SCRIPTORIUM

SCRIPTORIUM

"Scriptoriums" were rooms in which manuscripts were copied.  This website based art piece strives to portray the same objective.  The piece does not do this an any conventional way but in one that is remixed and glitched.  It questions linearity within novels and text and continued linearity in the way stories are created on the web. The story presented within this page is the first chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  Text on the page is not inherently supposed to make sense.  In fact I do not care much if someone can piece together the story.  If they do then they are simply putting the story back into its linear origin.  This page however wants to split and chop the story and create something new.  A new, non-linear and sometimes staggering piece of writing.

Final Idea/Presentation

http://justinhalm.com/scriptorium/

Jon Satrom

There is no topic for blog posts this week so I will speak on Jon Satrom.  In class we were asked to write a question we could ask Jon.  I had a great one but…almost the exact same question was asked by another member of the class.  My question that I had for Jon was in relation to sound in his work: “Does sound come about like the visual aspects of your work?  Is it mostly glitched sound you record or is it composed to sound like that?” Sound in many of his videos like “ROM 0” http://jonsatrom.com/---/rom0/index.html seem orchestrated in that they seem to match the visual glitch.  We know from using computers that glitches don’t make sound unless it’s during a video or music.  This particular video doesn't depict those two things so the music I had to assume was added later.  Jon did state that a lot of the sound is glitches but he does orchestrate it in a way by syncing it with certain images later on.  It results in a video that at first is jarring but later the sounds paired with the images are oddly satisfying.  I myself would get a bit of nostalgia for 8bit or even 16bit game sounds which his works seemed to have some references to.  They may not have been done consciously but a lot of the sounds reminded me of that.

            Jon’s talk in general really interested me.  Out of the different styles of internet art we have looked at I feel that glitch and remix are the most interesting to me.  It is interesting to take something that anyone could take for granted.  Something that is constantly being improved.  Something that people want to look nice and work and then doing the complete opposite with it.  It gives a look into what we use every day and take for granted as something familiar and turns it into something foreign and strange.  A good example of this in Jon’s work is the Satromizer OS https://vimeo.com/17414202.  It takes a hugely popular item and operating system and turns it into something completely different.  On the surface the OS looks like apple but as soon as you try to interact with it, it changes.  This is an incredibly clever idea.  It breaks down the normal walls of interaction and adds a whole new level.  It asks the question, how do we use something that is outside our normal comfort zone?  Depending on how you look at it, Satromizer is a working OS.  We aren't used to our operating systems operating in the way Satromizer OS does.  Therefore, it seems like it is broken but in reality it is doing exactly what it was designed to do.  I think this is an incredibly interesting look at perception and how we perceive something in technology as working or not.

            The question on perception and something doing something it was designed to do or not do is what interested me most about Jon’s talk.  I think it is a fundamental question that glitch art and even remix art asks.

The Yes Men

It has come to my attention that previous blog posts have not been kept to a satisfactory standard in the regard of grammar and structure.  To this I would like to make one simple argument: the purpose of a blog is for the writer to express themselves in a manner that they see fit.  Scholarly papers, journals and articles are held to a certain standard and should meet that standard.  Blogs were created to give the public a voice in any fashion that they prefer.  When I write a blog I prefer to do so in a conversational and semi stream of conscious fashion.  Therefore, some writing may have grammar or sentence structure that reflects this laid back tone.

On top of this, I work 28 hours a week and take 6 classes both physical and online, as a result I simply do not have the time to put forward my very best work every week.  “Best work” should be strived for every time, which I do, unfortunately it does not always turn out to be up to standard.

In the future, since grammar, vocabulary and structure all seem to be held to a scholar-esque standard, I would suggest picking a different medium for weekly class contribution.

That all being said, let us get to business on this week’s topic; The Yes Men.  I would first like to address the question: “Exactly how do [The Yes Men] operate?”  The film seems to go through their process pretty thoroughly so I will sum up what I gleaned from the viewing.  The Yes Men put on a fake façade and mimic a certain corporation.  Mimicry is originally simply intended to call in viewers who would be looking for the actual website and get them to read whatever is on the fake website.  The fake website may contain articles that attack the original corporation but by making the article seem as if it is from the original corporation.  It is akin to an animal in nature that may use camouflage to look like some other type of animal which it will use to lure in its prey.  A side advantage to the website looking just like the original website is that some people may get confused and ask the Yes Men to speak at a conference.  The Yes Men use these situations to actually go to the conference and get some media attention.  All this is the basic foundation for how the Yes Men operate. 

