.pavu.com on 5 Mar 2001 18:13:10 -0000


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[Nettime-bold] [Fwd: Informative arts ? An interview of Clement Thomas of pavu.com]




          Informative arts ? A plining world. An interview
          of Clement Thomas by Alban Saporos.

          Alban Saporos : Clément Thomas, you are an artist
          and you're pavu.com's Officer Général*. Isn't this
          a turnchair ?

          Clément Thomas : For who's heard this before,
          musical chairs are never enough.

          A_S : Your "ctgr theory" focuses on your
          conception of the Network as "the realized worlds"
          and you put forward the word of "informative
          arts".
          Yet within pavu.com, you deny making art. Can you
          explain this contextual deviance ? To paraphrase
          Marcel Duchamp, do netsters "make" pavu.com or is
          it the contrary ?

          C_T : Pavu.com does not postulate art as an action
          basis. I'd say we work in a field where art is a
          default value just because what we do doesn't fit
          in any other field (in short, we don't produce
          screws or batons...not yet though).
          Theories are wits that have their own working
          spheres with flavours such as fluctuations and
          inflammations: raw informative material for good
          upgrades.

          A_S : I notice with pleasure you share the concept
          of disposable theories but my question rather
          focused on what the Internet brings that makes it
          so different and so specific?

          C_T : I favour theories' natural wearing. The
          energy release resulting from theories' banging
          justifies alone that people continue theorizing.
          As to what the Internet brings, i'll answer the
          Internet brings the Internet: all the attitudes
          that come along with the Network, the tools
          to make the whole thing work and one extra :
          informative raw matter in astromic quantity.
          Just as Aladdin's sunlamp, you only need to know
          where to scrub to extract the marrow. The after
          contemporary plines the next route on the
          Internet.

          A_S : Marshall MacLuhan once promulgated a famous
          law according to which "the medium is the
          message". Do you believe it now has to be
          abrogated ?
          In concrete terms, can we take for granted the
          merging of a medium with its revelation - and vice
          versa - as a statue with the marble it's carved
          from ? How do you deal with this substantialist
          approach ?

          C_T : I didn't meet MacLuhan but i respect his
          sense of humour. What imports in your question is
          neither the marble nor the medium but the repeal :
          the removal. Arte Povera proved marble didn't need
          statue.
          With Brandt over Haffner, Bertrand Lavier cleverly
          showed that marble itself can do without marble.
          Yet what's up when nothing is to be removed? At
          pavu.com's, we leave Michelangelo's slave on
          Manzoni's pedestal and focus on one and only goal:
          becoming the masters of the world.
          Therefore, to Mario Merz's "Che Fare ?" we answer
          "Va bene !"

          A_S : I wish we get back to this "informative
          arts" concept. Here we have an extractive process
          that relates to my previous question. But what do
          you extract?

          C_T : Defining roughly informative arts supposes
          to think of information as a raw material and to
          extract it without taking in account what it
          pretends to convey. By this process based on the
          technics of signals, pavu.com operates a semantic
          reframe that enables to move the pole and
          magnetize the position. In this case, you can
          rightly speak of artistic engineering.

          A_S : Yet, you still talk of a "default
          position"...

          C_T : Information is the stuff dreams are made of.
          It's the appropriate matter for great conquests .
          Art problematics cannot always be scrutinized from
          an ecumenical point of view: reading Greenberg at
          the cafÈ Belge while drinking pints of Grimbergen
          is as much fulfilling.

          A_S : How do you deal with a time dominated by
          sampling and real time streams? Don't you fear to
          exhaust a vein without guarantees of
          popularization and profit?

          C_T : Everything gets recycled and informative
          arts are no exception.
          What characterizes informative arts fits in a
          single word: plining. Plining is pavu.com's LA
          technology; it covers the entire process of
          data-treatment: from data-drilling and swifting to
          the final PROduct. Plining implies upgrade and
          movement of Informative Objects. Our PROducts'
          popularity prove they're open and respond to our
          clients and consumers' needs. Moreover, all of
          them are open-boucle et copyGNou guaranteed.

          A_S : An entrepreneurial informative aesthetics,
          then?

          C_T : I leave aesthetics to beauticians. My
          opinion is that if there's somebody to create
          whatever aesthetics, then aesthetics exist. Value
          judgments do not interest me. Everything ends in
          exploitable and upgradable data.

          A_S : Physicians and astrophysicians speak of
          initial conditions. Is there an Informative Big
          Band?

          C_T : Informative Big Bang ? T.Click maybe...

          A_S : Still this vexatious dynamics remains very
          obscure to anyone not connected to the Internet
          and even more to the consumer who doesn't find
          there any narcissistic satisfaction. What do you
          plan to overcome this difficulty?

          C_T : Pavu.com carries on a large-scale works
          policy that will allow a wider movement of
          Informative Objects. This needed a new kind of
          market so we created the NELia**. Yet we do not
          forget usual channels and an infocoronary bypass
          will soon enable us to provide the target with
          beautyfully crafted PROducts that should satisfy
          consumers who didn't take the connective plunge
          yet.

          A_S : How do you see the immediate future?

          C_T : Developing the NELia market is of course a
          priority. Pavu.com will also take part in upcoming
          major international events. An online school is on
          its way too but let's not unveil the surprize,
          you'll know more as soon as Tomorrow...

          A_S : Thanks Clément Thomas for answering these
          questions. A last word?

          C_T : It is clearly the end of the "tomorrow free
          tabula shavings!". One single thing can be said
          without mistake of pavu.com and informative
          arts: "VA BENE!".

          ---
          * Other pavu.com executive include Paul Dupouy and
          Jean-Philippe Halgand who are respectively Chief
          Président and Executive Directeur.

          ** The NELia (for New Eco Logic informative arts)
          has been created by pavu.com to support online
          creation. In return of the online hosting of
          exchange values named Data-Heads (1 Data-Head
          weights 6.96 Kb), it enables anybody to invest in
          online art, to set up  collections of Informative
          Objects while taking part to the creation and
          development of networked free territories, i.e the
          GNou Found Lands, to prevent server space from
          becoming hunting corporates' monopoly.
          According to this promotional logic, the first
          NELia store opened fall 2000 on "Shower - a new
          degree of What!" followed a few months later by a
          second one on "Black-Soap" - with no less than 30
          international net art stars and more than 130
          downloadable mixes and movies.
          Institutions were not forgotten and Data-Head
          budgets were voted for the FRACs (French cultural
          institutions in charge of buying contemporary art)
          to enable them to collect online art.

          -- related links :

          pavu.com:
          http://pavu.com

          GNou Found Lands Territory Desk Office and NELia
          access:
          http://www.GNouFL.com



forget the avant-garde !
gET Ready for the En-gArde !

http://pavu.com


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