Thanks Luke and Damian for your input in regard to the problematics of practice and highlighting this aspect of the documentation condition of projects.
I suppose I had been viewing this from a more experiential perspective. Keith Armstrong (http://embodiedmedia.com/) who has done some amazing work, truly, and did rise quickly in the scheme of things. He was also an early adopter of video as a documentation tool for projects and I always saw his rise and the use of video as related. Keiths origin was not in the visual or media arts initially, but outside which is an interesting side note to this. All of us regularly apply for exhibitions, awards and projects using documentation. Consequently although it seems a bit weird to write it now, creative practice in electronic media appears bookended by documentation. Use documentation to apply, if accepted document the project and add it to your archive or site. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining how documentation got into the position that Damian and Luke are talking about? In terms of education context as a result of these considerations, in my New Media class the final project is the work and the video documentation of the work. But as I say, up till now I saw this mostly from the basis of personal experience (Keith and I shared a room at Solar Circuit Tasmania in 2002 and have kept in touch since) and the pragmatics of applying. But perhaps it is much more of a broad feature of practice today. So is there further comment on this, or other issues of practice that are worthwhile taking into account? Best Ian -----Original Message----- From: Luke Munn [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Fri 2/21/2014 1:27 PM To: Ian Clothier Cc: Aotearoa Digital Arts Subject: Re: [Ada_list] The problematics of practice currently I'm going to take documentation to mean work documented in media form and residing online. Damian's point is well observed, although it's not just a media art issue and stems from the shift in art consumption from on site to online. One curator I recently spoke to said the ratio is about 90/10: visitors to the exhibition website versus physical gallery visitors. There's a great essay on this shift from the gallery to the phone in Artforum, and some of the particular qualities that experience foregrounds. It notes, for example, that the grey, monochromatic paintings of Fredrik Vaerslev tend to break the 'pattern matching' visual behaviour which we engage in when consuming art in this infinite scrolling mode (tumblr especially but also facebook, g images, et al). Here's a copy from Tanya Leighton because the Artforum version is now behind a paywall (http://www.tanyaleighton.com/p/p000420/Artforum_summer_2013.pdf). Actually media arts has an advantage here, in that in many cases the work was conceived and produced specifically to be presented / experienced / executed online. Particularly in terms of software or code-based art, the 'primary work' enjoys all the advantages of the network in terms of accessibility and distribution, making any documentation (stills, screencaps, etc) rather moot. Artists like Rafael Rozendaal or Jonas Lund, making work specifically for the browser, or the Speed Show format which rents net cafes and presents one work on each machine, are great examples of leveraging the medium. I know Damian and others make more installation-based or physical media work, and as mentioned it's a harder task to shoot, edit and communicate this back to an online audience. I blame Kickstarter in setting up an expectation where everyone needs a professionally produced video under 3 minutes to convey any idea. ;-) Interestingly though over the last couple years I've noted several artists, media especially, who have opted to keep these spaces somewhat separate. That is, letting events and performances IRL occur while their web presence (site, fb, twitter) is left 'incomplete' or tangential. Incomplete in that works are just listed in plain text or referenced, or tangential in that their own work is hardly referred to, other/wider topics frequently tweeted about, social connections become more important, etc. Jesse Darling and Ryan Trecartin exemplify this latter approach, while Brad Troemel (he of thejogging fame) has a great essay on some of these strategies in "artists looking for an audience" (http://main.bradtroemel.com/Writing/The%20Accidental%20Audience.pdf). cheers, Luke lukemunn.com twitter:@lukemunn On 21 February 2014 12:21, Ian Clothier <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > Forwarded below is a message from Damian Stewart. What he talks about is > one facet of a bunch of issues for media practice. > > Hi Ian, > > To my mind the biggest 'problematic of practice' is that work exists > primarily in documentation: that the immediacy of experiencing a work in > person becomes secondary to the quality of the documentation. Which > means, that both a) having a nice camera and a good eye for film editing > techniques (or budget to hire someone who does) is more important than > the actual work itself, and b) works that film well get more exposure. > > cheers > D > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ada_list mailing list > [email protected] > http://ada.net.nz/ > > > Manage your list membership (Subscribe, Change to digest, Unsubscribe) > http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/ada_list _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://ada.net.nz/ Manage your list membership (Subscribe, Change to digest, Unsubscribe) http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/ada_list
