RE: Talan Memmott

It’s something about the discordant piano, the horror-movie background noise (a sort of red-death waltz chamber in a vacuum), the face looking like Scrooge’s dead friend Jacob Marley, and the ghostly text—popping up across the screen at a rate that seems faster than it actually is—that has me trying to remember is Hugo Ball ever seemed this strange when I read his work years ago. Wait. Go back.

I’m researching Talan Memmott, internet artist and creator of “The Hugo Ball,” a piece of flash animation that combines all of the words from Ball’s sound poem Gadji Beri Bimba in a random remix. For those who don’t know, Hugo Ball was a Dadaist artist and poet. If you don’t know what Dadaism is, you’re hopeless. Seriously, though, you ought to know. Back to the subject at hand. Hugo Ball achieved poetic fame for writing a series of “sound poems,” poems that featured made up words and no discernible grammar. As such, these poems relied upon performance and interpretation (i.e. creative liberty with regard to inflection and speech).

Playing off of some of the tenets of Dadaism, Memmott’s piece relies on collage. The Hugo Ball reconfigures the words of Gadji Beri Bimba into new structures, juxtaposing words off of one another and injecting pauses at random. The pace of the speaker (as stated above, a sort of Jacob Marley stuck in a mirror/crystal ball) is feverish and quick. The pauses are most certainly random. The speaker’s face contorts rapidly, most likely assigned a different posture for each word or each syllable. The piece, then, is truly a collage of what it is to perform something like a sound poem.

My initial reaction to the piece is one of puzzlement. The theme the piece evokes is a hard-to-place brooding and haunting. The piece haunts you, but I can’t help but feel that it misses the point. Wait. I’m uncertain because the piece so deftly distills Ball’s conception of the collage into a piece of net art, but it subverts this by having the same exact performance of each “sound word” every time. In other words, the configuration of the poem itself is different each and every time, but the way they’re pronounced remains the same, simultaneously injecting spontaneity into the piece while negating it. One must, of course, entertain the idea that Memmott simply did not have the tools at his disposal to create several individual pronunciations of each word, in which case the aforementioned complaint would be null.

In some ways, I can’t help but feel that Memmott’s piece mocks the originator. Dadaists attempted to reject form in place of spontaneity, yet Ball’s Gadji Beri Bimba rests on the page in a static position and Memmott’s random generator, The Hugo Ball, both calls attention to its static source text while commodifying (i.e. ROLL OVER TO HEAR A PERSONAL RECITATION OF GADJI BERI BIMBA) the one element (the performance) that made/makes each version of Gadji Beri Bimba unique. Regardless, Memmott’s piece only mocks Ball slightly. One could make the case that it actually picks up where Ball left off; it further subverts any sort of stylistic “form” by creating a random arrangement of Gadji Beri Bimba and thus implements technology in a way that reinvigorates some of the loftier ideals (i.e. elimination of form, pure spontaneity, pure chance) of the Dadaists from a technological approach.

Anyway, this has been one of the most scatter-shot blogs I’ve written all semester. I’ll continue to mull this piece over and come back and edit or refine some of the musings that you’ve stumbled upon.

For those only (for now) casually interested in The Hugo Ball, here are some caps to whet your interest:

RE: net.art

So, there are a million things that can be said about net.art, but for the sake of expediency, let’s start with answering some questions with regard to the net.art. The first question that we’ll consider is seemingly simple: what is net.art? I think a simple definition (one that will undoubtedly be subjected to my own scrutiny and revision as the semester goes on) is a piece of work developed with the intention of dissemination and placement in the context of the Internet. As such, net.art relies entirely upon the Internet as a medium to exist. Therefore, a photograph of the Mona Lisa is not net.art, but is, rather, art on the net. Also, the art itself may deal with themes that are both web-bound and non-web-bound.

That said, the two questions that were asked after this first question become slightly irrelevant. If the net.art fulfills the criteria I’ve stated, it can still be displayed in a museum—though, the net.art manifesto might disapprove of this—the Internet or anywhere else that is possible. As such, the places where one can find net.art are similarly only limited by publicity, placement in places such as museums (or not), and other social factors. It seems, though, that the most natural place for a piece of net.art would be on the Internet where individuals using a home/work/whatever computer can access it.

On to the introduction to net.art reading. Some sections seem incredibly ambitious and others seem very prophetic. The first quote that I’ll pull from the introduction lists this as a specific feature of net.art:

Vanishing boundaries between public and private.

