lists, boards, friends + feeds (PARTs I — V) — jonCates (2009–2010)
at the invitation of the founders, i once wrote for an online New Media Art platform called Furtherfield. what follows is a series of pieces which i wrote on Digital Culture, that Furtherfield published, called “lists, boards, friends + feeds” from 2009–2010, almost 10 years ago now. — jonCates, Chicago, 2019
lists, boards, friends + feeds: hyperthreaded hystories, coexisting datastreams, parallel processing + massively multilayered social networks PART I. the above title is meant to be understood as {purposefully|playfully} verbose, but recently a few events have occurred that have caused me to re:consider the ways in which listservs, forums, social software + blogs/RSS feeds function in the discourses of Digital Art these events include: I. AT&T’s blocking of specific 4chan channels (/b/ + /hc/) II. the announced ‘dissolution’ of + resulting responses on the freesound list III. the re:starting of the kfor list IV. the re:starting of the _arc.hive_ list V. && recent Twitter Art + RSS Art projects by Jake Elliott I. Return of The Psychick Youth purty recently AT&T began blocking specific 4chan channels, /b/ + /hc/. the news of this sent me bax to 4chan, specifically to those channels being blocked + to the site as a whole (if 01 could ever even argue for a ‘wholeness’ in this context). as has been observed by others in detail, the /b/ + /hc/ channels of 4chan are filled w/sum extremely hateful, racist, homophobic + misogynist performances of online identity. /hc/ is the “Hard Core” porn channel, which has users posting content in the context of an ongoing conversation about porn. the /b/ channel is the “Random” channel + is also 01 of the points of origin for numerous internet memes that are well known beyond the insular confines of the (boys((?)) club that is the threaded imageboard forum-based conversation of /b/. perhaps the best known example of these memes is the now omnipresent LOLCATS macro only the most undiscriminating of obsessive compulsive digital hoarders would want to collect everything posted to 4chan or specific channels such as /b/. but recently i was in NYC + talking w/friends, 01 of which is an artist/academic who conducts internet/web culture research + maintains several identities on 4chan. this friend was relating to me their interest in the social histories of 4chan as well as their research, during which they have traced a few of the regular posters, cross-referencing their posts + attempting to aggregate their creative output on 4chan. as we were discussing 01 such case, another person, who like my friend, maintains several identities on 4chan, the question of what constitutes New Media Art or rather what works might be equally legible as 4chan comments +/or Web Art? + the further question arose, what about those artists who have now literally grown up on 4chan? what will they make of making work in another context, i.e. art school? the same weekend in NYC, another group of friends + i were discussing Throbbing Gristle, secret shows @ galleries in Williamsburg, social engineering, hacking + majik… so returning to 4chan /b/ (which i did not grow up w/) reminded me of Psychic TV sum how + as i jumped from link to link i landed on Meme Generator http://memegenerator.net which self-reflexively allows users to generate new memes based on the Advice Dog meme + then also to make macro images using those new meme generators. the meme generators are all stored + accessible to anyOne + the individual images created w/them are also stored. once an image is created w/a meme generator, you then have the built-in option to post this image as a reply to a thread on 4chan via the interface on Meme Generator. again, as w/the /b/ channel, Meme Generator is filled w/hateful, racist, homophobic + misogynist meme generators that ppl have created. now, we may or may not be able to read sum of these meme generators or the macro images made w/them as ironic, sarcastic, funny, offensive, sickening, repulsive +/or sincere. also, these values may vibrate or oscillate wildly within any01 of these meme generators or resulting macro images. still, i read the entire Meme Generator project (as a whole) in a way that could easily be interpreted as Web Art or even Artware (aka Software Art) while i was on Meme Generator, the thoughts/feelings i have described prompted me to render sum meme generators. i immediately wanted to see Genesis P-Orridge in the middle of the rainbow. as others have documented 4chan /b/ posters have a tradition of calling themselves + each other “faggots” so i thought that Genesis P-Orridge’s complex genderbent/transitional/sex majikal identity would be an interesting play w/in this context. i initially created a meme generator of Genesis P-Orridge in which her/his breasts were visible. amazingly, this meme generator was censored, taken down + deleted by the next day. what amazes me about this is the way in which a social space that plays @ being bored-young-jaded-[anything is eligible for fun/ridicule in the form of hate speech] would react in a reactionary way to Genesis P-Orridge’s post-operative transgender breasts. so i revised my meme generator, cropping the image so that his/her breasts are visible, but his/her nipples are not. this meme generator is still available + im exxxcited to say has been used by those other than myself to generate images
