NEWSgrist: *Eryk Salvaggio=RGB* Vol.4, no.9 (May. 5, 2003)

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NEWSgrist

where spin is art

http://newsgrist.net

{bi-weekly news digest}

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Vol.4, no.9 (May. 5, 2003)

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CONTENTS:

- *Splash* Eryk Salvaggio=RGB (Dancing Pixels)

- *NEWSgrist’s Underbelly* post your own

- *Quote/s* culture gangs?

- *Url/s* Vuk Cosic's History of Art for the Intelligence Community

- *The Death of Theory* according to theorists...

- *Killer Video* The Art of Terror

- *Wedge of Light* Libeskind on the defensive

- *Art Cartel* the looting of Baghdad

- *Digital Dada* JODI comes to NYC

- *Book Grist* Grand Street gets webby

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*Splash* http://newsgrist.net

Eryk Salvaggio= RGB (Dancing Pixels)

...plus, links to other recent projects:

Turbulence Guest Curator: Eryk Salvaggio
http://turbulence.org/curators/salvaggio

“DUCHAMP’S IDEAL CHILDREN’S CHILDREN: NET.ART’S BRAT PACK”
Eryk Salvaggio presents the works of four net.artists under the age

of 25 as well as the interviews he conducted with each of them.

They are Cory Arcangel, Kalx.com, Geoff Lillemont, and Michael

Mandiberg.

“It was Vuk Cosic who said that net.artists were Duchamp’s Ideal

Children. I should be clear. This collection is not called “Duchamp's

Ideal Grandchildren. There are several reasons for this important

distinction of terms. For one, it is a collection of interviews and

some new work with artists who are under 25, and working with

the web, or in the tradition of the web. We are the descendants

of JODI, of Vuk Cosic, Heath Bunting, and Alexei Shulgin—even

though many of us were working at the same time. But, it doesn't

matter: for the sake of compliance with the established histories

of “Heroic” net.art, we will say simply: Here is a sampling of the

‘next’ (current) generation of internet artists.”
--from Salvaggio's introduction

splash archived at: http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_RGB.html

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*NEWSgrist’s Underbelly*

Check for new posts, or post your own news, press releases,

urls, opinions, rants, in the Underbelly : http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=870870569

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*Quote/s*

1)

"I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some

kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication,

not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they

have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

-- Sander L. Gilman, (intellectual )Professor of liberal arts and

sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

{see *The Death of Theory* below}

2)

"Liberals and conservatives are two gangs who have intimidated

rational, normal thinking beings into not having a voice on television or

in the culture... [They] are paradigms that mean nothing to anyone

other than the media."

--- Jon Stewart ; see : « Jon Stewart’s Perfect Pitch, »

Frank Rich, NYTimes 4/20/03 :

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/arts/20RICH.html

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*Url/s*

Vuk Cosic's History of Art for the Intelligence Community

http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/intelligence/

"History of Art for the Intelligence Community" is technically

described as a front end for Carnivore, the project that mimics

FBIs net surveillance software: http://rhizome.org/carnivore/index.php3

The web usage data of the surveillance target is being displayed

via well known masterpieces by Cezanne and Van Gogh and others

so that the reading of the painting gives the trained operative a

clear insight into the targets web activities.

The project for Medienturm, http://www.medienturm.at/mt/artist/about

will consist of a web site where the web user will have a chance to

follow in real time the web and e-mail usage of few art related

institutions. The data will be displayed in Flash movies based on

recognizable masterpieces.

The launch of the project is planned within the context of the

Steirische Herbst and is being staged at the Neue Galerie in Graz.

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*The Death of Theory*

The Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn't Matter

By EMILY EAKIN

NYTimes, Apr. 19, 2003

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/19/arts/19CRIT.html

These are uncertain times for literary scholars. The era

of big theory is over. The grand paradigms that swept

through humanities departments in the 20th century —

psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction,

post-colonialism — have lost favor or been abandoned.

Money is tight. And the leftist politics with which

literary theorists have traditionally been associated

have taken a beating.

In the latest sign of mounting crisis, on April 11 the

editors of Critical Inquiry, academe's most prestigious

theory journal, convened the scholarly equivalent of an

Afghan-style loya jirga. They invited more than two dozen

of America's professorial elite, including Henry Louis

Gates Jr., Homi Bhabha, Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson,

to the University of Chicago for what they called "an

unprecedented meeting of the minds," an unusual two-hour

public symposium on the future of theory.

