Museum's Newsletter - Isabel Aranda *YTO*j


	August WEB ARTIST : *ISABEL ARANDA YTO* / CHILE**


	ENGLISH: 1- BIO AND INFORMATION: Isabel Aranda YTO VISUAL & DIGITAL ARTIST Brief Biography 1990 - She Graduated in arts: painting in the "Universidad de Chile" She started painting abstract, postulating for the pure painting and making the plastic elements the main characters of her work. Later (1992) she worked with a expressionist landscape and arrives in figuration during the year of 1995. 1995 - She started work with digital art http://ww.escaner.cl/netart & http://ww.escaner.cl/yto/net-art 1999 / January - She published "Escáner Cultural", virtual website of art and culture. She continues publishing this electronic magazine/website monthly until today. ( http://www.escaner.cl ) At this moment she is devoted to investigate and to create around the NeT.ArT and digital art. She integrates this language to their painting. ( http://www.escaner.cl/yto/net-art ) More information: http:// www.yto.cl Complete Curriculum: http://www.escaner.cl/yto/curriculum.html Mail art and net-art: 2003 - "Digitalis 2: The Spiritual In Digital Art". ( The Digitalis Digital Art Society: http://www.ddas.ca/ddas ) and the Evergreen Cultural Centre, British Columbia, Canada. 2003 - "Violence Online Festival v.5.0". version 5.0 on 18th Videoformes Festival Clermont-Ferrand (France) 20-23 March. http://www.newmediafest.org/violence 2001 -"Identidad y Globalización" Salón Digital de la VII Bienal Internacional de Pintura de Cuenca, Ecuador, 2001. 2001 - 1ra Convocatoria de Arte Correo (Mail Art), Moscas en la Sopa (Comunicación y Vanguardia). Sala Proyect Room, Universidad Uniacc, Santiago de Chile. 2001 -Xi Festival Internacional de Poesía en Medellín, I Exposición Internacional de Poesía Experimental. Medellín Colombia 2000 - Proyecto 2000 Para la Suspensión de la Pena de Muerte Convocatoria de Mail Art Organizada Por Amnistía Internacional y AUMA. Tarragona, España 2000 - Nudo 2000 Regidoría de Cultura, Alcanar Tarragona, España. 2000 - Esquema 2000 Simposio Internacional Sobre Nuevas Tendencias en El Arte Contemporáneo. Sección Arte Correo. Syberia Nova Kultura Center, Rusia 2000 - 3er. Encuentro Internacional de Poesía Visual, Sonora y Experimental - Vórtice Argentina - Argentina. 2000 - Cruces del Mundo. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. Santiago - Chile. Painting and Engraving: 2003 > "Sensoriales". Galería Centro Cultural Reñaca. Reñaca. 2001 > "Papel". Galería Centro Cultural Reñaca. Reñaca. 2000 > "Aranda & Hernández, Recoger - Retener - Renovar". Galería de Arte "Ventana Cemicual". Santiago. 2000 > "Aranda & Naranjo". Edificio Corporativo Lan Chile. Santiago. 1998 > "La Esquina". Centro Experimental "Perrera Arte". Santiago. 1997 > "Mi Amigo El Color". Centro El Belloto. Quilpue. V Región. 1997 > "Presente". Corporación Cultural de Ñuñoa. Santiago. 1996 > "Pentágono". Centro Experimental "Perrera Arte". Santiago. 1996 > " El Que Tenga Ojos Que Vea ". Galería de Arte Balmaceda 1215. Santiago. 1995 > " Isabel Aranda * Yto * " Sala Arte Reñaca. 1994 > "Y Toma y Da Y... " Sala Mar Futuro. Viña del Mar. 1994 > "Yto May Day ". Centro Marginalia. Constructora Pacífico. Santiago. 1991 > "Después de Seis Años Pintando Para El Closet , Mi Pintura Perderá la Virginidad". Santiago. Exposiciones Simultáneas: - Galería Bucci y Libro Café 1990 > "Pintura - Pintura". Sala de Exposiciones, Departamento de Artes Plásticas, Universidad de Chile. 1985 "Paneles". Las Encinas. Universidad de Chile. 2- WORK (s): I- ESCÁNER CULTURAL It has been necessary just one decade to the advances in the electronic technology and the creation of the digital communication network, make possible an enormous growth of the written word and its possibilities of diffusion. In this wave of digital Literature "Cultural Escáner" is registered, a virtual magazine of vanguard art and general culture whose first number appeared on the network in 1999 January. The magazine was created, designed, directed and published by Isabel Aranda, more well-known like Yto or "yto.cl". When "Escáner Cultural" was created, another magazine of this nature did not exist in Chile, and it even had very little in printed paper. On the Internet, much less. The magazine already turned six years, and now, arriving at this seventh year we think that the greater profit has been the constancy and to demonstrate that not everything depends on money. With love, camaraderie and will, a great work can be done. We felt that we are making a contribution to our Latin American culture, and that is just what motivates us. Without realize, step by step, we have created a large network of artists who communicate through the Escáner. According to the artist Brian Mackern (Uruguay), our Internet magazine is the older artistic cultural network of South America. II- MINI ART DANCE I started in digital art transforming my work images into paintings and drawings. Little by little I have left those images and my net.art works became small animations and experimentation pieces. Also I am doing some works that I show offline because they are very heavy in MB, those works off line continue the same spirit of the small animations. I have worked since 1995 with digital art, but I feel that it is only the beginning. I have many ideas that I want to develop. * I feel very attracted by the Ascii Art. It is the language which I have integrated to my last works. The main topic of my work is the human being, our physical condition, which dominates our spiritual and intellectual being. From the beats of our heart to our external movements. Finally our thoughts and creativity. Our body, so vulnerable. Does our spirit depend on our body? * Many of the images which I discover in the digital art, I am integrating to my paintings and drawings.



