NEWSgrist: *THE THING’S 2004 Online Art Auction*

============================

NEWSgrist

where spin is art

http://newsgrist.net

{bi-weekly news digest}

free e-subscriptions:

http://www.newsgrist.net/subscribe.html

subscribe // unsubscribe

============================

Vol.5, no.6 (Apr 26, 2004)

============================

*Underbelly*

Bulletin board: post your own news, press releases, urls:

http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=870870569

NEW: we’re a blog: http://newsgrist.typepad.com/

============================

*NEWSgrist blogs it up*

Dear Subscribers:

After four years of operation I've decided it's high time to shift

NEWSgrist into blogdom. I'm starting with a simple Typepad blog

for now. I will keep sending the bi-weekly newsletters and I will

probably continue to edit them in much the same way. However,

the advantages afforded by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and

XML are too good to pass up. Still working on that.

Please visit the fledgling blog

(and leave your comments and suggestions if you wish):

http://newsgrist.typepad.com/

============================

CONTENTS:

- *Splash* THE THING ’04 Online Art Auction (bbs.thing.net)

- *Quote/s* on those 361 pictures of coffins (HairyEyeball.net)

- *Url/s* The Memory Hole; Warblogging; IdealWord

- *NeoCon Artists* "neoconservative definition of art" (Artforum.com)

- *Duchy* Rem Koolhaas Rocks (Slate.msn.com)

- *Fishbowl* Graffiti of Unvanquished Love (NYTimes.com)

- *Hard Wired* Interview w. Alexander Galloway (VilllageVoice.com)

- *Book Grist* ubu Editons :: Spring 2004 Titles (Ubu.com)

============================

*Splash* http://newsgrist.net

THE THING’S 2004 Online Art Auction STARTS SUNDAY APRIL 25th!

Where: http://auction.thing.net

When: April 25 through May 4

Telephone: 212.937.0444

Email: auction@thing.net

THE THING presents its fourth annual online art auction with

participating artists Mariko Mori, John Miller, Daniel Pflumm,

Beat Streuli, Miltos Manetas, Janine Gordon, Julia Scher,

Vuk Cosic, Noritsohi Hirakawa, Joy Garnett, Peter Fend,

Pia Dehne, and others. All funds raised support THE THING’S

commitment to the arts and social activism.

At its core, THE THING is a social network, made up of individuals from

diverse backgrounds with a wide range of expert knowledge. From this

social THING has built an exceptional array of programs and initiatives,

in both technological and cultural networks. During its first five years,

bbs.thing.net became widely recognized as one of the founding and

leading online centers for new media culture. Its activities include

hosting artists' projects and mailing lists as well as publishing cultural

criticism. THE THING's multimedia lab has regularly hosted a variety of

artists, including Vuk Cosic, Sebatian Luetgert, Nick Crowe, Prema

Murty, Daniel Pflumm, Heath Bunting, Beat Streuli and Mariko Mori.

THE THING has also organized many events and symposia on such

topics as the state of new media arts, the preservation of online

privacy, artistic innovations in robotics, and the possibilities of

community empowerment through wireless technologies.

If you have any further questions about the auction or THE THING,

please contact us at the number or email above.

THE THING receives funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and

the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Please visit http://auction.thing.net

THE THING is a 501(c)3 non profit organization.

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

============================

*Quote/s*

“Little Boxes”

A gallery of 361 photographs (Warblogging.com mirror) of war dead at

Dover Air Force Base has been made available by the Memory Hole.

Everyone should spend at least a few minutes browsing.

Memory Hole (www.memoryhole.org) has been so besieged with hits

that the site is not functioning properly.

My own response to these images is ambivalent: It's important that

they be published simply because our government did not want them

published, but as images they are distinguished more by their utter

banality than anything else. The aluminum boxes arriving at Dover

AFB are distinguished from ordinary freight by little more than the

fact that their contents are perishable and that certain formalities

are observed by a honor guard earning $1,300 a month apiece. It's

like a knee play from Einstein on the Beach.

Posted by hairyeyeball at 08:03 PM | Filed under: Terror Index

The Hairy Eyeball, april 23, 2004

http://www.hairyeyeball.net/blog//index2.html

see also: TalkLeft: The Dover Photos

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006183.html

============================

*Url/s*

Media + Politics:

The Memory Hole

http://www.thememoryhole.org

- updated 22 April 2004

Photos of Military Coffins (Casualties From Iraq) at Dover Air Force Base

exclusive: Due to a Freedom of Information Act request from The

Memory Hole, the Air Force has released 361 photographs showing

soldiers' remains arriving home. These are the images that the

Pentagon prevented the public from seeing.

