How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet

This article was written by Douglas Adams in 1999, and it still stands as one of the best things written on the subject. Required reading. A couple of quotes:

So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back — like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’
What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust — of course you can’t, it’s just people talking — but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV — a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’…”

“Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them.”


Ownership becomes a burden

“From cars to CDs, houses to handbags, people are no longer aspiring to own. Belongings which used to be the standard by which to measure personal success, status, and security are increasingly being borrowed, traded, swapped, or simply left on the shelf. Various factors – arguably the most important being an increasingly connected and digitally networked society, regardless of economic development – are causing revolutionary global shifts in behavior. As quickly as a new laptop becomes yesterday’s technology in a brittle plastic shell, or a power tool idly collects dust in the garage, it seems that material possessions are changing from treasure into junk, from security into liability, from freedom into burden, and from personal to communal.”

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The Rise of the Online Gallery

The Rise of the Online Gallery :

Paddy Jonhson discusses the rise of a new kind of art gallery. Brad Troemel dubbed this spaces as “Dual Sites”: 

“Thus, internet art is marked by the compulsive urge of searching (or, surfing) to connect with others in a way that is not directed by privatized interests, but found and shared among individuals.[1] The Dual Site is an institution born from this individuated system of relating with one another. It is an exhibition space symptomatic of The Physical and The Digital’s comingling– an example of how art, like life itself, now exists somewhere between the two.”

(http://thejogging.tumblr.com/post/536420881/the-emergence-of-dual-sites

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David Byrne on Italy

david byrne's blog

Here‘s a funny (but also depressing for us to read) report written by David Byrne after his trip to Rome. Featuring Radisson Hotel, the Vatican (with all the kitschy souvenirs), Renzo Piano’s Auditorium, Altare della Patria and much more… He seemes to understand very clearly what’s wrong with Italy’s sense of history:

“Do we have to respect every piece of rubble? What can we really hope to learn from these pathetic foundations and remaining stumpy bits of wall? Have the Italians sacrificed some part of their future in honoring and maintaining their glorious past? Am I being cynical? (I would certainly rather see ruins than block after block of ugly, concrete apartments!) The Italians must, I imagine, feel hamstrung by their past, which must justify in their minds the escape from the past represented by the ugly apartment and office buildings that fill these cities outside their historic zones.”

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Also on Internazionale this week (in italian)

Romanticismo hi-tech

Su Panorama Web di questa settimana Federico Ugolini firma un pezzo dal titolo Artisti Digitali. Creano con il mouse, espongono solo in Rete. Io che mi occupo di arte digitale da anni naturalmente non potevo esimermi dalla lettura. Non l’avessi mai fatto, mi è andata la colazione per traverso, altrochè…

Si parte con il sottotitolo “realizzano quadri virtuali usando sistemi HI-TECH” e poi si prosegue con espressioni tipo: “cyberpittori”, “pennelli digitali”, “Net ARTE” (sic!). E non importa se critici e studiosi abbiano riversato fiumi di inchiostro cercando di definire le specificità di correnti come la Videoarte, la computer art, la Net Art. No, secondo il giornalista di Panorama sono tutti sinonimi.

Ma quali sono gli artisti che esemplificano meglio questa sorta di cyber-net-web-digital-computer art? Sorpresa! Sono GRAFICI e WEB DESIGNERS! E nemmeno la frangia d’avanguardia. Non parliamo di maghi dell’interfaccia, di geni dello stile grafico, di webguru. Qua si parla quasi esclusivamente della setta degli “adepti del fotoritocco”.

Infatti il primo sito citato si chiama www.graphiczoneonline.it. Vado a visitarlo e scopro che si tratta del “sito dedicato a Photoshop”. Allora provo con il secondo: www.noredstars.com. Un altro sito di web design. Ok, forse www.computer-grafica.com? Manco per sogno, sempre grafica e fotoritocco. Illustrano l’articolo immagini tipo: donna con parte inferiore del corpo composta di una mano enorme, il tutto sullo sfondo di un fosco cielo rossastro.Tanto valeva pubblicare i calendari di Max, con la differenza che lì l’uso di Photoshop è molto più raffinato…

Io poi pensavo che “l’Oscar della NETTARTE” fossero i Webby Awards, oppure la Nike di Ars Electronica…Invece no, si tratta dell’American Design Awards.

Ora io capisco che non sempre è facile distinguere l’arte digitale dalla grafica. E’ anche vero che la Net Art è un fenomeno misconosciuto. E’ vero pure che da sempre l’uomo tende ad usare metafore del vecchio per interpretare il nuovo. Ma io quando sento parlare di pennelli digitali, pittori virtuali, mostre interattive e cybercreativi, mi deprimo. Possibile che l’arte evochi ancora nell’immaginario collettivo sempre e solo pennelli, tavolozze, camici sporchi, basco e baffetti alla Dalì? Ecco la versione aggiornata del mito dell’artista romantico, una roba che nemmeno Schelling, Goethe e Croce tuttietreinsieme sarbbero stati in grado di partorire: “…si lasciano trasportare dai colori e sono sempre alla ricerca della sfumatura migliore, altri si ispirano con una breve navigazione on-line”

E cosa contraddistingue gli artisti digitali rispetto a quelli analogici? “Ispirazione, fantasia, creatività”. E vai col tango…