	THE THIRD COLLABORATIVE REVIEW 2005 WORKS: ESCÁNER CULTURAL AND MINI ART DANCE

	1- EDWARD PICOT ASKS ISABEL ARANDA:

	Regina, I've just been looking at Isabel Aranda's work and I've got a couple of fairly basic questions for her, which maybe you could pass on. How does she define the difference between digital art and net art? And how does she make those ASCII animations - the Minimations on her website, for example - does she start from "ordinary" digital images, and then run them through some kind of software which transforms them into ASCII patterns? Or does she actually create the patterns herself, keystroke by keystroke?

	2- ISABEL ARANDA'S WORK by Millie Niss

	First of all, I want to say that I did not know the art of Isabel Aranda, and I am very glad that Regina's Review showed me this excellent work. I was very impressed by Mini Art Dance. I am intrigued by the mixture of ASCII art (a very spare, minimalist style based on old fashioned computers) and the painterly, lush style which Aranda uses in her backgrounds to the animations of Mini Art Dance. I would not have thought that these two styles are compatible, but Aranda uses them together to great effect. On a technical level, I see that this work is done in Flash, and (being a Flash designer/programmer myself), I am curious about how Aranda created such a painterly style of animation in Flash. I can see that this would be hard to accomplish, since Flash tends to lead people (including me) to create cartoon-like works rather than works which reflect the best in visual art. I suspect (perhaps Aranda can comment) that she made the animated background separately from the dancing figure (maybe separate SWF files or else just separate movie clips). I am impressed with the realism of the dancing figure, which is all the more surprising since the figure is made of symbols (ASCII art). I do not know how Aranda combined the ASCII art with the colors and smooth motion in the animations. Was the dancer made by using a video of a real dancer (rotoscoping) ? If not, the fluid motion that is so realistic despite the semi-abstract style shows that Aranda is a master of human anatomy, since she knows so well how dancers can move their bodies. If Aranda was trained in tradtional forms of art, I imagine she would have studied the human figure and this may help her get the wonderful smooth, suggestive motion. I saw from her website that Isabel Aranda is an artist who uses tradtional media (paint, engravings) as well as digital media. This visual culture informs the digital work and makes it richer and more evocative than most digital art. Aranda'a work shows the influence of many art styles, which she is able to mix and match and combine in the same work without any jarring discontinuities. For example, I looked at Mentes which I found on Aranda's web page. This work initially looks quite Cubist (the drawing as you first see it could almost be Picasso's except that the color palette is distinctly Latin American) but then when it begins to animate, you see that the work has roots in Latin American folk art and is also a commentary/demonstration of color schemes that are used in graphics design. To someone who has used computer graphics programs, the animation makes one think about palettes of swatches in color libraries, so the work fits into the themes of digital art as well. All these styles are merged into an animated GIF which, despite having only a few frames, can be watched at length because of the complex interweaving of styles.

	3- Mini Art Dance by Edward Picot

	Regina - I love mini-art-dance; and one thing which I think is particularly nice about it is that if you click on several of the links one after the other, you get several of the audio tracks playing at the same time, and they all synchronise with each other. You can display several of the mini-windows on screen simultaneously as well: each new one you open sends the old ones into the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, but you can drag them out again and arrange them around the place. It's very feminine and glamorous, isn't it? But at the same time it's quite modern and even a touch aggressive in places. I wonder if Isabel sees this as a representation of modern woman in a digital environment, or the modern female artist in a digital environment - or is it less of a conscious statement than that? - Edward

