ASPECT v. 15, “Influence and Reference” includes video documentation of AfterSherrieLevine.com. The original project is from 2001, the video documentation was made in 2009. As ASPECT is a DVD publication they use the audio commentary tracks for a critical analysis of the works. I was very fortunate: Marita Sturken gave an awesome audio commentary.

This is a reproduction of the original 1703 Right of Copy. Queen Anne granted Oxford the right to publish Clarendon’s History for 14 Years.

Yes. 14 Years. Just think of all the work between 1924 and… 1986 that would be part of the Public Domain

via http://blog.mises.org/12151/the-right-of-copy-a-courtly-privilege

I tweeted this just now, but I feel like it deserves a bit more context. This came out of an email with Adam Hyde (his coinage!) trying to convince him or one of our collaborators in Berlin to find and scan a print version of this article about our collaborative book project. I have found that the committees reviewing my materials for tenure not only frown on all forms of online publication, they also frown on printed copies of electronic versions of documents even if they also appear in print. A scan of the meatspace dead-tree newspaper is viewed as significantly more “legitimate” than a screenshot of the same text from the newspaper’s website. They are Dead-Tree-Huggers.

Marijke Appelman, Paul Branca, Jennifer Cane, Travis Hallenbeck and Guthrie Lonergan, Michael Mandiberg, Jennifer Delos Reyes, Gabriel Saloman, Suzie Silver, Lia Trinka-Browner, Jess Wilcox

S.A.S.E. uses the idea of the self addressed stamped envelope as its foundation (a method of distribution within the postal mail system that is always initiated by the one who wants to receive the information).

This method of distribution was (futilely) translated into a digital communication system, e-mail.

Eleven people were asked to organize an exhibition of images that would be contained within the space of an e-mail.

Ten e-mail exhibitions were created (each includes a selection of images, a statement, and a works list).

All the images were found online – either from web-sites or in e-mails.

To receive the e-mail exhibition one would initiate the process by sending a request email.

The exhibition e-mail would then be sent to the requester.

HOW TO RECEIVE AN E-MAIL EXHIBITION:

▸ Each e-mail exhibition must be requested individually
▸ Send an e-mail to sase.asdf@gmail.com
▸ Copy the title of the exhibition you want and paste it into the
e-mail subject

▸ Within 1-7 days your exhibition will arrive in your e-mail box
▸ NOTE: We will not be personally reading these emails
▸ NOTE: You must paste the show title exactly how it appears below
(a program will automatically be replying to the e-mails)

Marijke Appelman
IN CASE IT RAINS, IT MIGHT INVOLVE WATER
edition of 365

Paul Branca
Dont…Where…You…
edition of 5000

Jennifer Cane
Arcadian Arrow
edition of 100

Travis Hallenbeck and Guthrie Lonergan
summer thumbs 09
edition of 1,000,000

Michael Mandiberg
FDIC Insured
edition of 2,500

Jen Delos Reyes
The Sound We Make Together
edition of 250

Gabriel Saloman
Miscalled a Republic
edition of 1684

Suzie Silver
Unusual Animal Friends (aka Interspecies Friendship)
edition of 1,000,001

Lia Trinka-Browner
NO PUSSYFOOTING
edition of 110

Jess Wilcox
The Discovery of Orange
edition of 66

Click here to download PDF of the complete statements and work lists.

