ACM Multimedia'96 Hynes Convention Center
November 18 - 22, 1996 Boston, MA, USA
New Art Venues
Thursday, November 21, 11:00 - 12:30 pm, Room 306, Panel 5,
Moderator: Paul Sermon
Panelists: Hans-Peter Schwarz, Gerfried Stocker, Machiko Kusahara, Regina Wyrwoll
__________________________________________________________________
#Paul Sermon
Telematic Dreaming
When I consider the title of NEW ART VENUES, I am immediately reminded of a relatively old work; HOLE-IN-SPACE, produced in 1980 by Kit Galloway and Sherry Rabanowitz. A piece which was basically a teleconferencing link between two shop windows, allowing the public walking in 5th Avenue, New York to communicate with the public on a street in down town Los Angeles. The venue of this unannounced public art event, which lasted four days, existed, not only, as a satellite up-link across the USA, but more importantly on the streets in the respective towns. Ultimately the public were their own artwork. Rabonawitz and Galloway created the venue and on the third day the television and press reported and announced it to a mass audience, causing an overwhelming public response.
Telematic arts such as internet and teleconferencing projects
define new art venues in themselves. However, they invariably
find there way back to the gallery context as internet-cafe attractions
in media art exhibitions. Unfortunately financial support for
the media arts is more often than not supplied directly to the
gallery context. The recent Biennale in Lyon, featuring 64 artists,
exhibiting more than a 200 individual media art works, accumulated
more technology in one Gallery space than ever before, on one
of the largest budgets for art exhibitions in French history.
The chronological order of the exhibition was self defining the
genre of media art, and by definition an end to it. In my opinion
the gallery venue is over. The digital communications network
is not altogether the new one, but it is certainly where art now
exists, waiting to emerge and manifest itself in venues and ways
that we least expect, such as a shop window on 5th Avenue.
CV
Paul Sermon. Born in Oxford, England, 1966. Studied BA Hon's.
(Bachelor of Arts) Fine Art degree at Gwent College of Higher
Education, Wales, Post-graduate MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree
at The University of Reading, England. Awarded the Prix Ars Electronica
"Golden Nica", in the category of interactive art, for
the hyper media installation "Think about the People now".
Artist in Residence and produced the telematic video installation
"Telematic Vision" at the Center for Arts and Mediatechnology
(ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Received the "Sparkey"
award from the Interactive Media Festival in Los Angeles, for
the telematic video installation "Telematic Dreaming".
Currently living in Berlin, working as professor for telematic
media in the newly established media art department at the Academy
of Graphic and Book Arts in Leipzig, Germany. Exhibited works
in Great Britain, France, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany,
Holland, Canada, USA and Japan.
email: sermon@rz.uni-leipzig.de
VHS (PAL) video player, video (PAL) monitor, over-head projector, slide projector
__________________________________________________________________
#Hans-Peter Schwarz
New Art Venues - The final death of the Museum?
Immersive environments and all kinds of men-machine interactivities
gave an revolutionary input on art and - on a lower level - even
on technology in general. Great challenges for art and its institutions
will be the consequence of this development: The museum has to
change its policy and even its space, galleries have to develop
new methods to contact their clients, idiosyncratic artists have
to experience in team working and the public has to learn new
ways of perception. The history of modernism ist the history of
proclamations for the death of the Museum. But the Museum is still
alive and is still necessary for the survival of the arts. To
guarantee this survival a completely new net-work between artists
- art institutions - art criticism and the public has to be created.
The lecture will give some hints, based on the experience the
author made recently in Karlsruhe, Germany during the conception
and realisation of a supposed new kind of museum: The Media-Museum
in the Center for Art and Mediatechnology.
CV
Hans-Peter Schwarz was born1945 in Bielefeld, Germany. He studied
visual communication at the Fachhochule Bielefeld, History of
Art, Literature and European Ethnology at the University of Marburg.
1982 Dr. phil, 1983 - 90 Curator at the German Museum of Architecture
in Frankfurt, 1984 - 92 Lecturer at the Universities of Marburg,
Trier und Frankfurt, 1990 - 91 Head of planing for a new Museum
for History of the 'Moderne' in Frankfurt. Since1992 he is Director
of the Media-Museum in the Center of Art and Media Technology
in Karlsruhe, since 1994 Schwarz is Professor at the Hochschule
für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.
schwarz@guido.zkm.de
Media: Mac, Power Point, Projection
__________________________________________________________________
#Gerfried Stocker
Museum of the Future
The Ars Electronica Center - museum of the future is not simply
a collection or a gallery, but sees itself as a partner, as infrastructure
and initiator. The implementation of artistic ideas is nowadays
frequently only possible with considerable technological resources,
so that traditional venues of art can only seldom provide the
right framework. The altered conditions demand for new concepts.
