GAM3R 7H30RY

My favorite passage on Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark states:

"Ever get the feeling you are playing some vast and useless game to which you don’t know the goal, and can’t remember the rules? Ever get the fierce desire to quit, to resign, to forfeit, only to discover there’s no umpire, no referee, no regulator, to whom to announce your capitulation? Ever get the vague dread that while you have no choice but to play the game, you can’t win it, can’t even know the score, or who keeps it? Ever suspect that you don’t even know who your real opponent might be? Ever get mad over the obvious fact that the dice are loaded, the deck stacked, the table rigged, and the fix – in? Welcome to gamespace. It’s everywhere, this atopian arena, this speculation sport. No pain no gain. No guts no glory. Give it your best shot. There’s no second place. Winner take all. Here’s a heads up: In gamespace, even if you know the deal, consider yourself a player, and at least for this round have got game, you will notice, all the same, that the game has got you. Welcome to the thunderdome. Welcome to the terrordome. Welcome to the greatest game of all. Welcome to the playoffs, the big league, the masters, the only game in town. You are a gamer whether you like it or not, now that we all live in a gamespace that is everywhere and nowhere. As Microsoft says: Where do you want to go today? You can go anywhere you want in gamespace but never leave it."

It was slide # 24 in Agony.

I like the way Wark started the narrative with a hypothetical situation and made the reader identify as Gamer by the end. As I was reading the beginning of the passage, I kept thinking to myself that our lives are a game. Also prior to reading the article, I considered a gamer to someone who play Call of Duty and Halo 3 religiously. I like the relationship that Wark pointed out about the game ending by dying or losing all your points. In real life, you may lose all your points or your weapons, but you can't just quit the game. As a gamer, you might also feel this way. By dropping your weapon, or crashing your car you might have "lost" but as a gamer you continue on to complete the game.

The Electronic Distubance Theater

I realize that the people writing these articles are very well educated and have a lot to say, but it sure makes these readings tough to understand!

I do think that if an artist is passionate about electronic art or public art they should participate as an activist. I think that if someone truly feels strongly about anything they should be an activist. I decided to look up activist through wikipedia. Wikipedia says, "In some cases, activism has nothing to do with protest or confrontation: for instance, some religious, feminist, or vegetarian/vegan activists try to persuade people to change their behavior directly, rather than persuade governments to change laws. The cooperative movement seeks to build new institutions which conform to cooperative principles, and generally does not lobby or protest politically." A true activist shouldn't PERSUADE people, I think they should voice their opinions for change.

This definition of activism:
"A person who believes in or particiaptes in direct action to make changes in government or social conditions by campaigning in public or working" (google.com)
is a much better depiction of activists...

Cyborg by Donna Haraway

Today in class we had a discussion about the cyborg. The cyborg is anything that is part mechanical and part human. I think I am going to expand on the idea that one of my classmates brought up. In recent years, new technology has given humans the opportunity to use machines for medical advances. Having machines and robots do the surgeries and tasks that only humans could once do, is something that seemed completely fictional. "Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert."

I disagree with Hawaway in wanting to a cyborg rather than a goddess. I also am confused on her statement, "It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." A cybrog is just a "cybernetic organism". It is controlled solely by technology, while my definition of a goddess, would be an immortal being that is and has all sorts of power. I also think a goddess is glorified and almost praised. Is that asking too much!? I think the class was right... who wouldn't want to be a goddess!?

Oh ya... I wanted to address the question of why we chose art as our major.

Originally, I came into college thinking that I wanted to be a IPHY major. Then, I was convinced I wanted to be graphic designer. Come to find out, CU doesn't have graphic design as a major, BUT I could supplement for a graphic design major by doing studio art and ATLAS. As I began th ATLAS program, I learned that by combining this certificate and a studio major that it still isn't as similar to graphic design as I had been advised. Well... it's close enough, and during this frustrating process of not exactly knowing what I wanted to do... I figured it out. I think a lot of a college education is finding out what is right for you, as well as finding yourself. By taking different studios and other art and art history classes and I have really found a desire to be a working artist. Not only is it fun, I can channel my creativity.

I realize this is somewhat irrelevant, but our class got me thinking...

Deluze and Guattari - February 8, 2008

This article was over my head! This is what I got...

