03.19.00
from steve dietz guest editor: sarah cook
gallery 9, walker art center, the internet, and digital culture
ART ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK
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issue #18 03.19.00 |
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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 |
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editor's note online and offline economies links |
EAT: ENTERTAINMENT, ART, TECHNOLOGY http://www.walkerart.org/salons/eat/ eat digest no. 5 COMPETITION March 12 through March 19 contents: 1. editor's note. 2. A discussion about online and offline economies with posts from Jon Ippolito, Josephine Bosma, Steve Dietz, Robbin Murphy, Theresa Duncan and others. ________________________________________ |
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editor's note |
*** I should also like to point out to you that this COOKED digest is in itself part of an ongoing competition. In response to the competitive nature of e-mail (each demanding to be read and answered), artists Keith Frank and Jon Ippolito have created a work for the EAT-RAW list called "Slimfast." In their words: "Slimfast is meant to compact bloated prose while simultaneously highlighting the key passages in each e-mail." It has been posting automatically each day to the EAT-RAW list, and while I haven't included one of its outputs here (a digest inside a digest might be too much to swallow!), I invite you to visit the EAT-RAW archives at walkerart.org/salons/eat to see what they look like. |
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online and offline economies |
From JIppolito@guggenheim.org Sun, 12 Mar 2000 22:05:11 -0500 Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 22:05:11 -0500 From: Jon Ippolito JIppolito@guggenheim.org Subject: [Eat-raw] competition in the gift economy >Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 19:36:39 -0800 (PST) >From: { brad brace } > >... so, how much are you "invited guests" being paid by the Walker Museum? Jon Ippolito replies: To be honest I can't remember--if there is an honorarium for guests it certainly wasn't enough to light up my eyeballs with dollar signs. I suppose Brad's question is a good point of departure for EAT's discussion about competition in the context of online art and entertainment. I'm always struck by how the mainstream press is obsessed with the question of how Internet artists are ever going to make a buck. A disturbing preponderance of journalism on online art--from outsiders like Wall Street Journal reporters to insiders like CyberTimes columnists--boils down to the question of whether one can buy a Web site. I don't believe online art provokes this question just because it's a radical art form. To research the performances of Nam June Paik, I recently plodded through stacks of reviews from the '60s of Fluxus artists smashing violins and pissing in buckets. At the time plenty of journalists asked "Why is this art?" or "Is it theater?" or "Is it any good?", but I never saw a single article that raised the question of how these artists were going to make a living. Of course I'd love to make a living off of my online art, and I'm gratified when institutions like the Walker try to support (even in a nominal way) my work. But I think that the undue focus on making money online is a byproduct of the recent colonization of the Internet by the entertainment industry, rather than a dynamic native to the Internet--or to artmaking, for that matter. Imagine an artist in a university computer lab in 1995 thinking about making a Web site. Sitting to the artist's left is a physics grad student posting research notes to a Usenet group; at the artist's right, a LISP programmer is ftp'ing some shareware to a friend. To the artist's peers, the Internet is about sharing ideas and software; the inspiration to make a Web site lies in the hope that others might pay attention to it. Now imagine that same artist in a university computer lab in 2000. Sitting to her left is an MBA-to-be e-mailing investors a pitch for a WebTV portal; sitting to her right is a graphic designer who's just been offered a $50,000 starting salary to do movie title animation. To the artist's peers, the Internet is about economic opportunity; never mind that it all runs on government-subsidized technology designed to encourage the free flow of ideas. Authors like Lewis Hyde argue that artists have traditionally created cultural gifts without expectation or hope of an immediate reward. I believe this remains the dominant paradigm for online art (market-based throwbacks like NextMonet.com notwithstanding). Just because they operate in a gift economy, however, doesn't mean that artists aren't competitive; the Native American ritual of potlatch, in which the more affluent members of the tribe try to outdo each other with lavish gifts, is intensely competitive. So my question is, how does competition in a gift economy differ from the market competition we've seen in older entertainment media like movies and TV? And how does an online gift economy differ from an offline one? *** From: jesis@xs4all.nl Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:14:45 +0100 (CET) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:14:45 +0100 (CET) From: Josephine Bosma jesis@xs4all.nl Subject: [Eat-raw] elite, competition etc Steve Dietz's remarks: "But at the same time we tally who is in this show or that. Who won this prize or didn't. Who is getting paid to participate or isn't." It is hard to believe Steve would not care about who is where and wins what. I certainly care, if only out of desire to be amazed, to be annoyed or to be provoked. We could talk about art prizes and contests as