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<TITLE>Re: [iDC] Net & Network :: Off Topic? Not really...</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Lucida Grande, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Hi Heidi and all who’ve joined this thread.<BR>
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I’m afraid that the year-end insanity kept me away from this conversation almost entirely, but I was listening as much as I could. Even though I’m so very late, perhaps there’s time for one further thought before the clock ticks over and wipes the slate clean.<BR>
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The question about network art resonates strongly for me. But from the perspective of art education, the issue of definitions and art products can sometimes tangent away from the day to day work we do, and the conversations we have, with students. In my work with undergraduate and graduate students, both in art schools and in education schools, the focus on ‘what something is’ gets in the way (sometimes) of ‘why we care’ or ‘why we think we care’....admittedly this is a thin slice on something much larger, and the subtleties are going to get lost, so this note is just a brief tweak on the already thick exchange of the last few weeks.<BR>
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For instance, as an introduction for how we get into the work of connecting with our own social (exterior) and individual (interior) processes, I’m lately proposing that students position their thinking along several interrelated vectors of intentionality — one of which is ‘net’ (i.e., not ‘network’). Yes it appears as a simple semantic shift, but it opens the conversation to relationality that the word ‘network’ might miss (because it’s so tightly linked with ‘internet’, as has been discussed). So, for example, whether or not a mail art project or an internet project (or etc.) is the formal outcome, if the artist’s impulse is connection and relationships, and if the form of the work evolves through a nodular structure of shared experience, then the motivation of the work can be positioned as ‘net’ -- and in class and in the lab we can map our individual work into a larger context that can be productive and enlightening.<BR>
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Two examples I point to are Hiroshi Sunairi’s Tree Project ( <a href="http://treeproject.blogspot.com/)">http://treeproject.blogspot.com/)</a> and Jordan Seiler’s Public Ad Campaign ( <a href="http://www.publicadcampaign.com/index.php).">http://www.publicadcampaign.com/index.php).</a> Yes, they both include the web in their formal arrangements, but that’s a narrow and potentially misleading way to define what these projects are about. That is, to focus on the ‘network’ aspect of the formal structure of either of these projects would be to potentially miss the issues of community, history, public space, etc., that the artists are engaging. And to focus on defining ‘network art’ as a category would potentially overlook both of these projects altogether.<BR>
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In seminars these days I find that young BFA and older MFA folks respond well to the notion that we don’t have to begin our conversation by talking about what something ‘is’ -- and I’m surprised, actually, that this is new to them, because ‘process’ as a way of working is already so firmly established in our academies. <BR>
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But I guess I’m trying to interweave the ‘concept’ that informs the output, with the ‘output’ itself, and to bring that relation to the forefront. The dynamic starts to become visible (sometimes) when we position ourselves within a relational history of objects, materials, forms, and the new arrangements of them that continue to emerge. The conversation works well when students can acknowledge that the stuff they’re making might not yet have crystallized as a ‘thing’ in the language we use to describe it. It’s a conundrum, for sure. But the conversation about ‘net’ is way to start. <BR>
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(The other vectors on this matrix of intentionality-mapping, by the way, are surface, lens, and code....and I wish I had an essay to link on it, but I don’t. Rather it’s still an evolving conversation in the seminar and lab, etc., though most likely the sources and informants are probably already visible to folks on this list... )<BR>
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Anyway, speaking as an artist and art educator, the conversation around these new forms helps us all (students, instructors, artists, audiences) map the boundaries that hold us apart from each other; and, by illuminating those boundaries, points us toward new ways to transgress them. That might be naively optimistic. But these ideas and expansions help revive me for the new term to come.<BR>
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Thanks again for all the links and ideas posted on this topic the last several weeks; and thanks again to Heidi for opening the thread with the question about network art in the first place.<BR>
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Happy new year to all~~~<BR>
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Sean Justice<BR>
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Sean Justice<BR>
Photographer | Artist | Educator<BR>
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Columbia University Teachers College<BR>
Arts & Art Education<BR>
Doctoral Student & Instructor<BR>
New Media Art Education<BR>
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NYU Steinhardt<BR>
Arts & Arts Professions<BR>
Studio Art | Photography | Digital<BR>
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International Center of Photography<BR>
General Studies, Bard MFA, and Continuing Education<BR>
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Parsons The New School for Design<BR>
MFA/BFA Photography & Critical Reading & Writing<BR>
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College of Staten Island<BR>
Photography Program<BR>
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