Mafalda
Monday, April 04, 2005
seems I've been remiss in posting.
some people are so unreliable, don't you think?
no fantastic insights from here - other than - as most of the world - my life has been thrown into utter confusion -
the Pope is dead -
Where is my moral compass?
One news caster asked - or read - in earnest - should we stop our going to work for the day?
Good question.
I was immediately brought to mind of the deep media questioning that arose for us time and time again in the years after 9/11 and I really expected him to say - we should go out and shop in order that the Devil not 'win' the day.
Unfortunately, I changed the channel - yet again proving - the wisdom is there - sitting at the fingertips of an outstretched media palm but the short attention span of an American audience always misses enlightenment through the proverbial 'blink' of the channel changer.
(This message was brought to you by yet another Yarn of the Curmudgeon Gypsy Song of Despair)
(through some internal private investigation, there are allegations that the above report might have been submitted illegally by Witness Protection Program ID # 24 BananaBug)
As always - review is encouraged:
entertained ?
bored ?
wouldn't read past sentence two if this wasn't a good friend ?
someone paid me to read this and comment ?
really, who ?
will they pay me to write it ?
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
thought I'd pass along some of the sites - La Feminista - exposed me to last night:
BlackNetArt
Teleportacia
yhchang
transmissionarts
If you are only interested in one - I'd check out BlackNetArt and then look up his piece Blackness for Sale - this is the guy who auctioned his 'blackness' on e-bay.
Teleportacia is this very cool Russian woman artist who does a number of interesting things - one of them being will.teleportacia.org where she posts her will online - leaving not only her artwork but certain items that cannot really be quantified.
Chang is very interesting - or, at least, I thought so.
and Rhizome is the 'official' art magazine for internet art. Actually looks pretty interesting. Particularly when you think this art form has been around for all of ten years.
OK - you, two, are going to love this.
I went to this lecture last night - History of Internet Art - given by the director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NY (a museum I happen to like that has indulgent but good quality shows in my opinion - ie from interesting 2 D work to the huge machine that took up an entire room which basically 'ate, digested, and shit' three meals we might eat a day. (Actually three meals we would be lucky to eat.)(Installed at the same time we were bombing Afghanistan, so it was a little bizarre to pay $12 to watch a machine enzymatically breaking down food and remember what was happening outside).
I digress, of course.
So this woman gave this lecture.
I liked her immediately. Could tell she was very intelligent. Knew what she was talking about.
Unfortunatley, really was one of the poorest public speakers I have ever seen.
Uhhmm, was literally every third word and was the most emphasized word in every fragment of speech.
It was excruciating to sit and listen to her.
But the funniest thing was after just about an hour of circling all over a general overview of conceptual art from Dadaism to the 60's and then Internet art in the 80's through 2000, she realized she was out of time.
So she said she must cover something before she left.
The entire talk was also on powerpoint and hooked up to the internet so we've been jumping to sites to see examples of what she's talking about - all very interesting - if a little too random and rapid (I guess her side commentary on the internet).
So - the feminist site:
(shit, I didn't write it down)
she went to this site called Bindi and tried to pull it up. Had a bit of a problem loading it.
Then launched into how important this was to show us because often people accuse her of not representing feminist internet artists or feminist issues.
She paused and looked at us - and shared the 'look' - those 'people' are clearly ridiculous, right?
I hadn't really thought about it - mostly because I was off in my own little world thinking about the issues of art - Art - internet - audience - activism, etc
but now that she had drawn my attention to it - and from what I had seen through this lecture series before - there could have been a much more diverse overview of the conceptual and internet art periods she covered that actually included women - she hadn't actually included one, single woman.
Interesting.
So, she continued, this is my token piece to feminism.
Well, she didn't say token - but she did say, 'I included this so no one would go home tonight and blog that I haven't included a feminist piece.'
(Need I say more - I knew at that moment I would be reaching out to my huge interactive audience of two to four people).
So the site finally loads - and she says - this is really clever - Bindi is this woman's avatar and also a play on a Hindu diety. She's running a fake porno service here - see how clever it is.
We watch this for about two and a half minutes and then she continues on with the 'real' lecture.
This whole experience was fascinating - not in the least of which because it was so unexpected - and so strange - surely this woman - even though she is a poor speaker - has to do this kind of thing a lot - what was her hope?
To placate the irrate woman who approached her at the last lecture and snapped that she would 'blog' about what an antifemist this speaker is?
I'll post next time some of the interesting links the speaker did give.
And to follow up from the last posting - I agree - there is a strong sense and, in my opinion, erotic excitment, of 'getting' the scoop.
And I think there are few areas in adulthood that mirror the 'sandbox'. In retrospect, the sandbox seems like a place where we might not have really known many of the kids we were playing next to but we invested our emotions and energies into games that were important for those seconds or hour or that day.
