WAC | Gallery9 | WebWalker Daily | cook : EAT digest #2

issue #10
02.25.00

WebWalker DAILY 02_11_00-04_30_00
from steve dietz guest editor: sarah cook
gallery 9, walker art center, the internet, and digital culture
ART ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK

1. sarah's challenge 2. the "hush" 3. sissyfight challenge 4. next week...		EAT: ENTERTAINMENT, ART, TECHNOLOGY http://www.walkerart.org/salons/eat/ EAT digest no. 2 CHOICE February 19 through February 25 contents: 1. Sarah Cook's challenge inspired by Sara Diamond - why do you choose the things you do? with responses from Carl di Salvo, Patrick Lichty and Patrick Maun 2. the question of the "hush" 3. Louis Mazza's sissyfight challenge with responses from Lisa Middag and Sarah Miller 4. coming up next week... ________________________________________
1. sarah's challenge		From sarah.cook@walkerart.org Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:18:01 +0000 Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:18:01 +0000 From: Sarah Cook sarah.cook@walkerart.org Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? A challenge to all you out there listening in: If as Guy Debord taught us, our consumption is affected by attention, can you choose not to consume? How can you if you are paying attention?? Name your favourite form of entertainment (cougar spotting in LA as Sara Diamond expressed last week or her fascination with beds, posted below) or thing to consume and why and how it gets your attention. From Sara_Diamond@BanffCentre.AB.CA Sun, 20 Feb 2000 13:31:30 -0700 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 13:31:30 -0700 I do fantasize technologies and my changing relationships to these constantly as an ongoing negotiation, including one that is corporatized and corporealized. For all kinds of reasons, I have an obsession with beds. I want to take an innocent hotel room and then record the ways that people make sounds in beds, fuck etc. in beds, talk in beds, shift and move and have a playback tool that replays the previous bedsitters to the next inhabitant or inhabitants. Instant bed replay. I want a technology that reads the mood of your bed partner in fine nauance of offers instructions, past repetoire, moments of reflection and cues as to their hormonal and emotive resonances and cues my own bodily technology to theirs. Sometimes, I arrogantly believe that I have that technology already in place. I have a wrecked back and I have decided to offer myself to anyone out there with a bed they want me to test, and I will do the back tech test on it and offer a consumer report. * From cdisalvo@metadesign.com Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:53:50 -0800 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:53:50 -0800 From: Carl DiSalvo cdisalvo@metadesign.com Subject: [Eat-raw] Sarah's Challenge My favorite form of entertainment used to be sex. Now its food. Specifically eating out. In a restaurant. With several friends. It involves wine and rich food that made with cream, and butter, and meat. And more wine. And cigarettes. And coffee. And late nights. Yes, its all about consumption. And attention. Attention to what I want and attention to others (without really caring what _they_ want, _they_ can eat whatever they want, drink whatever they want). The attention is to the moment and to the nourishment of the self. As for sex,... * From voyd@raex.com Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:31:15 -0500 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:31:15 -0500 From: Patrick LIchty voyd@raex.com Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? Carl Wrote: >My favorite form of entertainment used to be sex. Now its food. >Specifically eating out. In a restaurant. With several friends.... I can see this, especially as my wife and I have had the pleasure of sharing a pleasant evening with Carl in this manner. One thing that struck me was the idea of choice as entertainment. There was a point where we ate at a little place near the Loring Cafe by the Walker. The time came to order drinks, and Carl and I looked at the menu, mused over the selection, and the conversation expanded into our experiences with our favorite beers. Now this is the shift that I find has happened in the last couple decades - the emphasis on choice and consumption as entertainment. In deciding, we can talk about our decisions, muse about what's not on the menu, talk about our past consumptions, and see whether our choices hold up to past experiences. Choice is now a huge entertainment industry - look at the Mall of America. And, in so doing, the recombination of multinationals into megacomglomerates creates choice as a commodity - which cluster of goods will you buy from? *** From pmaun@bitstream.net Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:10:56 -0600 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:10:56 -0600 From: Patrick Maun pmaun@bitstream.net Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? Sex, food, coffee. All nice. All forms of entertainment I enjoy. Simple pleasures, yes, but when done correctly simply exquisite. I indulge in primarily two activities that I would consider my forms of Entertainment. Cooking, for its raw sensuality -- the chopping, slicing and dicing, seasoning using intuition and experience, sauteing (much more satisfying than say baking), the presentation and then the enjoyment of a meal with friends. My second entertaining indulgence is a little more complex. I like, no, love outdoor gear. Not just the things that gear allows me to do, but the gear itself. I often wonder if I would even bother doing the various activities if I could reconcile the guilt I would feel if I didn't use what I buy. I sea kayak, bike, telemark, hike, winter camp, cross-country ski and recently took up rock climbing after discovering that I owned pretty much everything I needed for my other sports (a subconscious gathering of course). I love the look of gear, the feel, the functionality. Being able to trust a piece of equipment with your life is a perverse form of entertainment that I truly enjoy.... Ancient foodstuffs and space-age materials. ________________________________________
