On KiSS

KiSS, or the KIsekae Set System, was originally a popular Japanese cardboard doll game in which girls could play dress up by changing tabbed clothes on their paper dolls. Software was developed in 1991 enabling fans (read adolescent Japanese boys to elderly Japanese men) to create their own KiSS dolls. Digitizing the dolls changed it from an innocent Japanese girl game and put it into the realm of Japanese erotica. Many of the anime style characters are typical male fantasy fare -the school girl, the cheerleader, the nurse, the scantily clad hot cyborg assassin, etc. The KiSS program features transparent graphics and masking that allows the user to drag and drop (add or remove) various clothing or accessories onto a digital representation of a doll. The KiSS dolls became a phenomenon in the mid 1990's when the Internet made it possible for the masses to download the doll creation software and players (which are available for every platform). Rudimentary P2P file sharing allowed fans of the genre to share, and for most people collect, all the KiSS dolls that were being produced.

In his article "The Art of Kiss," Blackhawk (screen name) argues that the KiSS doll phenomenon has created a community of artists. This reflects some of the ideas presented in my previous posts on the consumer and producer being one in the same then what defines an artist? On the topic of high and low art, by definition, KiSS dolls are low art. They are mass culture, they are superficial kitsch. I will step down from the Ivory Tower that I sometimes visit to secede my argument that the creators of KiSS dolls are in fact undocumented, but are still artists. Many of them are expressing their creativity for the very first time and that should be commendable. In fact, anyone who makes something visual, beautiful or even remotely creative should be branded and hailed as an artist. I used to be offended by looseness of the word artist as it was applied almost at random or a marketing ploy (Subway sandwich assembly team wore the "Sandwich Artist" badge proudly). Rather that getting into endless arguments over semantics or making someone feel bad because the word "craft" is somehow negative -I will just declare that everyone is a fucking artist. Those of us who actually study and make "high" art just need to come up with a new name - we are supposed to be creative so it should not be that hard.

But I digress. There are still the moral issues that need to be examined behind the KiSS dolls. As previously mentioned the fans or hobbyists of the genre are predominantly male. The digitized KiSS dolls no longer share any of the controls that were in place in the original game. Most, but not all, of the KiSS dolls are of adult nature, you can remove tops to reveal breasts (or not) and you can remove bottoms to reveal pubic hair (or not). It is actually the "or nots" that bothers me. The fact that there is interest among men (young and old) to play dress up with virtual dolls that represent young and underage girls is for lack of better term, perverted. It is sexual fantasy whether it denotes erotic arousal or not. It is the subjectification of women and young girls. Find a new hobby or collection.

I am at an impass. I do not believe in censorship. In Helms vs. Mapplethorpe, I was rooting for Mapplethorpe. I thought Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" was a great work of art. I even think that Chris Ofili's work with elephant dung is thought provoking and stangely beautiful. KiSS dolls just seemed to have crossed that line for me. I don't think it should be banned, but the public should be aware of what it is.

Fluidities and Oppositions

Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders and Future Artists by Anne-Marie Schleiner takes a look at how the dynamic between net artists and curators are defining the net genre. By combining the current trends of globalization with the future fiction from cyberpunk literature, Anne-Marie attempts to predict the future role of the net artist (x, y and z!), the net curator, and the net audience.

In 1995, the Netscape IPO gave the Internet validity as a commodified resource and popularity among the mass culture. The initial question was "who will use this new medium to produce content for the masses?" The media industry was the obvious immediate answer -but turned out to be a non-inclusive answer as evidenced by both the failed AOL-Time Warner merger in particular, and the entire dot com era in general. There were the few artists who were early adapters of the technology, but lacking in both numbers and in support, their works did not make a very big splash in the relative ocean that is the Internet. The overlooked content creators were the masses themselves. Many of them learning to code themselves, were putting anything and everything online, with no filter, no censorship and no criteria.

