[DIWO curated emailbox displaying image 3 tampered, posted by Chris Fraser 28/02/07] Many of the themed folders and subfolders had their corollaries in the physical space of the gallery in the form of wiggly overlapping streams of printed images, pinned to the walls. Threads were represented by scrolls; one post after another in chronological order. A TV ran a video compilation, a sound compilation was played over four speakers, and two installation works were devised especially for the space. Sim Gishel's Will Work for Food and a print/projection mashup by Thomson and Craighead and Michael Szpakowski.
[Visitor to DIWO E-Mail Art at HTTP Gallery explores the DIWO email box] All categories were liberally interspersed with off-topic discussion, tangents and conversational splurges so one challenge for co-curators was to reveal the currents of meaning, and emerging themes within the torrents of different kinds of data, process and behaviour. Another challenge was find a way to convey the insider's - that is the sender's and the recipient's- experience of the work. These works then were made with a collective recipient in mind; subscribers to the Netbehaviour mailing list. This is a diverse group of people, artists, musicians, poets, thinkers, programmers (ranging from new-comers to old-hands) with varying familiarity with and interest in different aspects of netiquette and the rules of exchange and collaboration. This is reflected in the range of approaches, interactions and content produced.
[Lem Pollocked by Lem Urtastik 16/2/07 / Created using Jackson Pollock artware by Miletos Manetas8] The perceived impact of artworld values, markets and institutions on the art experience has meant that historically Mail Art has sat uneasily within art galleries and museums, as alluded to by Ray Johnson's famous Dear Whitney Museum I Hate You. By co-curating the exhibition for HTTP Gallery, a non-commercial, grass-roots gallery for networked media arts we aimed to create a more dynamic and maleable interface to the gallery for all contributors, visitors and their work. Whilst most usually created for a particular recipient, Mail Art is often self-reflexive in nature. The aesthetics and meaning of the artwork are impacted by its relationship to and passage through communication channels (through time, techno-social systems, values and space). In this case the traditional physical and institutional mail system was replaced with the global digital communication network. The fact that the works submitted for DIWO were created, distributed, discussed and appreciated all within this context meant that contributors drew on, quoted from, and remixed current ideas and data-streams from search-engines, news websites, blogs, artware and virtual worlds of all sorts. The works reflected contributors' engagement with the potential to share visions, resources and agency, through collaboration and negotiation, across networks. Some reveal their critical engagement with technology through long conversations about non-commercial tools and services with which to make and share work. Finally it seems worth a giving a little thought to the distinction between web 2.0 "social" utilities and the processes/outputs of networked media artists. Seen through "enterprise" or "creative industry" goggles the concerns and practices of media artists may seem tantalisingly close to those of web 2.0 entrepreneurs, providing an interface to support particular registers of interaction and relationship with access to a mass of participants. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs are interested in data and its flow as central to economic production and social control. In contrast networked media artists tend to be interested in the ways in which data comprises, connects and interacts with form, content and people to co-produce meaning in an art context, regardless of how easy it is to track, package and control. As with our previous experience of collective media arts ventures such as the first round of NODE.London Season of Media Arts (2006) we saw that lots of people invested with most enthusiasm in unstructured discourse; meandering and complex. This gave all participants a partial but meaningful view of the diverse contexts in which we worked, allowing us to make decisions about what our contribution could be. These many-to-many deep processes are never efficient but still invaluable to us in a culture where the pressures are always to be newer, faster, better-oiled, less philosophical, less human (ie less messy and complicated), more productive in the service of strategic overview.
[DIWO Dead Thread by James, Marc and Random Lab, 13/2/09] DIWO E-Mail Art contributors included: //indira, [--lo_y-], aabrahams, Alan Sondheim, Alexandra Reill, Allan Revich, Ana Valdes, Andre SC, Andrej Tisma, Ant Scott, arc.xolotl ARN, Aurlea, biodollsmouse, Bjorn Eriksson, Bjorn Magnhildoen, Blackmail, bob catchpole, bobig, brian@netart.org.uy, Camille Baker, Chris Fraser, Christphe Bruno, Clive McCarthy, cont3xt.net, Corrado Morgana, Daniel C. Boyer, dave miller, Denisa Kera, Dion Laurent, Eric Dymond, Edward Picot, Frederick Lesage, Geert Dekkers, Giles Askham, Giselle Beiguelman, Gregorios Pharmakis, Hans Bernhard, Helen Varley Jamieson, Hight, James Morris, janedapain, Jon Thomson, Jonathon Keats, Kanarinka, Kate Southworth, Lance W, Lauren A Wright, lem urtastic, Lewis LaCook, Lisa, Lizzie Hughes, Lorna Collins, Lucille C, Marc Garrett, Marc Cooley, Maria Chatzichristodoulou, mez breeze, Michael Szpakowski, Msdm, Neil Jenkins, patrick lichty, Paul Trevor, Regina Pinto, Riccardo Mantelli, Richard Osborne, rich white, Rosangela Aparecide da conceicao, Ruth Catlow, Sachiko Hayashi, Severn, Sim Gishel, Spread, Susana Mendes Silva, Taylor Nuttall, The Subversive Artist, Turbulence, Wolfgang, xavier cahen, zea |
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