general

Below, my comment to a Rhizome "best of 2008" post about "Internet Aware Art." The post says I.A.W. "attempt[s] to describe the tendency for artists to translate behavioral or situational tendencies occurring online to other contexts, particularly offline" and kinda-sorta attributes it to Guthrie Lonergan. I replied:

Guthrie Lonergan is unusually perceptive and has a caustic wit. That said, credit is generally given for defining a term when it's actually defined. "Internet Aware Art" is a Delphic utterance that flatters each person who uses it with his/her own definition, as seen in the posts here following the Net Aesthetics 2 panel discussion, when it was clear that no one knew what it meant. You attempted to qualify your attribution to Guthrie [by saying he "used the expression to explain a trajectory within his work, and not of others"] but people who don't follow the link can't know how thin his authorship is:

"Beard: You recently told me that you were working on some ideas for 'offline art.' Care to elaborate on what shape they might take?

"Lonergan: Right now I'm scheming how to take the emphasis off of the Internet and technology, but keep my ideas intact. Objects that aren't objects... I got a couple of books and a t-shirt in the works. Right now I'm really into text (not visually/typography... just... text...), and lots and lots of lists… 'Internet Aware Art.' :)"

I'm not reading where it says internet aware art is "an attempt to describe the tendency for artists to translate behavioral or situational tendencies occurring online to other contexts, particularly offline." I think the authors of this post are giving themselves "best of 2008" for a Boswell-like coinage.

The New York Times' Michael Cieply has struck again!

Media Matters has the lowdown on this article about Sundance "green" films being hypocritical because people flew to Utah and drove cars around town. Or something. As Atrios says, "The stupid! It burns!"

Cieply also co-wrote a piece a while back about the non-scandal of Errol Morris paying interview subjects.

What next?

The proclivity of left bloggers to embrace establishment figures when they say something agreeable annoys. For example, from the MyDD site (but I saw similar words elsewhere):

Only three years ago, Chris Matthews announced that the only Americans who didn't like the President were "real whack-jobs, maybe on the left."

But finally, on the eve of Bush's departure, Matthews finally summons the gumption to criticize our commander-in-chief.

Followed by a YouTube clip of Matthews spewing whatever hot air he spewed. Matthews is an asshole with a media megaphone that allows him to drown out the rest of us with his small opinions. He's not a menu with some good meals and some bad meals.

Also Bush isn't, and was never, our "commander in chief." Nor will Obama be. It's in the U.S. Constitution, duh.

A friend said he preferred ambient sorts of music and found drum and bass and so-called IDM too grating. Fair enough but those latter musics become fairly atmospheric at low volume.

hat tip shm