DOCUMENT RESUME IR 058 809 ED 482 128 Dietz, Steve AUTHOR Interfacing the Digital. TITLE 2003-00-00 PUB DATE 13p.; In: Museums and the Web 2003: Selected Papers from an NOTE International Conference (7th, Charlotte, NC, March 19-22, 2003); see IR 058 801. For full text: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/ AVAILABLE FROM papers/dietz/dietz.html/. Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) Descriptive (141) Reports PUB TYPE EDRS Price MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE Art; Computer Interfaces; Computer Oriented Programs; Exhibits; DESCRIPTORS *Museums Curators; *Digital Collections; Digital Technology; Telematics; IDENTIFIERS *Virtual Museums; Walker Art Center MN ABSTRACT In the last 5 years, there has been at times heated debate not only about how best to present digital and specifically networked art in an institutional context but also whether to do so at all. Not all of the discussion revolves around issues of physical interfaces to such works, but their onsite presentation is a critical concern for both museums and artists--and their audiences. This paper is informed by these discussions, mostly online in the archives of nettime, rhizome, thingist, and CRUMB, but focuses on the author's personal experiences in curating 10 exhibitions over the past five years that have included network-based art. The paper presents work at the Walker Art Center (Minnesota) focusing on new physical interfaces, particularly for the presentation of digital art. Some examples include a freestanding revolving door portal for the exhibition Art Entertainment Network; a telematic table resulting from an international design competition; and a "temporary autonomous sarai" developed collaboratively by the new media artists Rags Media These Collective (New Delhi) and the architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo) . and other projects are prototypes for new, interactive social spaces and functions being developed for the Walker's new building expansion, designed by the architects Herzog & de Meuron. (Includes 10 figures.) (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. PAPERS Museums theWeb 2003 and PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND Interfacing The Digital DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Steve Dietz, Walker Art Center, USA D. Bearman http://walkerart.org 00 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Register fI C\1 Abstract 1 Workshops C\1 ( 00 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Sessions Office of Educational Research and Improvement "Interfacing the Digital" presents work at the Walker Art Center focusing on EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION Speakers new physical interfaces, particularly for the presentation of digital art. CENTER (ERIC) #This document has been reproduced as Some examples include a freestanding revolving door portal for the Interactions received from the person or organization exhibition Art Entertainment Network; a telematic table resulting from an originating it. Demonstrations international design competition; and a "temporary autonomous sarai" 0 Minor changes have been made to developed collaboratively by the new media artists Rags Media Collective Exhibits improve reproduction quality. (New Delhi) and the architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo). Events These and other projects are prototypes for new, interactive social spaces Points of view or opinions stated in this and functions being developed for the Walker's new building expansion, document do not necessarily represent Best of the Web official OERI position or policy. designed by the architects Herzog & de Meuron. Key Dates Charlotte Keywords: digital art, art interfaces, digital curation, Rags Media Collective (New Delhi), Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo), telematic table, Walker Art Center Background A&M.1 Archives & Museum In the last 5 years, especially following Documenta X (1997), the Whitney Informatics Biennial of 2000, and Net Condition at ZKM (2000), there has been at times 158 Lee Avenue heated debate not only about how best to present digital and specifically Toronto Ontario networked art in an institutional context but also whether to do so at all. jil_Not all M4E 2P3 Canada of the discussion revolves around issues of physical interfaces to such works, but their onsite presentation is a critical concern for both museums and artistsand ph: +1 416-691-2516 their audiences fx: +1 416-352-6025 This paper is informed by these discussions, mostly online in the archives of [email protected] nettime, rhizome, thingist, and CRUMB, but focuses on personal experiences in www.archimuse.com curating 10 exhibitions over the past 5 years that have included network-based art, including Beyond Interface: net art and Art on the Net at Museums and the ckSearch Web in 1998.Iii] A&MI Finally, while working with art that is "born digital" is a special case for most Join our Mailing List. museums, I would argue that the many of the issues and lessons are transferable Privacy. to the digital contextualization of any work in a museum's collection. The Challenge of Context Updated: March 13, 2003 One of the challenges of presenting digital art, is that the context and the work are generally displayed via the same means: the screen. How to differentiate between the metadata and the experience? One strategy is simply to open the project in