02.08.00
from steve dietz
gallery 9, walker art center, the internet, and digital culture
ART ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK
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issue #4 02.08.00 |
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WebWalker DAILY 02_11_00--04_30_00 from steve dietz gallery 9, walker art center, the internet, and digital culture ART ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK |
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° art entertainment network ° EAT ° Sins of Change ° Let's Entertain ° mediatheque ° artWarez ° Empire of Signs ° links |
Let us entertain you! Opening February 11 and running through April 30, the Walker Art Center presents in the galleries in Minneapolis and online a complex of events that examine--and just plain play with--the intersections between art, entertainment, the network, commerce, and life. During these three months, the work of well over 125 artists will be presented as part of: Let's Entertain the exhibition in the galleries Art Entertainment Network the exhibition online EAT: Entertainment, Art, Technology an online forum Sins of Change: Media Arts in Transition, Again an international symposium at the Walker mediatheque your source for 24 x 7 digital arts programming on the Web artWarez cool art downloads During the course of the exhibitions, WebWalker will be published daily, focusing on different projects as well as guest columns by Sylvie Parent, Lev Manovich, Mark Amerika, Andy Deck, Robbin Murphy, South to the Future, and many others. _______________________________________ |
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Art Entertainment Network (AEN) is an online exhibition of more than 40-Web-based artist projects that exploit the convergence of media on the Internet in order to explode the boundaries between art and entertainment--and daily (online) life. All these projects are designed to be viewed, experienced, participated in, and played with online--from Natalie Bookchin's video gamelike The Intruder to participatory projects such as Mark Napier's ©bots to new forms of narrative such as Auriea Harvey's An Anatomy to Ken Goldberg and Bob Farzin's mysterious "webcam," Dislocation of Intimacy.
AEN is a portal concept by Steve Dietz, designed by Vivian Selbo, that is a gateway to the projects in the exhibition as well as other artist-created video, audio, and text works from around the world and around the Internet, featured "24 x 7" in the online mediatheque. Like any portal, there are the expected features from a search engine to a link of the day, except that in AEN each of these features links to a specific artist project, for instance, one that plays with the notion of a search engine such as Mongrel's Natural Selection or a daily link, as in Maciej Wisniewski's Jackpot. For the gallery installation, Antenna Design New York, Inc. has extended the idea of a network portal into the gallery to create a physical one--a revolving door that is a kind of portal between the physical installations of Let's Entertain, and the online projects of Art Entertainment Network. As you turn the door, different projects "open up," yet you always circle back, never actually crossing the threshold into the virtual. ________________________________________ |
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Entertainment, Art, Technology (EAT), is an online discussion investigating the reasons we are entertained and the ways entertainment affects our relationship to art and technology.
EAT is inspired by the 1966 organization of the same acronym: Experiments in Art and Technology, founded by engineer Billy Kluver. The Walker's EAT is a contemporary manifestation that considers the dynamic between entertainment, mass media, art, and technology. No matter what your preferred form of entertainment, its consumption is subject to a basic set of tracts. Each of EAT's six tracts will be addressed for two weeks and led by a different set of invited artists, writers, theorists, and technocultural producers. Choice: What shall I do today? Engagement: Am I having fun yet? Competition: Who will win? Mischief: Can I get away with it? Surrender: Have I forgotten the real world? Sacrifice: Is this worth it? EAT will be digested on the Walker website once a week as well as in a weekly WebWalker issue. Participate in the listserv discussion at www.walkerart.org/salons/eat/. Join us for virtual dinner. ________________________________________ |
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Sins of Change
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Sins of Change: Media Arts in Transition, Again is a two-day international symposium hosted by the Walker Art Center with The Kitchen. As older forms of media such as film and video converge with new digital technologies and networked communications, we are challenged to expand and redefine our critical understanding of the media and its intersection with the social, cultural, and educational institutions in the 21st century. In 1983, the Walker Art Center hosted Media Arts in Transition, a major national conference focusing on the emerging forms of independent film and video production. The conference examined the technological, social, economic, and aesthetic forces shaping the future of the media arts. Many of the questions posed at the 1983 conference remain relevant today, but their contexts and implications are far broader. Sins of Change: Media Arts in Transition, Again unites curators, academics, and artists from around the world who share their perspective on the issues underlying the state of media arts in transition, again.
Thursday, April 6 Pierre Levy, keynote speaker Friday, April 7 Pride: Media into Art Bruce Jenkins, Sara Diamond, Lynn Hershman, Lev Manovich Covetousness: (De)institutionalizing Media Bill Horrigan, Dirk DeWitt, Chrissie Iles, Benjamin Weil Sloth: Audiences and the Politics of Access Neil Sieling, Kathy Rae Huffman, Manse Jacobi, Esther Robinson Evening program: A Dialogue with Bill T. Jones and Paul Kaiser Saturday, April 8 Anger and Gluttony: Last Night Lara Croft Saved My Life Pierre Levy, Craig Baldwin, Jessica Bronson, Jordan Crandall, Krisztina de Chatel Envy: Can the Center Hold? (net.art per se) Simon Biggs, Vuk Cosic, Natalie Jeremijenko, Olia Lialina Lust: Artifice and Interface: Strategies of Visual Display Diane Gromala, Scott Bukatman, Matthew Causey, Elizabeth Diller Evening performance by Negativland Registration is limited. Full details and registration form at www.walkerart.org/salons/sinsofchange/ ________________________________________ |
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CELEBRITY. DESIRE. SEDUCTION. TRANSGRESSION. Welcome to the pleasure zones of today's gratification-driven consumer society. From the development of urban entertainment districts like Times Square and experiential retail environments such as Nike Town to the cult of celebrity surrounding politics today, everyday life is being transformed into an endless loop of multisensory spectacles and fictions in which we participate with both enjoyment and guilt.
Let's Entertain revolves around the twisted root of popular culture through a diverse selection of multidisciplinary artworks by more than 90 artists from 17 countries, some of them working in the placeless realm of the Internet. Drawing on 25 years of art practices-including Pop, Conceptual process, performance, and appropriation-these artists employ entertainment strategies as a means of critiquing our "thrill-seeking" society as well as a way to address the many complexities of contemporary global cultures. Their works, many of which invite active participation within the galleries, take form beyond simple medium or technique and bypass old distinctions between "high" and "low" art. The artists in Let's Entertain challenge us not to simply renounce notions of entertainment and pleasure per se, but to understand how such strategies can be used to tell a different story-one that is sweet, amusing and, like a fairy tale, sometimes cruel. ________________________________________ |
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mediatheque
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   The AEN mediatheque is an online resource of links to artist-created audio, video, text and screen-based works from around the world. At almost any hour of every day, the mediatheque highlights live webcassts, archived performances, as well as the links to related resources that help contextualize art on the net. Let me know if you have listings to be added. ________________________________________ |
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artWarez
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From screensavers by General Idea and rtMark to browsers by Wisniewski and I/O/D to Murphy's Multiples on Demand and Negativland's Squant plug-in, AEN's artWarez is the place to "shop" in good conscience. Let me know if you have listings to be added. ________________________________________ |
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Empire of Signs
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 Philippe Vergne, curator of Let's Entertain, visited Japan in November of 1998 to research many of the artists in the exhibition. View the online journal of his trip, designed by Louis Mazza, Empire of Signs.________________________________________ |
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links
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Art Entertainment Network aen.walkerart.org
Let's Entertain
EAT: Entertainment, Art, Technology
Sins of Change: Media Arts in Transition, Again
Empire of Signs www.cavil.com
Antenna Design New York, Inc.
The Kitchen
Negativland
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