2. the "hush"		From smpica@iinet.net.au Thu, 24 Feb 2000 18:14:14 +0800 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 18:14:14 +0800 From: Sarah Miller smpica@iinet.net.au Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? been contemplating a response to sarah's challenge but must admit - I'm feeling a tad inadequate - I don't know even what a cougar looks like - altho' the retractable headlights sound cute enuff. a kind of hush seems to have fallen over the list - i'm definitely curious about that. *** From melinda@subtle.net Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:04:11 +1100 Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:04:11 +1100 From: melinda rackham melinda@subtle.net Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? sarah m wrote.. >a kind of hush seems to have fallen over the list - i'm definitely curious >about that. perhaps because its a funny voyeuristic thread - these intimate mailing list revalations are making me squirm... which is a sort of enjoyable entertainment in itself.. ________________________________________
3. sissyfight challenge		From louis.mazza@walkerart.org Thu, 24 Feb 00 11:05:05 -0600 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 00 11:05:05 -0600 From: louis.mazza louis.mazza@walkerart.org Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? i got this last week from one of you: > >Sorry louis, I've been way too busy: playing sissyfight among other > >things. are you all _really_ too busy playing sissyfight? if so, great! why don't you tell us about it and talk about choice where gaming is concerned. is sissyfight unique? does it engage the player differently than duke nukem or some other shoot-em-up and take-over-the-world game? i just got done playing a few rounds and...what a thrill. the best thing about it is the opportunity to contribute your own commentary. i'm not a big time game player but i've never seen anything like it. it's like being in a chat room whose only purpose is to insult the other members. i loved it! what a great choice! listservs and chats are always guilded by the golden rules of RESPECTING OTHERS, NO FLAMES, NO NASTY BEHAVIOR. you have to admit, it gets kinda boring. perhaps there should be more environments where anger and violence are a creative _choices_ . it sure beats smily faces.... all those who enjoy a good fight (and who doesn't?) must check it out. www.sissyfight.com now... discuss. * From lisa.middag@walkerart.org 24 Feb 00 12:54:43 -0600 Date: 24 Feb 00 12:54:43 -0600 From: Lisa Middag lisa.middag@walkerart.org Subject: [Eat-raw] listserv rules I belong to a number of newsgroups, listservs, etc., and I have to say, I haven't seem much guilding of polite behavior. There is, oh yes, a superficial kind of nicety--but all it takes is one misinterpreted sentence, and the flames start flying. Every group I belong two goes through these upsets with the various sides aligning, regrouping, supporting, etc. Once or twice a month for small squirmishes, several times a year for major wars. So why do people chose to participate? One reason--thank you, Dr. ?Milgran? was it?--is that people LIKE to be able to align themselves with one group against another. It's that ole Freudian thing, you know--our discontent must go somewhere, it's a closed system, and so we aim at the "other." By CHOOSING we end up "in/accepted" with those who made the same choice. And this is reminding of that Rolling Stone article about the young teenage girls in a smallish blue collar town on the east coast. RS followed a group, maybe 10 of them, over the course of a few years. Basically, "individualism" as an idea is tremendously valued by these young women. "Be yourself. Be unique." Is the message they FELT. But somehow, this didn't carry into PRACTICE. They don't live it. Because they all CHOOSE to be together--to all wear a certain jean, or whatever.... And then I think many of my "choices" are positioned to put me in the "other" class. Once something is all the rage--I'm usually way OVER it. And how is this any different from what those young women are doing? Almost any top 10 song, and boy do I hate it. Sounds sort of familiar.... * From smpica@iinet.net.au Fri, 25 Feb 2000 16:52:01 +0800 Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 16:52:01 +0800 From: Sarah Miller smpica@iinet.net.au Subject: [Eat-raw] why do you choose the things you do? having just lived through one international arts festival, and somewhat masochistically, being about to go to another one, I'm feeling a bit like I've been force fed art/entertainment and - as in this particular festival, there was a