In the past 5 years, there have been technological advances that have ushered in the Personal Publishing Revolution. Blogging, podcasting, photoblogging (flickr), moblogging (mobile phone cameras) and very soon, thanks to video-sharing technologies like bit-torrent, vbloging (video journals). These push button publishing tools have given the masses the ability to self-publish quickly and easily. With strength in numbers giving them the power to have their voices heard they are becoming the dominant force in content publishing. The masses, once regarded only as content consumers, are taking the role of content producers away from the media industry. People are becoming their own news source (journalism 2.0 blogs), movie directors, musicians, game designers, writers, critics, and (drum roll) -artists.

This may be perceived as a problem for both traditional net artists and the art establishment. If everyone is producing art for the web, what exactly defines a net artist? The masses are not only in control of creating and distributing their own content, but as filter feeders, they are curating their own shows. What happens to the traditional art institution that consists of brick and mortar galleries and museums, collectors (with real money), and educated curators?

Recently I was "offended" that an art historian dismissed my work, without ever having seen it, simply on the basis that all net art is not "high art." As my belief system (the extension of myself) was challenged I flamed back something to the effect of "her generation (old school) of art critics will eventually die and the new generation will validate my work." But devils advocate is a powerful force and I decided to find a viable adaptation of high and low art.

high art - a.k.a. fine art -"the universal transcendence, having withstood the test of time and representing the epitome of artistic achievement - the meticulous expression in fine materials of refined or noble sentiment, appreciation of the former depending on such things as intelligence, social standing, educated taste, and a willingness to be challenged."

low art - a.k.a. mass culture -"the shoddy manufacturing in inferior materials of superficial kitsch, simply catering to popular taste, unreflective acceptance of realism, and a certain "couch potato" mentality."

I believe that traditional net artists can often be found under the "high art" category. John Simon's 1997 "Every Icon" is an example of high art, and yes it is digital. A lot of net artist are blurring the lines between high art and low art because we are manipulating and exploring the same tools that are available to the masses, but our projects are being smothered by the excessive amount of content being produced by the personal publishing revolution.

Truth be told, maybe we do need the art establishment to be our filter feeders. Their credibility and resources will help amplify our voice so that we may make a bigger splash.

On Google Print

In December 2004, Google started the Google Print Library Project to digitize the entire collections of five research libraries: Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Michigan, and the New York Public Library. Users are able to search for relevant content (using google's search algorithm -of course) in the entire content of the book. If the books are in the public domain users can read the entire book. If the book is still copyrighted then the user can only view a couple of pages at a time; usually the page you searched plus 2 pages before and after. A very recent security addition requires users to log in to google if the book is copyrighted (I was able to log in using my gmail name and password). Print.google already used cookies to make sure users were not doing anything dishonest (check your browsers cookie folder for print.google.com) like trying to see an entire book in one sitting. Cookies just identify the computer and not the individual person. Other copyright protections include disabling copy and pasting, disabling the save image function, and disabling printing.

With every new technology there are new hacks. Ironically, Aaron Boodman, a programmer from google wrote an extension for the fire fox browser (www.greasemonkeyed.com) that allows you to copy and paste the pages from google. A college student named Isometrick, another hacker, wrote code that manipulated print.google cookies so that you can see the entire text from a copyrighted book. The hack even created a complete pdf! He sent in his hack to google in hopes of getting hired, but only received a t-shirt and some pens. Hacking for Christ (still trying to figure out if they are being sarcastic) figured out how to hack the css of google.print to disable the transparent gif covering the page enabling users to copy the page image.

I can still take a screenshot using mac os x (shift-open apple-4) -not that I would want to.

I will edit and type more in the morning (its 2:30 am!)

On A Cyborg Manifesto -Donna Haraway

In "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Donna Haraway argues that cyborgs are, in theory, the postmodern social feminist ideal because they are void of gender. Cyborgs, according to science fiction (as well as the definition that Haraway has adopted), are both simultaneously animal and machine. They do not come from organic families and therefore are not susceptible to labor or individuation (Marxism) or gender formation or the Oedipal complex (psychoanalysis). Haraway states, "the main problem with cyborgs is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism” Fortunately for her argument, offspring are often unfaithful to their origins and have a tendency to rebel. She goes on to say, "their (cyborgs) fathers are inessential." I am not against feminism. I thought I was all for it. It turns out that I just really don't understand it beyond "Patriarchy=Bad.” If anyone versed in feminism wants to sum it up in a comment - I am all ears.

