keywords : New, Researchers blog

in MediaArtHistories
edited by Olivier Grau
The MIT Press, 2006, 475 p

MediaArtHistories, edited by Oliver Grau, seeks to renew the understanding of digital art by placing it against the backdrop of history and studying its relationships with film, cultural and media studies, computer science, philosophy and the study of images .

In the essay “The Myth of Immateriality : Presenting and Preserving New Medias”, Christiane Paul analyses the inherent challenges that the digital medium poses in terms of presentation and preservation. Paul is the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the director of Intelligent Agent – a service organization and information resource dedicated to digital art, and a lecturer in the Computer Arts department at the School of Visual Arts, New York.

For Paul, immateriality is one of the most challenging characteristics of digital art. Works are often process-oriented and based on software, systems and networks, and thus represent a changing and elusive aspect to the artwork.

However, this aspect of dematerilization should not make us underestimate the material dimension of these works : they require the medium of hardware or computers to exist. Moreover, many of the problems of presentation and preservation that museums are facing are related to this materiality. How can ugly computers can be shown? How can a constantly evolving medium be preserved?

Christiane Paul initially shows the specificities of digital art and the ways in which the roles of artists, audiences and curators are changing, and then proposes various models of presentation and preservation. Paul has organized her essay with the following different sections:
- Characteristics of the Digital Medium : Challenges and Opportunities
- Collaborative Exchange and the Changing Roles of Artists, Audiences and Curators
- New media in the Gallery : from Installation to ”Mobile” art
- Models of Online Presentation
- Preservation Strategies : From Materiality to Immaterial Process

This stimulating article deals with preservation issues and offers an interesting perspective by tackling the problem of presentation. It also gives a good overview of the various initiatives being explored in this area.