I got a complaint that I simply skim the surface of a subject sometimes rather than going into more detail.  Let us go down a bit deeper and look at the “hacktivism” that goes on with the Yes Men. Hacking at its core usually takes something and uses it against itself.  It doesn't always have to malicious and can be quite useful for certain things.  Hacking a certain tool to be more effective would be a good example. In the case of hacktivism, hacking is used to bring about change.  The Yes Men use their targets own self against them much like hacking in a digital space.  Using a website that looks just like the company’s, uses the company’s image and digital presence against them. As the Yes Men take their message into the real world and into conferences they begin to use the physical company and the media against it.  In the conferences the Yes Men use the company against itself in that they act like they are part of the company and they will use real world events or ideology from the company in their presentations.  They take everything that the company already has and uses it against that company or corporation.  What the Yes Men do may not being “hacking” in the sense of hacking code or breaking through a backend hole online but it mirrors the underlying method.  Using the company against itself is only the beginning.  The Yes Men will add upon what the company has already set down by creating absurd situations, like the phallus suit and hamburgers.  Some of these situations are accepted and some are not.  The Yes Men hack the audience to make them believe what they are seeing is reality.

            The activism part of “hacktivism” then comes from the media response.  The absurd situations and fake conferences are presented as actual news across the globe and this puts pressure on the company and its ideologies. 

The question is asked “How does their collective/collaborative and pseudonymous network practice challenge standard/conventional notions of ‘the individual artist as genius’ model we generally associate with a studio art practice?”  In my opinion I do not think that these two things can be compared.  This is not studio art and it has no relation to the artist of a studio piece.  Some individual may argue that all art can be studio art but I protest this.  I do not think that what the Yes Men do is studio art or can be related to it.  Therefore the argument of challenging the artist as a singular genius cannot be applied here.  I like the idea of the post-modern “the death of the author.”  I do not argue that Yes Men is art, I believe that it is but I also believe fundamentally it is quite different than “traditional art.”  By trying to put all art into one space we are creating a situation in which one work won’t stand out in a certain way.  There are different ways of presenting different art and in each situation art will thrive in how it is presented.  By lumping them together we do not allow the art to present itself.  What the Yes Men do is inherently cooperative.  They would not be able to do all they do with one singular person. Yes Men presentations are akin to mixed media, there are several components mixing into one and there needs to be several people to add to these different parts.  Studio art focuses on a singular medium and therefore one artist is needed.  I do not believe that what the Yes Men do challenge the notion of an individual artist.  On this note though I do think that digital spaces and digital art do challenge the notion of the individual artist.  As work becomes digital it is easier to change it and manipulate it.  It becomes easier for two people to work together to create something in a space that can be everywhere (physically) at once.

One last question to explore is “What is tactical media art?” which I’m afraid is just not possible to go into depth on.  Tactical media art is exactly what the Yes Men are doing; using the media to make a statement.  Media has changed and evolved throughout the years, from newspaper, to radio, to TV news, and then into the web.  One thing that has stayed consistent is the way in which the media is everywhere all the time.  No one can get away from the media unless they were to shut themselves away from the world.  Media is the perfect way to get a mass idea spread since it is so pervasive.  The Yes Men use this and so do several other activist groups in order to spread their ideas quickly.

I did not know of any works that were similar to Yes Men but since it seemed to be a requirement for this blog I took it upon myself to find some.

