After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving.

JODI - ICTI.me (2020) (Screenshot), part of We-Link, Ten Easy Pieces 

After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving. Let's enjoy this moment together.

The hall of the ORF studio in Linz, a design by architect Gustav Peichl in 1972, where the original The World in 24 Hours by Robert Adrian took place. The first Ars Electronica festivals also took place in this building, namely in one of its live TV studios.

After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving. Let's enjoy this moment together.

 Ars Electronica, Linz, performance shot of The World in 24 Hours (1982) by Robert Adrian X et al.

2017 has brought some new perspectives and more developments in the recognition of science and technology as major influences in art and culture. There is a growing interest in the history of art, science and technology on the one hand, while the interest for art involving new technologies keeps gaining momentum on the other. My work as advisor for Rhizome's Net Art Anthology has made me re-visit some works from the past. Getting Automatic Rain, a small work by JODI from 1995, restored brought some challenges around migration and emulation of software to the light. A much bigger challenge however was (and is) reviving one of the earliest network performances ever. Since the beginning of this year I am doing research into a possible re-enactment of The World in 24 Hours by Robert Adrian X. It is a vast research project involving interviews with all participants of the 12 nodes in the network from 1982 and an investigation of possible re-enactment strategies, involving a new generation of artists and various alternative network practices. For the latter I have given a presentation at the Dutch hackercamp SHA2017 and I am preparing a revised version of this presentation for Radical Networks in New York this October. I received the necessary and most welcome funding from the Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie. The project will continue well into 2018, as we may or may not realize a re-enactment at Ars Electronica next year. Given the huge difference in technological and cultural context between 1982 and 2018 this is not a given. Expect some writing from me about this topic the coming months. Besides this fascinating work I am also still acting as advisor, juror and moderator at various events. I compiled the symposium for GOGBOT 2017 and proved it is possible to find amazing female speakers for tech events. Professor Dynamics Amina Helmi from the university of Groningen, detector engineer Liz George from ESA and artist Daniela de Paulis gave interesting presentations, next to philosopher, 'denker des vaderlands', René ten Bos. More recently I moderated the Feedback symposium at West in The Hague, about media theorist Marshall McLuhan, together with artist and curator Baruch Gottlieb. I also recently started as an advisor for a wonderful new project by LIMA with the working title Dutch Digital Art Canon. More big news for next year will come up soon.

published: November, 2016

After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving. Let's enjoy it together.

 
First two pages of my interview with Jonas Lund in Kunstforum 243: Postdigital 2 (Nov 2016)

After a very busy summer with lots of travelling autumn seems to bring calmer times. I gave a presentation at Nieuwe Vide in Haarlem in the WIFI, Connectivity and Digital Utopia exhibition. After a long delay the Kunstforum Postdigital specials finally came out, with my essay Post-Screen and my interview with Jonas Lund in Postdigital 2. You can read the English version here. On Friday the 25th of November I am the host of the Crypto Design Challenge Award Show at Paradiso in Amsterdam. Somewhere around new year I plan to go see the first large solo exhibition by the artist duo Evelina Domnitch and Dmytri Gelfand at Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, which runs until January 8th 2017. Then I hope to see you at Transmediale in February, which promises to be a very special 30 year birthday edition! I am particularly looking forward to seeing the exhibition Alien Matter curated by Inke Arns. In between I work on new interviews, developing plans for new events and, last but not least, restarting my PhD. Hopefully, with the Dutch elections happening in March, there will be enough peace of mind for all of us to realize our hopes and dreams.

 
Jaromil Rojo and Debra Solomon, Entropical, Zone2source, Amsterdam, 2015. Photo courtesy Florian Weigl.

These are interesting times: the year starts off with many exhibitions focussing on the crossover field of art, science and technology. The often criticized gap between the contemporary art field and that of media art (or AST, Art, Science and Technology) seems to be closing. The question is what this will mean for the acknowledgment of earlier work in the latter field. There is a lot of catching up to do! Luckily there are many occasions to talk about classic and new works this year. February is packed with events where we could meet and discuss. First up is Transmediale from 2 till 7 February. On February 5th I will be joining the Telekommunisten in their Panic Room session. There will be many other interesting sessions to follow, like for example that on the Tactical Media Archive. A few days after Transmediale TEC ART opens in the 'institute for avantgarde recreation' WORM, Rotterdam. Part of the opening is a public presentation and debate about what art and life would be like in a Post-Singularity world. The next morning, on Thursday 11 February at 11.00, I will be in an hour long discussion with cultural sociologist Pascal Gielen in the Reflections series at Art Rotterdam. The Sunday after that, on Valentine's Day, I have been invited to speak about the value of art in a mini-symposium at Zone2source, for the exhibition of Entropical by Jaromil Rojo and Debra Solomon. Other speakers include Merijn Oudenampsen and Koert van Mensvoort. Last but not least the topic of conservation is to be addressed at Transformation Digital Art organized by LIMA on 18 and 19 February. I will present a brief introduction to art in networks on the Thursday evening in a session with also Rafaël Rozendaal and Eric Kluitenberg.

