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“It is easier to get an entire museum collection on the internet than to get a single exhibition of Internet Art in a museum space. ”


In the lecture today, Rachel introduce the term Net Art to us. It is art that made on and for the Internet, including many sub-genres of computer-based art, like browser art and software art. As we know, net art/ computer-based art is not a solid product, but a live process, a behaviour, and it usually requires certain technical supports for the display (or even not only display, but also interaction), so it’s always been problematic of the relationship between net art and the museum. As Domenico Quaranta proclaimed, “The curator’s priorities are as follows: to transfer the work into an object, whatever that might be; to bring technology into the exhibition venue and display it as if it were a key element of the work, and (as if audiences need) to be familiar with technology. As a consequence, curators do little more than complain about the fact that exhibition venues are not suitable containers for New Media Art; that New Media Art cannot be stored or commercialized; that people don’t “get it”, and that the art system is not interested”.

We had a small exercise in the lecture, to think of a computational artwork, and discuss how we would curate its exhibition. I came up with the example of Mario Klingemann’s collaboration project with Nick Knight, a series images generated by machine learning (deep learning), trained with examples of Nick Knight’s photographs. The AI generated images question the boundary between human and machine, and the possibility / definition of creativities. At the moment the images are displayed on Nick’s studio website, in a conventional form that title and brief description come first, then audience can scroll down the page to see the list of images.

I reckon this display form is suitable for Nick’s other photography works, but not really good for Mario’s AI images. It’s like displaying these AI images as prints on the gallery walls. This display form (of still images) makes no difference from the machine intelligence generated image and Nick’s other digital photography. So I was thinking how we can show the difference, and what difference (that necessary to show to the audience) is?

So if considering to show this project in gallery/museum space, I think it’s essential to show the audience the context of the technology, at least giving some basic understanding of algorithm, generative arts, and machine learning, etc. So that the audience (especially the ones without related background knowledge) would be able to see the creativity, the beauty, and the poetic of these AI images, rather than just see them as digital effects/technical show-off. And todo so, we could have a video introducing the context (before or after the main display area), or even organise some small workshops/events to educate the public these context knowledge more practically. (Because computational art per se has the practicality characteristic from its technology context.)

Also there’re some other arguments that is might be not necessary to display these net arts in physical museum space, since they live better on the Internet, on the interface. I might discuss about the online curation in the next blog post. But generally I think the conventional museum space has the chances to reach broader audience and a more effective discourse. Also because “the internet is an extremely narcissistic medium- a mirror of our specific interests and desires.” as Boris Groys claimed in Curating in the Post-Internet Age. Therefore for computational/ net art artists as well as curators, we need to keep the efforts in both on-line space and physical space.

# Term2_4

Responding to the lecture ‘Leaking box scenario, Curating the computational’ by Rachel Falconer

Franz Thalmair in Context.Net 2007

Tate, n.d. Internet Art – Art Term [WWW Document]. Tate. URL https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/internet-art (accessed 4.4.19).

Curating in the Post-Internet Age - Journal #94 October 2018 - e-flux [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www.e-flux.com/journal/94/219462/curating-in-the-post-internet-age/ (accessed 4.4.19).

Disruption Network Lab: Art as Investigating Misconduct & Wrongdoing - Furtherfield [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www.furtherfield.org/disruption-network-lab-art-as-investigating-misconduct-wrongdoing/ (accessed 4.4.19).

Image Gallery [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://showstudio.com/project/ai (accessed 4.4.19).

Reference

Scroll down the embedded area to view the images.

Similar case like James Howard's work exhibited in Saatchi Gallery,
It's difficult to understand his printed piece without experiencing his art piece on the browser.