[iDC] interesting article on new media scene in LA
john sobol
john at johnsobol.com
Mon Oct 31 10:29:36 EST 2005
This has been a very interesting thread...
I'd like to redirect it away from the recent cali-centric focus and
back to a point made a couple posts ago, which concluded...
On 29-Oct-05, at 9:46 PM, Anna Munster wrote:
> The art is the thing that is used to sell this military
> model as a public imagining/imaginary.
I found this to be a very provocative statement. I have taken it out of
its original context – which I believe had to do with the militaristic
control and colonization of research in partnerships between public and
private sectors in Australia – because it suggests a larger reality
worth considering.
What it suggests to me is the scary possibility that these words might
apply to the 'public imagining/imaginary' of the Internet as a whole;
the possibility that artists embody the best dreams of technological
possibility even in their critiques of technology, and in so doing
distract everyone else from literate capitalist agendas designed to
limit meaningful popular participation in digital culture through
legislation of networks, copyright, patents, standards, treaties and
more.
This is obviously not the complete picture. At our best we transcend
the compromises and obstacles we face as artists to transform our
communities. In fact, it stands as a kind of mirror showing what we
should not be. But it's also a possibility I haven't quite been able to
dismiss. For me it's given rise to such questions as: what kind of
politicized new media art resists those institutional manipulations
today, in SoCal or anywhere else? Not just intellectually but directly,
viscerally, constructively? And what are we (politically-conscious
artists) resisting anyway? What are the greatest stumbling blocks to
the further realization of the 'public imagining/imaginary' via new
media technologies?
I know these are not new questions but the answers are, I think, always
changing and always relevant. I'm interested in any responses that
point to specific dynamics or works that explicitly address and
reconfigure technological politics. Of course, some answers are
obvious, but no doubt many others are less so.
Happy Hallow'en.
John Sobol
--
NEW Samhain mp3s 2005
www.johnsobol.com
bluesology • printopolis • digitopia
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