NEWSgrist - where spin is art

At the Whitney: Vision and Violence: William T. Vollmann and Richard Drew

via Whitney.org : Conversations on Art

Thur, July 12 at 7pm
Vision and Violence: William T. Vollmann and Richard Drew - Thu July 12, 2007

Writer  William T. Vollmann and photographer Richard Drew address where images of brutality meet the limits of representation.

Culture and Conflict: Then and Now
A two-part series, in conjunction with Summer of Love, exploring cultural production in the shadow of turbulent politics, from 1967 to 2007.

Admission: $8; senior citizens and students with valid ID $6.  All programs are free for members.  Advance sales are strongly recommended as seating is limited.  Tickets may be purchased by clicking on the link to the right.  For Member reservations, email [email protected].  Inquiries: Email [email protected] or call (212) 570-7715.

Message From The Dark Side: Andrew Keen, "Those Tubes Are Killing Me!!!"

{Image source}

NYTimes book reviewer Michiko Kakutani didn't skewer the reactionary new  book by Andrew Keen -- remember Keen? he's the guy who called Lawrence Lessig an "intellectual property communist." Wow. I guess that makes Keen sort of the Christopher Hitchens of Silicon Valley...

(Re: "Tubes" -- anyone remember the name of the Republican Senator who publicly referred to the Internet as a "bunch of tubes"?)

UPDATE: It was Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

via Wired:

Andrew Keen: Trashing Web 2.0 And Winning

By Adario Strange
June 29, 2007 | 11:32:32 AM

You have to wonder if there is a design behind the fact that The New York Times review of Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur” was published on the same day as the arrival of the iPhone—a day when nearly all other tech news will be drowned out completely.

The controversial (at least in Silicon Valley) book that argues against the egalitarian user-generated party known as Web 2.0 was assigned to Michiko Kakutani, the infamous reviewer known for laying the guts of many an author on the side the road to be pecked mercilessly by media vultures slowly in the hot sun of publishing hell.

But Kakutani spares Keen (pictured right) the normal vitriol and lauds the book with a relatively positive review. Kakutani said, “Although Mr. Keen wanders off his subject in the later chapters of the book — to deliver some generic, moralistic rants against Internet evils like online gambling and online pornography — he writes with acuity and passion about the consequences of a world in which the lines between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation are willfully blurred.” In Kakutani-speak that translates into “give this book a try.”

Ugh. Ready for a fight? Here we go, via Stephen C. Rose Up Close and Personal:

Consummate Stupidity                    

Rarely does a book review convince me that this is a book I need not read.

The book is called The Cult of the Amateur -- How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. The author is one Andrew Keen.

Nothing against him. Such a book had to be written. It reflects the unanalytical bias of thoughtless critics everywhere. Web-bashing is as superficial and easy and idiotic as Ann Coulter. Sorry to be so blunt.

My suspicion is that my reaction is aided by the participation of the actual NYTimes review. The headline reads "The Roar of the Herd is Deafening on the Web".

The irony is that everything is going to the Web. So brickbats of all sorts are being thrown at an inevitable tide. Without much attention to what is actually there or how things actually develop.

The irony too is that the facts cited in the review, if they be true, argue not for a herd but for a modest-sized group which has always been with us -- those who seek to influence search results by tactics ranging from the nefarious to the legitimate.

This is not a herd. These folk do not roar.

And:

The argument that the Web is being overrun by amateurs is patently absurd to anyone who uses the Web as I do, for serious inquiries.

The implied reverence for some other sort of research venue leads straight to academe where the deficiencies are too numerous to set in opposition to the cliches that propel the thinking in this book.

A simple example is the field of New Testament study. Vastly better with the resources now available online.

The degree of herd thinking in the world out there is reflected online but what else is new. It is all a spectrum and you can find whatever you are looking for.

If anything, I believe that an amateur like myself has as tough a time online as off gaining access to dialogue with so-called experts. But at least online there is a chance to find an appropriate forum or podcast. Comments are a viable means of communication too.

What I believe gets ignored is the fact that generations on the Web last about five years.

I remember a stupendously good site about Francis Bacon that existed in the 90s but is NO MORE. Terrible. I remember a wonderful online presentation of the life of Kelly Miller Smith. NO MORE.

Does this mean the sky is falling?  That the thundering hoofbeats of the Nietzschean mob are drawing nigh? Not in the least.

Like a giant mixing bowl, the Web yields new versions all the time and the accomplishments are on balance an improvement because on the Web you can see the warts and do something about them.

