forwarded...

Hello list, Hannah here

I like the phrase - 'truth to technology' it's so slippery!  It
immediately makes me think of modernist architecture's commitment to
'truth to materials'. But digital media are a whole different kettle of
fish. How can you be true to media whose very nature is fluid
impermanence, and whose strongest quality is its ability to shift
between forms, meanings & playback devices? Digital media are fickle and
promiscuous. If Modernism gave us form following function, digital media
give us layering, simulation and convergence of forms.  However I'm not
quite sure if it is truth to technology we're really being asked to
comment on.

The questions are quite tightly packed.  There are lots of answers to
"should we be more true to technology, and less concerned with trying to
shoehorn it into conventional galleries?   and "is 'public art' then the
way forward?" depending on the ways in which you are working with
technology, and to what end. It also depends on which era you're working
with.

Currently, after many years of working on large-scale building projects
bringing together art, architecture, design and technology for various
audiences, I'm now involved in developing new projects with artists at
the Science Museum that review the way the Museum communicates digital
technology. These will involve moving from previous (science)
interpretations that privileged informative explanations of
functionality, to artists' projects concentrating on social applications
and implications. The questions this raises are really pertinent to the
'shoehorning' and 'public art' parts of the question.

I want to find a way of working with the current shift from interactive
installation to participatory, process-led projects, DIY culture, or
what have you, which I perceive as being strongly influenced by new
developments in networking technologies, community arts practice and an
apparent general cultural obsession with personalised experience and
personalisation.

Harking back to the question of "is public art the way forward", the
questions I am currently asking myself include:
  - is it possible to give people meaningful experiences of the
technology that go beyond the experience they can have at home/ITRW?
- is it possible to bring the intimacy of small artist led workshops
into a major venue?
- if it is possible to bring artist led workshops into a venue without
undermining conceptual and intellectual intentions, how on earth would
like content with the weight of health and safety, public liability,
public indemnity legislations etc I am bound to work within?
(I always find a way)

It's easy to just say don't bother.  It's happening out there on the
street anyway.  But it's either happening as art on quite a small scale
within quite niche groups, or it's happening as reasonably unchallenged
(in a critical sense) popular culture. So I see a role for galleries and
museums in being places where the questions artists are asking, and the
processes artists are developing, can be disseminated amongst bigger
groups of people and tested and expanded in the process.

I don't actually see this as a technical problem, or a problem of truth
to technology.  Yes, there is the irritation of big institutions'
reticence to allow open networks, but there are ways and means of
overcoming that including organising a dedicated network.  For me it's a
facilitating, interfacing and communicating issue. As well as
interprative. 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?  We don't really know.

There will be questions around sharing of technical skills inherent in
the solution, but really it's a matter of finding the right methods to
make the right investigations with the right people at the right time.
My dream would be to have a lab style space, staffed by artists,
scienctists, science communicators and artist engineers, on a gallery,
which groups can book slots with but passing visitors can also drop in
on. That would represent a fundamental change in presentation and
function of the Museum.  But it is in fact indicative of key directions
many museums are taking.  And in fact the Science Museum supports the
principle but doesn't have the resources to support its delivery.

So I'm planning a series of pilot projects with booked groups and artist
engineers, led by an overseeing community artist.  It will be
interesting to see how they work out. I've seen some beautiful examples
of drop-in workshops at festivals, andI'd be really interested to hear
from anybody who's been involved in these and particularly in upscaling
their workshops in large or more public environments.

p.s.  Here's a provocation - word on the street seems to be that amongst
our esteemed colleagues 'media' has been described as boring and we
should now just be settling in as 'art'. Does this represent the
ubiquitousness of technology finally bedding in to all art contexts or
is it a slippery slide away from traditional media art ideologies?

I think the above is probably my most useful offer to be questions, but
I will add that in relation to early Media Art and Software Art, I think
there are different more conservation-based responses to Beryl's
questions, which I'm not sure are as relevant.  Anyway here's my
tuppence worth if you care to read it:

'Media art installation' of the 1980s and '90s didn't appear to have any
problem fitting into galleries, practically speaking. That it never
found a comfortable place in dedicated art spaces - or mainstream
discourses - is another matter, which I think is changing slowly (see
above). But actually it was fairly easy to display. You did need good
technical support for the practical bits and I think it mattered as a
curator to have an understanding of the fundamental principles of
software and hardware in order to interpret a lot of the concepts. This
was before people started speaking of 'Software Art' as a distinct
sector of 'media' or 'interactive art' mainly perhaps because people who
couldn't code or weren't working with coders weren't making work that
called itself media art??

Paradoxically now that I think early works are slowly becoming
recognised in wider contexts intellectually, those works, as has been
extensively discussed, are at risk owing to obsoletions, redundancy and
upgrading of their technological components. Again as these works come
round to being exhibited, an understanding of the significance of each
component, be it software, hardware or playback system/delivery device,
is important.  But any curator who doesn't have that for herself will
probably find that knowledge with the artist and/or specialist
technicians. I am hoping to redisplay works I purchased for the Science
Museum in 2000 in a series of temporary exhibitions. This is involving
one-to-one discussions with the artists about what can be upgraded,
reformatted or  emulated.

I'm afraid I don't have any blanket answers! but Daniel Langlois
Foundation, John Ippolito and the Variable Media Network as well asTate
Modern are all doing interesting research. Actually if there's anyone
involved in the Variable Media Questionnaire reading this, it would be
great if you could contribute an update of how that project's going?

Thanks very much

Hannah (Redler)