Understandably, expectations were high. More than 500

people, mostly students and faculty, squeezed into a

lecture hall to hear what the mandarins had to say, while

latecomers made do with a live video feed set up in the lobby.

In his opening remarks, W. J. T. Mitchell, the journal's

editor and a professor of English and art history at Chicago,

set an upbeat tone for the proceedings. "We want to be the

Starship Enterprise of criticism and theory," he told the audience.

But any thought that this would be a gleeful strategy session

with an eye toward extending theory's global reach, or an

impassioned debate over the merits of, say, Derrida and Lacan,

was quickly dispelled.

When John Comaroff, a professor of anthropology and sociology

at Chicago who was serving as the event's moderator, turned

the floor over to the panelists, for several moments no one

said a word.

Then a student in the audience spoke up. What good is

criticism and theory, he asked, if "we concede in fact how

much more important the actions of Noam Chomsky are in the

world than all the writings of critical theorists combined?"

After all, he said, Mr. Fish had recently published an essay

in Critical Inquiry arguing that philosophy didn't matter at all.

Behind a table at the front of the room, Mr. Fish shook his

head. "I think I'll let someone else answer the question,"

he said.

So Sander L. Gilman, a professor of liberal arts and

sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, replied

instead. "I would make the argument that most criticism —

and I would include Noam Chomsky in this — is a poison pill,"

he said. "I think one must be careful in assuming that

intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the

track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only

have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but

they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

Mr. Fish nodded approvingly. "I like what that man said,"

he said. "I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual

work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people

against the decision to go into the academy because they

hope to be effective beyond it."

During the remainder of the session, the only panelist to

venture a defense of theory — or mention a literary genre —

was Mr. Bhabha. "There are a number of people around the

table here and a number of people in the audience, in fact

most of you here are evidence that intellectual work has

its place and its uses," he insisted. "Even a poem in its

own oblique way is deeply telling of the lives of the world

we exist in. You can have poems that are intimately linked

with political oppositional movements, poems that actually

draw together people in acts of resistance."

But no one spoke up to endorse this claim. In fact, for a

conference officially devoted to theory, theory itself got

very little airtime. For more than an hour, the panelists

bemoaned the war in Iraq, the Bush administration, the

ascendancy of the right-wing press and the impotence of the

left. Afterward, Mr. Gates, who arrived late because he had

been attending a conference in Wisconsin, said: "For a

moment, I thought I was in the wrong room. I thought we

would be talking about academic jargon. Instead, it was

Al Qaeda and Iraq — not that there's anything wrong with

that."

Finally, a young man with dreadlocks who said he was a

graduate student from Jamaica asked, "So is theory simply

just a nice, simple intellectual exercise, or something

that should be transformative?"

Several speakers weighed in before Mr. Gates stood up. As

far as he could tell, he said, theory had never directly

liberated anyone. "Maybe I'm too young," he said. "I really

didn't see it: the liberation of people of color because of

deconstruction or poststructuralism."

If theory's political utility is this dubious, why did the

theorists spend so much time talking about current events?

Catharine R. Stimpson, a panelist and dean of the Graduate

School of Arts and Science at New York University, offered

one, well, theory. "This particular group of intellectuals,"

she said, "has a terror of being politically irrelevant."

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*Killer Video*

"BIN LADEN IS BASICALLY A VIDEO ARTIST":

GROYS ON ART AND TERRORISM

In an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, theorist

Boris Groys claims that terrorists are more interested in

"occupying" the media than any other space:

http://www.frankfurter-rundschau.de/ressorts/kultur_und_medien/feuilleton/?cnt=200009

Artforum Online: 04/27/03 News, By Jennifer Allen

http://www.artforum.com/news/week=200317#news4696

"We speak mostly about the occupation of geographical space,

[like] the occupation of Iraq," says the fifty-six-year-old professor,

who teaches at the Karlsruhe Academy of Design. "Media space is

also a strategic space, and the attackers [of September 11]

occupied it—for months, only these images were to be seen. The

question is: How do I bring myself into the media space, and how

do I occupy it, how do I acquire and exercise media power? It's a

question that concerns all of us. It all begins with the videos from

bin Laden."

