Well, I've just had an opening to a great group show at the Maccorone Gallery. It is the culminating event to an artist residency program with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. I've got more time on my hands, but after every opening there is the need to jump to the next thing, continue the great feeling of getting work out there. I don't think I could have done everything in preparation without my husband being laid off (depressingly ironic, non?) and the help of family.
Just started Manovich's book today. I remember coming across this book while in graduate school. It happened quite simply: Amazon recommended it to me based on my previous purchases. The description looked appealing and when I read some of the first chapter provided by amazon, I decided to get it. I read most of it. Then, recommended it to some of my classmates, who then recommended it to be on our next reading list for graduate seminar class. Reading the forward by Mark Tribe, founder of Rhizome.org, I can't help but leap back in time to the late 90's when the art world was a blaze with excitement over the software technology explosion. I've re-read the following sentence a few times: “The Internet is particularly ripe with the potential to enable new kinds of collaborative production, democratic distribution, and participatory experience”. (p, xi) I still have the knawing feeling of wanting a poof to happen. Some of the most exciting internet based art that quickly comes to mind are: Critical Art Ensemble and The Atlas Group. Yet by and large, I feel a lag in production. Could it be that the buzz is over and our financial crisis has prevented funding and support?
Tribe points out that one of the things that impressed him about Manovich's perspective on the computer technology boom was his cold-shower reality check, that the internet, computer, and its networks were being blindly embraced with the promise of Utopian dreams. Perhaps it was because Manovich a self-proclaimed, “post-communist subject”, having experienced the affects of a disappointing new world order, he saw through the RGB-colored glasses. Well, I we've experienced let downs the past 45 years. For the past few weeks, there has been a lot of commotion (rightly slow) regarding the formation of the 4th Reich: The Goolge/Verizon empire. That's a far cry from an open internet where fairness and equality are king. With a share going for about $600 and change, money turns the best of us into Faustus. Our, zeal for “techno-utopianiasm and new libertarian politics popularized by Wired magazine” (p, x) has been replaced by good old fashioned Ayn Rand style economic Darwinism. Take a look at the huge investment to buy Adobe products and the like, and you're in for a massive stroke (especially if you need to change platforms because your computer is pre-historic. Alright, I'm venting). While in the rest of the world open source software is a reputable option, we scoff at the idea to the point where open source has become associated with evil hackers.
Manovich begins with a prologue consisting of a 22 page photo-illustrated guide “acting as a visual index to some of the book's major ideas”. (p, xiv) The late 1920's film piece Man with a Camera, by Dziga Vertov acts as the visual lead for Manoivch's book. I have seen the film and it provided a visual exploration that busted through the different possibilities of seeing reality at the time. Unlike DW Griffith's racist nightmare, Birth of a Nation, who is applauded as a visionary and for "unleashing the power of movies as a catalyst for social change", Vertov's piece merges photographic techniques of multiple imagery and storytelling into a magnetic kaleidescope. It creeps me out when Griffith's summoned. Tribe did so asking why haven't we seen the computer-game equivalent to Birth of a Nation. Well, I'd be scared to see it. Wouldn't you? Being chased by hooded klan's men? But, wait, we do see the equivalent with all the shoot-em up computer games spilling blood 1000-miles a minute. I guess I know what Tribe is getting at, but I'm much happier with Manovich bringing up Vertov instead (although there is mention of Griffith). It's clean. <>
No comments:
Post a Comment