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Theses Assignment

1. A Museum of New Media Art should always be detailed in describing each piece of artwork regarding it's history, inspirations, mediums, etc

2. A Museum of New Media Art should be updated as time goes by to keep up with current 'new' art so it doesn't have outdated media art.

3. A Museum of New Media Art should provide ways for viewers and the artists to connect and interact.

4. A Museum of New Media Art should be accessible to everyone, whether that be through physical galleries, online galleries, outdoor exhibitions, etc.

5. A Museum of New Media Art should be versatile in all the works that they present so as not to focus only on one aspect of media art.

6. A Museum of New Media Art should be organized into categories that are easily distinguishable.

7. A Museum of New Media Art should provide art that draw viewers to come back.

8. A Museum of New Media Art should only have work that deals with new media art so as not to confuse viewers as to what is actually new media art and what isn't.

9. A Museum of New Media Art should create inspiration and encourage viewers/visitors to create art of their own.

10. A Museum of New Media Art should have works that let the viewer/visitor actively participate with the work.

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Artist: Greyworld

Title: Words

Location: Gateshead, UK

Date: 2009

Description: “Words” is an installation located in Gateshead, United Kingdom. When people arrive at the installation site they are given a box and headphones and told to think of a word. They speak their word into the box and the box begins to glow. As they walk around in an empty courtyard with headphones on, they are able to hear words that seem to be everywhere, in the trees, on the floor, in water, etc. The visitors are then told to drop their words into whatever space they like. As they tip the box over the blue light from the box disappears and their word is dropped into that space for several hours. Some of the words that are in the space are permanent, and some have been dropped by people. When visitors are done they return the box to be used again by the next visitor.

http://greyworld.org/archives/37

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Artist: Greyworld

Title: Bins & Benches

Location: Piazza (in Cambridge)

Date: 2005

Description: “Bins & Benches”, located in Cambridge, consist of five trash bins and four benches. These bins and benches each have a personality and life of their own, moving and rearranging themselves in whatever way they please. The benches love it when people sit on them, so they constantly rearrange themselves to increase the chance that someone will sit on them. Such as on a rainy day, the benches would move and relocated themselves to a shaded area. The bins also move around; such as on Wednesdays they would line up to be emptied. The bins and benches also sing, randomly bursting into song.

http://greyworld.org/archives/46

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Artist: Greyworld

Title: Wave

Location: Copernicus Centre (Warsaw, Poland)

Date: 2010

Description: “Wave”, located in front of the Copernicus Centre in Warsaw, Poland (science museum), consists of 16 grey metal poles that stretch over 12 meters long. At one end of the exhibit is a speaker for people to speak random words into it. The poles move in wave-like motions that show the amplitude of the words spoken into the speaker.

http://greyworld.org/archives/682

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Artist: Greyworld

Title: The Source

Location: London Stock Exchange

Date: 2004

Description: “The Source”, located in the London Stock Exchange consists of 729 balls attached to 162 cables (arranged in a cube formation). Each ball moves independently and only needs a couple of seconds to travel 32 meters (seven stories). Throughout the day the balls move creating different shapes and images. Greyworld describes it as a “living reflection of market forces”.

http://greyworld.org/archives/31

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Rancière, Lanier and Foucault

Lanier mentions a “flat” global structure which he says “suggests happy world to software technologists, because every little program in a flat global structure is born fresh, offering a renewing whiff of the freedom of tiny code” (Lanier, 1). Lanier personally believes that when flatness is applied to human activities, it “leads to blandness and meaninglessness”. When it’s applied to the sciences, it “can cause confusion between methodology and expression” (Lanier, 1). Lanier than breaks into talking about the web 2.0 and Wikipedia. He mentions that the distinction between “first order expression is when someone presents whole work that integrates its own worldview and aesthetic” (Lanier, 2) First order expression is something new. “Second-order expression is made of fragmentary reactions to first-order expression” (Lanier, 2).Lanier talks about music and how the generation today cannot really distinguish the music generations, what happened in what years and what decades. In a decade music can go a long way and turn in different directions. He doesn't really prefer this new generations type of music, claiming that this new “kind of work is more nostalgic than reaching” (Lanier, 8)

Ranciere begins his article by talking about the paradox of the spectator. Ranciere notes that “there is no theater without spectators” (Ranciere, 271) but that spectatorship is not a good thing because it requires you to look and looking is not good either. He justifies that by saying “looking is deemed the opposite of knowing” and “looking is deemed the opposite of acting” (Ranciere, 272). By just looking, you do not know how things became the way they became. By just looking, you do not interact with what you are looking at. Basically a spectator is a passive onlooker. Ranciere uses these two points of spectatorship to come to the following conclusion: “theater in general is a bad thing, that it is the stage of illusion and passivity” (Ranciere, 272). He calls the theater s transmission of disease and ignorance and that good communities would not allow theaters to occupy it. The other conclusion that he comes to is that “theater involves spectatorship, and spectatorship is a bad thing. Therefore, we need a new theater, a theater without spectatorship” (Ranciere, 272).

