The Thing History - Jerome Joy website

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!!THE THING life The first project of major importance to emerge was THE THING, initiated by the artist Wolfgang Staehle. The Thing was originally a bulletin board, but other sections were added, like regional branches of The THING in several European cities creating a network of THING nodes. But THE THING most visibly changed when a Web interface was created for its presentation at the 1994 Ars Electronica. {br}{br} '''WOLFGANG STAEHLE''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/wolfgang_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/wolfgang.jpg] {br}{br}'''WOLFGANG STAEHLE'S EMPIRE (18 sept 1999)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/empire180999_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/empire180999.jpg] '''W.S'S EMPIRE (2000)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/empire2000_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/empire2000.jpg] Staehle worked as a video artist in the 1980s. He says in an interview with Dike Blair about three years after founding THE THING: ''I did originally conceive it as an art project; but, the addition of the other nodes certainly changed all that.'' '= ''"HIS THINGNESS", Interview with Wolfgang Staehle by Dike Blair (undated), in The Thing.'' =' Some years later he says: ''To me it is irrelevant (whether THE THING is art, JB); that is for the historians to decide.'' '= ''Tilman Baumgärtel, ^[net.art^], Nuremberg, 1999, p. 63.'' =' So THE THING was conceived as an art project, but the artist felt its definition changed as its functions changed and expanded. In a recent e-mail Staehle puts it like this: ''When I started THE THING I conceived of it as kind of a conceptual art project, sort of an '''art by all, art for all''' kind of thing.'' He thought it would only last about a few months. In the meantime, THE THING has gone through many transformations to become a multi-layered platform consisting of, for example, mailing lists, artistpresentation Web pages, a review section, and a commercial company to sustain all of it. {br}{br} '''THING CAM (2002)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thingcam2002_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thingcam2002.jpg] {br}{br}'''THING CAM (2003)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing02003_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing02003.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing12003_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing12003.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing22003_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing22003.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing32003_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing32003.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing42003_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/thing42003.jpg] Although THE THING has trouble finding funding, (note) unlike its peers that did receive funding, in the last few years it has offered sanctuary to a few controversial and also influential art projects. The art activism of Ricardo Dominguez and RTMArk has brought THE THING considerable trouble. It is unlikely that projects like these would have been possible on other local, US platforms. THE THING is not only a collaborative, conceptual art project; it also provides all the means, from discourse and theory to technology and access, for other projects to evolve. It is one of those spiders in the Web.{br}{br} '= (18) ''See Josephine Bosma, "One of The Oldest Art Servers On The Edge of Survival," in Telepolis, 19 Apr. 2001. (Josephine Bosma, Constructing Media Spaces - The novelty of net(worked) art was and is all about access and engagement, July 2004), http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/media_spaces/print/ '' =' Wolfgang Staehle in an e-mail : ''I like to think of it as a laboratory in which people are able to follow their inclinations and interests in a collaborative setting. Online and offline.'' This brings us to another aspect of artist platforms on the Net. Staehle's mention of the offline part of THE THING, an office and meeting place in New York, reminds us of something that is easily underestimated in the approach of any art in the digital sphere: its roots in an actual physical world of technology and offline cultures. Online networks are intrinsically connected to offline networks, even if they also move beyond them. Many online art platforms also have physical meeting places attached to them, and it depends on the situation at hand which is more importantÑthe online or the offline space. It seems that even the strongest online art environments could not have developed without the physical, social networks they sprouted from. Purely online spaces benefit from these same networks indirectly as the strong discourses and cultures developed from physical networks propagate through them. {br}{br} '''THING CAM (dec 2003)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt121203_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt121203.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt121203a_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt121203a.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt121203b_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt121203b.jpg] {br}{br}'''THING CAM (jan 2004)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt010704_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt010704.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt010704a_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt010704a.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt010704b_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt010704b.jpg] {br}{br}'''THING CAM (apr 2004)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt041804_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt041804.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604a_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604a.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604b_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604b.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604c_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt042604c.jpg] {br}{br}'''THING CAM (may 2004)''' [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt050404_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt050404.jpg] [http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt050404a_.jpg\|http://joy.nujus.net/files/articles/TheThing/tt050404a.jpg] {br}{br}{br}{br}
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