Massive Links! Events and Essential Web Documents Edition

by Art Fag City on June 3, 2008 · 17 comments Events

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  • “Where are the transmissions coming from? They’re coming from Pittsburgh.”- Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
     Tonight Light Industry presents Tuning a Deaf Ear, a program of transmissions from Pittsburgh curated by Peggy Ahwesh. From the press release:

…featuring small gauge oddities, punk documents from the late 1970’s, home movies, industrial films of heavy industry and selections from the George Romero nostalgia vault. Playing off a combination of home movies that perform celebrity, performance in the punk underground and role playing in the silent film, this program presents aural and visual interplays and turns the tropes of sensorial convention on its ear: a vampire film by deaf children, a punk documentary, sound problems on the Super-8 mag track, a silent work print version of a sound film.

     Look forward to viewing Miss You, Natalka Voslakov, Super-8, 1979, 3 mins, Nosferatu in WPSD, Super-8, 1979, 18 mins, Debt Begins at 20, Stephanie Beroes, 16mm, 1980, 40 mins, The Beach Bunnies at the Electric Banana, Peggy Ahwesh, Super-8, 1980, 10 mins
  • In next week’s news, Art Fag City friend Jeanette Doyle will be featured in the New Media project room as part of The Promised Land, a video art exhibition about the consequences of Globalism. “[body (orient)]” documents the journey from the site of the executions in Tiananmen Square to the ‘civilizing’ site of the Beijing Art Fair. The audio element is directly taken from Sidney Lumet’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, which itself comprises of the fictional ‘record’ of a bunch of ‘foreigners’ being transported and interrogated in transit.”
  • Prompted by a lecture artist Marcin Ramocki was asked to give at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design, Ramocki put together what is now a 13 page document on surf clubs. The document provides information ranging from the most basic observations about surf clubs and to much more complex structures. In particular, I liked the observations in section 4.5, which describe how communication works on these blogs (ie, posting organized content by a challenger, and its decoding by other participants). Ramocki’s lecture is pretty much an essential web document on surfing clubs, so I anticipate discussing it a greater length on the blog.

{ 17 comments }

tom moody June 3, 2008 at 7:20 pm

A few quick reactions to Ramocki’s excellent outline:

1. I would date group art blogs around 2003 with 544×378(WebTV). Ramocki says ’05/’06. 544×378(WebTV) wasn’t just Abe Linkoln and jimpunk: they had a roster of “speakers” with posting privileges. The emphasis was more on making than finding but the product/process is very similar to Nasty Nets, et al. (see http://544×378.free.fr/(WebTV)/2003_07_13_544x378_archive.html)

2. Ramocki values posts that start a dialog, and “challenge and response” or gameplaying is a good way to describe such interchanges. It was occasionally remarked on Nasty Nets, though, that posts with no comments had value, too–because people were stymied by them and/or needed time to process them. For some it was a game to inspire silence.

3. Some of the earliest internal discussion on NN is “why post this to NN and not our own blogs?” An aesthetic based on “what’s good for a group page” is something that might be added to Ramocki’s analysis.

4. I frankly don’t understand the difference between the boon and the wake on spiritsurfers, but I’ve noticed that the SS’ers are already making jokes and visual puns about it (e.g., a directional arrow cycling between the boon and the wake). This is very much like jokes about Bob’s pipe in the Church of the Subgenius webpages from 10 years ago. In-jokes about church dogma. This raises the issue discussed on Rhizome but not in Ramocki’s notes: what makes surf clubs different from 4Chan or the Subgenii?

Years ago during an artist’s talk I asked Jim Shaw what made him different from the Subgenii and he said “I’m more anal.” The spiritsurfers manifesto describes an elevated or lofty art purpose. More thought could be given to what differentiates group activity in the surf clubs vs 4Chan than “I’m a conceptualist elitist and you’re an anonymous bathroom wall scroller.” Or not–the internet’s ability to thoroughly confuse these categories has a certain fascination.

