media, particularly because the bias of the medium is “cold.”

Of course, the beauty of some new media art projects is that you can view it anytime you want online.

Right, which presumably has its pluses and minuses for dealers. I know you have been working on a contract between the artist and gallery. I thought maybe we could discuss some of these details a little, because I imagine they’re really important to both artists and dealers.

Sure. The contract I’ve drawn up is an agreement between the artist and artMovingProjects. It’s binding for the life of the working relationship between artist and the gallery, and that’s actually how the document starts. The stipulation is for one piece of the artist’s oeuvre — and that’s what’s so different about it than other gallery contracts. Typically, the contract between the artist and the gallery represents all the artist’s work, and ties the artist to the gallery. In this case, the artist is free to work for many different venues simultaneously, which is a real plus.

Well, there are examples of independently working artists in traditional mediums that seem to do okay, but it is very rare.

Yes, and this is very specifically tied to the intellectual content. It stipulates that the artwork will only be sold with permission of the gallery at the agreed piece in perpetuity….With editions, and video, the dealers typically increase the price of the edition as it is sold, and I feel that that’s not such a great idea in the short term because it creates undue pressure on the collector. Also, part of the contract stipulates that any deals the artist makes outside the agreement involving others will not be supported by the gallery without authorization in writing. Further, should the artwork be sold without permission in writing this will end the relationship between the artist and the gallery.

To read the full piece click here.

Paul Slocum, You’re Not My Father, Screengrabs AFC

Paul Slocum informs Networked Music Review blogger Helen Thorington that Full House re-enactors can’t be bought for 80 bucks, but tend to bite when offered $150.00. Launched this Friday, Slocum’s video, You’re Not My Father, remakes a scene from Full House featuring Candice Cameron and Dave Coulier with the paid help of actors and fans. The new vignettes take place in a photocopy depot, an actors studio, and array of suburban homes, none matching the exact rhythm of the original dialog delivery.

By layering the original and re enacted pieces, Slocum’s video may reveal a collective sympathy towards an essentially empty scene, but its real virtuosity lays in the musical composition. Carefully building a nuanced soundtrack whereby even the collective voice of its re-enactors never drowns out the source material, what might be an otherwise banal video collage eloquently shows our personal response to nostalgic ephemera to be a whisper relative to the flat and highly constructed voice of pop culture.

Screengrab AFC

Ouch! After observing the effective shut down of White Column’s slide registry for emerging artists under the tenor of Matthew Higgs, artist Martin Bromirski decided to update his work. Presumably in response the director’s statement “I don’t sympathize with empowerment, survival, battle, frustration and struggle” and “my practice as a curator is largely selfish. I make exhibitions that I want to see” the artist added a few photographs he thought might appeal more to Mr. Higgs.

Screen Capture: Marisa Olson

For the sizable chunk of my readership who don’t follow Nasty Net conversation threads, a heated exchange and temporary shut down of the blog (Nasty Nets was replaced by a giant puppy for two days,) ensued after I challenged Jason Kottke on the idea that group curated blogs, Nasty Nets among them, represent a new and improved form of art curating. The point of the original post was both to point out the issues for the reader in group blogs, and to challenge the notion that design and fine art were one giant interchangeable field of study. Nasty Nets was mentioned, both because the increased number of users has introduced a slew of problems normally associated with user blogs (ie too many posts to follow the blog properly, watered down content), but also because I think the net community, myself included, has at times mislabeled the blog as a whole as art (a mistake I ironically make in my own post.)

As for what happened on the thread, one member reacted poorly to the criticism, which since spawned a chain of heated commentary, including my own over reaction, and some selected blinking Dre lyrics. In short, none of the discussion of this nature has been very constructive. Since the original post was meant to engender conversation, as opposed to being divisive, I reopen the thread with that spirit.

Related: Tom Moody’s constructive post on VVORK, Nasty Nets, Your Daily Awesome

Screengrab AFC

May this post record my failure to post only between working hours this week.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Rhizome announced the appointment of two staff writers today! William Hanley and Caitlin Jones (my favorite critic working today) will be contributing daily posts to the site adding original content to their former reblog and news site. They’ve also adjusted their design to fit the new content, so you’ll note that reblogged and Raw material is distinguished by a yellow trap line and giant quotation marks, where as the blog frames all original content in blue. The move is a very important one for Rhizome; not only are they a little easier on the eyes (hurray wider column width!), but the new content will further develop their distinctive voice and indentity within the larger Fine Arts Community.

