ok, not really but Radar Masukami did, on his podcast number 29 criticize our criticism on podcast #9 of Jazrupt Naheed’s video. For those of you that don’t know Radar is the host of “SL Under the Radar” which is one of my most favorite podcast about SL. They usually do a kind of what i think of as a “travel show” segment called chugging across the grid with chugabug, were Radar’s co-host, Chugabug Goodnight (who has a beautiful voice) talks about a different place in SL she’s visited in every episode. Then they generally talk about SL news, SL technology, and whatever they feel like talking about… for example they’ve had arguments about…..um….. sheep? with another of my favorite podcasts, Diamons and Rust. But in SL under the radar podcast 29, Radar turns his attention to us! Yay! His critique comes after a very nice (for us, thank you!) segment of the podcast where went to Brooklyn is Watching and described the project in detail for their listeners.
I have to take issue with a few things that Radar said– one of the things he said was more or less “why are you ripping on this video when there is so much complete crap that calls itself art out there” — part of what he said is that anyone can create some nonsense, make up a good story to go with it and call it art. This is true. But… that doesn’t make it good art. Paradoxically making fine art is one of the most easy things to do poorly and one of the most difficult things to do well. After 150 years of people expanding the boundaries of what could be considered “art” pretty much anything is potentially in the category — but doing something that is really excellent… its really difficult and sometimes the difficulty is in the area of what i would call a “well-crafted idea”…. now speaking personally, that’s not the kind of thing i usually do– mostly i’m a painter. But… theres a lot of art that an average person might think “what is this crap” but if you know the obscure references that they are making, and the state of art criticism that existed at that particular time, its a really hilarious and brilliant statement.
Work like this is made for a tiny audience of super-over-educated people who like to think really hard…..
wow that makes us sound like we’re no fun.
We can be really fun too i swear. With hundreds of artists in new york trying to get their work shown for every one who does, its a very competitive environment, so we tend to be hypercritical…. and conversely we also think its fun to see if we can find meaning in things that may or may not be meaningless. Ok, we’re a bunch of wierdos. I know…. i grew up in kansas, i know how wierd new york art people are in the grand scheme of things.
So… making bad art = easy, making good art = hard. Arguing about what is good and what is bad = fun!
And its not ALL in the eyes of the beholder… I think. But you might disagree.
AND lastly, Radar was defending the video against what DanCoyote (who was our guest on that show) was saying about the video which was “why is this here, what does it have to do with SL”. Radar said — how is it different from taking SL art and putting it on a big screen in an art gallery? – and I would say that the differnce is that there’s a mouse and a keyboard and visitors to the gallery can experience (if they are brave enough to touch the mouse and the keyboard– that takes some convincing sometimes) the full 3d / sound/ interactive glory of SL as the artists mean for it to be experienced — so it is engaging the medium of SL fully.
But I do think that was a good question. Radar is a very smart dude, you can tell when you listen to him– Radar, if you’re out there reading this, maybe you’ll be a guest on our show sometime? Chugabug too, if you’re game. I’d love to hear you guys critique the art that shows up on our door step from your point of view.
And I’m not opposed to the idea of video in SL in general — and I don’t subscribe to DanCoyote’s hyperformalist dogma.
And lastly to the Seatle-based Jazrupt Naheed –first- thank you for participating at all — and Looking back, you might not have gotten a fair shake- we were a very small panel that week- and Boris who loves Video in SL wasn’t there. You should put up some other videos at BIW and we’ll talk about them too- AND– post a link as a comment on this blog post to places where your videos can be seen online so that people can take a look for themselves and decide what they think.
We talk about this incident quite a bit on podcast #12 which is going to be posted within the next two hours.