[-empyre-] Lab 3D - Curator's introduction

[Kathy Rae Huffman <kahuffm@attglobal.net>]

Dear Empyrean readers,

I feel it?s time to add in a few words about Lab3D, some background on the 
exhibition at Cornerhouse and the Web3D Art juried on-line exhibition, 
which is (as Roya has observed) a motivation for this discussion.  Sorry 
that these comments became so long.  I normally don?t ramble on so much. I 
also apologize for diverting the conversation, which has been  revolving 
around "oeil complex" (this work is not in the Cornerhouse exhibition) and 
other related streams of consciousness that 3D inspires so well.  Let me 
continue...

First of all, the venue: Cornerhouse.  Cornerhouse is Manchester?s center 
for contemporary art, film and moving image.  We have three galleries on 
three levels (total of 4,000 sq. feet), three cinemas that show first run 
and independent films, a bookshop, on-line publication distribution, and a 
very popular café/bar on two levels, where the artistic community of 
Manchester frequently meet up.  Cornerhouse was established in 1985, in the 
first wave of the UK?s re-purposing for art unused commercial spaces.  It 
has led the contemporary arts in England?s North West, with its programme 
of internationally significant and challenging exhibitions, events and film 
screenings. Cornerhouse has hosted a number of media and new media 
exhibitions over the past years, most recently Perry Hoberman?s 
?System 
Maintenance? in 1998, and Jenny Markatou?s 
?Taystee?s Room? in 2001.  But 
it?s important to keep in mind that Cornerhouse is not a media art center, 
has no permanent technical team, and has no special focus or mandate for 
New Media, or 3D in particular.  As these practical methods of artists 
working with technology began to play a significant role in contemporary 
art, they will, whenever appropriate be featured as New Media in our 
exhibition programme.

Next, the curator:  Lab3D is an initiative that I brought to Cornerhouse 
(along with other exhibition plans) when I began the post last May, of 
Director of Visual Arts. Although it has taken only one year to realize 
(quite short for an exhibition), it follows a long interest in the 
connection between the real and the virtual.  My brief was to give a wide 
view (a survey) of 3D artworks that are realized best in the gallery, and 
that are widely representative of artistic directions in the field.  As in 
all exhibitions, a focus and limit was necessary to observe.  Works 
selected include a live data stream navigation (Klima); 
literary/documentary/socially concerned historic work (Thiel/Houshmand); 
identity, intervention & gaming (Feng Mengbo); classic 3D investigation of 
virtual space, multi-user and avatars (Rackham); and the crossover 
investigation of sound and visuals in 3D space (Squidsoup & Icarus) with a 
work that was commissioned by Cornerhouse.  Web3D Art 2003 is featured in 
Gallery One, with 25 new projects from 13 countries, with a link to all 
previous years (with more than 125 projects) to show a kind of context and 
complexity to the topic (btw: gallery visitors are spending serious amounts 
of time in this space). The show is terrific, Web3D Art is installed with 
all the appropriate plugins and software, and the audience is enjoying it 
tremendously.  A new audience is appearing and taking a new look at a 
broader definition of contemporary art. The net connectivity has been 
robust and except for occasional re-booting of some pieces  it works very 
well!  The Gallery Supervisor and all the gallery invidulators are trained 
in the operation of each work, and are urged to assist the public when they 
look lost.  They can also reboot and reset works when necessary.   The 
audience spends a great deal longer in the gallery with this show than they 
have in other exhibitions, and they engage in the work with no hesitation.

The exhibition also includes a lot of important collaboration, which was 
essential to the realization of the show.  The Media Centre Huddersfield 
co-produced the work Q4U by Feng Mengbo, and their technical team built-up 
a dedicated game server especially for the piece.  They also provided a 
stable and dedicated net connection for it.  Several venues around the UK, 
Australia and Macedonia have joined in to show Web3D Art (the on-line 
version) simultaneously  and to enter this discussion.  We?ll have another 
opportunity on June 19 to interact with Adam Nash?s multi-user version of 
Memory Plains Returning (stay tuned for more information).

Since we are looking at individual pieces and in the field of 3D in depth, 
I can say that as an organization, we failed to raise significant 
exhibition funds to enable the show to travel and to create a catalogue 
(comments from various funding agencies were mainly along the lines that 
they could not see the reason to put virtual work in a physical space, and 
that the 
?art? was not significant enough.  We have also failed to gain 
interest from the art critics who usually review exhibitions like this, it 
is not enough 
?sound? to rate a review in WIRE, and maybe the consistent 
game reference in many of the works has put off art writers.  Anyway, this 
is one of the remaining issues that I?ll attempt to solve before the end of 
the show on June 22.  The marketing department at Cornerhouse approaches a 
standard list of press contacts.  We did not get new links to new writers 
or technical journals that might like to see this show and comment upon it.

We were successful to find a sponsor for the numerous data projectors in 
the exhibition, and for the education programme which included panel 
discussions, master classes, and a series of workshops for young people. 
Support to bring artists from Beijing, Tokyo, New York, Germany and London 
to Manchester was successful. We also put together a very good technical 
team, who came up with innovative solutions to working in an old building. 
Cornerhouse upgraded it?s ADSL connection (to 1 meg down and 500K up), and 
we worked with our ISP provider to insure we would have ports on our server 
to allow for interactive works to function (outside the firewall).  We have 
utilized wireless WiFi for the 
?Lab? area, to enable a flexible and mobile 
grouping of computer terminals, where we broke-in and tested three new 
Pentium IV computers, recently purchased for our education programme.

