I am new to THE THING, having only become involved in the last year or so, working with W and Christoph on The.Thing.Net and the White Slab screenings. I became involved almost by accident--I was recently out of graduate school and making non-salable and non-exhibitable work, mostly web stuff, and feeling a bit chagrined about the art world and its various camps of ideology. I was randomly surfing the web and sending out feeler emails to every organization I could find that was involved in New Media. Wolfgang was the one who answered back. I had no idea what THE THING actually was. I went to look it up online and struggled to find information, only coming up with numerous references to someTHING but never an actual history or a literal description. The most glaring example of THE THING online was the Post, and I think enough has been said about that. It took a long time of being involved, listening in conversation, and attending talks by Wolfgang, etc. in order to really arrive at a sense of what THE THING was and what it represented. If it were not so tragic it would be humorously ironic that an organization that did so much to galvanize thinking about the internet as an artistic and political medium has no functioning legacy online. I think that a proper and academic archive could potentially happen, but it will take a long time and a great deal of work. The nature of academia is to quest after a kind of perfection, to create a source of objective authority. Great! That would be awesome. In a few years it will be something we can all be proud of. I think something different needs to be planned in the interim.
What about creating a subjective archive? What about creating a nexus for the stories and narratives of THE THING. It could be a relatively simple interface, something like a data or tag cloud full of links to various stories, where the only hierarchy might be determined by font size. People with a story to tell or an event to document could create their own HTML page, with the only standard requirement being a ‘back to home’ button of some kind. The advantage is that this would allow each person’s ‘history’ to be acknowledged without necessarily privileging one or the other. One link might be called ‘eToy war’ and could be an account of those events while another might be called ‘Justin Berry’ and include simply my own experiences. These pages don’t even have to share styling, though we could certainly provide a CSS sheet for people to use if they chose. One person’s page might be a video, while another person could choose to simply write an essay; an event might be documented with only a series of contextless pictures. Something like this embraces the history of THE THING as a forum and a platform. This does not have to exist in opposition to a formal archive; it can be an accompaniment to that project. It also requires less energy to happen. Once a stable and functioning interface is set up it can be left to individuals to create pages as they wish. Each contribution can be considered on its own terms. It does not have to be ‘finished’, it can be an ever evolving project as new pages are added.
Perhaps this is only a selfish wish. I would like to hear the stories and see the history and I would like to have that kind of experience sooner than later. There should be an online presence of THE THING’s legacy. In my experience every time people attempt to create an authoritative history of something there are a whole lot of histories on the table and it takes a long time to negotiate which ones stick around.
Justin Berry
Justin, When I met you at White Slab, your creative energy, enthusiasm and competence became quickly evident to me. Your idea below shows the same level of talented verve, but I very much doubt that it will manifest. Based on the first round of letters - and obvious divergent positions held - my impression is that The Thing's early members have run out of energy and would not rise to the occasion of retelling the past. Nice as an idea it may be. The proposed abandonment of the TT blog seems to indicate this to me, for example. I see two possible strategies left at the moment: 1) Pass The Thing on to a younger generation - as we did with ABC No Rio - no matter how different the activities may be from the founders original ideals and practices. 2) Fold the tent and give all materials to The Archives of American Art ( see: http://www.aaa.si.edu/about/donating_papers.cfm ). This allows professional archivists to preserve and communicate TT's legacy - if it has one. I for one would like to see TT continue and improve, but I have become too much the realist to expect it. Would like to hear other voices on these perceived two options, of course. cheersJoseph Nechvatal
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:10:36 -0400 From: justinberryart@gmail.com To: thingist@mailman.thing.net Subject: [thingist] What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
I am new to THE THING, having only become involved in the last year or so, working with W and Christoph on The.Thing.Net and the White Slab screenings. I became involved almost by accident--I was recently out of graduate school and making non-salable and non-exhibitable work, mostly web stuff, and feeling a bit chagrined about the art world and its various camps of ideology. I was randomly surfing the web and sending out feeler emails to every organization I could find that was involved in New Media. Wolfgang was the one who answered back. I had no idea what THE THING actually was. I went to look it up online and struggled to find information, only coming up with numerous references to someTHING but never an actual history or a literal description. The most glaring example of THE THING online was the Post, and I think enough has been said about that. It took a long time of being involved, listening in conversation, and attending talks by Wolfgang, etc. in order to really arrive at a sense of what THE THING was and what it represented. If it were not so tragic it would be humorously ironic that an organization that did so much to galvanize thinking about the internet as an artistic and political medium has no functioning legacy online. I think that a proper and academic archive could potentially happen, but it will take a long time and a great deal of work. The nature of academia is to quest after a kind of perfection, to create a source of objective authority. Great! That would be awesome. In a few years it will be something we can all be proud of. I think something different needs to be planned in the interim.
What about creating a subjective archive? What about creating a nexus for the stories and narratives of THE THING. It could be a relatively simple interface, something like a data or tag cloud full of links to various stories, where the only hierarchy might be determined by font size. People with a story to tell or an event to document could create their own HTML page, with the only standard requirement being a ‘back to home’ button of some kind. The advantage is that this would allow each person’s ‘history’ to be acknowledged without necessarily privileging one or the other. One link might be called ‘eToy war’ and could be an account of those events while another might be called ‘Justin Berry’ and include simply my own experiences. These pages don’t even have to share styling, though we could certainly provide a CSS sheet for people to use if they chose. One person’s page might be a video, while another person could choose to simply write an essay; an event might be documented with only a series of contextless pictures. Something like this embraces the history of THE THING as a forum and a platform. This does not have to exist in opposition to a formal archive; it can be an accompaniment to that project. It also requires less energy to happen. Once a stable and functioning interface is set up it can be left to individuals to create pages as they wish. Each contribution can be considered on its own terms. It does not have to be ‘finished’, it can be an ever evolving project as new pages are added.
Perhaps this is only a selfish wish. I would like to hear the stories and see the history and I would like to have that kind of experience sooner than later. There should be an online presence of THE THING’s legacy. In my experience every time people attempt to create an authoritative history of something there are a whole lot of histories on the table and it takes a long time to negotiate which ones stick around.
Justin Berry
Very interesting points, Alan.
Justin I also like your idea, it could be a really effective kick-off idea for the archive, setting things in motion and making the process of archiving a more collaborative undertaking. indeed, a historicisation-in-progress. Yes it would be great to have a paid full-time person conducting this - but unfortunately we don't have this and funding -given the mess, as Arfus calls it- seems very difficult at this moment. Less difficult it seems to distribute a few tasks of organizing / coding...
Joseph's AmArtArchive suggestion could be tried out without excluding this effort, in fact I am curious to hear what art archivists say about an archive-art piece. To my understanding that's how the old bbs is defined.
Nonetheless still believe step one would be to "warp" the old thing into some appropriate kind of introduction. Susanne I am all ears :-) And give some room to grow. Meaning some kind of simple framework that encourages people to post some THING-related material.
*Thing next generation handover?*...not so easy to do....since there will be remaining activity, besides the ISP probably the editions that Wolfgang continues. * blog or not to blog?* Alan's statement gave some food for thought. Although I am still unsure how to cintinue....curious about other people's thoughts on this.....
©
Justin,
When I met you at White Slab, your creative energy, enthusiasm and competence became quickly evident to me. Your idea below shows the same level of talented verve, but I very much doubt that it will manifest. Based on the first round of letters - and obvious divergent positions held - my impression is that The Thing's early members have run out of energy and would not rise to the occasion of retelling the past. Nice as an idea it may be. The proposed abandonment of the TT blog seems to indicate this to me, for example.
I see two possible strategies left at the moment:
- Pass The Thing on to a younger generation - as we did with ABC No
Rio - no matter how different the activities may be from the founders original ideals and practices.
- Fold the tent and give all materials to The Archives of American
Art ( see: http://www.aaa.si.edu/about/donating_papers.cfm ). This allows professional archivists to preserve and communicate TT's legacy
- if it has one.
I for one would like to see TT continue and improve, but I have become too much the realist to expect it.
