Re: [-empyre-] galleries & establishments

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@unsw.edu.au>]

> I think many institutions are and I believe that museums can play an
> important role in supporting net art--due to the lack of an established
> economic model for this type of art, galleries have a harder time since
they
> depend on sales.

its seems to be getting worse in Australai. net.art is ghettoised to
specific but often marginalised shows produced by media arts organisations..
seems the Museum still can't deal with either the concept or the
technology.. even tho i know the Museums and Galleries Foundation has run
some seminars on specifically incorporating new media into existing
environments to try and encourage its incorporation.

Recently i had a hideous experience where the Museum in Hobart let my
immersive VRML installation remain "broken" for the whole exhibition period
because their technical person did not install the specified pluggin which
was included with all the and installation instructions i sent them , and
they didnt contact me to ask how to do it. Even worse was that when another
artist who i know , who worked in the same media as me, who was at the
location,  offered to do it  - the museum refused her, saying thier
technical people would deal with it..(which of course they didn't) i didnt
know this till after the show had finished.. the really simple soultion that
would have taken 5minutes to fix caused my work to look liek its crap.. and
it puts off audiences for new media becasue the work can't be seen..

there have been two Biennales here so far this year (yes the biennale
syndrome)  and another to come which have both completely ignored net.art as
a genre.. Wierdly both biennales had themes of art and technology, and
fantastic alternate worlds, which one would think completly opened them to
the net.art expericene, but  no... "new" media really does seem to mean ...
"interactivity" seems to mean passively looking at an object...

lets see what the Biennale of Electronuic Arts in Perth in August brings...

melinda

>
>
> >However, I'd like to ask, do you see the Whitney expanding its
> >support of net.art? And how? (eg. presentation, condervation,
> >collections etc.)
>
> I think the Whitney is definitely trying to expand support of net art in
all
> the areas above. For me, the Biennial was an indication of the status of
net
> art / new media art at this point in time. Needless to say, the Biennial
is
> a huge survey show incorporating all kinds of artistic practice and within
> that hierarchy, new media definitely isn't "on the level" yet.
(Ironically,
> the press often perceived it as "all new media" due to the number of
> film/video works that were included -- the "old new media") There is a
> growing number of new media exhibitions but I feel that the way new media
> are represented within large survey shows is an indicator of where this
art
> form stands. Documenta also included only a very small amount of new media
> work (some of it was installed quite impressively, although not all of it
> was "translated" well into the physical space).
>
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