Hi all
Good questions.
In my work with interactive art I focus on the importance of documenting
the audience's experience, since interactive art is essentially an
experiential form. I've developed a couple of techniques adapted from
ethnography and social science. One, called rather prosaically
"video-cued recall", involves videoing a person or group interacting
with an artwork, and then immediately showing them the video and asking
them to describe their experience at the same time. You end up with
lovely video documentation with a very natural and revealing voice
over. I've also developed an interview technique which begins with an
immediate, impressionistic description of the encounter with the work,
and moves on to more reflective and evaluative thoughts as it progresses.
Both techniques produce rich documentation, which are fabulous for
archival situations and for research (I'll be building on this work
through research at the Daniel Langlois Foundation at the end of the
year). They were developed for documenting individual artworks rather
than exhibitions but I've tried them in exhibition contexts and with
non-interactive experiential artworks too and they work well.
I think this kind of material would be too vulnerable, in terms of
privacy etc, for use in a public online format. I have used flickr for
documenting the processes of installation, usually for private purposes
and especially when working collaboratively over distance, but in
principle I'm all for making the back-story of an exhibition public.
Lizzie
Sarah Cook wrote:
> Dear CRUMB list
>
> having just opened a show, and blogging the process on the web, i
> just wanted to do a straw poll:
>
> how many of you include video walk-throughs in your documentation of
> gallery based exhibitions of new media art?
>
> how many of you insist on having people in the photographs/slides
> taken of the show?
>
> do you document interaction in the exhibition? how?
>
> what other formats do you document your exhibitions in? (sound art
> exhibitions are rarely recorded, or are they?)
>
> do you use online photosharing sites such as flickr for exhibition
> documentation? or do you hope that visiting artists / others might
> put their photos online and you can link to them later?
>
> have you ever been 'told off' by an institution for putting
> exhibition installation-in-progress photographs or gallery-
> installation photos on the web/flickr - and if so was it about
> infringing copyright on the artists work, or infringing the contract
> with the artist and the gallery over documentation?
>
> answers to the list rather than just to me will generate further
> discussion!
>
> thanks
> sarah
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