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 ...
NOV 3 Side Cinema: re-enactment and simulation
Date: Oct 27, 2005 4:56 AM
Subject: Fwd: NOV 3 Side Cinema: re-enactment and simulation
> a-side presents:
>
> Thurs 3rd NOV, 7.30PM
> RE-ENACTMENT & SIMULATION NIGHT
>
> Join Sarah Cook as she showcases artworks that engage in the practice
> of re-enactment or the technical phenomenon of simulation.
> Featured artists include: Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, Ben Coode-Adams &
> Marcus Coates, Ulrike Kubatta, Iain Forsyth &Jane Pollard, Marisa S.
> Olson, and others.
>
> This programme is supported by the University of Sunderland and
> coincides with the exhibition 'Once More
new york underground 2006 call for entries
Programming at the New York Underground Film Festival...
NEW YORK UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
CALL FOR ENTRIES!!! CALL FOR ENTRIES!!!
THROW US A BONE HERE!
Guess who's back
Yeah we're back!
13th Annual New York Underground Film Festival
March 8-14, 2006
New York Underground is once again accepting entries for the 2006 festival.
We're growing up, we're turning 13 (soon we'll be driving!), and we're
inviting you to be a part of our celebration!
Pierce our eyes,
heads,
ears,
WITH AUDIOVISUALS!
Send us your shorts, your docs, your features, your experiments, whatever
you've got, we wanna see it.
New York Underground Film Festival seeks film and video works for its 13th
installment, held March 8-14, 2006 at (as always!) Anthology Film Archives.
/////////////////////////////////////////////
Deadline - November 15, 2005
Late Deadline - December 1, 2005
Extended Deadline - December 15, 2005
///////////////////////////////////////////
To read complete regulations and download an entry form visit our website:
www.nyuff.com
What is 'Underground'?
WHAT IS IT????
Our festival seeks to go beyond what mainstream venues show, presenting
works of an innovative, experimental, subversive, critical, uncompromising,
and adventurous nature. The NYUFF exists to support and promote these films
that push boundaries and break new ground
Fwd: Radiator and Digital Cultures Symposium on Performance, Dance, and Technology Art
From: Johannes Birringer <orpheus@rice.edu>
Date: Oct 24, 2005 11:06 AM
M e d i a R e l e a s e
Radiator and Digital Cultures Symposium
on Performance, Dance, and Technology Art
2 - 4 December 2005
This three day international symposium comes to Nottingham in December to
bring into focus artistic practices of live performance and dance using
digital
technology in the form of lens based, sensory, networked or locative media.
Coordinated by Digital Cultures Lab based at Nottingham Trent
University, and
Radiator, based at Broadway Cinema, the symposium forms part of Radiator
05 - the UK's leading biannual Festival of New Technology Art. The symposium
also concludes the four-day Digital Cultures Lab in dance technologies
(Nov.28 - Dec.1) coordinated by Johannes Birringer to convene a platform
of exchange for some of the most recognized dance technologists around
the world.
The Symposium will bring together leading practitioners, developers,
scientists and theorists from the disciplines that make up new media
performance including live art, locative and pervasive media, telematics,
performance and dance, wearable, sensor based and cybernetic technologies.
Confirmed participants so far:
Troika Ranch (USA), Aylin Kalem (Turkey), Blast Theory (UK), Carol Brown
Dances (UK), Hellen Sky/Company in Space (Australia), Emanuele Quinz
(France), Armando Menicacci (France), Ghislaine Boddington (UK), Gob
Squad (Germany), Sally Jane Norman (UK), Scott deLahunta (The
Netherlands), Sher Doruff (The Netherlands), Henry Daniel (Canada),
Igloo (UK), Sue Broadhurst (UK), Igor Stromajer (Slovenia), Ivani
Santana (Brazil), Jayachandran Palazhy (India), John Mitchell (USA),
Karen Guthrie/Nina Pope (UK), Keith Armstrong (Australia), Koala Yip
(Hong Kong), kondition pluriel (Canada), Lali Krotoszynski (Brasil), Liu
Chun (China), Margarita Bali (Argentina), Marlon Barrios Solano (USA),
Michelle Teran (Canada), Mine Kaylan (UK), Alastair Bannerman (UK),
Nuria Font (Spain), Jonatas Manzolli (Brazil), Paul Verity Smith (UK),
Philippe Baudelot (France), Ran Hyman (Canada), Rimini Protokoll
(Germany), Gregory Sporton (UK), Simon Biggs/Sue Hawksley (UK), Simon
Pope (UK), Erin Manning (Canada), Sita Popat (UK), Stamatia Portanova
(UK), Steven Benford / Mixed Reality Lab (UK), Thecla Schiphorst
(Canada), Yacov Sharir (USA), Kunihiko Matsuo (Japan), Johannes
Birringer (UK).
