Myths of Immateriality

I came across this telelecture on “Myths of Immateriality: Curating, Collecting and Archiving Media Art,” and since we had talked about the issue of archiving media art in class last week, I thought you might be interested in checking it out.

Presentations are given by Christiane Paul and Paul Sermon, followed by a discussion afterward. Christiane Paul is Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service organization and information resource dedicated to digital art. Paul Sermon is a media artist and scientist at the University of Salford, UK; many of his works focus on telematic work, such as one of his earlier works, Telematic Dreaming, in which a bed is turned into a projection space that might show a partner a thousand miles away. The projection of the other person on the bed results in a remarkable suggestion which turns the touch of the projected body into an intimate action.

Paul gives an interesting talk about the subtleties of interactive telematic work, and Christiane Paul, speaks frankly about the issues of museums presenting new media art:

Presenting new media art is very challenging to an institution and other venues because of their ephemeral, network-oriented, telepresent nature that is to a large extent — immaterial…

In the video of the discussion, moderator Michael Freund says of her comments:

This is very enlightening and interesting, especially coming from somebody who is a curator, who basically says that museums are not equipped, for a variety of reasons, to do the kind of job [for new media art] that they’ve been doing for traditional art.

Check it out:
Paul Sermon Christiane Paul Group Discussion