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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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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