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http://www.ciac.ca/no_16/en/entrevue-zanni.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CARLO ZANNI: A kind of aesthetical choice, I don't like Flash movies very much. I prefer the visualization's instability of an html page instead off the affidability given to you by a .swf. In the past, some people stressed the fact that Flash movies aren't open source, so we can say they aren't in the net mood, which is more related to sharing and open source than to copyrights. But in my opinion this is just a really partial point of view. I prefer a w3 where you can find more different approaches than just one big flux of shared data streaming. In the end I'm not against Flash, it is just a tool and after all it has a beautiful logo I could not resist to paint in oil on canvas. But also Flash has a record: Flash is the greatest tool allowing you to hide empty-brain ideas with alluring fashion-oriented animations. There's a friend of mine who uses Flash to export his vectorial drawings (see www.rgbproject.com). These are static images, but so fresh and beautiful, without straight lines but with all those imperfections due to a handmade drawing (he uses a tablet and a graphic pen). In this way he can visualize them in the size he prefers. So, I mean, I like that way to use Flash. I feel bad with hyper-interactive menus. So my remark above was just a superficial and a little bit provocative description. Usually in their home pages people like to show all their entire tech skills. I just say: if you are looking for blinking linkable bytes…I'm sorry but you are losing your time.
Also, people like to theorize about new art categories using tech paradigms. We had the same in the past with video and photography. Now we have Generation Flash, NetArt or the Fabulous Next Art Movement. I don't care about these things. This approach is the same one you can find in the surveys (relatives percentages). Art Movements and Manifestos are something from 1900, not 2000. Art Movements are forerunners of Brands. I'm bored about them. I would like to stress that networking processes or interactions don't add any kind of value to a thought or to a work. They are just simple tools, just like a paintbrush and I can use them as a paintbrush if I need their specs to build my project. Speaking in absolute terms, it's wrong to confuse or identify the quality and the importance of a work with its tech content. Also: Technology is an ongoing process; art is the end of a process. So they are opposites, and often they attract each other. There isn't any kind of relationship between tech content and quality.
www.Newnewportrait.com is a website hosting my net works having to do with people's portraits. I made Icons portraits - recently shown at Bitforms gallery in New York and at Analix Forever in Geneva - and Cookies portraits. The first ones are more related to the traditional history of the commissioned portrait. In fact, I do them just by commission, although some of them were done just for my own interest (friends of mine, tech people…) These portraits are formatted as 32 x 32 pixel icons for desktop. My Icons portraits are a kind of links. You can click on them to link your page to your favorite web addresses or documents. You can change the link as you can change opinion. Your face is linked to a web address or to a sentence or to an image, as in the "real?" life where, perhaps, your face is already linked to something because of your public presence (and are you free to change it?). But these portraits are also icons, icons for a desktop. In the last decade object forms became elements of the best-known landscape in the world: the desktop. I don't sell anything physical, as it is usually done, I mean, I sell the file itself instead of a visualization of it. I like the idea to leave the temporary visualization choice to the buyer. When you buy the file, you are free to use it as you prefer. For example, you can load my Icon portraits on your desktop, and drag and drop them as other classic icons. But you can also project them as a video image over your fireplace if you like it, obtaining something similar to the family portraits of the old rich families: those paintings were witness of a birth. But you can also "visualize" these file-based art works in more traditional ways: printing them on canvas or on glossy paper without caring about dimension or paper's cut. They will still remain "temporary physical objects" unsigned and without any kind of "traditional" value. Cookies portraits are numbered portraits I send you for free every time you visit this address: www.zanni.org/betaCOOKIES. These works are based on the same cookie technology that is usually used by huge commercial websites such as amazon.com to monitor the choices made by users on their websites (a kind of marketing practice). With the help of this technology, my portraits make a "photograph" of the workstation environment of the connected user, sending him a very slim .txt file containing all the data: info about his operative system (ports, browser …); a sentence with the explication of the process and a number. At the time I'm writing this, 586 users already received a numbered cookie portrait. I also did theChurchOfSoftware.org, as a way to demonstrate the central and strategic role of the software in our culture. This allowed me among other things to produce the P2P$ conference.
I called it the protocol, and a big part of the rhizome community attacked me because they were scared about the possibility that I've written the new tables of the law, forcing all people to follow them. My 3-point protocol was just an easy way to try to begin a kind of relationship with galleries and with the market, without pushing any process but by just being active instead of living just hoping for the next grant and praying not to lose the second job. I think we cannot press or accelerate any "cultural?" process, but artists have the duty to think about these topics, making proposals and experiments. Artists must think about the economic side of their work because it is an important part of the process. They are on the front line with their life. You can find the txt with the protocol at this address: www.zanni.org/church/The_Protocol_v1. Those days were a big adventure: three days, ten hours chatting every day. The logs of the chat are posted at the following address: www.zanni.org/church/workshop/invitations, with all the participants and their "social" role. I think the best thing is to read them; any kind of resume would be partial.
I'm also developing two net projects: two screenshots of our time. One is called Softaid.biz (you can find a first draft of it at the following address: www.zanni.org/church/softaid/softaid_diagram_betaV.GIF); and the second one is called BaliLasVegas (working title). Finally, I'm doing paintings for Netizens, an upcoming group show curated by Valentina Tanni in Rome at SalaUno in collaboration with MACRO (Museum Contemporary Art Rome) and scheduled for December. As soon as I receive all the details I'll post all the info about it on my main website: www.zanni.org.
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