Net Aesthetics 2.0

the New Museum
Event Link
Rhizome.org and EAI are pleased to present a panel that will consider current expressions of Internet art in light of larger technological and cultural shifts. Over the past ten years, Internet-based art has transformed, moving away from a medium defined by an intimate, international avant-garde towards a more loose and dispersed range of conceptual and formal practices. This development has, in large part, to do with the expanded and diversified terrain of the Web itself. What was previously a thin network of interlinked pages, construction signs, and awkward animated gifs is now a sprawling area, home to some of the best new business models, largest communities, and billions of users both amateur and expert---a second stage some call the "Web 2.0." Now, artists working on, or drawing source material from the Internet, face not only a faster, richer, more complicated landscape, but also one whose parameters for art practice are continually being pushed out by artists and non-artists alike.

For this panel, artists Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, Marisa Olson, and Wolfgang Staehle will join curators Caitlin Jones and Michael Connor to discuss how the nature of online practice has changed over Internet art's first decade. Panelists will touch upon current themes and trends including performance, contagion, sampling, blogging, video and animation, and the ongoing challenges of translating Internet-based art into gallery and museum spaces.

Organized and moderated by Lauren Cornell for Rhizome.org.

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Panelists:

Cory Arcangel is a computer artist, performer, and curator who lives and works in Brooklyn. His work centers on his love of personal computers and the internet. He is a member of the artist groups BEIGE and Radical Software Group (RSG). His work has shown recently in the Whitney Biennial of American Art; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Migros Museum in Zurich; the Royal Academy of Art in London; and Team and Deitch Galleries in New York. Aside from being seen installed in galleries and museums, most of his projects can be downloaded with source code from his Internet Web log at www.beigerecords.com/cory/

Michael Bell-Smith is a New York-based artist whose work focuses on popular culture and how it is mediated through popular technology. He has exhibited his work on the Internet as well as in traditional venues, including Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; Foxy Production, New York; [plug.in], Basel, Switzerland; Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK; and PROJECKT 0047, Berlin, Germany. He has spoken on copyright and appropriation at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired (online), and Entertainment Weekly (online).

As Head of Exhibitions at the British Film Institute, Michael Connor is developing a new exhibition space in London dedicated to artists' film, video, and new media. The space, which will be sited within the National Film Theatre complex, opens to the public in autumn 2006. From 2002-2005, Connor worked as Curator at FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) in Liverpool, where he curated and produced a wide range of exhibitions, events and projects for the gallery and online. Before moving to Liverpool, Connor resided in Austin, Texas, where he worked with Cinematexas Film Festival, wrote for the Austin Chronicle and taught media literacy to "at-risk" youth through the Dougherty Arts Center. Connor holds degrees in Media Production and Cultural Studies (Highest Honors) from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Caitlin Jones holds a combined research position in the Curatorial and Conservation departments at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Working in collaboration with the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology and the Variable Media Network, she co-edited the publication "Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach," and was co-curator of Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice at the Guggenheim. Additionaly, Jones was the curatorial assistant on the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin exhibition, Nam June Paik: Global Groove 2004, and her writing on variable media preservation and presentation has appeared in a wide range of international publications. Her most recent article "My Art World is Bigger than Your Art World" can currently be found in the December/January issue of The Believer.

Based in San Francisco, Marisa Olson's work has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and she has most recently performed or exhibited at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Side Cinema-Newcastle, New Langton Arts (SF), Southern Exposure (SF), Foxy Productions, Debs & Co, 31 Grand, Galapagos, Flux Factory, the international Futuresonic, Electrofringe, Machinista, Scope, and VIPER festivals, and elsewhere. She has held residencies and fellowships at Goldsmiths, the New School, Northwestern University, the Technical University-Dresden, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. While Wired has called her both funny and humorous, the New York Times has called her work "anything but stupid." Olson is also Editor and Curator at Large for Rhizome.org, and has curated new media exhibitions in fifteen countries and written for Wired, Flash Art, ArtReview, Afterimage, and others, including Camerawork, which she edited in her three years as Associate Director of SF Camerawork.

Wolfgang Staehle is a New York-based artist and the founder of the net art community The Thing. Staehle started to work with media art in 1996, when he began to produce an ongoing series of live online video streams. The first of these works was Empire 24/7 (picture featured), a continuous recording of the Empire State Building that is broadcast live over the Internet. Staehle has followed Empire 24/7 with online streams of other buildings and landscapes, such as Berlin's Fernsehturm, the Comburg Monastery in Germany and Lower Manhattan around the time of 9/11. His work has recently been included in exhibitions at the Tate Modern, Fondation Cartier pour L'Art Contemporain and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Wolfgang Staehle is represented by Postmasters Gallery.


Moderator:

As Executive Director of Rhizome, Lauren Cornell oversees and develops the organization's programs all of which serve to promote and contextualize new media art. Before starting with Rhizome in May 2005, Cornell worked as curator, writer and arts administrator in New York. She worked in the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum, and from 2002-2004, she served as Executive Director of Ocularis, an organization dedicated to artists' film and video. Cornell also worked as a youth media educator and organizer at various schools and community centers around New York. Her writing on contemporary art, experimental film and new media has been published in a range of international publications and online art resources. She has curated screenings, exhibitions or performances at venues including The Kitchen, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Foxy Production, Participant Inc, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London and the Contemporary Center for Art in Warsaw.

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About Rhizome

Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art community. Rhizome's programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. Our programs include publications, archiving of new media art, commissioning of new artwork, online discussions and offline and online exhibits. Since 2003, Rhizome has been affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

www.rhizome.org

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About EAI

Founded in 1971, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is one of the world's leading nonprofit resources for video art and interactive media. EAI's core program is the international distribution of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI's activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, online resources, and public programs such as exhibitions and lectures. The Online Catalogue provides a comprehensive resource on the 175 artists and 3,000 works in the EAI collection, including extensive research materials and artists Web projects.

Electronic Arts Intermix
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
(212) 337-0680 tel
(212) 337-0679 fax
[email protected]
www.eai.org

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