:: Saturday, February 14, 2004 ::

Com_post is an email art project conceived and created by Stephan Barron, which has recently received a reworking and relaunch.

"Websurfers send in their texts by email. Poetry, texts expressing love and hate or utopian views, all forms are accepted. All are then composted! Just as we ourselves are composted! Recycling as organic and cyclical technology, a technology of intelligence and responsibility, of the link to the natural and artificial world. Recycling as a perpetual and natural movement of things. Compost on the internet is a celebration of slowness during a time of instantaneousness, a jubilant look at the microcosmic and the microscopic in an interrelated and independent world. It praises everyday individual gestures related to a collective whole. Cut-up."

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Computer Fine Arts (CFA) latest update gives us new works by Antonio Mendoza, Peter Horvat, Andy Campbell and Olia Lialina. This update brings the number of artists in the collection to 54 while another 62 are ready to join. If we take a look at who is in the collection and with what kind of work, we see the CFA collection is probably growing to become the most important collection of net art in the world. Rhizome's artbase, which hosts a huge amount of information and links to netart works, could somehow be seen as CFA counterpart. Both offer a huge amount of net art works and both can be seen as a collection, but with this the similarities stop; because where CFA hosts the original works on it's server Rhizome offers a collection of links. Links that make it's artbase vulnerable to linkrot (= dead links), which in fact is annoying, especially when you keep in mind that you have to pay to get access to this resource. On the other hand Rhizome's artbase offers a lot of additional information with it's linked artworks, something that lacks a lot of works presented at CFA. But then again CFA shows a selection of artists that can be seen as the cream of the net (you get selected for it) while the relevance to net art of some of the works in the artbase (you have to submit works) is at least doubtfull. But maybe this should be not seen as a problem, because, what I understood, the artbase's reach is meant to be as vast as possible. Conclusion: if you want to do research or are interested in netart, start to have a look at CFA. Here you find artists and works that are important to netart history, besides that you'll find links to all individual sites of artists presented. If you need to do deep research you're in the end probably better off with Rhizome's artbase and the Rhizome site as a whole because it really offers a vast amount of information.

And of course there's a sort of in between alternative: net.art connexion. This project started off as a sort of protest of Rhizome becoming a paid service in 2003. The net.art connexion site contains copies of all links you can find in Rhizome's artbase and more because you also can submit links. The site is free accessable but it misses all the extra info that makes this collection of links more interesting. Still it's worth a visit because the links are ordered in a better way Rhizome's artbase and of course you don't have to pay a dime for all the information.

Computer Fine Arts
Rhizome
net.art connexion


:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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With Valentine's Day coming our way, I recommend The Second Annual Video Valentine. This website offers quicktime video clips taking a closer look at the ordeals of love. The number of approaches range from narcissistic movies clips of a guy making out with his double (while Blondie's "Heart of Glass" plays in the background) to bigfoot walking around in a park (as lyrics of a song claim that he is lonely, when he actually acts rather bored). A reflexive yet playful and unexpectedly refreshing cynicism is shared by the short movies. At no point does the viewer feel disdain for love. Instead, the overall feeling is that love is able to take on many forms and it is here to stay, no matter how cynical we get.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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What is the state of net art? Floating Points, a series of talks organized by Turbulence.org and Emerson college, offers great potential to discuss this question among many others. People scheduled to present during this series include Steve Deitz, Christiane Paul, Alex Galloway, and Natalie Bookchin. It all happens at Emerson College in Boston. There will be a livestream for those unable to attend.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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One thing that may currently be overshadowed by the glossy interfaces populating the web is simple ascii and its beauty of special characters. Kenneth Young has developed a concise and easy to use special characters table explaining their history and relationship to other type technology, including the histories of telegraphy and character codes. Young's simple webpage proves to be a vital and convenient resource for those who want to make the most of text with good old html.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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The Database of Virtual Art has recently gone public. Currently not a hugh resource but backed by some of the leaders in new media art, Jeffrey Shaw, Lev Manovich, Knowbotic Research, Eduardo Kac, Ken Goldberg, Luc Courchesne, Jean Baptist Barriere and Maurice Benayoun to name but a few, the site / database has the potential to become in time an invaluable resource to those interested in new media art.

The database, developed specifically to "document digital installation art" will "also serve as a predesessor for the systematic preservation of this art".

"Considering the fundamental differences of virtual art, the documentation system reaches beyond traditional data by especially focusing on information about technical requirements, installation settings, blueprints, software-hardware configurations, interface and displays. Video documentation has strategically been given a core role, due to its ability to show the processual nature of these works – with more than 100 videos created by the artists."

For more information please see the site.

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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