 |
WEBART:
museum
memory
archive
|
ARTD
410/510
Associate Professor M. Flanagan Dept of Art, University of Oregon
Mondays, Wednesdays 3-6 The Advanced Lab
Office Hours 1:30 - 2:30 Mon. + via apptS
maryf@darkwing.uoregon.edu
syllabus located here. |
*course taught
in conjunction with G. Wilcox Architecture studio
[postcard zip file located here!!!!!!!!!!]
| This
course invites students who wish to broadly examine the museum in relation
to technology through the creation of internet art works. In what ways does
internet art explore themes shared by archives, museums, memory? How could
sound conjure memory and archived data? How do musuem structures participate
in the construction of gender, race, sexuality, and postcolonial subjectivity?
What are possible shapes and organizations for archives on the internet?
How does net.art function inside a museum, or become a museum-- how could
a museum become an artwork of its own?
From 3-4pm
once per week, we share class discussion time with an Architecture studio
taught by professor Glenn Wilcox. This is your chance to learn from those
working in a parallel creative practice, as well as get outside feedback
on your work; assignments will be reviewed by both groups. In the 4th
creative exercise, students work on different aspects of the same project.
The web brings us experiences, conversations, news, sound, video; because
of its accessibility, it is a compelling artistic medium. This medium
is not without its challenges, however. To make artwork for the internet
- and to see that the internet itself is a medium - requires creativity,
technical knowledge, attention to detail such as file size, and an understanding
that the artist's work resides amidst the billions of web pages, many
commercial, already in existence.
This
quickly paced course explores the Internet based artwork through reading,
discussion, technical lessons, and practice. Students are expected to
devote time to personal inquiry using this medium. This is an advanced
course and requires a good deal of work outside class as well as independent
initiative. The course is intensively engaged with critical issues in
electronic media and internet art.
|
Our
first postcard: 
Readings:
Erkki Huhtamo, "Seven
Ways of Misunderstanding Net Art." http://www.maryflanagan.com/courses/2002/web/SevenWays.html
Siegfried
Zielinski, "7 Items on the Net." 1995. Published in Ctheory 5/31/1995 and in
Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture. Ed. Lynn Hershman Leeson.
Seattle: Bay Press, 1996, 339-343. http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=68
Soke
Dinkla, "From Participation to Interaction: Towards the Origin of Electronic
Media." Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture. Ed. Lynn Hershman
Leeson. Seattle: Bay Press, 1996, 279-290. *paper
Jorge
Luis Borges, "Library of Babel." (1941 ). "The Library of Babel" first appeared
in English in the collections Ficciones (Grove Press, 1962) and Labyrinths:
Selected Stories and Other Writings (New Directions, 1962) and was originally
published in Spanish in The Garden of Forking Paths (Sur, 1941). (http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html
Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias" This text, entitled
"Des Espace Autres," and published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/
Continuité in October, 1984, was the basis of a lecture given by Michel Foucault
in March 1967. http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html
Naomi
Schor, "Cartes Postales: Representing Paris 1900." Critical Inquiry 18,
Winter 19h92, 188- 245. *paper
|
Exercises:
Exercise 1: HTML as a Material
Explore HTML as a material. What are its inherent properties? What happens
if you invert the "natural" order of a "web page?" Make an interactive
exploration of HTML as a material.
You must turn in a well-written paragraph statement about the work with
the assignment electronically.
Homework
1 Image is Here!
Exercise 2: Re-imagine a Museum site
Most museums around the world have web sites. Take a look at three of
them and compare and contrast them; then, sketch out your own new interpretation
of a proposed site. This is an opportunity to experientially, acoustically,
or otherwise explore what isn't included in most museum websites and you
think should be. How does the architecture of your site reflect the site
of the museum or its holdings, for example? You must turn in a well-written
paragraph statement about the work with the assignment electronically.
Exercise 3: What is a Virtual Postcard?
For a century, the postcard was the way people let each other know what
was going on in their lives, vacations, or special occasions. More informal
than the letter but quicker, millions of postcards have been sent around
the world. How is electronic communication like and unlike a postcard?
For this exercise, sketch 5-10 rough versions of electronic postcards.
Choose three to develop electronically - both graphically and interactively.
Create three demos of three ideas to show in class. The goal of this assignment
is imaginative breadth.
Exercise
4: Interface for an Online Postcard Museum
Create a working interface/architecture for an online postcard museum.
This assignment will be in conjunction with the architecture class's work
on a physical site/building. You are encouraged to work on teams for this
exercise. You need to create a bank of sketches of your idea, narrow it
down to three electronic ideas, conduct user testing, and create the functioning
interface. Also plan to turn in a well-written paragraph statement about
the work with the assignment electronically.
|
Lists of Museums
- WWW
Virtual Library: Museums around the USA
- take a look
here (or below) to get an idea of the volume of museums on the Internet
- WWW
Virtual Library: Museums around the world
- take a look
here (or above) to get an idea of the volume of museums on the Internet
- Paris
Pages / Museums of Paris
- there are so
many museums in Paris, they have their own list of museums on the Net!
