<nettime> challenge accepted (re art & the info economy)

Brian Holmes, Molly Handwitz, I accept the challenge you have both presented to think through the issues addressed in the 1996 piece on art and the information economy as they are playing out today, and agree with you both that a lot will have changed. What I meant by saying that I continue to stand on the 1996 piece regarded its analysis of the state of the matter at the time.

This is very good timing for this challenge, as I had already committed to bringing my historicization and comparative analysis of the diverse ways of thinking about what we mean by the information economy that developed over time but are all simultaneously in use today. In the mid-1990s, that history involved three different ways of thinking about the information economy:

- a neoclassical approach developed in the 1960s that emphasizes the relative importance of the information industries to other sectors in an economy that is the same as it ever was and operates as it always did

- a political economic approach developed in the 1970s that focuses on expansion of the domain of the economy itself through commoditization of types of information and informational relations that were never before commoditied

- a network economic approach developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s (inductively developed based on detailed empirical analysis of the operations of transnational corporations headquartered on both sides of the Iron Curtain, 1960s-1980s) takes the position that the economy is operating differently from how it has operated historically, with cooperation and coordination now as important for long-term success as competition

Since the "Art in the Information Economy" piece, two additional conceptualizations of the information economy have come into play.

- a postmodern economic (or "referential economy") approach developed de facto in the early 21st century although its incipient phases had been noticed and theorized by postmodern theorists decades earlier, focusing on the nature of the information dominating the information economy itself as it becomes referential rather than empirical; Robert Shiller won a Nobel Prize for, among other things, writing about the "narrative economy" but that is not the same thing . . . he is actually just delivering that discipline's decades-late arrival to the narrative turn

- an ecstatic economy approach in which the fact of information itself is all that matters (the fact of assertion, not assertion of fact), with no need for either referentiality or empiricism (the wilds of misinformation) or, one might argue, for inclusion of the human in the loop (thinking about proof of work blockchain, computation for the sake of computation at astoundingly large and growing energy cost)

Best that I fully develop all five of these as they developed and are currently shaping public and private sector decision-making -- and then return to what would then best be presented as "art and the information economies," articulating differences in policies implicated by each of the different ways of thinking about what it is that has so importantly changed as those are currently manifesting themselves.

If anyone would like pointers to or examples of publications re the above, happy to share. The first three stages have been pretty thoroughly discussed in print; the fourth was introduced in a book chapter available in English and Portuguese; the last is only suggested so far in a book chapter in press that could be shared. The other related item is a review essay on the development of the literatures on the macro-economics (the information economy) and the micro-economics (the economics of information) of information as they coalesced into coherent subfields of what had been understood as distinct lines of thought and research over time.

Molly, the kinds of community-based efforts you are talking about are really important. The fact that they have a long history may be considered either good news or bad news. I'm sure there are others on the list who know tremendous amounts more about this than I do, including yourself, but even in my own lifetime it was in the 1970s that artists and writers began organizing affordable health insurance situations. As applied to the digital world, during the same years nettime was getting going there were tremendous groups like NAMAC and TAAC that involved artists who were also community organizers using the arts to strengthen their own communities in incredibly smart and effective ways. You are right that all of this in its current manifestations needs to be taken into account in analysis of what is going on today. Do think it is implicit in several of the areas discussed in the 1996 piece, though.

Brian, on one other of your important questions, how was the information economy "imposed," this is certainly an example of the multicausality of any social development. A number of factors would come to light from organizational sociology, from law and society studies, and then we come back to political economy. Provoked by your question, thinking of how diverse causal factors use different forms (instrumental, structural, symbolic or persuasive, and informational) and phases (sunk, active, potential, and virtual in the sense of a form or tool of power that can be brought into use now using extant resources and knowledge, but that does not yet exist). One of the most difficult for us to actually engage in the detailed manner necessary is technical decision-making for technologies and networks, but that's another story (topic for another discussion).

