quote from my high school history teacher

"An essay should be like a miniskirt.
Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting."
-Paul Griffo

Bits from Joshua Davis

I recently received a phone call from Joshua Davis, a surprise response to an email I had sent. Just out of the shower and unprepared to record the call, I slashed some notes into a chunk of cardboard with a nail. Therefore it should be understood that these are not exact quotes, but somewhat paraphrased. Apologies.

[me] I wanted to hear your opinions on art vs. design.

[JD] "That's funny, cause that's what my buisness is based on."

"When I got into the net, it was for the purpose of making art
(...)
I was working on Once Upon A Forest, and looking over the logs ...
I realized people were spending an average of thirty minutes on the site ... then sending me emails asking how to access more content ...
they were not conforming to the internet-business model, which says that viewers get bored or anxious after a few seconds."

"(...) My art has been a catalyst for my business (...)"

"[I make commercial websites which are] engaging, but against how a commercial site is supposed to look."

On the Subject of Hate Mail

"I get these emails - hatemails from people, saying 'you can't do that that way. This is how a website is supposed to look', or 'this is the way this should be done, not the way you did it'
"So, so what, you want to dumb everything down? You want the internet to be exactly the same for everyone, regardless of their intelligence or skill or interest? Fuck that."
" I love these email/hatemails."

[i asked about design vs. art in the world of digital[

"Design facilitates a Purpose.
Art generally is self-indulgent masturbation, it serves no purpose, and I LOVE art."

"Think about it like this. It took seventy years for photography to become a recognized Art form. Will it take seventy years for digital work to do the same? I don't think so."

"You should check out this online digital art gallery in New York called Bitforms."

"Hey I just got to ESPN, I've gotta run. Email me with anything else."

[me] thanks for your time. Bye.

"-click-"

regarding the passage of time

How many abandoned email addresses
sit, alone,
forgotton,
collecting spam.
How many personal notes,
lost in a domain switch,
bcome unopened files, waiting in vain to reveal
the phone number
sent in hope of romance.

Art, public, and other non-related terms.

• Public ART!


• New Genre!


• Corporate Art!


• Memorials!


• Protest art!


• Protest ART!


• Site Specific Art!


• Earthworks!


• Advertising!


• Billboard Design!

What about the art of Sewing, and the art of Baking, and the art of War?
And Where Does Graphic Design Come In?
I think we need to expand the English language by a whole big lot. The language is what is limiting our ability to think abstractly. Where are the galleries of artesian Bread?
Not that there is a vernacular excuse for people being of different opinions. I don't think wrapping yourself in a cloak and being locked in a room with a coyote is very artistic. Joseph Beuys did.
And he did it! And articles have been published, books have been written, and on the whole he has been accepted into the general artistic community through the channels of academia. Where as I have never been reviewed, published, and discussed in scholarly circles. By some arguments, there are those who would say that I am not an artist.
I say I am an artist.
Here comes the funky bit.

We're both right.

That seems to come as a bit of a problem to my way of thinking, when I try to define public art.

• Graffiti?


• Commercials?


• The Top 40?

How public is public? Can it be seen by anyone? Or everyone?
Or everyone with a TV?
Or everyone who can go to a library?
Everyone who has access to the internet?
Everyone who is running at least win98/OS9 and IE3?
Anyone who happens to walk by?
And Where Does Graphic Design Come In?

Bosma on Vic Cosik

Alright, so the question and response:

Q: Were any of the talks or the outcome of the talks published
anywhere?

Vuk Cosic: No no no. (...) but it makes a lot of
sense to just meet, talk and not think of real academic or what
ever other kind of output.

I think this is hilarious, as what Bosma is doing by fact of the interview is exactley what Cosik and his peers were not doing: presenting and documenting thier theories on art and practice in an academically acceptable format!

Bosma on Mez

Alright, so you have to read how this girl writes. Here is her response to Bosma's first question;

Physical representations of net.art r n.evitably a dilution of their ideal
p][ackaged][re][pre][sentation. The idea of net.art/net.wurk ][in
particular][ being trapped in a geophysical space designed 2 replicate
traditional methods of historically-viable art genres seems somehow
ludicrous. I've seen a terrible translation problem developing via several
major x.hibitions that r presently ][failing 2][ come/ing 2 grips with the
problems that x.hibiting net.wurks seems 2 provoke.

SWEET!
In a case like this, Bosma really doesn't need intricate or complicated questions. The very format of the responses exemplifies Mez, also know as The Netwurker. She explores language, coding, and the relationships between them, paying particular attention to the "f.fects" (effects) of bugs, version issues and cross platform incompatibilities. This presents a difficulty in exhibition, as the context of the internet is personal, consisting of everything from bedrooms to libraries to offices. To remove this context by placing the work in a "real-time" event would invariably change the experience.

Bosma's interview was found at Laudanum.net.

Bosma on Cary Peppermint

Peppermint is focused in the ephemeral, exploring net.art as an idea, as opposed to a physical location.

(...) these are fleeting moments where "something" congeals and reveals an otherwise expansive "nothingness" of data with cloudy origins, data without destination.

Stencil art has a similar approach, creating an image by defing the space around it, as opposed to defining the space of the image itself.

Peppermint's aesthetic is one of art existing as it is, in its (to use the term loosley) natural environment. Ideally, he says, it would not be turned into something "physical", but would continue to network and evolve digitally.
My interpretation of this is that he would not want a dvd archive of "finished" projects, not a hardcopy prinout of any images or text. The art would exist on the screen and only on the screen. I compare this to a sculptor deciding that photographs of a sculpture would not be allowed; the only way to experiance it would be to visit in person.
This goes along with his idea that each part of each day is performance, which "is a process that goes on uninterrupted for the duration of a lifetime (...)"
I f you want to continue to watch this life-progress, and find out more about Peppermint's (offline) net.art (hallucigenic phyco-active) drug SOYLOVE, your might wanna peep Restlessculture.
Bosma's interview was found at Laudanum.net.

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