- Art
Museum Network, North Amer.
- UK
Museums, MuseumNet, Museums in the UK
- The
Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources
-
Museums
-
- WebMuseum
- large
virtual museum with many articles about artists & concepts; there
are many images for some artists, but only a few for others; go to
individual artists' entries to view images of works
- artSEENsoho
- displays
of various artists' work, gallery-like, with small images; odd arrangement
(by NY streets) which is worth a look, but makes it more difficult
to navigate
-
Real
- Musee
du Louvre
- many
images of works in the Louvre, although this is not the "official"
Louvre site (see next entry)
- Louvre
W3
- the
"official" Louvre site, from the French Ministry of Culture
- MoMA
| The Museum of Modern Art
- moderate
sampling of works from the collection; click on "MoMA" image to begin
- The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
- very
few images
- Los
Angeles County Museum of Art
- few
images (on average only 1 image per artist)
- Smithsonian
Institution: Home page
- access
to information about the many museums, research centers, and offices
of the Smithsonian, some with online images of exhibits (for examples,
see two entries below)
- National
Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution)
- "virtual
exhibits", as well as information about the "real" museum
- National
Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution)
- very
attractive site, but not much in the way of online exhibits
- The
Natural History Museum - London
- few
online exhibits, but extensive information on in-house exhibits
- UC
Museum of Paleontology
- unusual
navigational scheme, read "navigation tools" for explanation/help;
few images
- Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco
- this
great site offers a database of 60,000 images, which is searchable!
- Guggenheim
Museum
- a wide
variety of images is available from the Solomon R. Guggenheim & SoHo
Museums, but none from the Bilbao location
- The
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
- poor
arrangement, but nice images of 15 of the works/artifacts from the
museum
- Vatican
Museum
- many
images available; go to the bottom of the page to find links to images
- Sistine
Chapel
- at least
you don't have to get a sore neck to see these images! (you do have
to page down a bit to get to them, though)
- Oriental
Institute Museum
- information
about the museum; some images of items from collections & photo archives;
panoramic movies of exhibit halls (for Mac, need helper application
to view)
- The
Franklin Institute Science Museum
- an example
of a museum which is stretching the boundaries of the virtual museum,
with a number of online multimedia exhibits containing a good deal
of information, but few images
- Bellingham
Radio Museum
- lots
of information about the history of radio, with many images of antique
radios from the museum's collection
- The
Field Museum of Natural History
- information
about the museum, plus 2 online exhibits: dinosaurs & Javanese masks
- Whitney
Museum of American Art
- information
about the museum; samples of images from collections/exhibitions;
"artists using the web as a creative medium" projects (a new form
of "art"; not just images)
- Dia
Center for the Arts, New York, NY
- online
images of several of the center's large-scale installments/works
-
Exhibits
- Treasures
of the Czars
- images
of items from an exhibit of the Romanov artifacts, at the Florida
International Museum
- Palaeolithic
painted cave at Vallon, France
- cave
paintings discovered in Dec. 1994 (from French Ministry of Culture);
there aren't too many images, but they're definitely worth looking
at
- Honolulu
Community College Dinosaur Exhibit
- several
images of dinosaur remains, from a real permanent exhibit
- Colonial
Williamsburg
- something
like an online encyclopedia of colonial Williamsburg, with articles
about people & places with small sketches of buildings; also includes
information about visiting the actual historic site
- OneWorld
Magazine - Australian Aboriginal Art
- temporary
exhibit (may change to something other than Aboriginal art)
-
Artists
- Salvador
Dali
- 40 images,
with unusual layout/organization
- The
Salvador Dali Museum
- the
server is down or not responding as of 11/21/97
- World
of Escher
- appears
to be the site of a company which sells products with Escher's designs,
although the pages do not clearly indicate who they are & how they
got permission to display these works on the Web; go to the "museum"
to view the images
- Leonardo
da Vinci Museum
- many
images with annotations, grouped by type of work (paintings, drawings,
etc.)
- Picasso
and Portraiture
- special
presentation put together by Picasso's son; strange loading sequence
(be patient & wait for it to be completed, then click on the image
to begin)
- The
Andy Warhol Museum
- from
the real museum in Pittsburgh; samples of works, exhibits, gift shop,
etc.
-
Photography
- UCR/California
Museum of Photography
- various
images from the (real) museum's photographic collections, both historical
and contemporary
- PhotoServe
- Professional Photography Portfolios and Gallery
- displays
of work by established photographers and new talent; many images
- Photo
Perspectives Home Page
- various
online photographic exhibits
- St.
Petersburg Times Gallery
- actually
a site for the newspaper, but contains four photo collections
-
Miscellaneous
- Corbis
Publishing
- Bill
Gates is buying the electronic distribution rights to many of the
world's most famous, and some not-so-famous, images, and there are
lots of them. For now you don't have to pay to look...