One thing lost when communication became digital was the activity of waiting (obviously, it has not disappeared completely, and that is not the point of discussion here). This waiting corresponded with a travel – and the technologies of travel. A travel of an object of communication. A letter sent from one person to another, transported across an ocean on a boat. Or in an airplane across the sky. The receiver, waiting the duration it takes for this boat to sail across the ocean, or for the airplane to fly from one place to the next. The waiting corresponded with movement across a physical distance. It is an absurd gesture to intentionally insert this idea of waiting into e-mail communication (there ceases to be a physical distance traversed, and it is possibly argued there is no object).. But the same can be said of attempting to “translate” the idea of the Self Addressed Stamped Envelope, or S.A.S.E into digital. If anything, what is happening is that an older way is being pointed to. A way, with its own subtleties and distinctions, that has been lost. Yet, this does not become about nostalgia or an embracing of an anachronism. It is simply a reflection (and maybe a rupture). The exhibitions organized for S.A.S.E. tread in different areas. Some can be seen as curated art exhibitions, such as Lia Trinka-Browner’s NO PUSSYFOOTING, which uses the cover of the 1973 Brian Eno and Robert Fripp album of the same title as a central locus to pull together different art-works. Some such as Michael Mandiberg’s FDIC Insured can be seen more as a work-in-itself. Mandiberg used image searches, and The Way Back Machine to group image files of logos of recently failed banks. Miscalled a Republic by Gabriel Saloman comes out of neither a curatorial or art-making position. It can be seen more as a visual presentation of Saloman’s historical research into movements of secession and autonomy in North America. And there is Suzie Silver’s Unusual Animal Friends (aka Interspecies Friendship). I would say that this would be similar to Mandiburg’s (an artist using an e-mail to make a work). Yet there is something more happening here. Silver’s images were collected from emails forwarded to her by her mother. These images, already freely circulating through the meme-pool via the personal communication of e-mail, were pulled out and put back into circulation (or maybe never pulled out, just re-contextualized). The editioning of the e-mail exhibitions was obviously out of humor (who makes something digital an edition?). Yet it also has larger motives. It was not to stop the circulation of these e-mails by closing the door. But to hope that they continue to live by the act of forwarding (and possibly being altered as well). Letting the images continue to traffic by entering new in-boxes, just as Silver’s selected images had done organically. These may be high hopes, to want people share the e-mails once they become unavailable, but there is nothing wrong with that.
11″ x 17″ print outs of each show will be available from Aug 10 – Sept 12 as an open edition. These are available only by a real self addressed stamped envelope. Requests must be post-marked no later then Sept 12, 2009. Only one print out per request. You may request a specific exhibition, or we will send you a random one. The bigger the envelope you send, the less amount of folds the print out will have when you receive it. NOTE: Please make sure you include enough postage.

Send here:

Mylinh Nguyen
165 Park St #6
New Haven, CT 06511

For those who live outside of the United States and cannot purchase US postage stamps, do as follows: Mail in an unstamped envelope. Paypal $5 to asdf.makes@gmail.com. In your paypal payment clearly state your name and address. When your envelope arrives we will buy your shipping. If you mail in a heavy envelope send $10.

Drawing Contemporaries at Eyebeam

I have been trying to find a way to distribute my CC licensed master files, from little Illustrator files, master video files, to the 500MB InDesign file for the Digital Foundations book (http://www.digital-foundations.net). This is an experiment. Because these are all graphics and master files, i am going to put them in “Other.” We’ll see how this goes.

Digital Foundations Textbook master file including all files, links, images

This zip contains all of the inDesign files used to publish Digital Foundations. A description (from the intro) is below. Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite integrates the formal principles of the Bauhaus Basic Course into an introduction to digital media production with the Adobe Creative Suite.

via LegalTorrents™ – Digital Foundations Textbook master file including all files, links, images.

Tiananmen Square: Do you exclusively paint Thomas Kinkade paintings?

June 3, 2009

Four years ago, in preparation for a research visit to Shenzhen’s Dafen Painting Village, I requested that roughly a dozen Chinese painters paint a copy of the image of the man standing in front of the tanks during the Tiananmen Square protest on June 4, 1989. I did this partly out an interest in copies and reproductions and partly just to see if I could do it: the image is famous worldwide, but I have since learned it is virtually unknown under Chinese national censorship.

Tiananmen Square: You can add the person to painting when you get it.

Of the dozen requests I sent, most were returned with a price and the universal salutation “it is a pleasure to do business with you.” A few painters suggested I just leave the man and the lamp post out, often for unclear reasons: political or aesthetic? One person outright declared that he could not paint the image. I have titled each image with a snippet of dialogue from the negotiations for each painting.

