<eyebeam><blast> ONLY QUESTIONS.6

[Eve Andree Laramee <wander@earthlink.net>]

ONLY QUESTIONS.6
March 10 - March 29, 1998
195 New questions asked
698 total questions asked in 58 days

503. Any thoughts on what happens to the behavior of those using
distance technologies when they are not online?
504. Do they/we begin to experience themselves/ourselves differently and
so begin to act differently in our immediate setting?
505. How do you understand the relevance of philosophical concepts of
"distance" to decisions about design or style in work prepared for
electronic distribution?
506. Now again the question is: what kind of world do you want to
inhabit?
507. Wouldn't you say we've been living in an attention economy to some
degree at least since the 60s, when TV became the dominant force it is
today, and very possibly earlier, taking movies into account?
508. Also, isn't it worth distinguishing between different kinds of
attention (Benjamin's "Work Of Art in the Age..." being one obvious
reference point)?
509. Isn't that precisely a market-based model?
510. Do we need to agree on the latest postion of gender theory with
women who have been introduced to feminism in 1991?
511. Is the net -are we- ready to do something about these kind of
things?
512. Is this one of the cross-platforms that somehow helped to
coordinate the diverging terms of discourse -- the different languages,
positions, and histories?
513. Are there differences between Hegel and Videla?
514. Would this gaze go out and reach you in reality where and when you
need it?
515. Would this gaze go out and reach someone where and when it could be
healing?
516. Will it etinguish this this fire?
517. Or would it operate, like poetry for Paul Celan, in the too-early
and the too late?
518. Do you know the publisher, title and ISBN of the translated book(s)
of Kittler's?
519. Maybe the shared thing is there?
520. Can some Brazilians or anyone else tell us more than the New York
Times?
521. How to get beyond an imprisoning pseudo-recognition, without losing
all the historical-geographical richness and specificity that Pedro
describes and whose existence is for me so obvious?
522. Ursula - where can we find out more about the expo and the
symposium?
523. What did it achieve, in your eyes?
524. At least promoting solidarity, spreading the news, helping in any
way?
525. I still don't see why they should be 'unrecognisable to traditional
art discourse' - because gallery-goers and art critics don't know what
'parsing' is?
526. but isn't that a bit like saying the art world cannot understand an
artist who makes work about certain intricacies of molecular biology
because they lack the discourse?
527. Surely egos, and intention for that matter, are pretty irrelevant
when evaluating a work of art?
528. I can say, though, that the power of the work was indeed 'inscribed
on the object itself' - here else was it inscribed?
529. Does this make the work less interesting?
530. Michael: an interesting thesis on attention, but what do you mean
by apost-material economy???
531. Quite aside from all the material structures supportig the various
nets in which we find ourselves imbricated -inc. the Internet- surely
even the most posthuman bodies within them are throughly and utterly
*material*?
532. I would like to ask: is power related to a specific place or is it
a possibility of precisely investing against the solidity of the fixed
"locale"?
533. What do we need power for?
534. For becoming mobile centers of power (to gain conditions of
existence as individuals)?
535. For constituting a solid powerful place and erease power as
"problem" (stoping the inside/outside flow)?
536. ( "Why are there still urban planners filling positions in city
administrations when there could be art historians, postcolonial
critics, gender theoreticians, media analysts and net critics?"
537.  "Why are there still media analysts filling positions in
monopolistic multi-national communications conglomerates when there
could be art historians, urban planners, postcolonial critics, gender
theoreticians, and net critics?")
538. ...Surely, sir, your paintings "opened doors" of some description,
possibly within your own head, or else why would you have bothered
making them in the first place?
539. (are the two mutually exclusive?)
540. Who has?
541. The Sunday guards with their families?
542. Are they governed by reasons of state?
543. Reverse?
534. Reserve?
535. Should the net substantiate more than just what I just mentioned?
536. I for instance would like to hear from the eyebeam crowd if they
think interactive art can save?
537. Prevent?
538. Can an art piece on the net change a man's mind for not raping his
girlfriend, wife,or a total stranger that day?
539. Can it prevent a mother from drowning her newborn baby in a
bathtub?
540. in what way the internet might be developed as a support for a more
holistic collaborative approach to knowledge and problem-solving across
the practices of specialization?
541. "To whom does the schizophrenic write?
542. To whom the psychotic?
543. Would you be that person?"
544. To whom does the schizophrenic speak?
545. To whom the psychotic?
546. Would that you would be, that person?
547. Would that you would be, that person spoken to?
548. From whom is the speaking?
549. For whom is the speaking?
550. Why is it people want to polarize things ?
551. Perhaps Gert wants to out marginalise himself?
552. and just remain outside ?
553. (did you get that in holland ?)
554. Do  you think this sort of visualization would be applicable to
Brazil?
555. Why is "art" communication?  What does art communicate?
556. about...what was it again?
557. ...netcriticism?
558. --how is it said again?--
559. Becoming what?
560. Who are the front-line soldiers shining the light of an evolving
consciousness?
561. Are we really so afraid that there's a hitler in our ranks?
562. It doesn't matter what it all means does it?