On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 3:23 PM <nettime-l-request@mail.kein.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: re art & monetary value -- "art in the information
economy" (Molly Hankwitz)
2. Re: what does monetary value indicate? (bronac ferran)

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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:20:21 -0700
From: Molly Hankwitz <mollyhankwitz@gmail.com>
To: bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com
Cc: a moderated mailing list for net criticism
<nettime-l@mail.kein.org>, Sandra Braman <bramansandra@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> re art & monetary value -- "art in the
information economy"
Message-ID:
<CAH5TXpy8-PM2GuiZU3kugA7CqWBfwixb5AJ1w7k=gFSH94WboQ@mail.gmail.com>
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Dear Sandra, Brian,

Thank you from me for your very clear and concise breakdown of Art in the
information economy, Sandra. A good read and interesting sets of research
from your own forays into aboriginal culture to innovation as a driver of
the economy. Very apt for this conversation coming out if the NFT boom. And
very structured, which is calming amidst the boom frenzy, too, meaning that
along with the potentialities of the NFT boom comes uncertainty, somewhat
calmed by insights and speculative questions in your paper. It?s economic
history.

At the same time, I would argue two things?one, the information/digital
economy is substantially different now than it was in the 1990s, just as
web art from then operates on a different digital footprint, different
coding; than such art does now with Web 2.0, and that information has
changed dramatically and in terms of capital, flows, taxing of flows, etc.
This is probably also induced by what we might call the ?smart? information
economy, and as yet, I?ve seen no comprehensive studies on flows in smart
comm, but that might be helpful to know how ideas and information is
circulating.

Secondly, and I attended recently several sessions of the Berlin MoneyLab,
what is potentially transformational about cryptocurrencies and NFT type
currency making practices is that much if the drive to produce capital is
emerging from within local networks and self-defined communities of
practice. The opportunity may be upon collectives, for instance, to better
act on their own behalf when it comes to determining value, and that this
in turn can potentially reshape arts role in culture. I was impressed, and
then a discord thread started, on the introduction of ?feminist economics?
to the discussion of value in a presentation by DisCO, and by several
projects which projected possibilities for underserved communities of
artists being able to become more self sustaining and more in control of
their ?market? representation, so to speak. What this has to do with
post-COVID, remains to be seen.

At the same time it might be scary to conceive of splintering away from
institutions, just as institutions appear to be becoming ?inclusive?. But,
if there is a sure reason, it might be the recent pay debacle for African
American artists at the Whitney(will supply links later)

A few events from my part if the world, which is the ever-imaginative and
challenging Bay Area. I am reminded of Pro Arts gallery announcing recently
that they now have their own copyright, as they work to produce a ?commons?
and of the several Universal Income programs that are currently being
piloted here for artists. Another positive, progressive local direction is
the SF Community Land Trust which buys buildings from their owners and sets
up cooperative ownership.

All this time at home may have improved the house on a macro and micro
scale!

Cheers,
Molly

<Do white people also undergo acculturation? How was the information
economy imposed in the 1990s? How did it affect all of us, with its
particular forms of money, its codes of communication and its modes of
transport, its hierarchies and its violence? I wrote a lot about it, back
in the day. But it looks quite different today.

Cultural politics is a very slippery business, because it is also part of
states and corporations. What I'm trying to say is that, just as in the
early Nineties, a new kind of world order is likely to come together in the
wake of a major crisis. The crisis today is the pandemic - a relation to
animals, zoonosis - and the first big blows from climate change - a
relation to destiny. But such crises are resolved, at least temporarily,
and this one surely will be too. Still the challenges to the old order are
immeasurably more powerful than they were in the 1990s. The declarations of
the curent administration contain many things that the US left has been
calling for over the last twenty years, yet in the face of everything that
could take form as Green Informational Capitalism I have the feeling that
the critical blinders better come off very soon, as Bronac was also saying.