This seems very true and is currently being grappled with by artists from media not exclusive to net.art. Net artists, however, do have an obligation to consider whether their art ought to be made public or private. This facet raises some interesting questions about the very nature of net.art. If a work of net.art is made private (i.e. shown only in a gallery, despite existing at an undisclosed location on the web), is it still net.art? Does net.art depend upon a “public” level of accessibility? I would think this violates my criteria for what net.art is and would, therefore, still be considered net.art. However, this would violate one of the tenets of this introduction to net.art, so this was, at least, being considered and interrogated from the very conception of net.art.

The second quote, which I’ve pulled from the introduction, lists this as a specific feature of net.art:

[The] disintegration and mutation of artist, curator, pen-pal, audience, gallery, theorist, art-collector, and museum.

As we know, this hasn’t happened—at least not to my knowledge. There exists still in net.art the desire to have works recognized, written about (theoretically or otherwise), and it appears that distinguished digital-art websites (i.e. Rhizome, Turbulence) have taken the place of the museum with regard to net.art. So, disintegration no; mutation, yes.

Finally, let’s take a look at some questions raised by my tooling around with some early (and not-so-early) works of net.art. The first question that came to my mind while I was perusing these old “galleries” was: What happens to the art when the link no longer works? It seems as if the writers of the net.art manifesto foresaw the role things like bandwidth would play with regard to distribution and publicity, but it also seems as though they didn’t adequately prepare for the repercussions of things like broken links, a lack of server space, and improperly backed-up data. Coming across a repository of user-generated anecdotes and stories relating to “happier days,” I was saddened to see that the data was lost somewhere. Other times, the “art” (be it algorithm based or otherwise) would yield things like this:




Or this, the dreaded “404”:




One of the pieces that interested me most was a newly begun piece called “FUJI” (from the Turbulence website). It was of particular interest to me because of the break it signified between older, Web 1.0 works of net.art, and newer Web 2.0 works of art. Whereas the latter seemed entrenched in asking questions like, “what is the self in the digital realm? what is being in the digital realm? etc.” the newer works of net.art I encountered were more interested in playing with and investigating artifacts of the Internet age. Thus, FUJI is a project that melds a year’s worth of webcam images of Mount Fuji (culled from several webcams) together to create a sort of time-lapse.

This, however, by no means de-values the earlier works of net.art, but merely places them in their historical context. And, if anything, it validates the earlier works of net.art by signifying that, perhaps, those works elucidated the sorts of philosophic themes they were plumbing. And, of course, this is only based on a very brief, cursory survey of early net.art., so I am no doubt making broad generalizations.

Here are some pictures of FUJI:

RE: Digital Narratives

On to digital narratives. Of the five digital narratives that I read/experienced/navigated/etc. I found Six Sex Scenes and DAKOTA to be the most interesting to me; more on that later. The initial question that seems to need addressing with regard to these narratives is to their “conceptual framework.” Works like Six Sex Scenes seem to mimic the cognitive semantic map. In other words, the use of hypertext links allow for the user to navigate through the thoughts and intentions of the author in much the same way that the author would remember these events happening. In that regard, the conceptual framework of the pieces themselves is analogous to Bush’s concept of the “memex.” Rather than being scientifically-rooted (that is, they are not meant specifically for researching), these narratives are personal, autobiographical, and experiential. Works like Six Sex Scenes appear—whether artificially or not—to be autobiography, whereas works like DISTANCE (which asks, “Is technology a veil?”) try to represent—through narrative—the way in which the author has tried to navigate her own experience to long-distance, communication-based media. So, these digital narratives are capable of being autobiography and a great deal more.

Because these digital narratives run the gamut from autobiography to translation—or distillation—of experience, a question is begged of the reader: are these events really non-fiction? In other words, are these true experiences? In my experience, this question has been put to rest in the world of non-fiction. Currently, whether an expression/outshoot/love of postmodernism or not, I encounter people who have no problems with the embellishment that occurs when someone tries to write non-fiction. I believe that the lines between fiction and non-fiction are eroding and that there is no such thing as objectivity. On a tangent, if there were such a thing as objectivity, it would present itself in an incredibly fascistic manner to the writer of non-fiction; it would dictate their writing to a paralyzing degree.

