Oral Defense

May 20, 2009

Thesis Paper:

A History and Historiography of New Media
Curating and Exhibition Design and Display in the American Museum


Section 1:

Introduction: Why defining New Media is important

Section 2:

Museum in Transition: Architecture, Staff, and Curatorial Initiatives and Practices

Section 3:

The Parallels Between the Developments in Tools and Museum Exhibition

Section 4:

  • History of New Media Exhibition in the Museum
    • Experimentation with Technology: Late Sixties to Early Seventies
    • Video and Performance: Seventies
    • Embodiment and Virtuosity: Early Eighties to late Nineties
    • The Reflective New Media Exhibition: Late Nineties to 2007
Section 5:
  • Some Observations on Some Digital Art Contemporary Exhibitions
    • San Francisco MoMA
    • New York MoMA
    • New York Guggenheim

red: sixties, purple seventies and eighties in the museum, blue nineties forward
Exhibitions are in Bold

Year

Technological Innovation

Innovations in Art Praxis
& Major Exhibitions

Organizations and Programs

1952

John Cage’s 4’33” (aka Silence)

 

1956

Quadruplex was the first videotape format

 

1963

First Computer Graphics Software is created by Ivan Sutherland at MIT. It is called Sketchpad.
Instamatic film cartridge
ASCII text

Exhibit: Nam Jun Paik exhibits Random Access Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany

 

1964

Stan Vanderbeek and Ken Knowlton produce the first computer-animated film Poem Field.

 

1965

Stereo Computer animations are created at Bell Labs in New Jersey.

 

1966

Charles A Csuri produces the computer-animated film Hummingbird, later purchased by MoMA
9 Evenings: Collaboration between artists and Bell Labs at the New York  Armory by E.A.T.

Bill Klüver starts E.A.T.: Experiments in Art and Technology

1968

Exhibit: Machine as Seen at the End Of The Mechanical Age at MoMA, New York
Exhibit: Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London

1969

ARPANET is set up by the United States Department of Defense.

Myron Kreuger develops one of the first prototypes for virtual reality.
Exhibit: Information at MoMA, New York

The Studio for Electronic Instrumental Music (STEIM) is established in Amsterdam.

1970

 

 

Expanded Cinema written by Gene Youngblood is published.

1973

 

 

SIGGRAPH is established

1976

Betamax and VHS enter market.

 

1979

The modem is invented.
The first digital music synthesizer is invented.

Ars Electronica Festival in Linz Austria

1980

The MIT Media Laboratory is founded by Nicholas Negroponte.

1981

IBM releases the first computer.

1982

International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology is founded.

1983

The compact disk (CD) is introduced.

1984

The first Mackintosh computer is introduced.
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)

1986

Digital audiotape is introduced by Sony/Phillips

1987

First MFA program in Computer Art in the United States started at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

1990

Kenneth Snelson creates some of the first virtual sculptures using 3D software.

1991

The MP3 digital audio compression format is developed at the Fraunhofer Institute.

1992

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is developed for the Internet paving the way for the World Wide Web.

1995

Real Audio is introduced. It allowed audio to be streamed over the Internet. Real video was released shortly after.

Osmoses, an immersive virtual reality is created by Char Davies.

 

1996

DVD is introduced.
Mini DV First digital recording format available to consumers.

Rhizome.org is founded Eyebeam is founded by John S. Johnson in New York.

1997

MP3 format is introduced

 

1999

The first recordable CD-Rom is developed by Sony and Phillips.

 

2001

Exhibit: 010101: Art in Technological Times at the MoMA San Francisco
Exhibit: Bitstreams at the Whitney Museum
Data Dynamics at Whitney Museum

 

2003

Exhibit: NANO at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 

2009

Exhibit: The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now at the MoMA San Francisco

 

 

Curatorial Contributors

Christiane Paul, adjunct curator Whitney Museum of American Art

  • Digital Art in the Museum
  • Publications
    • Digital Art 2003 and 2008
    • New Media in the White Cube, 2009
      • challenges of new media exhibition
        • professional practices borrowed from traditional arts
        • funding, technical limits, architectural
        • skills of museum employees
      • Recent history of curatorial initiatives regarding documentation
  • Exhibitions
    • Data Dynamic

