[thingist] A resurrection?

[Pall Thayer]

Hi People,
I've just subscribed to the thingist list (again) to which I was  
subscribed a long time ago until it went more or less silent.

Looking through recent posts, I see that there is some sort of a  
resurrection attempt going on. I'm wondering, who are you people? It  
appears to me that there's a very small group subscribed and that you  
are somehow linked together through other connections (besides the  
list).

I'll introduce myself:

My name is Pall Thayer. I'm an Icelandic artist that has been  
involved in the new media scene for some time. If I had to pin my  
beginning to an exact year it would have to be 1997. The work I do  
has evolved quite a bit over the years from focusing on interactive  
audio-visual web-based systems in a sort of abstract painting sense,  
to more visual aggregation systems that follow the same abstract  
ideology and finally to where I am now which is presenting the code  
for small conceptual works that may or may not be visual or audible  
or networked or whatever (you can see these at http://pallit.lhi.is/ 
microcodes and previous work can be seen at http://www.this.is/ 
pallit). Although I've been more active in festivals and exhibitions  
in Europe, I've also exhibited my work in the US and Canada and did  
my MFA in Montreal. But since the computer-based new media scene here  
in Iceland is rather small (very small), I have relied on online  
networks over the years to keep in touch with new media communities.  
This has become increasingly difficult in more recent years as the  
way in which people use the internet has changed so much. In my  
opinion, mailing lists have proven themselves to be the best way to  
share work and ideas but they've been losing to the social websites  
like Facebook and Twitter. It's a bit difficult to share deep  
conceptual philosophies in 140 characters or less. There are still a  
couple of mailing lists like Netbehaviour which I find tends to lean  
a bit too far towards activism for my tastes, and Rhizome which...  
well... has really been going downhill for the past 4 or 5 years and  
finally hit rock-bottom over the last couple of months (especially  
since it's been non-functional for over a month now).

So I'm going to try hanging out here for a while and see how I like it.

Best regards,
Pall Thayer