Re: <nettime> FW: someding zu read

["G.H. Hovagimyan" <gh {AT} popstar.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Leili <leiloop {AT} jps.net>
> ----------
> from: Arthur Clay <artclay {AT} netsurfer.ch>
> reply-To: lev {AT} shoko.calarts.edu

> Wallpaper Slaughter Houses,
> 
> The modern artist working with what has come to be known as 'new media' is
> faced with a dilemma.  Commercial veins working with the same media, but
> producing what they produce, can afford the equipment and the manpower to
> run it, however the modern artist wishing to work in this area can not. 

GH Comments: 

Most of your essay  responds to the "lack of 
access" lament.  I personally don't feel the need to 
compete with Hollywood nor do I want the 
masses as an audience.  A larger issue is the 
multi-national corporate finance model that funds 
LucasFilms. In global capitalist terms Hollywood 
films are the perfect expression of Globalism or  
*Empire* as Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri call it.

So where does the artist stand?

You wrote:
> 
> The Dream Screen
> 
> Perhaps there are other parallels we can draw.  The idea that we go to the
> cinema to dream is a curious idea.  A dream is screenless. It takes place
> in the mind in a three dimensional space. We can enter our dreams by
> penetrating them in their spaces. We have the feeling of depth sensation.
> This sensation we can't get from film. If we want to stick or finger in the
> proverbial apple pie in a film, we just get shadows. If we do this with a
> dream, we put a whole into the apple pie.

GH Comments:
Mimesis is a traditional basis for all art forms.  It's 
also the most simplistic.   Discussing how "real" 
an apple looks in a film or how real figures are 
rendered in a 3D animation is the lowest 
common denominator. 

> Conclusion
> We don't need the screen to create a virtual reality. The concept of
> immersion can therefore be  based on the mental state of the viewer.  

GH Comments:
Peter Sinclair and I  just did an immersive/ 
interactive sound work called *Heartbreak Hotel* 
<http://www.artnetweb.com/gh/heartbreak.html>
It's been exhibited in France at GMEM in Marseille 
and Interferences at Belfort. 
It will be shown in Amsterdam in January of 2000.
Interestingly enough it's really hard to exhibit this 
piece in the USA.  It's not  an art object so it 
doesn't fit with art world commodity circulation.  Its 
not a media event so its mass entertainment 
appeal is rather limited.  

An essay I wrote several years ago approaches 
your subject from a slightly different angle. It's 
called, "Notes on Immersion" , 
<http://www.artnetweb.com/gh/imm1.html> 

I have another essay coming out in Leonardo this 
Fall for the Digital Salon catalog that also 
approaches this issue. It's called *art in the Age of 
Spirutual Machines (with apologies to Ray 
Kurzweil).   Here's the Abstract;
Abstract:
Humanity is evolving towards a * Post Human* 
society that may include enhanced human 
beings, hybrid humans and artificial intelligences.  
As an artist working in digital media and network 
culture, I believe that the crucial issue of the time 
is to clear the path for networked art and to create 
the foundations for a new aesthetic discourse that 
issues from networked culture. In order to do this, 
one has to be willing to create art that may not be 
readily recognized as art work.  In Art in the Age of 
Spiritual Machines I trace the common roots of 
structuralist philosophy, developmental 
psychology, reductivist art discourse,  structural 
linguistics and neural nets in attempt to create a 
basis for this new aesthetic discourse.  

G.H. Hovagimyan
<http://www.artnetweb.com/gh>

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