Curating New Media Art - Networks and Collaborations
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Sunderland
Department Name: Arts and Design
Abstract
New media art is a dynamic set of artforms using computer technology, including net art, interactive video installations, and software art. This artwork sometimes uses only the internet as a means of distribution, and is often misunderstood by curators and art critics. Some museums and galleries have started exhibiting new media art, and have effectively reached new audiences by understanding new artists and their ways of working. Others have struggled with exhibiting artworks which might have a new means of distribution, might be participative, activist, or might evolve over time.
Sometimes the artworks fall into the gaps between curatorial departments, and sometimes curators are simply unaware of the artwork itself, or of the different histories of new media art, from conceptual art, or video art, to activist media histories. Sometimes the web site of a gallery is regarded only as a marketing tool, rather than being an exhibition site for art.
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.
Sometimes the artworks fall into the gaps between curatorial departments, and sometimes curators are simply unaware of the artwork itself, or of the different histories of new media art, from conceptual art, or video art, to activist media histories. Sometimes the web site of a gallery is regarded only as a marketing tool, rather than being an exhibition site for art.
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.
Publications
Beryl Graham (Author)
(2009)
White Heat and Cold Logic: British computer arts 1960-1980. An historical and critical analysis.
Beryl Graham (Author)
(2008)
Curator as editor, translator or god? Edited CRUMB discussion list theme
in Vagueterrain
Beryl, G
(2011)
Museums, New Media Art, Documentation and Collection
in Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2011)
Gfader V
(2008)
Nervous Light Planes
in Animation
Graham B
(2013)
The International Handbooks of Museum Studies
Graham Beryl
(2010)
Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media
Graham, B
(2010)
Art Practice in a Digital Culture
Graham, B
(2010)
The future isn't what it used to be
Graham, B
(2010)
Recorders
Graham, B
(2011)
The Mobile Audience: Media Art and Mobile Technologies
| Title | Beam Me Up |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Title | Broadcast Yourself: Artists interventions into television and strategies for self-broadcasting from the 1970s to Today |
| Description | Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle; Cornerhouse, Manchester. Curated by Sarah Cook and Kathy Rae Huffman. With work from Shaina Anand, Active Ingredient, Miranda July, Doug Hall and Chip Lord, Bill Viola, Chris Burden, VGTV, Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie and others, co-curated with Kathy Rae Huffman for AV Festival 08: Broadcast. Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle, Feb 28 - April 5 2008; Cornerhouse, Manchester, June 13 - August 10, 2008. The exhibition also involved: - Broadcast Yourself paper presentation at Future Histories of the Moving Image, Conference, University of Sunderland, 16-18 November 2007. - Broadcast Yourself invited speaker and paper presentation at Video Vortex Conference in Amsterdam on the panel Curating Online Video, 18-19 January 2008. The paper was subsequently published as "The work of art in the age of ubiquitous narrowcasting? What early artist-led interventions into television broadcasting can teach artists about putting themselves online." In Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008, It is available online from http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/ or http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/videovortex/ - A performance and discussion with Joseph Delappe and Rod Dickinson at the Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle, October 24, 2007. - A performance and presentation by Cory Arcangel at the Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle, December 5, 2007 (transcription is in the process of being edited and will be made available online). |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2008 |
| Impact | In 2008 AV Festival invited Sarah Cook with curator Kathy Rae Huffman to curate the first official AV large-scale group exhibition Broadcast Yourself, which deliberately built bridges between video and newer media. The exhibition toured to Cornerhouse Manchester and was seen by over 9,000 people, and Art Monthly said "There is something immediately welcome ... about an exhibition devoted to the way that artists over the past 40 years have succeeded in opening TV up as a cultural forum " (Usherwood 2008). In Newcastle, the exhibition received the most visitors of any AV exhibition, around 4,700, and was described by audiences as of high artistic quality, "Compelling and illuminating" and "thought provoking", and by a festival artist Atau Tanaka as "A very well curated exhibit." (ANE 2008, pp. 11, 12, 73). |
| URL | http://www.broadcastyourself.net/ |