Foucault starts out his paper by writing a scenario of a plagued town. How order is kept to ensure those who are living and those who are dead. Everything is controlled and governed so that nothing is out of place. He lists some “contagions of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder” (Foucault, 3). Two different kinds of community mentioned are the pure community and the disciplined society. These two are the same thing in part that they both “exercise power over men, of controlling their relations, of separating out their dangerous mixtures” (Foucault, 3) On the other hand, a perfectly governed city requires that there be “hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing, and extensive power over all the people in the town” (Foucault, 3). 

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Manifesto for New Media Curators

I believe that one of the best way to organize, display and archive new media art is to embed it all online. Our future lies in the advancement of technology, and in the future I believe things will all be driven by technology, mainly the computer and its related sources. With all new media art archived in the computer database, people round the world will have access to the same things whether it be videos, pictures, etc. Even now artists use the computer as a means to promote and bring awareness to their pieces. Steve Dixon’s “Performance and Technology Since 1960”, he mentions that “computer technologies became much more accessible to artists and led to widespread digital performance activity.”

Another way to archive, display and organize new media art is through galleries and exhibitions. This would be mostly for those who do not have access to technological devices allowing them to view new media art. This way art could be displayed for all to see. If there were people there to give tours it would be even better; people would know more about the artwork and perhaps have a hands on experience with it (if the artwork so permits). Having new media art in galleries could provide people with recreational activities to do as well. This could increase the amount of time people spend outside instead of stuck at home.

As I mentioned before technology is always advancing, always developing. In the future there could be even better ways to archive and show off new media technology. But for the current technology advances that we have, using the computer as an archive gallery could be the best. 

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Assignment 1

One of Manovich’s “Eight Propositions” is “New Media as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or Through Other Technologies”. This proposition merely states that manual actions that we perform are now advanced and speeded up by the invention of new technology. In Gere’s paper, “New Media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age”, he speaks of how in today’s galleries, art relating to digital technology is “underrepresented”. Most times when people think of galleries they think of paintings or sculptures. But there’s a whole other side to art involving the technological side that is not represented or barely ever represented in galleries. One of the types of technological art that Tate is collecting is “real-time” art projects. “Real-time” entails fast speed and immediate responses. Without “real-time” there would be “no e-mail, word processing, Internet, or World Wide Web, no computer-aided industrial production, and none of the invisible “smart systems””. In today’s culture people are constantly asking for better, faster, more instant responses. Our society is very fast-pace which results in constant new technology coming out. This clearly supports Manovich’s proposition about technology speeding up daily manual functions.

In regards to Gere’s belief that “the gallery has an important role to play in making this art visible, not just now but also in the future, when such work will be part of history”, I agree that this art needs to be made available for people to see and understand, but perhaps not in a gallery. Nowadays “gallery” entails a place with past paintings, sculptures, and the occasional photographs depending on how modern the gallery one is at. But these technological advances will be more difficult to constrain within a gallery. The ever advancing technology is very hands-on and very reliant on people interaction. If these were to be in a gallery, then people would have to, or should be allowed to, interact with such technological art. But constant people interaction would require constant repairing. Not only that, if there were many people at a gallery, not everyone would be able to experience hands-on time with the “art pieces”. Another issue I have with sticking this side of art in galleries is that people would not be as interested to come and see such art. Technology is advancing very rapidly, there would be constant things added to the gallery as ‘past’ inventions, but remember that people use these technologies during their day to day life already. Why would they come to a gallery to see old VCDs, or old Apple Itouches, or the older version of our internet browser (if that still exists). Whereas seeing paintings and sculptures live actually hold some interest with people, walking around learning about old technology perhaps does not hold enough interest for people living a fast-pace ever demanding society.

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Marriage: It's Origin, Uses, and Duties

Library of Princeton University

Digitalized: March 21, 2008

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Maurizio Bolognini was born on July 27, 1952 in Brescia, Italy. He studied at the University of Birmingham, UK and the University of IUAV, Venice with degrees in urban planning and social sciences. He is a post-conceptual artist as well as a researcher. His interests lie in art, technology and democracy and combining them to create his works. He currently teaches at the University of Milan. His artworks focus on three different aspect of digital technology. The first aspect is described as a focus on “the experience of the disproportion (and disjunction) between artist and the artwork, which is made possible by computer-based technologies”. The second aspect is his focus on “structured communication techniques and e-democracy”. The third is the aspect of “space-time flows of technological communication”. Bolognini comments that his works are not about quality and how good they look, but he’s more interested in creating art works that are limitless in space and time. One of his most remarkable works is the Programmed Machines series. His works are currently still in museums and art galleries. Some of his other works include setting up computers to produce random images and letting them run for an indefinite period of time. 

http://www.bolognini.org/bio.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurizio_Bolognini

http://www.bolognini.org/foto/index.htm