Marisa Olson, Free Gift Economy, 2007, screengrab AFC

Last Thursday I posted a link to Marisa Olson’s Free Gift Economy under the Fresh Links section of this blog, with a short description explaining that that she had compiled a collection of free gifts for Facebook (and where ever else you might use these images.) and that I liked the literalization of the idea that iconography is a gift to the viewer.  Unfortunately, word count limitations of Fresh Links (and admittedly my own occasional short comings) sometimes do a disservice to the work meant to be highlighted.  What I did not have space to highlight about this work is that it addresses the issue of having to pay a buck for what amounts to stalk imagery on Facebook.  I also rather enjoy that the banality of the technique used to “free” these images up –simply posting carved out screengrabs to flickr — matches the banality of the images themselves.  Marisa Olson wisely expanded upon her work in the comments section of the fresh link. I’ve reposted her thoughts below, since I think they aid the understanding of the work.

…I’m definitely interested in the context of these being lifted.’ I posted a link to one on a friend’s Facebook page (a link because, unlike Myspace, FB doesn’t allow the embedding of images, which is one of the major losses that concerned me here), and his response was “Nice. A dollar for a JPEG? What are they smoking?” Though I kind of agree that it’s absurd, I don’t want to begrudge anyone the making of a buck. However, it’s worth pointing out that these images don’t circulate like JPGs or GIFs. I had to pull all of these in carefully-carved screen-grabs because Facebook doesn’t allow one to see and copy the code for these images. So they are not hotlinkable. Until now! And I love the idea of them having a life on MySpace, or other sites. Or even offline! Sharing and exchange are such a huge part of the way that I and the members of my personal “social network” (p.k.a. friends) experience the net. The economy for Facebook’s gifts didn’t reflect that, so I thought I’d facilitate it.

Something about Even Roth and Ben Engebreth’s open source project The White Glove Tracking gets under my skin, and like virtually everything else that evokes that turn of phrase, it’s not in a good way. Granted, the stated objectives sound great, which I suspect sold quite a few people initially, but just what are we looking at? Roth and Engebreth explain,

“W.G.T. is an effort to isolate just the white glove from this moment in pop-culture history. Rather then write unnecessarily complex code to find the glove in every frame of the video I am asking for the assistance of 10,060 individual internet users to simply click and drag a box around the glove in one frame. In the end this data will be shared freely for all to download, visualize, and use as an input into other digital systems”.

Now, Roth and Engebreth certainly nail what the Internet does best with this statement — engage over qualified geeks to document trivial minutia in their free time — however it remains to be seen if anything interesting will be generated from this project, and it’s not looking good for the pair. To begin with a small but important point, I can’t imagine either artist ever had any illusions that they would actually solicit the help of 10,000 plus unique users, and indeed their list of the 100 best contributers suggest that not only did they only solicit the help of a few hundred friends, but that the combined results of the top three participants exceed the number of isolated frames needed. So far W.G.T. findings show what anyone familiar with digital video editing tools would have suspected — that one person could have completed the project in less than a week. It also illustrates the self evident point that you really don’t need too much incentive to waste a whole lot of time on the Internet.

As far as what’s been done with the data since, I have to say I haven’t noticed anyone’s done anything that approaches the realm of good visualization, and frankly, it’s not surprising given such an uninspiring pop culture reference. In the game of citing interesting entertainment phenomenon, it’s hard to go lower on the totem pole than Billy Jean, the anthem of dorm room celebrations across North America. Focusing on Jackson’s glove only adds to the banality of this project since as a Halloween party prop it comes second only to vampire teeth and witches hats in it’s popularity. It’s possible the artists would tell me I am a pop culture snob who is missing the point — the project glorifies the mundane — but the bottom line isn’t that the source material is too well known to be interesting, but rather, that given the project’s parameters, its commonality gives the subject matter the feel of something chosen almost at random. And that’s a big problem because it only underscores the contributer results, calling into question the rationale for asking a community to collect and work with the gathered data in the first place. As far as I can tell, the only place Roth and Engebreth’s voice shows up with any success is in their website design, and even that is pretty basic.

