Gene Youngblood "Expanded Cinema" (1970) [PDF, 4.6 mb].
If you ignore the '70s newage-isms and predictions like this:
The computer does not make man obsolete. It makes him fail-safe.
The computer does not replace man. It liberates him from
specialization. The transition from a culture that considers leisure a
"problem" to a culture that demands leisure as a prerequisite of
civilized behavior is a metamorphosis of the first magnitude. And it
has begun. The computer is the arbiter of radical evolution: it
changes the meaning of life. It makes us children. We must learn
how to live all over again.
this is a very good history of early new media thinking as it attempted to "expand" old media such as television. Youngblood also predicted that computer programmers would be obsolete by now because computers would have the ability to program themselves...
Cory and Minimal Art
patrick lichty wrote:
> I have always loved the four letter word generator, and part of the
> reason why I have a small cache of the Burroughs alphanumeric nixie
> tubes
>
>
> Patrick Lichty
> - Interactive Arts & Media
> Columbia College, Chicago
> - Editor-In-Chief
> Intelligent Agent Magazine
> http://www.intelligentagent.com
> 225 288 5813
> voyd@voyd.com
>
> "It is better to die on your feet
> than to live on your knees."
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-list@rhizome.org [mailto:owner-list@rhizome.org] On Behalf
> Of Eric Dymond
> Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 10:54 PM
> To: list@rhizome.org
> Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: for all you new media types
>
> Here's an old link...,
> http://www.normill.ca/artpage.html
> back when it was really *New* media.
> Eric
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
and at issue here is the fact that most of the discussion re. 8 bit hacktivism or hack is assigned to be retro reinterpretation.
As Norman's site makes obvious, the parameters and *New* were very different then than what is now percieved as new media.
The hacks take commercial grade software from the 80's and try to emulate the minimal restrictions of the media.
On the other hand, non-commercial works, art works (with a lower case a) were exploring a very different environment and were advanced and engaging.
The 8 bitters (my new connotaion for the movement) are trying to understand the populist manifestation of digital art.
While the commercial exploration was going on, many artists were going way beyond the minimalist attributes of commercial digital interaction, which should really be called primitive, not minimal. Using the word minimal creates a false perception of what was in the air. It was really just primitive, and thats a very different field of exploration.
If Cory Arcangel's works are described as a return to primitivism, and attempt to understand the origins of the comnmercial sector, then I think thats a worthwhile cause, one we are still trying to come to term sith. But when it's called Minimal, my back arches. Minimalist work is very sophisticated, and at the end of a long dicourse in modern art of the last century. Minimal works require theses and dialogue, primitive works on the other hand are studied as artifacts.
Well Drawn