3tv

In the January issue of Leonardo [Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology] Jean-Paul Fourmentraux has an article about the net art work Des_Frags. The software creates a mosaic of pictures you upload, and make them into one picture (the mosaic). The article is about the problem of determining where the *art* is in a project like this. The Artist Reynald Drouhin does not know a clue about programming so he teamed up with a bunch of people who knows this stuff. The problem is of course whether the artist is the sole artist or the programmers also should be credited with artistic contribution (not to mention the users, the programming language, the pictures that goes into the mosaic and so on). Fourmentraux reaches the conclusion that it is difficult to decide (gee) and therefore uses the standard definition that circulates in the net art community: it is impossible to demarcate the artistic elements, so it more or less comes down to who has an education as an artist and how has not. This is not what he writes though, he talks of an artistic “dispositif” = software, artistic decisions, programmers, users, the internet and so on. This is the same kind of thing that went into the definition of net.art in the beginning of the nineties, where the . signals that everything that goes on online can be understood as an artistic practice, in the way that Fluxus, Situationist International and not least Joseph Beuys “social plastic” conceptualizes art. I’ve been fond of this definition of art for along time, but felt uneasiness while reading the article. This is primarily due to the fact that the internet is filled with projects like Des_Frags, take for instance a look at the flickr toys page and you will find lots of projects exactly like Des_Frags, that newer would claim to be art in any way.
Should we then drop the category of art altogether, it is only used by artists that need public funding anyway? (This is ART – ok, then you can apply for funding). Usually I would not have a problem with this, if it was not for the fact that some of my favorite art is digital and online, so I would like to be able to distinguish between art and everything else online.
One way of doing this – very modernist though – would be to claim that the artist should have made everything her- or himself (idea+programming). This is the definition used when museums are fighting against each other about who has the original Rembrandt and not one painted by his students/co-workers under Rembrandts guidance. I admit it is not perfect - far from - but I will go for it rather than the dispositif, because it will include works such as entropy8zuper and rule out Des_Frags, these kind of toys I can find at flickr and other sites anyway.

don’t ever make a course, conference or public talk called something with web2.0

one more reason to use the better term: social software. Social software has a history, web2.0 is oblivion.

The program for this years Reboot is now finally available and it looks really interesting, in fact to interesting, so will have to make some difficult choices. But then again that is better than to little of interest. Must go to either: Matt Webb or Adam Arvidsson, Adam Arvidsson or Bill Liao, Tim Pritlove or TL Taylor (probably gonna choice TL since she is my supervisor and I would like to hear her give a talk to this 2.0 crowd), Nicolas Nova/ Julian Bleecker or Chris Heathcote. Choices all ready made: Steve Coast, Rebecca Blood, JJ Garrett, Bruno Giussani, Tom Armitage, JF Groff, Jeremy Keith, Doc Searls and Euan Semple – damn this is gonna be good…..

Two days ago I saw Larry Page on the BBC News being interviewed from some big tech convention where google launched its new strategy. Larry Page talked about the development of their search engine, the dream is that it will be able to find information almost before you know you need it, this should be based on AI. I find this very surprising, since google success is based on users adding information by clicking and making links on their homepages/blogs. Their new plan is probably inspired on Larry Page’s boyish AI dreams – drop the machines and stick with users (sic)…..

wifi’ing

Originally uploaded by stilleben [’stelle:bƏn].

I’m in London again. I haven’t been here for many years – except for 2 weeks ago, when I was in for one day. I’m surprised that I spent most of my time, going around looking for wifi hotspots. I can’t drink coffee at a place if they don’t have wifi. I haven’t really planed to see anything - I am going to a concert with m. craft to night though.
What is interesting about this, is the fact that wifi changes how some people go about in cities, just as moblogging for some people changes what and how they do things. One reason for this is that I haven’t bothered to buy a guide book (there are googlemaps), also I haven’t checked out what is going on at the moment, so I go into cafes check some London sites find out what to do, do it, and then another round of wifi/coffee and find out something new to do. The good thing about this is that while planning for the next couple of hours, I can upload to flickr as well.
Is this the cycle of a social software junkie? Or are we seeing new emerging practices of media use integrated to everyday life and tourism? Perhaps a bit of both, but no doubt we are still at the beginning of noticing these changes. What is important is that we don’t rush in and try to judge this as an addiction (see article in Danish Newspaper Politiken). The danger of these kinds of judgments is that they resolve into boundary making, based on something that is seldom conscious to the boundary makers (in this case sociologist and psychologists). Where is this leading? I guess my claim is that we should sometimes give new media use time, before starting to judge.

Ohh and what am I doing here? Visiting INCITE and Adrian Mackenzie and interviewing the people behind Shozu (more on this later).