NEWSgrist: *Amy Wilson’s Conspiracy Theory* Vol. 3, no.
18 (Nov. 11, 2002)
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NEWSgrist
where spin is art
{bi-weekly news digest}
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Vol. 3, no. 18
(Nov. 11, 2002)
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CONTENTS:
- *Splash* Amy Wilson’s Conspiracy Theory
- *Quote/s* from privileging suffering to mediating blood-lust
- *Url/s* Subvertise; anti-genre
elite corps; Ultra Webcam System
- *Cheesy
Security* Airport insecurity + art
- *Humpty Dumpty* Eric Fichl on the removal of Tumbling Woman
- *A View from the Core* Robert Bevan on the destruction in Nablus
- *Brick by Byte* Mirapaul on the concept of Digital
Museums
- *Sheik
Chic* Eddo Stern’s “Sheik Attack,” etc.
-
*Collateral Damage* Bombed cultural sites in Iraq
- *Book Grist* Tom McEvilley + The Shape of Ancient
Thought
-
*Classified* “artpoint” launches for Art Basel Miami Beach
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*Splash* http://newsgrist.net
Amy Wilson’s Conspiracy Theory:
“I have travelled to several UFO
conventions; to Roswell, NM to view
the site of the supposed saucer
crash; to Washington DC to see Monica
Lewinsky up close to determine
whether she was a robot or a Mossat
agent - two theories being
bandied about during the height of the
controversy (I got within half a
foot of her and my verdict is that she's
neither)....”
this splash page is archived at: http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_Wilson.html
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*Quote/s*
1) "...I hate this idea that there are some people
who have a right to
express their suffering and others who don't, that there
are those in this
hierarchy of pain who own it more than you do. It's not
about
necessarily witnessing firsthand that makes the
experience. Picasso
wasn't at Guernica when it happened; Goya wasn't there on
the firing
line. This is what a culture
looks to art for, to put image, or voice, or
context to a way of rethinking, reseeing,
re-experiencing."
--Eric Fishl, NYTimes Interview (see *Humpty Dumpty*
below)
2) “There is absolutely no doubt that the
historic buildings of Nablus have
been targeted and destroyed by the Israeli
Defence Force since April.
Whether they have been targeted as heritage
per se, is a moot point.”
-- Robert Bevan, The Art Newspaper (see *A View from the Core* below)
3) “Once the museum has developed an audience, he said,
"maybe it
should go out of business."
-- Steve Dietz, the Walker's new-media curator, on the ghettoization
of digital art, NYTimes (see *Brick by Byte* below)
4) “I think Afghani war rugs and computer war games are
both
incarnations of a deep condition of mediated culture, the
condition of
fascination with unmediated reality, the quest for real experiences
and
authenticity. Both are pop representations of war,
processed through
complex economic and psychological organs. For many
people,
immersive, media generated fantasizations of war, like
Black Hawk
Down, Saving Private Ryan, all the romantic Vietnam
movie-musicals,
books like Dispatches, and computer war games are so
visceral, or
viscerally nostalgic, that they begin to quench the thirst
for real
experience.”
--Eddo Stern, interview in The Thing (see *Sheik Chic*
below)
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*Url/s*
1) Subvertise
2) august highland and the
worldwide literati mobilization network
(anti-genre elite corps)
http://www.inkbombdisposalunit.com/
http://www.antigenreelitecorps.com/
3) Ultimate Interactive Webcam
System
Artists: Kenneth Hung and Dr.
Optimator; Production date: 1025.02
http://www.111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.com
START YOUR WAR AGAINST
TERRORISM FROM YOUR HOME
TODAY! NOW YOU CAN CONTROL GADGETS
IN YOUR HOME
FROM ANYWHERE AROUND THE
WORLD REAL TIME!
60x1 operates in two ways. The
installation utilizes web technology to
examine the voyeuristic nature
of internet surfing as well as the
conflicting
relationship of virtual and given reality. The devices in the
room
are all controlled over the internet in real time by people watching
the
galley from anywhere in the world. Within a context of increased
National
Security and observation, this use of technology poses
questions
of power, choice, and privacy in a media that is largely
unchecked.
