Olson has served as Editor & Curator at Rhizome, the inaugural curator at Zero1, and Associate Director at SF Camerawork. She's contributed to many major journals & books and this year Cocom Press published Arte Postinternet, a Spanish translation of her texts on Postinternet Art, a movement she framed in 2006. In 2015 LINK Editions will publish a retrospective anthology of over a decade of her writings on contemporary art which have helped establish a vocabulary for the criticism of new media. Meanwhile, she has also curated programs at the Guggenheim, New Museum, SFMOMA, White Columns, Artists Space, and Bitforms Gallery. She has served on Advisory Boards for Ars Electronica, Transmediale, ISEA, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, Creative Capital, the Getty Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the Tribeca Film Festival.
Olson studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric & Film Studies at UC Berkeley. She has recently been a visiting artist at Yale, SAIC, Oberlin, and VCU; a Visiting Critic at Brown; and Visiting Faculty at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and Ox-Bow. She previously taught at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' new media graduate program (ITP) and was Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY-Purchase's School of Film & Media Studies. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at Eyebeam & is currently Visiting Critic at RISD.
Collectible After All: Christiane Paul on net art at the Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum artport has been an important institutional presence in net art and new media since its launch in 2002. Created and curated by Christiane Paul, artport features online commissions as well as documentation of new media artworks from the museum's exhibitions and collections. This year, artport as a whole was made an official part of the Whitney Museum collection; to mark this occasion, participating artist Marisa Olson interviewed Paul about the program's history and evolution over thirteen years.
Douglas Davis, image from The World's First Collaborative Sentence (1994).
Collections like artport are a rare and valuable window onto a field of practice that, in some senses, was borne out of not being taken seriously. From mid-80s Eastern European game crackers to late-90s net artists, the first people working online were often isolated, by default or design, and were certainly marginalized by the art world, where few curators knew of their existence and fewer took them seriously, advocated for them, or worked to theorize and articulate the art historical precedents and currents flowing through the work. Help me fast-forward to the beginning of this century at one of the most important international art museums. Many of the US museums that funded new media projects did so with dot-com infusions that dried-up after 2000. Artport officially launched in 2001; the same year, you curated a section devoted to net art in the Whitney Biennial. What was the behind-the-scenes sequence of events that led to artport's founding?
I think artport's inception was emblematic of a wave of interest in net art in the US around the turn of the century and in the early 2000s. This more committed involvement with the art form interestingly coincided with or came shortly after the dot com bubble, which inflated from 1997–2000, had its climax on March 10, 2000 when NASDAQ peaked, and burst pretty much the next day. Net art, however, remained a very active practice and started appearing on the radar of more US art institutions. To some extent, their interest may have been sparked by European exhibitions that had begun to respond to the effects of the web on artistic practice earlier on. In 1997, Documenta X had already included web projects (that year the Documenta website was also famously "stolen"—that is, copied and archived—by Vuk Cosic in the project Documenta: done) and Net Condition, which took place at ZKM in 1999/2000, further acknowledged the importance of art on the web.
US museums increasingly began to take notice. Steve Dietz, who had started the Walker Art Center's New Media Initiatives early on, in 1996, was curating the online art Gallery 9 and digital art study collection. Jon Ippolito, in his role as Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim, was commissioning net art in the early 2000s and in 2002, Benjamin Weil, with Joseph Rosa, unveiled a new version of SFMOMA's E-space, which had been created in 2000. This was the institutional netscape in which I created artport in 2001, since I felt that the Whitney, which had for the first time included net art in its 2000 Biennial, also needed a portal to online art. The original artport was much more of a satellite site and less integrated into whitney.org than it is now. Artist Yael Kanarek redesigned the site not too long after its initial launch and created version 1.1. Artport in its early days was sponsored by a backend storage company in New Jersey, which was then bought by HP, so HP appeared as the official sponsor. I think it is notable that sponsorship at that point did not come from a new tech company but a brand name that presumably wanted to appear more cutting edge.
booomerrranganggboobooomerranrang: Nancy Holt's networked video
Nancy Holt, Boomerang (1974), still from video.
In her time on this planet, Nancy Holt came to be known as a great American Land Artist, and certainly her brilliant installations, like Utah's Sun Tunnels and collaborations with her partner Robert Smithson and their peers, are profoundly significant, but it was her work in film & video that has had the greatest personal impact on me.