II. slow extinction vs life on the red thread in the middle of last month Tom Erbe announced the ‘dissolution’ of the freesound list, a list dedicated to the discussion of “the use of free and fringe sound tools on all platforms.” Erbe stated that due to low/no activity over the last year he would end the list + recommended ppl move their attention to the Facebook + MySpace groups for freesound/soundhack that he had created m e t a, an artist for whom i gave a great appreciation/respect, replied, writing that “the mailing list format as is slowly going extinct & being replaced with the message board / we forum format.” i found this sentiment odd in my inbox, as if it was a message sent from the past, dusty pixels from say the late 1990’s or early 2000's… i experienced a sense of deja vu when reading that line + actually had to reread it several times to believe it existed. after i had accepted this glitch in the matrix, the thread continued. friends said hello to each other casually + happily like long lost relatives @ a family gathering that everyOne has wandered into or just happened to already be in. Heather Perkins proposed to re:initiate the dialogue that Tom Erbe had initially created the list for, i.e. “the use of free and fringe sound tools on all platforms.” Perkins succeeded in sparking a conversation which went bax + forth && lasted for a few daze. separate threads were born of this initial thread to deal w/each specific topic (in this case various free/fringe audio applications) + then a thread started called “life discovered on freesound”. this thread’s subject evokes interstellar exploration + expansionism, the fantastical outerspaced-out extension of American Frontierism; Mars rovers and international space stations; Kennedy, Obama, Richard Branson, as well as the Cold War rise of computational technologies, the RAND Corporation, Microsoft, Apple, Reagan + the consumer computer market with it’s invention of commercial software, BBS’s, Gophers + AOL running on a {deregulated/demilitarized} internet backbone across the .US @ 14.4 K… in any case, this thread was not a signal of a close encounter w/alien intelligence, but rather a continued discussion of free/fringe audio apps. i continued to lurk, watching stars align + rearrange their shapes. when it comes to lists i have to admit that i have not been as active as i once was
III. the re:starting of the kfor list recently the kfor list has re:started. as i wrote on the empyre listserv bax in 2004, the kfor listserv was formed when the LEV listserv (Live Experimental Video mailing list) ceased to [exist/operate]. Clay Chaplin (the former [admin/moderator] of LEV) said that the “LEV list has moved and been renamed.” the movement + renaming of LEV formed the basis for the creation of kfor, a “Balkan network for video culture and media art”. this reasons for the end of LEV + beginning of kfor are mini + incomplete as [screened from/filtered through] my limited [perspective/participation] but these language games are their own hyperthreaded txt adventures Netochka Nezvanova, the developer of the Software Art projects nato.0+55 + 3d Modular + nebula.m81 …aka “The most feared woman on the Internet” aka “nameless nobody” aka “integer” or in my Media Art Histories opinion 01 of the most important/influencial New Media Artists + Artware Developers of the turn of the 21rst Century or perhaps rather more simply Rebekah Wilson + Gheorghe Dan (?) Netochka Nezvanova was very active on LEV + then after the end of LEV on kfor. kfor felt like a platform designed for/by Netochka Nezvanova + featured her prominently in terms of contributions to the ongoing discourse that occurred/developed on the original kfor list. but over time Netochka Nezvanova herself started to lessen her activities. she hadn’t released any Artware in years. she posted fewer messages. her once viciously amazing websites went dormant, expiring + being replaced w/nothing or simply placeholders, pretty vacant lots with cybersettlers/squaters posting for sale signs in the form of clip art + google ads… Netochka Nezvanova faded into the half-blue-half-grey light of lost CRTs illuminating the skies, all the colors of televisions tuned to dead channels in night, sunsets on classic Gibsonian descriptions of cyberspace on the turning away bax then the criticalartware crew of which i am a founder, found ourselves in a conversation about these issues + missing our mysterious inspiration, Miss Netochka Nezvanova. so we conspired to try to trigger her to re:appear. or @ least, we aspired to acquire her most majestic achievement, the coveted nato.0+55 + 3d Modular audio-video plugin suite for Max/MSP. we (as Americans) had never been able to afford individual licenses of nato when it was commerically available b/c of the steep tariffs Netochka Nezvanova placed against United States citizens in the sale of her Software Art. excited + inspired by her performances of online identity we quickly formed a persona, a troll in sum ppl’s perspective or more appropriately a B1FF. our B1FF’s name was “My Soul Seeks Nato” + he was a young intern @ the Chicago office of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. we created an email address, a MySpace account + joined lists that we knew Netochka Nezvanova +/or her servants/customers from. we then started