Hi list
Thanks for a fascinating discussion about permanence/transience. I
would like to contribute the point that I just been commissioned to
make a permanent external object-based installation for a new-media
research institute. It will have a very physical articulated
sculptural presence on the buildings facade a bit like a 'digital
ivy' that looks as though it could engulf the entire building. It's
structure is based on an L-System so it is in a sense algorythmic and
is the result of a generative process though it is completely static
though I am attempting to make it optically interactive in that it
appears to change as the viewer walks past. Part of the brief was
that the work should not 'date' so by invoking one of the first
Articficial Life algorythms I am perhaps making a 'classical'
structure one that refers to the early days of AL and hopefully has a
durable currency and will not become technologically or conceptually
obsolete. This I suppose is quite the opposite approach to Simon's
point about the demands of the art market. Is it possible to make a
'permanent' monument to new media art? I am not sure but feel it is
worth trying as an artist who uses some concepts and approaches from
new media discourses but whose output is sculptural. Perhaps it is
now possible to make work about the archeaology of new media without
having to find and renovate video disc players b&w crt's or other
pieces of Jurassic technology.
Simeon
Simeon Nelson
Reader in Sculpture
School of Art and Design
University of Hertfordshire
email [log in to unmask]
personal url http://www.simeon-nelson.com
On 15 Jul 2006, at 11:45, Simon Biggs wrote:
Outdoor public space. This makes me think of three media art examples.
Wolf Vostell's buried TV. I imagine that his TV is still down there
somewhere and in so far as it is a precursor of land-fill art (as
opposed to
Michael Heiser's overblown style of "land-art) is probably nowhere
near its
half-life yet.
Judith Goddard's Video Circle, installed for several months in the
forests
of Dartmoor back in 1987, as part of James Lingwood's curated show of
outdoor artworks in natural environments. Judith's piece used a lot of
electronics and therefore was required to be very weather proof in a
location notable for its often bad weather.
Chris Meigh-Andrews current research with wind powered outdoor media art
installations in the Cumbrian forests.
Perhaps we should be looking also at non-media based precursors, such as
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty or Walter De Maria's Lightening Field.
Smithson's work in particular challenges notions of permanence. The work
disappeared into the water three decades ago, but has since
reappeared, long
after the artist's death, due to falling water levels. What would be the
media art equivalent of such self-restoration?
An oblique observation to this is that much media art owes the better
part
of its value to its temporal non-permanent character. If you start
making
permanent works you have to have a good reason. The permanence of the
work
should be a requirement and function of its intent. Making a work
permanent
simply so that it will last a long time risks slipping back into the
artworld economics that demand that work is collectable, tradeable and
therefore permanent. Lack of permanence is a characteristic many artists
cite as what attracted them to media art (or performance, earthwork,
etc) as
it allowed them to avoid the art market and keep focus on the value
of the
work as art rather than as a commodity.
Best
Simon
On 15.07.06 00:00, Sarah Cook wrote:
> I suppose at first I had been thinking of public space as outdoors=20
> (certainly out of the gallery) if not at least actual space (not
> the=20
> virtual space of the web, which I agree of course is public).
Simon Biggs
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http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
AIM: simonbiggsuk
Professor of Digital Art, Sheffield Hallam University
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http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/
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