entertainment, maybe as entertainment in the good old 'gladiator and the lions' style. So a nice mixture of 'horror', social event and 'release'. *** From: theresa@panix.com Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:32:51 -0400 Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:32:51 -0400 From: Theresa Duncan theresa@panix.com Subject: [Eat-raw] COMPETITION I have a friend who poses the same question to begin every phone conversation. When the person he's calling picks up, he asks, "Are we winning?" It's nice how neatly it distills every conversation two people could possibly have. Work, relationships, health, life, art: "Are we winning?" Competition not only makes for a more interesting spectacle or a more intersting story, it is THE spectacle, THE story. But how do we explain social phenomena, including justice, mutual aid, commitment in the face of a natural world famously red in tooth and claw? Moral philosphers have tried for centuries to offer interpretations of altruism. For altruistic behavior to be produced by natural selection, the question is whether any desires are truly altruistic. Fortunately, evolutionary pschology comes to the rescue. It seems that creatures with truly altruistic desires are reproductively fitter than creatures without--altruists, in short, make better parents (not to mention, friends, lovers, and co-workers) than do egoists. Because competition contains so many shades of human behavior, including altruism, love and kindness, it makes the question "Are we winning?" central to any entertainment, whether it's a product of the World Wrestling Federation or Matthew Barney. *** From: bbrace@wired.com Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:43:14 -0700 Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:43:14 -0700 From: { brad brace } bbrace@wired.com Subject: [Eat-raw] competition in the gift economy At 10:05 PM -0500 3/12/0, Jon Ippolito wrote: ... So my question is, how does competition in a gift economy differ from the market competition we've seen in older entertainment media like movies and TV? And how does an online gift economy differ from an offline one? The Net has offered artists a means of working and support in lieu of the abusive, hierarchical, incestuous artworld-institutions. But now these same, unrepentant sweatshops have insinuated themselves alongside thriving cottage e-industries -- business as usual ;-( *** From: rnm7789@is9.nyu.edu Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:17:42 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:17:42 -0500 (EST) From: Robbin Neal Murphy rnm7789@is9.nyu.edu Subject: [Eat-raw] prizes and contests The strange thing about this is that I'm not even sure how to feel competitive about it even if I thought compeition was a good thing in this situation. I told my friend who is an art director at a big computer magazine based in SF about it and he thought I was joking. He competes for industry awards all the time because they're valuable in terms of business and because everybody gets together for a big party. Everybody benefits in some way. I'm not sure where anybody but the recipient(s), SFMoMA and the PR firm handling the awards benefits here. I felt that way about the Guggenheim/Hugo Boss Award, too, but I knew I would never be in the running for that anyway. Now I read the Whitney is giving $100,000 to an artist showing in the Biennial. But I guess a McArthur Grant is a prize, and worth more. We just don't call it that. Since you can't apply for it there was always a distant hope that the gods would smile upon you just in time before you're evicted. The Creative Capital Fund still seems like a good idea to me because it's geared toward sustainability past the initial award. So, I guess what I'm asking is how are we to to incorporate the SFMoMA/Webby Award into all the other "prizes" out there. It seems to be modeled on the Ars Electronica Golden Nica but you got a book if you entered that. How do the rest of us benefit by saying it's a good thing? *** From: melinda@subtle.net Tue, 14 Mar 2000 16:48:52 +1100 Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 16:48:52 +1100 From: melinda rackham melinda@subtle.net Subject: [Eat-raw] prizes and contests >So, I guess what I'm asking is how are we to to incorporate the >SFMoMA/Webby Award into all the other "prizes" out there. It seems to be >modeled on the Ars Electronica Golden Nica but you got a book if you >entered that. How do the rest of us benefit by saying it's a good thing? having just won a $AU 10, 000 prize for my [ carrier ] work (also in aen) last week at the adelaide festival (let me bask in my 15 seconds of localised fame..: ) i have to say i now like some aspects of prizes... ...it felt weird to get money from the corporate sector... i have recieved grants before of public money to do specific works, but this award came from a pharmaceutical company,and my winning work was about HCV a chronic illness with a not specific but implied anti- medical and anti parmeceutical adgenda. was there any way i was going to say "no - keep the money. i dont agree with your narrowminded mechanist capitalist approach to health care..."