Sitewide Comments

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by Self Process Post Facebook « Dialogical Balance

Sun, 16 May 2010 13:12:32 -0700 - [...] I have chosen to exploit the “proximity of relations,” which Anna Munster (2001; 2008) writes about in relations to networked art, yet the challenge I foresee will be the back and forth [...]

Comment on The EmerAgency as Graduate Seminar by Heuretics « Assemblage Expression

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 09:10:38 -0700 - [...] the Disaster (grad seminar, Sp.2009) — cf. excerpt in “The Learning Screen” (Networked, [...]

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by QofW #4 Electrate « Research For Experience Design

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:49:49 -0700 - [...] http://ulmer.networkedbook.org/the-learning-screen-introduction-electracy/ [...]

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Gregory Ulmer

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:19:18 -0700 - Your follow-up is appreciated, and your concerns are legitimate. The first caveat in these speculations is that there are no guarantees, but neither is there determinism. No form, practice, or technology is inherently good or evil. My optimism about electracy is based on the fact that any apparatus is invented, with some aspects of what is needed having direct relationship to arts and letters disciplines. Here are a few thoughts. 1) There is a correlation relating the features of digital technologies with the mechanisms of logics associated with creative thinking. 2) Imaging forms make accessible to ontology (to metaphysics generally) that dimension of thinking-willing-judging previously inaccessible if not unthinkable, identified as "virtue" by the Ancients and the Unconscious by the moderns. 3) The electrate apparatus does not eliminate or suppress the accomplishments we both admire associated with the existing apparati, but supplements them with a new dimension, noted in my essay: well-being, grounded in the human experience of dis/satisfaction. Electracy as a metaphysics (skill-set of digital imaging) enables users (via avatar) to experience (to undergo) the collective, abstract powers of culture and nature, providing in principle an intelligence of sustainability. Keep in mind that literacy began modestly, as illustrated by the story of Diogenes bursting into the Academy, disrupting an experiment with "definition." "Man" had just been defined as "featherless biped." Diogenes held up a plucked chicken and declared: "behold your 'Man'!" The Academicians consulted and amended the definition, adding "with flat nails." From such humble beginnings arose todays super-collider. I continue to develop my own inquiries into this shift in a couple of blogs: heuretics.wordpress.com, and routine.electracy.com.

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Rio Contrada

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:35:25 -0700 - Dear Mr. Ulmer, First of all, I apologize for my previous snarky post. I am writing a paper comparing the transition from orality to literacy to the transition from literacy to electracy, and I got emotionally frustrated. I'm finding it difficult to compare the two transitions because the transition to electracy is still in progress. When I looked at your table I was aggravated by how bleak the electracy column seemed. The apparati in the literacy column look like they have so much more depth than the apparati you associate with electracy. However, from reading your book Internet Invention in more depth, and from speaking with my professor, I feel reassured that you are not arguing that electracy is making our minds shallow and our lives meaningless. The question, then, that I would like to ask you is, how can we manipulate the changes in our apparati (for example the change from a state of mind of knowledge to one of fantasy) to expand our consciousness rather than contract it. I understand that this is essentially the question that you wrote an entire book trying to answer, and I hope that I'm not being unrealistic by asking for a straight-forward answer - I'm just having difficulty wrapping my mind around how the apparati in the electracy column can possibly be positive for our existence as human beings.

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by Etivity 10 V&A « ThInking Practices

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:44:58 -0700 - [...] The technology can be replaced but the memory can’t. In his essay The Immediated Now: Networked Culture and the Poetics of Reality, Kazys Varnelis questions high and low art coming from networked [...]

