Marisa Olson
Since the beginning
Works in Brooklyn, New York United States of America

ARTBASE (7)
PORTFOLIO (3)
BIO
Marisa Olson is an artist, writer, and media theorist. Her interdisciplinary work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Tate(s) Modern + Liverpool, the Nam June Paik Art Center, British Film Institute, Sundance Film Festival, PERFORMA Biennial; commissioned and collected by the Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Houston Center for Photography, Experimental Television Center, and PS122; and reviewed in Artforum, Art21, the NY Times, Liberation, Folha de Sao Paolo, the Village Voice, and elsewhere.

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


semiconductor_nanowebbers.jpg
Image: Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, 200 Nanowebbers, 2005

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

READ ON »


Tagalicious


Picture-1.jpg

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 ...

READ ON »


Reappearance of the Undead


agatha_appears_lialina.gif

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 ...

READ ON »



Discussions (281) Opportunities (10) Events (4) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION

Fwd: REFRESH! complete conference stream launched


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kennard, Susan <Susan_Kennard@banffcentre.ca>
Date: Nov 22, 2005 3:38 PM
Subject: REFRESH! complete conference stream launched
To: BNMI Info <BNMI_INFO@banffcentre.ca>

For immediate release
November 22, 2005

Banff New Media Institute launches webcast for Refresh! conference on new
media art, science, technology

In late September, more than 200 new media practitioners from around the
world gathered at the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) at The Banff
Centre for the first Refresh! international conference on the history of
media art, science, and technology. Today marks the launch of an
educational resource for new media artists, researchers, historians and
students across the globe - access to the Refresh! conference online:

http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/programs/archives/2005/refresh/

Visit this comprehensive archive to watch and listen to discussion on the
relationship between new media and the disciplines of art history,
anthropology, computing sciences, media studies, and other intercultural
contexts.

The webcast includes the inaugural Rudolf Arnheim lecture, by curator and
art historian Sarat Maharaj, honouring the crucial role of Rudolf Arnheim
in the history and theory of the interaction of art, science, and new
technologies. Catch London-based writer and curator Jasia Reichardt on the
evolution of computer-based art, and the development of electronic
sculpture, art robots, and environments. Watch Andreas Broeckmann,
director of the transmediale festival for art and digital
culture in Berlin, present on the effect of the machine on creative
thinking, and Edward Shanken, professor of art history and media theory at
the Savannah College of Art and Design, address methodologies for
analyzing the role of science and technology in the history of art. Find
out what Michael Century and Sheila Petty had to say on the transition
between analog and digital technologies within the institution, and the
issue of race in 'cybertheory'.

The Refresh! conference was hosted by BNMI, Leonardo / ISAST, and the
Database for Virtual Art and was generously supported by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Daniel Langlois
Foundation, Telefilm Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts,
Goethe-institute, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Villa Vigoni, UNESCO
DigiArts, INTEL and ITAU Cultural.

Refresh! is one of the flagship events of the 10th anniversary celebration
of BNMI, marking a decade of work by inspired artists, producers and
researchers. As BNMI looks to the next 10 years, it will continue to
engage in research, development, training and the exploration of broader
social, political and cultural issues, informing new media in its many
contexts.

- 30 -

For more information contact:
Iwona Erskine-Kellie * BNMI Assistant
+1-403-762-6652 * iwona_erskine-kellie@banffcentre.ca

Susan Kennard
Director & Executive Producer
The Banff New Media Institute
The Banff Centre

107 Tunnel Mountain Drive
Box 1020, Station 40
Banff, Alberta Canada T1L 1H5
Tel. +1 403 762 6481
Fax. +1 403 762 6665
http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi

OPPORTUNITY

Fwd: Wireless Media call for entry San Francisco International Film Festival


Deadline:
Tue Nov 22, 2005 20:22

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sean Uyehara
Date: Nov 22, 2005 6:03 PM
Subject: [New Media Curating] Wireless Media call for entry San Francisco
International Film Festival
To: NEW-MEDIA-CURATING@jiscmail.ac.uk

Please circulate to any you think might be interested.
Thanks!
Sean Uyehara
---------------------------

Wireless Media Call for Entries
http://www.sffs.org/festival/wireless06.html

This is an invitation to submit work to the San Francisco Film Society for
consideration to be included in the 49th San Francisco International Film
Festival taking place April 20


