lists, boards, friends + feeds: hyperthreaded hystories, coexisting datastreams, parallel processing + massively multilayered social networks

PART I.

the above title is meant to be understood as {purposefully|playfully} verbose, but recently a few events have occurred that have caused me to re:consider the ways in which listservs, forums, social software + blogs/RSS feeds function in the discourses of Digital Art

these events include:

I. AT&T's blocking of specific 4chan channels (/b/ + /hc/)
II. the announced 'dissolution' of + resulting responses on the freesound list
III. the re:starting of the kfor list
IV. the re:starting of the _arc.hive_ list
V. && recent Twitter Art + RSS Art projects by Jake Elliott

I. Return of The Psychick Youth

purty recently AT&T began blocking specific 4chan channels, /b/ + /hc/. the news of this sent me bax to 4chan, specifically to those channels being blocked + to the site as a whole (if 01 could ever even argue for a 'wholeness' in this context). as has been observed by others in detail, the /b/ + /hc/ channels of 4chan are filled w/sum extremely hateful, racist, homophobic + misogynist performances of online identity. /hc/ is the "Hard Core" porn channel, which has users posting content in the context of an ongoing conversation about porn. the /b/ channel is the "Random" channel + is also 01 of the points of origin for numerous internet memes that are well known beyond the insular confines of the (boys((?)) club that is the threaded imageboard forum-based conversation of /b/. perhaps the best known example of these memes is the now omnipresent LOLCATS macro

only the most undiscriminating of obsessive compulsive digital hoarders would want to collect everything posted to 4chan or specific channels such as /b/. but recently i was in NYC + talking w/friends, 01 of which is an artist/academic who conducts internet/web culture research + maintains several identities on 4chan. this friend was relating to me their interest in the social histories of 4chan as well as their research, during which they have traced a few of the regular posters, cross-referencing their posts + attempting to aggregate their creative output on 4chan. as we were discussing 01 such case, another person, who like my friend, maintains several identities on 4chan, the question of what constitutes New Media Art or rather what works might be equally legible as 4chan comments +/or Web Art? + the further question arose, what about those artists who have now literally grown up on 4chan? what will they make of making work in another context, i.e. art school?

the same weekend in NYC, another group of friends + i were discussing Throbbing Gristle, secret shows @ galleries in Williamsburg, social engineering, hacking + majik... so returning to 4chan /b/ (which i did not grow up w/) reminded me of Psychic TV sum how + as i jumped from link to link i landed on Meme Generator

http://memegenerator.net

which self-reflexively allows users to generate new memes based on the Advice Dog meme + then also to make macro images using those new meme generators. the meme generators are all stored + accessible to anyOne + the individual images created w/them are also stored. once an image is created w/a meme generator, you then have the built-in option to post this image as a reply to a thread on 4chan via the interface on Meme Generator. again, as w/the /b/ channel, Meme Generator is filled w/hateful, racist, homophobic + misogynist meme generators that ppl have created. now, we may or may not be able to read sum of these meme generators or the macro images made w/them as ironic, sarcastic, funny, offensive, sickening, repulsive +/or sincere. also, these values may vibrate or oscillate wildly within any01 of these meme generators or resulting macro images. still, i read the entire Meme Generator project (as a whole) in a way that could easily be interpreted as Web Art or even Artware (aka Software Art)

while i was on Meme Generator, the thoughts/feelings i have described prompted me to render sum meme generators. i immediately wanted to see Genesis P-Orridge in the middle of the rainbow. as others have documented 4chan /b/ posters have a tradition of calling themselves + each other "faggots" so i thought that Genesis P-Orridge's complex genderbent/transitional/sex majikal identity would be an interesting play w/in this context. i initially created a meme generator of Genesis P-Orridge in which her/his breasts were visible. amazingly, this meme generator was censored, taken down + deleted by the next day. what amazes me about this is the way in which a social space that plays @ being bored-young-jaded-[anything is eligible for fun/ridicule in the form of hate speech] would react in a reactionary way to Genesis P-Orridge's post-operative transgender breasts. so i revised my meme generator, cropping the image so that his/her breasts are visible, but his/her nipples are not. this meme generator is still available + im exxxcited to say has been used by those other than myself to generate images