I somehow didn't see Boomerang, her 1974 video performance usually credited to her collaborator Richard Serra, until I was a Ph.D. student in Linda Williams's Phenomenology of Film seminar at UC Berkeley's Rhetoric program, but the time delay was more than made up for by the work's formative resonance. In the video, made during Serra's residency at a Texas television station, a young Holt is seen sitting in an anchor's chair before a staid blue background. Despite brief station ID graphic overlays and one minute of silence in the midst of the ten-minute piece (announced as audio trouble and reminding viewers of the work's live TV origin), the work is in many ways sound-centric.
Sound and Image in Electronic Harmony

On Saturday, April 11th, New York's School of Visual Arts will co-present the 2009 Visual Music Marathon with the New York Digital Salon and Northeastern University. Promising genre-bending work from fifteen countries, the lineup crams 120 works by new media artists and digital composers into 12 hours. If it's true, as is often said, that MTV killed the attention spans of Generations X and Y, this six-minute-per-piece average ought to suit most festivalgoers' minds, and the resultant shuffling on and off stage will surely be a spectacle in its own rite. In all seriousness, this annual event is a highlight of New York's already thriving electronic music scene and promises many a treat for your eyes and ears. The illustrious organizers behind the marathon know their visual music history and want to remind readers that, "The roots of the genre date back more than two hundred years to the ocular harpsichords and color-music scales of the 18th century," and "the current art form came to fruition following the emergence of film and video in the 20th century." The remarkable ten dozen artists participating in this one-day event will bring us work incorporating such diverse materials as hand-processed film, algorithmically-generated video, visual interpretations of music, and some good old fashioned music-music. From luminaries like Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, and Steina Vasulka to emerging artists Joe Tekippe and Chiaki Watanabe, the program will be another star on the map that claims NYC as fertile territory for sonic exploration. - Marisa Olson
Tagalicious

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Greece, has committed itself to curating a number of recent exhibitions of internet art. Their current show, "Tag Ties and Affective Spies," features contributions from both net vets and emerging surfers, including Christophe Bruno, Gregory Chatonsky, Paolo Cirio, JODI, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, Les Liens Invisibles, Personal Cinema and The Erasers, Ramsay Stirling, and Wayne Clements. The online exhibition takes an antagonistic approach to Web 2.0, citing a constant balance "between order and chaos, democracy and adhocracy." Curator Daphne Dragona raises the question of whether the social web is a preexisting platform on which people connect, or whether it is indeed constructed in the act of uploading, tagging, and disclosing previously private information about ourselves on sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook. Dragona asks whether we are truly connecting and interacting, or merely broadcasting. While her curatorial statement doesn't address the issue directly, the show's title hints at the level of self-surveillance in play on these sites. Accordingly, many of the selected works take a critical, if not DIY, approach to the internet. The collective Les Liens Invisibles tends to create works that make an ironic mash-up of the often divergent mantras of tactical media, culture jamming, surrealism, and situationism. In their Subvertr, they encourage Flickr users to "subverTag" their posted images, creating an intentional disassociation between an image's content and its interpretion, with the aim of "breaking the strict rules of significance that characterize the mainstream collective imaginary..." JODI's work, Del.icio.us/ winning information (2008) exploits the limited stylistic parameters of the social bookmarking site. Using ASCII and Unicode page titles to form visual marks, a cryptic tag vocabulary, and a recursive taxonomy, their fun-to-follow site critiques the broader content of the web ...
Reappearance of the Undead

In 1997, internet art hall-of-famer Olia Lialina made a "net drama" called Agatha Appears that was written for Netscape 3 and 4 in HTML 3.2. One of the main features of the interactive narrative was the travel of the eponymous avatar across the internet. Let's just say the girl got around. But the magical illusion of the piece was that she appeared to stay still, even when links in the narrative were clicked and the viewer's address bar indicated movement to another server. But in time, both the browser and code in which the story was written became defunct and the piece unraveled as the sites previously hosting the links and files upon which Agatha was dependent disappeared or cleaned house. Such a scenario is common to early internet art (and will no doubt continue to plague the field), as ours is an upgrade culture constantly driving towards new tools, platforms, and codes. Many have debated whether to let older works whither or how it might be possible to update these works, making them compatible with new systems. For those who are interested, some of the best research on the subject has been performed by the folks affiliated with the Variable Media Initiative. Meanwhile, luddites and neophiles alike are now in luck because Agatha Appears has just undergone rejuvenation. Ela Wysocka, a restorer working at Budapest's Center for Culture & Communication Foundation has worked to overcome the sound problems, code incompatibilities, and file corruption and disappearance issues, and she's written a fascinating report about the process, here. And new collaborating hosts have jumped in line to bring the piece back to life, so that like a black and white boyfriend coming home from war, Agatha now offers us a shiny new webring as a token of ...