The feminist lexicon - I think I may have missed this conversation.

At first I was intrigued by the use of Haraway’s usage of language. art)ficial, art)facts, object)fication and diff~culties really got me thinking about multiple meanings and root words. Incorpora-tion, justifica-tion, scient-ism, simul-taneously, natura-alize, analyt-ical, constitu-tion, epistemol-gical, com-munication, prob-lems, transforma-tions, televi-sions, educat-tion, and domin-ation. Hey, I am all for isms and skisms -we have lots of ologies in acadamia too. Idendty, possibilidies, disdnctions, subjecdvity, prevedng, primidve, wridng, dme, idndty, indmacy. Ok, I am at a loss. When did feminists start using "d" in place of "ti"? HELP! Anyone?

On The Electronic Disturbance Theater

The Critical Art Ensemble is a group of five network activists/artists working together to advance the theory and implementation of Electronic Civil Disobedience. One of their publications "The Electronic Disturbance Theater" which is available online with instructions to freely pirate and quote, just let them know you are doing it -yeah right, I wouldn't feel very much like a pirate now would I?

It is a great read and I plan to blog all 142 pages ;) -it is that good. However as blogs are not supposed to be all that long I will probably tackle this in chunks and do this in multiple parts. I might even turn the blogosphere upside down (literally) by publishing these in CHRONOLOGICAL order. Here goes...

On the Virtual Condition (chapter 1): Wake up people, the world is no longer analog. Our culture's grand quest for world domination and power through technology have reduced its people to data. More so everyday, everything we do and everywhere we go we are leaving a trail of data like a snail leaves a trail of slime. Bad analogy I will edit later. Case in point, I am leaving a data trail right now, as soon as I hit publish. Even if I delete this post at a later day there is a chance someone made a copy to read later, or a robot crawler found it and added it to a permenent archive. I went to a silicon-flatirons conference on how "old" media is transitioning/dealing with new media and one of the speakers speculated that some day we would read a presidential candidate's blog from when s/he was a teenager. Wow, I said a lot of stupid shit when I was a teenager. I say a lot of stupid shit now. But I am typing it anyway.

I like the idea that there has always been a "virtual" -it was just called mysticism, abstract analytical thinking, and romantic fantasy. We are living in exciting new time, our imaginations have now taken form through technological manifestations and our virtual is now real... or at least visual which is at least 20% real. No matter how bad this bullshit seems to get, we have to have some sense of pride and awe that we are alive to experience this pivotal era in our sorted history of humankind. Bow down, bend over, get out of the way, or turn off the machine, it's your choice.

EDT part two

This is a continuance of The Electronic Disturbance Theater.
On Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance (chapter 2)
Foucault would have loved this chapter. The Sythians were the original nomadic superpower, they were able to create fear and compliance in those they conquered because they did not exist.

"I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Kaiser Sose."

The Sythian's constant movement allowed them to never have to take a defensive position and produced paranoia and fear in the non-Scythians that they were always susceptible to attack. Fast forward to today. Sound remotely familiar? Believe in conspiracy theories? Do you feel like you are being monitored? Are you your own self-surveilling panopticon?

Video and Resistance: Against Documentaries (chapter 3)
Subjective memory has always been a problem. The invention of photography was a temporary solution for a brief period because it represented a concrete visual record. This is no longer true; the photograph is no longer a scientific tool. Photoshop and even the Photo Op has ended the innocence of photography as visual truth. The documentary, however, has always lied at either 24 or 29.97 frames per second. If you consider yourself to be information literate then it is critical that you study the works of documentary filmmakers from D.W Griffith to Errol Morris to Michael Moore. "The quality documentary does not reveal itself." Keep the images flowing seamlessly. Do not give time for self-reflection. Use a tripod, keep the camera steady. Do not make the viewer aware of the camera and disrupt the suspension of disbelief.