The White Glove Tracking project is a Rhizome and Eyebeam commission.

I have a lot less trouble embracing the candied music and bad lyrics of pop stars than I do of bands that run around sporting the label “underground” to describe what they do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a sucker for the dance beat of Cursor Miner’s song war games used in Torrent Raider’s promo video above, but it’s hard not to feel guilty about liking it when the lyrics of the first chorus read:

No more fighting one to one,

Just a program to be run.

Press the button watch it go.

Set you equal to zero.

I mean with lyrics like this you have ask if the band is even trying. The project itself of course is a little more complicated than the music, but I do wish that creator Aaron Meyers had found a slightly better track than what is provided by Kraftwerk meets Gary Newman/Tubeway Army, meets Autechre. A Rhizome commission, Torrent Raider largely targets tech and copyright geeks asking users of bit torrent networks to collect evidence against their copyright challenging peers in order to reap bounties. As far as concepts go it’s pretty good, but the video is a little cheesy sci-fi for my tastes, and the visualization doesn’t really tell us very much about how the project works. My hope for the final game is that it manages to look a little less like computer tech boy candy, and a little more like the piece I know I’d want to play.

Additional note: Commentor Peter Brinson observes on Aaron Meyer’s site that a higher resolution video would benefit the piece and increase the popularity of the game. I have to say, I whole heartedly agree.

My next interview in the series Art Intercom is up on the icommons blog. This week I interview artist Jaka Zeleznikar. Check it out!

Much like Robert Rauchenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing, Jaka Železnikar often begins with pre-existing work and then transforms, sometimes even destroys it to make new art. Such studio methods can create a wide range of works, a number of which I discussed with Železnikar over the phone last week. The majority of the discussion centres on what he will be making at the iCommons Summit and his online works, though he has an array of excellent offline pieces that can be seen here.

AFC: So you do a lot of on and offline work. To make the interview a little more concise I’m just going to focus on the online work for now, and go through a few pieces on your site. Your most recent piece Letters, that’s a Firefox extension right? Now I haven’t installed this in my browser - frankly I’m a little fearful to do so…

Jaka: (laughing) It doesn’t bite!

AFC: Well, I’m a little worried about adding any additional distractions to the ones I already have to my work… Can you tell me how it works?

Jaka: It’s an online visual poem in the form of an extension for the Firefox browser. If you look at the project page there is a rotating letter ‘A’. Okay so you’ve got the whole alphabet – actually a mix of the English and Slovenian alphabet in rotating letters. Regardless of which page you are looking at, it adds this alphabet over the page, and then you can move letters around or if you type, these letters will appear and disappear, and you can make them move around the page by themselves. Plus I made a little button so you can switch it off to surf normally.

AFC: [laughing] How kind of you! So do you work with this Firefox extension regularly?

To read the rest of the interview click here.

Those using newsreaders will need to click through to view the above video.

Experimental composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock known for his thick loud drones and semi abstract videos recently added me to his mailing list which has thus far served the primary purpose of reminding me of how much I’m missing. For example, if you happen to be in Krems, Austria today, you can watch his premiere of “Stosspeng” at the donau festival, a piece for two guitars performed by companions Susan Stenger and Robert Poss, otherwise you’ll have to wait until the next time I get a list of events he’s playing that are more local. Adding to New Yorker frustration that the festival takes place somewhere other than here, I’ll note that also on the program for this concert is Throbbing Gristle, KTL, Haswell and Hecker, and the Boredoms.

