SB: Language is the crux of the issue. Digital data is a language field. Computer programs are language systems. Computers are language-enabling and -processing machines. Alan Turing defined the computer as a machine that can be all machines, because a computer is reprogrammable--a soft machine that exists not as fixed hardware, but rather as a self-modifying symbolic system designed to operate on symbolic material. In effect, he described a language machine. Given this, the above question seems redundant. However, if we rephrase the question to read, "How does arts-critical language and discourse help or hinder in our understanding of digital art?" then the answer must be that as yet such language cannot begin to address the issues involved in digital art, that such issues are distant to those that arts-critical discourse has traditionally addressed. Thus, when such language is directed toward digital art, it hinders the development of the work (if anybody chooses to take notice of the discourse, that is). I doubt that it is a question of such discourse adapting to the medium; rather, it is one of an entirely new discourse emerging, one that is better suited to this creative field. We have seen this happen with cinema, and I think a similar paradigm shift is required here: a new language and a new discourse. Certainly, there can be no expectation that digital art--or rather, those who practice it--need adapt to existing discourses. One of the most exciting aspects of being involved in such art practice is that it leaves you (and your audience) free of previous models.

Shock: Where net-work (work that can be accessed through the Internet) and the virtual are concerned, we tend to overlay existing categories and definitions--object, performance, space. Is this an obstacle to understanding/appreciating the work?

SB: Historical references, from within a media/discipline or from without, are both useful and problematic. They allow us to use previous models and metaphors of thought to analyze issues and arrive at a position on or perception of something. But they also can cloud issues and situations with nonapplicable metaphors. Nevertheless, human thought and communication rely on metaphors, and metaphors rely on references. In this sense, it is impossible to come to things "anew," even when those things we address are new. It is one of our limitations. If a computer is in a sense a metaphor (a language-based system, as defined above--a sort of extended human language act), then this is, perhaps, not a critical issue but an example of the problem itself. Thus, do not ask the question of the medium; rather, regard the medium as the question.

Shock: Do we need to construct new ways of talking about "virtual" work?

SB: Yes and no (see above).

Shock: What is new about "new" media?

SB: Everything and nothing. Keeping focused on the issues raised above, what is new is that we have developed this medium (the computer and its allied technologies) that allows language, which is a fundamental human technology (so fundamental that Foucault, for instance, regards the individual human as more or less an instance of language and the collective as the field of language in general), to operate without human involvement. That is, something that has been seen as intrinsically human has been decoupled from the human. We have a technology that allows language, both its instances and its potential to create more instances, to float free of its origins, calling into question not only what language is but also what it is to be human. This is, however, not new at all. The printing press, to a large degree, achieved the same thing, at least in so far as instances of language (language acts) were concerned. Therefore, what would seem new is that we now have a writing system that can write itself; a medium that defines itself.

Shock: What similarities and differences are there between "real" and "virtual" art objects/performances/spaces?

SB: I wonder if there is anything to be gained in distinguishing between the real and the virtual. I regard this as a false dialectic. It seems to me, taking into account all that is stated above, that the real is virtual and the virtual is real. What we are addressing here is the space in which the human comes into being, and how the enabling technologies we have created have gone beyond enabling us to enabling themselves, such that this space of "being" (to be) is itself reformed.

Shock: Is digital/virtual work a continuation of the "dematerialization of the art object" that has characterized new art of the last 30 years?

SB: As stated above, it is both useful and obsfucating to use historical metaphors such as the one referred to in this question. Does the question address the nature of the medium (which is neither primarily nor necessarily an artistic medium) or the art that happens to be practiced via the medium? If it addresses the former, then it should be broadened to include the dematerialization of culture and the self in general. If it addresses the latter, it should be directed not at artists' use of the technology but at why particular artists have chosen to use the medium to artistic ends.

Shock: How does the virtual object subvert or expand, or both, its potential for being seen, experienced, or collected?

SB: Perhaps the most important questions regarding computers in general and artists' use of digital media in particular, are those of ontology. How does this medium impact and make problematic the old certainties of how the self (singular and collective) comes into being? Because the medium is self-modifying and even (ultimately) self-replicating, we are indeed faced with something that subverts and expands its potential for being seen, experienced, and collected. First, how does one see something that can change itself, invent itself, even "see" itself? The same question can be asked about experience. Second, how can one collect something that is not only infinitely reproducable, but also infinitely variable in those reproductions? Here we are talking not about copies but about instances--where each instance is but a facet of a motile phenomenon, where each instance can produce more instances, where a "thing" is not a thing but a phenomenon. Can phenomena be collected (like the weather)?

Shock: Does "virtual" art need the museum? Do museums need virtual art?

SB: Art (any type of art) does not need anything. However, artists need a lot (money, basically, like anybody else). Within current socioeconomic practice, the museum is an institution delegated (in part) to the maintenance of artistic practice. It is not alone in this role, however; public programs, the commercial gallery sector, etc., also exist to achieve this end. Artists choose the economic model they perceive as being best able to both satisfy their material requirements and help them create and address an audience. Given that digital art tends toward the transient and the immaterial, digital artists are faced with certain problems. For example, because the work is very hard to collect and conserve (indeed, much of it cannot be kept for even a moment of time), it is difficult to sell a piece of it as an artifact. Rather, it must be sold as a phenomenon, an experience. In this sense, much digital art (though it might consist mostly of image or text) is performative. From this perspective, it is clear that digital artists need museums, which as public bodies are not bound to a profit/loss model. Museums could not only partially finance such work but lend it status that could be used as leverage for getting further financing from other sources. For their part, museums need digital art in so far as they wish to be seen as representing the breadth of artistic practice today, artists' use of computers being part of that.

