Re: [microsound] Net-Art vs electronic music

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Tuesday 09 March 2004 17:37, Ian Andrews wrote:
>> Niklas Wernerwrote:
>>> What makes net-art what it is in the first place?
>> 
>> Well first there's net-art (art on the net) and then there's net.art
>> which is more like "the net" as art. Net-art, I suppose, can be
>> anything that is art and is on the net.  Net.art, on the other hand, is
>> more like mail-art in the sense that mail artists used the postal
>> system not only for the delivery of art but as the material basis of
>> their art. envelopes, postage stamps, ink stamps and the service itself
>> constituted mail-art's palette and canvas.
> Yes, most definitely, and Net.art is what is really interesting and bound
> to explore new ways of looking at the Net, isn't it?
> 
> I do give due credit to http://www.peopleagainstthings.com/ for doing
> exactly this.

I wouldn't really call this site net.art. I'm thinking more of people like
Vuk Cosic, Jodi, NN etc.

> But my point was that much of the pieces called net-art, basically are
> video-art and are not including any aesthetic values of the net. They
> only use the net as a distribution medium. So the genre Net-art, as
> defined by Ian, is just as much about the net, as a picture driven from
> one museum to another in a truck is about street-art.
> 
I agree to some extent.  But trying to define the aesthetic values of the
net is not easy.  A few years ago a couple of net-art idealogues attempted
such a project. There names are Eryk Salvaggio and Lev Manovich.  You might
want to look them up. Manovich got it wrong in an intersting way in a
superficial analysis of the problem that linked the aesthetics of the net to
a certain neo-modernism which he saw as being a reaction to media art, and
Salvaggio had the bright idea of excluding Flash from the game. It all
reeked of essentialism in my opinion.

I find net.art of the Cosic variety very interesting.  I find net-art's (is
that what Salvaggio does, I'm not sure if its really net.art?) attempt to
establish aesthetic autonomy (Salvaggio's and Manovich's manifestoes) much
less interesting.

> Does the mode of communication in newsgroups and IRC-channels influence
> the way net-music is made?

Yes I'm sure it does.  But I'm sure it also effects the way that off-the-net
music is made too (collaborations projects etc. bound for CD). And I'm sure
that prior to the net the cassette networks (which coincidently grew out of
mail-art) had a similar effect, albeit much slower.

Cheers

ian 


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