What this book is about is simply what Foucault and before him Jesus observed -- in essence that nothing is doomed to remain secret, unexposed. Discourse will have its day ad nauseaum. This denouement is embarrassing but it is human and the purpose of the Web is to move to Hamlet's things I could tell you, to movement beyond the idiocies of the past.

The roar of the herd is an interesting thought. What is the herd? Who actually drives it? What lies behind the evocation of a herd? Are herds in the eye of the beholder? Or the auditor?

If we are dealing with the Web, relax. This is our home now and in the years to come. The more time elapses, the more expertise and analysis will surface and by their fruits they shall be known.

The author of this book says the herd took us to Iraq.

Enough said.

Look more deeply folks. The publisher, btw, is Doubleday.

 

You have to wonder if there is a design behind the fact that The New York Times review of Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur” was published on the same day as the arrival of the iPhone—a day when nearly all other tech news will be drowned out completely.

The controversial (at least in Silicon Valley) book that argues against the egalitarian user-generated party known as Web 2.0 was assigned to Michiko Kakutani, the infamous reviewer known for laying the guts of many an author on the side the road to be pecked mercilessly by media vultures slowly in the hot sun of publishing hell.

But Kakutani spares Keen (pictured right) the normal vitriol and lauds the book with a relatively positive review. Kakutani said, “Although Mr. Keen wanders off his subject in the later chapters of the book — to deliver some generic, moralistic rants against Internet evils like online gambling and online pornography — he writes with acuity and passion about the consequences of a world in which the lines between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation are willfully blurred.” In Kakutani-speak that translates into “give this book a try.”

Ugh. Ready for a fight? Here we go, via Stephen C. Rose Up Close and Personal:

Consummate Stupidity                    

Rarely does a book review convince me that this is a book I need not read.

The book is called The Cult of the Amateur -- How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. The author is one Andrew Keen.

Nothing against him. Such a book had to be written. It reflects the unanalytical bias of thoughtless critics everywhere. Web-bashing is as superficial and easy and idiotic as Ann Coulter. Sorry to be so blunt.

My suspicion is that my reaction is aided by the participation of the actual NYTimes review. The headline reads "The Roar of the Herd is Deafening on the Web".

The irony is that everything is going to the Web. So brickbats of all sorts are being thrown at an inevitable tide. Without much attention to what is actually there or how things actually develop.

The irony too is that the facts cited in the review, if they be true, argue not for a herd but for a modest-sized group which has always been with us -- those who seek to influence search results by tactics ranging from the nefarious to the legitimate.

This is not a herd. These folk do not roar.

And:

The argument that the Web is being overrun by amateurs is patently absurd to anyone who uses the Web as I do, for serious inquiries.

The implied reverence for some other sort of research venue leads straight to academe where the deficiencies are too numerous to set in opposition to the cliches that propel the thinking in this book.

A simple example is the field of New Testament study. Vastly better with the resources now available online.

The degree of herd thinking in the world out there is reflected online but what else is new. It is all a spectrum and you can find whatever you are looking for.

If anything, I believe that an amateur like myself has as tough a time online as off gaining access to dialogue with so-called experts. But at least online there is a chance to find an appropriate forum or podcast. Comments are a viable means of communication too.

What I believe gets ignored is the fact that generations on the Web last about five years.

I remember a stupendously good site about Francis Bacon that existed in the 90s but is NO MORE. Terrible. I remember a wonderful online presentation of the life of Kelly Miller Smith. NO MORE.

Does this mean the sky is falling?  That the thundering hoofbeats of the Nietzschean mob are drawing nigh? Not in the least.

Like a giant mixing bowl, the Web yields new versions all the time and the accomplishments are on balance an improvement because on the Web you can see the warts and do something about them.

What this book is about is simply what Foucault and before him Jesus observed -- in essence that nothing is doomed to remain secret, unexposed. Discourse will have its day ad nauseaum. This denouement is embarrassing but it is human and the purpose of the Web is to move to Hamlet's things I could tell you, to movement beyond the idiocies of the past.

The roar of the herd is an interesting thought. What is the herd? Who actually drives it? What lies behind the evocation of a herd? Are herds in the eye of the beholder? Or the auditor?

If we are dealing with the Web, relax. This is our home now and in the years to come. The more time elapses, the more expertise and analysis will surface and by their fruits they shall be known.

The author of this book says the herd took us to Iraq.

Enough said.

Look more deeply folks. The publisher, btw, is Doubleday.