DISCUSSION

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: 3 expos


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer <rafael@lozano-hemmer.com>
Date: Nov 21, 2005 4:31 PM
Subject: 3 expos
To: marisa@marisaolson.com

(Version en espanol abajo)

Dear friends and colleagues, hope you are well, apologies for cross-
postings. Here are announcements for three large exhibitions that are
taking place in Switzerland, Britain and Germany before the end of the
year, --in case you are close to any of them and can see them live. If you
would rather not be notified in the future about my shows please let me
know at errafael@gmail.com

All the best,
Rafael
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com

SUBSCULPTURES
Solo exhibition at Galerie Guy Bartschi, Geneva, Switzerland.
5 November 2005 to 14 January 2006
http://www.bartschi.ch
Exhibition featuring kinetic sculptures, video, photography and
interactive environments. A catalog is available with texts in English and
French. Includes the premiere of "Entanglement", an installation with two
neon signs that write emails to each other so that they are both
simultaneously on or off. NB: In early December, "Entanglement" will also
be shown at Art Basel Miami at OMR Gallery and at the transitio_mx
festival in Mexico City.

UNDER SCAN
A large-scale public art commission for the East Midlands region in England.
25 November to 4 December 2005: Brayford Campus, Lincoln University
12 January to 22 January 2006: Humberstone Gate, Leicester
3 February to 12 February 2006: Market Square, Northampton
24 February to 5 March 2006: Market Place, Derby
17 March to 26 March 2006: Canal Side at Castle Wharf, Nottingham
http://www.underscan.co.uk
Under Scan is an interactive video installation for public space. In the
piece, passers-by are detected by a computer tracking system that
activates video-portraits projected within their shadow on the ground.
Over one thousand uncensored portraits of local people are activated by
the shadows.

33 QUESTIONS PER MINUTE IN BERLIN
Installation at Postdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany
Presentation: 29 November 15:00 at Postdamer Platz 10
Show: 13 December 2005 to 8 January 2006
http://www.realities-united.de
A matrix of 1,800 fluorescent lamps cover an eleven storey-high building
in Berlin, a creation of architects realities:united. On this facade will
be displayed 55 billion unique and grammatically correct questions, --a
new German version of the software "33 Questions per Minute". People will
be able to input their own questions by typing them in at an outdoor
kiosk.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Estimados amigos y colegas, espero que esten bien, disculpas por los
envios repetidos e impersonales. Aqui tienen la informacion de tres
exposiciones ambiciosas que se presentaran en Suiza, Gran Bretana y
Alemania antes del fin de ano, --por si acaso se encuentran cerca y pueden
verlas en vivo. Si en el futuro alguien prefiere no recibir notificaciones
sobre mi trabajo por favor escribirme a errafael@gmail.com

Saludos cordiales,
Rafael
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com

SUBESCULTURAS
Exposicion en la Galeria Guy Bartschi, Ginebra, Suiza.
5 noviembre 2005 al 14 enero 2006
http://www.bartschi.ch
Exposicion de esculturas cineticas, video, fotografia y entornos
interactivos. Un catalogo con textos en ingles y frances esta disponible.
La muestra incluye el estreno de "Entanglement" (Entrelazamiento), una
instalacion de dos letreros de neon que se escriben email para mantenerse
siempre encendidos o apagados simultaneamente. Nota: A principios de
diciembre "Entanglement" se presentara en Art Basel Miami en la Galeria
OMR y en el festival
transitio_mx en la Ciudad de Mexico.

UNDER SCAN
Una obra de arte publico encargada por la region de East Midlands en
Inglaterra.

25 noviembre al 4 diciembre 2005: Brayford Campus, Universidad de Lincoln
12 enero al 22 enero 2006: Humberstone Gate, Leicester
3 febrero al 12 febrero 2006: Market Square, Northampton
24 febrero al 5 marzo 2006: Market Place, Derby
17 marzo al 26 marzo 2006: Castle Wharf, Nottingham
http://www.underscan.co.uk
Under Scan es una instalacion de video interactivo para espacio publico.
En esta pieza los transeuntes son detectados por un sistema de vigilancia
computarizado que activa video-retratos proyectados dentro de su sombra en
el piso. Mas de mil retratos de personas de la region, grabados sin
censura, son proyectados dentro de las sombras.