| Title | Johanna Billing: Another Album |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Title | My Own Private Reality: Growing up online in the 90s and 00s |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Title | SCANZ 2009: Raranga Tangata |
| Description | Exhibition curated by Dominic Smith |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Impact | Informed future work of the host organisation and researcher |
| Title | The Imagined Archive |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Title | Untethered: A Sculpture Garden of Readymades |
| Description | Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York. Untethered: A Sculpture Garden of Readymades, with work by Max Dean, Thomson&Craighead, Michel de Broin, Joe Winter, JooYoun Paek, Paul DeMarinis, Germaine Koh, Sascha Pohflepp and others, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York. September 25 - October 25, 2008 |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2008 |
| Impact | Audience, 1200 |
| URL | http://www.eyebeam.org/events/untethered |
| Title | an InviTe For mAking OrnAmentS |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Title | film< >juxtapositions |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Description | See final report jes-931270. See also narrative impact. The subject area of curating new media art is interdisciplinary, and we have outputs targeting both curators, and new media art, placing both in the context of the wider field of contemporary art. The key output for impact on the subject area is the Graham and Cook book Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media published by MIT Press (February 2010). The book has gone to reprint only 4 months after publication, is extremely well distributed internationally, and MIT has received enquiries as to whether it will be produced in other languages, including Chinese. It already appears on the reading lists of curating courses, and new media courses, and has received excellent reviews (for example, http://rhizome.org/editorial/3617). Citations already exist (including the proceedings of the ISEA 2010 symposium in Germany). Other publications (see Achievements) include chapters in books by leading academic publishers. Citations of CRUMB publications appear in books including Recoding the Museum (Routledge), MediaArtHistories (MIT), The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design (Springer Verlag), Issues in Curating, Contemporary Art and Performance (Intellect), and Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon). |
| Exploitation Route | See final report jes-931270. Beryl Graham's publications have been cited in over 60 publications by other people. See also Impact. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Other |
| URL | http://www.crumbweb.org |
| Description | See also final report jes-931270. The development of a useable taxonomy for 'new media art' is a thread running through the research, and has proved relevant to museums and publishers (for example, Sarah Cook is now advising on metadata for Rhizome, the major New York based archive of media art, and Beryl Graham is on the advisory panel for the Database of Virtual Art in Berlin). Rigorous editing and analysis of the gathered information into research outputs relevant to professionals and academics is an important key to the project. CRUMB researchers have also been invited onto the boards/panels of: Tate research - New media art network on authenticity and performativity ISEA 20011 Istanbul International Advisory Board. Leonardo Electronic Almanac Editorial Board (USA). Database of Virtual Art (Berlin Humboldt Univ.) International Advisory Board. UNESCO Digiarts Virtual Library expert advisor. Together, this evidence indicates an impact upon the academic subject area at an international level, and with particular emphasis on grant aim number 4 - "writing and publishing considered critical works as overviews of research, and developing a rigorous critical language and taxonomy for debating new media art." Outside Academia, Grant aims explicitly included professional as well as academic impact, and this has been particularly successful in symposia: The Caitlin Jones (formerly of Guggenheim New York) professional development seminar on documentation in 2008 was well oversubscribed, and the audience included contemporary art international curators, arts funders and policy makers including Arts Council England and British Council, as well as academics and artists. The Curatorial Masterclass on Open Source and Curatorial Practice in collaboration with research partner Eyebeam in New York in 2009 built upon Eyebeam's experience in masterclasses and Open Source debate, and has fed into exhibitions including those by Chelsea Art Museum. The Commissioning & Collecting Variable Media symposium at BALTIC, 2010, was a collaboration with Contemporary Art Society and successfully targeted curators at museums nationally and internationally. The recent Crafts Council symposium in London on Curating, Craft and New Technologies, was directly informed by attendance at this event. In publishing, catalogue essays for artists including