Shock: Does anyone see digital art? Does anyone care? Does digital work suffer from the "Who has actually read 'Gravity's Rainbow'?" syndrome?

SB: Do people see digital art? Does anyone care? From my experience, yes. Many of my own shows have broken venue attendance records, in terms of both the number of people who came through the door and the length of time they stayed. Such shows also seem to attract a lot of publicity, especially in the non-art media (newspapers, popular magazines, television, radio, etc.). My impression is that, compared with non-digital art, digital art enjoys an immediate relationship with its audiences (actual and potential) and that audiences respond to it very positively. In particular, many people seem to find digital art refreshing in that by its very nature it subverts or ignores traditional gallery and museological models of what art might be. The other side of this coin, though, is that digital art tends to have a fraught relationship with the arts establishment, because it does not seem to partake of the hermetic discourses that dominate these institutions, be they museums, galleries, or the art press. Again, my experience is that one of my shows will get many pages of reviews in the mainstream daily newspapers but will not even be mentioned in a single "serious" art magazine or journal. What this suggests is that there is a good general audience for such work but that the specialist "art" audience has a lot of trouble with it. As for the "Gravity's Rainbow" syndrome, a common audience response to digital work seems to be bemusement and an inability to recognize its status as art. However, while this often leaves people confused as to what it is they are experiencing, most of them seem, in the end, not to care. It's a question not of "Is it art?" but of "Do I like it?" In this sense the ambiguous status of digital work, in its relation to "proper" art, is a positive factor, freeing such artistic practice from established modes of dissemination and address.

Shock: How are audiences expected to experience a virtual object? That is, are they expected to see it in a museum, in their home, at work, on a 15-inch monitor, etc.?

SB: The answer to this question is entirely bound up with the artist's intentions. When producing work, an artist foresees where and how he or she wishes it to be experienced. The work might be produced for a public site, for broadcast, for private ownership, for a museum, for secondary reproduction, etc. As mentioned above, it is problematic to distnguish between the "real" and the "virtual." Ultimately, the virtual depends on some sort of material infrastructure in order to be experienced. It is the artist who decides what infrastructure (the Internet, an installation, etc.) to use and where the work should be experienced. It seems best to keep a very open mind about what places are appropriate for such work. In this way, it can develop in relation to as many situations (and thus audiences) as possible; if new situations develop, they can be more easily recognized and facilitated.

Shock: Does anyone actually take the time to view/experience net-work?

SB: Good question. Somebody needs to do a general statistical survey of this. Then we will know the answer.

Shock: Do audiences take the time to view/experience digital work in museums and galleries? (The average time a viewer spends with a work of art in a gallery is often measured in seconds.)

SB: At least in so far as my own experience is concerned, the answer to this is an emphatic yes. Audiences take an inordinate amount of time to experience digital work, when compared with the time they take to experience "traditional" art. I have often found people spending hours, even whole days, in one of my installations and then coming back for more. They seem to treat the experience less as a conscious form of viewing or spectating and more as just spending time in a place they like. The viewers, in this sense, abrogate their role as audience and become participants. People seem to like this. I am currently involved with putting together a museum of digital media (not an art museum, though it will include digital artwork), and one of the major problems we have to address is audience flow. Traditionally, a museum allows between one and three minutes per exhibit in calculating audience flow. We have upped this to five minutes. From our collective curatorial experience, we know that even this is a radical underestimate of the time people will wish to spend with each exhibit. However, the museum as an organization demands five minutes as a maximum "dwell time" due to the number of people who will come through the door every day and to health and safety requirements. As a result, we are designing the galleries, and even the works, such that people are effectively pushed (or dragged) away from individual projects, though we know they would rather spend more time with them. So, in conclusion, I would say that people spend a lot of time--a lot more than museums are traditionally equipped to let them--with digital works.

Shock: What has an artist created when she makes a virtual object (space/performance)? Is this aesthetic activity different from creating actual objects?

SB: As stated above, you have to look at the context, means, and infrastructure in which the work exists, and what choices the artist made. Contemporary artists are very literate regarding media institutions. They are concerned less with the materiality of what they make or the skills base they employ, and more with the manipulation of such things as context. When an artist chooses to make work for a public site, for example, the primary medium he or she works with is the notion of "public site." Similarly, when an artist produces work for a museum context, the idea of the museum as an institution becomes the medium. In this sense, today's artists are making entire disciplines their media. An artist who chooses to make a theatrical work, to be experienced in a theater, will use as the medium the entire notion of theater, in terms of both its processes and its social role. Again, the distinction between the "real" and the "virtual" is deeply problematic. An artist can produce something that seems immaterial; indeed, entire styles of art are dedicated to this approach. But is it possible for an artist to produce a work that is truly immaterial?

Shock: What are the artistic opportunities and obstacles one encounters when working with the nascent and primitive forms of a technology?

SB: See all of the above. Other than that, can I list all of them?

Shock: In what ways does the virtual environment challenge our ideas about who is an artist and how artists work?

SB: Again, see all of the above.

Shock: In what ways does virtual work (or net-work) differ from other forms of digital art practice?