One artist that I could think of right away that is similar is Banksy.  Rather than hacking the internet and conferences he hacks wall and public spaces.  The paintings he does take on the look of normal street art but they strive to make an argument against certain norms and societal issues.  Like the Yes Men he uses satire and parody to makes a point. His art shows mirror those of other artists but in their core he is using the shows to make an argument against the people that go to the shows and the artists who make them.

http://banksy.co.uk/

Another hacktivist group is called “Anonymous” which has becomes quite well known recently.  Similar to Yes Men they make arguments against government, religion and mainly corporations.  They use the victim’s website or content against them much like Yes Men.  The difference is that they do it anonymously.  Yes Men go on the news and show themselves, people know who they are.  Anonymous is a loosely structured leaderless group that doesn’t allow others to know who they are. 

http://wearelegionthedocumentary.com/

MidTerm

http://justinhalm.com/netmedium/

Hermetic Synch Remix (Think..anagram)

((4))A sense I get from Miller’s writing.  I don't see the writing and hear the sound… I feel it.  I feel the “flying” that is so often mentioned the flow, looping.  It is continuous.  A splashing of water, waves, one after the other over and over, one connecting to another.  A “theater of networks” being performed by the eb and flow.

((2))It doesn’t need to be in any particular order, the reader can “drift” and “fly” through the music un-constrained, in response, to streams of information.  The music serves to supplement not direct.  To give a second sense of things. It is lending to the idea of multiple “environments.”  Often times I have listened to this while writing about digital mediums.  Although Rhythm Science is a physical book, I can’t help but see it as something digital.  It seems like something that could exist in several digital forms (and indeed it does).
   ((6))   As I write this I do realize the constraints of my language… of my understanding.  I can’t hope to understand Rhythm Science at least not in the scope of my words. Not in the scope of remixed words.  I can barely scratch the surface of Miller’s meaning and can only access a small point of my understanding.  As I process, so do the words.  I understand fully however my language limits what I know that I understand.  However, as Miller says, tapping into the network, “flipping open a laptop” can help.  It all comes down to a word game however, the words dictate meaning, and they dictate sound.  “The beginning. That’s always the hard part. Once you get into the flow of things, you’re always haunted by the way that things could have turned out. This outcome, that conclusion.” This conclusion.

((3))It feels

((1)) “The beginning. That’s always the hard part. Once you get into the flow of things, you’re always haunted by the way that things could have turned out” (Miller).  Once you get into the flow of things there is no turning back without a loss of time and therefore space. Miller’s writing has a certain “flow” a visceral and poetic prose that mirrors the senses.  His book was accompanied by sound and music and therefore, my remix is as well.

((5))At this point I recall the very first sentence... “You’re always haunted…” Could I have approached this in a different way?  My words…and all words are a virus.  Jean-Luc Godard states “the limits of language are the worlds limits …the limits of my language are my world’s limits, and when I speak, I limit the world, I finish it.”  Nothing can be done with the multiplication of words… agents of an “omni-sensory condition, a compilation of local, distant, and virtual spaces.” Everything however can be stopped by language… by words… the extent of our knowledge and our continued flight through data and networks is dictated by our language.  As it grows so does our knowledge and our freedom.  Not just spoken language but any form of it.  As technology progresses, as we create new coding languages, as we expand those we have then we continue our flow, our un-constrained loops. 

      

*All text quotes from Rhythm Science by Paul Miller

 **Godard quote from Vivre Sa Vie

Jim Punk

            The artist assigned to me is Jim Punk.  He is an anonymous net. Artist thought to be from France.  Not only are his works non-linear and discombobulating but there are next to no interviews from him or articles.  The interviews or emails he sends are distorted and skewed much like his artwork.  It seems that every interaction Punk has on the internet is to send some sort of message.  The main message I gather from his work is distortion on basic human expectations. A lot of Punk’s work follows the “remix culture.”  One example is screenfull.net in which Abe Linkoln and Jim Punk remix the blogosphere.  It is interesting that we expect everything on the internet to be well organized and follow some sort of rules, but the internet is free territory (less and less so now though) and Punk and Lincoln show that they can present their content in any way that they choose.  A review hidden away on the site behind several links and text states, “Screenfull is a media mashup, a collision of borrowed (stolen) images, video, and audio that have been cut and torn and jammed back together.”  Screenfull does do this and to the extreme, past what is apparent from the quote.  There’s picture after picture mixed in with gifs, audio and video.  Links rarely lead to where you would expect them to and none even have a coherent identifier.  Punk doesn’t want to viewer to find everything accessible, in fact the slogan of the site is “we want to crash your browser.”  The natural “order” of the internet is challenged thoroughly through this work, it challenges the user to think differently. 

