Sarah wrote:
>But to turn back to our discussion of the month (and I do hope our
>invited participants will add their thoughts) - big media art in big
>media institutions...
>Reiner wrote, in a final parentheses:
>(there have to be found/realized ways to present these different aspects
>by
>showing 'net-art', i prefer to say i-art, in public places -
>environments
>where the visitor is stimulated (or at least gets the chance) to
>experience
>the quality of the pieces).
>
>and I ask in response, how is the museum different from a public place
>in the sense meant here? Does the museum prohibit stimulated
>interaction, and if so, why? does the i in "i-art" stand for intimacy
>rather than internet or interactive??
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Firstly, I hope that the discussion here will remain sufficiently broad so
as to encompass the totality of new media art, and not just focus on net
art or web based practice. Also, although my own practice is primarily
concerned with interactive systems, I recognise that not all new media work
is or should be explicitly interactive.
As to the distinction between the museum and public sites (recognising that
at least in Europe most museums are a form of public space) and how this
impacts upon new media art...well??? The primary distinction, putting aside
questions regarding the mechanisms of how work comes to be in either
locale, is that the museum space requires a proactive audience who choose
to enter that space whilst the public site is all about addressing an
audience that have not chosen to be addressed. They are passer's-by.
The psychological differences between a proactive and passer-by audience
has to be considered when creating a work for either context. In the case
of interactive work this is immediately of concern to the artist (and the
curator) in that they are premising their work explicitly on some sort of
active relationship between audience and work.
It is not possible to generalise on this though. Each artist's practice can
be so distinct, and public sites so different to one another, that aside
from the above vague observations each has to be addressed independently.
However, it might be of value to run an audit of previous such projects
that participants of this list have been involved with, whether as artists,
curators, producers, engineers, outreach workers or (perhaps most
importantly) as audience members.
Simon
Simon Biggs
London GB
[log in to unmask]
http://hosted.simonbiggs.easynet.co.uk/
Research Professor
Art and Design Research Centre
School of Cultural Studies
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/
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