My choice of artists for the exhibition follows my long interest in 3D and 
virtual worlds, and as a curator my broad definition of the topic.  Lab3D 
is by no means the definitive list, but for me it represents really good 
works by artists who have been successful to create significant works.  How 
does one make these choices?  My curiosity started way back in the early 
80s. Then, as a young curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, through 
artists, I became aware of  artistic work being made on or influenced by 
computers. This resulted in an exhibition in 1983 called 
?the artist and 
the computer.?  At the non-technical Museum in Long Beach, it was the first 
exhibition of it?s kind on the West Coast..  In order to bring 
artists,  the collaboration of universities and other venues provided a 
weekly series of discussions, demonstrations, screenings and special 
projects. I was not able to convince my director at the time of the 
significance of the topic, and received no significant funding from the 
core budget of the museum for the show.  It was only possible by artists 
coming together with the computer community, especially the local chapter 
of SIGGRAPH, who advised, provided equipment and promoted the 
exhibition.  People actually lined up outside the museum to come and see 
the exhibition!

Later, when I lived in Boston, as curator/producer at The ICA, I was able 
to follow technical developments which artists were engaged with 
there.  Especially in association with artists at MIT, I could follow the 
developments of interactive laser disc, and what was later to become CD 
ROM.  The SIGGRAPH conference was held in Boston in 1989, and that year 
Jaron Lanier introduced his spectacular (it was new information to the 
field) presentation on Virtual Reality.  I went out to San Francisco later 
on, met Jaron at his studio, and experienced the new 
?virtual? phenomena 
myself (and became very physically affected from my vigorous test 
session).  Although a different technology than VRML, which came later, it 
brought the reality of connectivity in 3D space into a clear focus for me.

During the Internet and net_art developments of the mid-90s, I was lucky to 
be living Vienna, where there was tremendous support for artist servers, 
and projects in Net environments.  Working with a group of young artists, 
HILUS, I was able to plunge into the internet and my normal day would 
include 10 hours of on-line research.  Having worked closely with Van Gogh 
TV (a team member for their amazing project Piazza Virtuale at the 1992 
documenta), I was able to follow their development, and stay in contact 
during the project 
?World?s Within? an online 3D communication space which 
VGTV built for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, as an officially supported 
project of the arts festival.  At that time, 3D and interactive works were 
beginning to be introduced at various media festivals around 
Europe  especially in Linz at Ars Electronica, in Rotterdam at 
V2?s  D.E.A.F. festival; and at Osnabruck?s EMAF festival, for 
starters.  In 1995, Telepolis  a huge exhibition and series of events in 
Luxembourg, featured 3D environments and navigable worlds.

Before moving to New York to teach at R.P.I., I attended my first Web3d 
Symposium, held in Monterey, California (in 1997).  I was amazed by the 
fact that it was primarily a huge technical geek-meet, and an area called 
?art show? had a couple of computers but nothing was ever turned on.  Once 
I got to R.P.I., and leaarned that there was a great deal of 3D work being 
created by both faculty and students, I received department support to 
organise the first Web3D Art on-line art show, in collaboration with Karel 
Dudesek, who was then Professor of Media Art at the University of 
Angewandte Kunst, Vienna.  Under the Van Gogh TV brand, we proposed our 
concept to the  Web3D Symposium (an ACM/ SIGGRAPH conference) in Paderborn, 
Germany, 1999.  As the official Art Show of that conference, this 
exhibition drew a number of artists together from around the world, and was 
voted the most successful programme of the3 day  symposium. Web3D Art 1999 
has positioned us to facilitate the further understanding of 3D work by 
artists, enabled us to bring it beyond the isolated realm of the technical 
community, and to make new connections for 3D work to be shown 
widely.  Since 1998, we have looked at more than 250 works from around the 
world, noting how it has changed significantly, has developed amazing 
levels of content, and has become technically sophisticated and intricate.

Having this background, having researched works in the field in dozens of 
countries, and having taken into account the theoretical issues of 
3D  (largely through the writings and works of artists and programmers) I 
proceeded with my desire to put together an exhibition called:  Lab3D.  As 
part of that show, of course, Web3D Art 2003 is included as a gallery 
installation to bring these additional on-line works and  artists into 
context, and for the further reference into the variety of styles, content, 
and origin of works in this amazing field.

I hope this introduction gives you all a kind of understanding of my 
interest in 3D and virtual worlds, and my long curatorial journey to arrive 
at the exhibition.  I am not extremely technical myself nor do I code (but 
I have owned 8 different computers  with all the accompanying work of 
installing, archiving and etc.) and I enjoy working with artists, and with 
talented technical people who share and contribute to artistic vision.

That?s enough for now, I?m reading your posts, and I?ll try to contribute 
again.  I may not answer your questions immediately, as I will be traveling 
June 11  15 to the Venice Biennial.

Finally, I want to thank all the artists who made the work in the show, and 
for their trust and collaboration to install and participate in all these 
events. Without them, none of this would  be possible!

Warmly, Kathy