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Re: <eyebeam><blast> clues on translocal territories




4 messages, from Sue Clancy, Giuseppe Iannicelli, Joshua LaBare, and
Jennifer & Kevin McCoy


Sue Clancy artist@telepath.com writes: 

I'm new to this list and what I've seen so far has really stirred my
creative juices! Thanks to everyone who's participated!

In response to what Saskia Sassen wrote... I am bi-lingual. I speak
fluent English and American Sign Language. This discussion of Symbols,
language and 'economic power' interests me because I had assumed that
everyone 'spoke' in symbols. I thought most people realized that the
spoken word or the art, sound etc was only a fraction of  Funny that I
should assume that! 

ASL (American Sign Language) is a primarily symbolic language of a very
complex nature. Each symbol (sign) has a different meaning based upon
the signs in conjuction with it, the manner in which the speaker
(signer) creates the sign, the way the light is surrounding the speaker
(or not), the space in which the sign occured, and how the space
surrounding the signer is used... I could go on... Basically ASL (& the
language of the Internet) is not a liniar / hierarchial thing it is more
open to circular thought & communication patterns. Spirals of meaning if
you will. 

In my opinion the Internet has forced us to use links, banners,
graphics, references to other sites in the same spatial way that sign
language is used. I think that the Internet will change the way we use
the 'symbol' of money. i.e. rather than being a linear & hierarchial
thing (you give me money I give you product) perhaps it will change to a
new mode altogether...(as our language use is changing now)  Right now
the main 'commodity' exchanged on the 'Net is attention. What gets/gives
attention better than art... (be it word or graphic) 

The Internet (and digital art - I am a digital artist see
http://www.telepath.com) has created a space in which *everyone* is
forced to present information in a visual sense as not every computer
user is multi-media equiped to say the least. I think we will change the
'code thru which economic power is made legible' by changing our use of
language (from auditory to visual - no matter country of originality) 
In my opinion we are currently changing the 'mode of power' since sheer
commerciality & economic power don't have the same 'muscle' on the
Internet that they do on the street. A store on the street has a bunch
of money to create advertising, sell product and thus get more money....
on the Internet money cannot always buy a fabulous artistic site and get
attention... that is gotten by artistic & intellectual 'muscle' rather
than just dollars...

all for now, Thanks for a great list!!

sue clancy
---
http://www.telepath.com/artist
artist@telepath.com


------------------------------------------------


Giuseppe Iannicelli <liutpran@galactica.it> writes: 

"Anna T." <anti@ns.ACEA.NEVA.RU> wrote:

> Speaking english makes people  western so how do you hope to hear
>something from beyond.

Good point.
For example, for me too ("western"...) it is sometimes hard to read the
texts on the net and even harder to answer, expecially if themes are of
some complexity. Sometimes I give up because my read-and-reply required
time is toooooo slow for a list rythm...

Let's face it. The language IS an obstacle. I mean, I can manage with
English rather well, NEVERTHELESS I feel weak compared to other people.
And there is a whole world of English not-speakers... What could you do
on the net without a RATHER GOOD knowledge of English? Just exchange
email with SOME friends in your own country. But I'm afraid THAT's not
THE NET...

This is why a look to OTHER ways of expressing ideas than words can be
interesting.
That should be a great part of an "art on the web", no?

On the "National Identity" to preserve, I don't feel this argument at
all.

As my favourite writers are Conrad (Polish-British), Fitzgerald (USA),
Gadda (Italy), my favoutite painter is Kandinsky (Russian), my favourite
musician is Satie  (French) (and I could go on for a while...), and they
surely conditionate my expressions in some ways, the problem of
"national roots" seems to me rather old even if compared with my
pre-internet times. I believe there is an auto-balance of "national
roots" given from everyday life in YOUR country. If you spend _ALL_ your
time on the net, is just like you are emigrating in a no-land foreign
country, but is this a net's fault? When I write something for the net,
doesn't matter if I use English language. I just communicate who I am 
and I'm also Italian, among many other things.
My image researches on the web are just a prosecution of what I was
doing
before the net.

