From: Peter Luining 
To: thingist AT bbs.thing.net
Date: Monday, February 23, 2004, 10:43:19 PM
Subject: [thingist] net art wars



Monday, February 23, 2004, 9:37:50 PM, t.whid wrote:

t.whid> I didn't get the other references in the email --- so i don't know 
t.whid> what's up with that.

The inventor of netdotart Vuk Cosic can be seen as the emperor of
ascii art, besides that for Vuk net art equals net.art. That's why the
ascii empire preaches net art = netdotart.
What's annoying is that a lot of critics just swallow what Vuk tells
them in his lectures. Recently some publications about net art in
quite important magazines overhere (the Netherlands) just came up with
Vuk's view of net art history. Of course the critics are to blame for
this because they just write everything down what Vuk tells them
without doing any research by themselves. Because Vuk did/ does(?)
really a lot of talks and a lot of critics aren't that critical it
looks like Vuk's history of net art will become the dominant one. The
game is an ironic comment on this.


t.whid> what annoys me is conflating net art and net.art. the former being a
t.whid> term for a certain mediumistic bent while the latter is a specific 
t.whid> group of net artists operating in the mid to late 90s made up of 
t.whid> shulgin, lialina, kosic and etc.

t.whid> it's like using the term ab ex to describe all painters IMO. that's 
t.whid> what annoys me.

exactly

here's part of a recent interview:

Eduardo Navas:
4)How do you see the term Net Art functioning today as opposed to the
early days of 1995/1996?

Peter Luining:
I think you should be aware of the terms net.art and net art. As
opposed to some critics I see the notion net.art standing not only for
a certain period in net art but also for a specific group of net
artists that operated in this certain period. I think you can find all
information on this group in the exhibition called "Written in Stone,
a net.art archeology" that was held at the beginning of this year in
Oslo's museum of modern art. Besides this group there were a lot of
people doing autonomous things that you can call net art but which you
cannot link to the net.art group. So in fact I would call net.art a
sort of branch in the whole history of net art. To go a step further I
think it's even better to use the term net arts, instead of net art,
if we talk about an umbrella for any kind of artistic labour on the
net as Florian Cramer suggested on nettime a few years ago.

http://navasse.net/p2pF/pLuining2.html


Peter

--------------------------------------------------------------------
t h i n g i s t
message by Peter Luining  
archive at http://bbs.thing.net
info: send email to majordomo AT bbs.thing.net
and write "info thingist" in the message body
--------------------------------------------------------------------