Would like to hear other voices on these perceived two options, of course.
cheers
Joseph Nechvatal
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:10:36 -0400 From: justinberryart@gmail.com To: thingist@mailman.thing.net Subject: [thingist] What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
I am new to THE THING, having only become involved in the last year or so, working with W and Christoph on The.Thing.Net http://The.Thing.Net and the White Slab screenings. I became involved almost by accident--I was recently out of graduate school and making non-salable and non-exhibitable work, mostly web stuff, and feeling a bit chagrined about the art world and its various camps of ideology. I was randomly surfing the web and sending out feeler emails to every organization I could find that was involved in New Media. Wolfgang was the one who answered back. I had no idea what THE THING actually was. I went to look it up online and struggled to find information, only coming up with numerous references to someTHING but never an actual history or a literal description. The most glaring example of THE THING online was the Post, and I think enough has been said about that. It took a long time of being involved, listening in conversation, and attending talks by Wolfgang, etc. in order to really arrive at a sense of what THE THING was and what it represented. If it were not so tragic it would be humorously ironic that an organization that did so much to galvanize thinking about the internet as an artistic and political medium has no functioning legacy online. I think that a proper and academic archive could potentially happen, but it will take a long time and a great deal of work. The nature of academia is to quest after a kind of perfection, to create a source of objective authority. Great! That would be awesome. In a few years it will be something we can all be proud of. I think something different needs to be planned in the interim.
What about creating a subjective archive? What about creating a nexus for the stories and narratives of THE THING. It could be a relatively simple interface, something like a data or tag cloud full of links to various stories, where the only hierarchy might be determined by font size. People with a story to tell or an event to document could create their own HTML page, with the only standard requirement being a ‘back to home’ button of some kind. The advantage is that this would allow each person’s ‘history’ to be acknowledged without necessarily privileging one or the other. One link might be called ‘eToy war’ and could be an account of those events while another might be called ‘Justin Berry’ and include simply my own experiences. These pages don’t even have to share styling, though we could certainly provide a CSS sheet for people to use if they chose. One person’s page might be a video, while another person could choose to simply write an essay; an event might be documented with only a series of contextless pictures. Something like this embraces the history of THE THING as a forum and a platform. This does not have to exist in opposition to a formal archive; it can be an accompaniment to that project. It also requires less energy to happen. Once a stable and functioning interface is set up it can be left to individuals to create pages as they wish. Each contribution can be considered on its own terms. It does not have to be ‘finished’, it can be an ever evolving project as new pages are added.
Perhaps this is only a selfish wish. I would like to hear the stories and see the history and I would like to have that kind of experience sooner than later. There should be an online presence of THE THING’s legacy. In my experience every time people attempt to create an authoritative history of something there are a whole lot of histories on the table and it takes a long time to negotiate which ones stick around.
Justin Berry
-- Justin Berry (713) 302 9599 www.waymakergallery.com http://www.waymakergallery.com JustinBerryArt@gmail.com mailto:JustinBerryArt@gmail.com Waymaker@WaymakerGallery.com
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thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
if you want to have the archive developed with an institution (sponsorship etc.) i can talk to my colleagues at parsons.
ZHANG Ga
Professor / Director TASML | Tsinghua University Art & Science Center MediaLAB -------------------------------------------------- Associate Professor School of Art, Media and Technology Parsons the New School for Design http://tasml.parsons.edu
On Jul 19, 2010, at 11:32 AM, Caspar Stracke wrote:
Very interesting points, Alan.
Justin I also like your idea, it could be a really effective kick-off idea for the archive, setting things in motion and making the process of archiving a more collaborative undertaking. indeed, a historicisation-in-progress. Yes it would be great to have a paid full-time person conducting this - but unfortunately we don't have this and funding -given the mess, as Arfus calls it- seems very difficult at this moment. Less difficult it seems to distribute a few tasks of organizing / coding...
Joseph's AmArtArchive suggestion could be tried out without excluding this effort, in fact I am curious to hear what art archivists say about an archive-art piece. To my understanding that's how the old bbs is defined.
Nonetheless still believe step one would be to "warp" the old thing into some appropriate kind of introduction. Susanne I am all ears :-) And give some room to grow. Meaning some kind of simple framework that encourages people to post some THING-related material.
Thing next generation handover?...not so easy to do....since there will be remaining activity, besides the ISP probably the editions that Wolfgang continues.
blog or not to blog? Alan's statement gave some food for thought. Although I am still unsure how to cintinue....curious about other people's thoughts on this.....
©
Justin,
When I met you at White Slab, your creative energy, enthusiasm and competence became quickly evident to me. Your idea below shows the same level of talented verve, but I very much doubt that it will manifest. Based on the first round of letters - and obvious divergent positions held - my impression is that The Thing's early members have run out of energy and would not rise to the occasion of retelling the past. Nice as an idea it may be. The proposed abandonment of the TT blog seems to indicate this to me, for example.
I see two possible strategies left at the moment:
Pass The Thing on to a younger generation - as we did with ABC No Rio - no matter how different the activities may be from the founders original ideals and practices.
Fold the tent and give all materials to The Archives of American Art ( see: http://www.aaa.si.edu/about/donating_papers.cfm ). This allows professional archivists to preserve and communicate TT's legacy - if it has one.
I for one would like to see TT continue and improve, but I have become too much the realist to expect it.
Would like to hear other voices on these perceived two options, of course.
cheers
Joseph Nechvatal
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:10:36 -0400 From: justinberryart@gmail.com To: thingist@mailman.thing.net Subject: [thingist] What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
I am new to THE THING, having only become involved in the last year or so, working with W and Christoph on The.Thing.Net and the White Slab screenings. I became involved almost by accident--I was recently out of graduate school and making non-salable and non-exhibitable work, mostly web stuff, and feeling a bit chagrined about the art world and its various camps of ideology. I was randomly surfing the web and sending out feeler emails to every organization I could find that was involved in New Media. Wolfgang was the one who answered back. I had no idea what THE THING actually was. I went to look it up online and struggled to find information, only coming up with numerous references to someTHING but never an actual history or a literal description. The most glaring example of THE THING online was the Post, and I think enough has been said about that. It took a long time of being involved, listening in conversation, and attending talks by Wolfgang, etc. in order to really arrive at a sense of what THE THING was and what it represented. If it were not so tragic it would be humorously ironic that an organization that did so much to galvanize thinking about the internet as an artistic and political medium has no functioning legacy online. I think that a proper and academic archive could potentially happen, but it will take a long time and a great deal of work. The nature of academia is to quest after a kind of perfection, to create a source of objective authority. Great! That would be awesome. In a few years it will be something we can all be proud of. I think something different needs to be planned in the interim.
What about creating a subjective archive? What about creating a nexus for the stories and narratives of THE THING. It could be a relatively simple interface, something like a data or tag cloud full of links to various stories, where the only hierarchy might be determined by font size. People with a story to tell or an event to document could create their own HTML page, with the only standard requirement being a ‘back to home’ button of some kind. The advantage is that this would allow each person’s ‘history’ to be acknowledged without necessarily privileging one or the other. One link might be called ‘eToy war’ and could be an account of those events while another might be called ‘Justin Berry’ and include simply my own experiences. These pages don’t even have to share styling, though we could certainly provide a CSS sheet for people to use if they chose. One person’s page might be a video, while another person could choose to simply write an essay; an event might be documented with only a series of contextless pictures. Something like this embraces the history of THE THING as a forum and a platform. This does not have to exist in opposition to a formal archive; it can be an accompaniment to that project. It also requires less energy to happen. Once a stable and functioning interface is set up it can be left to individuals to create pages as they wish. Each contribution can be considered on its own terms. It does not have to be ‘finished’, it can be an ever evolving project as new pages are added.
Perhaps this is only a selfish wish. I would like to hear the stories and see the history and I would like to have that kind of experience sooner than later. There should be an online presence of THE THING’s legacy. In my experience every time people attempt to create an authoritative history of something there are a whole lot of histories on the table and it takes a long time to negotiate which ones stick around.
Justin Berry
-- Justin Berry (713) 302 9599 www.waymakergallery.com JustinBerryArt@gmail.com Waymaker@WaymakerGallery.com
Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. Learn more.
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
-- caspar stracke www.videokasbah.net _______________________________________________ thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
Some good points have been made. I think it is possible to pursue both Justin's idea of a historical storybook AND look for a home for the rest so that it is kept together, preserved and worked in/on by a younger generation of art historians and archivists. Another option for that idea of an objective stable archive to house the TT collection might be New York University's Fales Library Special Collections ( fales.library@nyu.edu ). It already houses the archives of many Downtown-specific artists and groups. If anyone saw the Carlo McCormick show "The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984" - in consultation with Lynn Gumpert, and Marvin J. Taylor that was held at NYU's Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library - you saw a bit of their holdings. I think it a good context for The Thing. On the blog. I am with Alan. I use it (need it) and look at it. So, perhaps let's not kill it off?
Joseph Nechvatal www.nechvatal.net
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:32:33 +0200 From: kasbah@thing.net To: thingist@mailman.thing.net Subject: Re: [thingist] What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
Very interesting points, Alan.
