■ Mark Amerika's comment

After seeing all of the entries for the Project netarts.org award competition, one thing is for sure: Internet art practice is alive and well. It is a pluralized practice, with many genres, including digital narrative, performance, animation, ambient games, hactivism, data visualization, and the like. The discussions with the selection committee were noteworthy for their intellectual vibrancy. An online dialogue between selection committee members John Hopkins and Trace Reddell was especially revelaing.

> I'm suspecting that what we're talking about here ...
> is that what you and I would label "net.art" is in some ways ...
> best exemplified through a kind of daily practice ...
<jaceee> absolutely
> an ongoing relationship with dataspace in its varieties ...
> dataspaces in their varieties ...
> this is maybe why we both like the kind of blog-like projects as well
<jaceee> I think that about all creative practices!
<jaceee> yep
<jaceee> they must be lived
> and the net.art practice has just been melded into this model of ongoing output
<jaceee> yup
<jaceee> the re-presentative spaces of heavily socialized relation tend to kill that relation to life...
> what I liked when I first met you and got a sense of what you were up to,
<jaceee> there must be a direct connection!
<jaceee> likewise ;-))
<jaceee> I think that observing the schism of PoMo up close taught me that
> you saw networking as sort of navigating through opportunities for these
intensified moments ...
<jaceee> yup
> situations that were gathering energy into a temporary node of experience
<jaceee> I could see no other role for my particiaption in the 'art world'
> and facilitating a truly multilateral exchange
<jaceee> yup
> this is different from a rhizome, I think
> because a rhizome implies a genetic similarity across the connectivity points
> it's all the same lifeforce
<jaceee> I thot rhizome was to grow a cash cow? ;-}
> exactly
<jaceee> there are some substantial new research in the science of soils
that point to an intensive level of dynamic interconnectivity of root and soil
<jaceee> with facilitating agents keeping the flow of life going between both
> yes, because a network allows for exchange across systems that are dramatically different

I was struck by the beauty of the give and take, the harmony of voices, the polyvocality (real and potential) of the format, and the way it essentially captured the spirit of a distributed net art practice *taking place* IN asynchronous realtime.

A good deal of our discussion involved the differences between net art work that exists autonomously on and with the web, and more process-oriented work that is less about a finished product and more about how the network infiltrates our daily lives.

Most of the interesting net artists I know of who are producing formally experimental autonomous work that can be viewed in the collective and collaborative lab of the WWW are, by the very nature of their commitment to staying connected to the network environment, very aware of their ongoing relationship with the various dataspaces they operate in. It's not like they become zombies in daily practice while seeking completion of a finished object
that can be neatly packaged for a consumer audience. Yes, there are commercial Flash artists, for example, who do nothing but that. But those are not the kind of artists we are talking about anyway. There are intermedia net artists who are able to cover multiple and hybridized practices so that it's not an either/or situation, rather, it's an and/and situation - or an ether/ore practice where they mine the mind for generative forms that come out as part of their ongoing (and yes, daily) jam session with the yberpsychogeographical
border zones of the contemporary culture they activate themselves in.

True, some net artists have more output than others, and may also be more talented i.e. more capable developing a Life Style Practice via calculated "aimless drifting" that feeds into their formal experiments and that also, on occasion, results in what looks like pseudo-autonomous works. But my sense is that those works are a ruse the same way a static philosophy of rhizomatic flow and the nomadic Life Style Practice I expound can, at times, come across like a ruse. And, needless to say, it's not just net artists who are capable of outputting pseudo-autonomous works. Some very important novelists I have known over the years have a talent for parceling out large chunks of formally innovative work from the ever growing sausage-material they are grinding out as part of their Life Style Practice. They call them novels or collections. They are often just by-products of an otherwise totally immersive Life Style Practice. For some reason, they are able to create these pseudo-autonomous works of art like leaving their footprints in the sand. They are so productive they just can't help themselves and, yes, they have this urge to aestheticize.

I see two of the finalist projects fitting into the above category quite well. Constantini's Unosunosyunosceros and Crawford's Stop Motion Studies Series. I would have been happy to see either of these works win the award. But I was also impressed with Ping Melody, as were all of the committee members. Ping Melody attempts to take their musical and network instruments, as well as their undercurrent ideology, and turn it into an active practice via live
performance. The granular synthesis of data-noise from the net and live music+voice pings the listener and actuates a net presence as some kind of performative remix taking place in asynchronous realtime. The work is dependent on the networked space of flows to conduct its material ambition which becomes manifest in the sound we hear. Nice idea - bravo!

Overall, the decision was difficult and I am happy with all of the works chosen for the exhibition and could see any number of them walking away with the award although Ping Melody is certainly a worthy choice.