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

[Daniel Palmer <e@danielpalmer.com>]

First, re Jill Walker's gentle rebuff to my note about diverse audiences -

>  ie. it's worth
> > remembering that audiences to art spaces are more diverse and plural
> > than is sometimes supposed.
>
> Are they? My impression, from visiting my local museums in tiny
> Bergen, Norway, anyway, is that the audience is mostly the
> bourgeousie, dainty grey-haired ladies with expensive bags who want
> to be known as caring about art.

i'm certainly not suggesting that all musuems are totally democratic 
spaces; my point (and note i used the term 'art spaces' - which in 
australia refers specifically to contemporary exhibition spaces) was 
that institutions are quite varied, and so are their audiences. I 
just think it's become too easy to dismiss musuems/galleries as 
elite, etc. Maybe some more than others??? Where I work, about 70% of 
our visitors are under 35; they're typically well educated but 
usually carrying backpacks rather than expensive bags. (in Bourdieu's 
terms, high on cultural capital, but maybe not the kind that's 
readily convertible to economic capital!).

And then to Adrian  -

At 3:25 AM +1000 9/7/02, Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no> wrote:

> i agree with some of what you write :-) but i want to clarify what i
> mean, i guess. or what i think i mean.

thanks adrian, i agree with pretty much everything you say in your 
latest email - especially the part about us academic nit-picking 
about definitions! it seems you prefer a more restricted definition 
of net art as that which engages with:

> the screen as domestic appliance/space
> bandwidth
> time constraints

for me such reflection on material conditions would be just an 
important genre/strategy, rather than an essential quality, of the 
larger practice i'd call net art - art created specifically for the 
Internet., ie. all networked art projects for which the utilisation 
of the Internet is essential for their effect... (including telematic 
art).

> so with net.art that
> doesn't want to be on the net (that secretely wishes to be DVD and
> projected) then i want to call it something else. but of course this
> could just be rather naive.

i'd just call it rather purist

> i have work that i
> explicitly wrote as academic, theoretical content that has since been
> treated as net.art, i find that just odd.

you're probably not alone in finding it odd! and points taken about 
the governmental/career pressure to define what you do...

cheers
daniel