IV. the re:starting of the _arc.hive_ list

as i wrote about the kfor list in my last entry of this ongoing project, the _arc.hive_ list has also recently re:started. in fact the _arc.hive_ re:start was simultaneous wit the kfor re:start + i was automagically re:subscribed to both

mez + ftr began the _arc.hive_ list in 2001 in response to restrictive practices of other {text|web}-based discursive spaces. as mez wrote: "][net.art][ lists that have previously m.braced x.pressive/communicative tendencies of all typ][o][es r now dying ][heavily][ moderated & flame-driven deaths, with the survivors either hanging on 4 dear text or abandoning the status-quo-seeking shells in s][tatic][warms." _arc.hive_ was home to: "creative practices involving the network [ie new media art, code poetry, net.art, e.literature, content alteration poetry, web art, electronic art, hackerese, digital projects, net.wurks, programmer writing, spam art, incremental texts, theory/hybrid factions, software art, performative interactions, werdwurk, calls 4 applications & submissions, gamer rhetoric, technical info/details, net-linked announcements etc etc]"

like Netochka Nezvanova, mez had been similarly re:moved from other lists for her posts/activity. mez's posts, like Netochka Nezvanova's, were a part of an ongoing online identity construction as a creative + experimental New Media Art project. mez's posts are/were written in mez's own language, Mezangelle. as is stated in/on the Wikipedia entry for Mezangelle, this experimental-artistic-performative language is "not syntactically fixed and is in continuous artistic development". on the issues of unfixed net.wurk flows, Jake Elliott + i wrote a text called Hacking Open Together: New Media Art, Activism and Computer Counter Cultures back in 2006. we claimed that: the vocabulary at the edge of “hackerdom” is a kind of populist coded satire of elitism called l33t. l33t becomes not only a vocabulary but a pervasive affect. “The” becomes “teh” and “owned” becomes “pwned” as mistakes fold into the language, dirty glitch becomes linguistic atom moving horizontally + playfully rather than being controlled by linguistic legitimacy. we wrote then that our use of l33t was an attempt to play rather than render our activities illegible. we wanted to resist clean codes, introduce Noise to our experimental New Media Art theorypractices + embrace dirtiness of various kinds in these activities... we are still engaged in/motiviated by those efforts + desires

when _arc.hive_ re:started @ the same moment as kfor i was of course immediately curious about the points of origins of these re:starts. werking under the name autumn-frequency i was very active on the original _arc.hive_ in the early 2000's. as a part of the art-whirld-code-culture that developed onList + was fostered/facilitated by mez, i was a part of a vibrant codework community + my codework was included in both the Unstable Digests that Florian Cramer collected/curated from _arc.hive_ + re:posted to nettime + the 2002 _Net & Codeworkers Inc[ubation]_ exhibition curated by mez for the incubation gallery && trAce Online Writing Center. the activity by those werking on/thru _arc.hive_ was very intense + fast-paced @ times, involving digesting/remixing/reprocessing each others posts + replying/riffing off of 01 another in improvisational streams of textual +/or encoded datastreams. as i understood it, this process involved forms of mutual support && challenge, provoking && pushing the community to create && refine our own, as well as our shared understandings of what could constitute codework as an experimental New Media Art theorypractice

while _arc.hive_ was still running my friend-collaborator-fellow_artist/academic Nicholas O'Brien created an online identity/persona called LISMORE + joined _arc.hive_ in 2007. werking under the LISMORE name, O'Brien was also very active + provocatinnal on various lists as LISMORE aka L1XM0R3 aka L!XM0R3. these lists included _arc.hive_, the Chicago New Media list + the internal criticalartware developers list. LISMORE's posts were as fellow-Furtherfield blogger Patrick Lichty has written on Rhizome, part of a troll-as-artist position as mapped out along the trajectories of projects/artists such as antiorp/Netochka Nezvanova/integer, etc... which have in Lichty's words: "all institutionalized this position as “anti-strategy” that’s just as much of a pose as a strategy." these poses/startegies/positions/plays-with(in)-online-identities are also hyperthreaded hystories, coexisting datastreams, parallel processing + massively multilayered social networkings, meshworks of meanings that conspire together to make + unmake sense

so this brings me to wander outloud along these trails/traces about the confusions that can also be made + unmade by these relations. back in 2007, O'Brien's L!XM0R3 caused enough confusion in/on the local Chicago New Media list that many people asked me if i was Lismore. to which i would reply: "no, i am not... Lismore seems to mostly operate in a highly encoded form of speech + @ times particularly aggressive form of New Media Art theorypractice that is referred to primarily as codework or wryting..." (&& then i would often have to further clarify to ppl that) "...as you have noted before, i to have made codeworks. i have + still do occasionally use variously encoded forms of speech/writing to articulate a code-poetic approach that includes the influence of programming on net.art/Web Art/New Media. in fact, i recently completed a text for Leonardo that is written in many modes: diaristic, essayistic, encoded, codeworked, etc... while the Lismore entity seems to be interested in keeping their physical identity/ies obscured, i do think/feel that they are definitely operating in a way that involves serious attempts @ critique + creative theorypractices rather than just trying to attack + disrupt the listservs that they are on." of course, i knew then as well as i do now who LISMOAR was b/c O'Brien + i have been housemates since the time at which he joined _arc.hive_. of course, i also know that ][mez][ + Netochka Nezvanova influenced/inspired O'Brien in the LISMORE project, a project which O'Brien has concluded by saying "// unedit
crtl + z" back in October 2007 on the Chicago New Media list

which, again, circuitously returns me to the topics of the legibility of certain kinds of creative work in the field of experimental New Media Art as well as the question of what constitutes code-based approaches, code-art, codework, Artware, etc... && importantly what constitutes Spam Art or the so-called "Spam-like behavior" of sum art that flows along these paths... i imagine a kind of reverse ELIZA effect takes place at these times, in which those inhabiting these discursive spaces unconsciously assume human behaviors are analogous computer behaviors, i.e. how ppl can mistake ppl for machines, for malicious machines, spambots, unrestricted algorithms gone wild in a Turing Test turned upside-down +/or a Chinese Room experiment turned inside-out...

writing about these issues in/on online discursive New Media Art whirlds of 2000/2001 in November of 2001, Inke Arns & Andreas Broeckmann wrote that Netochka Nezvanova + others were parasites + that "like any good parasite, this artistic practice depends on the existence of lively online communities: it not only bites, but kills the hand that feeds it. - These parasite nomads will find new hosts, no doubt, but they have over the past year helped to erode the social fabric of the wider net cultural population so much that communities have to protect themselves from attacks and hijacks more aggressively than before." Arns & Broeckmann continue along this trajectory, saying that they: "despise the deliberation with which these people act." in the context of the "Rise and Decline of the Syndicate: the End of an Imagined Community", the text from which these quotes are taken, details their removal of Netochka Nezvanova from the Syndicate + concludes wit their position that they: "believe in people and their needs more than we believe in art."

now, unlike _arc.hive_, i was never very active or involved in the Syndicate or SPECTRE, so i have no personal experiences to draw from in relation to these online relations but i suspect that these blasts from the pasts might resonate closely wit sum who were on these lists in the early 2000's. + that perhaps the tone of of their text would ring differently now

speaking of ringing differently, mez didnot re:start _arc.hive_ + in fax, i rly wander who did... so i asked mez + she said, she didnot know + she in fax thought it was Nicholas O'Brien. O'Brien was not @ home but rather was in Berlin @ the time so the next time i saw him onLine i asked him, but he doesn't know either...