December 2003 Archives

Minara Progress

By Rob Myers on December 22, 2003 6:15 PM
I've created a web page on my site for Minara.
Here.
I've registered a SourceForge project for it as well (link from the page above).
Initial design is just about finished (I know how it will work, again see the above link for details) and I've coded some tests.
Next up is planning the milestones and starting on the code proper. Who said "vapourware" at the back? :-) It's past that point, just...

But It’s Art…

By Rob Myers on December 19, 2003 6:22 PM
Earlier in the year, some researchers wired rat neurons to a couple of coloured felt-tip pens over the internet to get scribbly "drawings". Voila! Art, not bad vivisectionist "science". The transformational power of art is truly amazing.
Article.
Inspired by this, I propose a project to make science in the same way. Some rat anus cells will be wired to a computer running a scientific typesetting program. Dip the cells in lemon juice. Voila! Scientific equations, not a bad nominative art stunt.
Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy for Damien Hirst to get out his chainsaw, but if a researcher has bad conscience, they shouldn't try to hide it under a sugar coating of "art".

Don’t Buy Glossy Lifestyle Magazines Quarter

By Rob Myers on December 19, 2003 6:22 PM
"Adbusters" were unimpressed by "MTV" not showing an advertisement for "Turn Off Your TV" week.

I propose "Dont' Buy Glossy Lifestyle Magazines Quarter". Glossy magazines peddle homogenized culture, leech cash and waste time. They propagate unreality more intimately than TV, and are more tailored to demographics. They are a threat to private space and shared reality and another pointless spend.

I can't wait to see an advert for it in "Adbusters".

Open Art: Inbetween Cities

By Rob Myers on December 17, 2003 6:23 PM
"Inbetween Cities" is now available for download at the Open Content section of my site.
Click here to go there.

It's in SVG format and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Open Art: Blobs

By Rob Myers on December 17, 2003 6:23 PM
"Blobs" is now available for download at the Open Content section of my site.
Click here to go there.

It's in SVG format and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Open Content: Back Catalogue All Done

By Rob Myers on December 17, 2003 6:23 PM
All of my public back-catalogue is now available as Open Content, with the exception of "Surgical Strike" which will remain closed and "The Cybernetic Artwork Nobody Wrote" which will be cleaned up and released under the GNU GPL.

"Blobs" includes the graphical elemsnts used to construct the images, so it's particularly good for sampling.

"1968" will be Open Content when it's finished, as will "Arrows", my next project. "Got To Start Somewhere" and my other software projects including Minara will be under the GPL.

Playing The Mall (1994)

By Rob Myers on December 15, 2003 6:24 PM
"walking through a shopping centre is like being in a computer game. different levels to get to, rewards to be had.
it's a very visual space. metal, glass, mirrors, windows, signs. glistening and reflecting each other, and reflecting you as you look at them.
you're playing the mall"

Open Art: Smileys

By Rob Myers on December 15, 2003 6:24 PM
"Smileys" is now available for download at the Open Content section of my site.
Click here to go there.

It's in SVG format and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Open Art: Titled

By Rob Myers on December 14, 2003 6:25 PM
"Titled" is now available for download at the Open Content section of my site.
Click here to go there.

It's in PNG format and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Playing The Mall

By Rob Myers on December 9, 2003 6:25 PM
I liked the idea that glistening, reflecting, revealing and frustrating optical spaces could be laid bare by base descriptive language standing in for light, colour and texture. I also liked the idea that words could be made spatial. Some people wish that the images looked less stark, or that the language could more poetic. But that wouldn't work. The images had to be this way to communicate how I felt about manipulative architectural spaces. They double as a parody of lit-crit textuality.
Visually the images draw on Dr. Ahmed Moustafa's art and the simple photocopied flyers that advertise bands playing in small venues. Conceptually they draw on Dean Motter's "Mister X" and whoever used the term "postmodern hyperspace" to describe the non-linear space of the mall. The source images came from sketches of The Bentall Centre, Kingston-on-Thames, photographs of Canary Wharf, London, and video footage of a multi-storey car park in Canterbury.
I made these works in 1994. The 386 PCs running Corel Draw let me have a tea break each time I edited a single piece of text, and the more complex images took a couple of weeks each to make. The images were laser printed A4 at 300DPI and digitally photocopied up to A0. They project well, too. You need to see them big to get the full impact.

Shared Space

By Rob Myers on December 3, 2003 6:26 PM
Creative Commons are trying to protect shared creative space from enclosure. Open space allows value creation, closed space is value extraction.
http://www.bollier.org/reclaim.htm
http://creativecommons.org/
I'm not convinced that commons are the best metaphor for the *constructed* wealth of shared human knowledge. Better imagery is available. One of "No Logo"'s theses is that public space is being fenced off by brands under the guise of sponsorship. Since it reduces the value of the sponsored space and regulates its use, sponsorship is value extraction and is enclosure.
http://www.nologo.org/
This shared theme of protecting shared space against enclosure and insuring value creation rather than asset-stripping is important. Open Source/Open Content seeks to address it by changing individuals' mode of production but the historically romanticised model of commons is inaccurate. Anti-globalisation's image of recent civic space such as the town square is still romantic but is more accurate. Anti-globalisation's weakness is that it seeks to change other people's mode of production without any real understanding of how this will impact its own ground conditions.
Open Content can learn from Anti-Globalisation's imagery and critiques of enclosure. Anti-globalisation can learn from Open Content's self-practice and legal strategies. Hopefully it will be a fruitful exchange.

Manifesto Of The Day

By Rob Myers on December 2, 2003 6:26 PM
Start a weblog. Place a downloadable image on it in a common format (SVG, PNG, Gimp, PhotoShop) placed under the Creative Commons Atrribution-Sharealike license. Let people modify and re-upload the image using the comments mechanism (censor uploads that don't preview, offer help if people get this wrong). Collaborative art.
After a while upload a new image as a new topic and begin the process again. Use elements from the previous work or make a call for new images. Encourage an accompanying discourse (or at least discussion). Take the work somewhere. Make shared objectives.
Art & Language's 1970s Indexes provide a good historical counter-example to the whimsy of Exquisite Corpses and Mail Art for collaborative artwork. The net can be studio and gallery simultaneously. Work can be done this way. More, it should be done this way. This is culturally urgent. The relations of production, distribution and consumption as well as the creation and extraction of value must be changed.
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