From: Foxhillside (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Mar 04 2009 - 08:13:23 PST
The current direction in media, particularly the way television seems to
be developing, is to shift more of it onto the net. It is looking more
likely that it will be the delivery medium for all moving images into
our homes, if not also cinemas eventually (although in the case of major
studios streaming into cinemas thats hardly likely to be a publicly
accessible network). I think what I'm getting is a lot of the
distinctions and points being raised, in regards to identifing a
difference (your what is the 'it') are very difficult. Video ? It's
digital art really, although as digital moving images have grown out of
video they share a lot of technical commonality with video. Your work
can also change considerably moving it around areas of the net (encoding
requirements of hosting services, bandwidth requirements etc). Of course
digital art can also encompass interactive works, sound only pieces and
still images too.
Mind you, it does raise questions of the politics of media. It is a
relatively cheap method of distribution with a global reach, this is
whats liberating and radical about it. Apart from that I'm pretty
stumped as to why this P2P available work is being called ephemeral
other than the rules of it's production/consumption contain an
unenforceable 'delete it when someone else has it' rule. I also think
that using torrent swarms would be a lot closer to this philosophy. I
favour the ephemeral term being used, as Tony sort of said in regards to
performance based pieces. We used to do a show called 'Deconstructed
Cinema' which was basically an improvised video art show, that too me is
ephemeral as it wasn't recorded and was edited together in real time. Of
course such things could be done online now with software like Arkaos.
What I do find interesting about this method of delivery on the net, by
that I mean P2P networks, is that its a way that a work can be
repersonalised in some sense by those that consume it. What I mean is
you can see what other works, music, and images a person who has a copy
also has in their P2P library. The work is like a book being restacked
in different librarys next to other works. This may lead people, by
browsing, onto other works.
I also agree, if what you're saying is that fundamentally there is no
Point A or B that can be easily identifiable. The way the net works
encourages an odd form of short term memory loss when it comes to
anythings provenance. It does however offer a way of identifying all the
places accessible to you where it exists (in some form, it could have
been reencoded etc). The virus analogy works best, once you put
something on the net and people find it its pretty much a given it'll
end up being somewhere else soon after, even if it only ends up in
somebody elses cache files. There are always point Bs, it becomes a
multiplicity. A work has the potential to carry other works along with
it, simply by a virtual-space association, other items that were found
in the enviroment it was stacked in where a singular user/browser found
it. It is infecting other pieces really. To get away from the virus
analogy this process can also be seen a form of curation carried out by
many individuals. I think that how these associations develop, and then
fracture, within such a large scale and flexible distribution method as
the net is what will become interesting. It'll be nice to get out of
categorisations of art work-types as such a complex free form
association will end up making categories meaningless. Like 'Ephemeral'.
-Stray.
> If Tony's work has raised questions about the significance of frame rate or projection for film, I am asking about the value of the delivery metaphor for net art. Is there a point A or B? Is there a message, does something travel? What are the parameters of the work? What is the "it" of this work, a video? What is its significance? Is it most constructively conceived of in the context of moving images? What makes it interesting? The use of ephemeral suggests material decay, but suppose we use the biological metaphor of a virus. What is the significance of imagery? Is there a location of reception? What significance does the work present for a politics of media? Is it important in understanding social control? Is it liberating, radical . . ?
>
> Bernie
> ________________________________________
> From: Experimental Film Discussion List [email suppressed]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 7:26 PM
> To: email suppressed
> Subject: Re: Ephermal filmworks? History?
>
> On Mar 3, 2009, at 7:01 PM, Roddy, Bernard P. wrote:
>
>
>> Terranova's book Network Culture undertakes to replace the discourse
>> of representation with that of information (I approximate), and to
>> get beyond the terms of cultural criticism (traced from Marx through
>> the Frankfurt School to British emphasis on identity). Walley's
>> reliance on the language of distribution ("from point A to point B,"
>> "institutions through which these things are brought to us") seems
>> ill-suited for examining the nature of the practice Anders has
>> going, particularly given that we can constructively examine the
>> project without seeing the work (right?).
>>
>
> But the work still has to travel, and it must do so through some
> means. A network is precisely such a means, and that's all it is,
> whether it is an "old-fashioned" distribution network of film/video
> coop's sending prints through the mail to people who want to screen
> them or "new-fashioned" electronic networks that allow us to transmit
> and see works via the internet. It seems to me that Anders's project
> is, in part, about the nature of this latter "network," about
> something that makes it distinct from other modes of distribution (and
> the potential consequences of these). This is all I mean by
> "distribution."
>
> I'm not sure why the language of distribution is less relevant to this
> project on the grounds that "we can constructively examine the project
> without seeing the work." Indeed, this seems to make the nature of its
> distribution all the more relevant. In this case, the nature of the
> "distribution" format Anders has chosen for his work may NOT bring the
> work to a viewer - it may FAIL. But this doesn't make it NOT a form of
> distribution, does it?
>
> Again, I suppose it comes down to how one defines "distribution." I'm
> not sure I'm really relying on a "language of distribution." That
> sounds pretty systematic. Simply pointing out that works of art, under
> most circumstances, travel from their maker to a viewer (or group of
> viewers), often through some more or less formalized system, and that
> this has consequences for who sees the work (and how, and when, and
> if) isn't the same as invoking a systematized discourse, which is what
> I take the first sentence of your post to be suggesting.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.