Re: <nettime> crush: a response to crash

["conceptualart.org" <curator@conceptualart.org>]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, melinda rackham wrote:

> >little joy). The museum does not fear the net at all, as suggested below.
> >The opposite is true, they hate the screen. Steve Dietz's only sin (other
> 
> i should imagine that museums now love net.art because they can still 
> get away with paying net.artist so little to link to or show thier 
> work.. now when all of us take out sites offline unless we are paid 
> similarly to the other types of artist that show in museums..i don't 
> see how that will change..

Yes, the museums do indeed love to point their web sites at those of net
artists from time to time to help provide the museum with a certain
"downtown" cachet, and virtually free of charge.  Our suggestion is that
museums get concerned when net art starts to blatantly exploit those
aspects of the network that are less tangible, less commodifiable, and
more technical. In sympathy with your suggestion.....  what will happen
when net art becomes something that the museum cannot simply link to? 
What happens when net artists work with non-browser based approaches to
the use of the network?  How much do museums support that kind of work? 

We do not mean to suggest that the museum is neccesarily afraid of net
art, only that by and large, museums don't understand what net art can be
beyond the browser and it's imagery.... keep in mind that the article in
question referenced a panel of predominantly American (largely
Californian) academics, and most of these comments are based on that
experience. 
 
We at conceptualart.org have encountered numerous classics of net art on
several MOOs, but have yet to hear about institutional support or praise
for art produced in multi-user, real-time, text based environments, at
least not on par with the lip service given to browser based net art.

While we are not against the exploration of the potentials of the browser,
we are particularly interested in possibilities beyond the browser, and we
do not believe that the museums we are most familiar with have embraced
those possibilities in the least. 

curator, conceptualart.org





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