VIDEO SEARCH - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The Department of Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago invites applications from artists working in video to
teach and expand an innovative curriculum in moving image media. We are
looking for artists who work with various applications of video/digital
media, experimental narrative and non-fiction forms, installation, video
performance, interactive environments and web-based work. Candidates
should have a strong conceptual and historical grasp of contemporary
issues in the intersecting worlds of independent video production,
experimental filmmaking, and new media. The department is committed to
alternative forms and practices that emphasize experimentation,
innovation, and the hybridization of existing media and modes of
presentation. Candidates should demonstrate the ability and desire to
participate in curricular initiatives; should be able to work with
undergraduate and graduate students in an interdisciplinary, fine arts
context; and should have advanced proficiency in one or more areas of the
media arts. Applicants must have an active professional creative practice.
Teaching experience preferred. The position is full-time, tenure-track
and begins in the fall of 2006. Rank and salary are commensurate with
experience.
Please send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, artist's statement,
teaching philosophy, portfolio samples which may include CD-Rom, DVD, VHS,
mini-DV, and/or website URLs, names and contact information for three
references, and an SASE (if you wish to have the materials returned) by
November 15, 2005 for priority consideration to:
FVNM Search
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Office of Deans and Division Chairs
37 South Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is committed to creating a
diverse community of faculty and students, and is an Equal Opportunity/
Affirmative Action employer/ educator. Women, minorities and international
applicants are encouraged to apply.
The School's Title IX Coordinator is Felice J. Dublon, Ph.D., Vice
President and Dean of Student Affairs, or her designee.
Further information about the School and its programs can be obtained at
www.artic.edu; specific job descriptions at
www.artic.edu/saic/facultypositions. Questions may be directed to Shanna
Linn at slinn@artic.edu, or 312.899.7472.
--
Mary Patten
Associate Professor
Department of Film/Video/New Media
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 S. Michigan, #512-G
Chicago, IL 60603
email: mpatte@artic.edu
voice: 001.773.275.1526
fax: 001.312.541.8070
Job Opportunity at the Beall Center
From: Indi McCarthy
Date: Oct 31, 2005 4:28 PM
Subject: [BeallCenter] Job Opportunity at the Beall Center
To: beallcenter@uci.edu
The Beall Center for Art and Technology at UC Irvine seeks an energetic
individual with project management and computer/AV experience to fill the
position of Assistant Director. The Beall Assistant Director implements
all programming (exhibitions, residencies, and events) for the Beall
Center, is responsible for operations management of the Beall facility,
and oversees the financial and hiring transactions for the Center.
The mission of the Beall Center is to support research and exhibitions
that explore new relationships between the arts, sciences, and
engineering, and thus, promote new forms of creation and expression using
digital technologies. More information about the Center and its
programming can be found at http://beallcenter.uci.edu.
UCI offers excellent benefits including a minimum of 3 weeks vacation per
year. To be considered for this position, apply directly on-line at
http://jobs.uci.edu, click on Job Listings and Find Job. No. 2005-1203.
UCI is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer dedicated to
excellence through diversity.
_______________________________________________
BeallCenter mailing list
BeallCenter@uci.edu
https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/beallcenter
Re: Re: Opposites
Of course, such choices are admittedly subjective, so I'm sending thisnot as a representative of Rhizome, per se, but as an individual whohad a response to this work. In fact, I will first say that I believethat we could be dealing with a difference in personal taste.Afterall, if anyone ever described something I'd made as "a powerpoint presentation gone mad," I'd be flattered.
I don't subscribe to the notion that something has to be the newest ormost innovative application of technology in order to be interestingor of value. I also believe, as a scholar of new media, that the "new"in that moniker has become simply a placeholder, some decades afterthis type of production began. Granted, some working in the fieldpersist in using newer technologies than those of their peers, but inthe grand scheme of things, this is a minor issue to me.
