Here’s what I propose:

Blaine’s e-harangue did bring up some valid points despite it’s
shrewery, and, yes, last night’s session lacked some focus and perhaps
we were a bit intellectually lackadaisical (although keep in mind we
were drunkenly watching Kesha videos a month ago), but I think we may
want to wait until the final 20 minutes or so of Blaine’s Krauss
evening on the 5th - which he had better freaking lead with aplomb —
to discuss what may be systemic challenges that inevitably pose
themselves in a group such as this one.

Examples: do we limit our discussion to explicitly net.art, or new
media curating oriented topics exclusively, for example, or are there
other, less obvious, but also fruitful inroads to shedding light on
the state(s) of things?  I liked Blaine’s Coetzee recommendation a few
weeks ago, but it was in the afternoon.  This is basically why I keep
stubbornly defending Alex Singh’s conservative sentiments, BTW.
Or do we want to further explore the field of new media art writing?

I’m not even afraid to earnestly pose the question: what is this ‘new
media’ anyway?; it’s a question not unlike ‘what is the contemporary?’
since it can nominally refer to any media new to it’s time (Krauss’
substitution “technical support” doesn’t help here).  The new media
definition we agree on is — I claim, for the time being until I’m
seduced by something that sounds more truthy — constituted by an
agreement on certain familial characteristics based on notable
precedents ie. Paik, Vostell, Rokeby (this, now that I’ve reread it,
the neo-Wittgensteinian definition I mentioned yesterday, proposed in
the 50s by Morris Weitz, whereby there is no logically reachable
single definition of art using Symbolic Logic).

I think we need to go backwards in order to go forwards. An example:
Brad thinks the author’s intentions (at least maintaining them) don’t
matter all that much, in effect, in the era of the DV-cam, YouTube,
and fan art.  Well, I learned that in 1954 one Beardsley, and one
Wimsatt, together wrote an essay, The Intentional Fallacy, pointed at
literary criticism of the time, but it seems at a glance potentially
relevant to mash-ups and walking into a gallery show not having any
idea what’s going on unless you’ve read up on it.

I wrote a note to Ed Winkleman the other day remarking that had I not
known the premise of Chris K. Ho’s “regionalism” show of conceptual
paintings, I would’ve thought I’d walked into the Keltie Ferris
opening by accident.

Maybe someone like Friedrich Kittler could help us re-think, via his
sweeping yet sober (sober on the page!) historical accounts of
technology and socio-technical systems, not just ‘art since Nam Jun
Paik’ or wherever we each draw our vague lines.  One of Kittler’s
provocative theses, actually, is that all ‘new media’ art, including
everything back to and beyond Les Paul’s development of the
electrically amplified guitar, should be called ‘computer art’,
because it’s the nature of the computerized system which is
uppermostly essential to it’s functionality.

In conclusion, for this coming Sunday if anyone is interested, we
could start afresh, somewhere tangibly, Teutonically, solid: with
Friedrich Kittler’s essay, There Is No Software:
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=74 (8 pages tops)

I can and would like to meet Sunday eve or earlier as I fly out Monday
morning, and to keep it simple, modest, but rigorous and high
horsepower.  So let’s focus on a single text.
We could meet at my place if anyone’s interested?  I’m just near the
68th street 6 stop, which I know seems like half way to Montreal for
some of you.  We have wine, cheese, and adjustable lighting.
I’ll be inviting two rigorous friends of my own.  Or, I’ll be reading alone.

P.S. regarding Lauren’s show, which I thought was GOOD - I’m
card-carrying pro new NewMu - my criticism would be with her confused
political invocations: I won’t elaborate in THIS e-harangue, but there
is a reason, beyond coincidence, that the in front window of the New
Museum had a display featuring Lessig’s Free Culture next to Slavoj
Zizek’s Living in the End Times — two books that are basically
incommensurable in their politics but which would speciously seem to
stand for similar values. No. And you know Lauren was reading both
because she freaking used the Rumsfeld joke in her catalog essay!!!


BTW, here is Lev Manovich’s Top Ten New Media Art Texts 1970-2000
http://www.manovich.net/digitalsalon.htm

Blegh
Paris