563. I mean, you want to make things that are cool, right?"
564. I don't know, what do you think?
565. collective_subject ask, "vit are you dancing?"
567. Onno_Guest says, "what the heck...?"
568. collective_subject [to vitruvius]: "are you going to dance?
569. (4 mill americans?)
570. What does the dancer do when she isnot dancing?
571.  What sort of dancer is a member say of an ecological movement, or
were there many dancers say who were members of the Maoist wing of
French leftist politics in France in the 1960's?
572. But what of Rilke say?
573.  What if Rilke had not written his Sonnets to Orpheus and had
chosen instead to act. Must one be silent to act?
574. How do we politic?
575. How useful, for example, would be the work of Barthes and Derrida
as a starting point for analysing hypertext? 576. What is the importance
of Deleuze & Guattari's influential idea of the rhizome as a
philosophical framework for the web?
577. 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?
578. Can't we stop thinking that we've to invent the wheel completely?
579. a question that follows on from his analysis is the relationship
between such mapping devices, and a notion of critical *agency*. is the
webstalker a purely descriptive tool, or does it allow for more or less
deliberate and controlled interventions into the mapped webspace? 
580. what are artistic projects for the internet that try to tease out
and develop new, creative and/or critical forms of agency that are
germane to this environment?
581. Brian, could you say a few words about the concept of 'possessive
individualism' - i remember from way back when that i looked at the book
by - was his name MacPherson?
582. (a forum for true democracy?)
583. Matthew, have you ever heard of the Institute for Old and New
Media, working out of Amsterdam?
584. What more is to be said on this?
585. But how far will this comparison take us?
586.  Will the architecture of control in the twenty-first century
simply be an electronic version of that of the nineteenth century?
587. After all, wasn't it a Panoptic impulse that prompted the U.S.
government in the 1950s to try to impose a centralized command structure
on the ARPAnet?
588. What will become of privacy if both intimacy and violence
canmaterialize without warning?
589. (Woops! Didn't Benjamin in "Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction" call that particular phenomena "fascism"?!)
590. as founding editor of one of the most influential contemporary art
organs in the nineties, what in your opinion are the implications of the
net. for art publishing, criticism, and the art media in general, and
perhaps for media-artist-critic-impressario-consumer relations?
591. in the age of electronic and network publishing and practice,
whither the art mag. and its all-powerful editor, and why?
592. Is it not true?
593. How Many Englishs are there in a city like New York, in a city
called London?
595. BTW, fellow writers, is the Village Voice (for whom I wrote for
many years) the only publication demanding that writers not write about
artists whose work they collect?
596. (who are they?)
597. How does it become a tool on the artist palette?
598. How does one design an online space that propagates a community of
people who have no time?
599. And, how may attention economies and the aesthetics of navigation
be consciously utilized in the creative process of online art work?
600. If art is defined by the audience/market, and there is no
marketplace for online art, where does this position artists working on
the net?
601. How may this marketplace manifest?
602. (I wonder is Saskia has some thought on this?)
603. Specifically I wish he (Jon) would elaborate on how we may learn
from the problems of marketability of conceptual work in the traditional
art world?
604. What would compel them to return over and over again?
605. Are we watching idly as it is being defined for us?
606. Or is this an opportunity to help define the emerging marketplace
as the existing art world is sitting still, dazed and confused?
607. What do you mean by money?
608.  is it paper or electronic...  Now, how does this resemble (or not)
feudalism?
609. As such, what are the capabilities specific to this instrument and
what new questions does it raise?
610. First, what is telerobotics?
611. How is this claim justified?
612. Lacking recourse to an external authority, how can one
differentiate a live telerobotic site from a forgery?
613. Finally, does it matter whether a telerobotic site is real or not?
614. We are talking, though, aren't we, Simon?
615. At least, I'm listening ... Only thing missing is a pint or two of
beer (or a cuppa) or why not?
616.  ... and for Phillipe Mora as well, why not?).
617. What did even that do for the artists in the end?
618. Where's Jules Olitski now?
619. How do you define intelligence?
620. How do you define conciousness?
621. As for "neo-bourgoise", perhaps your preference for Mezcal and mine
for fine wines explains that?
622. The question is, on what basis do you make the tactical moves?
623. Using what common sense?
624. Who can offer them, what forms of communication can best propagate
them?
625. (Are you serious that the 1969 U.S. landing on the moon could have
been simulated???)
626. I'm curious as to why you feel (or maybe if?) that forgery is
traumatic?
627. Does the origin of the effect of participation in a mass delusion
like the 69 moon landing make the effect any less real if the origin is
shown to be false?
628. What authorizes the determination of the human from the point of
view of the technological?
629. Art is indeed a polyssemic (?)
630. (is this process already being carried on?
631. Is History, as a discoursive techology, being experienced
differently anywhere?)
632. Can you give us an example of one of your telerobotic projects?
633. Since you include the 1969 moon landing in your examples of forgery
and refer to it as "the widely believed US moon landing," does this mean