            A project similar to Screenfull is another collaboration by Punk and Antonio Mendoza called dysleksic.  The sort of remix or…distortion is apparent already right from the title of the work, “dysleksic” dyslexic spelled wrong (ironic…).  Although it may be as shallow as that, I think it does point to the idea of subtle changing content and creating something new from it.  Although this work is anything but subtle…although the meaning may be as such.  http://dysleksic.tumblr.com/ Dysleksic features a scrollable tumblr page with video after video, each one remixed in some sort of way.  Mendoza states in an interview that both artist would not know what the other was doing and most of the time wouldn’t even understand what the other would be saying in an email or other communication.  What was born from that is a page that is absolutely mesmerizing.  At first it seems overwhelming and an average consumer may immediately close the tab.  However, after pausing and looking at the videos a sort of cohesiveness begins to take place.  The videos express the internet and media in a way that isn’t organized and understandable.  Much like how we perceive things within our mind the site videos are nonlinear and again, much like screenfull question the organization of the internet.

            Another main theme of Punk’s work is using the internet as the medium rather than as a place to display a medium. He employs browser windows, code and the webpages themselves to create a lot of work.  Punk will even use other people to create work.  Social media is often one of the most understandable things on the internet.  They try to create something that is at the top of its game for user friendliness, organization and accessibility.  Twitter is Punk’s main focus when it comes to creating art out of social media.  The site is known for its short “status” snippets of text, people talking about going about their day or artists stating when a new work will be coming out.  For Punk, that new work is daily, or by the minute depending on how active others are.  Punk created a keyboard with glyphs and figures that most people wouldn’t use in their daily lives and then allows anyone to type a message with it and post it to twitter.  The result is a collection of tweets that in most senses make no sense. Others create pictures out of the symbols.  Punk hands the tools over to the public.  As such, it isn’t the tweets that are his work but rather the internet itself.  The twitter account is the piece of art.  Punk takes something understandable and mundane and turns it into something unknown and strange.  He seems to be an all encapsulating force sitting back behind the code, watching as people strive to make sense out of something that cannot be made sense of.  It is this that is his main message, not everything can make sense, and especially not the internet.  People want to create an organized medium out of something that is inherently disorganized. 

Internet Art

            I really like the first sentence of Anne Marie Schleiner’s “Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders, and Future Artists” which is “Artists of the future may not know that they are artists.”  Which I think is already the case of our present day and art forms.  A gamer (as she mentions) may not know that they are an artist in a sense but they are, they can upload game clips or record interactions and display them much like a painting in a gallery.  It is something they created and take pride in.  This also makes me think of the film Professor Phil Solomon here at CU.  He has several films that use only footage from the Grand Theft Auto series.  He isn’t necessarily a gamer, but it shows that incredible art can be created from something not usually associated with art.  With the introduction of the new gaming systems (“next gen”) they have recording software built in that will automatically record clips, this takes Schleiner’s sentence to the extreme in that the person playing literally does not know they are creating art.  It is almost accidental art which is an interesting concept to think about, if the person doesn’t know they are creating art are they still creating it?  They are creating it yes but can it be identified as art if it was intended.  Something to think about.

            I also find the idea of collaboration in Schleiner’s writing interesting.  It seems like it is something that has become more and more prominent with the advent of internet art.  You don’t see collaboration between baroque painters (as far as I know) but now you can find works pretty commonly that have been contributed to by several people.  It even is becoming pretty common in the music industry, it was usually just rap and hip hop that featured large amounts of collaboration but now other bands of different genres are doing it more as well.  I think it has to do with the ease of being able to share, send and work on projects between people with the internet.  It just keeps getting easier as well with google drive sharing and cloud storage. 

Digital Narrative

My Body works in the way of an autobiography but it is very introspective, at the same time there is a use of illustration and several branch offs within the main narrative. The Six Sex Scenes seem to be simply stories in different pages, the titles vary in placement but for the most part it seems uniform and familiar. Distance, is a sort of photo-book or link story in an abstract way, each click only gives a bit of information but manages to tell a narrative. Red Riding Hood, to me is like those click adventure games, it depends on what you click and if you can find the thing you are looking on for the story to progress.