I'm sure the language problem I underlined before has some consequences,
and surely I will not use the same "style" when writing in Italian or in
English.

But, I say it again, from my point of view the main problem is not that
I'm going to say the same things that everybody on the net says just
because I will be "assimilated". The problem is that I'm not able to say
"all and well" what I think using the Net language (English). I could
give more in my own language. That's the only reason I feel to be a part
of a weaker "minority" (minority?). Now, we have to face the fact that
also this weaker minority is living in "privilege" (?) because anyway we
are "inside".  You can't say the same for a lot of people all over the
world, with no English and no access...

Ciao

======================================================
"Lege, relege, ora, labora et invenies"

Giuseppe Iannicelli
liutpran@galactica.it

Coming soon, a new web project:
The Lab, a virtual place for experimenting Arts  -    thelab@lycosmail
======================================================


---------------------------------------------


Joshua LaBare <joshbear@acpub.duke.edu> writes: 


Organon writes:
"To create - to be an artist - still means 'the gift'. Overabundant flow
which gives without return - without expectation - alone establishes the
possibility of a link that matters."

The net is a kind of artistic utopia, and we all fear its power, as much
as its dissolution.  The government layed the backbone of this network
for the dissemination of art and texts, just as it layed the backbone of
the _real_ superhighways: both projects have military origins, of
course, since what else do we give all that money to the government
for?  We, through our institutional affiliation or personal
wealth/interest (and our overwhelming tendency to be from or in the Rich
World) have taken advantage of this.  I can reach out through it and,
for a nominal fee (payed to ISPs, not to the producers in question),
pull in all your words, you, artists and thinkers from all over the
world.  This is a great gift, an excess: what is more "excessive" in its
giving than the net?  A sphere of constant gifts, perhaps due to the
ease of giving it allows: we can send our words out to hundreds,
thousands of others at the flip of a switch, the push of a button.  Oh,
and the fact that for a while there people just couldn't figure out how
to make you pay... don't worry, they're getting the hang of it, and it
will only get worse.  Copyleft will disappear again into copyright,
owned, as usual, not by artists but by the corporations that profit from
them.

Andy Best writes:
"Unfortunately in today's already multinationally controlled media
world, forms of artistic expression that are not sure fire money makers
need to be subsidised and supported. Audiences need to be educated,
informed, that there is an alternative. "Titanic" is a huge box office
hit - apparently 25% of US teenage girls have seen it SEVEN times - does
this make it a good film?"

The special nature of art on the internet is perhaps that it has yet to
succumb to this "Titanic" logic, the logic of cultural imperialism
that's shaking Europe, and Mexico, and all the others in its teeth like
a pit bull gone wild.  No, on the net it is STILL  all about giving,
about your reputation (as with the potlatch: give or destroy your goods
-- your art -- to prove you are favored by the gods): this utopian view
of art has little place in our capitalist society, Organon.  As someone
once said, the works of art are just proof that you are artist, proof
you show off when anyone questions your title.  A way of saying, "yes,
at certain times in the past i have gone through artistic processes",
whatever those are.  "I have lived the life of an artist."  "I have
produced: see, here's my title."  The net facilitates the process, and
shortcuts the standard capitalist exchange of our society.

I'm not very clear, I think: things get more and more fuzzy as time goes
on, unfortunately.  I guess my point is this: what happens when
possessive individualism comes to the net in full force?  The net's
relative distance from physical reality (that is: those of us who have
enough goods to waste our time on such stuff can get fooled into
thinking that this is all somehow "immaterial") has kept that
possessiveness out of it... but what will we build with these bricks of
possessive individualism (please allow me to borrow your phrase,
Brian)?  Something new, or the same old shit? 

