Hi Crumbs,

Again this conversation is very interresting ! Like the one on curatorship. In the present discussion, it seems that what comes out is this divide between means of knowledge valiadation, specialized (university) knowledge versus knowledge of the folks that has now found a global vehicules (the wikipedia, blogosphere brave new world). One has to remember that this separation was, historically, for distinguishing between "truthful" knowledge from superstition, religious believes, opinions and falsities. Anyhow, it seems also that the separation that is made oppose two groups; to be simple the professional (university) researcher and the amateur researcher, to take Anick'S terms. There is a lot of pressure around for organisations and institutions to be more "participative", to use the Internet and create platforms for people and communities to use and share, to be the wikipedia of whatever. I would like to suggest that the nice thing with the new media is that a lot of intermediary bodies and people are present in the Blogosphère or the Internet, that are not exactly "amateurs" but operating outside the university settings. These people are found in many traditional or non-traditional institutional settings. What I want to point out is that knowledge is dependant to a certain degree on validation systems. Rather than a crisis of knowledge, I'd suggest it is a crisis of certain validation systems. There is, in many of our countries, a crisis of the university, I could argue it for our case here in Quebec, Canada. One could also talk of a crisis of other knowledge sites or fields of practice such as art musuem and contemporary arts in general. Sites where this separation between a specialized and informed knowledge and the laymen(women) opinions, tastes, and "wisdom" can be felt.

Jean

-----Original Message-----
From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bureaud
Sent: 18 février 2007 06:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: fresh! Reflections

Dear Crumbs,

I think this discussion is very interesting. Actually, we are having the same, here in France, in regard to  the Presidential Election. The socialist candidate has started "participative groups" that are, via online and in presence forums, discussions where anybody can take part so that the ideas of the French population can come up and not only the ones of the professional politicians. Equally, on TV, the political broadcasts (where candidates are answering questions on their programmes) is open to the people which means that it is organised by the political journalists but the questions are those, and asked by, the people chosen on a representative panel of the French society.

And the question is the same as the one which is raised here
: professionals versus amateurs and underlying the issue of direct democracy in the case of our elections and direct knowledge in the case of Refresh and new media art history.
The problem is of course the one of populism for the politics and rumors more than knowledge in the case of history + the fantasy that regarding knowledge everyone is equal and has the same knowledge and understanding (why are the professionals so ashamed of being so ?)

In Astronomy, there are amateurs, that work along the professional astronomers, are equally respected and have contributed to the general knowledge of astronomy. Note that it is not "everybody" but "amateur astronomers" (they work a lot, and are very dedicated people) and that they follow the "knowledge rules" of professional astronomers to do their work, propose their result and beeing evaluated. Note also that the the professional have more means, work all day long on a topic and, generally speaking, provide more interesting discoveries and knowledge than the amateurs.

How this could be the same for the field of new media art history?  I don't see any network or place/space of any kind where their knowledge is put into the common pot. Do not answer me with the magic word "Wikipedia", it is not the answer to everything and can have totally wrong informations as mentionned by Jaron Lanier. The fact that we don't know "who" is speaking in Wikipedia (specially when it comes to history which is loaded with opinions of all kinds) is a problem for me. Knowledge is not neutral and precisely, who is writting the history does matter.

For me, the issue might be more to attract interested and interesting people in the discussion than to think that the discussion can be general. Patrick mentionned the slow scan projects in Vancouver with the Western Front. This is exactly history for me and not everybody can have an opinion about it (and to get the knowledge, you must work long hours to dig out the basic information).
But in history too, there are amateurs groups. In France, the territory is full of groups of amateur historians, usually working on a specific area of the territory. They are not necessarily well considered by professional historians (or by all professional historians) but they do contribute to histories, at least by digging out informations and reconstructing the puzzle of the past. They less provide a "narrative".

But I am struck by the "crisis of the intellectuals", who are afraid of their own knowledge so to speak. When Braudel and the other historians around him in France performed a revolution in the way to do history, it took a while before it left the Universities small groups to reach the entire French (and world) societies (and I am not sure it reached the whole world ;-). New media art history is just starting. 
The question would be more : is it providing other methods, etc. than traditionnal art history ? And, in my opinion, this new media art history is using one of the methods provided by the French School of History, a method that is common today = oral and direct history from the players (= the people who were part of the history that is being studied).

I also think that we should make a difference between history (conf like Refresh, Replace, the Langlois Foundation DOCAM project, etc.) and art critic and theory (conf. like ISEA, etc.). One is about the past, the other about the present and the issues and methodologies are not  the same.

Annick

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