Hello everyone,

Fascinating topic. Allow me to introduce myself: I'm the Director of 
Digital Media at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum 
and Pacific Film Archive (bampfa.berkeley.edu). I'm also a digital 
artist (www.coyoteyip.com). I serve on the San Jose Airport Art 
Activation Committee and have had the opportunity to work with the 
talented Gorbet and Banerjee.

Perhaps most pertinent though is that I've been deeply involved in 
two projects tackling the problems of permanence and preservation of 
digital art - the Variable Media Network (variablemedia.net) and 
Archiving the Avant-Garde (you'll find lots of research papers on 
this topic at the project website 
bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/avant_garde.html).

The problem of permanence naturally means "re-animating" media 
artworks periodically over time, which means collecting the right 
information at the beginning to enable that act (a paper at 
bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/formalnotation.pdf proposes how to 
do this). BUT the question raised on this list is slightly different 
in that it focusses on public art. Public art usually has a long-term 
caretaker (the city public art commission instead of the museum), so 
one could just say that they take the same role as a museum in 
preserving this art. But other questions still obtain: how much 
public art should be preserved? Unlike museums, public art 
commissions usually don't have the capacity for storing large numbers 
of works out of sight; so to keep it around is to keep it alive 
continuously. Of course keeping any art alive or preserved takes 
resources, but media art is especially demanding in this regard.

I'll be curious to follow this thread and see what other issues may 
be different when the issue is how to keep *public* art alive......if 
at all.



Richard Rinehart
---------------
Director of Digital Media
Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
bampfa.berkeley.edu
---------------
University of California, Berkeley
---------------
2625 Durant Ave.
Berkeley, CA, 94720-2250
ph.510.642.5240
fx.510.642.5269


>There is 1 message totalling 122 lines in this issue.
>
>Topics of the day:
>
>   1. july/august 06 theme: permanence and public art
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date:    Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:45:31 +0100
>From:    Sarah Cook <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: july/august 06 theme: permanence and public art
>
>Dear list.
>
>First of all, apologies for the delay caused by national holidays, the
>World Cup, computer crashes, house moves and the like! Welcome to the
>summer season and the belated launch of our discussion theme:
>permanence and public art.
>
>In his article "Public Art and Interactive Publics" (2003,
>http://www.yproductions.com/writing/archives/000730.html), Steve Dietz
>writes:
>
>"The content of interactive work may be ever-new, but inevitably its
>form will be obsolescent almost from the day it is installed."
>
>Which leads us to ask, just how permanent is permanent when it comes to
>public art installations which use new media technologies?
>
>This summer's ISEA festival (less than a month away!) has a strand of
>exhibitions concerning the Interactive City as well as an Interactive
>Cafe, which suggests that "we are on the cusp of a world where
>information processing and biotechnology has changed many, if not all,
>objects around us. How does this change our everyday spaces and
>everyday experiences?" While the works on view at ISEA will only be up
>temporarily, one can assume that curators will be visiting and thinking
>about commissioning similarly interactive projects for their cities and
>public spaces, potentially on a permanent basis. Steve's questions of
>three years ago are still of going concern:
>
>"How can host organizations be made to understand and accept
>maintenance as normal? Light bulbs? Of course they need to be replaced
>on a regular cycle. Computers? Why aren't they "permanent"? ...
>Eventually we will know that a computer in a reasonably protected
>environment can last x years, an LCD screen needs to be replaced every
>y months., and we'll plan accordingly. It's programming that is a
>particularly gnarly issue. Leaving aside the problem of buggy code,
>what happens when the information architecture changes? Who is
>responsible for making the necessary adaptations?"
>
>So this month we're looking for your thoughts on making public art
>experiences lasting, and your experience in being commissioned or
>commissioning work, and how it has affected your practice, your sense
>of public spaces and your idea of permanence in art.
>
>This month's respondents include:
>
>Sheldon Brown is Director of the Center for Research in Computing and
>the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD)
>where he is a Professor of Visual Arts and the head of New Media Arts
>for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information
>Technologies (Cal-(IT)2). His work examines the relationships between
>mediated and physical experiences. This work often exists across a
>range of public realms. As an artist, he is concerned about overlapping
>and reconfiguring private and public spaces; how new forms of mediation
>are proliferating co-existing public realms whose geographies and
>social organizations become ever more diverse.
>
>Matt, Susan and Rob Gorbet enhance people's experience of public spaces
>through the creative application of technology. With innovative
>physical interactions, their design practice and public artworks add
>surprise and delight to spaces like retail stores, hotels, airports and
>museums. Their interactive marquee 'P2P: Power to the People' will be
>shown at ZeroOne San Jose in August.  Rob is an artist and professor of
>electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, and a Director of
>the Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area (CAFKA). Matt and Susan
>are cofounders of Gorbet Design, Inc. and are also currently working
>with the City of San Jose and SJC as the 'Airport Art Activation Team'
>(along with partner Banny Banerjee) for the new San Jose airport
>buildings. They are creating an infrastructure to support a rotating
>program of Art & Technology in the airport. More at
>http://www.gorbetdesign.com and
>http://www.gorbetbanerjee.com/artactivation.
>
>Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead are artists based in London who have
>recently completed a permanent commission for a Sainsbury's grocery
>store window in South East London (Decorative Newsfeeds /
>http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/decnewsffh.html). They will also
>be showing two installations at ISEA 2006;  Unprepared Piano
>(http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/pianof.html) and a new work
>called, 'Light from Tomorrow' (http://www.lightfromtomorrow.com).  Jon
>is a lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art and Alison is a senior
>researcher at University of Westminster.
>
>Ben Rubin (who will join the discussion in August) is a media artist
>based in New York City, and his permanent project for the ADOBE
>building in San Jose will be on view at ISEA. Ben's exhibitions include
>shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MIT List Visual Arts
>Center, and the Skirball Center in Los Angeles (in a show organized by
>the Getty Museum). He has been a frequent collaborator with artists and
>perfomers including Laurie Anderson, Diller+Scofidio (on Jump Cuts,
>which also took place in San Jose), Ann Hamilton, Arto Lindsay, Steve
>Reich, and Beryl Korot. Rubin's Listening Post (2002, with statistician
>Mark Hansen) won the 2004 Golden Nica Prize from Ars Electronica. Ben
>received a B.A. from Brown University in 1987 and an M.S. in visual
>studies from the MIT Media Lab in 1989. He teaches at the Yale School
>of Art, where he was appointed critic in graphic design in 2004.
>
>Barbara Goldstein is the director of public art in San Jose and also
>was the public art director in Seattle for the Library and many other
>projects.
>
>and hopefully others still to be confirmed!
>
>Please chime in with your experiences and your thoughts.
>
>Sarah
>
>----
>
>Sarah Cook
>School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture, University of Sunderland
>CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
>http://www.crumbweb.org
>
>------------------------------
>
>End of NEW-MEDIA-CURATING Digest - 9 Jul 2006 to 10 Jul 2006 (#2006-129)
>************************************************************************


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