Some of the artists participating in the Digital Cultures Lab will
feature new works during three days of evening activities,
installations, screenings and concerts, starting with the opening night
(Dec 1) at Powerhouse (Victoria Studios) and continuing through Friday
and Saturday evenings.
For details, see http://www.digitalcultures.org
The symposium is a collaboration between the Digital Cultures Lab of
Nottingham Trent University and the Radiator Festival for New Technology
Art. This year the festival expands its own boundaries to include the
city streets as well as a range of new partner venues. Radiator 05 (1 - 4
Dec 2005) presents installations, screenings, workshops, talks,
performances, music and satellite events live and online at Broadway, Angel
Row Gallery, Future Factory, Victoria Studios, Waverley 1851, Malt Cross,
Surface Gallery, Sandfield Centre and Preset. For more information go to
www.radiator-festival.org
Symposium details:
Friday 2 - Saturday 3 December 2005 10am-6:30pm
Sunday 4 December 2005 10am-4pm
Powerhouse
Victoria Studio
Shakespeare Street
Nottingham NG1 4FQ
Full weekend:
Fwd: Balance and Power:Surveillance and Performance in Video Art
From: Jenny Marketou <jmarketou@yahoo.com>
Date: Oct 24, 2005 6:25 AM
Subject: Re: Balance and Power:Surveillance and Performance in Video Art
To: Marisa Olson <marisa@rhizome.org>
Dear Marisa,
I thought you would like to know about to my large
scale video installation project : 99 Red Balloons:
Be Careful Who Sees You When You Dream,2005 which
was commissioned for the show Balance and
Power:Performance and Surveillance in Video Art
curated by Michael Rush at Krannert Art Museum,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The
Exhibition will be up from October 22, 2005 through
January 1, 2006
The exhibition comprises works by
Vito Acconci;Antenna; Jim Campbell; Peter Campus;
Jordan Crandall; Sophie Calle; Steve Mann; Jenny
Marketou; Jonas Mekas; Muntadas;Julia Scher; Bruce
Nauman; Paul
Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar;Subodh Gupta; Harun
Farocki; Kristin Lucas; Tiffany Holmes; Kiki Seror;
Martha Rosler; Jill Magid; Tim Hyde; Andy Warhol.
Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in
Video Art is a particularly timely exhibition for a
world preoccupied with security and fearful of
international terrorism. Curated by Michael Rush for
Krannert Art Museum, this exhibition examines both the
early days of video art and current practices in an
attempt to understand the complex relationship between
voluntary acting for the camera and involuntary taping
by a camera on the part of power systems that have an
interest in the movement of citizens. The
award-winning, New York-based design firm, Antenna,
has created an innovative, sculptural environment for
the exhibition.
Balance and Power is guest curated for Krannert Art
Museum by Michael Rush, a curator, writer, critic, and
former director of the Palm Beach Institute of
Contemporary Art (2000-2004). Rush is the author of
three books from Thames and Hudson, London: Video Art,
2004, the first major survey of the field in more than
twenty years; New Media in Art, published in May,
2005, which is a fully revised version of his
best-selling New Media in Late 20th -Century Art1999.
He has been a regular contributor to The NewYork
Times, Art in America, artnet and several other
publications.
Fwd: conference on indy media at cornerhouse
From: Sarah Cook <sarah.e.cook@sunderland.ac.uk>
Date: Oct 24, 2005 9:44 AM
Subject: conference on indy media at cornerhouse
To: NEW-MEDIA-CURATING@jiscmail.ac.uk
Hi all,
A quick notice about a conference on indy media at Cornerhouse Gallery
in Manchester this weekend with a great lineup!
From Tomorrow On: art, activism, technology and the future of
independent media
http://www.cornerhouse.org/exhibitionedinfo.asp?IDu7
They will be streaming the conference live also.
Sarah