Month: April 2006
Ventriloquism
Imagine a horror film about an insane ventriloquist who believes that his possessed dummy is not in fact talking, and that he must speak for it.
It’s the business model for Web 2.0:
GBBG – Get Bought By Google
Copyright Culture (Remixed)
Copyright Culture (Remixed)
Who has the right to borrow, copy, cut, reproduce and remix what, under which circumstances and according to whom?
Copyright, Culture (Remixed) is a series of volumes of short films that looks at the impact that increasingly restrictive copyright laws are having on fair use and the creation of culture.
Remixed Reading
Remix Reading is hosting a unique art exhibition in the Riverside Museum at Blake’s Lock for the weekend of Friday 28th – Sunday 30th April, open from 10am-4pm.The exhibited artists won our competition that asked artists to remix either the town of Reading or existing works on the Remix Reading web site. Winning entries came from a wide range of individuals, from professional artists to children in a local refugee support group.All of the works are released under Creative Commons licenses, which allow you to customise your copyright so others can use, share and remix you work. Remix Reading stands in the company of the Beastie Boys, Brazilian culture minister Gilberto Gil and many other supporters of Creative Commons in hosting this exhibition. Visitors are encouraged to create their own remixes of exhibited works and share them on our web site. It was the use of these licenses for the original works that allowed many of the exhibited artists to create their winning entries.Ali Clark, curator, said: “The exhibition will be a celebration of the diverse culture of Reading, and of the creative freedom promoted by Remix Reading. I hope many people will be inspired to create and share their own remixes with the community.”Details of the exhibition, including the address of the gallery, are here:http://www.remixreading.org/events
NEWSgrist – where spin is art: Artists’ Rights or Copyright Extremism? Miro Estate vs. Google
I meant to blog this but Joy does it better. Moral Rights seem a very important concept to reconcile with Stallmanian Freedom (or Fair Use), but Stallmanian Freedom (or Fair Use) is also a very important concept to reconcile with Moral Rights.
I don’t really see why the Miro estate are objecting to free advertising. But then I’m a living artist, so what do I know? 🙂
Postcards
Polite have done an excellent job printing postcards of “belgrade (for manik)”, from the series “1969”. Email me and I’ll send you a few (rob at robmyers dot org). I -er- forgot to put the Creative Commons licence on the back but they are CC licenced. Really.
Slogan For A T-Shirt
A relational artist says that I’m with stupid
The trained seal of approval that is Relational Aesthetics (The Institutional Theory + Suspension Of Judgement – Radical Commitment) is unlikely to get its coat based on the chinstroking of Octoberistas. Pointing out that there is someone behind the curtain doesn’t help. That someone still has social relations.
Despite Bourriaud’s protestatations, RA is deeply, achingly, embarrasingly managerial. It is the managerial mode of regard embodied in materials that managers recognise: assets, particularly human assets.
And RA is auratic. Because without the aura of management -uh- art, what differentiates the social and aesthetic incompetence of RA from just actual social and aesthetic incompetence?
Both these qualities can only increase if people need their passports or whatever as part of the beautific images of managerialism that RA give us as works. Managers’ egos will not be deflated by an “art” of ever stronger management of Real People in ever more tighly controlled additions (or revelations) of managerial value (or power) in social situations.
Bishop‘s assessment of British art criticism in the 1990s is depressingly accurate but there is an account of art from that time that gives us something to work with. Julian Stallabrass’s concept of the Urban Pastoral (from “High Art Lite”) is far too close to the bone of RA to leave unused.
There’s a case to be made that the volume and duration of postings [by a net.art mailer script that accidentally flooded the Rhizome RAW mailing list with spam] makes the work sculpture. That their transgression makes them interrogative of unexamined social norms, which gives them critical content and value. And that this has shocked the bourgeoisie, which you don’t get too often these days, making it radical.
To attempt to make that case would be academic narcissism hankering after the decontextualised frisson of an unreflectively transgressive “real”. Or would it?
This is the problem with neoconceptualism: would it be if it wasn’t? Or rather, is it or isn’t it? There’s assisted readymades and then there’s making something to nominate. The latter is more than a little suspect, a bit like taking a felt pen to a laboratory mouse. If a spam flood attack wouldn’t ordinarily be art, which magical aura of art makes this spam flood attack “art”? If this en-arted (created, nominated) spam flood attack is art, can I nominate any real (authentic!) spam flood attack as (better!) art? Particularly one I might (or might not) unleash on the artist as an appropriation of their ouvre to index its (presumably) vitally important content. Surely the Sistine Chapel Ceiling of this particular genre would be a DDoS on the server hosting the project (chosen randomly from a list of one).
Yeah, this (RAW) is the audience to expect to chin-stroke to the bone over a (simulated?) flood attack. If we can ever be bothered to work out whether the skript is functioning as intended or this is just technical as well as conceptual incompetence. Where can we get the source?
The Tate buying a monoprint by someone who simply cannot draw is not the same as Rhizome Raw being graced by the genius of a would-be skript kiddie (please not “hacker”, we’ll be at “hacktivism” next and then I will have to stab someone to death with their conference name badge). And I say this as someone who can bang out a decent nude as well as a decent killfile entry.
I, for one, welcome our new net.prick overlords.