? i dont think so... but prizes are fairly meaningless to net.art in terms of sustainability.., unless museums start to pay artists fair amounts for linking to their work... amounts that are comparable with what any other artist showing in a gallery space in the museum would expect to receive for a whole body of work... one net site is usually not the equivalent to one painting... more like a major body of work - a large installation , a substantial video, a series of sculptures. and as someone noted earlier they usually provide multiple layers of meaning and space for exploration that one doesn't get so easily in a lot of contemporary visual art. net.art gives the museum more entertainment/horror/celebrity value for $ than anything else i can think of at the moment... and i guess the only positive thing about prizes is net.art's profile and pop cultural value as a whole gets raised, and hopefully that changes infrastructures, so that our community eventually benefits. *** From: kandbfrank@email.msn.com Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:56:52 -0500 Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:56:52 -0500 From: Keith J. Frank kandbfrank@email.msn.com Subject: [Eat-raw] the real competition As I see it the major competition is between online and offline artwork. Not because one is better but because one (offline work) has a long history of the "art" being subjugated to the "art object". Collectors and institutions have been acting like glorified stamp collectors. They buy and sell works basing prices on the rarity of the work. An artworks importance now relies on how much it is worth. I for one don't want to see online works fall into the same trap that offline works have. Grants to create a work are one thing, but buying and selling the works, limiting access to them or otherwise compromising their free distribution is ultimately counterproductive. Don't expect to support yourself by making art. As soon as you do your art will almost certainly cease to grow and you will stop taking chances in your work. Just look at almost any artist now working (who support themselves by making art) and you will definitely see how stagnant the work has become. Sure they will get shown and they will sell. Why wouldn't they? As far as the artworld is concerned they have become stable investment pumping out stale art product. *** From: stevedietz@yproductions.com Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:23:01 -0600 Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:23:01 -0600 From: Steve Dietz stevedietz@yproductions.com Subject: [Eat-raw] elite, competition etc ... Also, I think the bigger problem than an award per se is an environment where that is the only or primary means of discourse. (...) Someone's open system is always going to be someone else's closed system--and vice versa. Someone's healthy competition is always going to be someone else's unhealthy competition. I agree that an institutional framework mitigates toward closed-inness sooner or later, depending on your point of view, but I don't think it's uniform, and that's where at least there is the potential for something interesting. *** >From theresa@panix.com Sat, 18 Mar 2000 15:02:08 -0400 Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 15:02:08 -0400 From: Theresa Duncan theresa@panix.com Subject: [Eat-raw] Re: Eat-raw digest, Vol 1 #31 - 3 msgs I've been making commercial video games and other pop culture for girls and women since 1993. I recently sold two television shows to major networks (one of them is Viacom's VH1 network) I find it interesting that most of this dialog is dedicated to the posters imagining that their mode of cultural production is superior to mine. Amazingly, this belief seems to be predicated on the illogical theory that the less one is paid the better one's art. Is my animated film The History of Glamour magically worse now that it's in The Whitney Biennial than it was when I gave away (and am still giving away) hundreds of videotaped copies? *** From: rnm7789@is9.nyu.edu Sun, 19 Mar 2000 20:17:50 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 20:17:50 -0500 (EST) From: Robbin Neal Murphy rnm7789@is9.nyu.edu Subject: [Eat-raw] Re: Superiority One thing that's changed dramatically for me over the past ten years is how much more contact I have with larger variety of people involved in some form of art making with whom I have very little in common. And when I did usually there was some mediating circumstance that precluded being competitive such as the fact that a choreographer and a painter use different technologies. They could collaborate but not really compete, or at least not very effectively. Now I'm an artist who uses technology in his practice of art. I don't make much money at it though I do receive more attention than I've ever had before. I'm not in the Whitney Biennial because I don't do work that could be selected and exhibited in that context. I am part of AEN because I do work that fits into that context, in part because I helped create that context through my work. That's what I find exciting these days and that keeps me going. I don't see myself selling a show to VH1 or creating video games in the near future but hey, you never know. I'm doing things now I couldn't imagine ten years ago and yet I still see a continuity in my work and I feel what I'm doing is important. More and more I'm put in a position of having to defend what I'm doing and how I'm going about doing it to complete strangers. The most extreme example was flying back from Canada to New York and being asked by the US customs agent what my occupation was. I said artist and he demanded more details as another agent pulled all my dirty underwear out of my bag. That's because "artist" isn't an occupation or a profession -- it's a practice. Whether you support yourself with this practice is irrelevant. HOW you support this practice IS relevant. I considered telling this to the agent (I was the only passenger in a big room) but instead I told him I taught at NYU and flashed my faculty ID. That satisfied him and it satisfies a lot of people who need to know I'm legit, that someone else has approved me. Don't know what I'll use if they fire me. Maybe I'll tell people I'm a fireman. ________________________________________ |
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