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Gregory Ulmer

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:19:15 -0800 - By overlap I assume you are referring to the lefthand column, finding a point of comparison among the different apparati (Practice, Procedure etc). That is a convention of analysis (as you know). I don't see much overlap between Religion, Science, and Entertainment as Institutions, for example. So the point of making the table is to help understand, by analogy, what is happening in the present conditions of cultural shift (using as analogy for the present moment what we know about the shift from orality to literacy). There may be other ways to gain some perspective on this shift. As for the "strength" of the academy, the theory predicts (and the trends seem to support) that the hegemonic institutions of literacy are fading (the nation state for example). There are two parts to answering your final point. First, Entertainment (the Spectacle, mass/pop culture) is the institution doing the most to invent the practices of image metaphysics. Entertainment culture in our historical circumstances is dominated by the U.S.A., for better or worse: global Hollywood, which is not to say that there are not counter-forces. The relationship between American capitalism and electracy is historically contingent. At the same time (the second factor) there is a massive syncretism in progress at the civilizational level, underway since the beginnings of colonialism. Listen to World Music and you will hear it. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Rio Contrada

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:45:15 -0800 - Dear. Mr. Ulmer, My first question is, with such overlap between these three categories, what is the point of making this table? Obviously there was still a strong institution of the church during the "era" of literacy, and there is still a strong academic institution in this era of electracy. You happen to be a part of it. Also, you seem to be simplifying the electracy column into contemporary "American culture." Entertainment, internet, fantasy, play, aesthetics, body, figure... sounds like a bitter baby boomer, am I wrong?

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by On Adam Curtis’s Century of the Self. This is the first... | varnelis.net

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:28:44 -0800 - [...] has become a major cultural form in network culture, something I cover in my article on the immediated now. Feed: tumblr [...]

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Structural Portrait: Gest Rhetoric « Assemblage Expression

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:02:16 -0800 - [...] Studies” Meet in 282 Reitz (1:55-3:10pm panel) Preview Prof. Ulmer’s talk on “The Learning Screen.” » Note: If you can not attend entire panel due to subsequent class, choose [...]

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by Anna Munster

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:12:16 -0800 - Alex - I am wondering how contexture works? ie what is it doing to create the links/tags it selects - keyword searches? I think it looks great but I'm not sure what kind of information, beyond the visual, you were hoping to unfold or in a sense 'mine' as a result of peole installing the contexture plugin...do the colours code in a particular way ie is there a significance to them in terms of categories and so on. In terms of when I think these kinds of strategies will become mainstream - who's to say? At the moment the web is still pretty much caught in 'search' mode. Things that spread are still about 'how to locate'. Probably one of the most successful of these as a kind of 'alternative' to centralised Web 2.0 cultures is the pirate bay, which is appartently in the top 100 of all websites used. And yet all it is is a simple index to help you locate 'free' (ie bit torrent) downloads. I think the kind of plugins you and others I have written about are working with is a different level of networking, which has to do with reflection and reflexivity rather than seach. We could even say its kind of second order web! Unfortunately the direction of much networking is toward realtime, in which reflection is just about impossible! Let me know what you think about these ideas...anna

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality – Networked – Excerpts « Recombinant-TMA : Tactical Media Activism

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:49:36 -0800 - [...] The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality – Networked – Excerpts [Excerpts related to Tactical Media Activism, Appropriation Art and Remix - LINK] [...]

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by This is the first episode of Alan Curtis’s the Century of... | varnelis.net

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:04:54 -0800 - [...] has become a major cultural form in network culture, something I cover in my article on the immediated now. Printer-friendly [...]

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Learning Screen « Resonance || Gary Hink.net

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:14:38 -0800 - [...] Over the upcoming weekend, having my class read: Greg’s new article, “The Learning Screen” on the Networked Book site. (NB: all seven articles are indeed timely and intriguing; more [...]

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by Anna Munster

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:57:35 -0800 - Hi Alex, thanks for your comments. I am going to check out your site in the next few days and after I've had a look at that maybe I will have some suggestions back for your provocations. The questions about ho artistic interventions enter mainstream culture are challenging...I need to have agood think about these!

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by Alex Abreu

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:10:21 -0800 - Amazing essay, Anna. It's inspired me to restart work on some of my interface layering experiments. I'd be absolutely thrilled if you'd check my latest. You can find it here: www.contexture.in. Still very rough... I'm curious about how/when the interfaces you mention in your essay will start to make their way into the everyday user's browser. Their is a great deal of power in understanding the data/information underlying the web, but it is hidden behind our overwhelming dependence on a select few resources for finding information. Beyond making new pieces/tools which question information ownership and authority, what is the role of the artist/creator in educating the public that other avenues do exist?

