[from:
NY Arts Magazine International,
Vol.
6 No. 2 March 2001 (p. 67)]
[Excerpts
from:]
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"A
Panel Discussion:
On
the Presentation of Online Art
In
Physical Space"
Held on
January 6, 2001 in conjunction with the exhibition:
Dystopia
+ Identity in the Age of Global Communications Curated by Cristine
Wang
at Tribes
Gallery, NYC / www.tribes.org/dystopia
ANDY
DECK (net.artist):
"Undoubtedly
the internet is changing very quickly, and to the extent that our culture
is affected by those changes, there is a role for art in articulating this
correlation...The creation of favorable conditions in cyberspace may require
a confrontation with laws that are already written and implemented.
The connection of physical gallery spaces and network-related art may offer
an advantageous context for the staging of contradictions and unconventional
perspectives. Artists may use the latitude traditionally afforded
to art in physical space to legitimate their inquiries into contentious
cultural affairs."
RICARDO
DOMINGUEZ (net.artist, Electronic Disturbance Theater):
"We
try to translate a real event into a digital event; Basicray uses the notion
of 'extended media object'...and while what we just did in re-translating
a real gesture into the virtual could be what Diane Ludin calls a 're_fleshing
of the network': we play in this liminal space between the 'extended
media object', and this 're_fleshing of the network'--not to say that there
is an ostensive definition of truth between both values between the 'virtual'
and 'real' ...but they can create or trace out a possibility that perhaps
sidesteps the dystopia that we find ourselves in."
JON
IPPOLITO (net.artist / curator new media arts, Guggenheim Museum):
"What
can we do to accommodate the network ethic within a way that makes the
museum more interesting than just an experience at home? Nam June
Paik in 1963 created a work called 'Random Access'. you've got a box the
closest thing to a net.art browser: a reel to reel magnetic tape.
Paik ripped opened the guts of the machine, tacked 50 odd pieces of pre-recorded
tape onto the wall in a haphazard pattern and allowed viewers to grab the
playback head, at whatever order or speed, using the medium of the time,
an analog medium. He used a method + ethic much more akin to online
art, by giving complete freedom to the viewer; a solution to this random
access problem."
BARBARA
LONDON (curator video + media, MoMA):
"Nam
June [Paik] said, 'It's all about communication--whether it's on the back
of a camel or over the airwaves'..Often I make comparisons between the
early days of video and the early days of the web...In another month we
[MoMA] are going to roll out the first in a series of artist web projects,
the first piece will be by Tony Oursler...We had a couple of kiosks at
MoMA, where the web projects were seen, also I had wands, sound wands;
this is just to say that in a museum, we do have a context, a cultural
context...another thing you will see are databases, this collaboration
with MoMA-Tate...I don't want to talk about 'branding' but I want to talk
about context...But, I think that in putting artists work online, we still
look back at the early days of cable: how do you bribe Yahoo or Google
to put you as the first one in that series when you do a search on the
subject?"
JENNY
MARKETOU (net.artist):
"How
to combine the physical and virtual space? It was always very tempting
for the audience looking into the computer of the internet, to go to check
their email, to being part of the network...is creating an environment,
that are like 'lounges', which allow my viewers to sleep, read, or to participate
in the work; or just become part of the environment...How to engage the
viewer in an 'open-sourcing' or 'open-coding project'--that they can participate
not just by looking or doing something (similar trying to browse, or what
they can do at home), but like an open source lounge: the viewers use the
code and create their own extension to the project. I found that
to be another aspect of the internet that is quite positive. For
this show [Dystopia + Identity] I created my first photograph of my project
[Smellbytes]...and here we are talking about the intangible object, and
we need intelligent museums to house these works."
SAUL
OSTROW (curator / critic Univ, Conn):
"What
is the consequence of the presentation of the virtual, digital forms in
real space?...(concerning the integration of virtual forms into the cultural
mainstream)...The political side of this view that the digital has no natural
environment, given it has multiple delivery systems, is the question:
'Does inclusion of such work within the context of such galleries, which
are commercial ventures, advance the possibility of its commodification?'
The rhetorical answer lies in the fact that the web itself is a model of
disembodied commerce, exploiting the myth of accessibility...Will we allow
real works to be dissolved by virtual space?"
CHRISTIANE
PAUL (curator new media arts, Whitney Museum):
"The
obvious challenge in presenting digital art, is of course that you are
not dealing with an art object anymore, but rather a fluid transition between
manifestation of information. Net.art is of course particularly challenging
in this context, because the art has been created to be seen by everyone
from any point in the world at any place, so showing it within a museum
context creates a paradoxical situation in the first place...One of the
ways is creating a kiosk, which means a recontextualisation of the work...You
are redefining the work in many cases...[using] alternative interfaces
(touchscreen, voice activation)...There are many works that use 'point
and click' navigation, once you lose this, you lose the work...The future
of our culture, is the challenge of creating these crossroads between the
'physical' and 'virtual' worlds."
MARK
TRIBE (founder, Rhizome.org):
"I
divide the world of online art into two main categories: 1) works meant
to be experienced online, and 2) works created as hybrids (that have an
online and offline component)...The history of art museums is really the
history of trying to find ways to recontextualize cultural objects...It's
meant to be a solitary experience...The premise of net.art is almost that
it makes museums unnecessary...You end up with fiascos like the Whitney
Museum's inclusion of net.art which really did violence to the paradigm
in which the work was meant to be experienced...The new generation of shows,
like the Whitney [Bitstreams] and SFMoma [010101] are trying to show the
'online' work online and the 'hybrid' work offline...The idea is only to
show 'ephemera' related to net.art...that's how museums traditionally did
with performance art: you don't try to show the work itself, but just its
documentation--the 'ephemera'."
MACIEJ
WISNIEWSKI (net.artist):
"I
believe that there is a physicality to online work-- a very important physicality.
The input and output box are both very physical; there needs to be input
to create something, there needs to be output to see something...the physicality
of the output, a few elements that its composed of: ownership, accessibility,
empowerment + disempowerment, and economy. Politics, struggle we
have with how / where / who to present to?...The way you create [the work]
is invisible, the way you create the interface, the distribution, the context,
equipment, physical constraints, economic constraints...What is the role
of an institution: disempowerment / empowerment: is the struggle between
Does it make sense? Does it work within the context? Does it do something
for me? Yahoo is more important than MoMA in many ways...."
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NY
Arts Magazine International is a monthly journal on contemporary
art practise.
available
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(Paris), MoMA (NY), New Museum (NY), Aoyama Bookcenter (Tokyo), Agora (Paris),
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Abraham
Lubelski
(Publisher,
NY Arts Magazine)
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NY
Arts Magazine, 473 Broadway, 7Fl, New York NY 10013
Tel:
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