Re: Experimental collaboration

On May 14, 12:20 pm, Blue Sow <b...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
FCS wrote:
On May 8, 11:18 am, Blue Sow <b...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I do get the impression, and I hope I'm not going
to doubt the wisdom of saying this, that whilst you
do play around with language and information, you
are basically honest. So that when you say you
"know" something it means "know" in the dictionary
definition sense of the word, rather than, say, the
rather looser rhetorical sense of the word whereby
people "know" they're going to experience eternal life
one way or another.

Thank you. I am basically honest and I used the word 'know' in that instance to
mean 'know for an absolute fact because I have seen the evidence to prove it'.
In other contexts, playing with language is more or less my job (-:
I do not give personal details on the Internet, but to answer your other
question 'any and all' would be a fair description.

It is highly unlikely that one would expect to find quality criticism in a
public newsgroup. This is not to say it is impossible, but there is no good
reason why it would be probable.

Erm, no. You're just wrong here.

We must agree to differ on that.
Perhaps it is more important to consider where one might look for quality
criticism. Certainly, if and when I have had something for which I sought
criticism, Usenet was not, and never would be, my first choice. In keeping with
the principle of honesty, it would be true to say that it would be the last
place I would look given that there are so many others.

it has pretty much reverted back to such types, in that
it's the people who were into it anyway who still are.

I wish I agreed with you on that. The amount of trolling and abuse on Usenet (in
some groups) is as bad, or worse, than ever.

As such there have been times when intelligent discussion
and informed criticism have characterised USENET.

Possibly so, but as above, not high on my list of places to go. Certainly for
literary work, I would not seek criticism by placing the work in the public
domain. Even writers have to eat.
Most publishers that I know of will not touch something which has been published
before, especially if published on the Internet. We should exclude
Shakespeare et al from that generalisation.

As for the standard of criticism, I should've thought
there was more chance of finding real, worthwhile
criticism in a group such as this now than at any
time since about 1984.

As mentioned, I would never look here anyway, in 1984 or at any other time since.

Perhaps 1984 was a little early. But certainly this century.

It is not unusual for posting assignment work on the internet to be considered
an offence for which students can be sent down. I am not sure what would happen
to tutors who did so, but it would be unpleasant.

Bwahaha! In a field such as creative writing there
are no right or wrong answers such as there are
in maths or physics or chemistry.

There are no right or wrong answers in the humanities generally. I cannot state
this for all universities but in those with which I am familiar, posting course
work on the Internet, regardless of if it is from a humanities course or the
sciences is a very serious offence. This does not mean it never happens -
people commit murder and that is frowned upon by the law.

Still, with the role JANET played in propagating USENET,
not to mention that the DoD/ARPANET bandwidth provision
underpinned some server/newsfeed politics - far more in the
US than here - there was a higher than average chance of
meeting people with learning and insight than in, say, the
average pub'. For a long time this was true and much of
the reason we have the USENET infrastructure we do is
because of the, perhaps idealistic, reasoning that students
would use it for discussion and this would take some of
the load off of, say, the inter-library loan system.

It doesn't matter, for example, how seminal a paper may
appear in bibliographies, if someone whose library stocks
it can nip out and read it and say "nah, it don't cover wot
U R looking 4." then a lot of rather more costly time and
energy is saved, not to mention that once this becomes
a reciprocated procedure everybody ends up reading more
stuff than they would've and thus the education system
is that much more effective.

It is now possible ARPANET have pulled the plug on their
USENET bandwidth, although social networking sites
were cited specifically as having now been proscribed
for US operatives.

It depends. If he's being satirical in his repeated
reproductions of other artists' work which he then
passes off as his own until they complain, on the
basis that the last supper was reworked (i.e., copied)
goodness only knows how many times by various lesser-
known artists wishing to showcase their skills to
potential patrons, then he's made his point and,
in many ways, perhaps should seek some advice
on how to handle his aversion to generating original
material.

I was not commenting on his alleged copying, or not, of other writer's work.
His standard of writing is not high, regardless of the originality of the
content. As I suggested, it is like reading a child's essay (only much longer).


Are you saying Mark Wallace is a pseudonym used by
Damian Hirst? Or is there another artist who has found
controversiality a useful technique to raise his popular
profile? I've never heard of Mark Wallace outside of
USENET.

I took it, by "a man who saws cows in half", that you
meant Damian Hirst, by whom I've never seen so much
as a limerick.

Hirst does have a reputation for copying these days
and I don't see it as defensible unless he really is
working-in elements of individuality. It may indeed
be the case his colour wheel is as accurate a picture
of how Charles Saatchi would see the original colour
wheel (I forget who did it) but in terms of the time,
effort and artistic skill required to generate this from,
say, a good digital photo and reasonably-featured
image-editing software it serves an entirely different
purpose to creating a Last Supper or Road to Calvary
which wouldn't look out of place on the walls of any
Veronan town-house or Majorcan villa in pre-photgraphic
days.

In short, I'm not a Damian Hirst fan at all, but it is
next-door to impossible to keep up with current
affairs without getting some idea of what's prodded
the gallerizens into excited sycophantic gossip.

Obviously if you happen to know that Mark Wallace
works in a beef slaughterhouse in real life you know
more than I.


He was one of the people who was instrumental in
this group appearing on USENET in the first place.

Lots of people have set up lots of groups on Usenet. Some of them, I know and
most, of course, I do not. This does not automatically mean they are competent
to perform any other function although some certainly are and some obviously are
not.

I think it still has, and should have, a future, but only
after the basic assumptions have been reviewed.

It provides a meeting place for those interested in writing for whatever reason.
That should be the only basic assumption needed.

Oh, they decided the criticism would be so swingeing,
the demand for it so great, and the bandwidth wasted
so significantly draining that there were a number of
posting guidelines issued.

I suggest the time has come to review them and also
to remember that, in practice, very few people do read
them anyway.

One thing I was going to ask anyway though is
if this has indeed irredeemably ground to a halt
would you prefer if I removed the quoted material
(i.e., your posts) from my contributions prior to
reposting mine.

If you don't want your contributions up here any
more this wouldn't be a problem but would be a
waste of time if you honestly don't care either
way.

Honestly? I do not care either way.
My efforts did not represent any significant investment of time or thought.

--
Blue Sow

G DAEB

COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 SIPSTON
--

.

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