That said, I see this play between fiction and non-fiction (which is most apparent in MY BODY, Six Sex Scenes, and DISTANCE) as a natural artistic offshoot of Internet phenomena like Wikipedia (or, perhaps, the other way around, as I believe many of these narratives pre-date Wikipedia). Such a website asserts that there is an “absolute truth” that can be achieved through labor and scholarship (the collective efforts of those people who wish to see “truth” achieved); in doing so, Wikipedia commodifies “truth.” What these artists do, then, is distort this premise by embracing subjectivity in their work (whether it be the hyperbolic, break-neck dialogue/monologue of DAKOTA or the fantastic, sensual writing in MY BODY) and thus allow their work to more closely represent “reality.” I think a better articulation is to say this: these artists embrace fiction in a way that makes their non-fiction works even more so. While the artists “manipulate their data,” they do so in a way undoubtedly reflects their relation to reality and thus achieves a closer approximation of their experience or narrative. Because these narratives are intentionally digital, Laporta’s question, “Is the virtual, real?” is especially relevant. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer; I equivocate.

Finally, there is one more aspect that I would like to touch upon. In redridinghood, I stumbled upon the artist’s “thesis.” It reads:

Does point and click interactivity destroy the story?

I think, to a certain degree, that it does. Take this hypothetical: someone is navigating redridinghood. They get to the point in the story where they are “supposed” to click on the correct window to further the story. This person, however, clicks every window but the correct window and gives up. The story, for this user, has effectively been destroyed (unless you want to make the case that this is the story, bold one).

Therefore, do the other texts we’ve read destroy or pervert the narrative? If I missed a piece of MY BODY, did I miss the point? I would think the artist who works with digital narratives intends for the user’s navigation to dictate the story, but works like DAKOTA show an artist who does not wish for the reader/viewer to control the flow and temporality of the piece. Thus, there appears to be conflict between whether the user should be allowed—or not—to dictate the movement of the piece.

Thoughts/Responses to Benjamin/Bush

So, bling-bling blogging, eh? First, I would like to explain a basic equation with regard to my comprehension of dense, philosophic and theoretical texts. Upon first reading, I, on average, understand about 50% of said texts. This comprehension decreases exponentially with each concurrent reading. Therefore, first reading is 50%, second is 75%, third is 87.5%, and so on. Such an equation is convenient because it never assumes total comprehension. Rather, it is impossible. That said, I’ll be talking about Benjamin and Bush.

Two sections were of immediate interest to me with regard to this course. The first section pertains to Benjamin’s concept of the aura:

The cult of rememberance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the expression of a fleeting face.

If I understand this passage correctly, Benjamin seems to assert that, when photography was in its infancy and being used for only such stated things, it was still capable of maintaining an aura. As if somehow perverted by its move from individual, cult-like (by which he means attached to ritual and animalistic values) use, photography became incapable of maintaining an aura the moment it became [re]appropriated for showing objects in things like picture magazines.

Interesting, here, is what to make of such an assumption. Having little background in photography, I can only assume that those people invested in photography would find such a treatment as overly harsh. After all, I do believe we’re interpreting the aura as a “good” concept (i.e. artists would like for their works to have an aura). It would seem to me that Baudrillard would be a likely next-step in trying to reconcile the aura and works of art that are technically reproduced.

The second passage that I would like to address involves Benjamin’s treatment of the way in which Séverin-Mars describes the state of film and its artistic possibilities. On this, Benjamin says:

It is instructive to note how their desire to class the film among the “arts” forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it—with a striking lack of discretion. Yet when these speculations were published, films like L’Opinion publique and The Gold Rush had already appeared. This, however, did not keep[…]Séverin-Mars from speaking of the film as one might speak of paintings by Fra Angelico.

This passage is especially poignant for me, as I have little background to digital art. The passage, then, instructs me to be especially cognizant of the language and approaches that I will take when trying to describe and talk about digital art. In other words, do we talk about digital art as though it were a mere website, an image on a screen, long-winding strings of code—or, further, ones and zeroes? Or, perhaps, am I losing the aura—if it can, in fact, exist in digital art—for the medium?

On the Bush article (which is remarkably prophetic), there were again two passages that I found of particular interest. The first begins:

Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process of modification and extension.

While rather obvious, I find this of importance because it shows the way in which Bush sees information going beyond the written word. Later on, he implies a synthesis between all media that seems to assume the advent of the internet. In relation to digital art, I see Bush’s prediction of “modification and extension” as an anticipation of digital art that instructs through its indexed nature.

The other passage of particular interest to me came toward the end of Bush’s article. It goes:

Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass.

While my original response to this idea was, “yes, with the internet, we index things arbitrarily,” only to be disproven by Bush’s concept of a more semantically-mapped, semantically-dependent index. After all, the algorithms that Google uses (as I understand them) are dependent upon the users search data and website-accessing patterns. That Bush would have guessed the framework of the most popular search engine is incredible. Furthering this is the idea of the browser, wherein the user can chronologically map their relationship to data and websites over the time that they’ve used that browser.

Certainly over the word-limit, I’ll conclude this broadcast day here.