a new window. This was the strategy of Beyond Interface. The complaint from artists about such a strategy is that it creates a curatorial gateway that viewers must pass through before getting to the heart of the matter, the actual experience. If you think of the example of video games, for instance, but often there isn't and there may be a narrative introduction to the game and then you're in game play mode. If you generally you can skip through it need/want help you specifically open the FAQ or Help screens, but they are not the main way of starting the game. Even with a painting exhibition, while there is BEST COPY AVMLABLE 2 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003 \papers\ dietz \dietz.html reams of research about the best length, tone, style, etc. for didactics, the working assumption is that most people look at a painting first and then read the if they want more information. the help file, so to speak label Even when net art exhibitions present the artwork first, it is often because the only curatorial context is a list of links, which is an equally unbalanced approach. With Art Entertainment Network, I tried to finesse this issue by making the it is a portal to art projects but to find out interface part of the experience itself more information, you must go to the context (http://aen.walkerart.orq ). Figure 1 : Screenshot Art Entertainment Network And more recently, with Translocations, I integrated functions of various projects into the interface, so that from the contextual pages, you could directly "modify" the text (via an artist project called OPUS), send an email about it in any language anywhere (via an artist project called Translation Map), create your own soundtrack to browse to (via an artist project called Translocal Mixer) or pop up the video window of the Translocal Channel. jiii] The Challenge of Ghettoization Related to the issue of context is ghettoization. There is a conundrum. On the one hand, it can be valuable to provide a focus on a particular set of practices, whether they are photography or performance or digital art. It is easier in such focused contexts to meaningfully differentiate between, say, documentary, fashion, abstract, and conceptual photography, each of which has its own distinct histories, methods, presentational contexts, etc. At the but intermingled same time it doesn't make sense to completely divorce photography from the visual arts; to not include it in a thematic show, whether about modernist art in America or America in the modern age. At the Walker, my answer, as is my wont, is both/and, not either/or. Gallery 9 is a virtual gallery for network-based art. At the same time, with a project like Shock of the View, we specifically chose to compare a physical artwork with a digital artwork. In the example below, for instance, the guest curator chose to compare a John Frederick Kensett painting of Mount Washington with a ski resort webcam of the same view, arguing that Kensett was the board-of-tourism-promotional-guy BEST COPY AVAILABLE 3 5/27/2003 file://E: \mw2003 \papers\dietz\dietz.html of his day. In another case, I compared Ken Goldberg's Memento Mori, with the ephemeral Sisyphus of Luciano Fabro.(http://www.walkerart.org/ salons/shockoftheview/.) i)co.t.:4.900. Vt.04. NO..* 1.0. FW, 60. .410 4.0.7 .4 41 #41...141t CS Figure 2 : Screenshot Shock of the View Comparisons are odious, and in the end, the interesting point is not that digital artist x is as good as artist y, but to bring their contexts into collision and see what happens. Sometimes this is best done in a digital only show. In the same way that Douglas Fogle at the Walker might do a painting only show, such as Painting at the Edge of the World, which explores diverse ideas about painting at the moment, in the Walker's expansion there will be a "mediatheque" devoted to the presentation of new media art (http://www.walkerart.org/programs/vaexhibpainting.html). We will continue, however, to do crossover shows, such as How Latitudes Become Forms, the current Walker exhibition curated by Philippe Vergne, which incorporates performance, new media, and film directly into the gallery exhibition (http://latitudes.walkerart.org). The Challenge of Medium In this post-medium, post-studio world, the idea of a medium may seem slightly antiquated and naïve. It's all just art, right? Personally, I believe there is a cinema and video practice tradition that cannot be fully subsumed in installation art. The same with photography. And, I would argue, digital art. Perhaps more to the point, however, is that we tend to talk about most digital art through the prism of visual arts, perhaps with a nod to video art, but in many ways the more fruitful comparisons are with the performing arts. Digital art is time-based, often performative, often ephemeral, often done in/by groups, process-oriented, and so on. The burning issues of collectability and ownership and authenticity take on a whole different tone when viewed against the history of music, its notation system for replaying a core experience that is nevertheless different every time; and the by-now acceptance of live and recorded performances as different but not merely derivative. shown here in Athens in a show I co-curated with With 386 DX, Alexei Shulgin Jenny Marketou for Medi@terra 2000 - plays computer-generated covers of hits such as Purple Rain, an inspiration, I would argue, to a whole generation of BEST COPY AVAILABLE 