5. Ramocki’s notes are blogcentric. Supercentral is not included in his analysis. They recently switched from a blog to a Wiki. It was fun group-editing the Wiki for the Internet Sleepover last August and that format should be given some consideration as a surf club “syntagmic signifier.” The downside of Wikis is for all the pleasant Orwellianism of their tweakability how does an outsider follow the changes via RSS or otherwise? (Maybe it’s possible, I don’t know.)

tom moody June 3, 2008 at 7:20 pm

A few quick reactions to Ramocki’s excellent outline:

1. I would date group art blogs around 2003 with 544×378(WebTV). Ramocki says ’05/’06. 544×378(WebTV) wasn’t just Abe Linkoln and jimpunk: they had a roster of “speakers” with posting privileges. The emphasis was more on making than finding but the product/process is very similar to Nasty Nets, et al. (see http://544×378.free.fr/(WebTV)/2003_07_13_544x378_archive.html)

2. Ramocki values posts that start a dialog, and “challenge and response” or gameplaying is a good way to describe such interchanges. It was occasionally remarked on Nasty Nets, though, that posts with no comments had value, too–because people were stymied by them and/or needed time to process them. For some it was a game to inspire silence.

3. Some of the earliest internal discussion on NN is “why post this to NN and not our own blogs?” An aesthetic based on “what’s good for a group page” is something that might be added to Ramocki’s analysis.

4. I frankly don’t understand the difference between the boon and the wake on spiritsurfers, but I’ve noticed that the SS’ers are already making jokes and visual puns about it (e.g., a directional arrow cycling between the boon and the wake). This is very much like jokes about Bob’s pipe in the Church of the Subgenius webpages from 10 years ago. In-jokes about church dogma. This raises the issue discussed on Rhizome but not in Ramocki’s notes: what makes surf clubs different from 4Chan or the Subgenii?

Years ago during an artist’s talk I asked Jim Shaw what made him different from the Subgenii and he said “I’m more anal.” The spiritsurfers manifesto describes an elevated or lofty art purpose. More thought could be given to what differentiates group activity in the surf clubs vs 4Chan than “I’m a conceptualist elitist and you’re an anonymous bathroom wall scroller.” Or not–the internet’s ability to thoroughly confuse these categories has a certain fascination.

5. Ramocki’s notes are blogcentric. Supercentral is not included in his analysis. They recently switched from a blog to a Wiki. It was fun group-editing the Wiki for the Internet Sleepover last August and that format should be given some consideration as a surf club “syntagmic signifier.” The downside of Wikis is for all the pleasant Orwellianism of their tweakability how does an outsider follow the changes via RSS or otherwise? (Maybe it’s possible, I don’t know.)

tom moody June 3, 2008 at 2:20 pm

A few quick reactions to Ramocki’s excellent outline:

1. I would date group art blogs around 2003 with 544×378(WebTV). Ramocki says ’05/’06. 544×378(WebTV) wasn’t just Abe Linkoln and jimpunk: they had a roster of “speakers” with posting privileges. The emphasis was more on making than finding but the product/process is very similar to Nasty Nets, et al. (see http://544×378.free.fr/(WebTV)/2003_07_13_544x378_archive.html)

2. Ramocki values posts that start a dialog, and “challenge and response” or gameplaying is a good way to describe such interchanges. It was occasionally remarked on Nasty Nets, though, that posts with no comments had value, too–because people were stymied by them and/or needed time to process them. For some it was a game to inspire silence.

3. Some of the earliest internal discussion on NN is “why post this to NN and not our own blogs?” An aesthetic based on “what’s good for a group page” is something that might be added to Ramocki’s analysis.