This project is currently part of the "Bay Area Now 3" show
at Yerba Buena Center Of The Arts, San
Francisco, U.S.A.
http://www.yerbabuenaarts.com/va/current/ban3.html#
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*Cheesy
Security*
Say Cheese, for Airport Insecurity and for Art
[excerpted]
By SARAH BOXER
NYTimes, Nov 6, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/arts/design/06CAME.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
Surely this will be a
fleeting moment in the history of photography and,
when things get sorted out, in the history of
airport security too. A year
ago a Canadian artist named Isabelle Devos
discovered that certain
camera-toting tourists going through airport
security after Sept. 11
were being asked, as
she said, to take a photograph to prove that their
camera was not a
security risk.
Ms. Devos, who lives in Sackville, New
Brunswick, wanted those
pictures. She spread
the word in newspapers and magazines, on Web
sites and Web 'zines,
by word of mouth and by radio. Whenever she flew,
she would leave a stack
of her business cards next to the security
station along with a
plea: "Send me your security photos, no matter
how boring and bad
you might think they are!" [...]
The security scramble that followed Sept. 11
presented Ms. Devos with
a perfectly parameterized
photo op. If you have only seconds to
consider the
composition and subject and you're being watched by
guards and
anxious tourists who think your camera might explode, what
kind of picture
will you take? [...]
Soon the pictures
started rolling in. [...]
Ms. Devos hoped to find patterns, like
similarities in airport decor. A lot
of airport interiors have gray and pink color
schemes, she observed.
She expected to see pictures of security
guards doing their jobs, and
she looked forward to
getting lots of pictures of "people with tension
discernible on their faces." She hoped
for voyeur and "trapped traveler
scenarios." Her plan was to keep
contributors informed on her Web site,
http://www.insecuritiesproject.com
and then, when she had
accumulated 50
photographs or so, to have an exhibition of 3-by-4-
foot blowups of some
of the photographs with text addressing
broad
cultural and social
patterns.
Then airport security stepped in.
What was the problem?
It was not that Ms. Devos had photographed
airport screening
machines and guards or that she was being irreverent
about security. The
problem, it turned out, was with the screeners. The
practice of making
tourists take snapshots to prove their cameras
aren't weapons goes
against American and Canadian policy.
In Canada screeners can make you turn on
electronic devices, like
cellphones, laptop computers and digital
cameras, and they might make
you put your camera and film through the X-ray
machines, said Tony
Hahn, a communications advisor at Transport
Canada, which regulates
airline policy, but "they never would ask
you to take a picture." Well,
maybe not never. "We're aware that this
happens," Mr. Hahn said. But
that is just "the individual screener
being overzealous." By the end of
the year, he said, it
should all be sorted out. The Canadian government
will take over all
airline security.
It's the same story in the United States.
According to national
guidelines, "a screener cannot ask you to
take a photograph to prove
it's a camera," said Dave Steigman, a
spokesman for the Transporta-
tion Security
Administration. The fact that some screeners do, he said,
simply indicates that
security is a little chaotic right now, a mishmash
of public and private
screeners. But by Nov. 19, Mr. Steigman said, all
will be sorted out.
The Transportation Security Administration expects
to have 32,000
national screeners at 429 different airports for all
scheduled passenger
airlines in the United States. Then, Mr. Steigman
said, you will see
less and less of people taking pictures at security
checkpoints.
"Bad news that it will no longer be
policy to check some cameras by
asking to take a
photograph," Ms. Devos said. "I am disappointed that
I didn't have
hundreds or even 50 photos coming in." But she said that
the 19 pictures she
did get were a "small window of documentation of a
tense period of
time" and "a good cross section of what it is people
decided to take a snap
of in that minute time frame."
The Insecurities Project yielded one big
surprise. "I didn't expect that
most of the images would be people smiling at
the photographer,
seemingly happy," she said. What is that
about? [...] "For some reason,
smiling and photos being taken go hand in
hand."
Maybe more insecurity photos will come. Ms.
Devos is still hopeful that
the phasing-out of "the camera
thing" will be gradual. She plans to wait
until early January to decide what the
exhibition will look like. She will
apply and arrange for exhibition spaces in
North America. (So far she
has been offered an
exhibition by a gallery in Anchorage.) And who
knows? Maybe one day
airport security will once again be as wild and
woolly as it was
right after Sept. 11. If not, Ms. Devos said: "I don't
mind the fleeting
quality to it. After all, photography is so fleeting."
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*Humpty Dumpty*
QUESTIONS FOR ERIC FISCHL
Post-9/11 Modernism
Interview by DAVID RAKOFF
NYTimes Magazines, 10/27/02
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/magazine/27QUESTIONS.html
Q: Your sculpture commemorating Sept. 11, ''Tumbling
Woman,'' was
recently
removed from Rockefeller Center. Is that the largest
controversy you've been through?