Tiananmen Square: The man and the white lights will be painted or not?

Twenty years have passed since that violent government crack down on the twenty-something college students occupying the public square in pro-democracy protest. Enough time for the protestors’ children to grow up without ever seeing this famous image that was eradicated by the media. It lies cloaked lies cloaked in Google searches, behind the Great Firewall of China.

Tiananmen Square: our art products will give you total satisfation

This famous image did not exist. This was one manifestation of China’s pattern of Internet censorship. Another pattern was that if a scandals breaks out in China, all webpages outside of China are temporarily disabled. During my month there, two regional politicians were caught in corruptions investigations. One of them was sentenced to death, and the other killed himself. The official reports glossed over the details, and focused on the new appointee. The New York Times, on the other hand, did an in-depth analysis, which I happened to read, as I was up at a strange jet-lagged hour. It was gone the next day.

Tiananmen Square: composition without lights

Just yesterday the New York Times published a small series of editorials about the anniversary. And just now they are reporting on extensive shutdowns of most major communications platforms, from the NYTimes.com to Twitter. Ironically, that article will not make it through the firewall either.

Tiananmen Square: kindly please follow instructions for online payment

My translator & fixer that helped me get access to the painting factories said she had never seen this image. She was a very successful college-educated journalist, who was leaving China to work in Canada. She was a worldly person. She had heard stories but she refused to believe them; stories from family friends whose children disappeared that day, 20 years ago tomorrow.

Tiananmen Square: Chinese people forgot the history

I send images of these paintings out now as a quiet memorial, and an attempt to reseed this image of strength in the face of threats to humanity, tyranny, and the freedom of information

Michael

My HOWTO negotiate a CC license contract with a publisher was translated into Chinese. I love CC.

UPDATE: The translation is now on the CC Taiwan site. Awesome.

callsandopps.com

Marisa pointed out that the name of http://www.callsandopps.com is so familiar… Starting in 2001 I edited of The Calls and Opps List, www.TheRedProject.com/calls. It was a newsletter of Calls for Work, and artist opportunities. From 2001-2005 it was an email newsletter sent to 5000+ subscribers. In 2005 I closed it, looking for someone to take it over. In 2006-2007, it was published as a blog, but it got blown out of the water with spam. It has since been retired.

Being copied is one of the things that I have been trying to work harder at. When my brother would copy everything I did as a child, my father always told me that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ This was small consolation as a pre-tween struggling to establish my own ‘individual’ identity. But now, it really does ring true. Of course I wish they would cite the obvious precedent and inspiration, and maybe do a better job on their web design, but frankly, i just hope they can keep it going for a few years and keep the quality high. Good luck to them, and the community they are hopefully serving.

From my retirement letter:

At the end of one of their essays in one of their books Critical Art Ensemble offers their definition of the gift economy (from Lewis Hyde), which i remember as going something like this: at some points certain people have more time/labor or capital and can give it away to others who have less, which they do until they no longer have more time/labor/capital and then they cannot give it away, so they stop and someone else gives.

Deleuze (in one of his essays in one of his books) speaks of the idea of ‘becoming,’ and the way i always understood it was that an idea/person/etc should always be in the process of becoming something, as opposed to having become something. always evolving, changing, not staying still.

At this point i do not have the time/labor/capital to continue the calls and opps list. my service provider is making it difficult/impossible for me to run my own independent mail script (sendmail throttling, changing anti-spam verification rules, etc). i thought about possible methods of sustaining the project, (advertising, membership fee, etc) all of which turned the project into an institution. an institution is about as un-becoming as you can get, and also the last thing i want to be responsible for at this point. (smile.)

The thing i liked best about it was how un-institutional it was. I did it because it was easy to do, and made things easier: rather than sending out these list of calls by typing in all of my artist-friends’ emails, i could just set up mailing list and have them join. and then i and they could invite other people to join. and after four years, there would be over 5000 people subscribed worldwide.