Justin I also like your idea, it could be a really effective kick-off idea for the archive, setting things in motion and making the process of archiving a more collaborative undertaking.
indeed, a historicisation-in-progress. Yes it would be great to have a paid full-time person conducting this - but unfortunately we don't have this and funding -given the mess, as Arfus calls it- seems very difficult at this moment. Less difficult it seems to distribute a few tasks of organizing / coding...
Joseph's AmArtArchive suggestion could be tried out without excluding this effort, in fact I am curious to hear what art archivists say about an archive-art piece. To my understanding that's how the old bbs is defined.
Nonetheless still believe step one would be to "warp" the old thing into some appropriate kind of introduction. Susanne I am all ears :-)
And give some room to grow. Meaning some kind of simple framework that encourages people to post some THING-related material.
Thing next generation handover?...not so easy to do....since there will be remaining activity, besides the ISP probably the editions that Wolfgang continues.
blog or not to blog? Alan's statement gave some food for thought. Although I am still unsure how to cintinue....curious about other people's thoughts on this.....
©
Justin,
When I met you at White Slab, your creative energy, enthusiasm and competence became quickly evident to me. Your idea below shows the same level of talented verve, but I very much doubt that it will manifest. Based on the first round of letters - and obvious divergent positions held - my impression is that The Thing's early members have run out of energy and would not rise to the occasion of retelling the past. Nice as an idea it may be. The proposed abandonment of the TT blog seems to indicate this to me, for example.
I see two possible strategies left at the moment:
1) Pass The Thing on to a younger generation - as we did with ABC No Rio - no matter how different the activities may be from the founders original ideals and practices.
2) Fold the tent and give all materials to The Archives of American Art ( see: http://www.aaa.si.edu/about/donating_papers.cfm ). This allows professional archivists to preserve and communicate TT's legacy - if it has one.
I for one would like to see TT continue and improve, but I have become too much the realist to expect it.
Would like to hear other voices on these perceived two options, of course.
cheers Joseph Nechvatal
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:10:36 -0400
From: justinberryart@gmail.com
To: thingist@mailman.thing.net
Subject: [thingist] What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
I am new to THE THING, having only become involved in the last year or so, working with W and Christoph on The.Thing.Net and the White Slab screenings. I became involved almost by accident--I was recently out of graduate school and making non-salable and non-exhibitable work, mostly web stuff, and feeling a bit chagrined about the art world and its various camps of ideology. I was randomly surfing the web and sending out feeler emails to every organization I could find that was involved in New Media. Wolfgang was the one who answered back. I had no idea what THE THING actually was. I went to look it up online and struggled to find information, only coming up with numerous references to someTHING but never an actual history or a literal description. The most glaring example of THE THING online was the Post, and I think enough has been said about that. It took a long time of being involved, listening in conversation, and attending talks by Wolfgang, etc. in order to really arrive at a sense of what THE THING was and what it represented. If it were not so tragic it would be humorously ironic that an organization that did so much to galvanize thinking about the internet as an artistic and political medium has no functioning legacy online. I think that a proper and academic archive could potentially happen, but it will take a long time and a great deal of work. The nature of academia is to quest after a kind of perfection, to create a source of objective authority. Great! That would be awesome. In a few years it will be something we can all be proud of. I think something different needs to be planned in the interim.
What about creating a subjective archive? What about creating a nexus for the stories and narratives of THE THING. It could be a relatively simple interface, something like a data or tag cloud full of links to various stories, where the only hierarchy might be determined by font size. People with a story to tell or an event to document could create their own HTML page, with the only standard requirement being a ‘back to home’ button of some kind. The advantage is that this would allow each person’s ‘history’ to be acknowledged without necessarily privileging one or the other. One link might be called ‘eToy war’ and could be an account of those events while another might be called ‘Justin Berry’ and include simply my own experiences. These pages don’t even have to share styling, though we could certainly provide a CSS sheet for people to use if they chose. One person’s page might be a video, while another person could choose to simply write an essay; an event might be documented with only a series of contextless pictures. Something like this embraces the history of THE THING as a forum and a platform. This does not have to exist in opposition to a formal archive; it can be an accompaniment to that project. It also requires less energy to happen. Once a stable and functioning interface is set up it can be left to individuals to create pages as they wish. Each contribution can be considered on its own terms. It does not have to be ‘finished’, it can be an ever evolving project as new pages are added.
Perhaps this is only a selfish wish. I would like to hear the stories and see the history and I would like to have that kind of experience sooner than later. There should be an online presence of THE THING’s legacy. In my experience every time people attempt to create an authoritative history of something there are a whole lot of histories on the table and it takes a long time to negotiate which ones stick around. Justin Berry
-- Justin Berry (713) 302 9599 www.waymakergallery.com JustinBerryArt@gmail.com Waymaker@WaymakerGallery.com
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_______________________________________________ thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
Dear all
Sorry I didn't read all your messages since one week, because of hectic days and a lot of current work, but while reading the subject and topic, maybe you could be interest in this : http://thing.nujus.net/
just an introduction :
I wrote this brief history after Summer'07 until Jan'08 because I pointed out we missed a "history" of The Thing, specially in France. I began some short investigations by probing my own archives but this requires now a serious exploration and edition. I stopped this article because of time's lack, but I began some online interviews with Wolfgang, Gh, Blackhawk... and asked for corrections.
The wiki thing.nujus.net is a basic one but sufficient for sharing edition. My idea is to propose you to share this publication and to add articles concerning The Thing. The process can be simple: only one psw for all thingists.... I can update the wiki system in order to have more features such as comments on articles, etc. It's hosted on nujus.net maintained by Gh and Peter Sinclair, and I guess Gh can do a nujus.net presentation (http://nujus.net/) on this list.
My two cents, briefly, concerning past, present, future TT :
- to publish online archives of The Thing (the main website - articles, forums, etc.), and all the projects hosted on the servers) is more a work for archivists and specialists of net-art conservation. I guess that, after Summer'07, most of TT artists continued online works and had found another hosting server (that was my case). I know that some organizations are very interested in net- art archive, in a scientific framework (such as for instance, Fondation Langlois and DOCAM in Montreal, etc. Wolfgang has got contacts with some of them in Germany and Austria).
- the public access to TT archives is very important for art fields, practices and research. We can't work without memory, even if the used medium is electronic and networked. The TT period ('91 to '07) corresponded mainly to static edition (websites, forums), and the current evolution goes since '00 to realtime activities and practices (but remember the Empire webcam by WS). For instance, my research and art domain concerns streaming, flux and Internet auditoriums (see Locus Sonus, http://locusonus.org/ and other projects I initiated : Collective JukeBox, nocinema.org, sobralasolas.org, picnic, etc.). The question of archive (or of recording/documentation) is at the core (even if we decide to avoid the question, it's still these), because we join also other art questions present for instance in the beginning of the XXth century (performances, radio, etc.), or in the 60s (live processes, etc.), or finally in the 80s/90s (live programming, intermedia, etc.). The Internet is a very nascent medium, and it's not disconnected from art history.
- Concerning the now, the questions about critical spaces, online spaces for experimentation, etc. have moved since the TT period. The context is not the same. But these questions remain with little shifts because current techniques permit more appropriation and "tuning" than ten or twenty years ago. But the development of critical spaces is still required, maybe more today than yesterday.
- The question of future TT is based, on my viewpoint, on questions concerning collective dynamics. TT was based on the practice of a community, even if this one wasn't orthodox. Does this (these) practice(s) is(are) today alive and pertinent ? What new collective forms and protocols can be common today ? A server ? a very large bandwith ? an activity map ? a common tag thru web 2.0, 3.0, etc. ? ...
So here are so brief notes, written on-the-fly but I promise, I'll read and post some feedbacks in reaction to your messages.... maybe I'll be able to develop in a next post, some ideas and sentences I swiftly wrote into this message...
And sorry for poor english...
best Jerome
:
OK. I take it Jerome is offline. So I did an edit on what he had below. Check it out everyone before I paste it into http://en.wikipedia.org (or stop me if you hate this idea). I will need a sub-description (it will be hidden for the most part) to seperate The Thing out from the film and everything else Thingy. Is this OK? (Net Art Project) So please quickly read this and make any cuts or changes. Of course I or anyone can change the page after I create it - but the scrutiny will be very strict. Not that it won't be right away. BTW, what are the page #'s on TT in the Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010? cheersJoseph Nechvatal
THE THING (Net Art Project)
'''THE THING ''' is a pioneering international net-community of artists and art-related projects that was started in 1991 by [[Wolfgang Staehle]]. THE THING was launched as a mailbox system accessible over the telephone network in New York feeding a [[Bulletin Board System]] (BBS), a form of online community dialogue used before the advent of the [[World Wide Web]]. By the late 90s, THE THING grew into a diverse online community made up of dozens of members' Web sites, mailing lists, a successful Web hosting service, a community studio in Chelsea (NYC), and the first Web site devoted to [[Net Art]]: bbs.thing.net.