Rudolph Stingel: painting that swings between portable object and immersive environment

Photo: Julien Jourdes for The New York Times

At the Rudolf Stingel show, visitors can write on the foil walls of this installation.

via NYTimes:

Art Review | Rudolf Stingel
DIY Art: Walk on It, Write on It, Stroke It
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: June 29, 2007

Rudolf Stingel’s show at Daniel Newburg’s SoHo gallery in 1991 has always stuck with me. Mr. Stingel was 35 and newly arrived from Italy, and his American debut pulled no punches. He simply covered the gallery’s entire floor with plush carpet so deeply orange that the white walls acquired a pinkish glow. The effect was profoundly, disturbingly, subversively optical, a Duchampian ready-made in blatant disregard of Duchamp’s injunction against the retinal aspect of art.

Two years later Mr. Stingel exhibited a similar work at the Venice Biennale, covering an enormous wall in the Arsenale with orange carpet that visitors could roughen and smooth with their hands, leaving transient swirls and marks that suggested giant brush strokes. It was like Etch a Sketch cave painting, and made for terrific impromptu theater. The shock was multiple: Not only was this immense, furry orangeness a painting, it was interactive; you could run your fingers through its color. Yet for all it malleability, the piece remained basically impervious to interference. It was a concrete metaphor for art’s ability to be different for each viewer and yet retain its essential integrity.

There is, regrettably, no orange carpet in the grandly spare, casually exultant survey of Mr. Stingel’s paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art, but there is still plenty to enthrall and perturb. For nearly 20 years he has made work that seduces the eye while also upending most notions of what, exactly, constitutes a painting, how it should be made and by whom. Beauty, humor, euphoria, a democratic slant and a resolute sense of economy form the core of Mr. Stingel’s art. He combines a love of painting with the postmodern suspicion of it, and often achieves a near-perfect balance between the visual and the conceptual.

This show stands a good chance of fulfilling that old avant-garde imperative “épater le bourgeois” — shock the bourgeoisie. Some people may walk through it in five minutes, scoffing. But I doubt that anyone can move fast enough to evade its challenges to conventional ideas of painting, taste and progress.

For one thing, it has too much jaw-dropping, thought-provoking beauty. Even the most skeptical viewer may be slowed by the gallery where three gold-on-gold paintings with raised brocade patterns (and painted highlights if you look carefully) are reflected in a shimmering mirrored floor. Not only are you part of the painting that is this room, your reflection is too. The ensemble is a Baroque-yet-21st-century retort to Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings,  in which the main images are the viewers’ shadows.

The Whitney show opens with a silvery big bang: a large gallery lined with aluminum foil set aglitter by an immense crystal chandelier hanging from its ceiling. Viewers can mark on the foil, which is actually foam-backed insulation. An idea of what’s possible is provided by the already elaborately engraved foil on the upper reaches of the walls. Its exuberant textures, graffiti and carvings are the handiwork of visitors to the show’s first incarnation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where it was organized by Francesco Bonami, that museum’s senior curator. Its strikingly spacious New York presentation has been overseen by Chrissie Iles, a Whitney curator.

Optical intensity without sentimentality might be Mr. Stingel’s motto. He seems to define paintings foremost as flat surfaces that radiate visual power in unfamiliar terms. His art connects to European monochromists like Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni and also to skeptical painters like Albert Oehlen and Christopher Wool, but it may be best understood as an Americanized, Warholian version of Arte Povera; Mr. Stingel often favors cheap materials (Styrofoam, for example), but instead of being distressed they are always brand new, industrial and somehow implicitly American.

Big, even architectural scale and color are part of the mix, as well as thwarted expectations. Opulence is countered by austerity, spectacle is undercut by banality. All processes are as transparent and simple as possible. Skill is continually reinvented and always less central than thought. Abstraction is less important than physicality. [read on...]

iCommons for beginners - a primer (ca. 2006) by Tony Curzon Price

I had the pleasure of chatting very briefly with Tony Curzon Price at the iSummit in Dubrovnik earlier this month, but his burning question was cut short by a panel session -- Tony, I owe you a conversation!

reBlogged via OpenDemocracy.org:

iCommons for beginners
by Tony Curzon Price
Don't know your mashups from your GPL licenses? Tony Curzon Price gives the essential, non-geek guide to commons culture.
20 - 06 - 2006

Creative Commons
Creative Commons is an American charity founded by the radical libertarian legal scholar, Lawrence Lessig. Its aim is to help cultural creators give up some of their copyrights by creating the required legal framework of licenses. Why would a cultural creator do that? Because spreading a message, establishing and nourishing a reputation, having an audience, participating in the commonwealth of cultural production, may all be more important than the elusive royalty stream.