promiscuously asking for illegal/pirate copies of her most famous Artware, nato.0+55 3D Modular our project was more successful then we had ever imagined as we began this in the fuzzy line between making a joke among ourselves, telegraphing that into an international discursive space online + conflating that joke w/as mini ongoing New Media Art + Media Art Histories projects as possible while also crafting My Soul Seeks Nato as a project in + of itself. @ 1rst we judged ourselves successful in that we received mini amazingly funny + ridiculous replies to our request. wonderfully, 01 reply came from fellow artist rene beekman, who generously provided to us w/his copy of nato.0+55 3D Modular as he didn’t need it anymore + it had simply been gathering digital dust sitting unused + buried in deep in his directories. we were overjoyed. our joy was even more profound when Netochka Nezvanova herself replied to us. she engaged us in conversation, discussing the merits of our project + providing us w/much welcomed personal + artistic criticisms && witticisms. Netochka Nezvanova also then renewed her forgotten websites + online activity, @ least momentarily. less than a year later, both Rebekah Wilson + Gheorghe Dan would appear in person @ international New Media Art festivals + conferences (i.e. City of Women + Subtle Technologies respectively) + publicly claim their claims to the names of nameless nobodies we, My Soul Seeks Nato, had provoked our inspiration Netochka Nezvanova to step out of the darknet + back into the Gibsonian light of international New Media Art networks
IV. the re:starting of the _arc.hive_ list as i wrote about the kfor list in my last entry of this ongoing project, the _arc.hive_ list has also recently re:started. in fact the _arc.hive_ re:start was simultaneous wit the kfor re:start + i was automagically re:subscribed to both mez + ftr began the _arc.hive_ list in 2001 in response to restrictive practices of other {text|web}-based discursive spaces. as mez wrote: “][net.art][ lists that have previously m.braced x.pressive/communicative tendencies of all typ][o][es r now dying ][heavily][ moderated & flame-driven deaths, with the survivors either hanging on 4 dear text or abandoning the status-quo-seeking shells in s][tatic][warms.” _arc.hive_ was home to: “creative practices involving the network [ie new media art, code poetry, net.art, e.literature, content alteration poetry, web art, electronic art, hackerese, digital projects, net.wurks, programmer writing, spam art, incremental texts, theory/hybrid factions, software art, performative interactions, werdwurk, calls 4 applications & submissions, gamer rhetoric, technical info/details, net-linked announcements etc etc]” like Netochka Nezvanova, mez had been similarly re:moved from other lists for her posts/activity. mez’s posts, like Netochka Nezvanova’s, were a part of an ongoing online identity construction as a creative + experimental New Media Art project. mez’s posts are/were written in mez’s own language, Mezangelle. as is stated in/on the Wikipedia entry for Mezangelle, this experimental-artistic-performative language is “not syntactically fixed and is in continuous artistic development”. on the issues of unfixed net.wurk flows, Jake Elliott + i wrote a text called Hacking Open Together: New Media Art, Activism and Computer Counter Cultures back in 2006. we claimed that: the vocabulary at the edge of “hackerdom” is a kind of populist coded satire of elitism called l33t. l33t becomes not only a vocabulary but a pervasive affect. “The” becomes “teh” and “owned” becomes “pwned” as mistakes fold into the language, dirty glitch becomes linguistic atom moving horizontally + playfully rather than being controlled by linguistic legitimacy. we wrote then that our use of l33t was an attempt to play rather than render our activities illegible. we wanted to resist clean codes, introduce Noise to our experimental New Media Art theorypractices + embrace dirtiness of various kinds in these activities… we are still engaged in/motiviated by those efforts + desires when _arc.hive_ re:started @ the same moment as kfor i was of course immediately curious about the points of origins of these re:starts. werking under the name autumn-frequency i was very active on the original _arc.hive_ in the early 2000’s. as a part of the art-whirld-code-culture that developed onList + was fostered/facilitated by mez, i was a part of a vibrant codework community + my codework was included in both the Unstable Digests that Florian Cramer collected/curated from _arc.hive_ + re:posted to nettime + the 2002 _Net & Codeworkers Inc[ubation]_ exhibition curated by mez for the incubation gallery && trAce Online Writing Center. the activity by those werking on/thru _arc.hive_ was very intense + fast-paced @ times, involving digesting/remixing/reprocessing each others posts + replying/riffing off of 01 another in improvisational streams of textual +/or encoded datastreams. as i understood it, this process involved forms of mutual support && challenge, provoking && pushing the community to create && refine our own, as well as our shared understandings of what could constitute codework as an experimental New Media Art theorypractice while _arc.hive_ was still running my friend-collaborator-fellow_artist/academic Nicholas O’Brien created an online identity/persona called LISMORE + joined _arc.hive_ in 2007. werking under the LISMORE name, O’Brien was also very active + provocatinnal on various lists as LISMORE aka L1XM0R3 aka L!XM0R3. these lists included _arc.hive_, the Chicago New Media list + the internal criticalartware developers list. LISMORE’s posts were as fellow-Furtherfield blogger Patrick Lichty has written on Rhizome, part of a troll-as-artist position as mapped out along the trajectories of projects/artists such as antiorp/Netochka Nezvanova/integer, etc… which have in Lichty’s words: “all institutionalized this position as “anti-strategy” that’s just as much of a pose as a strategy.” these poses/startegies/positions/plays-with(in)-online-identities are also hyperthreaded hystories, coexisting datastreams, parallel processing + massively multilayered social networkings, meshworks of meanings that conspire together to make + unmake sense so this brings me to wander outloud along these trails/traces about the confusions that can also be made + unmade by these relations. back in 2007, O’Brien’s L!XM0R3 caused enough confusion in/on the local Chicago New Media list that many people asked me if i was Lismore. to which i would reply: “no, i am not… Lismore seems to mostly operate in a highly encoded form of speech + @ times particularly aggressive form of New Media Art theorypractice that is referred to primarily as codework or wryting…” (&& then i would often have to further clarify to ppl that) “…as you have noted before, i to have made codeworks. i have + still do occasionally use variously encoded forms of speech/writing to articulate a code-poetic approach that includes the influence of programming on net.art/Web Art/New Media. in fact, i recently completed a text for Leonardo that is written in many modes: diaristic, essayistic, encoded, codeworked, etc… while the Lismore entity seems to be interested in keeping their physical identity/ies obscured, i do think/feel that they are definitely operating in a way that involves serious attempts @ critique + creative theorypractices rather than just trying to attack + disrupt the listservs that they are on.” of course, i knew then as well as i do now who LISMOAR was b/c O’Brien + i have been housemates since the time at which he joined _arc.hive_. of course, i also know that ][mez][ + Netochka Nezvanova influenced/inspired O’Brien in the LISMORE project, a project which O’Brien has concluded by saying “// unedit crtl + z” back in October 2007 on the Chicago New Media list which, again, circuitously returns me to the topics of the legibility of certain kinds of creative work in the field of experimental New Media Art as well as the question of what constitutes code-based approaches, code-art, codework, Artware, etc… && importantly what constitutes Spam Art or the so-called “Spam-like behavior” of sum art that flows along these paths… i imagine a kind of reverse ELIZA effect takes place at these times, in which those inhabiting these discursive spaces unconsciously assume human behaviors are analogous computer behaviors, i.e. how ppl can mistake ppl for machines, for malicious machines, spambots, unrestricted algorithms gone wild in a Turing Test turned upside-down +/or a Chinese Room experiment turned inside-out… writing about these issues in/on online discursive New Media Art whirlds of 2000/2001 in November of 2001, Inke Arns & Andreas Broeckmann wrote that Netochka Nezvanova + others were parasites + that “like any good parasite, this artistic practice depends on the existence of lively online communities: it not only bites, but kills the hand that feeds it. — These parasite nomads will find new hosts, no doubt, but they have over the past year helped to erode the social fabric of the wider net cultural population so much that communities have to protect themselves from attacks and hijacks more aggressively than before.” Arns & Broeckmann continue along this trajectory, saying that they: “despise the deliberation with which these people act.” in the context of the “Rise and Decline of the Syndicate: the End of an Imagined Community”, the text from which these quotes are taken, details their removal of Netochka Nezvanova from the Syndicate + concludes wit their position that they: “believe in people and their needs more than we believe in art.” now, unlike _arc.hive_, i was never very active or involved in the Syndicate or SPECTRE, so i have no personal experiences to draw from in relation to these online relations but i suspect that these blasts from the pasts might resonate closely wit sum who were on these lists in the early 2000’s. + that perhaps the tone of of their text would ring differently now speaking of ringing differently, mez didnot re:start _arc.hive_ + in fax, i rly wander who did… so i asked mez + she said, she didnot know + she in fax thought it was Nicholas O’Brien. O’Brien was not @ home but rather was in Berlin @ the time so the next time i saw him onLine i asked him, but he doesn’t know either…
V. && ARTWARE RSS projects by Jake Elliott
a. “i know, LOL!”
in Chicago, during the last daze of 2008 && the 1rst daze of 2009, Jake Elliott + Nicholas O’Brien created a short-lived Twitter Art project/account called “i know, LOL” was an account by the same name which was based on the Twitter API + listened for ppl saying “LOL” + then automatically replied to those Twitter users, saying “i know, LOL!”