==History of THE THING ==
== THE THING BBS (1991) ==
In 1991, THE THING began as a [[Bulletin Board System]] focusing on contemporary art and cultural theory. <ref>Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010. </ref> In 1990, the writer and critic Blackhawk (having recently produced the film “[[Cyberpunk]]”) taught Wolfgang Staehle many of the abilities he needed to start the original Thing BBS - basic pc skills of how to use what then passed as a communication suite (they initially used [[ProCom]], cutting and pasting as needed). Blackhawk was the first person Staehle turned to after conceiving of the idea for an electronic culture resource based on the model of [[Joseph Beuys]]'s "social sculpture". Blackhawk and Wolfgang jointly set up the editorial structure of the original BBS and planned for many of the then experimental activities that took place. Other people who helped shape the content of the early BBS included [[Josefina Ayerza]], [[Dike Blair]], Jordan Crandall, Josh Decter, [[Rainer Ganahl]], [[Julia Scher]], Barry Schwabsky, Franz von Staufenberg and Benjamin Weil.
== THE THING WWW (1995) ==
THE THING changed its form when a Web interface was created for its presentation at the 1994 [[Ars Electronica]]. This phase was co-founded with Benjamin Weil, [[Julia Scher]], and Gisela Ehrenfried. Credits on 1995 website also name Nicky Chaikin, John Simon, [[Wolfgang Staehle]], Rob Keenan, Darryl Erentzen and John Rabasa. <ref> http://old.thing.net/</ref>
In 1998, Max Kossatz designed "The Thing Communicator" which gave THE THING its present form and shape. <ref> [[Christiane Paul (curator)|Christiane Paul]], ''Digital Art'', Thames & Hudson Ltd., p. 111 </ref>
Since 1995, THE THING set up an independent art network with hardware of its own that offered arts communities ways to establish themselves, to send information to one another and also to conceive of new artistic practices deriving from [[conceptual art]] and from [[performance art]]. Working with the Net was a way to operate around the institutions of the art distribution system.
== THE THING Net Communities ==
THE THING has enabled a diverse group of artists, critics, curators, and activists situated in the Internet climate. At its core, THE THING is a social network, made up of individuals from diverse backgrounds with a wide range of expert knowledge. From this social hub, THE THING has built an exceptional array of programs and initiatives, in both technological and cultural networks. During its first five years, became widely recognized as one of the founding and leading online centers for [[new media]] culture. Its activities include hosting artists' projects and mailing lists as well as publishing cultural criticism.
THE THING has also organized many events and symposia on such topics as the state of new media arts, the preservation of online privacy, artistic innovations in [[robotics]], and the possibilities of community empowerment through wireless technologies.
THE THING as an Internet Presence Provider for activist and arts organizations (primarily in the New York City area) has hosted arts and activist groups and publications including [[P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center]], [[Artforum]]; [[Mabou Mines]]; [[Willoughby Sharp]] Gallery; [[Zingmagazine]]; Journal of Contemporary Art; [[Nettime]]; and Tenant.net.
Among many others, artists and projects associated with thing.net have included [[Sawad Brooks]], [[Heath Bunting]], Cercle Ramo Nash, [[Vuk Cosic]], [[etoy]], [[GH Hovagimyan]], [[John Klima]], Jenny Marketou, [[Mariko Mori]], Prema Murty, [[Mark Napier]], [[Joseph Nechvatal]], [[Phil Niblock]], Daniel Pflumm, [[Francesca da Rimini]], [[Beat Streuli]] and Beth Stryker.
THE THING has been generously supported by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the [[Rockefeller Foundation]], the [[National Endowment for the Arts]], and thing.net communications.
==THE THING Globalized ==
A second node, THE THING Cologne, was added in 1992, followed by THE THING Vienna in November of the next year. Nodes in Berlin and elsewhere were soon to follow.
The most (inter)active, and therefore most important, area of THE THING consisted of various message boards offering forums for art theory debate, news and gossip, ongoing dialogue and an open-access flow of information, as well as several online versions of art journals.
Alongside discussion forums, THE THING offered artworks in the form of graphics downloadable to the home PC for example by [[Peter Halley]].
Since taking to the World Wide Web with a new user interface in 1995, THE THING has continued to function as a production and presentation platform for art and art-related discourse.
*THE THING Basel was founded by Barbara Strebel and Rik Gelles
*THE THING Berlin was founded Ulf Schleth
*THE THING Cologne was founded by Michael Krome
*THE THING Dûsseldorf was founded by Jôrg Sasse
*THE THING Frankfurt was founded by Andreas Kallfelz
*THE THING Hamburg was founded by Hans-Joachim Lenger
*THE THING London was founded by Andreas Ruethi
*THE THING New York was founded by Wolfgang Staehle
*THE THING Stockholm was founded by Magnus Borg
*THE THING Vienna was founded by Helmut Mark and Max Kossatz
*THE THING Roma was founded by Marco Deseriis and Giuseppe Marano
==THE THING URLS==
*http://old.thing.net/ (1991)
*http://thing.net/ (NYC, older url bbs.thing.net)
*http://www.ecn.org/thingnet/frameset.html (Roma)
*http://www.thing-hamburg.de/ (Hamburg)
*http://www.thing-frankfurt.de/ (http://www.thing-net.de/) (Frankfurt)
*http://www.thing.de/ (Berlin)
*http://www.thing.at/ (Vienna)
*http://www.thing.desk.nl/ (Amsterdam)
*http://www.thing.ch/ (Basel, closed)
==References==
*Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010.
*[[Christiane Paul (curator)|Christiane Paul]], ''Digital Art'', Thames & Hudson Ltd., p. 111
===Foot notes===
{{reflist}}
== External links ==
*http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/weiluntitled-abr.html
*http://www.nyfa.org/current_archive/2003/cur010803.html
*http://www.msstate.edu/fineart_online/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n01/reviews/...
*http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-thing/
*http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/source-text/73/
*http://www.thing.net/~homestudio/
{{DEFAULTSORT: THE THING (Net Art Project)}}
[[Category:Contemporary art]]
[[Category:Conceptual art]]
[[Category:Postmodern art]]
[[Category:Digital artists]]
[[Category:Media theorists]]
[[Category:Artist groups and collectives]]
[[Category:American artist groups and collectives]]
[[Category:Conceptual artists]]
[[Category:Postmodern artists]]
[[Category:Artists from New York]]
From: joy@thing.net Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:10:23 +0200 To: thingist@mailman.thing.net Subject: Re: [thingist] What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
Dear all
Sorry I didn't read all your messages since one week, because of hectic days and a lot of current work, but while reading the subject and topic, maybe you could be interest in this : http://thing.nujus.net/
just an introduction :
I wrote this brief history after Summer'07 until Jan'08 because I pointed out we missed a "history" of The Thing, specially in France. I began some short investigations by probing my own archives but this requires now a serious exploration and edition. I stopped this article because of time's lack, but I began some online interviews with Wolfgang, Gh, Blackhawk... and asked for corrections.
The wiki thing.nujus.net is a basic one but sufficient for sharing edition. My idea is to propose you to share this publication and to add articles concerning The Thing. The process can be simple: only one psw for all thingists.... I can update the wiki system in order to have more features such as comments on articles, etc. It's hosted on nujus.net maintained by Gh and Peter Sinclair, and I guess Gh can do a nujus.net presentation (http://nujus.net/) on this list.
My two cents, briefly, concerning past, present, future TT :
- to publish online archives of The Thing (the main website -
articles, forums, etc.), and all the projects hosted on the servers) is more a work for archivists and specialists of net-art conservation. I guess that, after Summer'07, most of TT artists continued online works and had found another hosting server (that was my case). I know that some organizations are very interested in net- art archive, in a scientific framework (such as for instance, Fondation Langlois and DOCAM in Montreal, etc. Wolfgang has got contacts with some of them in Germany and Austria).