	4- ISABEL ARANDA ANSWERS EDWARD PICOT, MILLIE NISS AND REGINA CÉLIA PINTO by ISABEL ARANDA

	Regina, at first, thanks a lot for the oportunity of talking about my work with other artists. It is a great experience. *************************************** My Answers to Edward Picot and Millie Niss *************************************** 1- Edward Picot: How does she define the difference between digital art and net art? Isabel Aranda YTO CL: For me digital art is synonymous of art created in a computer. A very ample term. And net.art is a definition very restricted to certain discussed parameters. I interpret net.art like art from and for Internet, using Internet and computation languages . But also I believe in the amplitude in the use of this term and not in the so exaggerated restriction that occurs. What I mean is that the language has its own dynamics, and if a word has a x definition, and many people interpret it in a wrong way, so this becomes something generalized, good is that the meaning of that word is extended. And I believe that this has been happened with the term net.art 2- Edward Picot: How does she make those ASCII animations - the Minimations on her website, for example - does she start from "ordinary" digital images, and then run them through some kind of software which transforms them into ASCII patterns? Or does she actually create the patterns herself, keystroke by keystroke? Isabel Aranda YTO CL: This answer also is for Millie Niss. How I did it? . the great secret... the hour to confess is arrived. The truth is that I use several programs. I made the mosaic backgrounds with Arkaos (http://www.arkaos.net/ 1), and created the texts of the backgrounds with Resolume (http://www.resolume.com/index.php 2). The figure was born from some small animations that I downloaded from the Internet and converted into a "series of images" that captured the movements frame-by-frame. I then selected some of these “frames" using my own criteria and enlarged them considerably, fixing each one with Photoshop, because the picture was very pixelly and distorted. After that I converted each frame into ASCII using Ascgen software http://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/ 3). ). I tested the animation several times with Arkaos. Then I saved it with the highest resolution possible and edited it using Adobe Premiere. I made a video from that animation which is called "Art Dance". From that video I selected the sequences that seemed most interesting to me and exported them in a smaller size. Then I separated them frame-by-frame: a total of 32 sequences altogether. I once again fixed some of these series of images using Photoshop. And then I put each mini-animation together frame-by-frame using Flash. Then I added sound, which is a little hard to synchronize with the image. The results of that last flash can be seen in mini art dance, and after that I put together the final work in HTML. It’s a little long, but I was obsessed with the idea of what I wanted to create - tiny beings dancing before those moving backgrounds - and I had to think up the best way to achieve this. That is why I worked gradually, bit by bit, because I had no idea what was going to happen next. One idea led to another, like a scientist in a lab. The order is not very precise because often I went back and created other things and started mixing it all up. It was a work of time. Several months of experimentation. Translation Notes: 1- Information about Arkaos which I found on the net: ArKaos VJ is the dazzling fast software that will enable you to put out outstanding video shows in matter of seconds. Build a full performance using a few simple video loops from your hard drive by mixing and altering them using more than 100 real-time effects. 2- Information about Resolume which I found on the net: Resolume is an application for live video performances. Trigger video clips, Flash files, and pictures. 3- To download Ascgen http://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/ *************************************** My Answers to Regina Célia Pinto ************************************* Regina:** 1- Nowadays is it difficult to work with culture in Chile ? YTO: Yes, it is difficult in the economic sense. The work of my husband, Omar Gatica, offers me the economic support necessary to produce specific projects like "Escáner Cultural" and to work with digital art. This is a great luck because for many artists it does not occur. Several talented artists, have had to stop working as artists because of this. On the other hand there are some artists that obtain the economic sustenance through the art, but is very difficult. To make things worse, the government has cultural policies that help very little in this subject and that has given an endorsement to some artists, but not to all. Sometimes it is frustrating, because ideas cannot be produced without money, and life in Chile is very expensive nowadays. The economic subject is the most complicated, but also it is difficult to be an artist because there are not many spaces where the young or sometimes not so young artists can show their work. The cultural gear is quite hermetic, and lamentably the "social level" of the artist influences so much. Cultural elites are formed and to people that are outside of them it is very difficult to spread their work. Many go away from Chile. Those that can. The third reason which I have been thinking here for difficult the culture, is the cultural isolation, little connected with the rest of the world. But this is changing little by little with the use of Internet. Regina: 2- The dictatorship left any kind of bad heritage to Art or Culture? YTO: To make art in the times of dictatorship was difficult, because there was censorship. But not always. In that time there was an intense artistic activity, but it happened in very closed circles, that art did not arrive to common people. There was not artistic diffusion or perhaps there was, but very little. I believe that the bad inheritance is the liberal economic model applied to the Universities, that now are very expensive and to study art is very difficult. Ironically, at the time of the dictatorship, universities were not so expensive, but the same model applied in long term has been very bad. It is very difficult that a poor person can study, mainly art. On the other hand a person who can pay has many opportunities. Inequality! Intellectually I believe that the dictatorship produced two phenomena, one positive, in the sense that among the artists there was more solidarity, complicity and commitment. The bad thing is that it moved away the common citizen from the cultural information, and soon came that economic summit (with its crisis), in where there is a bombing of publicity so hard, that in spite of having much more diffusion around the culture, there are not readers. So that, there is not a reflection around of the art by the citizens. Regina: 3- Is it easy to be an artist - woman in Chile? YTO: Well, a little discrimination exists, but as the women are perseveringand we did not let ourselves win so easily, there is a good feminine presence in the national artistic scene. But it is difficult, without a doubt. And in the aspect of the maternity, it is always complex and there is a great prejudice. There are people who think that the woman by the time and dedication that she gives to her children, diminishes her artistic potential. I have listened to it more of once here in Chile, and always are the men that say it. Regina: 4- Why you decided to create Escáner? What gave you this insight? YTO: I decided to create Escáner because in Chile there was a very great emptiness regarding cultural publications (1999). What more motivates me to make the magazine is the possibility of publishing works of artists not so famous next to others of great trajectory, therefore the people are discovering the artistic wealth of the alternative art. My major interest is the alternative thing, action art, mail art, visual poetry, digital art in all their forms. But I believe that also is important to include the writers, the acid critic to our prevailing social system in the West. In fact, all the branches of art are welcome in Escáner. Because the reason of the existence of Cultural Escáner is to spread the art and mainly the one that does not receive diffusion in the mass media. Regina: 5- How do you get to publish a new "Escáner" each month? I know how much work it means... YTO: Sincerely, it is a little bit sacrificed. It was not in the beginning , because one begins with much enthusiasm, and the magazine was smaller, but now, to dedicate many hours to arm this work is really hard. But seeing Escáner Cultural ready and online, is exciting and the spiritual compensation is great. The greatest problem nowadays is the fact that my personal artistic activity is more and more intense and it is hard for me to disconnect from my personal work to start build the magazine. This year, for example, I have sacrificed much the mail art. The last year I painted very little. *************************************** Nilda Saldamando-diaz comments: *************************************** Hello Regina! ... what a good experience for me to know Isabel Aranda by her own words..... that makes me confirm the intuition that their proposals have produced in me... and why I have decided to participate in her calls... I agree totally with her opinions about making art in Chile.... from another generation... like mine... and from outside of the institutional circuit and hierarchies..... and from the economic shortage... condition of the independent art..... which makes difficult the work's continuity but also demands to be very good manager of our own resources for not to leave projects... although they consume time.... also is why I spread to others and others.... her accomplishment.... hopefully Isabel can maintain the certainty of your projects.... ..... very warm greetings. - nilda saldamando-diaz/ multimedia experimental poet

