(1) For example, the term "tactical curating" is used by Roger McDonald (of Arts Initiative, Tokyo) to describe operating independently making reference to "tactical media" - a contemporary form of activism that is best characterised by the appropriation of mass media and current technology to challenge institutions of power. Further references: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_media); (http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2007/08/curating-from-outs...). (2) Alf Rehn, posting to iDC list, thread title "Kurating Keen", 25 August 2007 (https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-August/author.html), iDC list archive (http://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/) (3) Paul O'Neill, posting to Curatorial Network List, 23 October 2007 (http://www.curatorial.net/pipermail/curatorial/2007-October/000142.html); further discussion (http://www.curatorial.net/pipermail/curatorial/2007-October/thread.html) (4) Of particular relevance to this discussion are for instance Goriunova and Shulgin (eds.) (2004), or Fuller (2003). (5) Adrian Mackenzie (2006) in his book Cutting Code. Software and Sociality reiterates the point: "Despite appearing "merely" technical, technical knowledge-practices overlap and enmesh with imaginings of sociality, individual identity, community, collectivity, organisation and enterprise. Technical practices of programming interlace with cultural practices." (2006: 3-4) (6) The exhibition was accompanied by the Press Release (currently in Tate Archive, VA Pub 179) and an independent publication coinciding with the show - a special issue of Studio International entitled "Cybernetic Serendipity" (1968) edited by the exhibition curator Jasia Reichardt. For further references see MacGregor 2002, Reichardt 1968, Gosling 1968, Brown 1998 (http://www.mediaartnet.org/exhibitions/serendipity). (7) For further references see (Gere 2005: 156-160), (Burnham 1970) and Eddie Shanken's "The House That Jack Built: Jack Burnham's Concept of "Software" as a Metaphor for Art", chapter published by Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6:10 (November, 1998) (http://mitpress.mit.edu/ejournals/LEA/ARTICLES/jack.html), full version also available online (http://www.artexetra.com/House.html). (8) Further references for examples listed in this section are: Art and Technology (http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=706; http://www.fondationlanglois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=706); Information (http://www.moma.org/research/archives/EAD/InfoExhibitionRecordsf.html); Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) (http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=306; http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=237); Center for Advanced Visual Studies (http://cavs.mit.edu/); Tendencije 4 ([Nove] Tendencije computer and visual research, http://www.neuegalerie.at/07/bit/cover.html); CODeDOC (http://artport.whitney.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions.shtml). (9) Examples cited are: Desktop Is (http://www.easylife.org/desktop/); C@C - Computer-Aided Curating (http://www.evagrubinger.com; http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festiva...); FACE (http://fundamentalresearch.org/FACE/face.htm); CodeChat (http://pallit.lhi.is/~palli/codechat/codechat.php). (10) Examples cited are: Runme (http://www.runme.org); unDEAF (http://undeaf.v2.nl), TAGallery (http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/); Hack-able Curator (http://www.hackablecurator.org.uk/). (11) Runme (http://www.runme.org), launched in January 2003, is a collaborative project developed by Amy Alexander, Florian Cramer, Matthew Fuller, Olga Goriunova, Thomax Kaulmann, Alex McLean, Pit Schultz, Alexei Shulgin, and The Yes Men. Further members are Hans Bernhard and Alessandro Ludovico. The Runme.org website has been conceptualised and administrated by Amy Alexander, Olga Goriunova, Alex McLean and Alexei Shulgin; and was developed by Alex McLean. (12) The issue of how social technologies can be adapted for mainstream art galleries is demonstrated for example in the Saatchi gallery online project "Your gallery". It plays on the earlier popular online social platform "MySpace" (operating under the slogan "a place for friends"), and more recently "YouTube" (operating under the slogan "Broadcast Yourself"). It offers to "showcase your art to thousands of visitors every day", and the added attraction of displaying work on Saatchi's online "gallery" is the possibility of being selected by invited "experts - critics" to the so called "Saatchi Online top 10", or even more prestigious prize of being selected for shows in physical venues. This demonstrates that, despite the claims of many: "communities like this supplement rather than supplant: eBay created a new market and new opportunities for small businesses, but it has not replaced conventional retail", quoted in the iDC List posting from Chris Byrne, 17 August 2007, List Archive (http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/). References: (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/), (http://www.myspace.com/), (http://www.youtube.com/). (13) The description of social technologies and critical concerns that underpin current discussions in this field is derived from the Art & Social Technologies research group (at the University of Plymouth, UK) (http://www.art-social.net). (14) Other earlier examples of using wikis in curatorial process include Open Congress, 2005 (http://opencongress.omweb.org/wakka/HomePage) and