Archive for the ‘cory arcangel’ tag
Out Now: Reality is Overrated
Domenico Quaranta, “Reality is Overrated. When Media Go Beyond Simulation”, in Artpulse Magazine, Issue 3, March – May 2010.
Drei Klavierstücke op. 11
Cory Arcangel, Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 – I, 2009. Visit the project page to see episodes II and III.
Radical Software
Critical text written for the exhibition Radical Software, hosted by the Share Festival, Turin, 08.03.2006 – 12.03.2006.
If we leave aside its historical precedents, Software Art, in its classical definition formalized by the Jury Statement of “Transmediale 2001” [1] and extended by Florian Cramer [2], saw the light in 1997 with The Web Stalker of the English Group I/O/D and with the theoretical speculation started by one of the software authors, Matthew Fuller. Right from this first example and definitions, Software Art reveals its radical nature. The fact itself of transforming software from a mere instrument into “subject” and “contents” of a cultural and artistic reflection represents a Copernican revolution liable to be considered as heresy. Similarly heretic is the idea of adopting a language (HTML), a protocol of communication (HTTP) and the whole system of cultural objects (the web) and make them visible in a form that contrasts with their own original function. Software Art is radical even in its most harmless and politically neutral manifestations; when, in addition, it overturns the structure of the browser in controversy with the standardization of its interfaces, and when it adopts a slogan that sounds like: “software is mind control, get some”, then the controversy turns into poetics, the prime mover of a creative process.
RADICAL SOFTWARE is an exhibition including some recent examples of radical software. The name pays explicit homage to the magazine founded by Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot in 1970, that had the merit to combine, for the first time, political considerations and use of the media (in that case mainly video and television).
Radical Software (2006)
Epidemic, Antimafia
RADICAL SOFTWARE
curated by Domenico Quaranta
PIEMONTE SHARE FESTIVAL 2006 – LIMITLESS
TORINO, ACCADEMIA ALBERTINA, 08.03.2006 – 12.03.2006
web. http://www.toshare.it/ – mail. info@toshare.it
Featured Artists: ][MEZ][, [EPIDEMIC], AMY ALEXANDER, CORY ARCANGEL (BEIGE) + PAPERRAD, MARKETA BANKOVA, WAYNE CLEMENTS, GUERRIGLIAMARKETING.IT + MOLLEINDUSTRIA.IT, PETER LUINING, K-HELLO, MOLLEINDUSTRIA.IT, ROVEBOTICS, UBERMORGEN.COM featuring ALESSANDRO LUDOVICO & PAOLO CIRIO.
City of Bits
Critical text written for the exhibition GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists (Monza Civic Gallery, October 13 – 29, 2006). More infos here.
City of Bits
by Domenico Quaranta
“My name is wjm@mit.edu”. These are William J. Mitchell’s opening words in City of Bits (1995), his classic exploration of the evolution of the concept of city in the internet age. It is a line which reveals not only a new identity, but also a new form of citizenship. Ten years on the American artist Cory Arcangel performed his public “Friendster Suicide”, removing himself from one of the biggest online communities: maybe not a very spectacular suicide, but not for that any less painful than the real kind.
Between these two extremes, the revolution we are experiencing has rewritten a number of concepts that had remained unaltered in our culture for centuries: landscape, the city, life, identity. Alongside the tangible landscape there is now the information landscape; citizens have become netizens, and while our concrete jungles are being dug up to accommodate the information highway, we spend less and less time there, preferring the isometric gardens of Sim City or the 107 million inhabitants of myspace.com. It is time to update the concept of life, and has been since the advent of Second Life, while the idea of identity is still reeling from the complications heralded by nicknames, aliases, IDs, accounts, profiles and avatars.
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