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by inaornament

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:32:30 -0800 - Is very true that ‘’digital technology is an unmistakable presence’’ in our life, but my concern is still traditions. Do you really forgot “traditional art “or maybe you never know about it. What about art before 1900? Is only in the gallery? Who still experiment and research this old technique? Art it been connected with technology because is “networked art”. I feel lost in this “networked art” and I still believe in “Books on Technique” and “The language of Art History”.

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Novel Experience(s) Week « Novel Experience & Expression

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:15:59 -0800 - [...] 09-Nov read: Gregory Ulmer, “The Learning Screen.” 4 pages. Networked. [...]

Comment on Lifetracing 1. Platforms for Presenting the Self Online by links for 2009-10-25 - NOWUSEIT.COM

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:37:28 -0700 - [...] Helmond : Lifetracing » Lifetracing 1. Platforms for Presenting the Self Online Isnt everything published online automatically networked through the fetishized indexes of engines that shape the web? A networked book is not a self-referential object as it alludes to and embeds objects from the network it is part of, in this case the web. (tags: academic social data online software lifetracing) [...]

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by Weird Fiction » Blog Archive » Nourishing the Non-Normative Neuroaesthete

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:46:10 -0700 - [...] entrance to this and other realms—including prominently the panopticonscious lifeworld of the immediated real. Alternate universes open up in the inframince, like an obliterati’s escape mechanisms made [...]

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by Johannes Birringer

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:51:49 -0700 - why are there no comments on this rich and inspired text? an effect of nonvisualization? probably a sign of post-austere time, and lack of time/s and yet, one wonders, in this open forum, why it has not attracted all kinds of feed back, questions, elaborations? is it the form of the text (dense essay, not much breathing room between paragraph, is it perhaps possible to ask whether such writing, inviting collaboration, needs to be modeled on a different kind of contact improvisational form, aware of gravity, weight, shifts, balances imbalances, stillnesses (which are never still) and movement opening, to let the others in, how do you so this in address/speech, in text, in novel, in essay, in scholarly book, in diary, in poem, where do these textual forms (even in electronic writing with visuals and videos) open the space to move in an dwell a while? i am not a networked text person nor write blogs or comment much on blogs if ever, so also am not quite aware of more leasured visibilities to mine, or undermine. i don't follow the poetics of electronic writing (and the kind of things I remember K. Hayles lecture about a few years back, thos eliterary sites virtually were closed of course to all intervention - they seemed austere all right,

