[Nettime-bold] History Lesson (Part 1)

[Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>]

Declaiming the "unhipness" of this years prix ars electronica, thing 
blackhawk laments:

"Yes but it's not like we don't know how stupid people can be...
forever mistaking media for content, media for process, media for
theory, media for concept, &c, &c.  They don't seem to be able to wrap
their heads around anything more complex & 'media' is something they can
u/stand."


I'm not holding prix ars electronica up as the be all end all of 
what's hip and what's not, but I am amused at how the net.art 
subculture so whines about being left out of it.


------------------------------------------
History Lesson (Part 1):

1. Make something iconoclastic on the net, defy convention, defy 
categorization, defy recognition.

2. Watch as your radical net.art gains the very things you didn't 
want -- conventional acceptance, rigorous 
categorization/calcification, press recognition.

3. Watch as a new group of radical designers, programmers, and 
non-artists make iconoclastic stuff on the net themselves, defying 
convention, categorization, and recognition.

4.  Watch as their new radical work grows increasingly popular while 
your old school work falls out of favor.

5.  Bitch and moan about how nobody is concerned anymore with the 
original net.art "rules of engagement" (cf: #2).
------------------------------------------



Dig it friends -- you can't say that it's all good and it's all art, 
and then bitch when they give the award to a Flash technologist.

The tired mantra repeated again and again by creatives who suck is --
"they didn't like it because they didn't get it."  Isn't that what 
blackhawk is really saying in the above quote?  "If they really 'got 
it,' they would have given the award to one of our own."


MAYBE PEOPLE GET IT AND THEY JUST DON'T LIKE IT.
I get Diamanda Galas, but I like Led Zeppelin better.
I get Eduardo Kac, but I like Gaugin better.
I get Sartre, but I like Shakespeare better.
I get bean curd, but I like pizza better.
I get conceptual art, but I like abstract expressionism better.
I get cynicism, but I like love better.
etc.






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