NET ART'S BROADENING NICHE.

010101: Art in Technological Times

San Francisco Museum of Modem Art

San Francisco, California

March 3-July 8, 2001

Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace

Art Center College of Design

Pasadena, California

May 5-June 30, 2001

Austin Museum of Art

Austin, Texas

July 20-September 18, 2001

Atlanta College of Art

Atlanta, Georgia

October 11-November 25, 2001

Data Dynamics

Whitney Museum of American Art

New York, New York

March 22-June 10, 2001

Six or seven years ago, Net art emerged as the latest embodiment, or more accurately, the disembodiment, of a conceptual art practice that successfully circumvented the art market by eliminating the physicality of an art object. It was believed that Net-based projects living on the Web could not be valued, displayed or sold by the creators or disseminators of "good taste" (gallerists and curators) as they saw fit. Net artists often engaged in activist antics and hacker schemes by connecting directly with their audiences, effectively sidestepping the need to display and exhibit their work in an institutional setting. Web surfers disseminated and popularized the existence of these projects in a word of mouth fashion, a highly effective method of distribution now termed "pull technology" by on-line marketers.

Net art has become appropriated into the institutional setting much more quickly than its pioneering practitioners could ever have imagined. The confluence of recent high-profile museum shows featuring Net-based art such as San Francisco Museum of Modem Art's (SFMOMA) "010101: Art in Technological Times," the Whitney Museum of American Art's "Data Dynamics" and "Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace," curated by the Walker Art Center's Steve Dietz, are giving everyone involved a reason to stop and take measure of this medium's transformation. One might question whether Net artists who had initially operated outside of the institutional realm are now willing to have their work situated within the museum context. Does context ultimately impact the work's content and the artists' motivations for creating the work? Has the institutionalization of this novel medium forsaken its alternative stance? Has Net art finally been subjugated to the same market forces that it once rebelled against?

Several Net artists and Net professionals working in the digital realm offered their opinions regarding such questions at the recent "Digital Independence 2001" conference held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in January. Artists such as Natalie Jeremienko and Ben Benjamin and communications technologies specialists such as Andrew Blau, founder of the non-profit Flanerie Works, spoke about qualities unique to digital, Net-based media, suggesting that its relationship to its audience is different, that it is global, and that artists receive immediate feedback from their viewers. They discussed ad hoc distribution models and how a social network of interpretation could add meaning to the content of a work. Blau shared findings of trends that emerged from social research on the Internet, showing how communities or networks such as Napster enable the free sharing of sites and resources, successfully disseminating tastes and trends on-line. "The question artists should be asking themselves," said Blau, "is how to situate themselves and their work effectively within these communities on-line."

In regard to methods of display, the overarching consensus was that museums and galleries still have not found a way to properly host Net-based work. Well-versed in the experience, both Benjamin and Jeremienko have had their work included in high-profile museum surveys. Benjamin's interlinked collection of HTML graphics titled Superbad was included in the Whitney Biennial last year and Jeremienko's Net-based BangBang Network is featured in "Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace," a touring exhibition inaugurated at the San Francisco Art Institute last February. [1] BangBang consists of a surveillance network showing live footage from video cameras placed in areas of political conflict around the world (East Timor, Los Angeles, Kosovo, South Africa). The footage is displayed on a Web site accessible through a computer station within the gallery as well as on small video monitors surrounding it.

Having attended both exhibitions, I am in agreement with the artists-the gallery displays of both networked projects were admittedly disappointing. The Biennial's on-line projects were displayed on a single computer terminal in a darkened gallery, with a video projection enlarging the monitor display on a gallery wall for the benefit of a larger audience. If they wanted to interact with the online projects however, visitors had to wait their turn for the computer while others waiting in line looked on impatiently. The experience was far inferior to the process of accessing the projects in a more private manner, such as through one's own computer at home. During both of my visits to the "Telematic Connections" exhibition, Jeremienko's BangBang Network was down. In addition, I did not have much luck when I tried to access both projects from their independent domains on-line either, hitting multiple error messages along the way.

The technical difficulties encountered in the display of Net-based media are just part of the vexations that plague curators as they attempt to incorporate this work into a gallery setting. Many of the smaller museums and cultural institutions are not properly equipped with the right tools or the expertise necessary to host this kind of work, choosing not to show it altogether. Others who are trying to position themselves as the forerunners in chronicling the intersection of art and technology are concerned with trying to create the ideal environment for the display of work that lives on-line. But the technical glitches that viewers continue to encounter when interacting with networked art proves that there is still a long way to go in creating the ideal display conditions for this work. At a recent symposium at the San Francisco Art Institute titled "Digital Dialogues: Curating Byte-Based Art," Dietz, Benjamin Weil, curator of new media art at SFMOMA and Christiane Paul, curator of "Data Dynamics" at the Wh itney, offered answers to these questions and discussed other ideological conflicts surrounding the display of what they termed "byte-based" art.