Certainly the Arthur Ashe statue at
Flushing Meadows freaked out some people.
A: I guess it would be the highest profile. With the Ashe
statue, the
criticism seemed to come from very literal-minded people
who would
say things like, ''We've never
seen a nude tennis player'' or ''Where's
the tennis racket?'' I think I'm most hurt by
this one.
Q: But isn't a certain amount of controversy what an
artist hopes for?
A: I just feel like it would be cynical of me to
appreciate the
controversy, because it wasn't controversy I was looking
for.
Q: You're not a provocateur in that way?
A: No. I actually have done paintings in the past, back in
the early
80's, that came out of profound anger and confusion. The
sensational
aspect was intentional. But that was a long
time ago by a young artist.
Q: Where did that guy go?
A: He went into an adult world more complicated and subtle
and more
fascinating, and whatever. I wasn't trying to make a universal
monument to sum up the entire
experience of 9/11. The kind of
response that I was wanting to
get was one in which people would allow
me to share in the experience,
the holding up, the sitting with -- so of
course the response of ''Get
this out of here, you can't feel this'' or
''You can't make us feel this way'' was
incredibly hurtful.
Q: Maybe the problem is that some have interpreted this
body twisting
in freefall as a piece of grim, plastic
photojournalism.
A: One might see a moment of impact in a kind of way that
implies
brains splattering, a graphic
moment there. The thing is that if you look
at the piece itself, it feels
like a dream in which somebody is floating.
There's no weight there that is
sending this crushing, rippling current
back through the body as it hits
a solid mass. It feels more like a
tumbleweed, even though it's a
massive sculpture. So somebody else
looking at it might say, ''God,
it reminds me of falling in a dream right
before I wake up.'' Both of those are probably
correct.
Q: Has your art now turned to other current events?
A: No. It's actually gone back to sort of smaller, more
confined spaces.
I've been working on the relationship between men and
women,
intimacy, privacy, boundaries, all of those
issues.
Q: Given the outcry, would you have done things
differently?
A: I wouldn't have made the sculpture differently at all.
I even regret
caving in to Rockefeller Center so fast and saying:
''Yeah, take it away. I don't want to hurt anybody.'' I'm sorry
I didn't
raise a stink over it. I hate this idea that there are
some people who
have a right to express their suffering and others who
don't, that there
are those in this hierarchy of pain who own it more than
you do. It's not
about necessarily witnessing firsthand that makes the
experience.
Picasso wasn't at Guernica when
it happened; Goya wasn't there on the
firing line. This is what a
culture looks to art for, to put image, or voice,
or context to a way of
rethinking, reseeing, re-experiencing.
Q: When ''Guernica'' was first exhibited, I don't think
people felt
Picasso wasn't entitled to paint it.
A: Yeah, I think this is a new
turn, for the worse. Right now we're
shrinking away from truth. No one can criticize the
president because
we're in a very vulnerable time,
even though he's doing some things
that are terrifying. You can't
express your personal horror and trauma
at something that we all
experienced. I think what happened is that
since the 60's there's been an
ambition that art merge itself with pop
culture. At first it was an
ironic stance, and then it became actually a
real thing; people wanted to
have art as a playground and as
entertainment. And that's fine
in good times, but when something
terrible or powerful or
meaningful happens, you want an art that speaks
to that, that embraces the
language that would carry us forward, bring
us together, all of that stuff.
I think that 9/11 showed us that as an art
world we weren't quite qualified
to deal with this. Not trained enough to
handle it.
Q: That's some fairly grim training we're facing, then.
A: It's a terrible way to have to be trained, it's true,
but the way the
art world has been training younger and younger artists is
in ideological
gamesmanship, and there's been a lack of training in
history and in
techniques that one could apply in rendering the human
form, for
example. A lot of the young kids
are sort of fabulous at drawing
cartoons. But a cartoon's going
to be pretty hard to express a lot of the
experience of the last year.
People have told me I should stop talking
about this, just let it die down. But I can't
stand idly by.
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*A View from the Core*
Our man returns from Nablus [excerpted]
By Robert Bevan
The historic core has
been wrecked. In June we published reports of
damage to the ancient
city of Nablus; these reports were challenged by
a prominent Israeli
as being Palestinian propaganda. Last month,
Robert Bevan went
into Nablus and reports here the devastation that
he saw.