Echoing comments by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and the

artist Damien Hirst—who were both criticized for likening the

attacks of September 11 to a work of art—Groys situates the

actions of bin Laden in the realm of art. "Bin Laden is basically a

video artist who produces videos and distributes them through

Al-Jazeera and other media concerns," says Groys in the interview.

"From the beginning, it was about a new video and media art at

the level of the exercise of power, and a strategic game."

But Groys adds that bin Laden cannot be understood as an artist in

the traditional sense of the term. When asked if describing the

media realm as art makes the discussion of art obsolete, Groys

answers in the negative.

"We speak about art insofar as specific actions, things in a

tradition, are placed in an archive, and one lays claim to the

archive to prove one's existence within it. This claim is not situated

there; therefore I would not say that bin Laden—or the attackers of

September 11—are artists in the sense of the Western concept of

art. Rather, they were people who operated not in the archive but

in the factual functioning media world as a field of the spectacular.

To what extent they appeared to be interesting artists beyond the

attacks—namely, to what extent what they staged will be placed in

a tradition—that's another question."

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*Wedge of Light*

Libeskind Defends His Design

By Katia Hetter
Newsday, Staff Writer, May 1, 2003, 6:08 PM EDT
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-lite0502,0,4516336.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left

Facing charges that his "Wedge of Light" plaza will be cast in shadows,

World Trade Center architect Daniel Libeskind defended the feasability

of his proposal as workable, calling his latest critic "one of the sore

losers."

The Wedge of Light would create an open plaza, where sunlight would

shine "without shadow" each Sept. 11, between 8:46 a.m.,when the

first plane struck, and 10:28 a.m., when the second building collapsed,

Libeskind said.

Brooklyn architect Eli Attia, a constant critic of the design process, said

his study showed that shadows could be cast over the Wedge of Light

plaza by the Millennium Hilton Hotel and other buildings beyond the

16-acre site.

"This is only a small part of the deficiencies that are going on," said

Attia, who has his own design for the trade center site.

He has called for an open design competition since November 2001.

"The entire process has to be scrapped and start a new one,

guaranteeing that the best that America has to offer would be built,"

he said.

"What I proposed is true and stays exactly as it is," said Libeskind, who

won the trade center design competition in February. "We're working to

make it very precise. The Wedge of Light is determined by two angles,

the angle when first plane stuck at 8:46 a.m., when the second building

fell at 10:28 a.m."

The proposal of a sunlit plaza captured the imagination of many, making

its way into Gov. George Pataki's April 24 speech on his priorities for

Lower Manhattan. Several of Libeskind's supporters defended the design

yesterday after the New York Time's story of Attia's charges.

"I don't know that the wedge of light was necessarily the be-all and

end-all," Bloomberg said yesterday. "The governor and I thought this

was the right plan. These plans have to evolve as they work on them."

The Wedge of Light defines the space "in a way that is so elegant and

simple, saying something happened here, at a particular time and

history, like a Mayan ruin or Aztec pyramid," said Ric Bell, executive

director of the American Institute of Architects New York chapter.

Nikki Stern, a family member who lost her husband, Jim Potorti, on

Sept. 11, said she saw no purpose in "carping over specific details of

a plan that is meant to be interpretive."

Libeskind is producing an animation to more clearly demonstrate how

the Wedge of Light works, said Matt Higgins, a spokesman for the

Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which oversaw the design

competition.

"It's inevitable that more explanation will be necessary to show how

certain elements of the plan are realized and Daniel will elaborate as

we move forward," Higgins said. The Port Authority of New York and

New Jersey also issued a statement supportive of Libeskind's plans

and the need to work together to build it.

Other sources familiar with Libeskind's plan say the light created by the

placement of buildings at Ground Zero will overpower any shadows

from the Millennium Hilton Hotel and other nearby buildings.

Former LMDC lead architect Alexander Garvin, who oversaw the design

competition and asked Libeskind to enter it, dismissed Attia's criticism,

claiming that the sunlight effect on Sept. 11 is not its most important

contribution to the site.

"The Wedge of Light, in my judgment, is completely brilliant, not

because of the presence or absence of shadows, but because it gives

Lower Manhattan a new main square with a transit station," said Garvin,

who said he did not conduct a shadow study of the site.

Attia's criticisms sound like "sour grapes," said another critic, who didn't

want to be identified.

Attia responded "That's absolute nonsense. I was asked to participate

(in the LMDC design study) and I refused. I'll be happy to participate in

an open competition, and I hope I will win, but only through a

competition."

