At the blog of new media artist duo MTAA you can listen to an .mp3 file of artist Marisa Olson "kicking the ass" of MTAA-er T.Whid (as he phrases it). This is the eighth and next-to-last in a series of MTAA's "live at the art opening" online field recordings. It's very entertaining and informative.

In the recording, Olson, who also blogs and makes new media art, coolly, efficiently, and amusingly dispatches T.Whid's leading questions such as:

--Is the 8 Bit movement evolving, since Cory Arcangel is the leader of the movement and his most recent show contained nothing 8 Bit in it?

--Is it a problem that artwork requiring specialized knowledge to appreciate (i.e., Net Art) is on the Web where anyone can consume it in a mass media way?

--Is Net Art devolving into something that can be judged very easily and quickly and rated according to its hit count?

--Isn't it getting harder and harder for Net artists to work in the context of the other Web culture (i.e., popular, amateur) that is steadily growing?

(The above are my paraphrases of the questions. I believe the drift is accurate.)

Update: I characterized the questions as "leading" (stating arguments rather than open-endedly eliciting information) but they are actually more in the nature of "when did you stop beating your wife?" questions (containing more than one assumption the questionee is being asked to assent to or not). Here, for example, are all the assumptions packed into the first query: (a) that an 8-bit art movement exists; (b) that it has a leader; (c) that Cory Arcangel is the leader; and (d) that his switch from hacking Nintendo cartridges to a computer-assisted critique of films, TV, and pop music necessarily constitutes evolution. For what it's worth my answers to T.Whid's questions would be Yes, No, No, and No.

- tom moody 11-07-2006 8:10 am