Re: [-empyre-] Re: empyre digest, Vol 1 #168 -

[Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no>]

At 18:20 -0400 3/7/02, newradio wrote:
> So my question in return to Valerie is: isn't expecting viewership from the
> public a concern related to all forms of art? And wouldn't this kind of
> "art" be better promoted by encouraging online viewing? I frankly prefer to
> view from my home. The idea of schlepping across NYC  to see one or two
> works I could easily see at home is pretty appalling .. I do think there's a
> big difference between home viewing and the impersonal gallery or museum
> viewing. And that the general public may in fact be intimidated by the
> gallery/museum setting .. I may be wrong, but send me some URLs for
> home-viewing and you have a viewer. Expect me to travel across town to the
> gallery or museum and you may not.

i want to agree with this (and the earlier thing about participation 
which i'll return to). computer screens are actually domestic or at 
least personal (even in office settings) and for me this is a major 
contributing aesthetic of net.art. it's *my* screen. *my* time. hell, 
whenever i see net.art in a gallery the first thing i usually do i 
see if i can surf somewhere else, usually i'm curious to see how 
quickly my own stuff can load, then i usually politely return it to 
the work on show. why? cos its about using, not consuming for 
goodness sake.

my own *personal* preference is that i've no intention of 
watching/reading/using monuments on a computer screen. monuments 
belong on the silver screen or are bits of real estate on walls or in 
the sculpture garden, or lie between covers. i want stuff i can play 
with, read, use, explore, tease, be teased by, while i'm online, in 
amongst all the other things i do on my computer *at the same time*. 
and putting stuff in galleries, while authenticating net.art within 
some definition of high culture, doesn't do this.

the other really obvious thing i struggle with is the definition 
stuff. i do stuff online and just stick it there. that's what i like 
about it. then later someone comes along and says can they stick it 
into a net.art show. sure. at what point did it become art? if it 
wasn't before, what was it? if it is after, then i'm not too happy 
about art only being art when it is institutionally codified since 
there's an awful lot of art that rather obviously is not about this.

participation: yep, the network, as so much net.art likes to tell us, 
is about using. i don't see using as equal to consuming, and too 
often the gallery model of art is one of commodified consumption. i 
love galleries and seeing those wonderful things, and what they do to 
me, but i'm not sure if this is the aesthetic economy of net.art. but 
hey, i'm just an academic.

cheers
am
--
   
+  lecturer in new media and cinema studies 
[http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog]
+  interactive desktop video developer  [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/]
+  hypertext rmit [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au]
+ InterMedia:UiB. university of bergen [http://www.intermedia.uib.no]