Curating and Conserving New Media

Pop~report

A Workshop Presented by the Banff Multimedia Institute and the Walter Phillips Gallery

The Banff Centre hosted an international meeting, signaling the ripe moment for the representatives of major institutions to meet with an international group of networkers: artists, producers, funders, programmers and distributors. This group, convened by Sara Diamond, the artistic director of the Media and Visual Arts Department, and the Executive Producer for Television and New Media (at the Banff Centre), was a meeting to brainstorm about the problems of curating, conserving, and producing New Media. The leading question was a challenge to the entire group to consider the need for critical theory as it relates to the issues of curatorship, presentation and archiving of New Media and Net.art.

Curating and Conserving New Media: artists and curators discuss "curatorship"

The Banff Centre for the Arts, located in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada, has been a production and exhibition center, and a primary meeting place where the discussion of Cyber Arts, Virtual Reality and New Media Art has taken place for the past decade.

Curating and Conserving New Media - an international discussion that took place May 25-30 among internationally known curators, producers, funders and artists, centered around the issues of curating for the online environment. This "hot topic", frequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Net.community, has become more important during the last years as more official institutions, museums and state arts agencies taking up residence on the World Wide Web. The irony is that many artists who have established art websites have, by default, become curators and organizers of Net.galleries, and de facto editors of online journals-to bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignores Internet as a serious artspace.

In the process, the Net.community has created their own hierarchies and Net.cliques, groups that not only meet online regularly but also hold court at media art festivals, symposia and art exhibitions around the world.

Now, at the onset of the post-euphoric phase of Internet as Art, the fact that anyone can call themself a Net.artist conflicts with the longstanding curatorial practice of gatekeeping. But, with the inclusion of everyone online, it has become evident that the overwhelming number of web pages proclaiming to be art, are actually self-promotion by artists or institutions. Most often, the online representation is a mirror of what is physically available.

The participants at Curating and Conserving New Media agreed, early in the week and by overwhelming consensus, that New Media was not a digital version of traditional art like painting, nor was it a rehash of the more traditional Media Arts, video, computer and performance art. Instead, the workshop and symposium focused on the topics of Net.art, multimedia and the convergence of various new forms of communication practice, and how they create a new art form in the on-line environment.

Curatorial practice for Net.art

Sara Diamond lead a demanding schedule, from 9.30 am daily until 6.30 pm, inside the Banff Centre's television studio (read: no windows) for the entire week of workshop and symposium sessions. Discussions continued late into the night at the Banff Centre bar, which looked out on the dramatic skyline of rugged mountain peaks. With moderator Su Ditta, Diamond planned practical sessions (the workshop) to define theoretical and curatorial practice. The conclusions were forwarded to the symposium, held in the same location for an expanded audience of Canadian representatives from Parallel (alternative) Media Arts institutions (thanks to a grant from the Canada Council).

Ditta, an artist, independent curator and former Canada Council officer, reminded the group to respond to the intellectual, social and political issues, and not to rely on assumptions that answers to these new problems can be found by examining former media art practice.

The big question: what is Net.art? and the changing roles of Net.artists

What Net.art is -and is not-and how to define it, was an early discussion. Among the experts in the creation and presentation of Net.art were three well know members of the "European Net.mafia": Alexei Shulgin (Moscow), Vuk Cosic (Slovenia) and Heath Bunting (London).

Individually, they explained how quickly the European Net.art scene evolved, and how a Net.art community was closely related due to the large number of festivals, mailing lists, and collaborative projects. For example, the mailing list 7-11 (which Cosic explained was a form of collaborative Net.art), the mailing lists Nettime (a Net.theory list) and Syndicate (a list began by V2 to connect Eastern European artists). The Net project Refresh, originated by Shulgin and Cosic in 1996 as a collaborative, progressive work, was open to artists around the world, each contributed a new image that was "refreshed" showing each submission in rotation. These practical examples were used as case studies.

Shulgin, who established one of the first Net.gallery spaces, The Moscow WWWArt Centre, acknowledged its importance to the Russian Net.community, then declared it an archive, and threatened to erase it. He told the audience how it began with a group of friends in 1994, because they needed to escape a repressive and highly controlled cultural situation in Moscow, that was much too aware of itself being "important". Although he does not think of himself as a curator, Shulgin cautiously admits to being a communicator. He says the difference is that online, many people can be involved, and communicate.

Museums take interest in Internet

The role of the Museum in Net.art was examined in presentations by Barbara London, curator of Media Art at MoMA (New York) and Carl Goodman, curator at the American Museum of the Moving Image (Queens, N.Y.).

Several presentations were made by Canadians artists who had formerly served as curators of various museums. London (who is currently traveling in Russia visiting Media Artists and organizations, and creating a Website to parallel her journey, brought up the long tradition at MoMA for film and video. She declared MoMA to be an old man with many staid traditions and practices. She told how she needed to raise money for every project, and stated that Net.art was of interest not only to her video and new media department, but also to contemporary art curators, making it a curatorial issue as well as a museum concern for public relations and education.

Goodman explained that the AMMI was a new institution, only 10 years old, and that it is mainly concerned with the story of commercial film and television. As a curator, he was responsible for the popular exhibition he expressed a keen interest to bring Internet into the museum's future programming, and pointed out several museum conferences on the topic of Internet.

The Virtual Museum: two possibilities for the future of museums online

The ultimate museum presence online was portrayed in two projects that demonstrated what could be expected in the future. The Virtual Museum System of Van Gogh TV, a Hamburg based artist collective, was presented by Martin Schmitz.

