I sit in a precarious place between honouring an artist’s intentions and making art as accessible as possible to a wide audience. Which, of course, doesn’t always agree with what an artist intends.

I actually think that curators will be the ones to figure out what to “do” with media art.. not artists. Anyways, talking about how to exhibit, and intent is definitely more interesting than “how to sell” I tend to run and hide from discussions about limited edition DVDs by software artists!

I guess my primary interest is how new media is understood as it relates to any artist’s intentions. This obviously varies from person to person, and it’s impossible to have everyone agreeing on how to interpret a piece in a particular space. I sit in a precarious place between honouring an artist’s intentions and making art as accessible as possible to a wide audience. Which, of course, doesn’t always agree with what an artist intends.

Thanks for your points… I’m always looking for new ways to think about and understand new media and I appreciate your feedback. I’m reading the Rhizome article now.

I agree the “newness” of new is a point of contention. New, says who? And for how long? Of course, we don’t want to put ourselves in a position where “new” only refers to recent work with cutting edge technology, then we are simply technocrats. I think “new media” is a catch-all term just like net.art was years back.. it works in the present as a quick way to generally refer to a broad body of work and practices, but the term will stagnate, or perhaps it already has?

Media in a social context rather than a white cube can be liberating, but it can also ghettoize the work in relation to socializing. I think media art can still be appreciated as a spectator in the same contexts as more traditional forms.. but I think things get really tricky once you enter the commercial and archival (institutional) bandwidths.

I like the net for showing work, I know it doesn’t substitute for seeing work in the flesh, but it is a pretty damn democratic space for collective curation.

Keep the posts coming. :)