- the public access to TT archives is very important for art fields,
practices and research. We can't work without memory, even if the used medium is electronic and networked. The TT period ('91 to '07) corresponded mainly to static edition (websites, forums), and the current evolution goes since '00 to realtime activities and practices (but remember the Empire webcam by WS). For instance, my research and art domain concerns streaming, flux and Internet auditoriums (see Locus Sonus, http://locusonus.org/ and other projects I initiated : Collective JukeBox, nocinema.org, sobralasolas.org, picnic, etc.). The question of archive (or of recording/documentation) is at the core (even if we decide to avoid the question, it's still these), because we join also other art questions present for instance in the beginning of the XXth century (performances, radio, etc.), or in the 60s (live processes, etc.), or finally in the 80s/90s (live programming, intermedia, etc.). The Internet is a very nascent medium, and it's not disconnected from art history.
- Concerning the now, the questions about critical spaces, online
spaces for experimentation, etc. have moved since the TT period. The context is not the same. But these questions remain with little shifts because current techniques permit more appropriation and "tuning" than ten or twenty years ago. But the development of critical spaces is still required, maybe more today than yesterday.
- The question of future TT is based, on my viewpoint, on questions
concerning collective dynamics. TT was based on the practice of a community, even if this one wasn't orthodox. Does this (these) practice(s) is(are) today alive and pertinent ? What new collective forms and protocols can be common today ? A server ? a very large bandwith ? an activity map ? a common tag thru web 2.0, 3.0, etc. ? ...
So here are so brief notes, written on-the-fly but I promise, I'll read and post some feedbacks in reaction to your messages.... maybe I'll be able to develop in a next post, some ideas and sentences I swiftly wrote into this message...
And sorry for poor english...
best Jerome
:
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
_________________________________________________________________ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:W...
Hi Joseph,
was not online, but no time today to write a reply. but ok, I'm here now ;-), you can edit the page and make some corrections or improve the presentation I began. As I told you, this editing was a draft ready for a further exploration and writing. Most of things come out from copy/paste of various texts, messages, archives, etc. I have compiled along the years.
I'm sure that we can develop a better text and presentation.
Are you all ok to participate to the wiki ? My proposition is to write a series of texts, based on interviews, archives' probing, etc. which can offer various aspects of TT : documentation, studies, essays, notes, reports, etc. A large part could concern graphic (and sound) documentation (photos, videos, etc.). Thus we can cross information (from different sources and references) and validate the outputs. And the better, I think, it's to do it together...
sounds good ?
Joseph, to go swiftly, what are the parts you don't include within the Wikipedia presentation ? I answer to your question below.
best and warmly
jerome
Le 21 juil. 10 à 16:32, Joseph Nechvatal a écrit :
OK. I take it Jerome is offline. So I did an edit on what he had below. Check it out everyone before I paste it into http:// en.wikipedia.org (or stop me if you hate this idea).
I will need a sub-description (it will be hidden for the most part) to seperate The Thing out from the film and everything else Thingy. Is this OK? (Net Art Project)
seems to be good or : Net-Artivism ?
:-)
So please quickly read this and make any cuts or changes. Of course I or anyone can change the page after I create it - but the scrutiny will be very strict. Not that it won't be right away. BTW, what are the page #'s on TT in the Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010?
cheers Joseph Nechvatal
OK. Thanks Jerome. I started the Wikipedia page today - and we can build it up collectively. However, the editorial scouts there might flag what they call Original Research (they are against that there) - so it is not a place to do too much interview stuff. For the page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_THING_(Net_Art_Project) ) I merely cut out anything that was repeated on your page - and the stuff that I thought was too bulky or off the central historical line. I tried to line things up by year. So your page will continue to be important and should grow. It would be great if you can make a French version -- and someone else a German, Spanish etc version.... So here we go into Wikipedia. SEE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_THING_(Net_Art_Project) Joseph Nechvatal
From: joy@thing.net Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:15:15 +0200 To: thingist@mailman.thing.net Subject: Re: [thingist] proposed text for THE THING wikipedia page
Hi Joseph,was not online, but no time today to write a reply.but ok, I'm here now ;-), you can edit the page and make some corrections or improve the presentation I began.As I told you, this editing was a draft ready for a further exploration and writing. Most of things come out from copy/paste of various texts, messages, archives, etc. I have compiled along the years.I'm sure that we can develop a better text and presentation.Are you all ok to participate to the wiki ?My proposition is to write a series of texts, based on interviews, archives' probing, etc. which can offer various aspects of TT : documentation, studies, essays, notes, reports, etc.A large part could concern graphic (and sound) documentation (photos, videos, etc.).Thus we can cross information (from different sources and references) and validate the outputs.And the better, I think, it's to do it together...sounds good ?Joseph, to go swiftly, what are the parts you don't include within the Wikipedia presentation ?I answer to your question below.best and warmlyjeromeLe 21 juil. 10 à 16:32, Joseph Nechvatal a écrit :
OK. I take it Jerome is offline. So I did an edit on what he had below. Check it out everyone before I paste it into http://en.wikipedia.org (or stop me if you hate this idea). I will need a sub-description (it will be hidden for the most part) to seperate The Thing out from the film and everything else Thingy. Is this OK? (Net Art Project)seems to be goodor : Net-Artivism ?:-)
So please quickly read this and make any cuts or changes. Of course I or anyone can change the page after I create it - but the scrutiny will be very strict. Not that it won't be right away. BTW, what are the page #'s on TT in the Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010? cheersJoseph Nechvatal _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea. Combine multiple calendars with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multicalendar&ocid=P...
It's my special pleasure to announce ALTERAZIONI VIDEO NIGHT at White Slab Palace this Monday, January 31 at 8pm.
If you are in the city you cannot miss this...
http://post.thing.net/node/3271
Happy year of the rabbit!
Wolfgang
Are we ever going to have a converation on this list again? Or is everybody totally verzuckert by now? Zuckerrabbits. If nobody says anything I will call in Peter Fend...
Sadly, I will not be around but the show looks amazing. Following up la verifica incerta and stealing it's title is already extremely ambitious. Porn stars in the crypt and Italian artists making a bad anthro-horror film in Africa: what more can you ask for?
Keith
On Jan 25, 2011, at 7:47 PM, w w@thing.net wrote:
It's my special pleasure to announce ALTERAZIONI VIDEO NIGHT at White Slab Palace this Monday, January 31 at 8pm.
If you are in the city you cannot miss this...
http://post.thing.net/node/3271
Happy year of the rabbit!
Wolfgang
Are we ever going to have a converation on this list again? Or is everybody totally verzuckert by now? Zuckerrabbits. If nobody says anything I will call in Peter Fend...
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
On 26 January 2011 00:47, w w@thing.net wrote:
If nobody says anything I will call in Peter Fend...
"One could call this blog a series of pan-decade reviews." Peter Fend, 2 February 2010
The series was short lived. One post in a year. Even Cistercians talk more than that. Compared to him I'm a regular Bob Hope.
Anyway, I hope it works out with Peter and his biofuel experiment. Here in Oxford the artists growing things take a slightly more pragmatic approach to renewables and grew hops on their allotment then turned them into beer. I've had a few bottles and can say that it does increase energy and recommend beer as nice change to drinking petrol.
http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/the-fermenting-room-return-of-the...
By the way, before you close the list I'd like to remind Wolfgang that 10 years ago Blackhawk ran a short contest online relating to the phrase, 'When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.' The prize was a photo of you wearing, if I remember correctly, a green leather jacket.
I won and I still haven't received my picture. I know you've been busy but I am getting concerned.
Now when I hear the word culture I reach for my mouse. No prizes for that.
if you are in new york next week, come on saturday, september 10. i'll be there in the afternoon.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ney/en8045185v.htm
this is my favorite list now. nobody posts anything anymore.
wolfgang
cool! Woudl love to see it
H
On Sep 5, 2011, at 12:39 AM, w wrote:
if you are in new york next week, come on saturday, september 10. i'll be there in the afternoon.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ney/en8045185v.htm
this is my favorite list now. nobody posts anything anymore.
wolfgang
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
This to zero-nothing-silence-list: thanks a lot for invitation!
I will be in New York around Thanksgiving and it would be an honor to have a meeting with the artist at Goethe Institut. At 9.11. there is a performance of Ira Schneider at Freies Museum in Berlin, which i am going to attend.
So long. Susanne.
On Sep 5, 2011, at 12:39 AM, w wrote:
if you are in new york next week, come on saturday, september 10. i'll be there in the afternoon.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ney/en8045185v.htm
this is my favorite list now. nobody posts anything anymore.
wolfgang
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
http://cucusi.de http://www.mediacutmedia.net http://www.kuukuk.de http://www.virtual-station.de
susanne gerber tucholskystrasse 48 10117 berlin 0174 3040503
Sorry I will miss you on the 10th, Wollfgang. Going back to DukeThursday morning.
