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 ...
Fwd: HALLIBURTON SOLVES GLOBAL WARMING
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Halliburton Emergency Products Development Unit
<epdu@halliburtoncontracts.com>
Date: May 9, 2006 9:50 PM
Subject: HALLIBURTON SOLVES GLOBAL WARMING
To: "mo-marisaolson.com" <mo@marisaolson.com>
May 9, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: mailto:EPDU@halliburtoncontracts.com
Photos: http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com/EPDU/
HALLIBURTON SOLVES GLOBAL WARMING
SurvivaBalls save managers from abrupt climate change
An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even
when climate change makes life as we know it impossible.
"The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no
matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a
Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss
conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida.
"This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate
change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.
Most scientists believe global warming is certain to cause an
accelerating onslaught of hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes,
etc. and that a world-destroying disaster is increasingly possible.
For example, Arctic melt has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in just
the last decade; if the Gulf Stream stops, Europe will suddenly
become just as cold as Alaska. Global heat and flooding events are
also increasingly possible.
In order to head off such catastrophic scenarios, scientists agree we
must reduce our carbon emissions by 70% within the next few years.
Doing that would seriously undermine corporate profits, however, and so
a more forward-thinking solution is needed.
At today's conference, Wolf and a colleague demonstrated three
SurvivaBall mockups, and described how the units will sustainably
protect managers from natural or cultural disturbances of any
intensity or duration. The devices - looking like huge inflatable
orbs - will include sophisticated communications systems, nutrient
gathering capacities, onboard medical facilities, and a daunting
defense infrastructure to ensure that the corporate mission will not
go unfulfilled even when most human life is rendered impossible by
catastrophes or the consequent epidemics and armed conflicts.
"It's essentially a gated community for one," said Wolf.
Dr. Northrop Goody, the head of Halliburton's Emergency Products
Development Unit, showed diagrams and videos describing the
SurvivaBall's many features. "Much as amoebas link up into slime
molds when threatened, SurvivaBalls also fulfill a community
function. After all, people need people," noted Goody as he showed an
artist's rendition of numerous SurvivaBalls linking up to form a
managerial aggregate with functional differentiation, metaphorically
dancing through the streets of Houston, Texas.
The conference attendees peppered the duo with questions. One asked
how the device would fare against terrorism, another whether the
array of embedded technologies might make the unit too cumbersome; a
third brought up the issue of the unit's cost feasibility. Wolf and
Goody assured the audience that these problems and others were being
addressed.
"The SurvivaBall builds on Halliburton's reputation as a disaster and
conflict industry innovator," said Wolf. "Just as the Black Plague
led to the Renaissance and the Great Deluge gave Noah a monopoly of
the animals, so tomorrow's catastrophes could well lead to good - and
industry must be ready to seize that good."
Goody also noted that Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society
was set to employ the SurvivaBall as part of its Corporate Sustenance
(R) program. Another of Cousteau's CSR programs involves accepting a
generous sponsorship from the Dow Chemical Corporation, whose general
shareholder meeting is May 11.
Please visit http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com/EPDU/ for photos,
video, and text of today's presentation.
# 30 #
Re: online game performance art
Life. He also sent a call for participants to the list, on April
3rd...
Marisa
From: James <rhizome@factorynoir.com>
To: rhizome <list@rhizome.org>
Date: Apr 21, 2006 10:27 PM
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Virtual Opening of "The Real"
Ars Virtua Gallery & New Media Center invites the public to the opening
of it's inaugural show entitled "The Real."
The event will be held on the grounds of Ars Virtua which can be found
through http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dowden/41/58/52/ in the 3d rendered
world of Second Life.
Six artists are represented in this show which examines the nature of
observation, movement, communication, contact, and fetish in the virtual
environment of the avatar.
These investigations form the basis of questioning what is real, they go
beyond the experience of the user at the keyboard to reference that
similar and familiar experience of the driver behind the wheel. The
metaphor remains consistent between the two. The answers we arrive at
are not surprising and are no more profound than the pen on your desktop.