The rhizome that D & G refer to is a linked/never-ending amount of information of the web that has no beginning or end. This article applies to the web, because in a way the web is similar to the rhizome. You can get completely lost navigating through the web. A good example of this is facebook or myspace. As creepy as I think both of these sites are, I have pages. I have found my self logging on (which would be the beginning, disagreeing with the Rhizome) but then going from page to page or person to person, often clicking on people that I don't even know! Another example of this is on iTunes. I will be looking for a specific artist or CD and I find myself listening to the artists they suggest (if you like this.. then you will like this...) and I end up getting lost in process and forgetting the reason I even logged into the iTunes store.
I just ventured off from the the main topic or discussion questions from the assigned reading, but yet that again could be similar to the rhizome, or it could just be that I simply got lost in the difficult reading!!

Database as a Genre of New Media by Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich thinks that it is important to discuss databases because they are so abundant in our lives. As explained in the article, "the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database". The world wide web is simply a collection of databases, like flickr and any search engine (i.e, google, yahoo). These search engines navigate you to other databases that in turn have even more links, that link to other databases.
The problem with a narrative a narrative is that a database is not a story or a linear progression, it is a collection of material (Manovich).
I am going to go out on a limb and say that every website that contained art that we have looked at in class has been apart of a database. I think that a website, as long as it has any sort of link or collection of information could be considered a database.
If a website has only a linear way of navagation, without choice by the audience then it could be considered a narrative and a database. The only problem with that is the back button on the top of web browsers gives that option to venture backwards. This wouldn't happen if you were reading a book.... but I guess you could filp the back the pages and re-read parts... soooooo basically that's hard to say.
I think certain computer games can be narratives, like ones that you need to beat each level to conquer a a final villain or level. The article uses Tetris, which is a video game, as an example of a algorithm rather than a narrative.

January 27, 2007

The first time I read The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin, I had a hard time staying focused but got a good idea of the reading. Then, I printed off the discussion questions and went back through the assignment and got a much stronger understanding of what Benjamin was trying to say. His main points included; reproduction of art, specific mediums that are considered art, as well as how the working class or "proletariat" are related to capitalism and their expression/interpretation of art.

Benjamin describes Marxism as a prognostic understanding of capitalism in its infancy to present the way that capitalism could be in the future. Benjamin explains that there is a chance that the working class could eventually make it a possibility for the conditions to be so bad that capitalism is erased.
Over the years the idea of reproduction has had a very large impact of the public. In the reading, Benjamin says that it lacks presence of time and space. To this, I agree just as much as I disagree. I do believe that art has been changed due to the reproduction or art, but it is now much more easily viewed and shared. It does in fact lose the idea of space, and possibly even time, but it has created multiple new mediums (i.e., Printmaking, Photography).
Whether or not photography is an art form is certainly futile because whether or not its actually an art form, it "captures images that rscape natural vision" and "can make copies out of reach for the original". Further in the article, Dada is discussed. There are many art forms that can be absorbed into states of distraction, those being film, paintings and even poetry. Dada was a movement that followed WWI and was almost said to simply "outrage the public".
The reading was extensive but very interesting and it encouraged me to look up many things that I was unsure about. I wanted to find a specific relationship between Fascism and art. I have decided that public contemporary art is very related to Benjamin's idea of Fascism and art. "Fascism sees its salvation in giving the masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves." Digital Art is also directly correlated to this because it gives the audience a chance to give the "people expression while preserving property".

Interviews with Josephine Bosma

The two interviews that I read with Josephine Bosma were with Net Artists Cary Peppermint and Peter Luining. Because the interviews seem to have been e-mailed to the artists the questions were the same for each artist.

Cary Peppermint answered Bosma's very literal, straight-forward questions by beating around the bush. "How do you feel about physical exhibitions of net art in general?" was Bosma's first question. Peppermint started by answering as explaining internet as an "effective medium" but after saying that, his response to the question of physical exhibitions went off on a serious tangent. I felt Peppermint's answers were almost too flowery, especially in comparison to the next interview I read with Peter Luining.

Luining's responses were much more to the point, but not very expressive. I enjoyed reading that he understood the relationship between extending work into physical space and the one to one ration that you get when it is solely the viewer and the web browser.

I think that both artists were vague about their experimental set up. I would have liked to see more detailed or more experimental ideas. This question to me, was looking for fun, more responsive answers.