you have doubts that this event actually occurred?
634. What do these issues imply for your theory of telepistemology?
635. Could you give us an example of one of your "site plans" for
cultural habits or production protocols?
636. How do people move through these, how to these see and activate
these spaces?
637. How is perception formatted and aligned with buying modes.(?)
638. How is the buying body seen and figured through statistical
compulations?
639. A related question: what kind of public space is inside (not
outside) these structures and systems, and what might be the role of
artistic practice in the facilitation of that space?
640. To take the example of the restroom above,what if those who enter
the stall are not unsuspecting but instead are actors playing a definite
role?
641. How is the viewer/activator seen?
642. Does it matter to them if the site is real or not?
643. I wonder therefore: like  we must build the interactive
relationship between an artist and a scientist in reference to the new
techniques of communication where the principal characteristic is the 
interactivity? 
644. But how then do you prevent someone from simply claiming your work
as their own?
645. In the new, attention-economy world order, what differentiates art
(or anything else for that matter) from advertising?
646. Perhaps that is intellectual fatigue, or perhaps it is another way
of looking at things? 
647. Perhaps it is just cynicism regarding what people get up to when
they have too much spare time on their hands?
648. We take advice from people we trust - what's wrong with that?
649. It's not perfect, sure, but what is?
650. And how could it be changed?
651. Is that an awful thing to say?
652. How about creating a situation where people really want to find out
about your work, rather than pushing it at them all the time?
653. Anybody has read "The Conscious Universe" by Menas Kafatos and
Robert Nadeau (a historian of science and an astrophysicist), 1990?
654. Does anyone know who coined the term?
655. What will you do?
656. How will you call her?
657. What now?
658. Will you try to make love with a border, prove you are not a letter
with eating a carrot or pay the dragon to burn the book?
659. Remember "The Specialist"?
660. How many people are still in the Bus?
661. But where do digital art and the internet come in?
662. Who then will question its uses?
663. So isn't the cultural studies question more or less infinite?
664. Isn't the net just a particularly promising medium in which to go
on asking those questions about each specific discipline: What is it
good for?
665. Who is it good for?
666. Where does one turn one's own efforts, and why?
667. I'd never describe myself as Post-Colonial... I mean how could I?
668. (Simon can you enlighten us when you get back from Portugal?)
669. What voices??????***************** speak to us
**************************************** from the fires of Brazil and
Venuzuela? 
670. Does the ghost of Vallejos cry out ****** Spain Take This Cup from
Me! against the brutality South American faces, even if this time it is
disguised as a 'natural' disaster.(?)
671. (Who really proudly includes themselves in this movement anyway,
beyond your inner circle of five?)
672. And if art is irrelevant to understand the 'serious business' going
on in the 'real world', just what does nettime have that has more
potential to effect change?
673. And whatever power you think you have, what good is it when it no
longer stands for inclusivity, but for exclusion?
674. If we have such a clear experience of how participation of artists
and counter-cultural producers has been squeezed out over the past few
years, why not take it into consideration when theorizing the use and
full capacities of the net?
675. Why are there still art historians filling curatorial positions in
institutions when there could be urban planners, postcolonial critics,
gender theoreticians, media analysts and net critics?
676. Why didn't museums ever bother to buy satellite time?Does it make
sense that we show computers running digital projects in the art space
(appropriating it as yet another medium) or to continue to do individual
aesthetic productions on the net and develop a proper digital art
discourse (but remaining marginal if not irrelevant to the public
affairs)?
677. should he have?
678.  should he have not?
679. mazrui concluded that okigbo's sacrifice was a waste of
beauty--yet, as the igbo of biafra say, all beauty end in dirt. if
beauty may not rise to the call of the needy, or indeed make way, where
then is its essence? 
680. when a voice in the wilderness beckons and asks: "there is fire in
the forests of brazil; what shall we do?"
681. shall we cry in return: the horror, the horror?
682. or shall we go beyond the silly rhetoric of bad poetry and do
something concrete to help? 
683. may we not, on the other hand, exercise our right to face away and
indulge in the silly rhetoric of bad poetry?
684. are we under any obligations?
685. are we not, afterall, free?
686. what shall we do at the cry of "fire!"?
687. do a net-based installation?
688. write a lyric?
689. apply to the national endowment for the arts for a grant to enable
a multi-media event on the tragedy of conflagration, using five hundred
bags of lint, two million painted matches with the colors of the amazon,
and fifty volunteers from the afflicted community?
690. paint a mural of fire and redemption?
691. curse the capitalists who are raping the rain forests?
692. face away?
693. or.....?
694. why not?
695. are we not, afterall, free?
696. Could you elaborate more on this?
697. How many fires are still left burning?
698. Does such a thing exist, I wonder, or is anybody working on it?


Forum participants: please forgive non-chronologicality, ommissions and
repeats.
The Analog-Eyeball-Bot has been on the road the past two weeks and is
run down.




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