Jon Ippolito, artist, author, and associate curator for the Guggenheim

  • Tools for Museums & Artists
  • Exhibitions Curated
    • Seeing Double: 2004
    • The Worlds of Nam June Paik 2000
    • Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium 1993

Richard Rinehart, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive curator, and artist

  • Artist Advocate
  • Museum standards expert
  • 2001 panel discussion Preserving the Immaterial
    • MoMA-SFMoMA-Tate Consortium (2004)
      • New Art Trust (1997)
      • Partner: Bay Area Coalition San Francisco
        • only video and audio preservation center in the US serving non profit sector)
    • Open Art Network
      • Open Art License
      • Protocols

Artists Exhibition Records

The most current records are found most easily on artists' own websites. A few years ago, the representing gallery would present the artists work. The artists work would fit into the gallery website structure. Today most artists control their internet presence, which means they have control over the aesthetic, but more importantly their artist bios and exhibition records are complete. The websites from museums lags behind the artist records. The Museum's records are more comprehensive, but don't go as far back. The museum's linked to the consortium follow a similar structure. It appears that they are in the process of creating databases of records.

from Artist's Own Websites

Video Artists

    • Bill Viola
      • Lives and works in the United States
      • Ten year exhibition record / most work shown outside of the United States
    • Nam June Paik
      • Curious exhibition record/ articles
      • Biography not updated since his death
        • retrospectives at the Whitney in 1982, and the Guggenheim in 2000
    • Tony Oursler
      • Solo: Walker Art Center 1982, MoCA-San Diego 1996
      • Group: Whitney 1989, MoMA 1995

New Media Artists

    • Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (A Volve)
      • European, less than 10% of exhibitions in the United States
    • Char Davis (Osmose)
      • Canadian, most exhibitions are in Canada, followed by the US, then abroad
    • Kenneth Snelson
      • American born, trained, substantial American presence in collections, and exhibitions
    • Lynn Hershman (Tillie and the Telemmatic Doll)
      • Timline
      • Lives and works in United States (bio)

Exhibition records of New Media, Performance, and Video Artists (not the artist's website)

    • Vito Acconci (performance)
      • website in development
      • temporarily housed at Crown Point Press
      • Lives and works in the United States
      • About half of exhibitions in the United States
    • Gary Hill (video)
      • Lives and works in the United States
      • About half of exhibitions in the United States
    • Bruce Nauman (performance and video)
      • commercial site
    • Joan Jonas (video)
      • Professor at MIT
      • most exhibitions in Europe

Exhibitions

Early Experimentation with Technology: Late Sixties to Early Seventies

Video and Performance: Seventies

  • Exhibitions In Paper
    • California Video, Ghetty (aquisition of works created in this era at the Long Beach Museum of Art, shown as retrospective in 2008)
    • Individual works (shown later in retrospectives)
      • Nam Jun Paik’s 1963 installation Random Access
      • 1973, Acconci created the video Theme Song
      • Inasmuch as It Is Always Already Taking Place at MoMa features video of the face, and fingers scanning the printed page 1993
  • Exhibitions not in paper
    • 1980 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, Bill Viola Retrospective
    • 1976 In Transit,Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, CA Bill Viola
    • 1975 Video Art, Museum of Modern Art, NY Bill Viola
    • 1983 Video Viewpoints, Museum of Modern Art, New York (screening) Gary Hill
    • 1987 Clown Torture, Art Institute of Chicago, Bruce Nauman

Embodiment, and Virtuosity: Early Eighties to mid Nineties

  • Exhibitions Pieces In Paper
    • Individual works (shown later in retrospectives)
      • Bill Viola’s 1977-79 video The Reflecting Pool
      • In 1995 Char Davis created the virtual reality pieces Osmoses, and in 1998 Ephemere
      • Lynn Hershman’s Tillie and the Telematic Doll, created 1995 to 1998
      • 1994 interactive environment by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonnea
  • Exhibitions not in paper
    • 1988 Public Places, The Museum of Modern Art, NY Bill Viola Vito Acconci

The Reflective New Media Exhibition: Late Nineties to 2007

 

 

the end

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EXTRA: Museum Online Exhibition Records