Rafael Lozano Hemmer and Studer and van der Berg have helped reach a professional audience, and the carefully selected web site interviews with international curators have now been enhanced by Axel Lapp's work on the two Green Box books of interviews. Exhibitions are a major way in which research aims were articulated to professional and wider audiences: In addition to the three major exhibitions outlined in Achievements - 'Untethered' at Eyebeam New York, 'Broadcast Yourself' at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle and Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2008, and 'My Own Private Reality' Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, Germany, there have been other exhibitions with impact and varied international audiences: Sarah Cook: - 2009 Subjective Projections: Adam Shecter, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefelder, Germany, September 23 - October 13. - 2009 Beam Me Up, (online commissions about outer space with work from Joe Winter, Jamie O'Shea and Alec Finlay), Xcult.org, launched in June. - 2009 SCANZ 2009: Raranga Tangata, co-curated with Mercedes Vincente, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, February 6 - February 29. Verina Gfader: - 2009 Johanna Billing: Another Album. March 20. E:vent, London. - 2009 The Imagined Archive by Jon Garlick. May 07 - May 21. Add-Art. - 2009 "an InviTe For mAking OrnAmentS" Workshop with Merce Rodrigo Garcia, Serpentine Pavilion, Hyde Park. October 09. Contribution by SANAA Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa. Project Student Dominic Smith has organised several exhibitions and workshops around his research, including Random Information Exchange in Liverpool, New Zealand and Belfast, and Shredder at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle in 2010 (see http://ptechnic.org/). Project Student Adinda van 't Klooster has also exhibited work concerning emotion and embodiment in Belfast as part of ISEA 2009. The CRUMB Crisis/Bliss series of workshops have also engaged with a wider public at more popular level, and by maintaining contacts databases and event evaluation, we find that audiences cross over between events, online participation and international networks. Together, these strategies have fed forward into demonstrable impacts upon a wide audience, from popular to policy level- invitations to act as consultants, (in the past, Arts Council England, and now British Council) indicate possible future impact at a policy-level. The impacts are upon the practice and policy of arts organisations and arts organisers in relation to producing and exhibiting new media art, and hence include economic impact on artists and benefits to audiences. At Eyebeam in New York, the working practices moved from being purely a creative industries 'production lab' with artist/designer residencies, to being also concerned with curating and exhibiting the work: CRUMB chose Eyebeam as a research partner and in 2010 they hosted Dr. Cook's research - their first curatorial residency. The exhibitions Interactivos and Untethered curated by Cook there, and Curatorial Masterclass on Open Source and Curatorial Practice fundamentally changed the institutional understandings of the relationship between production and exhibition (Cook 2008). The exhibitions brought many visitors to Eyebeam, and brought new press attention, including Rhizome (Graham 2010, Moss 2010). The legacy was that Eyebeam staff including a Program Coordinator started curating substantial exhibitions there for the first time, and established further curatorial residencies at Eyebeam from 2011 (2). Attendance by curators and artists at the masterclass resulted in new knowledge being put to work in their individual exhibition practices, including those at Google's New York headquarters organised by Chelsea Art Museum (3). Impacts on the AV Festival (an international audiovisual biennial based around Tyneside Cinema). CRUMB has organized public events at every AV Festival since 2006, and is acknowledged in the festival's evaluation reports (ANE 2008). In 2008 AV Festival invited Sarah Cook with curator Kathy Rae Huffman to curate the first official AV large-scale group exhibition Broadcast Yourself, which deliberately built bridges between video and newer media. The exhibition toured to Cornerhouse Manchester and was seen by over 9,000 people, and Art Monthly said "There is something immediately welcome ... about an exhibition devoted to the way that artists over the past 40 years have succeeded in opening TV up as a cultural forum " (Usherwood 2008). In Newcastle, the exhibition received the most visitors of any AV exhibition, around 4,700, and was described by audiences as of high artistic quality, "Compelling and illuminating" and "thought provoking", and by a festival artist Atau Tanaka as "A very well curated exhibit." (ANE 2008, pp. 11, 12, 73). Other key AV events for impacts on other curators and policy makers included Professional Development Workshops Distribution and Dissemination After New Media in 2012 and Documenting New Media Art in 2008 with curator and archivist Caitlin Jones (formerly of the