I'm not sure if it is the medium or just the novelty of the internet that allows for that kind of rise internally.
Because as I continue to use it and it becomes a tool I 'have to use all the time' - that pleasure has been drained from the experience.
I love narcotics - so funny.
For me, I would have to say - it's the stimulants. Superfastdays and narkynight, if you please.
And I so please.
Monday, February 28, 2005
I'll pick up slightly from my last response to Shamus here -
I'm fascinated by these dynamics these days because of trying to design a product that would keep a user coming back over and over.
Blogging seems like such a complicated social environment - in my last post, I guess I was just throwing something out there to see if anyone wanted to discuss it.
The hoped-for interactivity that the cyber experience promises is the biggest draw for me.
When I blogged often - it was really to read and respond to the comment boxes.
Probably because for me, the comment boxes felt like more direct social intereaction - which was what I was asking from this medium despite its binary, flat, 'never offering a hug or giggle' nature.
And that's why even though I enjoy it, it quickly disappointed me - it was not socially satisfying.
But the social need remains.
So I am a reluctant repeat customer.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
very informal question:
I was wondering if you had any thoughts on what might be part of our "excitment/arousment" response with links.
Right away, you might be saying - what the hell - she is fucked.
But I am really asking -
so -
it seems to me there is a kind of very 'basic' emotional sense of pride or satisfaction that hovers around posting a link that one thinks one is posting ahead of one's peers - and especially in front of any people we would like to look cool.
I was wondering if you had any thoughts on possible motives.
For example:
my initial suggestions would be:
it kind of mirrors our regular 'physical' social patterns, in the sense, that we've found a way to interact and maintain tabs on a loose hierarchy (that has to be constantly maintained by its players) of social importance.
a kind of 'discovery baseball' phenomenon where instead of 'trading baseball cards' we are kind of triumphantly holding up a link that other people do actually think is interesting and we have the satisfaction of 'having done it first' (power)
Obviously, also 'sharing' but maybe it is my cynical side that I don't see this as a primary motivation.
Although - 'sense of genuine contact' would be, in my opinion.
Thoughts - other than - obviously I need to take a break from the computer and have some fun.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Ok - finally got a few minutes to read this article on smallpox vs. plague.
I think this argument (and probably research) is just as interesting.
What I found interesting was the temporal relationship between a devestating health situation over half a millenium ago and an immunity to a health problem now.
The statistics they site with AIDS and with European descendents are the same as the research I've found elsewhere tying these common immunities to the plague.
That it might turn out to be smallpox, instead, seems viable.
Their methods of specimen gathering and preservation (as well documentation of contanimation) is understandably horrid.
The only thing I found puzzling in their write up was - they claimed to have run tests on mice with the plague and felt conclusively that because the mice got sick and died, this immunity could not have a relationship to the plague.
But this seems like a weak experiment.
First of all, there are many mutations of plague - so how do the scientists know they have conducted a critical mass study?
obviously, this postulate does not need to include the idea that the person is immune to all plague, or all smallpox, or all strains of AIDS - that would be ridiculous - so it is not enough to prove that some disprove the theory in order to make it invalid.
what is the relationship between understanding the form of the disease then and it now - so when we inject a mouse with a contemporary version of the plague, how far genetically removed is that from our 14th century counterpart living on a flea?
I know.
I have a sense - that only Shamus and I (and possibly a mystery 'Biologically Inclined' Person Jane) are amusing ourselves with this discussion.
But I guess that's the nature of blogs.
Maybe soon, I'll be pulled over to the fascinating world of recirculated air and dust. Just what is the percentage of dust in our apartments and homes that is dead skin particles floating about?
Thoughts from the sandbox.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
sorry - I just realized I should respond to doubting Shamus on the blog rather than the comment.
Basically, these French scientists noticed that they were finding a small group of people who were immune to AIDS. Obviously, they haven't figured out why.
But in the numerous tests they ran on this, they figured out that there were genetic relationships between these people and people who had been exposed to the plague in the Middle Ages and survived it.
This is also not as random as you and I might think - because comparasions to other devestating health catastrophes would be a natural course of inquiry.
Still, I think this whole generational 'genetic relationship of immunity' is impressive and thought provoking - not quite like watching a bullet bounce off of a tissue (statistical possibility in quantum mechanics) but certainly not the most expected result.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Oh, an audience.
Fantastic.
I thought this was also very interesting and have confirmed it with a number of people.
If a person is Caucasoid and has a relative who was exposed to the plague in the 1300s and survived - a relative that not just survived the plague but was exposed and survived - that person cannot get AIDS today.
Bizarre, no?