Business models for Creative Commons are still in their infancy, but there are proofs by existence. For example, this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives license (ANoCNoD). It allows anyone to copy this page for Non-Commercial purposes; it does not allow "derivatives" – or "remixes" – and it grants these rights as long as we continue to be attributed as authors. Without the Creative Commons license in place, our default copyright as authors would be much more restrictive.

iCommons
iCommons is an international organisation that has grown out of the Creative Commons movement. Its purpose, according to Lessig, goes "beyond the infrastructure that Creative Commons is building" and is about developing a "global commons". How this will be achieved is high on the agenda at this year's iSummit in Rio de Janeiro.

Remix
This is the practice of taking a song and casting it in a new genre – negro-spiritual hymn becomes thrash metal scream, Dread Zeppelin plays reggae versions of Stairway to Heaven...

It's not just music. French dramatist Jean Racine is one of the great literary remixers; by taking Euripides' Hippolytus and turning it into his Phèdre, he transforms a classical obsession with fate into a modern reflection on the conflict of duty and passion. Francis Bacon's Triptychs and Vikram Chandra's stories in Love and Longing in Bombay are also remixes, relying on our understanding of their predecessors for their full force.

Mashup
In pop culture, a voice track is combined from one song with an instrument track from another to create a new (possibly aesthetic) third (see Frank Zappa's Xenochronies). In web culture, mashup is when the services from different internet sites are combined. For example, dudewheresmyusedcar allows me to find and map Aston Martins on auction in Silicon Valley by combining eBay auctions and Google maps.

Other traditions have been "mashing-up" for a while: musical variations, like Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Shakespeare's historical borrowings, James Joyce's knowing parodies, post modernists' clever architectural allusions. Fusion cooking – bangers and mash with coulis au curry – brings the mash-up full circle.

Left to right: From Boccaccio's Decameron, to the Arabian Nights, to Vikram Chandra's classical-inspired Love and Longing in Bombay

Wiki
From the Hawaiian wiki wiki (quick), this has come to mean a web page that can freely, easily and quickly be changed and edited by all comers. Wikipedia, the collaboratively created encyclopedia, is the most well-known example of a wiki. If the history of ideas is a conversation with the thinkers and authors who have preceded us, then the wiki is just a new support for it; the branching and revision histories are electronic traces of the complexities of the tree of human understanding.

OpenSource
Computer code that is free from copyright or patent restrictions. Microsoft and Apple use all the tools of Intellectual Property protection to run their businesses: copyright stops software duplication, patent restricts competitors, and software is delivered in a humanly-unreadable form, adding Trade Secret to the battery of protection. The OpenSource movement aims to liberate software code from most of these restrictions and their effects. The amorphous movement has created a body of computer programs, some of which are now essential parts of the Internet's infrastructure.

A lot of the work that goes into OpenSource is voluntary, though it does receive some academic or philanthropy-funding, and is also supported by companies such as IBM and Google. OpenSource is now enough of a threat to companies like Microsoft that Bill Gates felt obliged to try pushing some old Cold War patriotic buttons by lashing out at the "hippies and communists" the movement relies on. Microsoft has encouraged companies like SCO in their high-drama attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) over the commercial use of OpenSource code.

Richard Stallman

If the charming Linus Torvald, creator of Linux (popular alternative to Windows) is the poster boy of OpenSource, then the austere Richard Stallman, through the Free Software Foundation, is high priest and philosophical guardian of the ideal of Free Code.

GNU General Public License (GPL)
The GPL is the license under which much OpenSource code is distributed. It enshrines the idea that computer code, like speech, should be free to be copied, interpreted, modified and generally mashed-up. The license is viral in the sense that it requires any code based on GPL and distributed must itself also be GPL-licensed.

Therefore, if a commercial project takes advantage of "free" GPL code – often an attractive and time-saving option for a company – then it will have to release modifications of the code under the GPL.

For the curious, GNU stands for "GNU Not Unix". A computer programmers' joke (Richard Stallman's choice), it is a recursive acronym – of the type popularised by Douglas Hofstader in Godel, Escher and Bach.

What has all this to do with culture?

Calvinists in Geneva do not go to church on Sunday, they go to the "Cult": the place in which the community comes together to renew common understanding of all that is profoundly shared. Culture – our profound common understandings as a community – originates in the Cult, in the community and in sharing.