Okay, that's my fuzzy contribution,
thanks,
Joshua


---------------------------------------------


Jennifer & Kevin McCoy <mccoy@earthlink.net> write:


<BLAST>--> "PART ONE: NET REGIONALISM"

Access statistics for www.thing.net/~m

Summary period: January 1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         Total transfers by Country  33 Items

        No.    Hits     304's   KBytes sent         Country

         1  3167 32.6%219 32.9%       70398 US Commercial
         2  2700 27.8%174 26.1%       59887 Unresolved
         3  2156 22.2%171 25.7%       43185 Network
         4   588  6.1% 36  5.4%       12642 US Educational
         5   198  2.0% 23  3.5%        4063 Spain
         6   164  1.7% 18  2.7%        2808 Canada
         7   110  1.1%  0  0.0%        2831 Greece
         8    89  0.9%  9  1.4%        1445 Italy
         9    82  0.8%  0  0.0%        2029 France
        10    57  0.6%  0  0.0%        1766 Australia
        11    46  0.5%  0  0.0%         999 Indonesia
        12    37  0.4%  2  0.3%         888 Germany
        13    37  0.4%  7  1.1%         645 Brazil
        14    34  0.4%  1  0.2%         930 United States
        15    28  0.3%  3  0.5%         562 United Kingdom
        16    22  0.2%  0  0.0%         610 Portugal
        17    20  0.2%  1  0.2%         438 Korea (South)
        18    20  0.2%  2  0.3%         339 Austria
        19    19  0.2%  0  0.0%         529 Switzerland
        20    18  0.2%  0  0.0%         306 Uruguay
        21    16  0.2%  0  0.0%         429 Ukraine
        22    15  0.2%  0  0.0%          20 Non-Profit Organization
        23    13  0.1%  0  0.0%         281 Romania
        24    12  0.1%  0  0.0%         716 US Military
        25    12  0.1%  0  0.0%         258 Netherlands
        26    10  0.1%  0  0.0%         193 India
        27     9  0.1%  0  0.0%         246 Denmark
        28     8  0.1%  0  0.0%         187 Pakistan
        29     8  0.1%  0  0.0%         187 Singapore
        30     8  0.1%  0  0.0%         187 Norway
        31     6  0.1%  0  0.0%         175 Japan
        32     3  0.0%  0  0.0%          98 Sweden
        33     2  0.0%  0  0.0%           4 Hungary


<BLAST>--> "PART TWO: PROTOCOLS"

                           100 Most common used browsers

 No.  Hits                              User Agent

  1   9 0.1% Mozilla/2.01KIT (Win95; U; 16bit)
  2 129 1.3% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.01; AK; Windows 95)
  3  37 0.4% Gulliver/1.2
  4 327 3.4% Mozilla/3.01 (Win95; I)
  5 216 2.2% Mozilla/4.02
  6  40 0.4% Mozilla/3.0Gold (Win95; U)
  7 692 7.1% Mozilla/4.03

  8 145 1.5% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; AOL 3.0;
Windows
             95)
  9 165 1.7% Mozilla/3.0Gold (Macintosh; U; 68K)
 10 842 8.7% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 95)
 11 256 2.6% contype
 12  58 0.6% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT)
 13  43 0.4% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; AOL 3.0; Windows 95)
 14  55 0.6% Mozilla/4.03 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 15  96 1.0% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows 95)