	4- Some Reflections on Isabel Aranda's Work by Regina Célia Pinto

	Edward Picot, with much property, commented about "Mini Art Dance": "It's very feminine and glamorous, isn't it? But at the same time it's quite modern and even a touch aggressive in places. I wonder if Isabel sees this as a representation of modern woman in a digital environment, or the modern female artist in a digital environment - or is it less of a consciousstatement than that?" (Edward Picot - http://www.edwardpicot.com ) I believe that "Mini Art Dances" reflects the personality of Isabel Aranda. For me, all artistic work reflects the artist and his / her personality, his / her way of life. That becomes clear in this Aranda's Wonderful Work. Through the Aranda's answers to my questions, one can identify both women realized by Edward Picot: The first of them very feminine... "Yes, it is difficult in the economic sense. The work of my husband, Omar Gatica ( http://www.escaner.cl/og/ ), offers me the economic support necessary to produce specific projects like "Escáner Cultural" and to work with digital art. This is a great luck because for many artists it does not occur." (Isabel Aranda) "I have two children, I am a housewife. My children are 16 and 18 years old. They help me a lot. However, some time ago, when my children were smaller, I worked with Art a lot, the difference is that I had shorter schedules of working." (Isabel Aranda) and glamorous ... I can see this in Isabel's Mysterious Portrait and in the way how the ballerina of "Mini Art Dance" dances, after all, these sequences were chosen by the artist and they show a woman who dances with much freedom. The second quite modern and with some aggressive touches... This woman that is revealed by the dancing illustration is that Isabel Aranda who launched, in a completely pioneering way, an electronic magazine of art in South America, also it is that Isabel Aranda who works with digital art and launches art projects on the web and that one who valorizes alternative art. ***************************************** For a long time the feminist movement devalued the "housewife" woman. Nowadays I think the things are changing, the concept of Jessica Loseby's excellent work (http://www.rssgallery.com/), for example, is the cyber - domestic aesthetics. I believe that it is not more a crime, for a woman, to be "dueña de casa" ("housewife") if she really wants that. Even because this housewife can have an intense cultural and artistic life. This is what happens with Isabel Aranda YTO CL. In this point, I would like to ask only one question to the members of this list (men and women): What do you think concerning this subject? And another for Isabel Aranda: What is the Omar Gatica (who also is an artist) participation in your cultural and artistic life?

	5- Comments by Muriel Frega

	Hello Regina! Today I have more spare time, then here you have my comments to the collaborative review: At first I would like to congrat publically Isabel, for me, Mini Art Dance is one of her best works. It is simple, concrete, very well built, and it has a fluidity and a sensuality that catches. It pleases me particularly because although she has antecedents in visual poetry and typical mail art (years 90), Isabel returns to those subjects but updated them. 1 Also I admire the fact that Isabel gets to maintain the level of so complex monthly publication as Escáner is Those things make one spents much time and much organization, and dedication.(... also Regina knows quite a lot of this subject, eh? ) I believe that in the future Escáner will get to be a very interesting data base on artists of this starting century, because of the diversity that it reflects. On the feminism subject and about woman as a housewife..., it can generate an almost endless debate 2. Also I believe that it is possible to be housewife and artist at the same time, in the same life and not to become crazy. The key is to enjoy what one makes and not to live it as a torture. Perhaps now the couples have more respect by the personal time, and the division of rolls is not so strict. Perhaps Isabel had luck by the fact that Omar also is an artist and can understand the necessities of an artist. On the other hand, I believe that Omar also had luck because Isabel understands his necessities, the thing always is reciprocal, is not it? , -) Muriel Frega

	6- Art versus Domesticity by Edward Picot

	Regina - I thought you might be interested in some work which was recently posted in the trAce forum, by Christine Wilks - rather an enigmatic but very elegant and erotic work called IntraVenus (http://homepage.mac.com/christinewilks/IntraVenus.html). When I wrote in to ask Christine about this piece, she replied that one of its themes was "the female fear that to give in to sensual pleasures - and by extension to experience the pleasures of having children - might mean the death of an alternative creative life as an artist. This is a notion that very many women would passionately disagree with, but it's still a fear that haunts some of us." One of the issues here is pressure of time. Because we don't make any money out of new media work (which takes us back to the subject of whether we ought to be trying to sell it, a subject we discussed earlier this year) it has to be fitted into our lives as a hobby - yet it's extremely time-consuming. I'm sure that many of us feel that we could do much more work if we were in a position to devote more time to it. Domestic life is also extremely time-consuming. Just keeping a house and garden in good order takes up a lot of time - but once you get into raising a family, then you're talking about a serious drain on your resources, in terms of the number of hours you've got in the day. But are you also talking about a serious drain on your resources in terms of energy? Well, yes and no. Undoubtedly looking after children, as well as being time-consuming, also demands a lot of energy, because what children want above all is your attention. But as well as being energy-consuming and time-consuming, it's also an incredibly creative thing. I spend quite a lot of time playing with my daughter, as you know, and there's no doubt that there are times when she comes home from school and I'm right in the middle of doing something, and I wish I could get on with what I'm going instead of having to go downstairs and play with her for an hour. But once I start playing with her, I start to enjoy it. I come back to my work refreshed. Not only that, but I get some of my best ideas from playing with her. So it can be frustrating at times, but it can also be immensely creative. I feel the same way about work, by the way - I get a lot of ideas from going out to work - although work is more of a chore and less of an inspiration. But I think the moral is that if you spend all your time as an artist all by yourself trying to be creative, where are you going to get your inspiration from? You have to have some kind of involvement with everyday life as a source of ideas. That's how I feel personally, anyway. The difficulty is striking the balance in the right place. It's a compromise, and any compromise involves a sense that something is being lost as well as something gained. - Edward