"the documentary does not create an opportunity for free thought, but instills self-censorship in the viewer, who must absorb its images within the structure of a totalizing narrative."

I love documentaries, but I do realize they are fictional propaganda, and I try to ingest them as such. Some of my favorites are uncut amateur videos taken at protests, they are often aired on free speech tv. These rough, jerky shots are the farthest thing from professional filmmaking and this makes them feel closer to the original purpose of the photograph -a solid witness.

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art - Suzanne Lacy

Mapping the Terrain is a collection of essays edited by Suzanne Lacy and published in 1995. The introduction, written by Lacy, gives a good analysis about the history and strategy of creating public art.

New genre public art is distinguished from its predecessor "public art" in that it is not about the object but is based on the relationship between the space and the audience. Where as old-school public art, and incidentally what most people think of as public art, is a sculpture in front of a corporate building. Re-watch fight club if you are not sure what corporate art is. Originally it was seen as a way to revitalize inner cities and create jobs for sculptures, but public meant that it was to be moved outside the gallery and viewed in a public space, the actual people that comprised the public had nothing to do with the process. New genre public art moves away from this corporate art paradigm by working with the communities in which the art is placed. Open dialog is encouraged between the artist and the people that are going to actually have to live with it. New genre art is often based on liberal ideals and speaks about issues relevant to the societal culture in which it is placed.

The goal of Mapping the Terrain is to provide first hand accounts of the design and implementation of new genre public art so that young artists can have insight into the processes and strategies of moving public art forward. It is equally a great resource for net artist because much of our work takes place in space (virtual) and involves a community of people.

Net Art: Building Something Out of Nothing -Josephine Bosma

(more subtitle) Self Education, Collaboration and Networking article

B.I. (Before the Internet) - wow, that's great. Never heard that before.
Moving on.

History is written by the winners. Net.art history is written by your friends. This review of an article written on net art history was written by me.
Moving on.

Bosma argues that net art is and has been: writing, cinema, radio art, sound art, music, kinetic art, conceptual art, performance art, mail art, digital art and video art. It is now popular, however, because of advances in technology. Particularly the small one in 1999 when Netscape created RSS, not built specifically for blogging, but blogging florished because of it anyway and with it: online writing, cinema, radio art, sound art, music, kinetic art, conceptual art, performance art, mail art, digital art and video art.

In the early days before the internet (b.i. - I just love that) it is interesting to read about the early experimentations with rudimentary shared networks, old crappy computers and really expensive and faulty internet access. We know - it sucked! That is why we have Moore's law; technology will always improve and make things a bit easier. It probably really sucks right now, although we won't realize it until many years from now when we look back and say "I can't believe I had to blog using my fingers."

When the machines are on and your fingers are on the keyboard, you are in connection with some space that is beyond the screen - I got turned on by the space! - Robert Adrian

Net Artists! There is division amongst our ranks. If we are to continue to beable to afford our high-priced broadband and upgrades to our hardware and software, not to mention food and shelter for our weak organic bodies, we must ©UNITE! Apparently there are those of us who prefer to create art for the screen a.k.a. 'click and go' web art, and those that prefer to create complex net projects that involve (and depend) on many end users to furnish the content, or by simply just "being" - are in fact, the art itself. Cheap shots are being taken from both sides of the aisle. We are also divided into independent artists doing it solo and those that seek sponsors in larger institutions such as the government, universities and god forbid -art galleries. While we were squabbling and fighting over virtual air time we have unleashed an attention economy (LOOK AT ME ;)

What we have with net.art is, we have a sort of shifting paradigm in art from the idea of representation to the idea of communication. For communication you don't need a lot of skills. You can use very simple software, which is widely available -Alexei Shulgin

Final note, I met Mark Napier in 2002 when he presented and spoke about potatoland.org at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I would have liked to have read Bosma's article that did not exist until three years later. Anyway, it was nice to learn that he was a painter before net art and that in 1995 he started experimenting with html by posting his paintings on his home page. Then he realized his paintings were no longer paintings and if he screwed with their pixels they became something totally different. This happened to me, exactly.