NODE.London 2006 (http://nodel.org). While the curatorial process of Open Congress was facilitated through an online wiki that simultaneously served as a vehicle for documentation and the further distribution of a two-day public event, presented in a mainstream art gallery, NODE.London wiki website was "created to locate media arts in London by inviting practitioners to put themselves on the map and to describe their connections to other individuals, projects and venues". In this way the project "worked as an open organisation, using consensus decision-making and pooling ideas, resources and even people". (15) For more information see (http://vercodigofonte.blogspot.com/2005/11/on-blogging-as-curating.html). (16) CONT3XT.NET is a Vienna-based organisation founded in 2006 as a collaborative platform for the discussion and presentation of issues related to (New) Media Art. The collective was founded by Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl (a.k.a. carlos katastrofsky) and Franz Thalmair. (http://cont3xt.net/index.php) (17) The project is described in the following way: "TAGallery by CONT3XT.NET extends the idea of a tagged exhibition and transfers the main tasks of non-commercial exhibition-spaces to the discourse of an electronic data-space. The method of tagging allows the attribution of artworks to different thematic fields. In TAGallery the act of selecting and recombining - besides chronologically ordered show-rooms, exhibition-titles in a semantically concentrated form and various ways of contextualizing the presented artworks - will be published as well: The continuous progression of curating can be followed by the public, using newsfeeds." The TAGallery is located online (http://del.icio.us/TAGallery). The first TAGallery-exhibition "dead.art(-missing!)LINKreSources" deals with the idea of a "link" as metaphor for networking, collaborating, contextualizing as well as with its reversed connotation: missing or broken link. The link that is not working stands for the ephemerality of Web-based art-forms. The requested URL not found on the server emphasises just as much the need for human care and maintenance as technology itself. References: Gallery (http://del.icio.us/TAGallery), Exhibition (http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/EXHIBITION_dead.art). (18) Other examples of the use of blog in relation to (public) curating, as listed in CRUMB List posting from 15 August 2007, include: http://www.curating.info (run by Michelle Kasprzak), http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/ (run by Nina Simon), http://curating-netart.blogspot.com (run by Ursula Endlicher and Ela Kagel), http://leisurearts.blogspot.com/ (run by an anonymous group). More generally in relation to new media art, examples of blogs listed in the same CRUMB posting were: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com (run by Régine Debatty); http://blog.furtherfield.org (run by furtherfield/http); http://www.test.org.uk (run by Matt Locke), http://www.eyebeam.org/reblog/ (run by a different person every two weeks), http://blogs.walkerart.org/newmedia/ (run by designers/producers), http://www.coinoperated.com/ (the site of artist Jonah Brucker Cohen). The CRUMB List Archive can be found online (http://crumbweb.org/discussionMenu.php?id=9&showList=1&ts=1199034774). (19) For more information see (http://del.icio.us/) (20) Luis Silva further explains the idea of social bookmarking and its relation to curating: "Social bookmarking allows for users to easily store lists of resources (websites, for instance) and have them available to the public, allowing people with the same interests (or not) to share and have easy access to relevant information on a specific subject. But the most important feature of social bookmarking lies in the categorization of these resources by the users themselves. Tagging is the word that comes to mind. Tagging consists basically in the possibility these social bookmarking services have of allowing the users not only to bookmark something, but to informally assign tags (relevant keywords) to it, thus creating meta-data about the tagged resources in a collective way, rather than individually, something that can be seen as a second layer of meaning, but determined by the users rather than the original producer of the content. This is what is called folksonomy, a user-generated taxonomy used to retrieve and categorize web content." References: (http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/STATEMENTS_I.tag_you; http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/EXHIBITION_I.tag_you). (21) Hack-able curator (2007) is a collaborative project by students of masters programme in Digital Art and Technology (m-DAT) at the University of Plymouth (UK): Anita Barwacz, Lindsey Bedford, Andy Bennett, Anaisa Franco, Martha Patricia Nino and Richard Wilkes. It was first shown as part of SLOW exhibition (January - March 2007) at the Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth, UK (http://www.hackablecurator.org.uk/). (22) There is a distinction here to be made between the term "hacking" and what some refer to as "cracking". While hacking (performed by a "hacker") describes a computer expertise and skills used to solve difficult technical problem without causing computer harm, cracking (performed by a "cracker") implies using technical expertise to break into computer systems for malicious purposes causing harm (for instance shutting computer systems) (Barabási 2002: 116). |
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