If you are in NY already, and also others interested in critical takes on 9/11 memorials, my show at Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in Lower East Side opens this Wed Sep 7, 6-9pm. in a nutshell...Twin Towers appear rebuilt to scale in Kabul, Baghdad, Darfur, Guantanamo, Gaza City, and other sites.
More info here: http://www.stephanstoyanovgallery.com/images/Stoyanov-Lasch-PressRelease-Sep...
The internet fictional organization TTGG is also part of the work, and Yes Men are serving on jury for the open call we just finished: http://www.twintowersgoglobal.org/wtc/open-call/
Hope some of you can make it on the 7th.
Pedro
On Sep 4, 2011, at 6:39 PM, w wrote:
if you are in new york next week, come on saturday, september 10. i'll be there in the afternoon.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ney/en8045185v.htm
this is my favorite list now. nobody posts anything anymore.
wolfgang
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
HaHa
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 11:48 PM, James Allan james.allan@gmail.com wrote:
On 26 January 2011 00:47, w w@thing.net wrote:
If nobody says anything I will call in Peter Fend...
"One could call this blog a series of pan-decade reviews." Peter Fend, 2 February 2010
The series was short lived. One post in a year. Even Cistercians talk more than that. Compared to him I'm a regular Bob Hope.
Anyway, I hope it works out with Peter and his biofuel experiment. Here in Oxford the artists growing things take a slightly more pragmatic approach to renewables and grew hops on their allotment then turned them into beer. I've had a few bottles and can say that it does increase energy and recommend beer as nice change to drinking petrol.
http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/the-fermenting-room-return-of-the...
By the way, before you close the list I'd like to remind Wolfgang that 10 years ago Blackhawk ran a short contest online relating to the phrase, 'When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.' The prize was a photo of you wearing, if I remember correctly, a green leather jacket.
I won and I still haven't received my picture. I know you've been busy but I am getting concerned.
Now when I hear the word culture I reach for my mouse. No prizes for that.
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
Dear Thingist members, I would like to invite you to my performance on Saturday Feb. 25 at Eyebeam. It¹s my first full-scale performance work. I hope to see you! Jordan
JORDAN CRANDALL UNMANNED
Saturday, 25 February 2012 4-6pm Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011 212.937.6580 http://eyebeam.org
Jordan Crandall's Unmanned is a work of "philosophical theater": a blend of performance art, political allegory, philosophical speculation, and intimate reverie that explores the changing nature of masculinity in the face of automated technologies of war. Jordan conducts a series of monologues in the guise of seven different characters, supplemented with stage action, video, and sound. Each character is an archetype of masculine identity struggling with its own agency and role in the field of deployment -- historically the most complex issue in the field of military endeavor.
The action takes place in the desert borderlands of the American Southwest and revolves around the crash of a drone into a surburban backyard. The crash is investigated through the agency of a detective who attempts to discover its cause -- the place where the fault resides. Along with a trucker/cowboy who searches for drone crashes along the borderzone, he helps orient the performance away from the failure itself and instead, toward its productive power. The crash becomes a destabilizing force that dislodges conventional associations and reorganizes the field of awareness. With actors rendered newly mobile, all kinds of novel players enter the scene, and a new ontological framework begins to take shape.
dear yasir,
i remember the contest, unfortunately the green leather jacket doesn't exist anymore and neither does a picture of me wearing it. these days i am wearing suits, maybe i can offer this clip as a consolation price: http://vimeo.com/34066078
i cc to peter fend, maybe he'll chip in if he's not busy getting high on methane. he just had a show in some dump on essex street and every dork in the art critical establishment had to review it... http://artforum.com/index.php?pn=picks&id=30197&view=print
looks like you're doing fine. oxford? i thought you're in pakistan.
best regards,
wolfgang
On Fri, 2012-02-17 at 23:32 +0500, yasir ~يا سر wrote:
HaHa
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 11:48 PM, James Allan james.allan@gmail.com wrote:
On 26 January 2011 00:47, w <w@thing.net> wrote: If nobody says anything I will call in Peter Fend... "One could call this blog a series of pan-decade reviews." Peter Fend, 2 February 2010 The series was short lived. One post in a year. Even Cistercians talk more than that. Compared to him I'm a regular Bob Hope. Anyway, I hope it works out with Peter and his biofuel experiment. Here in Oxford the artists growing things take a slightly more pragmatic approach to renewables and grew hops on their allotment then turned them into beer. I've had a few bottles and can say that it does increase energy and recommend beer as nice change to drinking petrol. http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/the-fermenting-room-return-of-the-rhizome/about/ By the way, before you close the list I'd like to remind Wolfgang that 10 years ago Blackhawk ran a short contest online relating to the phrase, 'When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.' The prize was a photo of you wearing, if I remember correctly, a green leather jacket. I won and I still haven't received my picture. I know you've been busy but I am getting concerned. Now when I hear the word culture I reach for my mouse. No prizes for that.
Dear Wolfgang,
Happy to see you're making a good recovery. That was a close shave.
I never realized you were left handed until I saw the film. Admittedly, I may have missed you smoking with your right hand before your epiphany. If that’s the case I applaud the nuanced performance and wish you continued success.
Sadly, I think you’ve conflated two people. It’s easy to do but as a memory aid here’s a catchy tune to help you remember, ‘Yasir, that’s my baby, no sir that’s James the guy who’s still waiting for a picture of you in a green leather jacket & I’m not getting any younger.’
Anyway, what’s new in NYC?
I have to admit one of the nice things about being an immigrant to the old world has been the declining influence of Americana on my psyche. New York’s starting to look like a B movie Hadrian’s Wall and I’m on the side without olive oil... Mind you, as you see, it’s being replaced by History. I’m not sure which is more interesting.
(Btw, Yasir if you are in Oxford give me a call)
Yours,
Nosir
On 18 February 2012 04:22, w w@thing.net wrote:
dear yasir,
i remember the contest, unfortunately the green leather jacket doesn't exist anymore and neither does a picture of me wearing it. these days i am wearing suits, maybe i can offer this clip as a consolation price: http://vimeo.com/34066078
i cc to peter fend, maybe he'll chip in if he's not busy getting high on methane. he just had a show in some dump on essex street and every dork in the art critical establishment had to review it... http://artforum.com/index.php?pn=picks&id=30197&view=print
looks like you're doing fine. oxford? i thought you're in pakistan.
best regards,
wolfgang
On Fri, 2012-02-17 at 23:32 +0500, yasir ~يا سر wrote:
HaHa
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 11:48 PM, James Allan james.allan@gmail.com wrote:
On 26 January 2011 00:47, w <w@thing.net> wrote: If nobody says anything I will call in Peter Fend... "One could call this blog a series of pan-decade reviews." Peter Fend, 2 February 2010 The series was short lived. One post in a year. Even Cistercians talk more than that. Compared to him I'm a regular Bob Hope. Anyway, I hope it works out with Peter and his biofuel experiment. Here in Oxford the artists growing things take a slightly more pragmatic approach to renewables and grew hops on their allotment then turned them into beer. I've had a few bottles and can say that it does increase energy and recommend beer as nice change to drinking petrol.http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/the-fermenting-room-return-of-the...
By the way, before you close the list I'd like to remind Wolfgang that 10 years ago Blackhawk ran a short contest online relating to the phrase, 'When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.' The prize was a photo of you wearing, if I remember correctly, a green leather jacket. I won and I still haven't received my picture. I know you've been busy but I am getting concerned. Now when I hear the word culture I reach for my mouse. No prizes for that.
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
Hi Joseph,
was not online, but no time today to write a reply. but ok, I'm here now ;-), you can edit the page and make some corrections or improve the presentation I began. As I told you, this editing was a draft ready for a further exploration and writing. Most of things come out from copy/paste of various texts, messages, archives, etc. I have compiled along the years.
I'm sure that we can develop a better text and presentation.
Are you all ok to participate to the wiki ? My proposition is to write a series of texts, based on interviews, archives' probing, etc. which can offer various aspects of TT : documentation, studies, essays, notes, reports, etc. A large part could concern graphic (and sound) documentation (photos, videos, etc.). Thus we can cross information (from different sources and references) and validate the outputs. And the better, I think, it's to do it together...
sounds good ?
Joseph, to go swiftly, what are the parts you don't include within the Wikipedia presentation ? I answer to your question below.
BTW I'm interested to translate it for the French Wikipedia. I know that one French editor (maybe in collaboration with another French one) could be interested in publishing a French book about TT history. Maybe the better idea is to do our collective work about editing (on the wiki for instance), and the final output could be published (in English, German and French, and .... according to the editors who are ready).