Crazy.

Net.Radio and The Public Space (Josephine Bosma)

The two main arguments presented by Josephine Bosma are:
1) Net art needs to be presented in physical public spaces
2) Net art needs to be documented and archived

I experienced "net happenings" through John Hopkins (the net artist not the hospital -slightly different spelling) while he was at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His classes spent the semester preparing and then hosting a net happening. The actual event itself lasted 24 hours and the physical space turned into a crazy twisted hallucinogenic party with everything from techno sound pumping to video projects covering most wall space (there may have even been a disco ball). It was incredible for a college course, we felt pretty privileged that we were having a pyschodelic party in the middle of campus and we were blown away that people from all over the world were joining us via web cams and IRC. Net artists half way across the globe would send us streaming video that we would remix and send back out. I went home in the middle of it to find what everyone outside of the university was experiencing. It was ok, certainly not on the same level as what was happening in the physical space.

Just as Bosma pointed out in her article, our net happening was neither documented or archived. John has left the building (actually the country) and all the students in his class have graduated and are gone. If I were to host another net happening I would have to start over from scratch and make all the same mistakes and have all the same technical difficulties that John had.

Moral of the story (and Bosma's article) - next time you create net art, do it in a public space and please document it.

Josephine Bosma: Vuk Cosic interview

Vuk Cosik interview

Although this piece was written in 1997 Vuk Cosic asked what he considered a rhetorically pompous question "does the globality of the audience automatically mean the universality of the topic". Well Vuk, let me help you out five years after the fact.

No.

The part of the article that resonated with me was when he argues that net art conferences is actually net art. I was an invited artist at FILE 2004 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The symposium brough in net artists from around the world and we together we formed a net. We had interesting conversations of the past, present, and future of net art. That felt more like net art to me than being online at home.

Success and Failure When Art Changes - Allan Kaprow

In Allan Kaprow's essay "Success and Failure When Art Changes" the author attempts to dismantle what is, and what is not, art. Kaprow is recognized as one of the pioneering artists to perform “happenings” in the late 1950's (John Cage beat him by 7 years to be considered the first). Kaprow collaborated with educator Herbert Kohl to create Project Other Ways for the Berkeley school system. The project was an educational experiment that attempted to inject art into a failing traditional curricula. The example Kaprow focuses on in his essay is artwork created by illiterate sixth-grade students who could be described as social out-casts. Through the umbrella of art, students were able to copy local graffiti (similar to apprentices copying the works of master painters) and then synthesize their own graffiti, eventually learning to spell and even write their own names. They jumped right to a higher level of learning according to Bloom’s Taxonomy – art rocks! The students also created early analog versions of hacktivism and mash-ups by defacing and rewriting discarded “Dick and Jane” early learning books.

The main question the author tries to answer in the essay is whether or not the work that the Berkeley sixth-grade students created should be considered as high art. Is artwork that is created outside of the institutionally set norms considered art? As a graduate student of the integrated arts, my short answer is yes. My long answer is hell yes. It is easier to answer this question twenty-plus years later when the art institution has lost its absolute monarchical control. The formal institution consisting of academia, galleries, curators and critics still exists. However there has been an extreme change in how art is delivered to the public. Information technology has allowed artists (even the most amateurish) a direct outlet to the viewer. Young artists are showing their work on their own, in both virtual (net) space and physical (run-down warehouse) space. Do we need art critics and curators to filter the work for us and tell us it is any good? Do we need galleries to select the work for us and tell us the value of the work (times two)?

In my working definition, art is actually art when it is viewed, discussed, interacted with, criticized, copied, parodied and reworked. If the students who created the art were free to express themselves, then it was certainly art for them. If the viewers who saw the work got a reaction from it, whether it was mental or emotional, then it was art for that moment.

The other question; was the work educational? Since there was no study or follow-up such as “where are they now?” -one can only speculate. Safe bet there was a surge in graffiti around the bay area. E]