There's been a lot of talk on the lists lately about manifestos.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm as passionate as the next guy. When some unkind cretin yells from his (and it is invariably a "his") pick-up truck, advising me to "cut my hair and get a real job," why, I just shriek (like the little girl I am inside) back, "HEY! You try writing actionscript for mouse movement all night and see if you don't show up for work in your girlfriend's glitter sarong the next morning!"
But manifestos, much like marriage, too often end in anemic dogma. Take what happened to "Surrealism," for which plenty of manifestos have been written. And where did all the spooky rhetoric of Breton get us? Dali, who shares much formally with Norman Rockwell, with but a tint of Bob Ross on PCP thrown in for flavor. And yes indeed Dali wrote his own manifestos...
This is why I think a recent post to the Rhizome list-serv by Eryk Salvaggio touched more than a few nerves.
Eryk, spurred on by boredom induced by undoubtably too much commercial flash in net art, penned (okay, pecked) a few rules for a new net art, or perhaps it would be better to say he proposed a wish list for future net art. The text of Eryk Salvaggio's rules is as follows, intermingled with my own reaction to his prescription:
1. No Flash.
"This has nothing to do with corporate/anti-corporate; and should not be
mistaken as the most radical rule." Eryk writes. "The no-flash rule
is in effect by simple virtue of its rampant use in net.art work at the expense
of diversity. Because flash is so common, we see common systems of animation;
common color schemes, common layouts. This rule should be taken with the understanding
that under the rules for "new net.art" there is an allowance for up
to 30% of a site to consist of flash and shockwave."
As an artist who works in flash, I find this one quite objectionable. While I understand Eryk's dilemma (I too am sick of lazy, uninventive flash cartoons and e-cards), I have to disagree with him strongly here.
To assume that, because flash is a prevalent tool for new media authoring, it's created limitations on said authored objects is Eryk's mistake, I think.
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