The basic concepts of intellectual property law arose in the 18th century out of the technological and social individualisation of cultural production. The US Constitution enshrines both copyright and patent. The economic rationale is undeniable (the rapid development of an industry of creation) but today is increasingly at odds with the mashing traditions of cultural production.

Digital copying has reduced the technological barriers to copyright infringement at precisely the time when the media and celebrity industries have sought to expand into the new global space of common understanding with films, music and games.

The "Media Entertainment Complex" is militantly increasing the scope and duration of copyright and patent to such an extent that the normal methods and traditions of cultural production are threatened. The Disney Corporation, which has benefited hugely from remixing and mashing-up the folk tales of traditional cultures, is one of the most politically active in trying to stop anyone, ever, doing the same with its own cultural output.

Intellectual property not only moulds culture, it is itself part of our culture, and we can change the rules.

cultural odyssey: from Homer, to Derek Walcott, to Disney
Left: Homer's Odyssey book cover / Centre: painting by Derek Walcott for Omeros / Right: Disney's Hercules

iCommons is an organisation that has grown out of the Creative Commons movement. It aims to establish a global commons – a worldwide system that allows people to use the internet to collaborate and access knowledge without the restraints of traditional copyright law.

{Note: this describes last year's iSummit in Rio; for information on iSummit 07 Dubrovnik, check out http://icommons.org}

This year's iCommons summit entitled "Share the past, create the future" will take place on 23-25 June in Rio de Janeiro and will be structured around three major themes:

• Tools. Developing effective, relevant tools to forward creativity and innovation.
• Policy. Strategies to ensure international, regional and local policy conducive to the development of the commons.
• Practice. Learning from the experience of others to develop effective models for open content worldwide.

Speakers at this year's summit include author Lawrence Lessig, internet entrepreneur Joi Ito, academic James Boyle and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

For members of the iCommons board, click here.

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz: New Artistic Director of Art Basel

A triumvirate: Marc Spiegler will be responsible for Strategy and Development, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz will become Artistic Director and Annette Schönholzer will be in charge of Organization and Finances

via kopenhagen.dk:

Interview: Cay Sophie Rabinowitz
Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, senior editor of Parkett, is going to be one of the three new directors of the Art Basel, when Samuel Keller leave his position as director at the end of this year.[...]

What is the specific job you’re going to do as the artistic director?

My job is to continue the quality of the content and the relationships that we have. And to continue to grow with the market, and with the art programs, the artists and the galleries. As the director I have to follow in Sam’s footsteps the best that I can.

Do you have specific ideas about how to improve the art at Art Basel – because at the moment it seems like you have just everything represented here?

It’s not about the quality, because the content is outstanding. And we work very hard, and will continue to do so, on maintaining the strong relationships with the gallerists and the artists. I will take over in january, and I’m very proud to be giving this opportunity, and I’m sincerely looking forward to it as a challenge.

You have sort of divided the galleries, so it seems like the old and the young galleries are in different sections. Is that something you work on with purpose?

We work each year in a different manner, but we also try to maintain constant relationships with the galleries. So maybe that’s a good question for the current director.

But our intention is to be committed to the serious collectors, the museums, the artists and the galleries, and to be faithful to their own mission. So my idea is to follow what Samuel Keller has done.

It feels like art is reaching out to more and more people. So does Art Basel have any ideas to try to get the attention of a broader audience?

Art is democratic, and it’s presented accordingly both socially and publicly. But art has many diverse functions. Again when I will take over from Sam, I will be able to follow up more clearly about how to represent our brand. But right now, I’m just looking forward to follow Sam Keller at Art Basel and Art Basel Miami, and see what I can learn from him, and then take over his role in a few months.

Are there any great difference between the represented countries at Art Basel and Art Basel Miami?

I don’t think that the art world thinks in regions anymore. Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach represent the global situation in the art world. So again, I’m very much looking forward to being part of that.

For how long have you known about your new job?

A few weeks...

This summer you have all the big art events going on at the same time, have you any ideas about how Art Basel will position itself in this situation?

We are working collaboratively with all of the art events, and we’re very excited about this. So our position is wonderful collaboration.

Yes, but the structures of these events are very different to each other, so you much somehow also be competing of attention, because the other art events are more rare, and you are here every year?

Absolutely not, we collaborate with both the Venice Biennale, Documenta and Skulptur Projekte Münster. So competition is not the word, I use the word collaboration. It’s a new thing that we coordinate with them, so I find that quite exiting.

New Art Basel artistic director Cay Sophie Rabinowitz
and her husband, MoMA drawings curator Christian Rattemeyer.
Photo: Mary Barone, Artnet.