            These net artists blur the distinction between autobiography and fiction by being incredibly detailed so much so that it seems as if they are creating a new story and a new identity.  Also, the addition of illustrations, sound or pictures creates more of a fiction feel rather than a drab autobiography that skims the details and simply tells it how it is.

            The link strategy, the most closed was distance the other three works however seems to branch in several directions.  To me, the links are distracting, I think it may almost be a tired medium.  When it comes to games people want several options and narratives however when I was reading these stories I didn’t like the feeling I got that I would have to click through everything go backwards and click again, I felt like I was missing some things which I did not like.

            I cannot think of any specific other narratives that do similar things however I do remember when the youtube choose your own adventure type deals began to pop up.  Which, are pretty similar to the redridinghood work.

            In each of these narratives, in Jacksons piece, when she recalls very fine details about her childhood I began to doubt the authenticity of the memories, I felt them to be more fictional than real. In Distance, it seems that Laporta is playing a character however I felt none of it felt all that real, simply because each picture was of a different person, it didn't give off the sense that it was a cohesive story about one person but rather several people. The frame story of redridinghood gives a good look at how over time things may have changed but it also is a familiar story that most everyone knows.  It creates a common interest foundation that anyone can interact with to learn the new story.

            I think that the distinction of literature vs visual becomes arbitrary in electronic environments.  When these sort of things just began at the advent of the style of link stories and what not, it could be split into categories.  However, the term mixed media came around and that is how I see these works, I no longer view them as one distinct genre.   Now, I see them as a conglomerate, a lot of parts working together towards the whole. 

Blog Post 1

Blog Post 1:

I actually read Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in relation to film theory some time ago.  He brings up points that do still have meaning during our era, mostly the form of plagiarism and even re-appropriation.  Benjamin’s example of the statue of Venus illustrates the idea of appropriation perfectly, “Venus…stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura” (Benjamin 5).  Benjamin argues that aura is the unique characteristic that never leaves a piece of work, however, I would argue that now in the digital age this no longer applies.  A piece can be altered and reproduced in infinite ways now and through such alterations can lose its aura, its defining characteristics or underlying feeling that the piece gives off. Even just looking at a work in the digital space seems to alter the aura or render it hidden. For example, look at the Mona Lisa in a museum, its aura is there and intact. Now pull up google image search and look up Mona Lisa. There is rows and rows of it, reproduced into infinity and each one lacks the aura, the feeling, of the original work.

            Another line from Benjamin I find interesting is, “Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work” (Benjamin 5).  What this means is one piece of art could be like a church relic and another a piece in a museum.  In the modern age, this can be seen as more of underground art vs. traditional art.  People still strive to put their work into museums but then there are the “cult” artists that either publish solely online or in un-traditional mediums like street art.  Although now the two merge somewhat, street art is cult like but at the same time is exhibitionist at its core, it is put straight into the public space for everyone to see.  So with the advent of the digital world and evolving art forms, cult vs. exhibition begins to merge.

            Bush’s article I found to be enlightening on the ideas that he presented of future technology. The part on the camera “certainly progress in photography is not going to stop” (Bush 4).  Rather than use a long quote or paraphrasing I would just like to look at the paragraph starting with the line quoted.  It is interesting to see that back then although he had some notion of what would be in the future, what we actually have is way past what he though.  He still mentions film and square frames.  Instead we have digital and wide frames and anything in between.  Photography has progressed incredibly far, now there is gopros and google glass similar to what he described but far surpassing his predictions.  The web allows for sharing of millions of photos and no need for film. It is interesting to think that technology progressed so much faster than even a scientist of that time could comprehend or predict.

            In a similar vein, “Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic” (Bush 11).   Bush speaks of computers here but only in the sense of them being mathematical.  Now, we can use computers for far more things and in the scope of this class, art.  Big data and data visualization is one example I can think of.  The digital art world has surpassed data as being only figures that can be used for equations or intel.  Now, it is used to create beautiful works of art and even art that is more informative than the data itself.  Not only that but there are endless ways to create and present the data.  Something that Bush probably did not foresee, the use of data and science to create art.