 16  56 0.6% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; AOL 4.0;
Windows
             95)
 17 147 1.5% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; Windows 95)
 18   4 0.0% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.01; Windows 3.1)
 19  16 0.2% Mozilla/3.02 (Win16; I)
 20  99 1.0% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.0; Windows 95)
 21 803 8.3% Mozilla/4.04
 22 123 1.3% Mozilla/3.0 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 23  13 0.1% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0b2; Windows 95)
 24  41 0.4% Mozilla/3.04Gold (Win95; I)
 25  33 0.3% Mozilla/4.0
 26  51 0.5% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 3.1)
 27 297 3.1% Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)
 28  16 0.2% Mozilla/3.01 (Macintosh; U; 68K)
 29   3 0.0% Digimarc
 30 264 2.7% Mozilla/3.01-C-MACOS8 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 31 124 1.3% Mozilla/4.04 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 32  48 0.5% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; MSIECrawler; Windows 95)
 33  47 0.5% Mozilla/3.03 (Win16; I)
 34  14 0.1% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 95; PI4.0.0.104)
 35  25 0.3% ArchitextSpider
 36  52 0.5% Mozilla/3.01
 37  25 0.3% Mozilla/4.04 (Macintosh; I; PPC, Nav)
 38 380 3.9% Mozilla/3.01Gold (Win95; I)
 39  55 0.6% Mozilla/3.0C-NC320
 40  17 0.2% Slurp/2.0 (slurp@inktomi.com;
http://www.inktomi.com/slurp.html)
 41   6 0.1% Mozilla/4.01a (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 42  22 0.2% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; AOL 4.0; Windows 95)
 43 160 1.6% Mozilla/3.0Gold (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 44 181 1.9% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 95)
 45   7 0.1% NetAttache/2.5
 46 148 1.5% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; AK; Windows
95)
 47 184 1.9% Mozilla/3.0
 48  49 0.5% Mozilla/3.03 (Macintosh; I; 68K)
 49  98 1.0% Mozilla/3.01 (WinNT; I)
 50  93 1.0% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; MSN 2.5; Windows 95)
 51   2 0.0% Mozilla/3.01 (X11; I; Linux 2.0.32 i586)
 52 304 3.1% Mozilla/4.01
 53   1 0.0% Crescent
 54  17 0.2% Mozilla/3.03 (WinNT; I)
 55  86 0.9% Mozilla/3.01 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 56  66 0.7% Mozilla/3.01 (Macintosh; I; 68K)
 57  39 0.4% Mozilla/3.0Gold (Win95; I)
 58  35 0.4% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.01; AK; Update B; Windows
95)
 59  15 0.2% Mozilla/3.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.01; Mac_PowerPC)
 60  22 0.2% Mozilla/3.0-C-AICK1-2 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
 61  22 0.2% Mozilla/4.01 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
 62  35 0.4% VCI
 63 100 1.0% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95)
 64  21 0.2% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 95; Daves World)

 65   1 0.0% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 95
            
http://av.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=professional+depositor&hc=0&hs=1

 66   3 0.0% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 95
             http://www.thing.net/~m/tools/tool2.html
 67   3 0.0% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 95 -

 68   3 0.0% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 95
             http://www.thing.net/~m/tools/tools.html

 69   6 0.1% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; AOL 3.0; Windows 95
             http://www.thing.net/~m/maintenance.html
 70  79 0.8% Mozilla/3.0Gold (Win16; I)
 71  12 0.1% Lynx/2.7.1
 72   8 0.1% Mozilla/3.0C-KIT
 73  58 0.6% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98)
 74  80 0.8% Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; U)
 75  32 0.3% Mozilla/2.0 (Compatible; AOL-IWENG 3.0; Win16)
 76  57 0.6% Mozilla/2.02 (Macintosh; I; 68K)

 77   8 0.1% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.0; Update a; Update B;
Windows
             95)
 78  12 0.1% Mozilla/4.01 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 79  15 0.2% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; Windows NT)
 80  17 0.2% Mozilla/3.01Gold
 81  18 0.2% Mozilla/3.03Gold (Win95; I)
 82  46 0.5% Mozilla/3.04 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 83  15 0.2% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows 3.1)
 84   1 0.0% Mozilla/2.02E (OS/2; U)
 85  49 0.5% Mozilla/3.01C-SYMPA
 86   4 0.0% Mozilla/3.01C-GCIC
 87   8 0.1% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; AOL 3.0; Mac_PowerPC)
 88  76 0.8% Mozilla/3.01Gold (Macintosh; I; 68K)
 89   8 0.1% Mozilla/4.03 (Macintosh; U; PPC, Nav)
 90   6 0.1% Mozilla/3.0 (WinNT; I)
 91  65 0.7% Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; I)
 92   9 0.1% Mozilla/3.04 (Win95; I)
 93  49 0.5% Mozilla/3.01 (Win95; U)
 94  56 0.6% Mozilla/3.01 (Win16; I)
 95  10 0.1% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 95; DH120297)
 96  23 0.2% Mozilla/2.02 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
 97 169 1.7% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; MSN 2.5; Windows 95)
 98   8 0.1% Mozilla/3.0 (Win16; U)
 99 298 3.1% Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.01; Windows 95)
 100 84 0.9% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT)
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