How to properly display Net-based work without forsaking its unique characteristics and altering the artist's original motives for creating it is a main concern for curators as they attempt to introduce Net art to new audiences and preserve it for subsequent generations. Such inquiries were first addressed in a definitive exhibition of Net media titled "Net_Condition," organized by ZKM media in 1999. [2] Judging by head curator Peter Weibel's introductory statement, "Net art is the driving force, which is the most radical in transforming the closed system of the aesthetic object of modem art into the open system of post-modern (or second modern) fields of action," the curators were attempting to examine--some would say exploit--Net art's progressive potential.

Ironically, the characteristics of Net art that Weibel lauded were the same ones that rendered the display methods of the exhibition unsuccessful. This was one of the first exhibitions that attempted to introduce the Net space into the museum, in an environment equipped with computers, T1 connections and couches. According to Weil, one of the show's curators, the show's display methods were a flat-out failure. "To present this work in a gallery space, with the mouse pads functioning as wall labels, simply didn't work," Weil admitted. Weil applied the lessons learned from "Net_Condition" to the next exhibition he curated, the Web component of SFMOMA's "010101: Art in Technological Times." The Web site for this exhibition, which was launched January 1, 2001, contains five Internet-based projects commissioned by SFMOMA. It was decided that Web commissions should be kept on-line for viewers to access from any remote location, and that computer kiosks with access to the projects would not be situated within the g alleries.

However, SFMOMA's curators still needed to create a contextual framework for the Web commissions on-line in a way that somehow positioned them within the grandiosity of the museum. The solution came from San Francisco-based design firm Perimetre-Flux in the form of an elaborate Web site in which to encase the projects. The "010101" site, which can be accessed through the SFMOMA's regular Web site [3] as well as through exhibition sponsor Intel's ArtMuseum.Net, [4] is a striking and complex contextual frame indeed. First off, the user has to invest a good amount of time to download the plug-ins and the software necessary to view the on-line projects. Secondly, the commissioned pieces are well hidden inside a graphically sophisticated interface that the user must navigate by accessing complicated pop-up menus in an effort to find where the pieces live. Fine for those who like puzzle gaines--not so ideal for those looking to engage with the projects in a snap.

Weil qualified the site's complex design by likening it to an architectural metaphor for the SFMOMA building designed by Mario Botta. In the same way that one has to navigate the physical space of the museum in order to see the work hanging in the galleries, he said, one would similarly need to maneuver through the virtual halls, virtual walls and doorways of the Web site in order to view the projects on-line. The architectural metaphor was intended to create a link between the Net projects and the gallery installations of the exhibition.

A positive aspect of positioning the work on-line for viewers to access from their preferred remote locations is that it enables viewers to spend more time with each project, thereby allowing them to fully explore and become immersed within pieces that contain a great many layers. Pieces like Matthew Richie's The New Place, a sci-fi narrative that interweaves the storylines of various characters within a labyrinthine, Flash-animated universe can be more fully experienced when accessed from a personal Web space. But the effect of packaging the work within an elaborate Web site, complete with various "think texts" and a slew of other informational material, mediates the experience of viewing this work to a great degree, having almost as much impact on the experience as placing the work within the physical space of the museum. That is precisely the museum's job however: it must provide a specific context for viewing this work, in this case, an educational one, thereby introducing the work to audiences who might not be familiar with Net-based art. It would be impossible for the museum to present work in any medium--whether it be performance, video art or Net art--without certain "filters" through which to view this work. The compromise that Net artists--or anyone else creating work that is bleeding-edge radical--must make when agreeing to exhibit this work within the museum context is to take the chance of having the work lose its subversive potential in exchange for the prestige of being included in a museum show. This is a compromise that many Net artists are choosing to make.