“i know, LOL!” was very quickly “suspended due to strange activity” (to use the official statement/language of Twitter). i immediately Tweeted about it calling it Twitter Art, LOL.ART or webArt while Twitter defined this project as “spammy behavior” + suspended the account
following the suspended accout took you to a standard explaination of why the account “may” have been suspended. The reasons incl: “If you are sending large numbers of @reply messages that are not genuine replies, you may be considered spam.”
these (automated) replies were “not genuine” from the perspective of Twitter. therefore this form of Twitter Art, LOL.ART, webArt, New Media Art, etc… can be easily (mis)understood/interpreted as “spammy behavior” by the cybernetic systems designed to protect Twitter from itself
as Elliott has said in presentations on his artware, this project opened his eyes to what was possible in the social space of communities created/linked through these RSS feeds/streams
i immediately used the self-same networks to self-consciously proclaim: “Twitter Art is Dead, Long Live Twitter Art!”
i also posted this untimely death announcement of Twitter Art (in the self-reflexive style of the much over-estimated|exaggerated deaths cries from inside of the form formerly known as “net.art”) on Rhizome.org (1) my Rhizome.org post elicited a response from curt cloninger. in his response, cloninger states that Twitter is not “offended, legally threatened, or even critiqued” suggesting that these are negative attributes of “i know, LOL!”, demonstrating “i know, LOL!”’s failure “to overtly (or even subtly) critique said networks”. seemingly preoccupied with specific binary notions of success && failure, cloninger continues, saying that this “is the conundrum of critical art in the era of corporately commodified social networking.”
cloninger apparently goes on to devalue “i know, LOL!” on the basis of his definitions of success. his standards applied in this case seem to include standards such as high visibility outside of what he calls “parochial net art circles”, wide distribution, being deployed ‘outside’ of the network being utilized, functioning as a floodnet + existing “beyond a few screen shots, blog posts, and discussion board dialogues.”
in a recent talk given by Jodi Dean, during the panel discussion Participationism and the Limits of Collaboration (2), Dean defines “communicative capitalism” in relation to ideas of openness and forms of resistance. she describes Communicative Capitalism as a Neoliberal ideological formation that fetishizes speech, opinion + participation, thereby complicating + question assumptions of the inherent “good” of participation, collaboration, openness, etc as “successful” strategies for critical practices
these questions resonate for me w/the standards proposed by cloninger while he was disparaging “i know, LOL!” however i think/feel it is worth noting that: (A) neither Elliott, O’Brien or myself have made claims for “i know, LOL!” being “critical” in the sense that either cloninger (hoped for?) or Dean works from in their statements; (B) “i know, LOL!” was very literally an inside joke, inside of Twitter + an outside joke. Elliott, O’Brien + myself were (@ that point) housemates + “i know, LOL!” was part of an ongoing creative/constructive discussion populated w/extended + recursive jokes within our immediate community that was literally transported/telegraphed/networked/streamed outside of that local specificity to the nets; © “i know, LOL!” ran for 6 hours, having a 6 hour lifespan + acquiring about 25 followers
b. Answers Only
http://twitter.com/answersonly
Elliott has previously stated that the “i know, LOL!” experiment provided a lesson that he would go on to use prolifically in the creation of multiple automajikal artware projects which exist primarily amidst RSS streams online
the 1rst of these projects to immediately follow “i know, LOL!” is Answers Only. the Answers Only project searches for and downloads answers from Yahoo Answers + tweets of ppl asking questions on Twitter. while building a database of Yahoo Answers answers && questions posted to Twitter, Answers Only attempts to map + match keywords in order to build somewhat reasonable responses + then posts those responses as answers to Twitter users who have asked questions to the nets by posting them via Twitter
a recent example would be that Twitter user Nicole S. (OhPookiePop) posted the following question on Twitter:
“There’s a longing question in my mind, why dont you ever try to talk to me??”