An institution such as the Ars Electronica Center, by virtue of
its specific infrastructure in terms of hardware and of personnal,
of its twin function as a place of production and of presentation,
and also by virtue of its positioning "between the fronts",
assumes in this connection the nature and function of a model
for its time.
CV
Gerfried Stocker, born 1964 in Graz, Austria is presently managing director of the ars electronica center and artistic director of ars electronica festival.
He studied communication technology and is a musician and media artist. 1991 he founded x-space, an interdisciplinary group of artists and technicians, 1992 he was head of the "Steirische Kulturinitiative" in Graz/Austria. His Projects where shown at EXPO Sevilla '92, Bienale Venedig '93, ISEA '93 - '95, SIGGRAPH '94/'95, steirischer Herbst '94, Ars Electronica '95. He is publisher and writer of various publications in art and telecommunication. His own artistic work is focused on interactive installations and radio-/ tv-/ network-projects.
email: gerfried@www.aec.at
email: gerfried@mail.aec.at
Media: Laptop with VGA output (640x480 or 800x600) connected to beamer
__________________________________________________________________
#Machiko Kusahara
Can all artworks move on the network?
Certainly not. The network has brought new possibilities for artists
not only as a virtual exhibition space but also as an interactive
space that allows sponteneous communication between the artist
and the visitors. As interactivity achieves more importance in
art, the network has become animportant medium of art. Yet there
are projects/works that can be accomplished or exhibited only
on a real space - at a physical venue. The importance of such
venue is ever increasing. There are certain types of artworks
that require physical space by its nature. Artworks using virtual
reality technology are typical of that kind. Without maintaining
such venue for artists our culture will loose the balance between
technology and sensitivity. It is important to maintain such space
for artists, not only for engineers and researchers, to enrich
what we will see on the network in future.
CV
Machiko Kusahara is an Associate Professor of Media Art at the Faculty of Arts, Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics. She has been in this field since 1984 with the background in mathematics, history of science, and art. Besides taking responsible roles in academic and industrial organizations, she is a co-founder and a Program Committee member of Digital Image, the largest group of digital artists and designers in Japan. Kusahara curated many exhibitions including those organized by NTT InterCommunication Center and has been an on-line/off-line jury member for competitions including Interactive Media Festival(95,96), MILIA(95,96), and The Portrait in Cyberscape(95). Her recent research has been centered around the transition of the nature of artistic creativity in interactive art, especially
in relation to the concept of networking and A-Life.
email: kusahara@renga.ntticc.or.jp, kusahara@img.t-kougei.ac.jp
Media: NTSC VHS video, Images from Power Book Duo, Internet connection,
Desktop Mac or PC computer with CD-ROM drive
__________________________________________________________________
#Regina Wyrwoll
Goethe in the Net
The Goethe Institute is a world wide German cultural organisation with
about 150 centers in 78 countries in the world. As an independent
association it gets public funding for teaching German language abroad
and building up intercultural dialogue in arts and science. In this
context it works since about 40 years with artists, writers, filmmakers
and scientists, universities, museums, galleries and other partners in
Germany and abroad.
Since about three years Goethe Institute emphasise on mediawork
recognizing that electronic media offer a new platform for communication
between cultures and that they are new art venues. Now many institutes
are working intensively in creating projects of intellectual debate about
new media and internet (f.e. in Buenos Aires "Universes in Universe"), of
coproduction in arts films for tv (f.e. "Bauhaus, Texas - the American
Artist Donald Judd" for German and American tv), of arts projects on the
net ("cyberclipper" a American-German arts project - on the web now
http://glows.com/cyberclipper/), of CD-ROM and multimedia. Teleconferencing
and live-satelite-TV is getting daily routine. A homepage on the
net (http://www.goethe.de) exists since one year. There the first
language courses will be available soon. As one of the major goals
of Goethe Institute is to dialogue with local artists the creation
of art work on video, real installation or art in the internet
is a subject of important matters. Media art exhibitions combined
with symposia (e.g. in Turin and Madrid), media exhibitions like
TELEPOLIS (Luxemburg) are part of the communication work through
the Goethe Institute. Media enlarge the audience for art and artists,
it cannot replace traditional artforms. The Goethe-Instute is
trying to combine the traditional way of cultural communication
with the potentials of new technologies, always in close relation
with the media environment of the local partners.
CV
Regina Wyrwoll studied history of art in Cologne and Hamburg. She got
director of a tv production company in Hamburg, author of a number of
feature films on contemporary art, museums and culture in general for the
two German public tv stations. After moving to Bonn she worked several
years as an arts correspondant of major German pubications. For two years
she was chief editor of an arts magazine called "Kunst Intern". Up to now
she publishes in "S|ddeutsche Zeitung" and "Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung" specialised on cultural policies and art. Since
1993 she is building up a media department in the headquaters
of Goethe Institute in Munich.
email: wyrwoll@goethe.de
Media: Video VHS PAL, Overhead Projector
__________________________________________________________________