Here I am behind a closed Starbucks' in North Canton, Ohio on Christmas Morning, sniffing out a T-Mobile node because my 86-year old dad does not have Net access...
Patrick sans Caffeine
I'd tell myself to lay off the cafeine, if I had had any...

James Brown Dead on Christmas, or “When the Saints go Funkin’ In…”
All right- I realize that this is a blog on art and media, but this is about another type of media artist – James Brown. I don’t know about you, but Soul Brother #1 has had a profound effect on all of the “funky” culture of the US & the UK, from Prince, Fatboy Slim, George Clinton, DeeLite, Carmen Electra; the list goes on. When I thought about it, there are direct and indirect influences on my own life. He’s part of the reason why my black & white shorthair cat has a second name of “Elwood”, and a direct reason for the inspiration for the machinima music video I’m planning in Second Life. Although he hadn’t a big hit since the 80’s, his energy and flamboyance was always an inspiration…

second lifeFor the past three weeks, this thing called Second Life has consumed my time, my wallet, and my mindspace. The question is: why? Is it because there is a tremendous amount of speculative activity on the SL Grid regarding the potential of money to be made in selling aether> Is it the potential of having unrelenting avatar sex with humans, furries, centaurs, elves, or mecha? Is it the fact that within three months, I have met the strangest asemblage of people, been in bizarre and compromising stiuations, slammed a cycle with a girl on back into the side of a mountain at 180 KPH, or blew off a nuke that crashed my grid?

malachi ritscherNew Media Artist Kanarinka posted on the Netbehaviour list about Malachi Ritscher's act of self immolation in protest of the Iraq War in Chicago on Nov. 3rd, 2006. He burned himself to death on the side of the Kennedy Expressway near downtown Chicago during the morning rush hour. He was a part of the arts and music community, and people who knew him told me that he was quiet and affable, but did not seem a person who would "go that far". Malachi was one of fewer than ten US citizens to protest in such a way, and it barely brought a blip on the radar.

Recently, in a conversation that I was having on Rhizome, a colleague was mentioning that although a particular body of work wasn’t their cup of tea, that they surmised that it must have been interesting in that it must have been difficult or challenging to do. This is only one example, but it gives me a rhetorical touchstone for what seems to be a larger phenomenon.

In thinking about the creation of New Media, I’ve come across a multitude of artists who believe that the merit of a work is linked to the artist’s technical prowess and the degree of difficulty involved in the creation of the work [1]. The link of New Media Art to craft seems to elide the conversation of art and objecthood initiated in 1917 upon the fateful inscription of “R.Mutt” upon the urinal by Duchamp. And, with the force of the Conceptual Art movement in the 60’s and 70’s in working to problematize the whole idea of the art object, why does a material discourse (i.e. craft) reemerge in a de-objectified movement like New Media? This is a (somewhat) puzzling phenomenon.