OpenCollection software

"OpenCollection is freely available open-source software for managing and publishing online collections of digital media. While primarily designed to handle museum and archival collections, its support for a wide variety of image, audio and video formats and its ability to store extensive contextual information about people, places and events makes it an effective solution for arts organizations needing to manage multimedia documentation archives and/or publish them online."

http://www.opencollection.org

Dirty New Media - Jake Elliott (2008)

Dirty New Media: Art Activism and Computer Counter Cultures - Jake Elliott (July 2008)

"A talk by Jake Elliott from "The Last Hope" - Hackers on Planet Earth 2008. This talk presents a short history of electronic art by illustrating connections between artists, activists, and hackers. The connections and histories presented include: the demoscene and its origins in software piracy; video and conceptual artists in the 1970s and their activist work; contemporary artists working with circuit bending and other detournements of modern technologies; the Chicago “dirty new media” community; contemporary artists, hackers, and activists creating software and electronic art with a punk/anticapitalist ethos. Excerpts of work from these different artists and communities are screened and discussed. http://dai5ychain.net/jake/ http://criticalartware.net/ http://4rtcr4x0rz.com/"

"Written forms of self-documentation" as "future oriented"

"Written forms of self-documentation, such as diaries, are future oriented." - That Different Place: Documenting the Self Within Online Environments - Andreas Kitzmann (2003)

on Media Art Histories of Virtual Realities

below is an excerpt on Media Art Histories of Virtual Realities from "Recombinant Poetics: Emergent Meaning as Examined and Explored Within a Specific Generative Virtual Environment", the 1999 doctoral thesis of Bill Seaman.

"Myron Krueger envisioned the responsive, interactive potential of computer-based artificial realities (his term for virtual reality). Krueger writes:

The responsive environment has been presented as the basis of a new aesthetic medium based on real-time interaction between men and machines. In the long range it augurs a new realm of human experience, artificial realities which seek not to simulate the physical world but to define arbitrary, abstract and otherwise impossible relationships between action and result. We are incredibly attuned to the idea that the sole purpose of our technology is to solve problems. It also creates concepts and philosophy. We must more fully explore these aspects of our inventions, because the next generation of technology will speak to us, understand us and perceive our behaviour...The design of such technology is an aesthetic issue as much as an engineering one. We must recognize this if we are to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made. (Krueger, 1977, pp.423-433)

This premise is central to my project, where I have sought to intermingle the technological with the artistic. Myron Krueger specifically points in this direction when positing the history of Virtual Reality. In his essay "The Artistic Origins of Virtual Reality," he writes:

The dawn of Virtual Reality is most often traced to a paper by Ivan Sutherland presented at the national computer conference in 19654 and another written by him in 19685. There were also two relevant dissertations at the University of North Carolina in 1970 and 1976.6 Otherwise, during most of the 70’s and the first half of the 1980’s, the idea of virtual reality was dormant in the technical community, except for the classified work of Tom Furness in the U.S. Airforce. (Krueger, 1993, p.148)

He later continues:

The premise of this essay is that the ideas [related to virtual reality, emphasis Seaman] were actively pursued in the arts from the beginning, that virtual reality’s rebirth as a technical field was triggered by the efforts of artists and that increasingly the involvement of artists now would foster more rapid development of the field in the future. (Krueger, 1993, p.148)

In the essay, Krueger outlines the importance of the artist’s aesthetic development of Virtual Reality, or what he terms "Artificial Reality." I will here outline a series of different artistic involvements as drawn from Krueger’s text:

Mort Heilig’s Sensorama, 1960, developed a full-immersion experience involving stereo film and stereo sound as well as "physical" feedback attributes; Salvitori Martirano in the 60’s explored 3D sound experiences; Michael Noll explored telepresence, stereo viewing apparatus, 3D drawing and tactile communication for visualising dance; Dan Sandine and Myron Kreuger explored computer-controlled responsive environments; the PULSA group led by Patrick Clancy explored large outdoor environments; Aaron Marcus implemented a symbolic, interactive, computer-environment in the early 70’s; Krueger’s exploration of shared tellecommunication space in Metaplay 1970 and the Videoplace exhibition in 1975; Kit Galloway and Sherry Rabinowitz exploration of telepresence or "composite spaces"; Dan Sandin, Tom Defanti and Gary Sayers development of the Data Glove; a later pattented Data Glove by musician Tom Zimmerman; research into the head-mounted display by artistically trained Mike McGreavy; artist Scott Fisher’s virtual reality work for NASA; Jaron Lanier, musician — interested in exploring musical production in virtual space and president of VPL research; Durand R. Begault, interested in 3D sound; Mark Caniglio’s exploration of sensors on dancers; Graham Smith’s interest in new forms of unencumbered VR. (Krueger, 1993, p.148)"

"This is Tomorrow" - exhibition catalogue

the complete catalogue online can be found here:
http://www.thisistomorrow2.com/images/cat_1956/cat_web/FrameSet.htm

BITMAP: as good as new - vertexList (2008)

"BITMAP: as good as new is a group exhibition celebrating the history of the digital image, the aesthetics of early computing, and early video-game consoles. BITMAP, recently featured at the Museum of Modern Art, highlights old-school CRT’s, pixels, and 8-bit music. The exhibition will be held at Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Curated by vertexList. Exhibit runs June 25-July 25, 2008, free to the public.

B I T M A P: as good as new" is proud to feature:

Cory Arcangel, Lee Arnold, Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Christine Gedeon, Kimberley Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI, Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, Jim Punk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and CJ Yeh.

The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery
Drexel University
33 and Market St.
Philadelphia PA 19104
215 895 2548

Opening reception:
Thursday, June 26th, 5-7pm + special screening of "8 BIT" @ 4 pm

This is Tomorrow + Software in Art, Time and Technology

in the Art in Realtime chapter of his Art, Time and Technology by Charlie Gere (2006), Gere compares + connects 2 exhibitions that pioneered early engagements with what we now refer to as New Media Art:


This is Tomorrow - members of the Independent Group and collaborators, Whitechapel Gallery, London .UK (1956)


Software: Information Technology, Its New Meaning for Art - Jack Burnham, The Jewish Museum, New York City .US (1970)

in addition to his comparison of these 2 exhibitions, Gere lists other exhibitions that ran during these times + articulated or experimented w/similar themes. Among these exhibitions are:

Nine Evenings - Experiments in Art and Technology, Armory, Brooklyn, New York .US (1966)

Art and Technology program - Maurice Tuchman, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, .US (1967)

Cybernetic Serendipity - Jasia Reichardt, ICA, London .UK (1968)

The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age - Museum of Modern Art, New York .US (1968)

Some More Beginnings - Experiments in Art and Technology, New York .US (1968)

Art by Telephone - Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago .US (1969)

in the next chapter, Is It Happening, Gere continues this chronology through a discussion of the influences of philosophies on these prehistories of New Media. Gere discusses the exhibition:

Les Immatériaux (The Immaterial) - Jean-François Lyotard, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris .FR (1985)

in detail, explaining the ways in which Lyotard attempted to decentralize + immaterialize the form + structure of the exhibition itself through strategies such as converting the space into a soft maze as well as publishing the catalog as an unbound series of loose sheets.