33 PREGUNTAS POR MINUTO EN BERLIN
Instalacion en Postdamer Platz, Berlin, Alemania
Presentacion: 29 noviembre 15:00 en Postdamer Platz 10
Exposicion: 13 diciembre 2005 al 8 enero 2006
http://www.realities-united.de
Una matriz de 1,800 luces fluorescentes cubren un edificio de 11 pisos en
Berlin, una creacion de los arquitectos realities:united. En esta
plataforma electronica se mostraran 55 mil millones de preguntas
gramaticalmente correctas, --una version en Aleman del software "33
Preguntas por Minuto". La gente puede introducir sus preguntas
escribiendolas en una terminal frente al edificio.

OPPORTUNITY

2 posts: School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University


Deadline:
Tue Nov 15, 2005 16:10

Two posts available in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon.University:
One in Art in Context/Public Art; the other in Electronic and Time Based
Art. Please circulate.

Art in Context/Public Art - Carnegie Mellon University School of Art
Tenure track or Visiting Faculty Position
Beginning August 2006

The School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University is seeking to fill one
tenure-track or one two-year visiting artist position (with possible
renewal) with an emphasis on creative practice that expands the context
for art and engages the public beyond traditional venues. Seeking broad
approach that may include interdisciplinary, collaborative, tactical,
interventionist and other models of artmaking. Candidates with conceptual
strengths, contextual sensibilities, and/or a multidisciplinary
orientation are sought to work with a dynamic faculty team and energetic,
motivated students in innovative BFA and MFA programs. Teach project-based
undergraduate and graduate courses in which students research, interact
with and respond to organizations, sites, and/or audiences in a variety of
diverse communities, sites and contexts. Artists with additional
experience in other visual media or visual culture history/theory also
encouraged to apply.

Salary and benefits competitive. Start August 2006. Advanced degree or
equivalent. College-level teaching experience beyond graduate
assistantships required or equivalent professional experience.

Programmatic information at
http://artserver.cfa.cmu.edu. Include letter
of application with teaching philosophy, CV, names/addresses/ telephone
numbers of 3 references (no recommendation letters). Up to 20 examples of
creative work, documented through slides or digital media. Documentation
of time-based or interactive media should include navigation directions,
if applicable, and should not exceed ten minutes total viewing time. For
specific submission guidelines for electronic work, visit:
http://artserver.cfa.cmu.edu/media.html
Documentation of student work only at interview stage. Minorities
encouraged to apply. AA. EOE. WMA. SASE.

All applications should be postmarked by January 7, 2006 and mailed to:
Art in Context Search, School of Art, CFA 300, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890.

Electronic and Time-Based Art - Carnegie Mellon University School of Art
Tenure track or Two-year Visiting Faculty Position
Beginning August 2006

The School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University is seeking to fill one
tenure-track or two-year (with possible renewal) visiting artist position
in its Electronic Time Based Art Area. Candidates with conceptual
strengths, contextual sensibilities, and/or a multidisciplinary
orientation are sought to work with a dynamic faculty team within an
established electronic time based area in the School of Art. Emphasis on
creative practice in technology-based art with experience in one or more
of the following areas: digital multimedia, Internet-based interactive
and/or virtual environments, performance, interactive audio, motion
capture, telepresence, computer vision, artificial life or biotechnology,
robotics, or programming for electronic art. Potential for collaboration
with the School of Computer Science, the Entertainment Technology Center
and/or other divisions on campus.

Artists with a significant track record in digital/electronic media who
are qualified for joint appointments with computer sciences, natural
sciences or engineering will also be considered.

Those with additional experience in other visual media or critical theory
are also encouraged to apply.

Salary and benefits competitive. Start August 2006. Advanced degree or
equivalent. College-level teaching experience beyond graduate
assistantships required or equivalent professional experience.

Programmatic information at http://artserver.cfa.cmu.edu. Include letter
of application with teaching philosophy, CV, names/addresses/ telephone
numbers of 3 references (no recommendation letters). Up to 20 examples of
creative work, documented through slides or digital media. Documentation
of time-based or interactive media should include navigation directions,
if applicable, and should not exceed ten minutes total viewing time. For
specific submission guidelines for electronic work, visit:
http://artserver.cfa.cmu.edu/media.html
Documentation of student work only at interview stage. Minorities
encouraged to apply. AA. EOE. WMA. SASE.

All applications should be postmarked by January 7, 2006 and mailed to:
ETB Search, School of Art, CFA 300, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890.

Hilary Robinson
Stanley and Marcia Gumberg Dean,
College of Fine Arts
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
USA

hr@cmu.edu