+ Answers Only replied to her:
“well @OhPookiePop, sorry. this question was too big and complicated for me to understand.”
if this exchange has the familiar ring of the automated sounds of Turing Tests, Chinese Room experiments + Eliza effects it is due in part to the abstraction of the question that began the exchange. other exchanges have occurred between Answers Only + Twitter users that are more specific + in which the Twitter users who have been messaged attempt to engage Answers Only in an ongoing conversation, a conversation that Answers Only is incapable of
despite it’s limited conversational abilities Answers Only now has 122 Followers. i am 01 of these Followers + i also sumtimes reply to Answers Only
Elliott has stated that he is engaged in working w/the what he has referred to as the “naive social space of people who believe that robots on Twitter are in actual conversation with them.” this engagement extends + continues his work in online social spaces that are complicated/contested/confused by questions of valid authorship, stable identities, the differences between machine-generated spam + human-originated communications, etc
in terms of stability, Answers Only also has a number of consistent friends/Followers. Elliott suspects that sum of these are themselves also Twitter Art projects but those have also been as of yet unattributed projects, semi-anonymously projecting their Twitter accounts/RSS streams into the nets
c. The Same Eagle Is in All These Pictures
Elliott turned next to tumblr as a platform for bringing together his ideas for experimental New Media Artware, social software, RSS streams, online identities, etc
in The Same Eagle Is in All These Pictures, Elliott has created a tumblr account which produces a steady stream of images in which the same eagle is composited onto the results of Google image searches for terms related to positively-valued traits of American landscapes
01 of the most exciting outcomes of this remix/mashup logic are the unexpected backgrounds on which the same eagle is seen flying. in other words, for Followers of The Same Eagle Is in All These Pictures such as myself, watching the algorithm move, edging around ideas of what constitutes “American landscapes” holds a particular power. perhaps while not always exactly as beautiful as the now-famous “chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table” these are certainly aesthetics of dislocation, recombination, automagical remix + algorithmic mashup through the found materials of digital cultures
d. I Am Busy Doing Research
http://iambusydoingresearch.tumblr.com/
I Am Busy Doing Research brings images of computerized digital labor together via a woman who is working @ her computer, ostensibly researching various topics. I Am Busy Doing Research searched Twitter for Twitter users who are stating “I am researching…” the topics that they are researching are then reprocessed and mined as Google image search terms. the results of this process are then composited into the computer screen that the woman is working on. the reprocessed text is also added to the images as captions, explaining what it is that she is researching
her endless research streams on + on via this tumblr account. she is in her office everyday, working, researching, unmoving, w/a stream of topics/consciousness algorithmically rendered on her screen. her hand is positioned on the mouse, tentatively, as if mid-click, from 01 link to the next, researching… surfing… just chilling… in her office @ her computer screen
she could easily be part of the Bored At Work Network (BWN) or a digital cultural engineer, figuratively authoring the stream we see rendered on her screen. in any case, her position/predicatment is familiar to many who work w/in digital culture. as Brian Droitcour recently wrote on Rhizme.org young artists/curators are also working w/these positions + timespaces. in particular Droitcour writes in relation to the JstChillin… (3) project that online “Chill time is simultaneity of the recent past and lagging present, the sum of attempts to track some threads into the past and push others toward the future.” (4) + as he quotes Jstchillin founders Caitlyn Denny + Parker Ito as saying this is an experience of living “in a constant state of multiplicities, a flow of existence between web and physicality.” (5)
e. I Thought I Had a Virus
I Thought I Had a Virus is, as Elliott states, part of this ongoing “series of microblog artware mashups”. I Thought I Had a Virus is a tumblr account as a web comic with only 01 recurring punchline: “I thought I had a virus!” Again, a twitter search + a Google image search are recombined to create variations on a comic strip. I Thought I Had a Virus documents the life of, as Elliott has said, a guy + his computer ++ all the weird stuff his computer does to make him think that he has a virus
i see a strong connection between Elliott’s I Thought I Had a Virus + David Rees’ Get Your War On which ran from 2001–2009. (6) a number of notable differences + similarities exist between these 2. similarly to Rees’ use of a limited catalog of clip art images of office work/workers (w/the occasionally surprising appearance of stars from other universes such as Voltron), I Thought I Had a Virus features only 2 stable image frames, 2 unmoving characters. of course the web/net specific dialog on infected computers differs from the political critiques mobilized in Get Your War On but the humor of these 2 web comics is sum how similar
