Snail-Mail

[Ruud Janssen]

Do we need still snail-mail when we have forums like these?

[Maurizio Follin]

Io ho conosciuto la Mail Art e i Mail Artisti tramite Internet e devo molto a questo mezzo.
Ma ricevere una busta contenente arte è tutta un’ altra cosa

I knew the Mail Art and Mail Artists over the Internet and I have a lot to this form.
But receiving an envelope containing art is a whole 'else.
(I am sorry but I do not speak English and this is a translation of Google)

[Reid Wood]

This reply is to Creative Thing's comment about being Old Wave. I'm putting it here because I couldn't find a way to attach a photo with a direct response to him via the Inbox.

Hey Leslie-

I'm old and I wave (see photo). I think (as others have stated) that the online networking is a complement to the snail mail. As for Reed's comment about snail mail being a wave of the past ... it still seems to be hanging around. I remember Cracker Jack Kid commenting in the 90s that the postal system was on its last legs. I still get interesting stuff in the snail mail (along with a lot of less interesting stuff, but that was always true). I do spend more time online (with sites like this and many others that keep proliferating), and I do send less out through snail mail. But ... it's not dead yet.

Reid (State of Being)

[jim leftwich]

the digital and the postal compliment each other. postal mail art is not a thing of the past. mail art has become a hybrid form.

my current project, mail art responses to trench art, will result in a multimedia exhibit. it will include video and
audio works, and at least one web page designed as a direct response to the call.

it will also include booklets, collages, texts and all of the other forms we expect to find in envelopes sent by mail artists.

documentation will be digital.

[Judy Skolnick]

There is nothing like the real thing to have and hold and keep. E-mail print outs are ok no passions though, no texture, post office marks or real stamps with pretty pictures on them and stamped by foreign countries, colors aren't really true either.

[Reid Wood]

Reed Altemus said:

Reed Altemus said:

Well, maybe the wave of the future is nanomailart or genetically-modified mailart whatever. I feel closer ties to the idea of networking (Reid mentioned Chuck Welch an old friend and collaborator) and community-building than to the individual and exchange of handmade postcards. The process of networking, or maybe better, netplerking (because networking is playful), is more important than the arts and farking crafts to me. Networking is ajoyful celebration of community not an exchange between a limited number of chosen pARTners the exclusion of others. Everyone is an artist and that means that, ultimately, art itself has got to go. In any case, the Internet is NOT the future, it was the future back in the 80ies, the Internet is NOW.

Wilma Duguay said:

Hi Reed,
I am very curious as to why you feel that snail mail is the wave of the past.
What do you see as the wave of the future? Is it the Internet perhaps?
Please clarify. Thanks.

Wilma

Reed Altemus said:

Forget postal art, Ruud, postal art is history. Snail mail is the wave of the past.

[Reid Wood]

Hey Reed-

I love it - "farking crafts."

Reid

[Ruud Janssen]

It is difficult to write the right words and typing them down is even more difficult. When I write letters I normally need more time to explain myself but the message might become clearer. A drawing works faster for me. Putting concepts on paper is my favorite.

(just a bit o thoughts)

[Tamara Wyndham]

I would love to exchange art over the internet. It is less expensive, for one thing.
Also I am beginning to use computer programs like photoshop to make art, so there is no material original - so why not just post it to the web, or email it?

I would not want to never work with actual materials of paint and paper again, and for that there is a need to snail mail.

But here's to expanding our horizons!

[Tamara Wyndham]

Another reason I like posting art to the web and not snail mail is that I had trouble storing all the mail art I received. And I could not afford to mail it all back out... it was getting too expensive and taking up too much space.

[Ruud Janssen]

I have problems storing all the digital materials that I produce.That is a new problem. Where to leave all those terrabytes of files? Agree that we produce digitally too. I have been doing so for almost 30 years.......

Tamara Wyndham said:

Another reason I like posting art to the web and not snail mail is that I had trouble storing all the mail art I received. And I could not afford to mail it all back out... it was getting too expensive and taking up too much space.

[Ruud Janssen]

there are still mail-boxes outside, so I guess the postal system still functions.....

[Ruud Janssen]

Snail mail with on it SNAILS. Now that would be a nice project. Something for Bruno?