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by Simon Biggs

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:11:04 -0700 - Hayles concept of "born digital is useful in contextualising what Jodi might have meant when they spoke of "net.artists living on the net". Prior to a certain point in time artists working with computers and associated communications technologies came to this practice from other media, employing frameworks and criteria imported from other contexts. At some point this changed and a generation of artists emerged who had always worked with digital and networked media. This didn't happen in a simple linear manner. Nor did developments occur at the same time, or in the same way, for the various aspects of what are now, but what were not previously, related media (computers and telecommuniciations only got substantially together in the 1980's). There were a small number of artists working in the 1970's who started out in their practice using digital systems, even a few in the 1960's. There were, similarly, a small number of artists who emerged in the 80's who were using networks from the start. Bunting is an example of this ­although his early network practices did not engage the internet but telephone networks. Paul Sermon is another (very different) example. However, the emergence of a generation of network savvy artists, with a culture attached, didn't begin until well into the 1990's. The associated buzz, involving the engagement of theorists and cultural commentators, intensified after that time. In this sense I'd assess Varnelis's observation that these technologies "cultural implications (were) confined to niche realms for enthusiasts" more or less correct ­ although I¹d move the dates back a little to the early 90's or even the late 1980's and identify 1993 as they key year in terms of impact, when the first web browser (Mosaic) became publicly available. There were a series of events and developments, in the late 1980's, when the key players in what was to emerge in the 1990¹s, with net.art and related practices, started to meet, communicate directly with one another and inform each other's work. It is no accident that many of these people were Eastern or Central European or were based in what had been cold-war border cities, like Berlin and Ljubljana. A few of these artists did replay historical tropes. Shulgin's playful refigurings of Suprematism is an example, although as much concerned with developing a commentary on his personal sense of national heritage at a time of social turbulence, post 1989, than formal art-historical deconstruction. It can be argued that the emergence of new medialities and formal frameworks are often associated with artists revisiting the past. Picasso's confluence of Cubism and African art is perhaps an example. Again, it would be dangerous to consider this as simply or even primarily formal aesthetic experiment. Picasso, like Shulgin, lived in a social and political context and he drew inspiration from the excitement and conflict he experienced living within it. Contemporary network culture is a very recent phenomenon. Perhaps we forget how fast things have changed and what seemed odd or futuristic to many until only a few years ago is now commonplace. There is a turbulence associated with that rate of change. Varnelis's piece attempts to connect artists practice with digital networks with examples of practice from a more mainstream art world (you can't get more mainstream in the UK than the work of a Turner Prize winner). To some degree this approach is illuminating, allowing some novel connections to be made. Zittel and Auerbach's work sits interestingly alongside Halley's or Estes's. It is also clear that mainstream arts practice of the early post-modern period (1960-1980) was an influence on many artists who were associated with the 1990's emergence of art practices situated within a networked cultural context. However, it is important to remember that many of those artists chose to work with digital and communications systems in large part because they were disillusioned with the mainstream artworld. Here I am not talking about art practices but the artworld itself. These artists sought out of a parallel system that would allow practitioners to work, communicate and facilitate new audiences without the mediation of the institutional framework the artworld was/is composed of. This activity is traceable to earlier examples, some of which explicitly join up, with practitioners associated with artist run initiatives like The Kitchen and Film-makers Coop in New York or London Video Arts and Film-makers Coop in the UK (amongst many other activities around the World during the 1960's and 70's) being part of the development of the prototype digital and networked culture of the 1980's which Shulgin, Bunting and many others are associated with. This is arguably a stronger lineage of historical precedent than that which connects Peter Halley to Josh On and in this sense Varnelis's piece risks being revisionist. But it can be hard to establish new historical connections without taking such a risk. However, as was pointed out in the first paragraph above, nothing is linear or simple. Whilst many of the artists associated with net.art and similar activities did seek alternate models to the dominant artworld market model others sought to play with it and turn the system to their own advantage. Vuk Cosic is an example here, his provocations and interventions functioning as both critique of the dominance of market thinking in the creative arts and an attempt to grab some of the associated limelight. He played this double edged sword with some skill. It is perhaps too early to evaluate whether Shulgin's more recent work with easy to consume electronic multiples is as clever and destabilising as Cosic's practices (he made sense of what he was doing by Oretiring young) or whether he risks repeating the failures of Kasemir Malevich, the Suprematist Shulgin parodied in his Oform artworks, who, after a blazing period of creativity retreated into politically-correct folk-art. To me this sort of art-historical connection evidences a "born digital" art criticism which Varnelis's essay perhaps fails to do.

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by Carolyn Guertin

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:07:58 -0700 - But Duchamp did NOT sign it. The urinal was sent to him signed -- probably by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven -- as a commentary on his art practice. The fact that Duchamp exhibited it, but never gave the Baroness (or someone else if it wasn't her) credit tells us more the devaluation of women artists and about patriarchal power structures in his day than anything.

Comment on No End In Sight: Networked Art as a Participatory Form of Storytelling by Marco Deseriis

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:24:50 -0700 - Hi Manuel, thank you for your precious feedback. I was not aware of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook series. However, it is interesting to notice that this is still a book (i.e. its topology is immediately accessible to the reader in its entirety) and that it is a game--a cultural form that borrows some conventions from storytelling, but it is also governed by “algorithmic” rules, notably the fact that games are actions. While in games you must act in order to play, in hypernarratives the reward still rests with the pleasure of reading. My argument is that this pleasure is largely taken away by the opaque structure of hypertext (at least in its HTML codification).

Comment on No End In Sight: Networked Art as a Participatory Form of Storytelling by Jo-Anne Green

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:21:50 -0700 - Manuel, Thanks for your feedback. You can leave your comments next to the relevant paragraph by clicking on the speech bubble next to that paragraph. Jo

Comment on No End In Sight: Networked Art as a Participatory Form of Storytelling by Manuel Schmalstieg

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:23:16 -0700 - This should be nuanced as there was one interesting genre of "hyperfiction" that had a big success for some time in the marketplace: the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.

Comment on No End In Sight: Networked Art as a Participatory Form of Storytelling by Manuel Schmalstieg

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:31:47 -0700 - Les Liens Invisible = missing final "s"

Comment on No End In Sight: Networked Art as a Participatory Form of Storytelling by Manuel Schmalstieg

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:30:00 -0700 - The avatar's are rather Lego-looking than Playmobil-looking.

Comment on Introduction: Electracy by Gregory Ulmer

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:59:19 -0700 - Thanks for posting. The beauty of this venue is that you are invited to propose your own terms, and fill in the slots of the apparatus formation based on your own vision and or theory. The whole column under "Electracy" is speculative, but based on considerable historical evidence (produced by academics). Yes, the Internet is an institution, meaning that it operates according to a set of protocols enforced by governing bodies with the power to include/exclude practices. This institution is very young and still evolving.

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by Anna Munster

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:15:57 -0700 - Sorry for the mispelling - will fix in the text! And please leave some actual cues or direct me toward any links you have that might take up some more of these questions about aesthetics

Comment on Lifetracing 1. Platforms for Presenting the Self Online by Lifestreaming | digital K

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:43:42 -0700 - [...] do MetaReciclagem. Cheguei no Storytlr depois de ler o capítulo da Anne Helmond "Lifetracing 1. Platforms for Presenting the Self Online", no networkedbook, que o efeefe tinha linkado no [...]

Comment on The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by Bruce Sterling

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:57:10 -0700 - Wow! I'd pay good money for "a new poetics of the real" that is "distinct from existing models of realism." Offering to "pay good money" is kind of a "bourgeois rise to power" gesture, however, so I'll have to settle for making this affirmative social-media comment.

Comment on Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility by vito

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:05:08 -0700 - Very interesting reflection, I'm taking many cues from it. Thanks for the quote, I just have to remark that my family name is: Campanelli. Best, V.

Sitewide Activity

Sitewide Activity Feed

• Owen Gallagher and Martin Leduc are now friends   2 months, 3 weeks ago

• Martin Leduc updated the ”Base” information on their profile   2 months, 3 weeks ago

• James updated the ”Base” information on their profile   3 months ago

• James and Jo-Anne Green are now friends   3 months, 1 week ago

• Gregory Ulmer commented on the blog post Introduction: Electracy   4 months ago
  

  Your follow-up is appreciated, and your concerns are legitimate. The first caveat in these speculations is that there are no guarantees, but neither is there determinism. No form, practice, or technology is inherently good or evil. My optimism about electracy is based on the fact that any apparatus is invented, with some aspects

• Gregory Ulmer commented on the blog post Introduction: Electracy   4 months, 3 weeks ago
  

  By overlap I assume you are referring to the lefthand column, finding a point of comparison among the different apparati (Practice, Procedure etc). That is a convention of analysis (as you know). I don’t see much overlap between Religion, Science, and Entertainment as Institutions, for example. So the point of making the

• Gregory Ulmer commented on the blog post Introduction: Electracy   4 months, 3 weeks ago
  

  By overlap I assume you are referring to the lefthand column, finding a point of comparison among the different apparati (Practice, Procedure etc). That is a convention of analysis (as you know). I don’t see much overlap between Religion, Science, and Entertainment as Institutions, for example. So the point of making the

• Gregory Ulmer commented on the blog post Introduction: Electracy   4 months, 3 weeks ago
  

  By overlap I assume you are referring to the lefthand column, finding a point of comparison among the different apparati (Practice, Procedure etc). That is a convention of analysis. I don’t see much overlap between Religion, Science, and Entertainment as Institutions, for example. So the point of making the table is to

• sougwen updated the ”Base” information on their profile   5 months ago