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003\papers\dietz\dietz.html 4 digital performance artists that transgress the boundaries of the art world's disciplines (http://www.mediaterra.org/mediaterra2000/en.cgi?opensource and http://www.easylife.org/386dx). Figure 3 : Alexei Shulgin performing as part of the Open Source Lounge at Medi@terra 2000, Athens The point in terms of interfacing the digital is to pick our models appropriately. Many of the issues of displaying digital work may be better solved working from a tradition of theater (think of object theater in history museums, for instance) and performance than rigid adherence to the traditional gallery experience. In the Walker's new expansion, we have built in this idea by putting the mediatheque galleries literally in the balcony level of the new performing arts studio. While there is no specific plan to always integrate the spaces, the assumption is that at some point artists will insist on their integration, building out the potential of the conjunction experimentally. BEST COPY AVAILABLE 0 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003\papers\dietz\dietz.html Figure 4 : Computer model of the new performing arts studio as part of the Walker Art Center expansion. At the back of the 2nd level balconies will be a series of mediatheque spaces. The Challenge of Expectations One of the reasons why the computer and the network have become not only subjects but also means of making artwork is that they are so ubiquitous in our daily lives. That very ubiquity, while it may provide a certain familiarity, also creates a whole set of expectations, starting with "user friendliness." Try telling Matthew Barney, he should be more user friendly. Or Jasper Johns that his references are too obscure. In this picture of BangBang, a work by the Bureau of Inverse Technology, which was presented in a traveling show I curated Telematic Connections, the Bureau disturbs our expectations of interactivity. The viewer can do nothing to make the work "happen;" it is dependent on environmental triggers outside of the gallery space (http://telematic.walkerart.org/ and http://telematic.walkerart.orq/telereal/bit_index.html). This was extremely frustrating for many visitors but too often the response was based on a false notion of "good interactivity," not, really, whether they liked or understood the work on its own terms. Figure 5 : "BangBang," 2000, Bureau of Inverse Technology. Installation view from "Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace" at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art Interactivity and user-friendliness are just a couple of the expectations with which we view digital art. On the museum side of the equation, there are a whole set of parallel issues to do with touch/don't touch, how much time you spend with a time-based work, and other learned gallery behaviors. All of these are concerns that both the artist and the presenter must take into consideration when to make things interfacing the digital, but the answer is not always obvious "easier" to do, for instance. The Challenge of Infrastructure 6 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003\papers\dietz\dietz.html Figure 6 : David Henshaw, a friend of the author who just "dropped by" to see the installation of Telematic Connections at the San Francisco Art Institute, who was drafted to splice cables. There is not really too much to say about infrastructure except that it is absolutely necessary, vital, critical. Yet, in every single installation I have done over the past 5 years, no matter where, the level of support has been less than for a comparable contemporary art exhibition at that institution. Not out of malice or design but largely because of the history of the space and the personnel. Nevertheless, it should be just as easy to plug-in a network connection as it is electricity, as just one small example. But ifs not, and until it is, institutions will when interfacing and their audiences only be compounding their problems the digital. The problem is totally solvable, but perhaps primarily in the design of new facilities. No facility should be built today that does not assume that significant network and computing resources will be required in potentially any area of the institution at one time or another. The Challenge of Legal Bug A "legal bug" is a concept that the artist group Knowbotic Research coined when their installation for Open Source Art Hack. Minds of Concern was shut down not because of infrastructure issues, exactly, but because of a contractual obligation on the part of the institution hosting the show. _[iv] supposedly 7 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003\papers\dietz\dietz.html Figure 7 : "Minds of Concern," 2002, Knowbotic Research. Installation view at the New Museum, New York. Minds of Concern uses port scanning, a technique that is sometimes used by hackers to determine whether there are any weaknesses in a server. Knowbotic's use was simply the scanning, no hacking. After extensive consultation with legal experts around the United States, it was determined that this is essentially like looking in a window or open door from across the street. As long as you don't enter, there is no crime. For Knowbotic's use, they were alerting various non- profits when there was an insecurity in their system. It did not matter that this was the museum's or at least not illegal activity a legally protected