general

A person enters the literary world as a novice, and slowly studies the works of great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep, alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting wisdom. Respect is paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.

[It was such immersion that led me to conclude that the US needed to invade Iraq.]

A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.

[Such as led many "bloggers" to decide invading Iraq was wrong.]

After the previous post on Henry Darger a friend wondered if "outsiders" can exist anymore, with the Net leveling and connecting. Sure, "outsider" now equals "someone not on the Net." But seriously, the term outsider sounds cruel and judgmental and snobby but all it means is "one who makes art heedless of a context larger than one's own computer (or studio, or computer/studio)." We can like an outsider's work as much as an insider's but it's always fair to ask "where is this coming from?"

Using that "metric" it's actually harder to identify an insider than an outsider. The same friend thought the two net art camps discussed in an earlier post possibly ignored some of the other subdivisions. Well, yes, and to heck with all of them. A type of artist exists, let's call him Patrick, who cannot describe any new artwork or art movement without giving a long summation beginning with Manet, working through Cubism, minimalism, Pop, several shades of conceptualism, and then increasingly fine gradations of "net art" to the present example and where it fits in that continuum. This is perhaps taking insider-dom to extremes.

To be an outsider you just make your work and let the historians take care of it. To be an insider all you really need to understand is what you're doing (Camp Two) and how it differs from stuff you hate (Camp One), plus some vague background knowledge of how it all fits in the history of art, which you don't need to recite every time. I had a discussion with a Camp One/Camp Two analyzer about how much depth you even need to go into explaining the camp you dislike. You don't want to dignify it with too much scholarly exegesis. As they say in politics, "if your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil." But if you acknowledge another camp at all, and care about it, you are an insider.

hat tip mat3i for the scanner

An attempt at a wikipedia page on the internet surf club phenomenon is mostly wrong, or a joke, particularly in describing it as "net.art" (an older form of internet art, as indicated by the knowing dot placement, a la the dot com era). Am not too interested in a nerd tug of war over language on Wikipedia, so here's a first draft to replace the bare bones text that's there:

A so-called internet Surf Club is a group site (usually a blog) where artists and others link to "surfed" or "surfable" items on the Web and also post some of their own creative work. "Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club" was the first to use the words "surfing club" (ironically) and others on the list below followed the form or adopted the word "club" to sound relevant. Several "clubs" on the list are arguably Net Art 1.0 or "net.art" style websites and not Nasty Nets-style surf clubs. The original clubs were never true clubs but there has been much rancor over the issue of invited membership in the supposedly open and democratic web that still exists outside Facebook-like commercial enclaves. Dump.fm is a real-time image sharing website that has many aspects of a surf club; however, anyone can sign up for Dump. The core surf clubs (Nasty, Double Happiness, Loshadka) are barely active now--their heyday was 2006-2009, which could be called the "surf club era." Arguably the widely-used, configurable tumblr sites made surf clubs obsolete.

Citations to add:

Rhizome Surf Club vs 4Chan discussion

Rhizome Surf Club vs Rhizome discussion

http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2010/05/09/surf-art-continuity/

blog posts at http://www.tommoody.us/?s=surf+club

Addendum: Although Nasty Nets used the phrase "surfing club" the usual shorthand use is "surf club." Titling the Wikipedia page "surfing club" sounds prissy and formal, or mock-formal, at this stage of the discussion.

Afterthought: One thing is fairly certain: the history of surf clubs will not be memorialized on Wikipedia by the original participants, but rather a later generation that misunderstands the "clubs" as a form of "net.art," or adds a faux mystical dimension that absolutely wasn't there at the outset. The web is mostly crap, people. Miracles happen, but attempts to claim an exalted higher plane for "surfing" are bogus--even sardonic attempts.

Update: Many thanks to whomever modified the Wikipedia "Surfing Club" entry, incorporating some ideas and language from this post.

Brian Droitcour's Rhizome article about Jstchillin.org provides some grist for Duncan Alexander's broad generalizations regarding two types of net artists.

Alexander's argument in sketch form:

Camp 1: "The net is their vehicle for dissemination, and they stand out from the online flow"; "design heavy" pages that look like art pages and are a final destination for the surfer (I added the non-quoted part). Examples: Computers Club, Oliver Laric

Camp 2: "This camp makes art for the net on the net, and blends in to the net-social fabric." Examples: Various Dumpers and Tumblrers

To the extent Droitcour describes Jstchillin as having a "top-down organization and meticulous calendar" that sounds like Camp 1. To the extent Droitcour describes Nasty Nets and dump.fm as "touching the issue of chill time by adapting its form" that sounds like Camp 2.