Hi all,

There are a few things I would like to pick up on before I head off- 
line for a few days. First of all Anna's astute comments:

>  But I am suggesting that these are mainly privatised ( and that is  
> not a judgment, just a description).

I'm curious for you to expand on what you mean by privatised here -  
whether this is to do with the modes of commission and exhibition of  
these works (being, as they often are, a product of innovative  
marketing and branding campaigns) or whether you mean the experience  
of them is privatised, not shared, not public? In either case I would  
argue that the gallery/art space is often more privatised than those  
funded by marketing budgets of corporations, ironically. This is  
certainly true in terms of the production of many works. It's a theme  
I'll return to in a minute in my reflection of the conference.

> What I think artistic practice and experimentation in new media has  
> to offer right now when, globally, social and collective space are  
> being seriously eroded, is these other 'zones' of networked and  
> social space. This is what seems to me to be new about the use of  
> media - not just new aesthetics, new technologies but new spheres.  
> Interestingly enough, these seem to curate themselves!

Yes, absolutely and this was something I feel wasn't very much  
explored in the sessions that I went to. John Ippolito spoke of it,  
but I'm struggling to think of any others (though my brain is a bit  
addled right now). I think it was an excellent conference and am very  
happy to have been part of it, but for me also felt like a crash  
refresher (ha ha) course in Art History. This was a history that  
appeared to end around 1995. This is not to say that many of the  
historical accounts of interactivity and media technologies weren't  
interesting or relevant (and Anna, this is what Erkki focussed on by  
the way), it is just that these accounts stop when the going gets  
into the sticky territory that we need to deal with. There were very  
few references to more recent works (last five years) and no  
references to people working with the mobile space (Blast Theory,  
Aware, etc.). In that sense there was more recycling than refreshing.

I feel that the slippage into "it's all art" is rather an  
intellectual avoidance of the issues that, for want of a better  
phrase, "new media art" throws up. It seemed to me that the  
historical accounts of media, cybernetics, video art, automata, etc.  
allowed a group of people heavily invested (both personally and  
professionally) in the frameworks of art history and theory to remain  
comfortable because all of these historical forms have some kind of  
art object to contemplate in the very traditional sense of  
connoisseurship and arbitration of taste (and all the politics of  
control that these suggest). I completely agree with Simon Penny who  
in his talk and in conversation argued very strongly that art history  
is too narrow a lens through which to examine this area. Not only do  
the theoretical frameworks struggle with some of the issues, but also  
it does not take in the scope or depth of many of the practices drawn  
together by emerging cultural technologies (long phrase for new  
media). It also doesn't allow for those creating work that simply do  
not see (or do not position) themselves as artists, hence the subject  
line of this posting. I think this is something that Simon Biggs just  
pointed to rather more eruditely than I.

Lastly, by not engaging with the last two or three years we are left  
discussing a period of immaturity in this area. The dotcom crash had  
as much of an effect on the new media art scene as it did in the  
commercial sphere. Funding from all sorts of areas dried up (as  
Sarah's pithy title The Art Formerly Known As New Media alludes to).  
The last two years, however, have seen a maturing of attitudes in new  
media, at least in the commercial sphere in Europe and the U.S., that  
have moved on from the utopian attitudes of the 90s and have engaged  
with all the emerging trends such as the wireless space, social  
networks and the rise of the personal media space. All of these are  
potentially problematic from an art historical point of view as I see  
it and were essentially ignored by most of the presenters at Refresh!  
I should qualify here that I don't claim to be an art historian,  
rather than to say that "I woz there". (Don't get me wrong, I love  
historians and theorists – we make the work and they very generously  
tell us why we did it ;-) ).

These are all areas that I would really like to see covered in the  
next Refresh! and Berlin is an ideal place for that given it's  
history of activist art conjoined with new technologies and clearly,  
to borrow from a terrible song, we've only just begun. Incidentally,  
a few of us have been saying how much we would like to do the one  
after in Sydney so we could include the Southern Hemisphere a little  
more (and it's sunny there).

Okay, that's that rant out the way. All the best to those of you  
travelling back to various parts of the world. See you online (how  
new media of me).

Best,

Andy

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Andy Polaine
Head, School of Media Arts
Senior Lecturer, Interactive Media
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