4. I frankly don’t understand the difference between the boon and the wake on spiritsurfers, but I’ve noticed that the SS’ers are already making jokes and visual puns about it (e.g., a directional arrow cycling between the boon and the wake). This is very much like jokes about Bob’s pipe in the Church of the Subgenius webpages from 10 years ago. In-jokes about church dogma. This raises the issue discussed on Rhizome but not in Ramocki’s notes: what makes surf clubs different from 4Chan or the Subgenii?

Years ago during an artist’s talk I asked Jim Shaw what made him different from the Subgenii and he said “I’m more anal.” The spiritsurfers manifesto describes an elevated or lofty art purpose. More thought could be given to what differentiates group activity in the surf clubs vs 4Chan than “I’m a conceptualist elitist and you’re an anonymous bathroom wall scroller.” Or not–the internet’s ability to thoroughly confuse these categories has a certain fascination.

5. Ramocki’s notes are blogcentric. Supercentral is not included in his analysis. They recently switched from a blog to a Wiki. It was fun group-editing the Wiki for the Internet Sleepover last August and that format should be given some consideration as a surf club “syntagmic signifier.” The downside of Wikis is for all the pleasant Orwellianism of their tweakability how does an outsider follow the changes via RSS or otherwise? (Maybe it’s possible, I don’t know.)

abe June 3, 2008 at 8:49 pm

was “noblog” @ http://jimpunk.blogspot.com/

abe June 3, 2008 at 3:49 pm

was “noblog” @ http://jimpunk.blogspot.com/

abe June 3, 2008 at 8:50 pm

+ before 544×378 (webtv) was “noblog” @ http://jimpunk.blogspot.com/

abe June 3, 2008 at 8:50 pm

+ before 544×378 (webtv) was “noblog” @ http://jimpunk.blogspot.com/

abe June 3, 2008 at 8:50 pm

+ before 544×378 (webtv) was “noblog” @ http://jimpunk.blogspot.com/

abe June 3, 2008 at 3:50 pm

+ before 544×378 (webtv) was “noblog” @ http://jimpunk.blogspot.com/

Art Fag City June 3, 2008 at 10:47 pm

Tom: I think those are all really good additions to the text.

One thing I thought about reading the Ramocki text is how quickly these blogs evolve — he notes the speed at which blogs change himself. It seems like there’s a limited life for these blogs before they evolve (or not) into something else. I actually quite like this, because for me, it’s easier to think of the blog as a distinct art work.

Art Fag City June 3, 2008 at 10:47 pm

Tom: I think those are all really good additions to the text.

One thing I thought about reading the Ramocki text is how quickly these blogs evolve — he notes the speed at which blogs change himself. It seems like there’s a limited life for these blogs before they evolve (or not) into something else. I actually quite like this, because for me, it’s easier to think of the blog as a distinct art work.

Art Fag City June 3, 2008 at 5:47 pm

Tom: I think those are all really good additions to the text.

One thing I thought about reading the Ramocki text is how quickly these blogs evolve — he notes the speed at which blogs change himself. It seems like there’s a limited life for these blogs before they evolve (or not) into something else. I actually quite like this, because for me, it’s easier to think of the blog as a distinct art work.

damon June 5, 2008 at 6:10 am

@tom
there is probably a way to make this work better but:
http://supercentral.org/index.php?n=Site.AllRecentChanges?action=rss
(other options: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WebFeeds)

damon June 5, 2008 at 1:10 am

@tom
there is probably a way to make this work better but:
http://supercentral.org/index.php?n=Site.AllRecentChanges?action=rss
(other options: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WebFeeds)

tom moody June 7, 2008 at 2:59 pm

OK, thanks, Damon, I added the feed–didn’t know I could track changes with RSS. Or at least track that changes have occurred.

tom moody June 7, 2008 at 2:59 pm

OK, thanks, Damon, I added the feed–didn’t know I could track changes with RSS. Or at least track that changes have occurred.

tom moody June 7, 2008 at 9:59 am

OK, thanks, Damon, I added the feed–didn’t know I could track changes with RSS. Or at least track that changes have occurred.

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