[-empyre-] why i surf net.art

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

hi all

just to lesson the image i've made of myself as the 
free-surfing-in-the-gallery sorta thing. the reason i see surf a 
net.art installation is to see if the content is or is not online. 
this might be something like turning on a browser status bar to see 
what the url is. whatever.

it's my academic bias. which i realise in lots of contexts is wrong. 
but as an academic i think of all the presentations i've given of 
work that is online the only times i don't show it live is when there 
is not connection available. i just don't do the load off my hard 
drive and let's pretend we're online sort of thing, because i'm a 
network sorta theorist. i just really have this almost ethical thing 
where if my work celebrates/advocates things liked networked writing 
and video as empowering but i don't use it when i present, then well, 
the claims are hollow.

i think i bring much the same to net.art but it's also obvious that 
if my stuff was in a show and online and not available then i'd be 
upset about that.

my question to the artists and curators does anyone see a 
contradiction between an art work that advocates/utilises the network 
that may not be delivered online in an exhibition? or is this no 
different than some social realist painter who advocated and 
described painting for the masses having their work only available in 
private galleries?

cheers
adrian miles
--

+  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]