[-empyre-] Galleries, publics, net.art

[Daniel Palmer <e@danielpalmer.com>]

Title: Galleries, publics, net.art

At 18:44:29, 4 Jul 2002, Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no> wrote:

> 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.

A few comments in relation to this interesting, perennial discussion about viewing net art at home or in a gallery. And in particular in response to Adrian's (personal) antipathy to gallery displays of net art. I should say up front that I'm in support of gallery displays for all the reasons mentioned by Valerie and others so far (contextualizing etc) and am I'm involved in such activities myself at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne.

My problem with your post, Adrian, is its all or nothing logic.

First, your notion of the audience. As Reiner suggests, "a net art show at a museum is a good opportunity for a first introduction of this art [stuff] to a completely new audience." When I recently curated a program of CD-ROMs for regional galleries, among the many moving entries in the comments books was one from an 83 year old man who said it was his first time using a computer! ie. it's worth remembering that audiences to art spaces are more diverse and plural than is sometimes supposed. I know you were careful to note that you were speaking only for yourself, but your post reflected the privileged position of an academic net junky with fast/constant net access... Even in Australia, most people use 56K modems and pay by the minute/MB at home (and we know the other arguments about plug-ins, speed of the computer, etc.)

Seems the problem for you is the idea of the 'audience' for net art, with its passive-spectacle connotations? ("cos its about using, not consuming for

goodness sake"). OK, I take your point about the ideal of *using* the medium, but 'consumption' is not always so simple/bad. eg. I like cooking, and appreciate the fact that the ingredients are available for me to create with, but sometimes I like going out to dinner - where the choices are more limited, but hopefully what's on offer has been carefully prepared and I can engage enjoyably with the experience without myself making anything new (although I might take ideas home for the kitchen). Not quite a perfect analogy, but you get my point.

Second, I agree that the monitor screen has a domestic/personal history, but surely we can imagine the net differently, more publicly? As Reiner reminds us, the net is a kind of public space. I'm happy for people to do whatever in their private bubbles, but I'd also like to see the web in public (and semi-public) places, and like Marek, I'm very interested in the relationship of a physical space to a networked one. This stuff is great in galleries, but costs, as Helen notes (eg. John Tonkin's work, Personal Eugenics, where you have your portrait taken in the gallery installation and it's uploaded to the web, for all to see. Or stuff like Ken Goldberg's Telegarden, where remote users  interact online with a physical environment - in his case, water a real garden)

Ironically, the idea that net art is best suited to the flaneuristic pleasures of domestic/office surfing seems rather elitist/romantic/purist. Maybe that's not what you meant, but perhaps the point is more that what is called net art involves all kinds of different activities, and some kinds are more appropriate to show in a gallery than others? eg. The genre of work designed to interrupt the regular computer interface/surfing activity - the conceptual one-liner - might work beautifully on your own screen, but less well in a gallery. Different context. At the e-Media Gallery at CCP, it makes sense, to me, to show online work that  in some way engages with the idea and practice of 'photomedia', which (esp given our audience) then might potentially strike up a dialogue with our other exhibitions. In other words, I want to agree with Chris, that showing work outside the home/office/personal computer can lead to new dialogues.

Anyway, thanks for the provocation Adrian! By the way, OK, so 'art' is an institutionally defined notion, caught up in a bureaucratic  network of definitions....  So who cares if what you are doing is art or not? Embrace the ambiguity! But I think you're being a little disingenuous to suggest you put some stuff up online and then it gets picked up as art - isn't it already framed as such by your own career trajectory as a film/digital theorist/academic, participation in art festivals and the like?

Cheers

Daniel