another point of reference is the act of Situationist detournement that Elliott has reappropriated w/his I Thought I Had a Virus project. as Amber Frid-Jimenez writes in her thesis Leave Any Noise at the Signal: Participation Art Online, the Situationist Raoul Vaneigem rewrote comics in his La Survie Et Sa Fausse Contestation, demonstrating “the broad Situationist desire to jolt people out of complacency by activating viewers.” (7) more a self-recursive Situationist displacement then Surrealist dislocation, this project seeks to repeatedly detourne the same semiotic symbols, undoing itself in the process. I Thought I Had a Virus is caught in a kind of obsessive-compulsive loop in which a character is constantly afraid that he has a virus, his computer infected endlessly by the stream of automated non-singular + yet not-collective consciousness of RSS streams + Google image searches
f. OH MY GOD! YOUR EYES
comparatively direct, OH MY GOD! YOUR EYES is another tumblr account artware project of Elliot’s in which a Twitter search for descriptions of eyes is “pushed through” a Google image search w/the results being composited with textual descriptions into an older woman’s eyes. Elliott has literally cut out her eyes, replacing them w/descriptions of eyes, as offered by the online social community of Twitter. this older woman’s vacant eyes, 2 transparent holes, display behind or inside her slightly smiling face, an ongoing stream of images related to the textual descriptions of eyes offered via Twitter users
w/her pink, greying hair + empty eyes constantly being refilled OH MY GOD! YOUR EYES is even more directly a form of portraiture, rendering a portrait of a composite identity in the context of a tumblr account. this context is of importance, as tumblr accounts are often used as forms of self-portraiture in the same ways as which ppl use contemporary social software to render themselves by displaying a stream of their thoughts, feelings, desires, descriptions, choices, favorites, likes, photos, etc…
or, as Marcel Duchamp may have once said: “The artist of the future will simply point…”
g. Kitten Glitches
Kitten Glitches directs the artware engines that Elliott has developed towards a recombination of Glitch Art, LOLCATs, folksonomies + Flickr photos. Kitten Glitches takes images posted to Flickr that Flickr users have tagged w/the term ‘kittens’ + processes those found objects w/a “pseudorandom automatic databending script” then posting to a tumblr account. Elliott also, in this case, openly offers the Python source code for this artware project online
i believe Kitten Glitches to have been inspired in part by the Satromizer by Ben Syverson. Jon Satrom (on whom the Satromizer is based), Ben Syverson (the artware developer who created the Satromizer) + myself are among the co-founders of previous versions of the critical artware project, a project which is currently constituted by myself, Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy + Mark Beasley (8)
the Satromizer for iPhone™ is “the world’s first multitouch glitch tool” + as Ben Syverson writes, The Satromizer is “a unique artware for the iPhone™ and iPod® Touch”. (9) Syverson also writes that he “has created many versions of the Satromizer with Jon over the years”. (10) the 1rst versions of the Satromizer were in fact developed by Syverson when he + Satrom were both students of mine in 2001 in the Radical Software/Critical Artware course i developed in the Film, Video & New Media Department @ The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. the initial Satromizer emerged from a discussion/consideration of Brian Eno’s speculative Eno Box in the context of this studio course on Artware development. in 1995 Brian Eno was interviewed for Wired Magazine by Kevin Kelly. during this interview Kelly asked Eno:
“If I could give you a black box that could do anything, what would you have it do?” (11)
Eno replied:
“I would love to have a box onto which I could offload choice making. A thing that makes choices about its outputs, and says to itself, This is a good output, reinforce that, or replay it, or feed it back in. I would love to have this machine stand for me. I could program this box to be my particular taste and interest in things.” (12)
Eno continued in his response to a follow up question:
“…I want to be able to sell systems for making my music as well as selling pieces of music. In the future, you won’t buy artists’ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of “their” works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. Or you could buy a Brian Eno box. So then I would need to put in this box a device that represents my taste for choosing pieces.” (13)
i’ve included those quotes to help to illustrate what i believe to be a critical media art hystories of the developments of these systems of thought/action + artware
Jason Scott has said of our Chicago-based community that is the “birthplace of dirty new media” (14) or as Rosa Menkman wrote here on Furtherfield in her review of our project entitled Entropic elasticity: Critical Glitch Artware && the demoscene: “Criticalartware is now foregrounding these glitch art works (with an emphasis on the procedural/software works) that have been on a ‘pivotal axis’ of the crew for a long time.” (15) together, we have been creating + enabling a dynamic community of Glitch, Noise & Dirty New Media Art to develop in experimental, often collaborative, open exchanges in what Menkman has referred to as our networked glitchscene(s) (16)
in a cyberpsychadelic feedback/forward loop of IRL social software, Elliott’s Kitten Glitches artware project undoubtedly influenced a subsequent project by Satrom entitled Purrflux:
http://jonsatrom.com/projx/purrflux/Site/Welcome.html
Purrflux from jonsatrom on Vimeo.
