Just replied offline to Luke, putting him in touch with Oliver Grau who runs the other ADA project
two cents worth: Digital: for fifty-odd years this wasn’t ubiquitous: anyone older than forty will remember trying to explain to people what email was or the web. The problem with the idea of The Digital (and I share din this) was speaking/writing as if there were only one. From roughly 1915 to roughly 2000, the word “film” meant a flat rectangular movie made with photomechanical technologies. From about 1949 to about 2000, TV meant a flow of images and sound sectioned into programmes / ads/ dents etc using basic set-ups and kit. Thus the idea that ‘film’ and ‘TV’ were medium-specific media. Digital was never that specific. Instead, like post 2000 film / TV (print, sculpture, take your pick), each new job involved inventing new plug-ins at least, often new software, not infrequently new machinery. Digital = medium very specific. To understand a work, you need to understand the specific kit used. this would be one reason why things in the archive look dated. Um. Satchmo c. 1926 sounds “dated”. The General looks dated. 80s synth pop sounds dated. Inventing a new way of making and distributing involves things that we like and things we don’t like decades later. The important thing is that the invention of a new medium - and the digital was not always ubiquitous and familiar - involved loads of things we no longer use and have forgotten. Whatever happened to vector screens? Why is CSS “better” when it ends the user’s control over design? Is there nothing to learn from the lost experiments of the past? the archive is a living entity - Derrida and Foucault were wrong. Or if not: when the archive already exists (as in state archives) it may be an instrument of power - when WE build an archive it may be an instrument of counter-power Kaupapa maori has something to teach us about how to respect the past sean > On 12 Jan 2015, at 21:54, John Hopkins <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12/Jan/15 13:52, Luke Munn wrote: >> Contains some great learnings on how not to setup a digital archive. > > snip... yep Luke, I agree... > >> The distinct (and must be said, dated) aesthetic of most of these works >> nevertheless poses an interesting question for our ADA too. What role does >> the 'digital' now have as commonality when digital and network technologies >> have shifted from marginal to ubiquitous? In other words, when the internet >> has become banality and 'every artist working today is a post internet >> artist, lets move on' (Darling), does it make any sense to differentiate >> 'digital' as both a separate medium and community? When 90% of your >> 'viewers' are hits on your website looking at photoshopped documentation >> taken with CCD chips, where is the boundary line? I don't really have >> answers to these questions, and personally find communities like ADA, >> Rhizome and Net-time hugely beneficial, but its worth thinking about what >> we mean with terms like 'digital art' and what the real common threads in >> these works and communities are. > > There was a similar implosion in the 'world' of art photography when it came > 'round that it simply another tool for an artist to use, another way of > putting a mark on paper. Across Europe & elsewhere numerous photo museums and > photo 'centers' closed because the distinction that it was a 'special' medium > was redundant. They were used in the heyday as funding tools to secure > funding/public support for artists working in that 'revolutionary new > medium'... This after a decades-long fight to be 'recognized' as an art > medium at all... sounds familiar... > > In the digital it is somewhat similar -- with only narrow slices not meant > for projection/screen or, in some cases still, paper or other 2D substrate -- > or analog speakers -- there isn't much that does not 'fit' under what has > become a swath of traditional rubrics: sound art, documentation of > performance art, moving images, etc. > > Certainly projects that are using/creating digital tools to do other things > is imho a legit application of the 'digital art' idea. As an artist that > worked and still occasionally works using 'the network' as site and partially > as medium, even that area of working seems to have become ubiquitous (and in > a perverse way, utterly banal) -- to the point that I keep running into > younger artist who tell me they are doing "the first network music > collaboration" of some sort, huh? > > The whole field seems to be a mash-up of sustainability, diy, diwo, > 3D-printing, bio-art, balh-blah-blah, and whatever the latest spin tossed out > by Silicon Valley. Yep, the distinction is becoming passé... > > JH > -- > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD > grounded on a granite batholith > twitter: @neoscenes > http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > _______________________________________________ > 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