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*Art Cartel*

U.N. cultural organization urges Security Council

to ban import of looted Iraqi artifacts

EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

May 1, 2003

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/04/30/international1928EDT0861.DTL

(04-30) 16:28 PDT UNITED NATIONS (AP) --

The U.N. cultural organization urged the Security Council on Wednesday

to adopt a resolution requiring all countries to ban the import of

thousands of artifacts looted from Iraqi museums.

UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said 97 countries are

parties to the 1970 convention against illegal trafficking of cultural

goods, but a U.N. resolution would be legally binding on all 191 U.N.

member states.

"If there is a new Security Council resolution ... demanding all countries

to introduce an embargo on importation of Iraqi cultural goods, that

would be a very important step forward," he told a news conference.

In trying to recover antiquities stolen from Iraq's national museum in

Baghdad and other cultural sites, Matsuura said it is "very crucial" to

keep the stolen goods from leaving Iraq and to prevent them from

getting to potential buyers in other countries.

Matsuura met with Secretary-General Kofi Annan late Wednesday to

discuss the thefts and seek his support for a U.N. resolution.

Immediately after the massive looting, Annan appealed for the return of

the historic artifacts and backed international efforts to prevent trade in

stolen Iraqi objects, saying "their loss is a wound inflicted on all

humankind."

At a meeting in London on Tuesday, the world's top curators said

antiquities are still being smuggled out of the country three weeks after

Baghdad fell and urged U.S. authorities to tighten border controls. The

UNESCO chief said stolen goods have been confiscated in Jordan, the

United States and other countries.

The curators said professional thieves appear to have slipped in among

the bands of looters in Iraqi museums -- but Matsuura said the looters

took advantage of the professionals.

"My impression is these lootings have been done by well organized

bandits and gangs," the UNESCO chief said. "Many Iraqi civilians joined

them to loot other goods."

Earlier this week, however, U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of

coalition forces in Iraq, said the looting in Baghdad did not appear to

be the work of organized thieves.

One of the major problems is that nobody knows precisely what was

stolen so it is "very, very urgent to establish a database" of Iraq's

cultural treasures, Franks said.

UNESCO is currently negotiating with U.S. officials to send a small

mission of experts to Baghdad and other cultural sites in Iraq in early

May to help prepare a database, Matsuura said. "We are waiting for

a reply."

He noted that the market in stolen antiquities amounts to $5 billion

a year, second only to drugs.

"What is crucial is to mobilize international efforts ... to recover what

has been stolen," he said.

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*Digital Dada*

ARTS ONLINE

Deliberately Distorting the Digital Mechanism

By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL

NYTimes Apr 21, 2003

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/arts/21MIRA.html?pagewanted=all&position=

While tinkering recently with one of the first personal computers from

the 1980's, the digital artists Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans took

a look at its technical tutorial. As Mr. Paesmans recalled, the on-screen

guide delivered a reassuring message: "Remember, don't be scared.

You cannot do anything wrong on this computer."

Since 1994 Ms. Heemskerk and Mr. Paesmans, collaborating under the

name Jodi, have created a series of Internet-based artworks that

deliberately cause computers to do the wrong thing. Viewers of these

online works will find their screens filled with meaningless text and

needlessly blinking graphics. Web-browser windows spawn smaller

windows that race maddeningly around the screen. Links that appear to

lead somewhere yield dead ends. Like a sci-fi thriller, this could be

delightful, except that the underlying premise is of computers in

complete control. A terrifying thought.

Beginning tomorrow Jodi will be the subject of a retrospective exhibition,

"install.exe," at Eyebeam, a new-media art center in Manhattan. It was

organized at Plug.In, a new-media art center in Basel, Switzerland,

where it was shown last fall before it traveled to Berlin. The exhibit,

which runs through June 14 at Eyebeam's gallery at 540 West 21st

Street, contains nearly two dozen works. Many of them can also be

viewed online at http://www..jodi.org, http://asdfg.jodi.org,

http://404.jodi.org, http://wrongbrowser.com and

http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org.

Prepare to be disoriented, if not stuck, in a World Wide Web gone awry.

The Web is less than a decade old, so it might seem premature to

declare that Jodi's works are classics of Internet art. Yet these artists

were probably the first to use the Internet's own visual language to

create what are in effect paintings of the Internet landscape. They did so

by exposing the hidden computer code that makes Web pages do what

they do, then altered its odd texts and strange symbols so that they

became abstract art. They also took Web features and simulated what

would happen if they ran amok. For people who assume that a

computer is a benign dictator, these were reminders that the slightest

transgression could turn it into a deranged despot.

