Joseph Nechvatal on Thu, 20 Jan 2000 22:04:16 GMT |
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Syndicate: San Francisco Museum Creates $50,000 Internet Art Award |
  January 20, 2000 New York Times                          By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL                          San Francisco Museum Creates $50,000                          Internet Art Award                                 In the hope that it will serve as a generous incentive for contemporary artists to                                 forsake the canvas for the computer keyboard, the San Francisco Museum of                                 Modern Art is establishing a $50,000 annual competition for Internet art, part of                          the museum's ambitious plans for stimulating interest in the emerging genre.                          The SFMOMA Webby Prize for Excellence in Online Art will go to as many as three                          digital artists for their overall work, not for specific projects. The cash prize,                          financed by an anonymous donor, will be divided among the winners. The first                          recipients will be announced on May 11 in San Francisco at the annual ceremony for                          the Webby Awards, which are billed as the Internet's version of the Oscars                          In a telephone interview, David A. Ross,                          SFMOMA's director, said the new award was                          designed to call attention to the Internet as a                          medium for creative expression and to                          encourage artists to explore its aesthetic                          potential. The prize, he said, was also meant to                          "spur additional thinking about what kind of                          activity takes place on the Web in an artistic                          framework."                          "It's not like awarding the best movie of the                          year," Ross said. "It's a broader prize for                          artistic vision."                          Even though the number of commissions and                          foundation grants for online-art projects is                          gradually increasing, competitions are still rare.                          To date, the most prestigious has been the ".net"                          category of the Prix Ars Electronica, hosted                          annually by the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria. The top prize for 1999, about                          $8,600, went to the operating system Linux. The SFMOMA award is closer in value to                          the 20,000 pounds (about $33,000) attached to the Turner Prize, given each year by                          London's Tate Gallery to a British artist under 50 working in any medium.                          The competition is only one element in SFMOMA's broad agenda for the digital arts.                          To fill its slot for a curator of media arts, the museum has hired Benjamin Weil, the                          co-founder of ada'web, a seminal Internet-art site that from 1994 to 1998 induced                          such well-known artists as Doug Aitken and Jenny Holzer to experiment with the                          Internet.                          In mid-February, SFMOMA will launch a redesigned and expanded Web site with a                          strong educational focus and an online gallery for Internet art. And at midnight on                          January 1, 2001, the Internet version of the museum's exhibit "010101: Art in                          Technological Times" will open. It is expected to feature a number of newly                          commissioned Internet-based works.                          Ross said the museum's commitment to media art in general, and digital art in                          particular, was no different than the embrace of photography and video art by cultural                          institutions over the past decades. "It would be rather more odd not to have such a                          program in a contemporary art museum today," he said.                                                                                                             But in addition to suiting Ross's own                                                                                                             cutting-edge curatorial sensibilities --                                                                                                             in a lecture last year, he tried to                                                                                                             identify the 21 distinctive qualities of                                                                                                             Net art -- the museum's focus on                                                                                                             high-tech art also represents a savvy                                                                                                             fundraising strategy. Ross joined the                                                                                                             museum in June 1998 after a                                                                                                             seven-year stint as director of the                                                                                                             Whitney Museum of American Art in                                                                                                             New York. Although SFMOMA has                                                                                                             made a raft of important acquisitions                                                                                                             since then, Ross acknowledged he                                                                                                             has made limited progress in                          attracting financial support from the wealthy entrepreneurs of nearby Silicon Valley.                          What better way to draw dollars than to appeal to the future philanthropists in their                          own language?                          And there are plenty of opportunities. While American museums are using the Web                          for marketing and educational purposes, most have been slow to consider the Internet                          as a platform for presenting art. Noteworthy exceptions are the Walker Art Center in                          Minneapolis and the Dia Center for the Arts in Manhattan, which regularly                          commission and display works created expressly for the digital medium.                          Ross disputed the notion that museums have been, at best, inching toward the                          Internet. Administrators who want their institutions to be involved in media art, he                          said, "have recognized that to be serious about it means substantial changes in the                          structure of the museum."                          At SFMOMA, that means the online gallery, dubbed "e.space," will be devoted to                          Internet-based work instead of tiny reproductions of paintings. The first exhibit will                          be a selection of five Web sites from the museum's design collection. It will be                          followed in April by "Locomotion: Moving without Moving," which will be assembled                          by Aaron Betsky, SFMOMA's highly regarded curator of architecture and design, and                          will look at how dance and other forms of movement are transformed into data.                          Weil said one of his goals would be to position Internet                          art in relation to the museum's extensive collection of                          video art. He also intends to invite technical experts to                          speak at the museum on topics like streaming media, as                          he did while at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts,                          encouraging them to feel welcome in a cultural                          environment. And he would like to build an international                          network of regional online-art resources. "As much as                          we talk about the Net being global," he remarked, "it's                          still very hard to find out what's happening locally."                          Ross said the SFMOMA Webby Prize was conceived in the summer of 1997 while he                          and friend, a New York philanthropist who wishes to remain anonymous, were                          walking on a beach in Martha's Vineyard. They agreed that the genre had not yet                          progressed enough to justify a prize, but his friend's offer to provide the money for it                          remained open. Last year, while Ross was serving on the jury for the Webby Awards                          art category, he was sufficiently impressed with the diversity of the entries to                          contact his friend. Tiffany Shlain, founder of the International Academy of Digital                          Arts and Sciences, which holds the Webby event, agreed to administer the                          competition.                          The SFMOMA Webby Prize will be selected by a jury composed of four SFMOMA                          curators and three outside experts. An international call for entries will be issued                          Feb. 21. On May 12, the day after the awards ceremony, SFMOMA will hold a                          symposium about online art, with the winning artists invited to participate in                          discussions of the genre. "One of the reasons we're doing the award program is to                          generate some critical response," Ross said. Matthew Mirapaul at mirapaul@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and                          suggestions. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress