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cream 13: cream bits
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Cream almost seemed to melt away in the long hot summer we had on the
European continent. You, the honorable members of the cream newsletter,
have been terribly neglected. To relief you a bit from the lack of
necessary art protiens and cultural vitamins this is causing we now
serve you some cream bits, drops and scoops. Our present cream editor is
still seeking the secret ingredients for cream 13: the end of the
internet. Will it become a sizzler or a skidder, will it keep balance or
fall from the tightropes of the internet? Send us your thoughts on 'the
end of the internet' and our editor might just think your text the
cherry on his cream. But first, here's some lusheous info snacks for you.
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content:
! art contexts, projects and short reviews
* found treasures (non-creamy reviews)
? cream contribs activities
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! what is going on out there: art contexts, projects, reviews !
:::
The Daniel Langlois Foundation and the Guggenheim have published a book
by the Variable Media Approach entitled 'permanence through change',
which deals with the preservation of what the book calls "nontraditional
art works". This means art works that are not stable objects. One of the
introductions is a highly ironic text by Bruce Sterling, who describes
the many dangers threatening art works in colorful terms and then adds
the new problems of the digital age on top. Besides the obvious problem
of obsolete hardware the illusion of digital information being
immaterial and thus eternally available needs some reflection: "Bits
have no archival medium. We haven't invented one yet. If you print
something on acid free paper, and you put it in a dry dark closet, you
can read it in 200 years. We have no way to archive bits that we know
will be readable in even 50 years. Tape demagnetizes. CDs delaminate.
Networks go down." The other texts are gathered in thematic chapters
called perspective, method, case studies and resources. Amongst the case
studies are works by Nam June Paik, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Mark
Napier. The variable media approach seems to offer a very good addition
to the discourses on the preservation of contemporary art, by also
taking the artist's intent and the art work's context into account,
something which is not common practice of conservators yet. The book is
bi-lingual, in French and English.
It's ISBN number is 0-9684693-2-9
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This year's Ars Electronica, the Austrian festival for art and
electronic media, seems to have been slightly hacked. The texts from its
catalogue are available on line at a rather obscure website, which makes
them available for those without access to the book or for those without
enough cash to buy one. The texts from amongst others Christiane Paul,
Florian Cramer, Peter Bentley, Oliver Fritz, Richard Kriesche and Howard
Rheingold all deal with this year's Ars Electronica theme 'CODE'.
http://www32.brinkster.com/blueplane/aec03/
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Heath Bunting, former net artist, was in Berlin this summer to present
some of his projects at Buero Friedrich, one of Berlin's most
interesting galleries, and to give a workshop in fence climbing for the
Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien. The Fence Climbing project, a collaboration of
Heath Bunting and Kaylee Brandon, has been nicely documented in a little
booklet compiled by Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien curator Gerrit Gohlke. The
booklet called 'tour de fence' hopes to encourage its readers to "become
a tour de fence amateur team". More promo blurb : "tour the fence is the
answer to your real needs. while the internet promised to level out all
barriers, tour de fence enables you to surmount the fences out there
that people erect to obstruct your way every day. from wire netting to
rustic fence, from steel door to close security system, tour de fence
offers you the necessary know-how for unhampered movement. tour de fence
is the direct way." About ten people participated in the Berlin workshop
to climb fences throughout the city, of which two children, aged 9 and 3
years old.
Distribution by Vice Versa Vertrieb, Dorotheenstrasse 4, D-12557 Berlin,
Germany. Or viceversa@comp.de
http://bethanien.de/de/tourdefence2003.html
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Jon Ippolito, artist, curator and member of the variable media
initiative, is working as a teacher in Maine these days, in what he
calls the 'Still Water' project. His students have now produced at least
three projects, which you can find at the website below. One of the
projects is a game, or a proposal for a game. In the game the player
apparently becomes a five year old epileptic girl, and sees the world
from her perspective. It is unclear whether the game is working already,
but what I like a lot about the presentation of it on the website is
that it plays with the usual commercial game release and conjures up
fake past and future positive reviews and negative criticisms of the
game. Definitely a game with potential, even if it is only in concept stage!
http://newmedia.umaine.edu/codeplay/
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The artist Cary Peppermint has been a special case inside the net art
arena for some years now. His work is mostly off line performance art,
yet he has also engaged in so called 'ebay art', making on line
auctioning a mixture of conceptual and time based performance art and he
has made a few small web projects. Peppermint is one of those artists
that work with the internet as a given, as just one material at hand for
contemporary art practice. In this new work for the on line art
collection of Doron Golan Peppermint is using his alotted space to
follow up on earlier work in which his private life is opened up and in
which the artist balances uncomfortably between intimacy and
exhibitionism. This is one of those artists for whom art and life are
almost one, without the artist ever slipping into pure self indulgence.
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/peppermint/mediation/
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Another artist with a background in performance is Karen Lancel. Her
work have so far been largely overlooked by the net art community and
media art scene, which is a great shame. The reason for that seems to be
that Lancel has not really involved herself in those on line communities
which have spurred most of the attention for network art. Her work is
interesting enough though. It ranges from 'nomansland', which deals with
the question of territory and borders, to 'stalkshow', in which the
audience has to follow someone wearing a computer on her/his back in
order to be able to take part in the work. Only recently Lancel's
'agora-phobia-digitalis' was presented at the Eyebeam Gallery in New
York. This installation, in which one can take part in a chat with
someone in an isolated place, like a prison or a monastery, creates a
feeling of space and claustrofobia at the same time. It consists of a
transparent plastic blown up curl, which at the same time protects and
encloses the audience participant, that serves as an outdoor computer
booth. Both 'agora phobia digitalis' and 'stalkshow' are part of a
larger project called 'traumatour', in which Karen Lancel investigates
"psychological survival techniques for experiences with violence,
(in)security and isolation".
http://www.xs4all.nl/~lancel
http://www.nomansland.nu/
http://lab.v2.nl/projects/stalkshow.html
http://www.agora-phobia-digitalis.org/uk/home.html
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* Reviews on the web - found treasures *
:
Lars Midboe, one of the organizers of the Swedish Electrohype festival,
wrote a review of the latest edition of the Read-Me software art
festival in Helsinki, where many of us wanted to go but weren't able to.
The text is available at
http://www.kopenhagen.dk/international/articlesint/readme0603.html
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Artist Kate Rich, formerly part of the Bureau of Inverse Technologies
together with Natalie Jeremienko, wrote a lengthy review of the
'Territories' exhibition in the Berliner Kunstwerke. The main focus in
the text is on a project by the Israeli architects Segal and Weizman
called LAND GRAB. The project seems an interesting, critically
productive overlap between architecture, art and politics. The gallery
Berliner Kunstwerke which is now presenting this project has a
controversial approach to art which is at the moment causing heated
debate in Berlin, since it is currently preparing an exhibition about
art and the terrorist group Rote Armee Fraction. Read the text about
'Territories' at the web exclusive department of Mute magazine. Also
check the text by Weizman and Misselwitz which you will find under Kate
Rich's review on this same site:
http://www.metamute.com/
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Writing weblogs has really become popular. At the Next5Minutes
conference just last weekend Geert Lovink called it the solution for
mailing list and other email trouble. This weblog is filled by artists,
curators and critics and offers an interesting, fast overview of various
events and exhibitions around the globe.
http://www.thecentreofattention.org/
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Another interesting, weblog (blog) type site is netartreview.net. The
site has been started by people that were annoyed by the change in
membership policy of the new media arts site rhizome.org. It focusses on
art on the net, and the content is mostly written by artists. When it
first started a lot of the reviews were on older projects as well, which
was good for those new to the net, but slightly boring for others. Now
the site is amazingly fresh and should be in everyone's regular surfs. A
very good alternative for or addition to rhizome's daily netartnews.
http://www.netartreview.net/
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? what are those creamies up to: cream contribs activities ?
Saul Albert:
Saul Albert is currently helping to build a distributed library
(http://dlpdev.theps.net) for the University of Openess
(http://uo.theps.net)
where he is the janitor.
You will be able to meet Saul Albert live in Rotterdam, the Netherlands,
on October 12th, for a Dorkbot event, with ao Alexei Shulgin and
Wilfried Houjebek (who organizes this event). See:
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotrotterdam/
Inke Arns:
Inke Arns is curator of the upcoming travelling exhibition of Irwin, the
Slovenian art group. The Irwin exhibition will first be presented at the
Kuenstlerhaus Bethanian in Berlin, Germany, from September 26th to
October 26th. Then it will move on to the Karl-Ernst Osthaus Museum in
Hagen, also Germany, from November 11th 2003 to Januari 4th 2004, to
finish at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Belgrade, Serbia, from April
17th to May 17th 2004. A bi-lingual, German/English catalogue will
appear, for more details please see the following web site:
http://www.irwin-retroprincip.de/
Tilman Baumgaertel:
Together with Hartware from Dortmund Tilman Baumgaertel is preparing an
exhibition on computer games. The exhibition will run from October 11th
till November 30th in a renovated old industrial site called Phoenix
West in Dortmund, Germany. Amongst the artists that are presented are
Thomson & Craighead (UK) , Arcangel Constantini (MEX), Jodi (NL/BE) and
Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer (A).
http://www.hartware-projekte.de
Josephine Bosma:
You can find Josephine Bosma's latest text ('No Ego'), which is
available in a preliminary version, at:
http://www.404project.net/datenbank/bos_pdf
The final version of this text will be available at the same site end of
October 2003.
Josephine Bosma will be speaking about art and the interface at a
conference on the same topic at the University of Aarhus Denmark. Danish
web site:
http://www.digital-aestetik.dk/
Sarah Cook:
Already in a few days Sarah Cook will be presenting a seminar about
data-based art, with Steve Dietz, Cornelia Sollfrank, Lev Manovich and
Graham Harwood at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle,
United Kingdom.
http://www.balticmill.com/
In spring 2004 Sarah Cook is co-curating an exhibition in the Banff New
Media Institute, Canada, together with Steve Dietz and Anthony Kiendl,
called Pretty Good Access. Details will be announced later.
Florian Cramer:
After making one exception by appearing as a speaker at this year's Ars
Electronica, Florian Cramer will now focus entirely on finishing his PhD
thesis on self-executing code in poetry (in the form of anagrams,
permutations and finally computer sourcecode) from the late antiquity,
17th century, 20th century modernism to present.
Steve Dietz:
On September 18th you can find Steve Dietz at the Baltic Centre in
Newcastle for a seminar on data-based art. (see also: Sarah Cook)
http://www.balticmill.com/
Steve Dietz also just started teaching, and the course he gives is
called 'art after new media'.
Then Steve Dietz is also preparing an exhibition in the Banff New Media
Institute, together with Sarak Cook and Anthony Kiendl. More details on
the exhibition called 'Pretty Good Access' will be announced later.
Tetsuo Kogawa:
At the 'birthday of art' Tetsuo Kogawa and others started a monthly
webradio broadcast in Januari this year. For live stream at specific
times and the archive of earlier webcasts check:
http://anarchy.k2.tku.ac.jp/kinesonus/
Then there is a big chance you can meet Tetsuo Kogawa in person at
Radiophon'ic 2003, a radio art festival in Brussels from November 1st
till November 8th. The website of this festival is nothing but a front
page today (September 17th), but hopefully the program will appear there
soon.
http://www.radiophonic.org/
Some info about the festival in French:
http://www.acsr.be/rencontres.php
Frederic Madre:
The malfunctions of the Internet as a space for social re-invention have
now become too numerous to mention for Frederic Madre. Tune Out. He is
currently in a state of mourning and blames it all on the gluttony of
weblogs. "Destroy All Weblogs" is his motto. Turn Off. Later this year,
Fred will pick up the pieces and try to put everything forward together.
Listening at night to Roland Barthes' "Living together" seminar helps
him. A book of Frederic Madre's photographs will be published in the
Fall of 2004. The word is "Idiorrythmie". Syndicate lives, he says. Drop
in.
http://www.roland-barthes.com/qesseuil/pub/FRA/seuil/extrait0014.htm
http://2balles.cc/dehors.php
http://pleine-peau.com/mange
http://anart.no/~syndicate
Robbin Murphy:
Robbin Murphy is still in exile on an island in the Gulf of Mexico where
he works at the confluence of digital theory and landscape architecture.
He posts his findings daily on thingist (http://bbs.thing.net). If
anyone knows the secret of making gardenias bloom he can be contacted at:
murphy@thing.net
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cream is an experimental collaboration of writers and curators in the
field of art, with a focus on art in networks. You can subscribe to cream
and we invite you to forward this mail to anybody you feel might be
interested in the content of cream.
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Contributors and supporters of cream so far: Saul Albert, Inke Arns, Tilman
Baumgaertel, Josephine Bosma, Sarah Cook, Florian Cramer, Steve Dietz,
Katharina Gsöllpointner, Karin Hinterleitner, Frederic Madre, Armin Medosch,
Robbin Murphy, Tetsuo Kogawa, Uli Wegenast, Alex McLean, Jo Walsh, Michael
Weinkove.
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contact cream at: cream-info@laudanum.net
web site: cream.artcriticism.org
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