	7- Art versus Domesticity by Millie Niss

	Some woman may well answer Edward that it is creatively inspiring for him to _play_ with his daughter for an hour when she comes home from school, but women are often cooking for and cleaning for their children all day, which may be less inspiring... However, I imagine Edward does his share of that stuff, being a thoroughly modern father. Still, even in liberated families, there is often an assumption that the father is "helping out" his wife (a charitable act) when he does cleaning and child care, whereas the mother has no choice about it and doesn't deserve any special praise for her hard work... Aside from that slightly snide remark, which I do not mean very seriously, I think the most interesting thing about being an artist and raising children is raising the children to do art/writing/whatever. My mother was not a web artist (obviously, since I am older than five years old), but she did some freelance writing for publication throughout my childhood, and she taught me that I could get out of almost any nasty chore by saying I had something to write. Not perhaps the lesson she wanted to teach (!), but I definitely started submitting things for publication at an early age because of her, and by extraordinary good luck, my first few attempts actually got ublished, which gave me anough encouragement to keep going. (A kindergarten friend of mine -- this is age 5 we are talking about -- somehow got a little story in the NY Times newspaper about a cat and a dog getting married. So (infuriated that this little boy got published when I thought I could do better) I wrote a parody of it, which stated that the cat and the dog didn't get a divorce even though they were not of the same species (I forget what little kid langauge I used). So I gave it to my mother and said, "send THIS to the New York Times." She gave me the lecture about how most things one submits to a newspaper get rejected and I should expect to get rejected, and I forgot about the story until a few days later, when a bottle of Champagne, addressed to me, courtesy of the New York Times, was delivered to our door as reward for a successful submission to the Metropolitan Diary page. I complained for many years after that that my mother bought the champagne for $5, which was under the market price but apparently what she could afford. (I said I could have sold it to someone else for a higher price.) Anyway, the incident made me keep writing!)

	8- Art versus Domesticity by Nilda Saldamando

	o experimentar lenguajes de una poética que vive doméstica / .... en las formas de trabajo que fui creando para explorar lenguajes ... de sola intuición ... tiempos de trabajo en la placidez nocturna durante el sueño descansado de mi familia ... tiempos de trabajo reflexivo en simultaneidad con el trabajo mecánico de repetición de la puesta al día de satisfacción de necesidades diarias ... apartar muebles ... buscar el domingo ... para mi primer trabajo de fotoperformance ... en relación a la luminosidad oscuridad que día tras días transitaba mi casa .....conociendo así cada rincón ... cada trozo de muro .... cada ventanal ... cada marco de puerta .... apareciendo como el lugar legítimo de puesta en inicio de una poética experimental .... un ritual a solas .... de una mujer-yo en su lugar más propio y ancestral : su hogar .... lugar de ceremonias .... cruce de tiempos . . de historia e historias ... para gentes célebres y anónimas ... .... seguir las palabras entre un trabajo y otro .. un quehacer y otro .. ... experimentarlas en sus vocales y consonantes en volúmenes posibles de día .... y prohibidos de noche ... mover las palabras en cada gesto del cuerpo y su objeto de quehacer .. ... y descubrir ! . . . . qué sorpresa descubrir !... la potencia de saberes formidables para experimentar poéticas multimedios .... contenida en la mecánica de funcionamiento multiexpresivo del trabajo doméstico familiar .. ... seguir las palabras ... en ejercicio doméstica ... con sus tiempos de acción ... de espera .... de inmediatez ... de largo aliento ... de imprevistos ... de precisión . .. . para un cuerpo en movimiento en simultáneas direcciones .... con habilidades para múltiples objetos ... ubicación de espacio ... alternancia de relaciones ... prioridades de afectos ... .. resolución de emergencias ... ... efectividad de aprendizajes .... cuidado de recursos ... despliegue de generosidades en ejercicio ... resistencia de conflictos ... disponibilidad de emociones ... pensamientos ...estrategias . .. en acción ... siempre en acción de vivir . .. luminosa ... oscura . . . la vida ... ... a tiempo .... a tiempo ... doméstica-rte ha sido construir la libertad de aprender la vida doméstica como vida de arte poética que hoy realizo ... desde cada lugar ... cada objeto ... cada acción ... parte de los saberes del mundo en todas sus ciencias ... vida instalada poética en performance ... en su habitat .. casa-urbe .... urde poesías pa´l mundo ... creación realizadora ...de ese trabajo imprescindible y si obligado hasta el infinito genera su infinito malestar cuando nos secuestra la vida .. .- Nilda Saldamando-Diaz multimidia & experimental poet ( I decided do not translate the text by Nilda Saldamando - Diaz into English, it is very beautiful and quite difficult to translate. Never I will get such a beautiful text, doing a translation. The text explains poetically how the experimental poet and howsewife Nilda Saldamando-Diaz works.)

