Dear List,
Thanks Jon Ippolito for the DOCAM 2 posting - some great examples of
really useful tools - and particularly interesting how the David Rokeby
example crosses over from being a tools useful for exhibiting from a
collection, back through conservation, to the documentation of audience
experience during live exhibition.
Marc Garrett's mention of the Victoria and Albert museum is another
inspiring example of how having works in a collection can stimulate the
commissioning of new works and the exhibition of contemporary design
works in the Decode exhibition - the fabulous Louise Shannon came to
our symposium last Friday, and had some very interesting points about
how the risk of commissioning complements the solid base of collection.
RE Rick Rinehart's post below, I'd like to pick up on his mention of V2
as a lab space. Something else which cropped up at our symposium last
Friday was the usefulness of the lab model for that intimate
relationship with commissioning production, and built-in consideration
of 'the right to fail'. Benjamin Weil discussed this in relation to
LABoral in Gijon, which has both production and exhibition spaces.
Sarah Cook also considered this recently in her work with Eyebeam on
New York - working with artists (including open sourcers) to address
the tension between process and object.
Could 'lab modes' of commissioning be useful to consider here? As Kelli
Dipple has mentioned here, the process of commissioning is dialogical
over a long period of time - could the long term experience of 'lab
into exhibition' we useful here?
Yours,
Beryl
On 8 Mar 2010, at 22:59, Richard Rinehart wrote:
> Hello again New-Media-Curating,
>
> In addition to the other mischief we like to cause individually, Jon
> Ippolito and I are co-authoring a book for MIT Press, due out Spring
> '11 on collecting and preserving new media art <end shameless pitch>.
>
> I include below a brief excerpt from the book relevant to our
> discussion this month on commissioning variable media art. In it, I'm
> proposing a new model for an archive of new media art I call "the Open
> Museum" and describing perhaps a new way that commissioning could be
> seen to function in that.
>
> I was originally inspired along these lines by the V2 arts
> organization in Rotterdam that had a stipulation in which new media
> works commissioned for their lab space must remain open-source within
> the lab space for future commissioned artists. It got me thinking, why
> not take that great idea a couple steps further.....
>
> "Students, scholars, and the public can currently access images and
> records –representations - of artworks held in museum collections, but
> they cannot access the collections themselves. The Open Museum takes
> advantage of the unique property of new media that allows one to share
> the original without diminishing it. In the Open Museum, the source
> code and other files for digital artworks from the collection are free
> for users to download, study, use, and re-mix into new works. In this
> way, even the casual student can peer under the hood and examine the
> inner workings of these artworks in the way that previously only
> privileged scholars could with traditional material collections.
> .......
>
> Intellectual property law was created to balance the private need with
> the public good. It grants authors and artists exclusive rights over
> their work for a limited period (not a short period, sometimes 90
> years after the artists lifetime) after which the rights in the work
> move into the public domain. The artist has time to find ways to earn
> a livelihood from their work and this is seen as an incentive to
> create in the first place. Why then, could not public museums act as
> stewards of the public good and compensate the artist earlier rather
> than later by commissioning works for the Open Museum, after which
> they apply Creative Commons licenses and release the work to the
> public. The museum would earn their renown not for the quality of art
> they obtain in exclusivity, but for the art they obtain and then give
> away. The artist gets money up front and still owns their work. And
> the public is served by waiting months rather than decades to gain
> access and rights to use the work in question."
>
> Two more items.
>
> Within the Berkeley Art Museum's net art portal, we were able to
> include *some* of the function of the Open Museum - an open-source net
> art archive. Call it a baby step.
> (see http://netart.bampfa.berkeley.edu and scroll down to NetArtchive)
>
> An earlier post to this list (from Leigh I believe; I lost the email),
> outlined how public institutions in Scotland are now using their
> muscle to gain IP rights in works they commission. While public art
> funding and IP are quite different between the UK, US, Canada and
> elsewhere, I wonder if the Open Museum provides a more positive spin
> on how public institutions could partner with artists with regard to
> the disposition of IP in commissioned works - or - is the Open Museum
> just another step toward big brother taking everything?
>
> What do you all think? What are the ways in which commissioning new
> media *could* work in addition to how it already works? What are your
> dreams?
>
> Richard Rinehart
> ---------------
> Digital Media Director & Adjunct Curator
> Berkeley Art Museum and 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
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Beryl Graham, Professor of New Media Art
Faculty of Arts, Design, and Media, University of Sunderland
Ashburne House, Ryhope Road
Sunderland
SR2 7EE
Tel: +44 191 515 2896 Fax: +44 191 515 2132
Email: [log in to unmask]
CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
http://www.crumbweb.org
CRUMB's new book: 'Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media' from MIT
Press
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12071
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Beryl Graham, Professor of New Media Art
Faculty of Arts, Design, and Media, University of Sunderland
Ashburne House, Ryhope Road
Sunderland
SR2 7EE
Tel: +44 191 515 2896 Fax: +44 191 515 2132
Email: [log in to unmask]
CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
http://www.crumbweb.org
CRUMB's new book: 'Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media' from MIT
Press
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12071
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