I hope that when I'm in my 70s I won't be haranguing bloggers (or whoever replaces them in the communication food chain) by saying "I was the first artist to make paper quilts with computer output!" or whatever. Just got a comment from Manfred Mohr, who wishes the record to reflect that he used the "incomplete open cube" before Sol LeWitt did and is mad that I said he "copped" it from LeWitt, in my discussion of the "Scratch Code" show at bitforms. He seems to have missed that my review was complimenting his work. His peevish comment and my petulant reply are here.

- tom moody 12-26-2004 2:16 am

this is OT, but in reference back to our earlier discussions, did you check out Peter Vogel's work on that Bitforms site? More here:

www.sukothai.com/X5.Vogel.htm

www.artmag.com/galeries/c_frs/vincy/vogel.html



- paul (guest) 12-26-2004 7:37 pm


I saw Vogel's piece in the bitforms show. It's more interesting technologically than artistically. Or perhaps, better as sound art than visual art. It gets back to what I was saying about circuit bent work being problematic as sculpture. The best work looks like it emerges casually and offhandedly as a result of a technologist trying to create a certain set of sounds (sloppy mad scientist bricolage): as soon as it becomes self-consciously "artistic" or "sculpture-like" it loses me. Vogel has made a little cage of soldered wire that cheeps and bleeps as you move around it. All the circuitry is exposed and you can visualize a certain set of probabilistic variables creating that sound even if you know nothing about electronics. The sounds are fascinating but the sculpture has to stand next to say, David Smith, who kind of set the standard for freestanding modernist sculpture, and it rather ignores all his hard work and the dialogue he participated in in favor of "making shit up," i.e., presenting an unengaging, upright column-shape which has the spidery, solder-y metallic textures of, I'm sorry to say, modernist knockoff mall art (or church or synagogue art). I can enjoy it on that level, but I have to view it with my kitsch filters firmly in place.
- tom moody 12-26-2004 9:16 pm


There is a new show at bitforms of work by Peter Vogel April 20 - May 20, 2006. It's beautiful.
- anonymous (guest) 4-22-2006 5:59 am