On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 10:53 PM Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 9:37 AM Sandra Braman <bramansandra@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> This piece from 1996 on art and various forms of capital in the digital
>> world has some things to say that are pertinent to this interesting
>> conversation. You'll see some theorists not as present in ongoing
>> conversation these days as they were then, but I stand on the piece.
>>
>> "Art in the Information Economy"
>> http://people.tamu.edu/~braman/bramanpdfs/011_art.pdf
>>
>
>
>
> --

molly hankwitz - she/her
http://bivoulab.org
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 21:20:39 +0100
From: bronac ferran <bronacf@gmail.com>
To: bodo@uva.nl
Cc: a moderated mailing list for net criticism
<nettime-l@mail.kein.org>, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> what does monetary value indicate?
Message-ID:
<CAOXXUWCpGNcgegtagF7+Dnqk2LSDmZbRCwmMgg0jyiEce82idA@mail.gmail.com>
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May be of interest as an artistic statement

https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/115220853285890333577834225944660395868515539915081397019161699807314084626433
B

On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 13:14, Balazs Bodo <bodonospam2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> i see two ways to read what is happening in the various valuation bubbles
> around us (which include not just NFTs, crypto-currency bubbles,
> meme-stocks, but also QAnon conspiracies, or trumpism).
>
> - the pragmatic reading assumes a rather primitive pump and dump machine
> going around in various markets (first ICOs, then alt-coins, now NFTs, but
> also politics) using the same logic: identify a market with high liquidity,
> high visibility, high complexity, low entry barriers, a large number of
> clueless potential 'retail investors', create hype, gain trust by offering
> epistemic certainty in face of complexity, extract their money, move on.
> there is really nothing to see here, in terms of art, or the artist as a
> designer of complex information flows, rather than artworks; or politics as
> ideology: ICOs, and NFTs and MAGA are literally the next generation
> Nigerian 419 email scam (which btw still makes hundreds of thousands per
> year): pay us something in advance for a huge payoff in the future! STONKS!
> - the theoretical reading would go something like this: markets resort to
> keynesian beauty contests when it becomes difficult to link valuations to
> fundamentals. the fundamentals are increasingly hard to link back to in any
> derivative markets, as the 2008 financial crisis has shown, but in all
> these newly emerging bubbles, there are no fundamentals to even start with:
> speculative bubbles is all we have. tech development unmoored us from
> reality in unforeseen ways, and only through the emergence of these
> speculative bubbles we see where we became detached from any earlier
> semblance of 'fundamental reality'. these bubbles are then serve as
> diagnostic tools to see in which social, economic, political, cultural
> domains we need new anchors to however we define fundamentals. But one
> thing is clear: the anchoring cannot happen in the aspirational, or in the
> future, as it is exactly such a grounding in a speculative/aspirational
> future which detached us from the ground reality of the here and now,
> whether that is environmental degradation or systemic injustices. We have
> consumed our future, and all that is left of it is a scam.
>
> I know i'm sounding like a puritan looking at the excesses of the high
> baroque catholic church with disgust and a torch in the hand, but maybe
> there are enough similarities in the phenomena to justify the parallels in
> the response. :)
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Cathedral,_Utrecht#/media/File:Altaarretabel_Domkerk.JPG
>
> cheers,
>
>
> b
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 11:09 PM Molly Hankwitz <mollyhankwitz@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Brian & Bronac,
>>
>> This whole metaphor of the beach! And the dead beached whale washed up
>> after the wave...I?m enjoying this! Have you ever seen Canadian filmmaker
>> Dominic Gagnon?s film about the North of North America? Footage from oil
>> drilling outpost towns, which like off-colonies exist in this very liminal,
>> icy, dark skied version of mobile home park at the edge of a
>> goldmine...part of a quadrant of four films, one for each direction on the
>> Compass...
>>
>> Anyway, there is footage of a large, beached dead whale being discovered
>> having washed up from planet Ocean...like the Suez Canal problem, the
>> people cannot move the bulky whale, so they chainsaw it into blubbery cubes
>> which are removed in small batches...
>>
>> Whale ENTERS from one system, leaves by quite another...! smile