The Art Newspaper Nov 8 2002 –
For full article + photographs :
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=10291
NABLUS. Holy sites in the Holy Land arouse
passions. The current
Intifada was ignited by the prime minister of
Israel, Ariel Sharon’s
stroll within the walls of an enclosure that surrounds
the mosques on
Haram al-Sharif (as
it is known to the Palestinians; Temple Mount to
the Jews), which was seen as an attempt to
assert ownership.
Since then, however,
both sides in the conflict, Palestinian and Israeli,
have avoided targeting each other’s religious
buildings.
There have been rare
attacks, such as the Palestinian destruction of
Joseph’s Tomb (which
Yassar Arafat ordered rebuilt) and an attack by
Israeli Jews on a
mosque in Tiberius, northern Israel, but, until this
Spring, these have been isolated.
However, Israeli
incursions into West Bank towns have begun to
unravel that unspoken
agreement. The destruction of large parts of
Jenin and the siege of Bethlehem saw the
demolition of numerous
Palestinian buildings.
The Israeli army says that the aim was the
pursuit of suicide bombers
but along the way the infrastructure of these
West Bank towns was
wrecked, from
Arafat’s own compound in Ramallah to schools, radio
stations and cultural
centres.
It is the fate of the historic city of Nablus,
however, that has provoked
an outcry. Dating back to at least 71BC, the
beguiling old town
incorporates stone
structures from Roman, Byzantine, Crusader,
Mamluk, and Ottoman
times.
On 3 April dozens of tanks, and armoured
bulldozers invaded and
occupied the town. They are still there and
Nablus remains under
almost continuous
curfew with its inhabitants confined indoors for over
100 days and nights,
apart from the very occasional days when the
restrictions are
lifted for a few hours.
Shortly after the
incursion a preliminary assessment report on the
damage to Nablus’s architectural heritage was
prepared by a team
which included the municipality, the local UN
office and local
conservationists. This report, which remains
online at http://www.nablus.org
says that among the buildings that were
damaged or destroyed were
three of its 30 plus
mosques, dozens of historic Ottoman houses, an
Ottoman hammam (steam bath), centuries-old
soap factories (a
traditional local industry) and the Greek
Orthodox Church in the
centre.
Although the report
was not an official UN document as suggested in
the June issue of The
Art Newspaper, at its annual meeting in June the
World Heritage
Committee of the United Nations’s cultural branch,
Unesco, condemned the
damage to the Palestinian Heritage.
In a statement, Unesco officials said: “[We]
deplore the destruction and
damage caused to the cultural heritage of
Palestine” and emphasised
the
“exceptional universal value” of this heritage.
Under the 1954 Hague
Convention for the Protection of Cultural
Property in the Event
of Armed Conflict, and additional Protocols of the
Geneva Convention,
the deliberate targeting, or reckless damage to
historic buildings is
considered a war crime.
In June, The Art
Newspaper (No. 126, p. 3) published an article [click
here: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9457
]
about the damage to Nablus
and Unesco’s condemnation, citing
the above report and
information from the Paris-based organisation,
Patrimoine sans frontières.
We wrote: “The
al-Khadrah mosque has been 80% destroyed; the
al-Satoun and al
Kabir mosques, converted Byzantine churches, were
20% destroyed; 60 historic houses were
demolished (and 200
partially
demolished); the 18th-century eastern entrance to the old
market has been
destroyed; seven Roman cisterns and at least 80%
of the paved streets
have been ruined.”
The article provoked
strong rebukes particularly from Jews in the US.
In a letter to the
editor published in the October issue of The Art
Newspaper (No. 129,
p. 4), Martin Weyl, former director of the Israel
Museum in Jerusalem,
said that there had been no deliberate
destruction of
cultural property by the Israeli army in Nablus or other
West Bank towns.
Reports of “the non-existent damage” he
suggested were based on
“misinformation” fed by the “strong anti-Israel bias in the UN’s
various
agencies which are largely controlled by a
pro-Arab lobby.”
“Regarding the al-Khadrah Mosque,” said Dr
Weyl, “It was originally an
ancient Byzantine
church dating from 1187 and was turned into a
mosque, and according
to the mayor, the mosque had been completely
repaired by June. It
seems highly questionable,” he added, “that a
building that was destroyed
80% and which is an historical building
could have been repaired in less
than two months.”
He also challenged
the reports of damage to other buildings: “Except
for the Roman
cisterns, your numbers pertaining to the extent of
destruction are total
fabrications. And the cisterns were used as
ammunition depots and
booby trapped so the Israeli Army had no
choice but to blow
them up.”