	9- Art versus Domesticity by Regina Célia Pinto

	Lévi-Strauss [1] said that the role of the Art in any society is not only to offer to the spectator a sensitive gratification. It seems to me that just because of this, these debates that arise in our reviews are very interesting. I need to tell you that when I launched the question which originated this discussion, I was not thinking about how it is difficult for women to be howsewifes and artists. Everybody knows how much it is difficult. My doubt was if a woman could live today without a work to make money. This is a doubt that appeared in the origins of the feminist action, since the absence of remuneration causes dependence and submission. Also I think that nowadays very few couples can have a confortable life if the woman does not have an activity to make money. And, to work with Art today, be it on the web or traditional, means to be dependent of sponsors, that are always difficult to get and at the same time dangerous because they limit the artist's freedom. Unfortunately there are still very few artists that get to live only from their Art. On the other hand, the biggest obstacle to feminine creation always was the belief that for this gender imported a harmonious and unitary life, which installed the woman in the role of wife and mother, performing only this unique role. And, under this focus, the power of conceiving and to give birth was always the biggest feminine power. And nowadays,it seems to me that it continues to be. Should the woman forget this power of her? I am sure that not. But also I believe that the changes that the feminine gender crossed in the second half of the XX th century caused changes in the masculine gender. These changes allow me to think on a balanced couple, where the woman can be only howsewife and artist (not remunerated) if she really whants this. Also those changes alow me to think that perhaps it could be possible for a woman to be howsewife, artist and to work to make money, without going mad - for that it is necessary that the couple shares the tasks at home with a just division. It is almost sure that those changes are transforming the world. Michelle Perrot [2], for example, during an interview to the newspaper "A Folha de São Paulo", stated that the task of the XXI st century will be, probably, that much more women will get the political power. This should not imply neither in the exclusion of the man, neither in the copy of masculine model of power. To be political leaders, women must discover their own forms of exercise the power, but it is the most difficult... For me, it is in the trenches of Art [3], that we will be able to find resistance to the land roller of the capitalist subjectivity, to the deafness with the other. I am talking here about all the subjective creative practice which crosses the oppressed generations, the ghettos, the minorities, the erased categories [4]. I am talking about developing a new taste to life, derivative from a necessary creative practice, which is able to generate other manners of feeling the world. And then, which comes to my mind immediately is the sensitive poetry of my friend Maria da Conceição Estácio, charwoman, almost illiterate, living in Xerém / RJ, in a place called "Pocilga" (Pigsty), that told me about her satisfaction while cleanning her pans, putting them to dry under the sun and to sit down far from them, observing the shine of her work. [1] LÉVI-STRAUSS Claude apud CHARBONNIER, Georges . Arte, Linguagem e etnologia: entrevistas com Claude Lévi-Strauss. Campinas, Papirus, 1989, p. 123. [2] PERROT, Michelle. Perrot torna visível a história das mulheres. Folha de São Paulo. São Paulo, 01- 05 - 1994. [3] GUATTARI, Felix. Caosmose _ um novo paradigma estético. Rio de Janeiro, editora 34, 1992, p. 122. [4] Expression created by the Brazilian antropologist Rosza W. Vel Zoladz.

	10- Art versus Domesticity by Ana Boa Ventura

	It was an extraordinary coincidence to read Regina's excellent text this morning. I had just read a much more prosaic approach to the expectations we have of both sexes. In today's newspaper in Austin, Texas - where I live while working on my PhD- I was reading an article where the journalist discusses the enormous opportunity that New Orleans offers today to "exotic dancers" as they're called here (euphemism to "strippers" for a society that has a complicated (another euphemism) relationship with the body and sex). Here's what the article says: in a city that is now a city of men - with construction workers and contractors - what is missing are strip-clubs to entertain the male population. Very simple, right? Immediately afterwards, Regina's email pops-up on the screen of my laptop at the coffee shop where I still am (the ways in which "wireless" changed the lives of women artists might be worth some examination in this debate, too). What an incredible shock! After these "coffee shop ramblings" that Regina's text suggested and the reading of that strange article (written in 2005 just imagine that!) provoked -a vision of a city to build, New Orleans, as a city of men where the opportunities for women are summarized as "(exotic) dancers could make $500 a night easy" (I quote.) - after this (sigh.), I was saying. I would like to propose in this list a look at those women for whom " domesticity" is part of their work. One could say " isn't it always?" but I am referring to those artists that worked that concept formal and explicitly. " But Bourgeois' domesticity also took more pervert aspects. In what might be considered as an allusion to her drawing of two pairs of scissors - a bigger protecting a smaller one, which you can see for instance here Bourgeois says ("My knives are like a tongue - I love, I do not love, I hate. If you don't love me, I am ready to attack. I am a double-edged knife." ). Regards to all Ana Boa-Ventura (pursuing her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin) http://www.boa-ventura.co