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/0_skp95&hl=en-US&q=Dominic+Gagnon&kgs=ddc02b560bd9acf7&shndl=0&source=sh/x/kp/osrp&entrypoint=sh/x/kp/osrp
>>
>>
>> Molly
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 9:25 AM Brian Holmes <
>> bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Bronac,
>>>
>>> It's hilarious what you say: the beaches, the digital hordes, "the
>>> rhetoric is being exposed and is adapting!"
>>>
>>> I guess if cryptocurrencies are going to go from being designer assets
>>> to something more structural - full-fledged global currencies integrated to
>>> states and regional blocs - then it'll be kind of like a giant wave that
>>> sweeps over the beach, destroys all those nifty little parties, and leaves
>>> only two or three giant beached whales behind. Kind of like how we got
>>> GAFANG out of early Internet experimentation.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ??snip??-
>>
>>>
>>> Anyway, Broodthaers came to mind as a counterpoint to the era of systems
>>> aesthetics, basically for his critique of empire (Museum of Modern Art,
>>> Dept. of Eagles) and ultimately, of colonialism ("Decors: A Conquest" or "A
>>> Winter Garden"). Works which go beyond the scathingly negative to explore
>>> the cultural and subjective foundations of imperial power, as it began to
>>> be experienced domestically by millions of Europeans in the late nineteenth
>>> century, when they ate a ripe banana or entered a steam-heated greenhouse
>>> full of tropical plants. If you look back on that work now, at least in the
>>> Americas at a time when statues are toppled and people protest in the
>>> streets against the ongoing consequences of colonialism, it looks
>>> incredibly prescient - far beyond Michael Asher or any other of his
>>> contemporaries.
>>>
>>> Beeple is like a decayed and recycled Warhol, for sure. That sort of
>>> figure is a structural feature of society now. I am curious about the
>>> counterpoints, necessarily more rare or at least, harder to recognize. Who
>>> are the artists that have been able to represent and critique the
>>> incredible conquest of space that we've all lived through - I mean, the
>>> fiber-optic cabling of the world and the entry into ubiquitous real-time
>>> communications, including global finance of course? Because indeed, the
>>> material weight of tech and its environmental consequences are being
>>> recognized.
>>>
>>> I just can't get into the crypto thing as the biosphere collapses. But
>>> if someone has suggestions about artists to look into, I really am a taker.
>>>
>>> best, Brian
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 7:21 AM bronac ferran <bronacf@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Brian
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the tantalising thoughts. I am confused by the analogy with
>>>> Broodthaers. Had thought rather this was a renewing of Warhol and Banksy
>>>> for the post-pandemic, digital sphere.
>>>>
>>>> I would refer to an article by Buchloh for closer reading of the
>>>> hermetic negativityin Broodthaers and associated artists such as Michael
>>>> Asher:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.artforum.com/print/201304/michael-asher-39885
>>>>
>>>> The interview available via this tweet seems to me to convey a sense of
>>>> Beeple as a declared non-artist, who works commercially for Vuitton etc,
>>>> who understands the power and value of branding and rebranding and is not
>>>> doing it for individual recognition (as he has professional status as a
>>>> designer):
>>>> https://twitter.com/BusinessInsider/status/1370532729364828160
>>>>
>>>> Meanwhile I am enthralled by the gathering numbers of artists gathering
>>>> on the virtual beaches with their little digital hordes. At the very point
>>>> when the material weight of tech is finally recognised and its
>>>> environmental impact is being confronted, the myth of virtuality and
>>>> weightlessness is being reinforced, as tokens of ownership, of the
>>>> evanescent. The ecstasy of having an audience: of finding someone who
>>>> cares! The rhetoric is certainly being exposed and adapting. Watch this
>>>> space.
>>>>
>>>> B
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, 28 Mar 2021 at 05:29, Brian Holmes <
>>>> bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 8:51 PM Molly Hankwitz <
>>>>> mollyhankwitz@gmail.com> asked:
>>>>>
>>>>> Artist as ?administrative author? or initiator of a system, through
>>>>>> which communities can act, somewhat recursively to establish value, and/or
>>>>>> prosper via, for instance, a shared currency?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I am fascinated by the concept of the artist as "initiator of a
>>>>> system," it's the most profound and still-relevant notion of art to come
>>>>> out of the late 20th century. To initiate a system is to open up the field
>>>>> in which something like orientation or valuation can take place. Exactly
>>>>> what the orientations and values must be is not initially prescribed, but
