Freeze frame: Sound in the Era of Digital Networks: Ken Jordan and Paul Miller

From the point at which I first started getting my music from the internet till now has changed quite a bit. I was a user of Napster, the music shearing program that is synonymous for illegal shearing, but at that time no one really knew where the whole music shearing was going to go. No one had any idea that it would get so big and that the artists would start suing for their rights. Yet another example of us losing control of what we create. But the quality of today’s music that you can download is amazing.

            Just like when Jordan and Miller talk about the first try to send the word login to someone across the United States it was two low pitches and while typing the letter g it crashed, there was not enough information for us to be able to be successful.

“Online collaboration today takes many forms. Using Web-based music technologies, artists are working together to create new music. There are online studios that connect artists across great distances, and Web-based jams between musicians who have never laid eyes on one another.”

     It is interesting to read that they feel we are not listening to music but the sound of the internet, the sound of the computer. He says, “As the distinction between “artist” and “audience” begins to slip away, and we find ourselves dipping into the data flow, listening to the music that it makes, and that we make with it.”  It is strange that I have never thought about this. When we hear music now, with the electric guitar or the singer through the microphone we are hearing their music but hearing it through technologies that manipulate the original sound.

The Hacker Manifesto: McKenzie Wark

Let me start by saying I HATE hackers… I can not stand them they have crashed many of my computers and even stolen my credit card information on more than one occasion. And with that being said, the second point in this manifesto pisses me off more than I can communicate with words. “Whatever code we hack, be it programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colourings, we create the possibility of new things entering the world. Not always great things, or even good things, but new things. In art, in science, in philosophy and culture, in any production of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted from it, and where in that information new possibilities for the world are produced, there are hackers hacking the new out of the old.”     McKinzie goes on to say that they do not own what they produce, just like in my preveous entry, Marcin Ramocki saying we do not own what we create, but when it comes to hackers, if I ever catch who took my credit card information I will procicute them to the fullest extent of the law. You can not tell me that when a hacker decides to hack into someone personal information that they do not own that acting. That is pure bull shit.      They call what they produce as new to the world. They even say it may not all be good but it is still something new. Yeah, a new computer for the poor sap who didn’t have his firewall on that day.      I am sorry I can not sit here and read this thinking it is a new art or think that what they are doing is not their own action and that they are not responsible for what they do. I just cant. I can not read this crap as a nutral party.

DIY: The Militant Embrace of Technology

     Marcin Ramocki has an interesting opening point, “[People] lose what Marx believed to be the most fundamental human need: the access to the fruits of their own labor.”  He says this because in his first paragraph he says that people are now taking hardware or software that they can find on the internet to either manipulate their own works or electronic devices and call it art.  He asks two questions about the, “growing phenomenon of artists involved in active critique of the technosphere,” and they are; “why do we feel compelled to mess with electronic devices and call it art? And the second; is what we do still a continuation of Modernist principles or an all together different thing; and if so what kind of thing is it?”     It is an interesting point. Can a photo edited with Photoshop really be part of the Modernist principals?  I am a fine arts major with an emphasis in photography. I have been taught many forms of how to produce a photo, from a silver gelatin print to a cyanotype and even a print from Photoshop, and in my opinion a picture that you developed and printed in a dark room yourself is more of an art form than taking a picture on a digital and placing it on the computer to manipulate.  The reason why is because when you take a 35 mm photo or even an 8×10 and develop it in the dark room, what ever you captured in on the film it what you get. You can darken areas or lighten them but you can not make someone look skinnier, or clear up their acne, or even go to the extremes of making it hot pink.       When you create a work and then place it on the internet it can be taken and used without your knowledge and it can then be manipulated beyond recognition which brings us back to Ramocki’s point of us losing access to the fruits of our labor.  He goes on to explain that if we work for a major company, lets say building parts for a car, ever part we build ourselves goes on to be used and we never see that part again we do not get to profit from that one part, only a little if we are lucky.

     So when did art become that way? Well, if you think about it, it started years and years and years ago. When ever the first work of art was sold and then resold to make an even bigger profit. Work these days that you see being sold for unholy amounts go to the previous owner, there is not percentage off the top that goes to the artists family.

