More press accounts, and comments regarding nerve.com's semi-hostile interview in response to the exhibit, can be found in the comments to this post.

- tom moody 7-27-2002 7:21 pm

Here's a story on artnet:

A new art project has invaded the lively "personals" section of Nerve, the highbrow online sex site that posts poetry, prose and photography (by the likes of Janine Godon, Beth B, Nobuyoshi Araki and Richard Kern, to name only a few). Organized by artists Giovanni Garcia-Fenech (former Artnet Magazine art-news correspondent) and Jody Hughes, the project involves more than 40 artists posting their own personals on the online bulletin board at Nerve.com. Titled "Are Friends Electric," the scheme has the intent of "confronting the commercialization of personal relationships, exploring the idea of online identities and maybe trying to pick someone up." One participant looks suspiciously like a sock puppet and describes him- or herself as "bigfoot's sex slave"; another answers the survey questions in haiku, as in "A web art project / Using online personals / Making a point? Feh." Participants can be found by searching for "afe_".
- tom moody 7-31-2002 7:39 am

Who is Tom Moody? Where are you? Did you go to an opening? Maybe you are on a date.
- sarah 8-02-2002 4:58 am

So far, the nerve.com dating profile I created has resulted in zero inquiries. Which means we still live in a sane and healthy world.
- tom moody 8-02-2002 6:15 am

Nerve.com recently posted an interview that its CEO Rufus Griscom (Brown, Class of '91) did with four of the artists in the "Are 'Friends' Electric?" exhibition. It was heavily edited, so I'm posting Giovanni Garcia-Fenech's email account of what actually was said:

About a week ago, Jody [Hughes] and I were invited to do an interview at Nerve.com by their C.E.O. Rufus Griscom. As Jody has been jet-setting, I placed an open call to the NY participants to come along with me, and Jeff Gauntt (afe_paleshelter), Josh Jordan (afe_spaceace), and Mark Masyga (afe_julius_k) accepted the challenge. To make a long story short, we met Rufus at a trendy cafe in SoHo at 11 am, and proceeded to impress him by ordering beer for breakfast; that was probably the best part of the experience. Rufus (a handsome chai-drinking devil) was quite defensive, and began the interview by asking "why would artists want to do something as lame as attack something they admit they like?" We tried to make him understand that the exhibition was much more complex than that, and attempted to talk about the other issues that our ads touched upon, but he insisted on returning to the same theme. Other questions he asked were "don't you think you're just hiding behind a facade of irony?" and "why is it that artists distrust something once it becomes popular?" (which led to a discussion about the differences between Samuel Beckett and Jerry Seinfeld). After a frustrating hour and a half of fielding variations on those questions - and maybe once we started feeling the beer - we gave up and told him we were just looking for dates, and admitted that the press release had been written with the fervent hope that it would get us laid by writers at the New York Times. Any fears/hopes we might have had of selling out disappeared when Rufus left $4 on the table and we realized he wasn't going to pay for our drinks.

On a brighter note, we got listed in New York's Franklin Furnace list of events, thanks to Natalie Bookchin and Melinda Klayman (afe_sugarbaby, afe_domina).

After the Nerve.com interview came out, Giovanni sent this follow-up email:

I spoke too soon when I assumed the Nerve interview saga was over. No, we still haven't gotten reimbursed for our drinks, but the interview is featured on Nerve's front page, with a nice screen-cap of afe_lumberjack's sexy ad. You can read the whole damn thing at http://www.nerve.com/Dispatches/Griscom/AFE/

Not surprisingly, the interview has been heavily edited, but yes surprisingly, it's not as extremely biased as we would have expected; a lot of the finer points were erased (faulty tape-recorder, I guess), but I would like to think a kernel of our points actually make it through. Unfortunately some of our answers get cut off at the point when we made a criticism. When Jeff Gauntt is quoted as saying "The notion that this was social critique and an anti-Nerve thing is kind of strange. Among my friends, at this table, people have dated online at Nerve. And it's a great place. It's a good thing," the second part where he discusses the finer points of the show's critique (where he pointed out it's not strictly social critique, but also a questioning of personal issues) is completely taken out, making it sound like he's a totally happy customer. Mark Masyga made some interesting points about the meaning of the interactions he's had from his afe ad, but that also fell by the wayside. My comment on the way that Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" has lost its original meaning gets truncated, so that I sound like a bitter old man who's pissed off that his record collection has become popular. That was when Josh Jordan pointed out that the meaning of art is in its context as much as in its content, but maybe the tape only recorded Rufus slurping his hot chai. That discussion also included Rufus' comment "but popular things aren't necessarily bad - I think the Simpsons and Seinfeld are as good as any art." Our reply was that it depended on what it is that you want to say as an artist - I asked Rufus if he didn't think that if Samuel Beckett had attempted to reach the size of Seinfeld's audience, he would have had to dumb down his novels "a tiny bit." He admitted that we had a point, but you're not going to find that in the interview. If we had been a little more aggressive (and less drunk), we would have kept a transcript of the interview ourselves so we could offer the other side, but alas, shoulda oughta coulda.

In a sense, this interview marks the end of the show - the cat's entirely out of the bag, and that leaves us in a different position from the one we started with. But I would hope that the discussions in the forum might pick up on new directions.

This was the image and text of my personal ad. It's still on nerve. Last I checked, I received no responses to this ad.

afe_supertoy

"I will nurture and protect you"

me my goods my habits
I am: a man
Looking for: a woman
Interested In: serious relationship

Age: 33
Location: New York, New York
Area Code: 212
Occupation: Partner

Height: 6'
Weight: 175 lbs

you your goods your habits
Age: 20 - 50

why you should get to know me

I am strong. I will protect you. I will nurture you, and always be there when you need me. Our lives together will be an adventure. I will cook meals for you; help you with what you are working on; provide a shoulder to cry on. Our playtime together will be timeless and otherwordly. I will love every inch of your body, kneading your soft skin and kissing you and whispering how much I love you, until we reach peaks of floating, orgasmic intensity. Yet, at the same time, our relationship will be serious and productive. I'm strong and I can carry both of us, but I want you to grow and thrive to reach your fullest potential. I love children and we'll have as many as you want. I will cherish and protect them. I am a romantic, and I am here to serve you.

- tom moody 10-22-2002 7:02 am

Update: afe_supertoy received 2 personals messages. One was cheeky and took him to task for giving and never taking. The other one asked, "Are you real?"

The name, BTW, is from the Brian Aldiss short story "Super Toys Last All Summer Long," on which the movie A.I. was loosely based. The portrait is a promotional pic of Neil Fleming, synthespian from the movie Final Fantasy.

- tom moody 11-30-2003 11:55 am