And thanks Caspar,
I guess I've got other archives on my hds, but the recollection requires more time and to take a period of work to achieve or to approach a reliable publication (weeks). And I guess it will be more simple when the whole TT archive (servers) will be online to recover information and documentation. As I said, our editing work, such as studies, essays and reports, will concern the enlightment of art aspects of the TT projects...
If you are interested in, here are some documentation (archives) concerning homestudio.thing.net and jukebox.thing.net
http://jeromejoy.org/w/index.php?page=Homestudio.thing.net
the current informations about these projects, and other ones (lascaux2.info for instance, or forum hub which was on TT) are accessible from the frontpage. (Reminder : this website jeromejoy.org is currently under construction : I'm currently gathering all my archives)....
best and warmly
jerome
Le 21 juil. 10 à 16:32, Joseph Nechvatal a écrit :
OK. I take it Jerome is offline. So I did an edit on what he had below. Check it out everyone before I paste it into http:// en.wikipedia.org (or stop me if you hate this idea).
I will need a sub-description (it will be hidden for the most part) to seperate The Thing out from the film and everything else Thingy. Is this OK? (Net Art Project)
So please quickly read this and make any cuts or changes. Of course I or anyone can change the page after I create it - but the scrutiny will be very strict. Not that it won't be right away. BTW, what are the page #'s on TT in the Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010?
cheers Joseph Nechvatal
hallo it's barbara strebel here from The swiss Thing ( thing.ch - now redirected to artcast.ch or .info) http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-thing/images/7/
can make a contribution with my: 1- audio interviews (TT andrea kallfelz) and other net artist: heath bunting, amy alexander and ... graham harwood) let me see my backlog 2- data : once i take apart my computer from 1995- the swiss thing. if there is a forma project i can start t try to seek some funding for this archival work: the swiss thing projects ( that no did not interact much w thing.net . 3- t i might have found some personal documents ( images) and older files. of ealier feswtival / meetings: TTvienna ? Linz? transmediale? i need some time and a forma project so that i can try to submit for funding, to do this in a proper way ( formats) welcome any experience with data recovery? my laptop 1996 and pizza box 1995, the BBS server was taken apart.
-barbara
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:20 PM, Jerome Joy joy@thing.net wrote:
Hi Joseph,
was not online, but no time today to write a reply. but ok, I'm here now ;-), you can edit the page and make some corrections or improve the presentation I began. As I told you, this editing was a draft ready for a further exploration and writing. Most of things come out from copy/paste of various texts, messages, archives, etc. I have compiled along the years.
I'm sure that we can develop a better text and presentation.
Are you all ok to participate to the wiki ? My proposition is to write a series of texts, based on interviews, archives' probing, etc. which can offer various aspects of TT : documentation, studies, essays, notes, reports, etc. A large part could concern graphic (and sound) documentation (photos, videos, etc.). Thus we can cross information (from different sources and references) and validate the outputs. And the better, I think, it's to do it together...
sounds good ?
Joseph, to go swiftly, what are the parts you don't include within the Wikipedia presentation ? I answer to your question below.
BTW I'm interested to translate it for the French Wikipedia. I know that one French editor (maybe in collaboration with another French one) could be interested in publishing a French book about TT history. Maybe the better idea is to do our collective work about editing (on the wiki for instance), and the final output could be published (in English, German and French, and .... according to the editors who are ready).
And thanks Caspar,
I guess I've got other archives on my hds, but the recollection requires more time and to take a period of work to achieve or to approach a reliable publication (weeks). And I guess it will be more simple when the whole TT archive (servers) will be online to recover information and documentation. As I said, our editing work, such as studies, essays and reports, will concern the enlightment of art aspects of the TT projects...
If you are interested in, here are some documentation (archives) concerning homestudio.thing.net and jukebox.thing.net
http://jeromejoy.org/w/index.php?page=Homestudio.thing.net
the current informations about these projects, and other ones ( lascaux2.info for instance, or forum hub which was on TT) are accessible from the frontpage. (Reminder : this website jeromejoy.org is currently under construction : I'm currently gathering all my archives)....
best and warmly
jerome
Le 21 juil. 10 à 16:32, Joseph Nechvatal a écrit :
OK. I take it Jerome is offline. So I did an edit on what he had below. Check it out everyone before I paste it into http://en.wikipedia.org (or stop me if you hate this idea).
I will need a sub-description (it will be hidden for the most part) to seperate The Thing out from the film and everything else Thingy. Is this OK? (Net Art Project)
So please quickly read this and make any cuts or changes. Of course I or anyone can change the page after I create it - but the scrutiny will be very strict. Not that it won't be right away. BTW, what are the page #'s on TT in the Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.) “Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art”, Sternberg. 2010?
cheers Joseph Nechvatal
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
My 2 cents:
Has Archive.org been considered as a potential site for a the thing archive? I know Brewster and Rick to have a great range of interests. They don't have the circumscribed cultural interests of a MoMA and are located in SF, which has not really been a site of TT activities, but they have a great record of follow-through. I know nothing of their current finances.
Keith
On Jul 19, 2010, at 1:10 PM, Jerome Joy joy@thing.net wrote:
Dear all
Sorry I didn't read all your messages since one week, because of hectic days and a lot of current work, but while reading the subject and topic, maybe you could be interest in this : http://thing.nujus.net/
just an introduction :
I wrote this brief history after Summer'07 until Jan'08 because I pointed out we missed a "history" of The Thing, specially in France. I began some short investigations by probing my own archives but this requires now a serious exploration and edition. I stopped this article because of time's lack, but I began some online interviews with Wolfgang, Gh, Blackhawk... and asked for corrections.
The wiki thing.nujus.net is a basic one but sufficient for sharing edition. My idea is to propose you to share this publication and to add articles concerning The Thing. The process can be simple: only one psw for all thingists.... I can update the wiki system in order to have more features such as comments on articles, etc. It's hosted on nujus.net maintained by Gh and Peter Sinclair, and I guess Gh can do a nujus.net presentation (http://nujus.net/) on this list.
My two cents, briefly, concerning past, present, future TT :
- to publish online archives of The Thing (the main website -
articles, forums, etc.), and all the projects hosted on the servers) is more a work for archivists and specialists of net-art conservation. I guess that, after Summer'07, most of TT artists continued online works and had found another hosting server (that was my case). I know that some organizations are very interested in net- art archive, in a scientific framework (such as for instance, Fondation Langlois and DOCAM in Montreal, etc. Wolfgang has got contacts with some of them in Germany and Austria).
- the public access to TT archives is very important for art fields,
practices and research. We can't work without memory, even if the used medium is electronic and networked. The TT period ('91 to '07) corresponded mainly to static edition (websites, forums), and the current evolution goes since '00 to realtime activities and practices (but remember the Empire webcam by WS). For instance, my research and art domain concerns streaming, flux and Internet auditoriums (see Locus Sonus, http://locusonus.org/ and other projects I initiated : Collective JukeBox, nocinema.org, sobralasolas.org, picnic, etc.). The question of archive (or of recording/documentation) is at the core (even if we decide to avoid the question, it's still these), because we join also other art questions present for instance in the beginning of the XXth century (performances, radio, etc.), or in the 60s (live processes, etc.), or finally in the 80s/90s (live programming, intermedia, etc.). The Internet is a very nascent medium, and it's not disconnected from art history.
- Concerning the now, the questions about critical spaces, online
spaces for experimentation, etc. have moved since the TT period. The context is not the same. But these questions remain with little shifts because current techniques permit more appropriation and "tuning" than ten or twenty years ago. But the development of critical spaces is still required, maybe more today than yesterday.
- The question of future TT is based, on my viewpoint, on questions
concerning collective dynamics. TT was based on the practice of a community, even if this one wasn't orthodox. Does this (these) practice(s) is(are) today alive and pertinent ? What new collective forms and protocols can be common today ? A server ? a very large bandwith ? an activity map ? a common tag thru web 2.0, 3.0, etc. ? ...
So here are so brief notes, written on-the-fly but I promise, I'll read and post some feedbacks in reaction to your messages.... maybe I'll be able to develop in a next post, some ideas and sentences I swiftly wrote into this message...
