Reblogged from Art in the Age of Global Weirding at Art in the Age of Global Weirding

Here’s what I propose: Blaine’s e-harangue did bring up some valid points despite it’s shrewery, and, yes, last night’s session lacked some focus and perhaps we were a bit intellectually lackadaisical (although keep in mind we were drunkenly watching Kesha videos a month ago), but I think we may want to wait until the final 20 minutes or so of Blaine’s Krauss evening on the 5th - which he had better freaking lead with aplomb — to discuss what may be systemic challenges that inevitably pose themselves in a group such as this one. Examples: do we limit our discussion to explicitly net.art, or new media curating oriented topics exclusively, for example, or are there other, less obvious, but also fruitful inroads to shedding light on the state(s) of things?  I liked Blaine’s Coetzee recommendation a few weeks ago, but it was in the afternoon.  This is basically why I keep stubbornly defending Alex Singh’s conservative sentiments, BTW. Or do we want to further explore the field of new media art writing? I’m not even afraid to earnestly pose the question: what is this ‘new media’ anyway?; it’s a question not unlike ‘what is the contemporary?’ since it can nominally refer to any media new to it’s time (Krauss’ substitution “technical support” doesn’t help here).  The new media definition we agree on is — I claim, for the time being until I’m seduced by something that sounds more truthy — constituted by an agreement on certain familial characteristics based on notable precedents ie. Paik, Vostell, Rokeby (this, now that I’ve reread it, the neo-Wittgensteinian definition I mentioned yesterday, proposed in the 50s by Morris Weitz, whereby there is no logically reachable single definition of art using Symbolic Logic). I think we need to go backwards in order to go forwards. An example: Brad thinks the author’s intentions (at least maintaining them) don’t matter all that much, in effect, in the era of the DV-cam, YouTube, and fan art.  Well, I learned that in 1954 one Beardsley, and one Wimsatt, together wrote an essay, The Intentional Fallacy, pointed at literary criticism of the time, but it seems at a glance potentially relevant to mash-ups and walking into a gallery show not having any idea what’s going on unless you’ve read up on it. I wrote a note to Ed Winkleman the other day remarking that had I not known the premise of Chris K. Ho’s “regionalism” show of conceptual paintings, I would’ve thought I’d walked into the Keltie Ferris opening by accident. Maybe someone like Friedrich Kittler could help us re-think, via his sweeping yet sober (sober on the page!) historical accounts of technology and socio-technical systems, not just ‘art since Nam Jun Paik’ or wherever we each draw our vague lines.  One of Kittler’s provocative theses, actually, is that all ‘new media’ art, including everything back to and beyond Les Paul’s development of the electrically amplified guitar, should be called ‘computer art’, because it’s the nature of the computerized system which is uppermostly essential to it’s functionality. In conclusion, for this coming Sunday if anyone is interested, we could start afresh, somewhere tangibly, Teutonically, solid: with Friedrich Kittler’s essay, There Is No Software: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=74 (8 pages tops) I can and would like to meet Sunday eve or earlier as I fly out Monday morning, and to keep it simple, modest, but rigorous and high horsepower.  So let’s focus on a single text. We could meet at my place if anyone’s interested?  I’m just near the 68th street 6 stop, which I know seems like half way to Montreal for some of you.  We have wine, cheese, and adjustable lighting. I’ll be inviting two rigorous friends of my own.  Or, I’ll be reading alone. P.S. regarding Lauren’s show, which I thought was GOOD - I’m card-carrying pro new NewMu - my criticism would be with her confused political invocations: I won’t elaborate in THIS e-harangue, but there is a reason, beyond coincidence, that the in front window of the New Museum had a display featuring Lessig’s Free Culture next to Slavoj Zizek’s Living in the End Times — two books that are basically incommensurable in their politics but which would speciously seem to stand for similar values. No. And you know Lauren was reading both because she freaking used the Rumsfeld joke in her catalog essay!!! BTW, here is Lev Manovich’s Top Ten New Media Art Texts 1970-2000 http://www.manovich.net/digitalsalon.htm Blegh Paris