Pit Schultz on Fri, 21 Jun 2002 07:24:15 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own "Carnivore" [6x] |
* costs of success * certainly this hacker tool is well crafted in many ways (2), reading about it i first thought 'build for success', but does it's success make it a 'good' art work, a work one might talk about in a few years in a respectful way? Surely it is symptomatic, but is carnivocre a work of art which started an own genre, which made oneself look at the possiblities of making art in a new way, a work of art which made it impossible to continue to produce an accepted form of art in the old way? i don't say that successful art (or software) is to be dismissed because of it's success, but because what it might sacrificed to become successful (3), beeing secondary consumers in the food chains. * conceptual confusion * i think carnivocre is as rationally planned as it is conceptually confused. it doesn't provide a proper idea about the art context in its relation to software. it provides an interface service. it hardly carries an own concept of itself beeing software, nor beeing a piece of art. it is neither social, nor critical but includes the discoursive gestures of those features. especially if the techniques you mention are all implemented properly, it is exactly this ambitious featuritis on all levels which make the piece questionable as a piece of art, yes a filter, but art? if it is not conceptual than why does it need such a long description, if it is conceptual than why does it need to prove to perform so well practically? if it is context sensitive then, isn't it first and for all the context of the media art discourse it is produced for providing a romantic version of the strange and beautiful digital landscape of the united states? why then all the reference to be functional outside of it? and if it will become a wildly used sniffing tool, what is it that makes it different from other sniffing tools other then aesthetification of the politics of packet sniffing? * dog shows * by beeing conformative to all sides and on all levels, carnivocre achieves seemingly a high degree of customization. affirmative and critical, open source and mysterious, practical and aesthetical, software and art, it generates a heterogenous homogenity which has something for everyone but says nothing in general. it doesn't make clear cuts but it boroughs from all contexts one might think of as relevant for the targeted market. as such it is designed like a new car model, a hyperopportunistic piece of project management and it clearly reports more about the culture from which it derives than about all the sources it tries to nourish itself from. there is only one slight possibilty, that in another dimension by showing all this, the work tries to overcome itself and all the meaning it carries, beeing a parody of a pastiche (1), sending the observer in a loop of salon data art for the purpose of salon data art, to produce a beautifully crafted confused inertia. 1) pastiche, A work of art using a borrowed style and usually made up of borrowed elements, but not necessarily a direct copy. A pastiche often verges on conscious or unconscious caricature through its exaggeration of what seems most typical in the original model. (Thames & Hudson) 2) my critique on the softwareculture list, from 30Apr02 >>take the case of "carnivocre". it seems to include technological criticism, but it is also working on the marketplace of forms, including various 'styles' from ascii, to distributed networks, global maps, surveillance, programming, p2p, and the beauty of code on the ground level of tcp/ip. but finally it is showing the highest perfection on the level of project management. the critique is symbolic, as there is no real effect outside the art context. the technique is without relevance as noone outside the art context is using it. but to the art system it looks like it comes from the "other side", it interfaces it, makes it 'understandable' and fulfills the need for a criticism which doesn't hurt.<< 3) see the discoursive meltdown arround Martin Walser's new (e)book in germany. also on textz.com # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net