The Memory Hole is often hard to access; see it cached:

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:OQ5-J3b4fQUJ:www.thememoryhole.org/+the+memory+hole&hl=en

or: The Memory Hole Mirror site (Warblogging.com) is here:

http://warblogging.com/mirrors/www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/gallery.htm

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Art:

IdealWord

http://www.idealword.org/home.htm

found at Version>04 invisibleNetworks Festival, Chicago

http://www.versionfest.org/default/

============================

*NeoCon Artists*

NEOCON COLLECTORS AT THE ARMORY SHOW?

Art Forum Online, week of 4/19/04

INTERNATIONAL NEWS DIGEST

http://www.artforum.com/news/week=200417

"What artists do with their work is completely irrelevant--at least on the

art market." So says Isabelle Graw in her review of the 2004 Armory

Show, held last month in New York. Writing in Berlin's Tageszeitung,

Graw bemoans the emergence of a "new type of collector, radically

different from the 'connoisseur,' because s/he no longer strives for

any expertise....The art market is booming, and it attracts a clientele

that purchases art as if it were Louis Vuitton luggage....Meeting

real, existing artists no longer suits collectors." This lack of interest

in the artists themselves, notes Graw with dismay, seems to indicate

the emergence of a "neoconservative definition of art."

The situation is equally dire for critics. "No one is interested in

critique anymore," writes Graw, "even if it's just a critical comment or a

timidly intoned complaint." Graw cites an encounter with a Gagosian

Gallery director with whom she shared her observations about the fair.

"He asked me in a suspicious tone if I was 'an intellectual,'" reports

Graw. "When I said yes . . . he seemed to regard me with mistrust."

What's left for the critic in the new art market? "In these conditions,"

concludes Graw, "only investigative journalism."

original article in German: Tageszeitung:

http://www.taz.de/pt/2004/04/14/a0187.nf/text

============================

*Duchy*

Going Dutch

Can Rem Koolhaas hold onto the title of world's most influential architect?

By Christopher Hawthorne

Slate – architecture - Updated Monday, April 19, 2004, at 3:122 PM PT

A slide-show essay on the rock star of architecture.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098574/slideshow/2099123/fs/0//entry/2099124/

Over the next few weeks, you're likely to hear a lot about an

aggressively sculptural public library that opens in downtown Seattle

on May 23. At a cost of $165.5 million, it was designed by the Dutch

architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

If the early buzz is any indication, the library may prove a breakthrough

of sorts for Koolhaas, at least in this country, giving him public celebrity

to go with the outsized reputation he's long had within his profession.

While Frank Gehry remains the most famous architect in the world, for

more than a decade Koolhaas, who is 59, has been the most influential.

A few architects have a sharper theoretical edge than Koolhaas, and a

few create more exciting spaces. But nobody--not even Gehry--produces

buildings that are simultaneously so intellectually ambitious and so

shamelessly populist. In addition to running OMA, which is based in

Rotterdam, Koolhaas has spun off a consulting practice with clients like

Wired magazine and Prada; teaches at Harvard; and is the author of

enough polemical books and essays, including the now-cultish Delirious

New York, to fill a small bookcase.

Late last year, Koolhaas was awarded the gold medal from the Royal

Institute of British Architects, which means that he has now carted home

all the biggest honors in his field, including the Pritzker Prize—

architecture's Nobel--in 2000. But like a rapper who wins a Grammy and

immediately sees his street cred take a hit, Koolhaas knows that such

official plaudits don't do much for his reputation, at least in avant-garde

circles. And they arrive at a time when certain long-standing complaints

about Koolhaas, particularly that his greatest talent is for self-promotion,

have grown louder. All of which makes this an ideal time to assess

Koolhaas' body of work: His position as architecture's coolest designer

and its leading theorist--the closest thing the field has to a rock star--is

looking shaky just as several new buildings, in Seattle and elsewhere,

promise to give him a wider profile than ever.

How did Koolhaas make his reputation in the first place? Particularly in

this country, it was mostly on paper, thanks to his writing and a batch of

proposed designs and competition entries that fellow architects and

students loved to dissect and argue over. He didn't build anything at all

in the United States until 2001, and his first two projects here--this Prada

store in Manhattan and a joint branch of the Guggenheim Museum and

the Hermitage squeezed inside the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas--were

interior jobs, not free-standing buildings. Many critics who had seen his

work in Europe--buildings with floors that curled up to become ceilings,

a tiny house with a swimming pool on the roof--came back raving. They

were most impressed by the way he juxtaposed cheap, industrial

materials with polished ones and how he gave striking visual form to

ideas about contemporary culture and political power. But other critics

argued that the projects were more about bluster and trendy rhetoric

than substance.

cont'd... http://slate.msn.com/id/2098574/slideshow/2099123/fs/0//entry/2099124/

============================

*Fishbowl*

A Jumping Fish in the Bronx Lands Its Creator in Criminal Court

By IAN URBINA

NYTimes, April 13, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/nyregion/13art.html

His chalk messages appear on buildings all over the city, offering wry

commentary on the human commerce inside: "Beauty magazines make

my girlfriend feel ugly," penned on the sides of fitness clubs on the

Lower East Side. Or, "The best remedy for a cheap person is to have

him pay for everything," scrawled on banks and expensive restaurants

near Wall Street.

