New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art

by Christiane Paul (Editor)

This provocative, cutting-edge anthology addresses the challenges of curating, presenting, and preserving new-media art—artworks that use digital technologies as media and emphasize process over object. As an art form that is inherently time based, dynamic, interactive, collaborative, customizable, and variable, new-media art resists objectification. It boldly challenges the traditional art world's customary methods of presentation and documentation as well as its approach to collection and preservation. Edited and introduced by Christiane Paul and featuring contributions by prominent practitioners—institutional and independent curators, theorists, and conservators—this volume charts developments in an exciting field and addresses the conceptual, philosophical, and practical issues of both curating and presenting new-media art.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2008

Reviews

[Mark B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful read on the topic. Though, if you're at all familiar with the perils of exhibiting/collecting/preserving/documenting New Media (especially in a museum context) some of the content will be very familiar. Still, just as an example, Jon Ipppolito's chapter "Death by Wall Label" will give you some new and provocative insight.

Ippolito proposes a new sense into what the traditional wall label provides, or should provide. This is one of my personal battles, so I was thrilled to read his valid arguments. He manages to get across the necessity to relate to the audience the idea of multiple authors, varying titles/dates/collections, environment installers, variable multiples, etc. I know some of my curator friends would resist such fluid formats, but time and time again, I find myself questioning the traditional wall label for misleading (unintentionally?) the audience.

If this is appealing to you in any way, search out this book as you'll find many perspectives of interest to peruse. Also, some great case studies at the end!