Re: <eyebeam><blast> net criticism

[Sjoukje van der Meulen <sv103@columbia.edu>]

Some interesting voices were recently posted to the Eyebeam discussion:
from Matthew Slotover's eloquent defenses of Contemporary Art to Geert
Lovink's concern with some broader economic- and political issues and
Jordan Crandall's critique of Nettime and his insistance that the Net
should stop behaving as some alien remote space without any interaction
with the physical world. For the first time, I feel a need to react.

I am surprised that Geert Lovink drops again one of his favourite
manifesto-like texts in the Eybeam discussion, instead of some more
serious reflection on one of the topics discussed so far. From someone
who is so much concerned about Net criticism and Media theory, one would
expect a more sophisticated discussion of those 'academians with no
experience in the field of programming' who, as he says, determine the
digital field.

Actually, I would be in favour of discussing more academic theories on
platforms such as Eyebeam. How useful, for example, would be the work of
Barthes and Derrida as a starting point for analysing hypertext? What is
the importance of Deleuze & Guattari's influential idea of the rhizome
as a philosophical framework for the web? And, last but not least, what
is the worth for web discussions of the dialectic legacy of Adorno in
the field of esthetics within the social/political field? It seems quite
relevant, especially in relation to the Net, to explore these theories
more in depth. Can't we stop thinking that we've to invent the wheel
completely? 

Although I am not 'constantly surprised by how efficient the artmarket
is in getting the cream on the top', I do agree with Matthew that the
artworld functions quite well. It is rather art on the Net that is,
somehow, still disfunctional. The question why, has turned out to be a
fundamental one.




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