Dr Weyl had
previously threatened a campaign against the “slandering,
vicious, and
inaccurate articles” of The Art Newspaper among his
museum colleagues,
art and antique dealers and collectors, the Jewish
press and the
Anti-Defamation League. After he was shown the text of
the present article,
he wrote: “Every armed conflict can cause a lot of
destruction. Most of
these structures were in the centre of Nablus
where terrorists refused to surrender, using
inhabitants and old houses
as shields. A few buildings, including
mosques, were damaged, and in
nearly all cases they
could easily be repaired. This is a far cry from your
headline that ‘Many Palestinian monuments were
destroyed by Israel
troops’. Israel does not have any intentions
to damage mosques or
churches. On the contrary, it is Israel’s
policy to protect cultural and
religious sites.”
On 11 October I entered Nablus. I visited the
sites that were reported
as damaged or destroyed by The Art Newspaper.
Both The Art
Newspaper and Martin Weyl were incorrect in their
assessment of the
damage to the al-Khadrah mosque. It is a modern
addition to the
mosque that suffered most damage and was almost
entirely flattened.
However, its historic prayer hall had its front torn off
by an Israeli
armoured bulldozer. The saucer-domed roof of the mosque
was smashed inwards
to the boss of the first vault (see the November
issue of The Art
Newspaper for full illustrations, the building hugs a
hillside with the
street above almost at roof height). It was this element,
at least 1,000 years
old (not built in 1187 but converted from a church
then) that was
quickly rebuilt. The new stone courses
and mortar
correspond precisely
with photographs of the damage taken in mid April
this year.
Two other historic mosques, which are some 1,600
years old (again
converted early Christian churches) were also
hit by heavy weaponry.
Damage
to the al-Satoun mosque was less extensive than the 20%
reported by The Art
Newspaper, but at the al-Kabir mosque in the heart
of the souk, a whole
building of the historic complex was smashed in
(see illustrations),
even though the main building escaped damage.
A great deal of the
damage to the public buildings has been repaired by
the Palestinians but
much remains, especially to the centuries old
pattern of courtyard
houses. [...]
Only within the ancient souk is there any
semblance of life; a few of its
20,000 inhabitants out in the narrow,
winding alleys, buying vegetables
from the makeshift stalls, sitting smoking in doorways,
kicking a
football around in a desultory way.
It is the souk’s very
inaccessibility to heavy armour that is its
protection, and it is
why the Israeli army attempted to blast its way in
with
tanks, bulldozers, Apache attack helicopters and F-16 jets.
Throughout the centre,
stonework has been gouged, pocked and
reduced to rubble.
The
most concentrated area of destruction turned six important hosh
buildings,
two 250-year-old Ottoman soap factories, and a caravanserai
(nomadic
merchant’s inn) into rubble.
This area, in the very heart of the souk, was
bombed by an F-16 jet.
Only vestigial stone vaults remain around the
edge of the crater (see
illustrations). The
blast also wrecked the now rebuilt street frontage of a
Greek Orthodox Church.
It is a huge rent in the historic fabric of
the city. As with the hammam,
the Israeli forces
have said that the factory buildings were being used
by militants. They
cleared out hundreds of local residents into nearby
schools before bombing the area. [...]
Eight people were killed on 9 April when the
al Shu’bi hosh on the
southern edge of the town was bulldozed to
drive a path into the souk.
Two more were pulled alive from the rubble a
week later when the
curfew was temporarily lifted—as was shown on
Israeli television.
Further up the street
two teacher sisters, Zoha and Soha Fretekh, were
killed, according to
Nablus radio reporter Ala Badarneh, when their
historic family hosh
and the adjacent Okasha family hosh was blasted
by an Apache helicopter. [...]
The Israeli army claims the hammam was being
used to shelter
Palestinian fighters. Its owner, Nablus Fire
Chief Yosef Jabi, says it was
being used as a telephone relay station for
the nearby mosque which
was serving as a hospital for the wounded.
Either way, he says, it does
not
justify firing rockets at a 15th-century building.
Dr Weyl’s claims that a set of Roman cisterns
was used as ammunition
dumps and booby-trapped thereby forcing its
destruction is harder to
substantiate. [...]
The initial reports from Nablus that were
referred to in The Art
Newspaper did contain
inaccuracies but the devastation of the historic
core of the town has,
if anything, been more extensive than claimed in
the June issue of The
Art Newspaper. The “non-existent” damage is
there to be seen by
anyone who is able and willing to enter Nablus.
