As upsetting as it is to hear yet another contemporary arts organization evict live and media art from its premises, I think we can do more than wring our hands on our own email lists.

A year or two ago I was invited by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute to review books on new media art and theory for a feature on their Web site. At first I thought "I don't have time to do this," but then remembered that I had taken it upon myself to
write Amazon reviews of a few recent MIT Press titles as a sort of public service for the field. I asked LBI if they would consider republishing these, and they graciously accepted, citing the importance of spreading the word as far as possible.

My next suggestion, however, went too far. Would they consider re-posting the reviews they solicited from other authors back onto Amazon, so as to put them also under the nose of the public at large? The answer was no--their pressing goal was to
gain more acceptance for new media among the curators and critics who ply the mainstream art world.

I have a lot of respect for the LBI staff--they're smart, have their heart in the right place, and didn't say anything different than most new media art institutions would have under the circumstances. But why are we so eager to knock through the
walls of the Media Art World ghetto just to find ourselves within a slightly larger Mainstream Art World ghetto?

"Obscure." "Irrelevant." "Lacking quality and depth." The broader Internet-savvy public is less likely to associate these phrases with a Web site or indie game than with paintings and installations from today's *art world*. Previous posters lamented
that most new media art hasn't attained the foothold in the white cube enjoyed by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer or Olafur Eliasson. I'm happy for Rafael and Olafur, but is that really the kind of esoteric recognition we are aiming for? And is the white cube
the right place to find our audience? Why can't we aspire to the real-world impact of Will Wright, or Linus Torvalds, or even the Yes Men?

We have the tools. We have the savvy. We know that networked culture isn't just a popularity contest (sorry, Andrew Keen) but a broad swathe of interconnected and overlapping subcultures, of which hundreds easily dwarf the contemporary art world's
inbred audience. And we've evolved a rich and thoughtful discourse we can use to frame the work we think is important.

Posting about new media art to public forums like the Guardian blog will help. If it's more informed dialogue you're interested in, try ThoughtMesh (http://thoughtmesh.net). I will post more about this publication tool in a separate post, but
suffice to say that it's designed to link authors--especially across seemingly unrelated fields--who share common themes.

So by all means, stir up passions and plot strategies on lists like CRUMB. But also look for allies beyond the curators and critics who are the gatekeepers of art's enclave. 

jon
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What do pigs' wings, alien planets, and computer viruses have in common?
They're all At the Edge of Art.
http://at-the-edge-of-art.com