activity "shrinkwrap" contract with its upstream Internet Service Provider included a apparently standard - that no port scanning was allowed, blanket clause regardless of intent. of a public and necessity Knowbotic's point was that there is the possibility domain in the digital realm, but that regardless of the public law around the issues, which in itself is problematic, the standard operating practice of shrinkwrap licenses and their equivalents was severely restricting the actual scope of the public domain. Legal bugs, so to speak, are undermining public space in the digital realm. My point is that institutions, while often overwhelmed by the financial burden of litigation, understand and can protest cogently and strongly an artist's right to fair use, to parody, etc. But in the digital domain, it is often terra incognita, and so much easier to simply say "it's in the contract," and let the lights go dim. As the digital sphere becomes increasingly privatized, interfacing it becomes increasingly compromised. The Challenge of Presentation One can list dozens of other challenges to interfacing the digital, but I would like to end with three examples of the presentation of work in physical space. These are not intended, naturally, as universal solutions, but as case studies of attempts 8 BEST COPY AVAILABLE 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003 \papers\ dietz\ dietz.html to solve particular issues in specific situations. Lers Entertain and Art Entertainment Network As I said earlier, the interface that we created for the online exhibition Art Entertainment Network, was designed as a portal; a format "native" to the network. Once we had decided on this exhibition design, we commissioned Antenna Design in New York to create a physical interface, which could be used in the galleries as part of the parallel exhibition of visual arts, Let's Entertain (http://www.walkerartorglva/letsentertain/le content.html). Figure 8 : Door-Portal for Art Entertainment Network as part of Let's Entertain, Walker Art Center Antenna designed a freestanding, revolving door, which acted as a kind of portal between the physical space of the exhibition and the virtual space of the online artworks. As you push the door around, it automatically calls up the home page of each project. A touchpad allows you to interact with the work. This door could hold its own, so to speak, with the other installations in the exhibition. At the same time, it was appropriate to the concept of the online as a portal. It also didn't assume that the goal of the interface was to interface create a comfortable browsing situation for hours of enjoyment. Like much gallery 9 5/27/2003 file://E:\mw2003\papers\dietz\dietz.html behavior it was designed for more casual browsing. A holder next to the didactic label contained printed bookmarks, which visitors could take and use to later log on to the site at their convenience and in their favorite viewing position. Architecture for Temporary Autonomous Sarai The Walker's most recent commission is a collaboration between Raqs Media Collective from Delhi and Atelier Bow-Wow, an architectural practice in Tokyo, Architecture for Temporary Autonomous Sarai, which is part of the How Latitudes Become Forms exhibition, currently on view. first online and then in From a visit to Rags Media Collective's Sarai project I was very impressed with their genealogy of the idea of the sarai as well Delhi as with the energy, levels of interaction, and quality of output. This is how Rags described Sarai in a conversation with myself, Yukiko Shikata, and Gunalan Nadarajan that undergirded the parallel online exhibition, Trans locations. ".. for us, the creation of a sarai was to create a 'home for nomads' and a resting place for practices of new media nomadism. Traditionally, sarais were also nodes in the communications system (horse-mail!) and spaces where theatrical entertainments, music, dervish dancing, and philosophical disputes could all be staged. They were hospitable to a wide variety of journeysphysical, cultural, and intellectual. In medieval Central and South Asia, sarais were the typical spaces for a concrete translocality, with their own culture of custodial care, conviviality, and refuge. They also contributed to syncretic languages and ways of being. We would do well to emulate even in part aspects of this tradition in the pew media culture of today.... This might create oases of locatedness along the global trade routes of new media culture.(Transcript, Trans locations, full transcripts at: http://latitudes.walkerartorg/translocationsi) A sarai was exactly what was needed for the How Latitudes Become Forms a place for social intercourse, both onsite and translocally; a place exhibition for the investigation of both artists' work and the exhibition context. Another artist group in the exhibition was the Tokyo-based architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima, who are proponents of what they have named da-me or no-good architecture. Multi layered structures with varied uses (underpass + cinema + bar + barbershop + store, for example), these buildings epitomize, for them, a new creative, adaptive aesthetic. We decided to ask Raqs and Bow-Wow to collaborate on a "Temporary something that was physically modest, intended to be Autonomous Sarai" temporary, and programmatically could function as a sarai for the exhibition. 1 0 5/27/2003 file://E: \mw2003 \papers\ dietz dietz.html