	11- Escáner cultural by Millie Niss

	Seeing Escaner, which is clearly a very interesting journal of art and art reviews, but not being able to read it because I cannot read Spanish is probably a good experience for me and other English speakers. We (English speakers) are so used to having everything in our language that we forget that cultural events happen outside of the English-speaking world. The Spanish speakers of the world (also the Chinese speakers and Arabic speakers) have a good argument for making the rest of the world speak their language. After all, Spanish is the language spoken by a continent and a half (and much of the USA as well), plus parts of Europe. But Spanish speakers do not have the same cultural and linguistic imperialism as English speakers do. (Plus, I ought to know a little Spanish but I do not. In my neighborhood in NYC, there are many Spanish speakers, mainly from Colombia and Puerto Rico. There are signs in Spanish. When I go to vote in the elections, the list of candidates appears in Spanish and English. Letters from the State government about Medicaid -- subsidized medical insurance -- come in Spanish and English. New York City is almost bilingual... Yet there are parts of the US (in the West) where they want to make laws against using Spanish on official documents and in schools. There is something sad about this -- because the US is a country of immigrants -- and also racist.) Millie

	12- The Call - The Hunger's Pulses by Isabel Aranda - yto.cl

	http://www.pulses.yto.cl The Hunger's Pulses is a work in progress which intends to focus the hunger theme in its wider sense. The Hunger's Pulses is a collective project created by yto.cl. It is an invitation to artists to reflect on one of the most painful subjects in our current world. Digital artists are invited to send animated and interactive web works . Please, visit: http://www.pulses.yto.cl . Send the works to ytoaranda@lycos.es ; ytoaranda@gmail.com . Isabel Aranda (Edited by David Daniels) ----------------------- To debate: Should Art solve or should Art help the problem of the hunger in the world?

	12- Talking... by Millie Niss and Regina Célia Pinto

	Millie Niss ( http://www.sporkworld.org ) and I were talking in another list called Writting and Digital Life (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html), directed by the Professor Sue Thomas (UK). The subject of our conversation was my last work "Two 'Ugly' Ducklings" , which was done to Isabel Aranda's project - "The Hunger's Pulses". I would like to remind you that "Two 'Ugly' Ducklings" is a portion of a true history that I will tell you completely in my next electronic artist's book. For now it is a small and interactive narrative that has only one sentence. It happens because images are language that everybody understands. The effect "alpha" (that one that makes an image become transparent) was used to build the narrative. I asked Millie's permission to send these conversation to you because you will find in it our answers to my question to this debate "Should Art solve or should Art help the problem of the hunger in the world?, at the same time I think it is a good opportunity to explain my last work to you. Millie commented: "This new work is very elegant. The images and the alpha transparency technique is very well executed. The user interface works well and is attractive and does not overwhelm the art. The music (who composed it? isvery emotionally affecting. The theme was moving and well communicated. I did find the image of the boy to be painful to look at." My answer:: I am so glad for your comments! There are only two small fragments of musicthere. The first one when you click the egg with the word HUNGER, the music is a very very small fragment of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff , the second one is another very small fragmentof Pierrot Lunaire, by Arnold Schoenberg, but this one I mixed with another sound, which is not music - you listen to this music/sound when you move your mouse on the child. for me it is like a cry. The sound of the evil-look is a mix of people talknig and some noise that remind me guns. This sound was created by myself. I decided to build a page of credits to this work, in fact, I do not know why I forgot this. So that, thanks for ask me these questions. Millie commented: "The work made me wonder if it is fair to make beautiful art out of such suffering. But your work is firmly directed towards fighting that suffering (at least as much as art can fight real problems like poverty and hunger.) In your personal life, I know you rescued the ducks who feature in the work to stop them from suffering. It is not in your power (or mine) to stop the children of the world from starving." My answer: I thought about this when I created the work with that image and in fact I do not know if it is fair. I am sure that I will not change anyone because of my work. However it was impossible for me not to use so strong image after I found it... Perhaps Art and artists put their work above all, perhaps ... perhaps I should have hope that my small contribution and Aranda's project will make some people concious of this horrible problem. Millie commented: "I think your work is very relevant to current events, specifically to the current United Nations Summit in which the United States (my country unfortunately) made the UN weaken its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, which the UN countries had previously agreed to. (The goals were to halve poverty, send as many girls as boys to primary school, and reduce infant mortality by (I think, someone can correct me) 2018. This was supposed to be funded by a commitment from all rich countries to donate 0.7 % (which is so little!) of their GDP to foreign aid.) I think your art work shows vividly the reason why governments need to fight poverty, in their country and in other countries. The reason is not political, it is not economic, it is not strategic. It is the dryness of that one boy's skin, so tight on his body which has no flesh. It is the dying bird the boy is reaching toward -- a bird whose own starvation means it cannot feed the boy. It is also the kindness of people like you, who take in sick birds, which makes it so necessary that our leaders help people in need. Your kindness can save two birds, the kindness of all citizens individually can save a flock of birds and a crowd of children, but it is nations which must take the lead in solving the really huge problems of development." My answer: Yes Millie, I think that the problem of hunger could be much less if everybody decided to collaborate. Also I am sure that there is always some person having profit while some other is starving by death - I am writting about corruption - the history of the ducklings will show it very clear. Wait! But once more I believe that my new e.book will be only a register of a hard moment of my life. I do not believe that I will change anything. Also I do not believe that human beings will be all good in the future. I do not think that the good will exist without the evil. Do you? Millie commented: "I wish your art could be displayed (with art of others which deals with hunger) where our leaders have to see it, are forced to stare at the ugliness of suffering. But I fear they are blind to the pain and the hunger. Our president just made a speech full of lies and false promises about helping the victims of the New Orleans hurricane. He made it sound like he would help the people and at the same time is making plans to only pay for health care for a very small portion of the hurricane victims who need it in only one state." My answer I wish all the artists of the world could make a work about this theme and that all those works could be seen by our leaders and by everybody. I imagine that it was because of all of this that Isabel Aranda created her project. About New Orleans, I am completely astonishing, I have never imagined that there was so quantity of poverty in USA. Also I can not understand why the ammount of money spent with war was not used to help the poverty of your country. Millie asked: "What is the project of Isabel Aranda that you did this work for? Is she looking for new works?" My answer: The project is "pulsos del hambre" ("The hunger's pulses") at http://www.pulses.yto.cl . And of course anyone can send works to Isabel Aranda, I do recomend you all do this. *************************************************** Millie answers: I don't suppose I think art can really change politics or economics, either. But it is nice to dream about it sometimes. Isabel Aranda's project sounds very worthy. I don't know if I can make anything on that topic, but I imagine someone on this list might be able to do it. Does Isabel have a formal call for work describing what she is looking for? (I think if her call is in Spanish she could send it to this list in Spanish since there was discussion of blogging for WDL in multiple languages, although of course more people would be able to respond to a call in English...) Is Isabel publishing the works on hunger herself (in her journal Escaner?) or is she planning to look for another place to publish the project? *************************************************** Millie Niss published the call for The Hunger's Pulses on the Writing and Digital Life' s blog* (Thank you Millie!) and Isabel Aranda told us that "The hunger's Pulses" has its own site but the call will be annouced through her web magazine Escáner Cultural. ***************************************************** Christina Mcphee commented: Thank you so much for sending this on to the Museum list. It's so sort of clear and unaffected that in itself would be a really elegant html work using basic tools. wow. Christina