Simply put, Shaun created a poetic piece with a "visual component" andhe obviously used a number of technologies to do so. (Afterall,writing, itself, is a technology, to say nothing of video and computeranimation.) It's terribly tired to compare new media to painting, butthis asking for some specific type/level of technology feels likediscriminating against painters--or challenging their status assuch--because they used one type of paint or another, or made one typeof mark or another with their brush.
I think that you actually ask two separate questions, below: "What isthe message?" and "Why is this considered new media art?" I thinkit's very important to keep these questions separate. On the questionof the message, I too would enjoy hearing more from Shaun about whatthis piece says, and why. But while there is an inherent relationbetween what is said and how it's said, I don't think that theefficacy of the message should be linked to the novelty of the piece,particularly when the "degree of novelty" is used as the basis foraesthetic discrimination.
Tore, the rhetoric of your question seems to follow this train ofthought: this piece is not "advanced;" if it's not advanced, it's not"important." I can think of many very important works that are nolonger technologically "advanced" and many others, within the field ofmedia art, that were importantly never too "advanced."
But, of course, I can't speak to Shaun's intent.
Incidentally, it is probably worth mentioning that this piece is quitesimilar to "The Struggle Continues," by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVYINDUSTRIES, archived here by Rhizome:http://www.rhizome.org/artbase/2427/THE_STRUGGLE_mac.html
In 2001, this piece was nominated for a Webby (my memory is fuzzy inmy old age, but I think it may even have won) and some of the jurorsargued that this piece shouldn't be considered, because it wasn't"really" net art, but was "just a video." (Now these were seasonedjurors--I remember that Mark Tribe, Jon Ippolito, and Sara Diamondwere among them, though I don't remember each person's position.) Fouryears later, a piece by the same artist, with many of the same formalqualities, was included in Rhizome Artbase 101, the ten-year survey ofinternet art: http://www.rhizome.org/artbase101.rhiz
So even the question of newness (and media specificity) isn't so new.I don't suppose I need to tell you that these conversations were alsohad long before the internet existed.
Marisa
On 10/31/05, tore terrasi <toreterrasi@yahoo.com> wrote:> well shaun, i appreciate the work, but i don't really see the art form in this. It seems like a power point presentation gone mad. Yea, the words oppose each other, and sometimes the black and white do too. Well so what. What is the message?: that some things have opposites. Why is this considered new media art. It doesn't really reach the potentials of new media, pushes no boundaries. The aesthetic is fairly simple so i'm pretty sure that there are not advanced software at work. I guess what i'm asking is, why is this art you created so important that you decided to post it? I would also like to know if anyone critiqued this...beyond the "it's nice...i like it" from your friends. What do strangers think of this?>>>> Shaun wrote:>> > Opposites
Fwd: Gulf Coast Residency -- Please forward! URGENT
From: Erin Donnelly <edonnelly@lmcc.net>
Date: Oct 29, 2005 10:39 AM
Subject: Gulf Coast Residency -- Please forward! URGENT
To: Erin Donnely <edonnelly@lmcc.net>
LMCC is creating an emergency residency for artists from the Gulf Coast.
They'll get a downtown studio for 6 months and a small stipend.
The applications are due on Monday, 10/31 at midnight.
Please pass along the following link to your contacts, as they might know
some artists who would be interested in applying.
http://www.lmcc.net/Residencies/gulfcoast/index.html
I know this is short notice, but the application is pretty short and
straightforward. Thanks for your help in getting the last minute word
out!
Erin
//// NOTE: LMCC has a NEW OFFICE ADDRESS, see below \\
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Erin Donnelly
Residency Director and Curator
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
125 Maiden Lane 2Fl New York, NY 10038-4912
212.219.9401x107
www.lmcc.net
(The residency has not moved from 120 Broadway.)
Rhizome Exhibition: Net Art's Cyborg[feminist]s, Punks, and Manifestos
guest-curated from the Rhizome ArtBase. "Net Art's Cyborg[feminist]s,
Punks, and Manifestos" is an exhibition on the politics of [internet]
appearances, guest-curated by Marina Grzinic. Ten works and the curator's
statement are online, here:
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/cyborg/
+ + +
Marisa Olson
Editor & Curator at Large
Rhizome.org