A VRML based organizing structure for the organization of information, the VMS works between HTML and VRML to allow the creation of a 3D presentation system. Created as an online working environment for curators, the public and artists, it can be used with high end office PC workstations. The long standing experience that VGTV has with interactive audiences, and with telecommunications projects (offline and as broadcast works) proved to be extremely useful in the design and implementation of this new work.

David Plant, the representative of Silicon Valley North, presented another model, the SGI Virtual Museum project. This system, with its 20 Terabyte trashcan, does, as Plant stated "just about everything that can be done in digital technology." It requires an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time, but will allow detailed representation of master artworks, even to the level of artistic interpretation. Plant demonstrated the system from a video documentation, showing how artworks could become a kind of "setting" for an animation, and examinations of the artists subject matter. A test project now being created with the British Museum, the SGI Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 20 years to complete (and 20 million British Pounds). It will ultimately connect major museums throughout Europe. SGI will present this project at the 98 SIGGRAPH in Orlando, as Reality Center Technology.

The money issue: festivals, residencies, commissions and other schemes to realize new work

The various methods how artists produce a new media art work, especially a Net.art work, and innovative ways to present them at international events, was a concern of the artist participants and presenters. Festivals and residencies were cited as a solution, in several presentations. The annual ISEA festival was discussed, as both the organization (now with a permanent staff of five, and based in Montreal) and as the international symposium and exhibition.

OSTrananie, the Festival Nouveau Cinema Montreal, and Ars Electronica, were all given as examples where artists could find support to not only exhibit their work, but also to use as infrastructure to create it. Residency programs at the Banff Centre, C3, Budapest (Hungary), and projects like the Polar Circuit in Lapland, and various works produced in the UK with support from ARTEC were case study examples.

Sara Diamond discussed the Art and VR Environments project at the Banff Centre held in 1991. It was a pioneering, technically driven residency project that offered a place for artists to re-think virtual reality, both the software and the creation of new works. This project scored a lot of money for the Centre, and many projects were developed. Unfortunately, only two were ever shown due to the technical requirements and legalities. What remains of the project is a book, and a videotape (which cost $15,000 to produce).

The funding issue was highlighted by information about the new Foundation Daniel Langlois. This new foundation in Montreal was announced by Jean Gagnon, the Director of its program. Endowed by the profits earned by the selling of SoftImage to Microsoft, Langois has set out to restore culturally interesting buildings (he has already started projects in Soho, New York and in Montreal which will become media showcases) and to establish a fund to support the critical discourse of media art, and support artistic and scientific research, with an international scope. It plans to commission new work, and establish residencies to bring major artists to Canada, to teach, work and create. In the same session, the Canada Council announced an additional $25 million available in the next year, specifically devoted to media art.

The World Wide Web and Telecommunications are big questions that are on the drawing board, as well as establishing new ways to disseminate current media work. Outreach is considered a major investment for the Canada Council, and Canadian curators and programmers can apply for funds to travel for research, to present work, and to participate in exhibitions.

Cyber Heart: an illustration of artistic praxis

Curating and Conserving New Media took place concurrently with the exhibition "Cyber Heart" curated by Sara Diamond, May 29-July 26, 1998.

The collection of works shown at the Walter Phillips Gallery provided a practical example of new interactive media art work that examine "the physical effects of sentiment, immersion in technology, biological engineering, institutional and data body systems." Net.artist in-residence at the Banff Centre Heath Bunting, produced "Heath's Loan Agreement" providing a functional example of Net.art production practice. Catherine Richards' work "Charged Hearts: Excitable Tissues" was a case study discussed during the workshop of how-to produce large scale projects, with commercial companies and support from several organizations. Thecla Shiphorst, with her work "Bodymaps: artifacts of touch" excited the audience with its sensual multi-user interaction. Shiphorst was awarded the prestigious 1998 Canada Council Petro-Canada annual award at a presentation during the symposium. Other artists included in "Cyber Heart" were Natalie Jeremijenko, Jane Prophet, Allucquere Rosanne Stone, Astrid Hadad and Josephine Starrs/Leon Cmielweski. The CCNM workshop & symposium participants were able to benefit from the juxtaposition of real art in a real gallery, bringing a clear and important relationship between the virtual space and real space.

Conclusions: an official summary resolves many discussions

The site of numerous conferences for more than a dozen years, the Banff Centre offers an expert example on how to conduct symposia and workshops. There is a clear methodology used to bring panel discussions to resolution, and to bring the conference proceedings to a useful conclusion. Su Ditta, in her closing remarks, brought the week's presentations into focus by summarizing the most important moments, and the most important statements of the discussion. She noticed a frequent reference to memory, community and history in a number of presentations. She contrasted the disseminators and distributors of Media Art, and perceived them as networks - and added art galleries (especially the parallel gallery system of Canada) to the networking institutions.

She observed many references to "containers" (and getting out of them), and to models (and creating new models of production). Her acknowledgment (and gradual acceptance through the week) of the Web as exhibition space was enlarged to respect the community of web artists (and their communicating colleagues, Net.artists). The understanding of festivals, and how they play an important role in the market of Net.art, and how necessary festivals are, because they can offer new possibilities that traditional Contemporary Art Museums just can't, as they need more time just to keep up. At the conclusion of the symposium, the participants forged a new Net.community by creating a mailing list. Some of the Canadian attendees, who met at the Banff Centre for the first time, will maintain virtual communication, keeping the community alive dispite the vast physical distances of Canada.

Curating and Conserving New Media: A Workshop Presented by the Banff Multimedia Institute and the Walter Phillips Gallery, May 25-28, 1998 - Symposium: May 29 - 30, 1998