Guggenheim Museum in New York). The workshop sold out, and the audience included contemporary art international curators, arts funders and policy makers including Arts Council England and British Council, as well as academics and artists. Feedback forms from the event stated that 98% of attendees felt that their future practice would be changed by the workshop (Jones 2008). In 2012 the Tyneside Cinema, informed by these developments, advertised the new post of Digital Media Projects Manager, and this post was filled by a researcher completing his PhD concerning participatory and open source art projects with CRUMB (AHRC Research Grant studentship). He has since collaborated with CRUMB as a professional, including the Surreptitious Networks professional development day (Pixel Palace, CRUMB and an 2013), and implemented 'Pixel Palace', a new digital media programme at Tyneside Cinema which involves many young people, "drawing upon knowledge gained with CRUMB " (1). He was recently invited to speak at BBC Academy/Arts Council digital partnership 'Building Digital Capacity for the Arts' and is passing on the knowledge at the policy-level. Postdoctoral CRUMB post 2013 Isabella Streffen co-curated Surreptitious Networks with Tyneside cinema, and curators at all levels have been attracted to the region, and are impacting upon local audiences. Like the Digital Media Projects Manager, they aim to work with arts organisations and in turn affect their policies: PhD Student 2011-14 Marialaura Ghidini programmed the 2012 workshop for AV festival, and Hybrid Curatorial Models: Producing and Publishing a professional development workshop for curators in New Delhi, exhibitions at Grand Union in Birmingham, and also online with Or-bits. A Senior Post-Doctoral Fellow with CRUMB 2009-10, has since become a curator of MEWO Kunsthalle and Strigel-Museum in Germany and has included new media art exhibitions (4). Curators sharing knowledge on the CRUMB discussion list have included curators from Eyebeam, Guggenheim, and V&A. CRUMB research can therefore be seen to impact on the practice of curators, who then go on to influence other curators, in both art and creative industries contexts. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2007 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Economic |
| Description | International Centre for Photography: Infinity Awards. New York. Invited Nominator and invited Jury member. |
| Geographic Reach | North America |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | 2017 International Centre for Photography: Infinity Awards. New York. Invited Nominator. 2016 International Centre for Photography: Infinity Awards. New York. Invited Jury member. |
| URL | https://www.icp.org/infinity-awards |
| Description | Swiss National Science Foundation Research funding application reviewer |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Impact | 2017-onwards Swiss National Science Foundation Research funding application reviewer. |
| Description | Eyebeam |
| Organisation | Eyebeam Art+Technology Centre |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Provide a Curator is residence at Eyebeam |
| Collaborator Contribution | Hosting a curator in residence, a masterclass and and 2 exhibitions at Eyebeam |
| Impact | Untethered: A Sculpture Garden of Readymades Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York. 1200 Curated by Sarah Cook: - Interactivos. Work by partoicipant in MediaLab Prado, Madrid, intensive 7 day workshop. - Untethered: A Sculpture Garden of Readymades, with work by Max Dean, Thomson&Craighead, Michel de Broin, Joe Winter, JooYoun Paek, Paul DeMarinis, Germaine Koh, Sascha Pohflepp and others, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York. September 25 - October 25, 2008 - Curatorial Masterclass: Open Source and Curatorial Practice, with Eyebeam, New York, 2009. The masterclass, and exhibitions 'Interactivos' and 'Untethered' curated by Sarah Cook there, have fundamentally changed the institutional understandings of the relationship between production and exhibition. Eyebeam is now seen as a more valid contemporary art exhibition venue in New York, and permanent Eyebeam staff have started curating substantial exhibitions there for the first time. Discussion with Eyebeam have agreed to continue the relationship with a focus on developing the curatorial skills of Eyebeam staff, and future possible curatorial residencies at Eyebeam. Working in New York has also developed a good network of contacts there, including artists, galleries, museums and universities, which feed into many different events. ( |
| Start Year | 2008 |
| Description | Lancaster |
| Organisation | Lancaster University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Co-programming the conference "Real-Time: Showing Art In The Age Of New Media" |
| Collaborator Contribution | Co-programming the conference "Real-Time: Showing Art In The Age Of New Media" with University of Lancaster for AND Festival, Liverpool, 2009. |
| Impact | Real-Time: Showing Art In The Age Of New Media with University of Lancaster for AND Festival, Liverpool, 2009. |
| Start Year | 2007 |