	13- Whether art can change the world by Edward Picot

	Dear Regina - Here in the UK, the television has just been showing a documentary by Martin Scorsese about the life and times of Bob Dylan. I think this acts as a reminder that there are certain times when art can influence the course of events, if only by articulating and crystallising widespread patterns of thought and feeling which are waiting for the opportunity or the catalyst to bring them into a definite shape. Undoubtedly Dylan did this during the sixties. But Dylan was a kind of genius, and even so his art is somewhat suspect at times - he quite clearly portrays himself as a Christ-figure or a prophet-figure here and there, even if he maintains a saving sense of irony about himself. Setting yourself up as a spokesman or a polemicist is always a dangerous thing to do as an artist. Yeats is another example who comes to mind. Millie Niss asked a question about whether it's right to use images for the sake of art like the one of the starving child you use in your piece. I think the answer to this question is that it's right as long as you use them with genuine feeling. As soon as you start to use them to give an air of importance to your work or to make it clear that your attitudes are politically correct, then the use of such images becomes distasteful. As long as you use them because you are genuinely moved by them and feel too strongly about them to ignore them, I think it's okay. My initial feeling about your piece was "What are the ducks doing in there"? The juxtaposition or suggested equivalence between the starving child and the ducks seemed all wrong. Having thought about it some more, though, I'm inclined to feel that the ducks, which on the face of it seem inappropriate, and actually acting as a kind of guarantee of the authenticity of your feeling. In other words you're responding to the starving boy, not in some grandiose or policitally correct way, but in just the same way that you responded to your starving ducks when you took them in. When you feel sympathy for suffering, you don't stop to worry about whether a small child is more important in the great scale of things than a couple of ducks. You just feel sympathy. There are no weights and measures involved, no comparisons. - Edward

	14 - Conclusion by Regina Célia Pinto

	The golden proportion was very used by the Renaissance artists, because of its natural harmony. This golden number is found in several Nature shapes, like in the galaxies, shells and plants. It reveals a growth and unfolding ordination. [[OSTROWER, Fayga. Universos da arte] . The golden rectangle gives origin to a spiral. The spiral is a very special line because it is a fold which goes to the infinite or to the "endless / without exit". So that the cyberspace and spirals have identical properties. Deleuze [Le pli - Leibniz et le baroque (1988). Trans. The Fold - Leibniz and the Baroque] says that in the current world the ethical dilemma be a question of to fold (To fold is used here with the meaning of to submit) or not to be fold. The one that fold is the owner, the dominant and, who is folded , the slave, the dominated. For him, the unfold , is not the opposite of the fold, but it follows the fold up to another fold. This fold. - unfold, also means to evolve - to involute. WOULD THIS ETHICAL DILEMMA RELATED TO THE PROBLEM OF HUNGER IN THE WORLD, WHICH IS THE THEME OF ISABEL ARANDA'S PROJECT? ***************************************************** I sent the text and the question above to our community some time ago, but, I did not receive any answer to my question. For me it occurred because the question is really very difficult of being answered, It teases with concepts of dominant and dominated in an unexpected way. So that I will let this subject open, and consider my question only as a suggestion of reflection. I believe that it was a good time this one we spent talking about the Aranda 's amazing works and projects. I imagine that many people liked to know better this South American artist which is one of the pioneers on the web.art and communication. Also I would like to comment that I am very glad with the series of collaborative reviews of this year. It happens because of the three wonderful artists and human beings I chose and because of all of you that collaborate with us, reading attentively our messages or contributing with good answers and comments, thank you all! My most gracious thanks to the three wonderful women: Isabel Aranda YTO.CL, Isabel Saij and Millie Niss. A very special thanks to Edward Picot and his always excellent comments. Thank you Edward! The series of 2005 collaborative reviews is over, let's wait for 2006...