On dry days, his chalk drawings are all over the sidewalks in East

Harlem: fish in separate bowls staring longingly at each other. "It's

about unvanquished love and people feeling trapped," explained the

artist, James De La Vega.

Mr. De La Vega, 32, is a muralist from East Harlem whose artwork may

soon put him behind bars. In July 2003, he was arrested while illegally

painting a mural on the side of a Bronx warehouse. The subject? An

oversized fish jumping from a large fishbowl into a tiny glass. "I can't

explain what the drawing meant," he said of the unfinished mural, near

the corner of Willis Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard. "I was simply trying

to make people think and smile."

Mr. De La Vega is to appear in Bronx Criminal Court on Friday and faces

several misdemeanor charges, including criminal mischief, making graffiti

and possessing graffiti instruments. Kenneth Gilbert, Mr. De La Vega's

lawyer, said yesterday that the Bronx district attorney's office had

offered his client 30 days in jail in exchange for a guilty plea. "The

district attorney has drawn a line in the sand," Mr. Gilbert said.

"They've said that they will not accept any form of restitution that does

not include jail time."

Robert T. Johnson, the district attorney, would not comment on the case

except to say: "Our attitude towards graffiti is that our community has

asked us to eliminate it. We find it offensive that people come here and

treat our walls as their canvas."

Sandra Palomino, who runs a nonprofit housing group in East Harlem,

said she did not think the neighborhood saw Mr. De La Vega's work in

that category. "He is a hugely successful muralist and an icon in East

Harlem," she said. "Kids with artistic ambitions look to him for inspiration.

And for adults, he makes us laugh and think."

Ms. Palomino pointed to one Mr. De La Vega's works, on the corner of

106^th Street and Lexington Avenue, which features a 5-by-7-foot mural

of Fidel Castro smoking a cigar and wearing a Yankees cap, with the

caption, "Even Fidel Is a Yankee." She also mentioned Mr. De La Vega's

"Slaves to the Past and Present" mural - a 15-by-35-foot acrylic painting

on the side of a pizzeria at 124th Street and Lexington Avenue that

features an elaborate Crucifixion scene. It is an East Harlem take on

Picasso's "Guernica," with St. Lazarus' s dogs biting and chasing him

rather than faithfully sitting at his side, said Mr. De La Vega, who

received a B.F.A. from Cornell University in 1994.

Part of Mr. De La Vega's legal situation stems from the fact that he has a

prior conviction. In 1999, the police caught him painting "Become Your

Dream" on the side of the Associated Supermarket on Lexington Avenue

between 103rd and 104th streets. Two hours after he had pleaded guilty

to a misdemeanor, Mr. De La Vega said, the owner of the supermarket,

Euripides Reynoso, showed up at the police station house to explain that

he had given him permission. But it was too late.

"Around here we don't see his work as graffiti," Mr. Reynoso said. "James

doesn't tag his name. He paints Latino heroes like Celia Cruz and Marc

Anthony. Who else is painting inspirational things in our neighborhood?"

Since his first arrest, Mr. De La Vega has worked for Mr. Reynoso,

illustrating the store's advertising fliers. "In this neighborhood, those

who haven't seen his murals or sidewalk drawings have seen his fliers,

since we send out more than 10,000," Mr. Reynoso said.

Mr. De La Vega's mother, Elsie Matos, said that when she heard of her

son's arrest she immediately bought him 30 boxes of colored chalk.

"Keep with your passion," she said when she gave them to him. Ms.

Matos has organized a protest that will take place tomorrow at Mr.

De La Vega's store and gallery in East Harlem.

Mr. De La Vega said it might be time for him to consider changing his

canvases. He said that if he avoided jail time he would consider

refraining from painting illegally, but would continue the sidewalk

chalking. "The problem is that even chalking is classified as a crime," he

said. "But if they try to sentence people for that, every kid hopscotching

will be in cuffs."

============================

*Hard Wired*

This Is Freedom?

