Course Requirements and Objectives
(1) Arts 404.JO is an information-arts course titled " - Network Performance Art - Arts 404.JO" Arts 404.JO is intended for:
Artists, Hackers, Cultural Purveyors, Imaginative Housewives, Creative Construction Workers, Creative Workers, Creative Choclatiers, Urban Homesteaders and Back to the Land Types, Special Teachers, Special Education Teachers Who are Fighting Corporate / State Mandates, Cosmopolitan Farmers, Innovative People and Animals, Eco-minded Global Citizens, Cultural Readers, Whole Food Eaters, Savvy Art Critics, Curators, and Art Historians Who Aren't Afraid to Ride In The Back of Pick-up Trucks, Cyborg Mycologists, AIs Masquerading As Musicians, Information DJs, Print-makers, Painters and Ceramicists Who Set Information Free, etc.
(1)All participants in this course must create what is loosely defined as a creatively infused, viral-pimping of a MySpace page and then submit their work through clicking on Add to friends . Participants must choose whether they wish to be a student or professor in the Department of Networked Performance.
(2) Students must complete "Assignment #1" detailed below.
(3) Professors seeking full-time faculty status in the Dept of Network Performance are strongly encouraged to apply. The selection process is competitive. Applicants must significantly add to the curriculum and knowledgebase of the Dept of Network Performance through the creation of additional exercises, assignments, readings, viewings, and links including detailed instructions, conceptual strategies, and working examples of networked performance art .
PLEASE NOTE: This course is intended as a restless, evolving, active-media template for researching, exhibiting, coding, creating, and building network performances. Arts 404.JO is NOT a vehicle for commercial, corporate, individual, or self-promotion. Arts 404.JO is not a course for simply displaying one's works. This course is a network performance unto itself. Unexpected solutions are encouraged, i.e. works that complete the assignment provided in the syllabus but attempt to push that structure into realms of creative play.
Assignment #1
Commercial Carriers for Restless Culture.
You will create a work that is informed by an introductory knowledge of the history and practice of 20th century performance art. Your work will involve digital technologies and the internet.
Your work will be made possible through technical, and cultural models and manifestations of the globalized network as implemented and experienced through commercial web interfaces and the world wide web. Your work will seek to perform the network, e.g. this very site is a networked performance. In order to be performative your work must consider the internet and world wide web as an active media platform, interactive stage, interface, and instrument for hyper-linked social art actions . You will consider commercial web sites such as Ebay.com, Myspace.com, YouTube.com, etc. as digital readymades. Remember you will NOT use these sites for their intended purposes, but instead you will interrupt, hack, re-configure, and customize them for the purposes of a performative work of art. Potential solutions will lie in conceptual approaches (idea-based art) and in creative, technical approaches to the medium of the internet and world wide web in particular. Successful work will emphasize recombinant strategies; infusing creative-viral strains of restless content into otherwise predictable commercial sites that serve a prescriptive mix of narrcisism and commerce. Successful work will seek unexpected results along with or generated by participatory user actions or feedback.
Required Reading
A selective and thus reductive list of relevant links with an emphasis on more traditional modes of performance art including a brief definition and both pioneer, and contemporary practitioners.
Definition of Performance Art from the Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?e ntryId=218
Laurie Anderson
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/anderson/index.html
Joseph Beuys 7000 Oaks
http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/7000/
Nao Bustamante
http://www.naobustamante.com/
Nicolas Dumit Estevez
http://longwoodarts.org/Artists/nicolas/
DADA & the Cabaret Voltaire
http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/may/dada.php
Allan Kaprow
http://brooklynrail.org/2006-05/art/allan-kaprow-19272006
Paul McCarthy
http://www.newmuseum.org/more_exh_p_mccarthy.php
Charlotte Moorman interviewed by Harvey Matusow
http://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman.html
Nam June Paik
http://www.paikstudios.com/essay.html
Stelarc
http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/
A selective and thus reductive list of relevant links to world wide web and networked based modes of Performance Art including theoretical texts, blogs, portals, and practitioners.
A Research Blog about Network-enabled Performance
http://www.turbulence.org/blog /
Network Art and the Networked Gallery
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/networkgallery.htm
A Contemporary American Artwork In Progress
http://restlessculture.net/americanart/
Aesthetic Conditions in Art on the Network
http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v4n2/brett/index.html
MT Enterprises WorldWide
http://www.mteww.com/
The Gif Show
http://www.myspace.com/gifshow
Abe & Mo Sing The Blogs
http://artport.whitney.org/gatepages/january06.shtml
Friendster Suicide
http://beigerecords.com/cory/Performance/ps1_2005.html
H5N1 by Nerve Theory
http://www.kunstradio.at/2006A/H5N1en.html
BorderXing Guide
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/borderxing/
Netzbikini
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/netzbikini/
Electronic Disturbance Theater
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/EDTECD.html
Cecilkleakins 7000 Oaks
http://platial.com/cecilkleakins/map/3798?title=7000_Oaks
DID FITTS FOR FIGHT STEAL YOUR MUSIC TOO??
http://nl_hq.micromusic.net/stolengoods/
Meiko and Ryu Exclusive
http://www.dnp.co.jp/museum/nmp/nmp_i/report/mandr.html