Downtown Nablus remains a ghost town under
curfew. The streets are
empty except for
dust, rubble and uprooted palm trees until a gaggle of
Palestinian children
appear around a street corner, throwing stones at
an Israeli tank which replies with raking
machine gun fire.
Most days, the muezzin’s call to prayer has to
go unanswered. Schools
are empty, cafés are shuttered and commercial
life is all but dead. It is
virtually impossible for any Arab resident to
leave or enter the town by
the Israeli army checkpoints.
There is absolutely no doubt that the historic
buildings of Nablus have
been targeted and destroyed by the Israeli
Defence Force since April.
Whether they have been targeted as heritage
per se, is a moot point.
The Hague Convention
is a complicated document, but there is no
doubt that it is
contrary to international law to destroy architectural
monuments in this
fashion.
How much deliberate damage do you have to do
to buildings of such
rarity before you regard it as contrary to
international conventions to
which
Israel is a signatory?
Whether or not Palestinian heritage has been
attacked because of the
Palestinian history
it represents, there has been a total disregard for
this heritage. It is
deemed expendable by the Israeli forces. It is no
wonder that the
Palestinians are suspicious.
Hundreds of Arab villages across Israel were
destroyed in the wake
of the creation of
the State of Israel in 1948. In their determination to
create irreversible
“facts on the ground”, new, exclusively Jewish
settlements have been built on seized Arab
land (contrary to UN
resolutions)
and Palestinian towns put in a strangle-hold.
The built environment
and archaeological remains have become highly
politicised as both
sides argue the merits of their historic claims to the
land.
In the wake of the
Israeli destruction in Nablus, the sacred Jewish site
of Joseph’s Tomb on the
edge of the town was again destroyed by local
Islamic militants. It
is vital for the world’s collective heritage that
damage caused to the architecture of Nablus,
Christian, Jewish and
Muslim, does not descend into the ugly
cultural cleansing that was such
a
feature of the Bosnian war.
{Robert Bevan is the
editor of Building Design and author of the
forthcoming book: The
destruction of memory: architecture in conflict.}
With thanks to Teresa
Smith and Orly Halpern for making a visit to
Nablus possible. The
photographs were taken by Jaffar Shtayeh
Eshtayeh.
============================
============================
*Brick by Byte*
Concrete Dreams: Actual Museums With Virtual Art
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
NYTimes ARTS ONLINE, 10/28/02
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/28/arts/design/28ARTS.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
The United States is a curio cabinet of quirky museums.
Among them
are the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum in Wisconsin, the
Children's
Garbage Museum in Stratford, Conn., and the National
Museum of
Funeral History in Houston.
But there's a gap. Despite the
pride that Americans take in our
technological prowess, this
country unlike Austria, Germany, the
Netherlands and Japan
does not yet have a major institution devoted
to Internet-based art works and other forms of computer
art.
Of course it's more than likely that a digital-arts center
will eventually
open. "Museums usually get started not just because
there is a list of
things that should happen, but because an individual with
a particular
passion makes it happen," said Marc Pachter, director
of the National
Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. "So
it's an accident that
it hasn't started yet, but I think there will be one. It
certainly makes
sense that such a place would exist."
Efforts to establish a one-stop shop for the digital
arts a Linkin'
Center, if you will
have been, at best, modestly successful. Donors are
tight fisted, especially when there are no tangible
objects that they can
call their own. As a result,
while there are small high-tech art centers
scattered around the country and virtual museums sprinkled
across
the Web, none fulfill the museum
functions of organizing, commissioning,
exhibiting, collecting, preserving art works and
education.
But two organizations are moving in the right direction.
The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs are
working on a
Center for Arts and Invention,
to be housed in a new $120 million
building on M.I.T.'s Cambridge
campus that could open as early as
2005. Meanwhile Eyebeam, an
independent high-tech arts center in
New York City, was to announce
today that the innovative digital-arts
curator Benjamin Weil will take on the top
curatorial role there on Nov 1.
Officials at both institutions said their centers would be
modeled less
on a traditional museum than on the Bauhaus, the
20th-century German
school that encouraged artists to integrate
science into their creations.
Officials also cautioned that their plans were in their
early stages and
that money to realize them has not been secured.
At M.I.T. the 197,000-square-foot center would be in a
sleek seven-
story structure designed by the
Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. It is
to contain two rooftop theaters
and an atrium for media-art exhibitions.
The I. M. Pei-designed Media
Labs building next door will be renovated,