Talks

2012

▶ “Internet Aware, Post Internet, Expanded Internet: Recent Developments in Internet-Based Art Practice” at the New Media Caucus-sponsored panel “Spontaneous Combustion” at CAA 2012, Los Angeles, February 16, 2012

The panel was organized by Preston Poe. Other presenters included Lee Montgomery, Joseph Delappe, Robert Lawrence, and Ei Jane Janet Lin.

Synopsis of my paper:

Within the last 5 years or so, two terms have cropped up in discussion of contemporary internet-based art – “internet aware art” and “post internet art.” These works are not intended to be viewed and experienced exclusively online, but are seen as always having the potential to go offline, in many cases becoming physical objects. The dispersed nature of many of these works also allows multiple forms of engagement, across a number of different contexts. This paper will review these concepts of “post-internet” or “internet aware” art while also providing examples of recent internet-based art practice that seems to pertain to these ideas by artists such as David Horvitz, Artie Vierkant, Kari Altmann, Travess Smalley, Mark Leckey, Seth Price, Samara Golden, Anne de Vries and others. Why, within the past 5 years, have internet artists been so attentive to the materiality of their projects, often working both on and offline? How does this relate to a digitally-informed experience of being in public? Is this a response to shifting conditions within the space of the internet itself, brought on by social media, expanded bandwidth (allowing the faster transmission of video, images, sound, animation, etc.), and a limitless landscape of data? Are we seeing the emergence of expanded internet-based art, perhaps akin to expanded cinema?

2011

▶ “Viral Not Virus: Alan Liu’s “Viral Aesthetics” Reconsidered” at The Matter with Media at ISEA 2011, Istanbul, September 17, 2011.

The panel was organized by Jamie Allen and Tom Schofield. Other presenters included Martijn Stevens, Alejandro Schianchi, Shintaro Miyazaki, Thomas Zummer.

Synopsis of my paper:

My paper will explore how a particular subset of contemporary internet-based artworks intentionally operate as “work as assemblage” (after N. Katherine Hayles in My Mother Was a Computer). The examples I will use – Seth Price’s Dispersion (2002-Ongoing), Oliver Laric’s Versions (2009 and 2010), and David Horvitz’s Idea Subscription (2009) – all destabilize the idea of a static, ideal “work” by relying on their diffuse circulation and instantiation through networks for their realization. Notably, they all involve a text in some way – Dispersion and Versions are essays about visual culture and the distribution of content online and both take many forms,Dispersion circulates across various media – sculpture and printed booklets – where Versions is remixed by other artists and curators. Idea Subscription was a year-long tumblr blog disclosing written (often whimsical) ideas for readers to implement, which was recently repackaged in book form as Everything That Can Happen in a Day. In response to what Alan Liu terms “viral aesthetics” in The Laws of Cool, I will argue that these works offer another, alternate aesthetic mode to “viral aesthetics” – one that operates through its immersion within the endless stream of information, where presence results from serendipitous instantiation. Liu emphasizes the “destructive creation” of art by Joseph Nechvatal, Jodi, and William Gibson’s Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) – examples that subvert knowledge work by engaging in a destructive mode of productivity, one that problematically contains the assumption that taking something apart reveals its inner truth. While the art practices I would like to discuss also circulate in a “viral” fashion, they do not engage in corrosive destructivity, e.g. Nechvatal’s computer virus projects. Rather, they offer insight by way of a constructive, symbiotic relation with the information technologies that enable them, becoming powerful through their own momentum and spread, an aspect yielded by their existence as “works as assemblage.” By foregrounding the facets of their own transmission, Dispersion, Versions and Idea Subscription provoke a meditation on the movement of information online.

▶ “The Festival” panel for the INDEX Festival for Media and Culture, August 3, 2011

Opening night panel on the concept of the “festival” for the INDEX Festival for Media and Culture. Other panelists included Malcolm Levy (New Forms Festival), Cornelia Lund (Fluctuating Images), Nathalie Bachand (Elektra Festival), moderated by festival organizers Victoria Keddie and Kristin Trethewey.

2010

▶ “New Style Curators” at the New Museum, November 18, 2010

Panel organized by Joanne McNeil, event part of the exhibition “Free” at the New Museum.

Description: Last year, the New York Times proclaimed, “The Word ‘Curate’ No Longer Belongs to the Museum Crowd.” This panel takes a look at “curation” online and how the word applies to social media and Internet use. New media companies sometimes hire “curators” to filter the web for specialized information and data. But missing from this analogy is the importance of context and preservation. Are we all curators of the web? How are sites like Tumblr and Delicious contributing to this trend? Does the Internet even need curation? What can social media learn from the art world? More importantly, with everyone busy curating, who is making the original content online? Joanne McNeil will moderate a panel including Paddy Johnson (Art Fag City), Rex Sorgatz (Kinda Sorta Media), and Ceci Moss (Rhizome).

2008

▶ “Rhizome Commissions ’08” at the New Museum, August 8, 2008

Moderated a panel honoring artists awarded grants through Rhizome’s Commissions Program. Artists presented on their commissioned projects and larger bodies of work, artists included Dan Pfiffer, David Nolen, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Carolyn Strauss and Julian Bleecker, and Melanie Crean.