Satrom created the images + video the comprise Purrflux in December 2009 for the iPhone therefore iArt show held January 8 @ Chicago Art Department. (17) this exhibition was positioned as “exploring the iPhone as creative tool” + Satrom’s Purrflux project directly engaged the iPhone as an art material/context/platform in a similar way in which Elliott’s projects which are discussed here engage w/tumbr, Twitter, Google, APIs + RSS feeds as art materials, contexts + platforms in + of themselves
h. I Pretended
Elliott’s most recent Artware RSS project, I Pretended, finds Twitter search results for the phrase “I pretended” then reprocesses and mines those results as Google image searches. the results of these 2 searches are then visually merged, again in a comic style, compositing these images with their reprocessed text as captions. a pained male figure grits his illustrated teeth + pushes on his temples w/his hands in every image that this artware machine makes. behind him are the doubled/intertwined results of the Twitter + Google image searches. below him are the textual captions
I Pretended is perhaps among the most efficient of Elliott’s artware machines @ producing disturbing recombinations in the Pop Art/Web Art mashup style that Elliott is developing in these Artware RSS projects/accounts
are among sum recent examples of I Pretended disturbing behavior
as Elliott has expressed, these projects are primarily informed/inspired by image macros, i.e. the LOLCATs meme, as a digital cultural form. but unlike those points of reference, Elliott’s Artware RSS projects/accounts/machines are automatically generated. Elliott has observed that the power of image macros often relies on the author being clever, i.e. demonstrating an uncanny, irreverent, sarcastic, ironic combination/contradiction of text + image. this form of skilled authorship is expressly not Elliott’s goal or motivation. rather, he seeks to develop a form of automated + often unpredictable computer synthesis while still foregrounding the conceptual availability of the algorithms that are being implemented. as such these projects constitute a mashup of definitions of Algorithmic Art, retooling systems in the Meme Factory that exists online
these projects rely on publicly available APIs, the Google Search API, Twitter API, etc + Elliott also makes his own Python source codes available, i.e. directly through Kitten Glitches or more conceptually through explanation + their literal implementations
these instruction sets are machines for making conceptual artware, in the mode of Sol Lewitt’s 1967 quote from Artforum as requoted by Saul Albert in his 1999 essay Artware: “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art” (18)
as w/other mechanical reproductions + mechanized or especially digitized labor, these machines are _extremely_ prolific. Elliott has also stated that this is an important aspect/goal of the work in that these accounts/streams can be discovered for the 1rst time after they have automajickally produced thousands of results/posts
+ Elliott himself, is _extremely_ prolific having made 8 of these projects/accounts since i originally conceived of wryting this series on lists, boards, friends + feeds. additionally, Elliott has produced other artware mashup/remix projects during the same period (19), individually developed a number of indy/Art Games (20), started an independent game development lab (21) among other projects… all of which have enjoyed successes such as widespread circulation + participation in their specific contexts + communities
i. IN.F3XXX0N.US
it is mayhaps fitting that i complete this unfinished series now when Elliott + i have now organized + initiated IN.F3XXX10N.US, an online art exhibition, running from July 1 — July 31 2010 on tumblr. during the run of the exhibition we have been promiscuously spreading && sharing our passwords for the exhibition:
OUR EXHIBITION EMAIL: INF3XXX10N@GMAIL.COM
OUR EXHIBITION LOGIN: http://www.tumblr.com/login
+
OUR (current reset) EXHIBITION PASSWORD: 1nF3kkkT3d
so that interested parties/agents can infect us @ IN.F3XXX10N.US
we are alrdy infected by all of Elliott’s Artware RSS streams/feeds which i have been discussing + detailing above
additionally, Elliott has created a new machine especially for this exhibition but rather than detail that system, i will leave it potentially hidden, as it has insinuated itself seamlessly into the flow of the exhibition. mayhaps those of you reading this txt will want to pix it out or will otherwise login + effect/affect the directions we move in as we tingle tangle thru vasty webs of lists, boards, friends + feeds.
— jonCates 2010.07.22
1. http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/41347
2. http://vimeo.com/13219623
3. http://jstchillin.org
4. http://rhizome.org/editorial/3659
5. IBID
6. http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/
7. http://www.amberfj.com/participation/thesis/
8. http://criticalartware.net
9. http://bensyverson.com/software/satromizer/
10. IBID
11. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.05/eno_pr.html
12. IBID
13. IBID
14. http://www.demoparty.us/2009/speakers.shtml
15. http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=391
16. IBID
17. http://www.chicagoartdepartment.org/2009/12/iphone-therefore-iart-friday-january-8-6-10pm/
18. http://twenteenthcentury.com/saul/artware.htm
19. http://dai5ychain.net/category/artware/
20. http://dai5ychain.net/category/games/
21. http://cardboardcomputer.com
