I've been following the discussion on computing/computation etc over the 
past month.  My first observation goes back to an early point in the 
discussion, where some people seem to suggest that it's important to 
have a grasp not only of programming but of the nature of the machine 
itself.  The latter certainly seems to me to be a bit extreme and even 
reductive, like arguing that it's necessary to explain a theory of 
economics on the fact that we're mammals.  But while it may not be 
necessary to understand the logical gates and electronics of computer 
and network switching devices, it certainly could be important for the 
curator to know about operating systems and programming languages and 
development software.  To know about these things is to know about the 
material basis of computer-based art, much as the curator of twentieth 
century art would be able to distinguish oil paint from acrylic and to 
know how the advent of acrylics influenced the look, the feel, the 
practice, and the structure of painting. 

To appreciate Jodi's work, for instance, it's important to realize that 
their work was ASCII and HTML-based because that was what they had to 
work with when they started out.  It's significant that Jodi has pretty 
much continued to work in this mode, despite developments in web-based 
technologies.  To take another example, curators should know the 
difference between works created with Flash and works "made by hand", so 
to speak, using Javascript, PHP, DHTML, etc.   Technologies imply 
different takes on the creative process and on the meaning of the works 
created using them. 

A number of posts have asked for more "human" content in net art.  And I 
can sympathize with this.  Manovich recently posted an essay on data art 
in which he makes just such a plea:

   For me, the real challenge of data art is not about how to map some
  abstract and impersonal data into something meaningful and beautiful--
  economists, graphic designers, and scientists are already doing this
  quite well. The more interesting and at the end maybe more important
  challenge is how to represent the personal subjective experience of a
  person living in a data society.

This is certainly an important challenge.  On the other hand, it's not 
easy to draw the line, not as long we we believe that the formal 
elements of works of art are themselves meaningful.  And those formal 
element include technologies.  I think you have to look very carefully 
before dismissing an informed relationship between artist and curator as 
hieratic mystification.


Myron Turner


Guilherme Kujawski wrote:
>  the tendency of new media curators to privilege
> the 'programmer' (as traditional curators privilege the artist) begins
> to look like mystification: a alliance between artist and curator, as
> magician and priest of new media, to defend a hierarchy which the
> proliferation of technology has already helped undermine. However, if
> emphasis falls on the technology and not the relations it mediates,
> the tendency to celebrate new media revolutions begins to look like a
> utopian affirmation of the marketing hype.
>   
Myron Turner
http://www.room535.org
http://www.room535.org/woodblocks

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_____________________
Myron Turner
http://www.room535.org
http://www.room535.org/woodblocks

-- 

_____________________
Myron Turner
http://www.room535.org
http://www.room535.org/woodblocks