strong emphasis on angels and christianity (the 'new spirituality' as it were) like I need to purge (violently). Consequently, my current consuming passion - which is unlikely to be realised any time soon - is to do nothing more than go swimming, read books, eat at home and sleep a lot! Nevertheless, living in a town dominated by an anti-intellectual, anti art, pro censorship, racist and homophobic government on the one hand and beaches, backyards, barbq's beer, boats & brits on the other, it is more usual for me to be anti lifestyle and pro art even tho I too, love food, wine beaches and trash literature. So what I might choose - at any given moment - changes - am I fickle or merely perverse ;-D still I was surprised by Louis' comments on the golden rules of listservs. Most of the listservs I've been involved in have tended to start cannibalising themselves at a certain point in the proceedings. In fact I've just had to calm my baby bro' down following his withdrawal from one particular listserv after receiving death threats - which - even knowing my bro to have a loose tongue and a wicked wit - I found pretty wild. So guess I'm aligning myself with lisa middag on that one. one slip of the tongue or a mis(reading) or a different position on something and the flaming starts.... ;-/ sorry louis - just couldn't resist if not a smiley face - at least a quizzical one ________________________________________
4. next week		Starting Sunday February 27th the next topic in the EAT forum: ENGAGEMENT. Join our guests, Mark Kingwell, Midori Matsui, Geert Lovink, Brian Goldfarb and Dike Blair as we find out what happens when you stop and ask yourself if you're having a good time. Philosopher and cultural theorist Mark Kingwell was born in Toronto in 1963 and educated at the University of Toronto, Edinburgh University, and Yale University, where he completed a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1991. He is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Kingwell is the author of: "A Civil Tongue"; "Dreams of Millennium"; "Better Living"; and a recent collection of essays, "Marginalia". In addition to a number of scholarly articles in academic journals, Kingwell's writing on culture and politics has appeared in Harper's, Utne Reader, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Observer, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail, among others. He is a contributing editor for the magazines Saturday Night, Shift, and Descant, a columnist for Adbusters, and a member of the editorial boards of This Magazine and Queen's Quarterly. He speaks frequently on cultural issues for television and radio. His new book, "The World We Want: Virtue, Vice, and the Good Citizen", will be published this fall. Brian Goldfarb is a digital media artist, curator, and Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Rochester where he teaches seminars on contemporary art and digital culture, and studio courses in computer art and electronic media. Goldfarb has exhibited in and curated a number of exhibits and independent video/multimedia programs. He was Curator of Education at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC from 1994-7, where he organized "alt.youth.media" (Fall 1996), an exhibition of computer art, video, and popular print media (zines) by and for young people. He is author of "Media Pedagogy: New Technologies and Visual Culture in Postwar Education" (forthcoming, Duke University Press), which looks at the intersections of the theory and practice of pedagogy and new (post-war) media technologies in a number of global contexts. Goldfarb holds a PhD from the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester. His current CD-ROM/Web project, "Ocular Convergence," is the first of a broader series considering real, experimental and imagined technologies for enhancing physical abilities, in this case, digital ocular prosthetics. Dike Blair was born in western PA in 1952. He is an artist who works in a variety of media and has shown his work in a number of galleries and museums in the US and abroad. He recently exhibited fluorescent light and carpet sculpture, and paintings at Feature, Inc. in NYC. His ancillary activities include writing and editing for the Parisian based magazine, Purple; and the internet site, The Thing. He is a contributing editor of ArtByte magazine and has contributed articles and reviews to magazines such as Paper, Art News, Flash Art, and Harper's: and has a number of his interviews included in the Let's Entertain catalogue (which you can read online at www.walkerart.org/va/letsentertain/). He has curated (or co-curated) several exhibitons, and has taught at a number of institutions including; the School of Visual Arts, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. One can see examples of his work at: http://www.thing.net/~lilyvac Geert Lovink, is a Dutch media theorist and activist, co-moderator of the www.nettime.org mailinglist(s), co-founder of www.dds.nl (digital city freenet) and co-organizer the next fives minutes conferences on tactical media www.n5m.org and a series of temporary media labs (last one in Helsinki www.kiasma.fi/temp). Midori Matsui is a scholar and cultural critic based in Japan who has published widely on contemporary art. sign up at www.walkerart.org/salons/eat ________________________________________
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