In direct response to the question: What artists' projects have (re)defined the idea of webcasting?
I'd recommend you have a look at my book about Franklin Furnace, published last year by Intellect. Large chunks of the book focus on the organziation's pioneering work in webcasting. Their collaboration with (the original) Pseudo.com should not be overlooked, especially because it predates domestic broadband, for the most part. Pseudo was as self-billed as Internet Television.
Martha Wilson's "What Franklin Furnace Learned from Presenting and Producing Live Art on the Internet, from 1996 to Now" is also a very significant first person narrative from the trenches. Her article appeared in Leonardo in 2005.
Another important artists' project which defined early concepts of webcasting is Robert Galinsky, who now runs the New York Reality School. My 2001 interview with him appeared in TDR in 2005.
TV Swansong was certainly a pioneering project, but it was far from the first.
Best wishes...
...t.s.
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Dr. Toni Sant
Director of Research
School of Arts and New Media
The University of Hull - Scarborough Campus
Filey Road, Scarborough - YO11 3AZ
email: [log in to unmask]
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-----Original Message-----
From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org on behalf of Sarah Cook
Sent: Mon 23/01/2012 2:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] quick piece of research regarding artist's television
hello CRUMB again
Thank you all so much for your generosity of thought (and time) in this research exercise.
I know there are still more messages, which were sent to me off-list, which might be reposted here at my encouragement, as they are full of interesting nuggets, so keep them coming. Thanks to Fee also for filling in a bit of the history of TenantSpin too.
Which leads me to ask if I can change the question, and segue towards a professional development workshop CRUMB will be running at the AV Festival in March:
What artists' projects have (re)defined the idea of webcasting?
How has the terrain of the webcast-art-event been mapped out and what contributions have artists made to the discussion around the pitfalls or delights of webcasting?
I ask because this is something which TV Swansong is as much remembered for (or lamented?) - certainly as much as for its artists projects, which were each their own criticism or celebration of television.
These reviews of the project at the time are interestingly telling:
http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/67298
"Artists were selected not so much for their technical familiarity with webcasts, but for their ability to bring something innovative to this developing medium. Several contributors appropriated existing TV/radio programme forms..."
<http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/67298>
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/tv_swansong/
"'TV Swansong' had the air of an off-kilter telethon, breathlessly jumping from event to event as programmes were rescheduled according to technical or logistical hiccups."
Anyone care to make another list of art projects we should remember and why?
As Fee noted in an email to me (and I'm sure she'll forgive me for reposting this bit here):
"the history, what went before - when the hardware/software/platform/user/creative technique/etc either didn't exist or was incredibly complex and unstable - isn't referred to by contemporary practitioners. When they are referenced, usually that context isn't given, so that makes those works seems outdated, simple, pixelated, when actually they were building the foundation stones of contemporary practice, and helping current audiences understand how this stuff works."
So how does TV Swansong sit in relation to the history of artistic webcast experiments?
Sarah
Hello CRUMB list
as you are all eminently smart about art and technology and the history of
art I have a request.
There is a forthcoming publication from the Finnish Institute in London about
artists' works and community television and I'm informally working with Nina
Pope and Karen Guthrie to help them recontextualise their project TV
Swansong. We'd like to gather some thoughts related to this project's place
in history from you all, before the end of next week.
At the time (2002, a decade ago) TV Swansong was billed as:
"a cross-media art project which commissioned 8 new works reflecting on the
current state of flux in television with idiosyncratic responses to its past,
present and future." http://www.swansong.tv/
Some of you might remember the exhibition I cocurated with Kathy Rae Huffman
on a similar topic - http://www.broadcastyourself.net/ - for AV Festival in
2008, which included TV Swansong's archive. A question we asked with
Broadcast Yourself was how did we get here, to this moment of many online
platforms for dissemination of broadcast work (the end of television?) - and
what initiatives did artists take before this point.
So we are wondering the same thing again now: how do works which deal with
the 'current state' of technology age?
How are works which were once live supposed to be exist within the history of
art and technology in archived form?
Is television dead? Is artist's television dead? Was TV Swansong ever
considered as community television, or indeed television at all (as it was
webcast)?
Can artists continue to contribute in their work to discussions around
community television and if so, how?
As this is an informal chat we welcome any and all responses, which, with
your permission, we'd like to quote in the dialogues we hope to be included
in the publication.
You can email back offlist if you like.
We've got til the end of next week... and we'll launch some regular monthly
discussions on CRUMB after that.
Thanks all,
Sarah
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