Collecting Art: new media art and audience

New media art is a dynamic set of artforms using computer technology, including internet art, interactive video installations, social networking media art, and software art. This art is starting to be collected by museums, galleries and private collectors, including Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. Although there is much research published on the use of new media as a collections management, online documentation or museum education tool, there is very little published material to help arts workers and academics with collecting new media art itself. In particular, collecting new media art that is interactive or participative can offer useful case studies to inform the current interest in participation across contemporary art, because it fundamentally affects the role of the audience in relation to art. If art collections can be tagged or selected by users themselves, then this also changes the relationship between audiences and collections.

The CRUMB resource aims to help curators, academics and arts workers with these new challenges, by sharing examples of projects, by curating exhibitions of new media art, and by publishing analytical writing on the different histories of new media art. CRUMB has an international network of specialists in the field, and has undertaken consultancy for the Arts Council of England, amongst others. In 2010, CRUMB was invited by the national organisation Contemporary Art Society to collaborate on the symposium 'Commissioning and Collecting Variable Media' which included speaker Benjamin Weil, formerly of SFMOMA. Also in 2010, Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook's authored book Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media contained elements on collections, and audience, but these need to be developed and expanded.

Professor Beryl Graham's Fellowship therefore seeks to spend time developing research on collecting new media art, in relation to audience, and will have outcomes in the form of a book, and interviews and other material on the CRUMB web site.

The proposed research impact plan is based on what has worked particularly well in previous CRUMB methods and outputs, with particular targets for policy-level, professional and media impacts. Because CRUMB often uses collaborative and participative methods of research, including workshops and the active CRUMB discussion list, the co-producers, 'users' and beneficiaries of the research overlap productively.

The beneficiaries of the research include artists, arts and media workers, curators, and a wider public interested in culture and technology, as well as academics. They benefit not only as 'receivers' of high-quality publications, but also as participants in discussion and the development of new debates.

Mechanisms for ensuring benefit are based on past experience of fully-booked events, feedback and evaluation of exhibitions, and well distributed publications (the MIT book Rethinking Curating went to reprint after 9 months, and has sold over 2400 copies to March 2011). Particular efforts are being made to make the book well-illustrated, and hence of wider appeal than some academic books.

By encouraging public and private buyers to collect new media artworks, the research is of obvious commercial and economic benefit to artists. By including international collections in the research, this would include benefits to British artists from abroad, and advice has been sought from British Council concerning how this can be of most benefit. There is also economic benefit in Ashgate selling books abroad.

At a governmental, policy and public sector level, past consultancy work for Arts Council England North West will feed into a possible future consultancy for The British Council concerning commissioning new media art for collection. Past policy panels concerning new media collections at Institute for Network Cultures in Amsterdam and Tate in London will carry forward into ongoing research networks. Past symposia with attendance by, and policy-level feedback to Arts Council England such as the CRUMB/CAS Symposium on Commissioning and Collecting Variable Media in 2010, and the Harris Museum symposium Current: An Experiment in Collecting Art Debate, will inform this research and future symposia. The research therefore aims to improve the benefits of research expertise offered to policy bodies, and to inform collecting policies internationally.

Professional and practitioner groups: Past work with the bodies above makes the most of existing strong professional networks, and feeds into policy-level research. Past professional development and masterclass events at an international level, including Caitlin Jones at AV Festival 08, and at Eyebeam New York in 2009, showed a high demand, and aim to continue professional/academic knowledge transfer.

Museums and galleries are of obvious importance for curatorial research, and by producing publications and a web site specifically aimed to be of use to professionals, research can be seen to be useful. By including medium-sized regional galleries such as Harris in Preston, and online collections, a more widely accessible approach is intended.

Local communities and the wider public are addressed via the web site and discussion list, which are free and open to all. The organisations involved also run workshops as well as more formal events.