NYU prof Alexander Galloway unmasks the inner workings

of computer networks

by Ed Halter

The Village Voice, April 12th, 2004 7:50 PM

Education Supplement: Spring 2004

http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0415/halter.php

From cyberpunk's keyboard-jockey fairy tales, to Wired magazine's

rave-era libertarianism, through the dotcom boom's fast-company

frontier days, the concept of the Internet as an essentially revolutionary

space of anti-authoritarian freedoms has remained a key operative

myth, serving the needs of start-up hypesters, free-market globalists,

and political progressives alike. But NYU professor Alexander Galloway

believes that we should lay these techno-utopian fantasies to rest. In

fact, he argues that at least some of our old notions need to be turned

upside down. His new book, Protocol: How Control Exists After

Decentralization (MIT), asserts that, far from existing as a counter-

hegemonic free-for-all, "the Internet is the most highly controlled mass

media hitherto known."

The 30-year-old Galloway's first book elucidates his seemingly

paradoxical claim within an engaging methodological hybrid of the

Frankfurt School and UNIX for Dummies. First conceived as a

communications system designed to withstand nuclear attacks on

American cities, the Internet took shape as a distributed network, a

radically dispersed organizational form based on multiple routes without

central hubs, something he likens to both the interstate highway system

and Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari's branching rhizome model, "a

horizontal meshwork," Galloway writes, linking "many autonomous

nodes together in a manner neither linear nor hierarchical." But in

Galloway's view, the Net's non-hierarchy should not be mistaken for

uninhibited freedom. Rather, control exists within the very nature of the

Internet protocols, the universally recognized technical standards and

shared languages (HTTP, TCP/IP, HTML) that allow information to be

shared successfullycreating "a political conundrum that involves the

acceptance of universal standardization in order to facilitate the

ultimate goal of a freer and more democratic medium."

"Protocol is a language that regulates flow, directs netspace, codes

relationships, and connects life forms," Galloway writes. "It is etiquette

for autonomous agents." As a language, albeit one composed of

computer code, protocol can thus become the object of critical thinking

as much as any textconveniently for Galloway, whose background is

primarily in literary studies, though he has worked as a systems

administrator and done some programming. "The project basically

grew out of my dissatisfaction with all of the dotcom-era books about

the Internet," Galloway told the Voice. "There was this idea that the

Internet was at its core a kind of chaotic, uncontrollable technology.

And I thought to myself, how could that be the case? Why does it work

so well, why is it so bug-free, how is it able to spread globally so

quickly? I thought there must be a high level of organization and

control at the root of the technology, but that might just be a different

kind of control than people are used to seeing." He learned more

about the workings of Internet protocols through developing Carnivore

PE as part of programmer/artist collective Radical Software Group.

This award-winning project serves as a "personal edition" of FBI

software Carnivore, an online wiretap that snoops on data traffic.

Both Carnivore PE and Protocol likewise explore how boundaries

between online and offline control systems may prove irrelevant.

Galloway argues that the logic of protocol extends to biological and

social structures as well, with examples like the genome, the VHS/

Beta market wars, the actions of hackers and terrorists, and the self-

referentially protocological new-media artists like Jodi.org. But

Galloway stresses that he's not merely making an analogy: "Protocol

is materially immanent," he writes, and as such, "protocols generally

resist interpretation."

"It's important not to situate control and organization metaphorically,"

he says. "If you say that something's just a metaphor, then maybe it's

just in our minds and we can forget about it. But if it's not a metaphorif

it's actually being created and lived every day by me and you and

everybody that uses the technologythen I think that just underscores the

power of it. Because I do think that social relations follow the network

diagram, just the way that the body follows the network diagram,

which is just the way that the Internet follows the network diagram."

Though Galloway hashed out his ideas through projects like Carnivore PE

and writing in online forums like CTHEORY and Nettime, Protocol is clearly

situated within the largely academic traditions of leftist critical

theory. As such, it serves as an exemplary example of a recent boom of

scholarly titles analyzing video games, Net art, artificial life, and

related topics: survival adaptations of 20th-century criticism to fit

21st-century technologies. "The unmasking of the inner workings of the

commodity in Marx is the kernel of his entire work," Galloway says, "and

people have used that in a method in everything from feminism

unmasking the kernel of patriarchy, to film theory unmasking the inner

working of the apparatus of cinema. So I'm trying to do a similar thing

by unmasking the inner workings of computer networks." Despite

Galloway's desire to overturn gee-whiz hype, his criticism retains a

streak of utopianism and system-building that indeed leans on

metaphor; poetic underpinnings are difficult to exorcise from

Continental thinking. As with concepts like power, hegemony, Empire,

or patriarchy, protocol at times floats a little too easily through history

and existence, and the use of the Foucauldian term "control" needs

further unpacking. Though Galloway makes clear he is concerned