On starting up this CD-ROM we hear a voice saying: Some men see things as they are and say: why? I dream of things that never were and say: why not? The voice is that of Robert F. Kennedy, the quotation one he borrowed from George Bernard Shaw and adapted and used in his campaign for the presidency of the US in 1968. He is referring to his brother John F. Kennedy. And just as this citation is 'borrowed', everything is 'borrowed' on this CD-ROM, which seems to be almost entirely made up of images, sounds and texts from others. Cut, paste, copy, repeat and mix, or, to put it another way: borrow, steal and put each citation in a new context, mix it with your own material and presto, you have a new version of everything the media has to offer you. This is the recipe that is used here, and in the game between meaning and interpreter each is present with its own criteria for judgement and meaning. And with a vague awareness of the memories that are called up by the fragments used here and the bits we recognize but of what? the maker(s) reveals all: a CD which lets you look and listen to clips, but where the interactivity often lies more in one's own thoughts and associations than in the doing. 'This is not a bear' is, after all, the title of one of the clips in 'Volume One: Greatest Hits'. It seems to be an almost superfluous comment on a CD where nothing is as it was and everything has become something else. But that is to be expected of an artist who promotes himself as 'digital media manipulator, zero-budget film director and disturber of general social events'.
Carla Hoekendijk
|
Art Jones ° 1963, New York (USA)
Lives and works in New York (USA)
|
|
1 9 9 8 
