New Steps, at NY Digital Salon by olia lialina

[Auriea.]

New Steps
There was a new step made recently in net art exhibiting practice. By 
NY Digital Salon. Actually two steps.

Step One: Screenshots instead of Links.
illustration
http://www.zombie-and-mummy.org/misc/nydigitalsalon.gif

On 14.04.03 I got a message from Bruce Wands, Director of New York 
Digital Salon, informing me that my work

"Will-N-Testament was selected by Gregor Muir of the Tate for 
inclusion in the New York Digital Salon's special issue of Leonardo, 
as part of an international survey on new media art. Our upcoming 
exhibition, Vectors: Digital Art of Our Time at the World Financial 
Center Courtyard Gallery, is a selection of works from that survey
[...]
Further information can be obtained at www.nydigitalsalon.org"

from
http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/

i went to http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artists.php?nav=artists

and then to
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=28

a page where will-n-testament was featured. I click on the picture of 
will-n-testament. A new window opens with only a fraction of the 
will-n-testament page visible. I was about to write my standard 
message to the director and the curators that it looks really bad to 
open a link in a small window without location bar visible: it is bad 
taste, dilettantism, it is a mistake of last century curators, it is 
against logic of the web, against nature of the work ... But then I 
resized the window: there was still only part of my page visible. i 
reloaded -- still same effect. It could only mean that it is not a 
site, but an image, a .gif. will_n_testament.gif as the source code 
revealed.

Most Other works looked the same:

CarnivoreLogo.jpg instead of Carnivore 
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=7

IOD-picture-1.jpg for IOD 
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=15

leonardo_numbers.jpg for The Godlove Museum_Numbers 
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=42

I wrote a message to salon and curators asking how it could happen 
that online works are represented without any link to them. The 
answer came from Benjamin Weil. He wrote that what i see is not an 
exhibition, but just a documentation of the exhibition.

But what's the logic? Wouldn't it document an exhibition better if 
you can see the works of the artists? How can a screenshot be more 
informative than a work itself? What for to make a screenshot (which 
is also more effort) if you can make a link? Additionally i can't get 
why this 'documentation' is decorated with my email address? 
(Actually it's nobody's email address, this mailbox never existed.)

That it is just a documentation, not an exhibition itself, is of 
course a good argument in conversation with me. I could criticize the 
way my work is exhibited and demand that it is changed, but I can't 
protest about the way ny digital salon is documenting its own 
activity.

To sum it up: Ideal form found. Not an exhibition, but a 
documentation. Not a link, but a screenshot.

Screenshots are easy and unpretentious. They can't destroy a 
curatorial concept. They won't bring technical complications.

And, anyway, no one would complain, because the audiences (real and 
virtual) of digital salons do not care about net art. Nobody would 
follow more than two links deeper. People coming from weblogs, 
private home pages or links their friends sent in an email would do.

Plus, lots of more recent net art project are so complicated to 
navigate, plug-in demanding and content-wise heavy that it is not 
possible to get through them and they are adequately represented by 
screenshots, "about" and "artist bio".


Step Two: "When Exhibition is over links will be reactivated"

But links to the project were found on these pages:

http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=55
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=17
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=5
http://www.nydigitalsalon.com/salon_10/artwork.php?artwork=62

Real links. You click on them and they open a work of the artist in 
the same window and with location bar.

On 5th May I got a new message from Bruce Wands explaining that:

"The NYDS Web site is currently set up to support our exhibition at 
the World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery through May 25. As such, 
the Web site and kiosks contain information about art work and the 
essays in Leonardo. Four net art pieces were chosen for the NY 
exhibition: Vuk Cosic's ASCI History of Art for the Blind, Mark 
Napier's Riot, Maciej Wisniewski's netomat and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's 
Vectorial Elevation. These links are live. We were hoping to have a 
wider selection of net art in the exhibition and are sorry that your 
work was not included. After May 25, the Web site will revert back to 
its pre-exhibition status and the links to all the net art pieces 
will be reactivated."

The way this online exhibition is constructed may appear very simple, 
but in fact it's the next step in e-curating: Online archives of any 
art institution contain links as real museum archives are filled with 
paintings, video tapes, etc. To make a real exhibition you take 
things out of the archive. To make an online exhibition you activate 
some links from your online archive. To make a new online exhibition, 
you deactivate these links and activate others.

After years of perverse experiments the idea to make and remove links 
sounds like a relief. Environmentally friendly approach.

However, this practice cannot be really recommended due to the fact 
the role of curators and museums is different when it comes to online 
exhibitions: they are not that important. No matter how loud the 
museum's name or how great the curatorial concept is, they are just 
nodes. Because online works are public anyway, linked or not.

That is why the meaning of deactivating links is not identical to 
bringing an art object to a storage room. The result is that, for 
example, Digital Salon is not excluding works by not linking to them. 
By not linking to them, Digital Salon is not participating in the 
constantly ongoing exhibition of all these works. I don't think this 
is a meaning they wanted to achieve by selecting only 4 works from 
20. But this is how it looks for the people who see the pages i 
mentioned above.

And even worse in particular Digital Salon case. If my project is 
listed, but not linked it can mean that curators could not find it. 
Or that it was found but is not working. Or that i did not allow to 
link to it, which is damaging for my reputation: in no way i am 
against that there are links to my works from any site. Even when it 
is in 'exhibition status'.

So the conclusion here can be that in case of online art, it does not 
make sense to divide your collection into archive and current 
exposition, into linked and not linked works.

May 9th, 2003
olia lialina
http://art.teleportacia.org