And sorry for poor english...
best Jerome
:
thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
dear fellow thingists,
there have been numerous attempts already at archiving various THE THING activities.
number one, MoMA still has the box of ephemera (flyers, disks, posters, press releases, the classic thing baseball cap, etc.) that was given to barbara london about ten years ago on the occasion of the potential sale of http://old.thing.net to MoMA (a deal that collapsed after MoMA lawyers raised copyright issues - unlike rhizome i never bothered to secure rights from the artists). the box had been lost during their move to queens, but has recently re-surfaced.
number two, jerome joy, who runs the audio lab at villa arson in nice, started collecting snippets of history on the web and on mailing lists and put a web site together: A brief history of The Thing - '91 to '07 http://thing.nujus.net/index.php?page=The+Thing+History (this was a spontaneous individual initiative, so kudos to jerome!) it's by no means a comprehensive history, but an excellent starting point. and as if anticipating this discussion, jerome installed a wiki for the collection of more material which - as i understand it - now is open to everyone to contribute. maybe jerome can say something more about this: http://thing.nujus.net/
third, the ludwig boltzmann institute in linz, austria so far undertook the most comprehensive archiving endeavor: http://netpioneers.info/
the institute, which is headquartered in vienna, had a media art research branch in linz. the media art office was lead by art historians dieter daniels and gunther resinger and concerned itself with the preserving and archiving of early net art (which was then rightly seen as some sort of endangered species, because of the entropy inherent in on-line storage media). this effort folded when the media branch was shut down at the beginning of this year for reasons not entirely clear to me (most likely budgetary). gunther reisinger ported the project over to the university of graz and he continues to work with max kossatz (the original programmer) and walter palmetshofer on the restoration of bbs.thing.net (1997 - 2004). unfortunately this project is also way behind schedule. http://netpioneers.info/node/5
the original plan was to have an exhibition at the austrian cultural forum in nyc in february 2010 and in 2012 a larger exhibition of early net art at the lentos museum in linz. with the closing of the institute these projects were shelved. however, the book project, netpioneers 1.0, survived and was published this year by sternberg press. it's available in ny at the MoMA bookstore and the dieter daniels essay on the importance of "frameworks," multiple user platforms such as THE THING, is highly recommended.
gunther reisinger also took three large containers of documents from our filing cabinets and had them scanned and put into an on-line archive. unfortunately the reproductions are so small that they are virtually useless. i also would have liked to be involved in the prioritization and contextualization of the material (as far as i know, this was done by a young intern); at the moment i cannot make heads nor tails from it: http://netpioneers.info/node/17
so this is the state of the affair, it's not a pretty picture but not entirely hopeless either. lots of bits and pieces and loose ends floating around. there are no exclusive contracts (in my view the lbi contract is null and void, since they did not fulfill their obligations), so i am open to any suggestion. my inclination is to work with jerome joy's wiki and collect as much from the original members as possible (stories, documents, images etc) and this way create a source pool for a potential future thing publication. hopefully the bbs restoration will be completed this year and the on-line projects, video and audio works, the various mailing list archives will be available for the public once again.
number one, MoMA still has the box of ephemera (flyers, disks, posters, press releases, the classic thing baseball cap, etc.) that was given to barbara london about ten years ago (...)
Well, this should be returned ASAP!
number two, jerome joy, who runs the audio lab at villa arson in nice, started collecting snippets of history on the web and on mailing lists and put a web site together: A brief history of The Thing - '91 to '07 http://thing.nujus.net/index.php?page=The+Thing+History (this was a spontaneous individual initiative, so kudos to jerome!) it's by no means a comprehensive history, but an excellent starting point. and as if anticipating this discussion, jerome installed a wiki for the collection of more material which - as i understand it - now is open to everyone to contribute. maybe jerome can say something more about this: http://thing.nujus.net/
This is a joy to discover!! Needs to come out of the shadows, I think. Jerome, if you write (edit) a condensed version of this I will create a Wikipedia page from what you send me. Unless there is resistance to this idea. Of course this can be amended at any point.
gunther reisinger also took three large containers of documents from our filing cabinets and had them scanned and put into an on-line archive. unfortunately the reproductions are so small that they are virtually useless. i also would have liked to be involved in the prioritization and contextualization of the material (as far as i know, this was done by a young intern); at the moment i cannot make heads nor tails from it: http://netpioneers.info/node/17
A cruel joke. I just look a look - well not even a look as the images are ANTI RETINAL!This perhaps should be taken off the net and the material returned for a proper treatment (someday). I still think giving everything to a professional or university archive could/would mend all the blows against the empire and restore TT's sense of dignity. +Joseph _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PI...
joseph...so good!
i so second jerome's initiative and worry not whether it is letter for letter.
i guess i don't need to reiterate that i love all ideas and want a terrible mess of content!
(well i don't really love ALL ideas but all ideas realized are something-something...right?)
quite frankly we could begin to post these lovely dialogues (maybe not including my stupid interruptions) in a bbs style on the site...and already we have the start of process as product in keeping with the early thing.
and why not co-opt history, tongue-in-cheek, to inform the style of our methods today?
cheers, arfus
On Jul 20, 2010, at 10:37 AM, Joseph Nechvatal wrote:
number one, MoMA still has the box of ephemera (flyers, disks,
posters,
press releases, the classic thing baseball cap, etc.) that was
given to
barbara london about ten years ago (...)
Well, this should be returned ASAP!
number two, jerome joy, who runs the audio lab at villa arson in
nice,
started collecting snippets of history on the web and on mailing
lists
and put a web site together: A brief history of The Thing - '91 to
'07
http://thing.nujus.net/index.php?page=The+Thing+History (this was a spontaneous individual initiative, so kudos to jerome!) it's by no means a comprehensive history, but an excellent starting point. and as if anticipating this discussion, jerome installed a
wiki
for the collection of more material which - as i understand it -
now is
open to everyone to contribute. maybe jerome can say something more about this: http://thing.nujus.net/
This is a joy to discover!! Needs to come out of the shadows, I think.
Jerome, if you write (edit) a condensed version of this I will create a Wikipedia page from what you send me. Unless there is resistance to this idea. Of course this can be amended at any point.
gunther reisinger also took three large containers of documents
from our
filing cabinets and had them scanned and put into an on-line
archive.
unfortunately the reproductions are so small that they are virtually useless. i also would have liked to be involved in the
prioritization
and contextualization of the material (as far as i know, this was
done
by a young intern); at the moment i cannot make heads nor tails
from it:
A cruel joke. I just look a look - well not even a look as the images are ANTI RETINAL! This perhaps should be taken off the net and the material returned for a proper treatment (someday).
I still think giving everything to a professional or university archive could/would mend all the blows against the empire and restore TT's sense of dignity.
Joseph
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. Get busy._______________________________________________ thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist
Jerome, I totally forgot about your fantastic collection. That's a great base to work off from. How ironic... since the idea of an archive is to preserve knowledge - working against the forgetting. If we were archivist by profession, we would be characters from a Borges novel, who have to write themselves little notes reminding that 'the archive' already exists before we start all over from the scratch...
©
Thanks Caspar,
I guess I've got other archives on my hds, but the recollection requires more time and to take a period of work to achieve or to approach a reliable publication (weeks). And I guess it will be more simple when the whole TT archive (servers) will be online to recover information and documentation. As I said, our editing work, such as studies, essays and reports, will concern the enlightment of art aspects of the TT projects...
Le 21 juil. 10 à 16:43, Caspar Stracke a écrit :
Jerome, I totally forgot about your fantastic collection. That's a great base to work off from. How ironic... since the idea of an archive is to preserve knowledge - working against the forgetting. If we were archivist by profession, we would be characters from a Borges novel, who have to write themselves little notes reminding that 'the archive' already exists before we start all over from the scratch...
;-) I began this "brief history of TT" because I found nothing, except some quotes or comments.... at this time, after Summer'07.
©
If you are interested in, here are some documentation (archives) concerning homestudio.thing.net and jukebox.thing.net
http://jeromejoy.org/w/index.php?page=Homestudio.thing.net
the current informations about these projects, and other ones (lascaux2.info for instance, or forum hub which was on TT) are accessible from the frontpage. (Reminder : this website jeromejoy.org is currently under construction : I'm currently gathering all my archives)....
+ j
Le 20 juil. 10 à 16:37, Joseph Nechvatal a écrit :
This is a joy to discover!! Needs to come out of the shadows, I think.
Jerome, if you write (edit) a condensed version of this I will create a Wikipedia page from what you send me. Unless there is resistance to this idea. Of course this can be amended at any point.
I'm interested to translate it for the French Wikipedia. I know that one French editor (maybe in collaboration with another French one) could be interested in publishing a French book about TT history. Maybe the better idea is to do our collective work about editing (on the wiki for instance), and the final output could be published (in English, German and French, and .... according to the editors who are ready).
+ j
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arfus greenwood -
artcast artcast -
Caspar Stracke -
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James Allan -
Jerome Joy -
Jordan Crandall -
Joseph Nechvatal -
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Keith Sanborn -
Pedro Lasch -
susanne gerber -
w -
yasir ~يا سر -
z