In the discussion of their recent byte-based curatorial projects, Dietz and Paul gave presentations of works that were hybrid in nature, ones that lived on a network but also had a physical interface that extended into the gallery space. "Telematic Connections" is a show that emphasizes process; Dietz believes in the importance of trying to document the artist's ideas and their development rather than being concerned with qualifying the work as "visual alt" or presenting it as an aesthetically appealing art object. "The audience response to the show has been that a lot of the work doesn't look like art," proclaimed Dietz. With its "Telematic Timeline" chronicling the history of technology's impact on the arts and on popular culture, and with its virtual "Data Sphere" documenting pivotal Net art projects created over the course of the past few years, "Telematic Connections" does indeed come across as a comprehensive resource for the recent history and progress of Net-based work. [5] The hybrid manifestation t he gallery projects--where the user taps into a network to affect an installation that has a physical presence elsewhere, or vice versa, affecting the network's configuration by interacting with the physical components of an installation--intends to demonstrate the ever growing impact that technology is exerting over our social interactions as well illustrating the latest, museum-friendly direction this rapidly evolving medium has taken.

"Data Dynamics" follows a similar direction, introducing a hearty dose of fun into the viewer's experience of interacting with the projects in real space. It is an exhibition that takes as its subject "data flow" models, often considered the main narrative of the Internet. The show's gallery installations and projections display how physical movement and information flow can be mapped in real time. It is a compelling display that effectively transgresses the computer screen. Users are able track their interactions with the networks by altering the display of visuals and text that pop up on the gallery walls surrounding them. Complete control of the network's output seems nearly impossible, but the spontaneous nature of these interactions--the fact that you never know what your commands will elicit--adds an element of surprise to the experience of viewing this work. Moreover, the project outcomes are open-ended--they rely on user interaction for their ongoing transformation, growth and enrichment, thereby sta ying true to Net art's democratic potential.

Take, for example, Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg's Apartment, a particularly immersive virtual map of a fictional city that viewers and users within the gallery as well as on-line can help formulate and construct. [6] To create their own "apartment" within the urban nucleus, viewers type in various sentences. Each word is analyzed and reconfigured into semantic patterns that form the blueprint of an apartment. The more words and sentences one feeds into the computer, the larger and more impressive their apartment becomes. The 2D blueprint is then translated into a graphic, 3D structure made up of a diverse arrangement of images and sounds corresponding to the words that form the building blocks of the architectural plan. Viewers can then take a 3D, virtual tour of their apartment while listening to a musical backdrop, and even print out a color inkjet copy of it, complete with words, blueprint and 3D model that they can take away with them as a souvenir of their visit to "Data Dynamics's" virtual realm . Each apartment is archived within the project's database, and the city plan grows more dense and complex in relation to viewer engagement and activity.

Could it be that a new media curator has finally discovered a manner in which to effectively display Net-based work, successfully engaging gallery visitors without sacrificing the medium's unique characteristics? Maybe so, and in so doing, they may have laid the groundwork for Net art's mass appeal. As the art world increasingly takes notice of Net media, there is going to be more of a demand for it among a growing audience. And as the medium becomes popularized, more and more artists, even those previously using other, more traditional processes, are going to want to incorporate this new technology into their work. Of course, by giving their work a physical component and creating objects that can be sold, Net artists have found a way to commodify their work. For example, Lew Baldwin, creator of Redsmoke, has taken some of his on-line projects out of the networked realm and placed them onto a CD-ROM, selling them in a limited edition series. [7] Moreover, Net artists who have made a name for themselves are s tarting to gain gallery representation, although the sale of Net-based projects is still problematic. Instead, they are starting to produce and offer for sale other object-oriented, non-Networked pieces.

The main question that net artists must grapple with in light of the art world's embrace of this new media is whether it can still lay claim to the ideologies that it originally fostered: that it was activist, incendiary and uncommodifiable by nature? "I think a lot of artists who work on-line today have very different motivations for creating this work," states Well. Dietz concurs, "We are at a place when we can leave it up to the artist to decide where they want their work situated. I believe in a multiplicity of places to display net-based work. Different contexts can add different meanings." In other words, activists and hackers are still free to spoof and deconstruct their favorite corporate identities and Web sites and to distribute their projects to Web surfers all over the world in guerilla fashion as they wish. For those who are looking to quit their day jobs and start making a living off of being a Net artist, the audience is receptive, the commissions are bountiful and the art market may well be primed. There is something to be said for effectively promoting one's career on-line.

BERIN GOLONU is Editor in Chief of Artweek, a print publication based in San Jose, as well as the content editor of www.sfstation.com.

NOTES

(1.) See www.superbad.com.

(2.) See www.zkm.de/net..conditions.

(3.) See www.sfmoma.org/010101.

(4.) See www.artmuseum.net.

(5.) See http://telematic.walkerartorg/.

(6.) See www.turbulence.org/Works/apartment.

(7.) See www.redsmoke.com.