    

DIY Survival

The book is massive. And so as I was reading threw it I came across the most interesting form of “do it yourself” art work. The art form is called, me_artista, or known as piss artist. DIY Survival gives you directions as to how to start your work. They call it, how to elaborate a self managed painting. First you have to find a way to produce liquid from the kidneys. You do that by ingesting your favorite type of drink, such as water, juice, beer and so on.  They explain that is would fantastic to see it as a group action, but that brings up many complications. If a female would want to join this mass artista then she would have to gather her contents into a container and then participate, but any and every woman I know would not, and I repeat, would not pee into a cup and then use to in a spray bottle to create art. Yes, I admit if someone or some ones created this public art in the snow, it would create a following if you will of curious people wanting to know who had done it, and who would not want to not be a part of that, not me. So as a woman I guess I would have to find a way that did not make me feel sick to my stomach so I could participate.

What is Biomeadia? REALLY WHAT IS IT!

From the Article Biomedia written by Eugene Thacker of Georgia Institute of Technology, “This passage between codes is the foundation that informs much of molecular genetics, though it has been transformed significantly between the postwar era and the new millennium. The establishing of such a passage is based on the assumption that some essence or essential data pervades bimolecular bodies such as DNA or proteins that enables them to be compositionally and functionally transported from one medium to another, or that, at the very least, enables them to be technically enframed as units that

operate according to an informatic logic.(20)” 

Now someone please explain to me what this man is trying to say, in plain English preferably.
Now Matt, no offence but you assigned this reading to a mass of Art students. I do not know about the other students but for myself, this reading was the worst thing to try and comprehend. I mean seriously, “biotech fields are embodied practices, a unique type of embodiment that is cellular, enzymatic, and genetic?” If you can tell me what that means I would be more then happy to try and understand exactly what in the world he is jabbering on about for 30 pages. I see how he is trying to connect the sci-fi with today’s technologies, but alas, I didn’t get it. So, “Please, wont you help me, ‘H’ for hurry, ‘E’ for ergent, ‘L’ for love me and ‘P’ for p-p-please help.”

Becky

How I was Played by Online Caroline: A response

I have never been a fan of simulated games. I am part of the club, “Girlfriends who have been ignored by their boyfriends who play WOW.” For those of you who don’t know, WOW is World of Warcraft. So when I read the article by Jill Walker entitled, “How I was Played by Online Caroline,” I found myself extremely intrigued by this wed page (http://www.onlinecaroline.com) Walker was discussing. 
     She talked about getting pulled into the obsession of wanting to know what will happen next, thus becoming addicted to this fictional woman and her woes. As a woman I can sympathize with walker and why she got pulled in. When a woman hears about another woman in a bad relationship that turns for the worse we get the feeling that we need to protect her anyway we can. 
     If you are at all interested in the website and would like to “play” for yourselves I will not give the ending away. 
     Walker compared the game to the mausoleum of Emanuel Vigeland. The mausoleum is built so that when you walk in you have to bow to go threw the door and once your inside Vigeland made it so that your have to wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. The acoustics inside were created to where every little noise you made was magnified to the point of embarrassment.  Vigeland created it on purpose so you had to give him honors of the bow and the sitting in silence. He manipulated the surroundings so that you had to do what he wanted you to do. The website is the same way. You do not get to give your answers; you have to click on one answer that was given to you out of three others.              It’s interesting the way people can manipulate you into doing things you don’t even know your doing.

Web Work: A History of Internet Art

Net.art, what is net.art? According to Rachel Greene it is a term that came about in 1995 when Vuk Cosic opened an e-mail that was jumbled up and the only thing he could make out was net.art…he figured this term would be a description of online art.  It came to be the term used for communications and graphics, e-mail, texts and images.    With her evidence of this being the relative description of net.art it is hard to comprehend what net.art really is. With her layout of the paper and the disconnected arguments and disjointed paragraphs it is extremely hard to understand Ms. Greene’s point of view or where she is going with it. I have always had a hard time understanding someone when his or her writing seems to be completely uneducated.  

Expendable…

E-X-P-E-N-D-A-B-L-E… Think about this word for a second…

Ok what have you thought about? Expendable…a word a boss uses when firing you…extra dough left over when making a pie…something that you no longer need..something…not a person a something…right?

When you think of expendable you think that you getting rid of something…an object.

Well, when someone tells you that your friendship or you yourself as a friend is expendable it hits ya pretty hard.

At least you could tell the person face to face or over the phone or via e-mail….right? So then why do people prefer to ignore you for three months, not speak a word to you, and then when you demand a reason or an answer they say, “its simple…you were expendable…,” why?
That person would have understood if you talked to them about it three months ago I guarantee it.
So if there is anyone out there thinking they need to do the same thing….lighten your load of friends…tell them, talk to them, e-mail them do anything you to let them know. What ever you do, do not, I repeat, do not let them know three months later.