March 2014

Art F City mini-thread re GIF Rescue Service

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I disagreed with Art F City on its support of a ladder competition for GIFs.

While ArtFCity supports the neoliberal model of GIFs as mano-a-mano, "fuck your buddy" capitalist competition, complete with a ladder of winners and losers and hokey flames in the background, tommoody.us, a kinder, gentler website, announces "Operation GIF Rescue" [subsequently changed to GIF Rescue Service"], where the "losers" of these dogfights will be given deserving homes. [This comment went into moderation when I changed the URL - whoops.]

Paddy replied:

I support "Operation GIF rescue." I see the tourney as a way to get people engaged and have some fun, and pulling good gifs off the site and talking about them critically helps that cause.

Then I decided to change the name (too much like a certain pro-death organization):

Please note that the name and post title has been changed to GIF Rescue Service. Competition is not fun but rescue warms the hearts of millions.

I received one email from someone else disturbed by the "competition ladder for art" concept. Would be interested in others' commentary - please see email address on my About page. Let me know if you prefer name, initials, or anon. One of the nice things about dump.fm is that while the "fav count" can get you to the "top of the directory," hackers easily game the count and then every few months the site goes kerflooey and resets everyone to zero. All that said, "GIF Rescue Service" will also intermittently rescue dumps from the instant obscurity of "dropping off the front page" -- our editors have already been doing that for a few years, but without a public-spirited name.

announcing "GIF Rescue Service"

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systaime

So-called art GIFs deserve better than to die in a cock fight or dog fight.
They need love and white space to look their best, not some hideous "tourney" with flames in the background.
Hence, we're announcing an on-again, off-again feature called "GIF Rescue Service," where deserving creations will be given shelter from gimmicky environments of forced wackiness.
When possible, these GIFs will be nurtured by critical commentary.
Art is not sports, it doesn't have winners and losers, and its value is not decided by electronic, quasi-democratic vote.
The GIF above, by Systaime, "lost" to another GIF and is reproduced here. Ironically, Systaime's GIF also depicts a competition, imaginary rather than real, in which a graphic element on a Facebook page becomes detached from its background and plays a game of old-school Pong with itself. Systaime comments on the humdrum, cluttered boredom of another day on Facebook with his fake game, much as a disaffected cubicle worker might while away the hours playing Solitaire. Would that Systaime had remained in the realm of imaginary, masturbatory mock-competition and not submitted to the humiliation of a "real" GIF tournament, an unregulated, unvetted practice where results can be gamed by having your friends vote and there is no right of recount or appeal. Fortunately for Systaime, GIF Rescue Service arrived to save the GIF from a dubious self-promotional judgment.

Update: The name (and post title) was changed from "Operation GIF Rescue" to "GIF Rescue Service."

rhizome telethon notes

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Corinna Kirsch and Paddy Johnson liveblogged yesterday's portions of the Rhizome.org fundraising telethon (which is still in progress overnight) and Kirsch raised a question about my segment, specifically regarding an artist's use of Google. Just for clarification, here's a link to the text I was reading aloud (the slightly smoother blog version) about a Javier Morales post on Nasty Nets. Petra Cortright showed this Morales post when we did the Net Aesthetics 2.0 panel in 2008. Thanks to Kirsch for her notes and commentary. At 12:38 pm EST she wrote, about my reading of my Rhizome comments aloud: "Funny that comments originally thought of as vitriolic seem tame when read aloud from a binder. I’d like to see all these comments in a book." She also noted: "Rhizome’s Zachary Kaplan asks if reading the old comments brings up old emotions at the time. Tom says it actually does come back in a 'horrible rush.'" Kaplan also asked if I workshopped the comments before posting them -- if only.
Rhizome's editor Michael Connor preceded me as a telethon presenter and wrote this post, while the camera was rolling, during his hour of screen time. Once I got home and had a chance to read it, I replied in the comments to his thoughts about comments. Both he and Kirsch note the sad passing of the comment torch from blogs and/or listServs to "social" (meaning Facebook and Twitter).
As of this writing, Rhizome is only about $700 short of its $20,000 fundraising goal -- you could still kick in.

Twitter feedback:

@tommoody is holding a bounded media object live on #rhizome (let's unpack that joke: UmThatsMyLuggag connected someone's phrase from that 2008 panel to this binder):

new daytime drinking game, everytime @tommoody sez "blogger" take a drink (Nicholas O'Brien -- wish I could have)

Update: Kirsch also noted that the sound was intermittent -- I watched some of the YouTube later and confirmed. In case you were following and my voice cut out just as several carefully developed lines of argument were coming together into a piquant punchline, the comments can all be read here.

comment-reading for Rhizome telethon

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comments2014

Tomorrow, March 19, 2014, at noon EST I'll be doing a reading for Rhizome.org's annual community campaign. The fundraiser takes the form of a 24 hour telethon of streaming video that runs from 11 am on the 19th to the same time on the 20th. Guest fundraisers have one-hour slots. Go to the Rhizome front page for the stream. [Schedule]

Have been an indefatigable commenter on the site for years, and veteran of new media slugfests where I go down swinging amidst a pile of bodies. Will be reading these comments aloud for an hour: on twitter I described it as "part poetry, part filibuster." To give you a flavor of the ordeal, please see the photo above, that's five-plus years of my Rhizome comments printed out, single-sided -- the tree-killer version. The flags are for ones that might work as "stand-alone" writing, as opposed to long strings of back-and-forth dialogue.

Will probably take breaks to sip water and hector viewers to donate. The goal is $20,000 and the total's currently at $13K.
Why contribute? Here's what I wrote last year:

Notions of "net art" and "new media" change over time and we have nothing like a consensus on whether these even exist. Still, the idea of a digital commons where this can be hashed out has merit.
Rhizome's relationship with a museum (the New Museum in NYC) adds a provocative element to the mix: the possibility of institutional legitimacy or illegitimacy makes people genuinely angry, whereas in most digital situations the appearance of democratized crowdsourcing gives every decision a layer of cottage cheese affability.
My own writing about Rhizome was described last year by an AFC attack ninja as venomous when at the most it was mildly critical (it's all available for perusing if you want to have a venom hunt). The same ninja said my writing about Rhizome impeded Rafael Rozendaal's career!
The escalation of mild to venomous and the potential for artist career destruction would not even be considered if the attack ninja hadn't perceived something to be at stake in writing about Rhizome. This may be a strange and roundabout logic in support of donating but it's worth dollars and cents to me.

The loyal opposition can't be seen writing puff-piece paeans to the organization's improved programming; hence this reblog of last year's passive aggression.