For the 98% of my readers who won’t be able to attend the above event I managed to cull a few truly great Phill Niblock resources from the web for your perusal. First up, in what is undoubtedly the most informative interview I’ve read this year, Bob Gilmore (with Guy de Bievre) talks with Niblock about his current(ish) exhibition at London’s Sketch Gallery, the development of his career, and his approach to art making. I particularly enjoyed the recollection that when Hermann Nitsch was in town they had spilled blood all over the Kitchen’s floor thus rendering it unusable, thereby prompting his famous loft concerts, and the discussion Niblocks interest in making work that doesn’t have development. Second, I found a great quick time excerpt from Niblock’s video The Movement of People Working on Experimental Intermedia, which demonstrates this desire. I’m inclined to say relatively little more about this piece since the title basically describes it. I suppose it goes without saying though that if you don’t like drone music you may not find much interest in this work. Finally, I’ve posted Phil Niblock’s 1966 Magic Sun above. An “avant jazz cinema classic”, Niblock uses negative filming techniques, often shooting close ups of the instruments and hands of the Sun Ra Arkestra!

Related: Paper Thin Walls, Drifts and Drones.

Screengrab AFC

I don’t know if you can consider the fact that new media artist John Michael Boling just uploaded another great piece to his website breaking news, since he’s been making roughly one awesome piece a month for a while now, but 20 Years Ago Today certainly ranks high amongst my favorites, so it makes today’s headlines. In this piece Boling runs a banal youtube video capturing street traffic in the 80’s across the screen indefinitely. Want to stop the youtube video from scrolling? Well, you can’t. Just like time, it keeps on moving, just like life experience, it repeats itself indefinitely. You can turn the sound off if you happen to have the reflexes of Billy Mitchell, (the first to play a perfect game of pacman), an aspect that vaguely reminds me of Carousel, a piece which suspends various carcasses and a TV on a rotating apparatus, so if you want to watch his video you had to follow it around. Nauman’s piece of course speaks to the connection of socially accepted forms of behavior and hunting, so it’s not like I’m speaking of a deep thematic relationship between the two works, but more to the ways that the piece actively engages the viewer.

It’s probably impossible for a blogger to watch a movie about traffic and draw comparisons to their site stats into the meaning, though if this is a part of the piece, I imagine it’s not overly important. The traffic of the street is a little too constant to serve as a metaphor for the web, but I do enjoy the fact that the piece works just as well for the simile not holding any interest. Internet shop talk is as fascinating as say, watching street traffic on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Editors note: Unrelated to this post, apologies in advance for what will be a week of slow comment moderation and posting. I’m out of town again today and Friday.

Image via Tom Moody

Tom Moody announced yesterday that artMovingProjects will open an exhibit featuring his blog May 19th, which has of course prompted the question of how the hell you can sell such a thing. Commentor p.d. has offered “to work out some super complicated per-sale pro-rata profit sharing scheme for contributors during the exhibition,” which already sounds more awesomely convoluted than I care to think about in advance of seeing the answer. Whatever the case, in a perfect world Moody would at least receive some sort of stipend during the exhibition for the work he does. Klaus Biesenbach, head curator of New Media at MoMA meet artMovingProjects.

For those of you just joining us, over the weekend I participated in a youtube, pitting my video selections against 19 other contestants at the New York Underground Film Festival’s Tube Time. As far as strategies go that evening I learned what would have been obvious to all of you: No matter how much you love a video, if it has 15 million views on youtube, it probably shouldn’t be in your cue. Deemed by the audience as old news, Shoes got me eliminated in the first round after my first choice, (Yatta) failed to play. As a contestant I can’t actually report on the event, but I will say that Rich Juzwiak won the event, besting runner up John Michael Boling with the brilliant video Why Must I Cry? by Reh Dogg. Kevin McGarry tells me a full list of links with all the contestants videos will be uploaded onto the site, but in the meantime here are a few of the videos I enjoyed the most.

Contestant Rich Juzwiak’s Why Must I Cry by Reh Dogg

Contestant John Michael Boling’s Synth Coke

Contestant Jessica Delfino’s, Jaime Pereira’s Christmas Tree, by MittyMoo

Contestant John Seroff’s Valentine for Perfect Strangers, by Ben Coonley. Incidentally Coonley was also a contestant but was eliminated in the first round, after the audience failed to respond to a video that required 3-D glasses.

Finally, you’ll have to excuse this bit of self indulgence, but I was particularly saddened by not being able to play Ghengis Khan - Moskau, the disco version.