Like Cezanne's late works in which the raw canvas is often part of the

painting, Jodi's sites force viewers to become conscious of the Web's

appealing surface and the digital mechanism that lurks below.

Annette Schindler, the director of Plug.In and the co-curator of "install

.exe," said, "You think you know your computer, but really all you know

is a surface on your screen." This state of affairs is based on the foolish

hope that our technology, like our cars, will always operate properly, so

that we never have to look at the oily, gritty bits under the hood. But

Jodi subverts this notion. Visitors to the duo's Web sites, Ms. Schindler

said, "immediately have the experience that Jodi wants to give them,

which is, `What if everything goes wrong?' "

In questioning the Internet's rules, Jodi has had a huge influence on

digital artists.

"They are the only Internet-based artists that have created a truly new

aesthetic," said the male half of the anonymous digital-art duo known

as 0100101110101101.org in a recent phone call. "They have

influenced almost everything on the Internet that is related to art," he

said. "It's like trying to find a painter who was not influenced by

Michelangelo."

Ms. Heemskerk and Mr. Paesmans were resident artists at San Jose

State University in the heart of Silicon Valley in 1994, at the start of the

dot-com era. One day while working on a Web project they accidentally

omitted a bracket from the computer code, and the resulting Web page

was a messy jumble of text and characters. They liked what they saw

and began to experiment.

Mr. Paesmans said they initially wondered if it was ethical to transmit

the "wrong" code to others. "But we found out quite fast that when

you make mistakes in this code, it doesn't affect anything other than

the image it creates," he said. They began to put their works online,

where the results were intensely perplexing to those expecting clear

information and helpful links. They became even more interested in the

Internet once they realized that they were "disillusioning the beliefs of

people," Mr. Paesmans said.

They called themselves Jodi, a combination of the first two letters of

their first names. Each new project attracted greater attention and not

just in Internet-art circles. Their dark, impenetrable works contributed

to the early Web's spirit of coolness. Ms. Heemskerk, from the

Netherlands, and Mr. Paesmans, from Belgium, moved to Barcelona and

gave few interviews, making themselves even more mysterious.

Like many digital artists they have started to work with computer

games. But while others' projects typically keep a game's realistic

setting while making minor modifications to its scenery or characters,

Jodi is again making abstract art. For its version of the Wolfenstein

game, for instance, the dog becomes a black square and a dwarf the

white one. And in their adaption of the first Quake game, the viewer

sees only a white screen and must navigate through the 3-D spaces

on sound alone. In an art form where excess is the rule, Jodi has

stripped games to digital skeletons.

All of these works, along with several recent game and video projects,

will be shown in the "install.exe" exhibition. Installing screen-based

work, usually viewed in private, in a vast public gallery like Eyebeam's

will certainly be a different kind of challenge to Jodi, but it may also

attract a larger audience.

Benjamin Weil, Eyebeam's curator, said that for most people the gallery

was "an interface that's a lot more accessible than the Internet." But

Jodi is still seeking fresh ways to disorient. Visitors who want to view

the online works must carry one of the gallery's laptop computers to a

foam-cube seat. When they open the computer, its screen shows a

view from the seat, as though the computer were functioning as a live

camera.

Tilman Baumgaertel, the exhibition's co-curator and the editor of its

catalog, said Jodi's vision was "about the deconstruction of technology,

the abuse of technology and looking for different opportunities within

the technology."

Mr. Paesmans put it this way: He wants people to understand that they

"have the freedom to be irresponsible in front of your computer."

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*Book Grist*

GRAND STREET GOES ONLINE

Artnet News, Apr 17, 2003

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/news/artnetnews2/artnetnews4-16-03.asp?C=1

After a two-year hiatus, Grand Street is back. The prestigious art

and literary journal, edited and published by Jean Stein since

1991, has relaunched with an new design and an emphasis on

international art and writing. The current issue is devoted to

"Danger," and includes a cover by Neo Rauch, a note from

Walter Hopps on James Rosenquist and some classic photographs

by Chris Burden. Selections from current and past issues can be

found online at www.grandstreet.com. The 256-page issue can

be had in the flesh for $15.

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