>>>>> still, the coordinates and the terms of measure are made available and
>>>>> shared, as we all know from software and activist movements and even love
>>>>> (let's think co-initiators).
>>>>>
>>>>> But the demon of contradiction wants me to take something so admirable
>>>>> into a more troubling direction, which could have some bearing on Felix's
>>>>> question of NFT motivations.
>>>>>
>>>>> There were these two dudes, I happen to know their story, Leo Melamed,
>>>>> the star trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and Milton Friedman -
>>>>> well, you get the picture. Leo went to listen in on the classes given by
>>>>> ol' Milt at the University of Chicago, notably because of the idea that in
>>>>> a world of floating currency values, futures markets would easily emerge.
>>>>> Money could be made from the possible future values of money - it fired
>>>>> Melamed's imagination. When Nixon suspended the Bretton Woods treaties and
>>>>> opened up the floating world, Leo commissioned Milt to write an
>>>>> authoritative paper, and the two co-initiators went to Washington to
>>>>> institute a new world order. Legal to boot. Friedman rang the bell at the
>>>>> opening of the International Monetary Market on May 16, 1972. It opened up
>>>>> the entire computational space of financial derivatives. You can read
>>>>> Melamed's prose if you're curious, but you gotta see the look on Friedman's
>>>>> face: https://bit.ly/3rvC1t8
>>>>>
>>>>> NFTs are gesturing toward a new market, a hitherto unknown territory
>>>>> of abstraction. For a financier this would be the equivalent of the voyages
>>>>> of discovery - Christopher Columbus. The everyday lives will get colonized
>>>>> later on. Right now these people have the sense of establishing, not just
>>>>> an asset class, but something new under the sun. They feel like world
>>>>> movers.
>>>>>
>>>>> The weird thing is that I think many of us can imagine it, at least a
>>>>> little bit. Do you remember what it was like, co-initiating
>>>>> social-computational systems? Maybe you still do it?
>>>>>
>>>>> Around that time back in the early 70s, the conceptual artist Marcel
>>>>> Broodthaers was ironically exploring what he called "the conquest of
>>>>> space." It was about Columbus and the art market and the Apollo Program.
>>>>> Certainly with the symbolic space they opened up - now the Globex trading
>>>>> platform - Friedman and Melamed oriented the whole neoliberal period. They
>>>>> discovered a new America. They created and administrated what you might
>>>>> call an effective abstraction, which has not yet ceased to govern the vast
>>>>> lifeworlds of just-in-time production and distribution. This is the
>>>>> terrifying other side of initiating systems.
>>>>>
>>>>> NFTs are not going to rule the world. This is an attempted conquest of
>>>>> art-market space. But the desire it attempts to symbolize is significant.
>>>>> What kind of currency would a computational oligarchy need for the era of
>>>>> accelerated technological change and asymptotically granular population
>>>>> control that is emerging as a possibility right now, through the ubiquitous
>>>>> applications of AI? In the best of cases this would have to be a truly
>>>>> common currency, enabling resilience, adaptation, transformation for the
>>>>> future 9 billions of human earthlings - and infinite other species. In the
>>>>> worst of cases, it would be the currency of a veritable state-financial
>>>>> nexus, the kind David Harvey talks about, where privatized monetary
>>>>> creation is the enabler of hyper flexible bureaucratic control.
>>>>>
>>>>> Frankly, just reading the newspapers, I see a huge struggle going on
>>>>> over the initiation of systems. Either you get eco-socialism, or you get
>>>>> the nexus.
>>>>>
>>>>> Meanwhile I see lots of artists trying to invent new blockchain
>>>>> currencies. But who is the Marcel Broodthaers of the onrushing AI era? And
>>>>> how would *they* express themselves?
>>>>>
>>>>> curiously, Brian
>>>>> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
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>>>>> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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>>>>> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Brona?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
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>>> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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>>> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> molly hankwitz - she/her
>> http://bivoulab.org
>> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
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>> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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>
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--
Brona?
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