Hi,

I am Burak Arikan. I recently completed my master's degree in the Physical
Language Workshop at the MIT Media Laboratory. While at MIT, I pursued
research exploring systems that address the transition from connectivity to
collectivity in the context of creative expression. I've been reading the
posts in this list for a while and I would like to contribute to the
discussion. I'd like to first say a few things about the current theme, then
tie some of the ideas to the Openstudio project that I've posted an instance
of it in my previous message.

How much does a curator need to know about the technology?

I think about this question considering the artists who use technology in
the essence of their work. More often we see artworks that need electricity
and Internet connection. These artworks can only be experienced if they are
up and running, so maintaining and storing such work is a challenge and I
think this basic task is part of the curatorial activity. Of course we see
more complex needs than electricity and Internet connection when artists
create their work out of custom technology, which needs super special care.
I think this practical issue connects to another common question: do you
think about technology as a tool or as a medium in the creative process?
Since we use technology in our contemporary production and communication, it
is clearly changing the way we understand our world. I think if we know the
core ideas about the technology and observe its cultural reflections in the
society, we can better frame the messages artworks communicate, not through
their medium, but as a medium.

How much does the technology effect the very reception of the work - should
we be more true to technology, and less concerned with trying to shoehorn it
into conventional galleries?

Today artists not only create software and hardware, but they also create
systems that run on network of machines. These are platforms and
environments in which people not only interact with them but also live in
them. I think Hannah Redler asked important questions related to this
situation:

"Can the everyday experience people are having with distributed and
networked technologies be achieved, enhanced, 'elevated' even by being
presented within gallery environments? What happens when social interplay
becomes directed - does it heighten opportunities for creative involvement
or do we end up over-regulated, over-legislated and over-played?"

As the works are becoming more complex cultural systems, I think only
instances of such systems can be shown in a gallery. May be the gallery with
all its context can only be one of the elements in such complex systems. I
agree with Andy Polaine about his thought:

"I think we are moving from (or have moved from) scenarios where meaningful
experiences are 'given' by artists/curators/galleries, etc. to one in which
they are found and exposed by the participants of a larger scheme."

Curators have been selecting, organizing, displaying, distributing, and
archiving artworks. So far, this practice has been exercised by a single
person or a single body of a curatorial committee; it has been mostly
monolithic and authoritative. However, curating can be collective through
continuous participation of the public at large. We can build technologies
so that authors, artists, and interested public can consciously act to
influence a meaningful experience to emerge.

At this point, I'd like to introduce you the Openstudio project (
http://openstudio.media.mit.edu/) we've been developing at the MIT Media
Laboratory for a year. I believe it can be an interesting discussion related
to curating new media art. Openstudio is web + art + community + economics.
It is an open ended experiment that couples a very simple drawing tool with
an economy of artists, curators, collectors, dealers and viewers. Members
can create and modify drawings, set prices and licenses, exchange and
exhibit work, view financial records, and commission one another.

In today's social networked media systems, meta-data is commonly used for
filtering content and putting it in various contexts. I think this is an
important method for creating meaningful experiences in the case of
curating. While building this system we didn't decide on certain roles, but
just created the necessary tools and protocols for people to have rich
communication and exchange. As people use the system we store the social and
economic connections among people and semiotic connections among the art
pieces. We show the aggregated data in profile pages or piece pages to let
people synthesize. Furthermore, when people buy an art piece they don't
simply buy an image, they buy its source in the XML format. They also buy
the discourse – meta-data – formed by people's tags about the piece.

Members in Openstudio are doing all sorts of experiments that ask
interesting questions. The message I sent previously is one of those
experiments that deals with the wholeness and distribution of an art piece
in a networked environment. Sometimes such experiments lead to trends and
even movements and people learn and explore various concepts by
participating.

Openstudio is not intended as a direct critique of the existing art world,
although it does loosely mimic a 'real' economic system. This peer-to-peer
economic system is flat, so the community determines the value of the
drawings. Over time people learn what sells and what doesn't without
institutional mediation. It is a conceptual foundation from which we're
continuing to develop further work in creative tools, collaboration,
licenses, participatory media, law, and trust.

These are my cents and liras, I hope it adds a little bit to the discussion
of this month's theme.

Best,
Burak