The show runs from April 28 through June 23, 2006 with the opening and
artist's reception at 7pm SLT (Pacific Daylight Time) on April 28.
inquiries to gallery@arsvirtua.com
The GIF Show, Rx Gallery-SF, opens May 3
which is collaboratively presented by Rhizome and Rx Gallery. Below is
the text of today's Rhizome News piece, announcing The GIF Show. I'm
excited to say that the show features a combination of very active
artists and a few exceptionally talented artists for whom this is
their first exhibition.
I hope that some of you can attend the opening (which will feature
live music & visuals by Eats Tapes & Nate Boyce!), but if not perhaps
you'll help us spread the word by becoming Myspace friends with the
exhibit! :)
Best regards,
Marisa
The GIF Show, an exhibition opening May 3rd, at San Francisco's Rx
Gallery, takes the pulse of what some net surfers call 'GIF Luv,' a
recent frenzy of file-sharing and creative muscle-flexing associated
with GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format files). Curated by Marisa Olson
in a West Coast Rhizome collaboration with Rx, the show presents GIFs
and GIF-based videos, prints, readymades, and sculptures by a range of
artists, including Cory Arcangel, Peter Baldes, Michael Bell-Smith,
Jimpunk, Olia Lialina, Abe Linkoln, Guthrie Lonergan, Lovid, Tom
Moody, Paper Rad, Paul Slocum, and Matt Smear (aka
893/umeancompetitor). GIFs have a rich cultural life on the internet
and each bears specific stylistic markers. From Myspace graphics to
advertising images to porn banners, and beyond, GIFs overcome
resolution and bandwidth challenges in their pervasive population of
the net. Animated GIFs, in particular, have evolved from a largely
cinematic, cell-based form of art practice, and have more recently
been incorporated in music videos and employed as stimulating
narrative devices on blogs. From the flashy to the minimal, the sonic
to the silent, the artists in The GIF Show demonstrate the diversity
of forms to be found in GIFs, and many of them comment on the broader
social life of these image files. The opening is sure to be just as
lively, with music by Eats Tapes and visuals by Nate Boyce. Spread the
luv! - Rhizome.org
http://www.rxgallery.com/
http://www.myspace.com/gifshow
+ + +
Marisa Olson
Editor & Curator at Large
Rhizome.org at the
New Museum of Contemporary Art
Re: Just added to the Rhizome ?
Your piece has been turned on:
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?37992
As Patrick explained to you, via email, your clone took a bit longer
for him to process, because of the server issues. We have, basically,
a one-person tech dept and he's incredibly swamped with many pressing
issues. This is why he explained to you that it would be a while.
Also, because of the server issue and other, older tech issues, I
didn't receive notification that your piece was ready to turn on. A
quick email, sent directly to me, can usually solve such problems
quickly.
Patrick will soon be sending out a DT report, to Raw, outlining the
Artbase issues and the status of other tech things, for anyone who is
interested. We are still having some issues with the Artbase, but
Patrick's working hard to resolve them.
All the best,
Marisa
On 4/19/06, manik <manik@ptt.yu> wrote:
>
> Lauren wrote:
> Hi Manik,
>
> I don't understand what the issue is here is
Call for Rhizome News Writers (Please Forward)
Call for Rhizome News Writers
Rhizome.org is seeking experienced writers to contribute to its
publication, Rhizome News. Previously known as Net Art News, this
html-based series covers exhibitions, art projects, events,
publications, and opportunities in the new media art field. Rhizome
News features original writing by artists, curators, and critics from
around the world.
The publication is delivered to over 12,000 email subscribers, three
times per week, and many more who read Rhizome News via RSS and
website syndication. Previous articles can be viewed online:
http://rhizome.org/netartnews/archive.rhiz
Prospective contributors must have experience writing about art and
technology and must demonstrate clarity and insight as well as style
and professionalism. Rhizome News writers pitch articles and receive
assignments. Articles are 120-180 words in length, so experience
writing in short format is a plus.
Please email three writing samples (URLs preferred) to marisa@rhizome.org.
Marisa Olson
Editor & Curator at Large
Rhizome.org at the
New Museum of Contemporary Art