    
      Image created through Artomat, an online art generator by Electroboutique

The coming months are filled with writing and a few appearances in panels and talks. I am working on an essay for the German magazine Kunstforum for their Post-Digital theme. For that same magazine I am preparing an interview with Jonas Lund. On May 22nd and 23rd you can find me in MAMA in Rotterdam for a two day event around art and the Internet. I will be in a panel discussing what Post-Internet art and its potential for addressing the merging of digital and analog culture with Florian Cramer and Geert Lovink the first day. The discussion will be moderated by Michelle Kasprzak, curator at V2. That same afternoon I will moderate a discussion between Jonas Lund, Rafaël Rozendaal and Joel Holmberg. A week later, May 29th, I will conduct an onstage interview with Electroboutique at the Twente Biennale.

published: January, 2015

     
(Installation by Simone C. Niquille in the Born Digital exhibition at the MOTI, Breda. Till June 2015)

The 21th of March 2015 I moderated a panel about art after the Internet at the Museum of the Image (MOTI) in Breda. I will also give a brief talk there. All this takes place in the Born Digital exhibition. But my year started with a trip to Brussels on January 28th, where I will speak at a panel organized for the Data Privacy Day, in connection with the Faceless exhibition. More work and publications are being prepared, on which I will post an update later. 

published: October, 2002

In 2002 the Dutch Belgian artist duo Jodi (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) had their first big solo exhibition at Plug-In gallery in Basel. In preparation of the text I met up with the artists, and it became clear they wanted me to write a light text. They came up with the title themselves: Caricatures of Knowbotic Research. Knowbotic Research is a German-Swiss electronic art group, known for their extensive collabortions with media art labs and technologically complex works.

Catalogue cover of install.exe, ed. Tilman Baumgärtel 

published: October, 2001

This review of Alexei Shulgin's music and data CD was originally written for Rhizome in 2001. For those unfamiliar with the 'band' or the name, a 386DX is an old type computerchip, the Intel 80386 developed in 1985.

published: January, 2002

The question of how to exhibit net art came up strongly in 1997. It became clear that some works were actually interesting for a traditional, offline art audience. In the beginning it seemed that exhibiting net art in a physical space was an anomaly, something contradictive to the nature and background of the attitude from which net art sprung. The online communities a lot of net art came out of refused to think of solutions for physical exhibitions, like they also found it very difficult (with some exceptions) to find a way to deal with question how to sell a net art work.

When I was approached by one of the net communities' most notorious members Frederic Madre to write a text for a tongue in cheeck woman's magazine I decided therefore to write a piece that was half satire half serious about how to deal with net art. In some sense one could say the text is metaphorical. By ridiculing the style of the average woman's magazine I compare the desire to own any art work (and also to exhibit it) to certain bourgois tendencies to use art in a semi-decorative way. We could ask ourselves whether our desire to own and present an art piece is ultimately more then a wish to exhibit our own cultural awareness in a fashionable way, like the American artist Cary Peppermint jokes in this text. The intangibility of most new media art and the impossibility to set limits to certain works force us having to face what exactly it is we want from art. Many do want something of art that seems missing: something to surround oneself with. Let's dive into the interior design of net art.

published: July, 1997

This early article appeared in Mute magazine, and shows some of the discourse and thoughts on cyberfeminism that were going around at the time.

published: August, 1998

Published in Ars Electronica Catalogue 'Infowar'

Webcasting has been one of those hot words on the internet the last year. Funny thing is however that it never got the attention or discussion that for instance hypertext had. It seems like the term from the beginning was perceived as a balloon, a bubble of hot air, ready to explode and proof obsolete any moment. The reason for this is not its lack of potential. The reason is its lack of potential for the kind of marketdomination and power massmedia conglomerates like to have. Or in short: it is not as profitable as was hoped. The goldmine many look for when it comes to undertaking on the internet is not one that easily shows its treasures. The internet is still about developing new paths, and these paths extend into the offline world most literally with webcasting. This makes webcasting one of the ultimate platforms for experimental artforms now.

published:May, 2004

This text was originally written for the symposium '404 Object Not Found' on preserving new media art, organized by Hartware in Dortmund, Germany, 19-22nd of June 2003. It was later modified a little and has appeared in edited form in the Belgian art magazine 'A Priori' in autumn 2004. This text is actually still in development, or at least its topic and line of thinking is. |Intro: translation, art as conceptual space and art as experience

published:January, 2005

This text combines two  thoughts: what new art practices did the internet 'spawn' and how did these art practices deal with public space? It appeared in the book and on the website of mediaartnet.org, an extensive archive on media art supported by the ZKM in Karlsruhe. Due to transition from Word file to HTML document the footnotes are missing in the text. This will hopefully be corrected in the near future.

published:June, 2005

Chapter from the book aRt&D, Research and Development in Art, published by V2_NAi in Rotterdam in 2005. The text gives a rough introduction to the development of net art, pre- and post-: the issues artists on the internet had to deal with and the context they worked in. Due to transferring the text from Word file to HTML document the footnotes are missing.

published: Juli 2010

Enigzins impressionistische tekst over het werk van Jodi, het kunstenaarsduo Joan Heemskerk en Dirk Paesmans. Het is geschreven voor het literaire tijdschrift De Gids. De tekst dient oa als introductie voor het werk van Jodi die in de herfst van 2005 een expositie zullen hebben in Montevideo te Amsterdam.

Dutch, slightly impressionist text about the artist duo Jodi, written for the literary magazine De Gids. It also serves as an introduction to the work of these artists who will have a major exhibition in Montevideo (Amsterdam) autumn 2005.