[spectre] Furtherfield Blog - Recent Posts of Interest on Media Art Practice and Culture (Feb 09).

[marc garrett]

Furtherfield Blog - Recent Posts of Interest on Media Art Practice and 
Culture (Feb 09).

The Furtherfield Blog is a shared space for personal reflections on 
Media Art practice: making it, curating it, translating it.

Here is a selection of recent Blog entries below,
to read more visit - http://blog.furtherfield.org

WikiPedia art?
Submitted by Patrick Lichty.
On WIKI as Art - On Valentine's Day 2009, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel 
Stern launched the Wikipedia art page, which resonated with the history 
of media art, authorship, and media formalism on many levels. Has this 
particular piece updated Beuys' admonition of the openness of art? Not 
only that, does art based on open Web 2.0 standards like the Wiki define 
art that is a palimpsest by definition? What is interesting yet 
disturbing about this is not only the obliteration of discrete 
authorship, but the total indeterminacy of intellectual ownership 
whatsoever.

For example, what happens when the conceptual work of art is left open, 
such as Douglas Davis “World's First Collaborative Sentence”, but is 
allowed to be opened to anyone, without “gatekeeping”, and the work is 
open to repetitive writing and re-writing to the point where it is 
possible that the only remnant is the gesture itself. I'm sure that 
Kildall & Stern, and their initial collaborators will be documented as 
the progenitor of the form, but the destination of the vector is by no 
means assured.
permlink - http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/267

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How creatively bad can it get?
Submitted by Aileen Derieg.
When I received the invitation from the Chamber of Commerce (of which I 
am automatically a member, because I have a business license) to a 
presentation and discussion of "Creative Community Linz" followed by a 
"creative buffet" and "networking", everything about it seemed to be 
sending me alarm signals, so it was a real challenge not to reach a 
negative judgment too quickly. Concerned about what kinds of plans might 
be underway, which could conceivably have a longer-term impact on the 
field I work in, I sent an RSVP via email (since there was no card in 
the invitation) that I would be coming. I never received confirmation, 
but at least my name was on the list when I got to the Ars Electronica 
Center last Tuesday afternoon.
permlink - http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/266

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scanz, collective intelligence, and another disappearing body
Submitted by Helen Varley Jamieson.
I am about to leave the house to drive up to new plymouth and the SCANZ 
symposium, where i'm presenting with several remote collaborators the 
performative presentation "Enacting Collective Intelligence", in UpStage 
(you can join in online - there will be live links from the UpStage site 
half an hour before the show, which is sunday 8th at 11am for us here in 
nz, probably saturday night for many of you. there is a time converter 
on the UpStage site).
http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/265

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Eco Fury and Man with Head in a Box.
Submitted by Ruth Catlow.
Eco-scope (http://terranode.org/ecoScope/) is a communication tool that 
provides a context for discussing environmental affairs, acknowledging 
"by its structure the importance of participation in any meaningful 
solutions that can be imagined". Last week Marc and I were interviewed 
by Andy Deck of Transnational Temps - http://www.transnationaltemps.net/ 
(creators of Eco-scope) about our take on media art and ecology. It is 
currently featured in a touring exhibition called Ecomedia - Ecological 
Strategies in Today's Art - 
http://www.edith-russ-haus.de/english/ecomedia.html . The variety of 
ways in which conversations can be retrieved and redistributed via 
Eco-scope is very powerful. The viewer of the archive can read a 
straight transcript of the conversation or they can control the speed of 
the chat replayed through the interface- this allows them to speed-read 
for an impression of the discussion or to take their time and follow up 
links.
Permlink - http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/264


More Info:
This multi-blog is a place to intuitively explore media arts practice, 
together, as it occurs, to develop understanding and to learn, without 
any pressure to formulate complete arguments or to come up with answers. 
The blog was set up in Autumn 2006, initially as a place for informal,
day to day exchange between members of the Furtherfield.org 
(www.furtherfield.org) team, including editors/reviewers. The team 
discovered that this format suited some people more than others and are 
now open to new contributors. The Furtherfield blog is not intended as a 
platform to promote particular projects. Instead bloggers explore their 
own perspectives on their own terms; personal thoughts, emotional 
responses and critical intentions that are rarely publicly discussed 
elsewhere in such detail.