UT ADV 391K - What Galleries Are Doing on the World Wide Web

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Austin Chronicle, January 19, 1996, p. 56What Net Art?What Galleries Are Doing on the World Wide Webby Rebecca S. CohenI received a postcard from Lucerne this week, from a young friend on her firstromp through Europe. She says, I didn't even know this placeexisted until yesterday, and I am already in love with it.”That's how I feel about the Internet. One minute I didn't knowit existed, and now I visit as often as I can. The galleries andmuseums, in particular, provide my incentive to return. TheInternet, that international network of computers on whichpeople share information in the form of words, images, andsound, is a big place." My own interest is fairly narrow. Doesart, that most human of activities concerned with aestheticsand craft, have a place on the Net? Is there any compellingreason for low-tech artists to pay attention to the high-techpossibilities offered by the link between computers,worldwide? Does the appearance of arc on computer screensthreaten the public's appreciation of "real art or enhance theartist-gallery/museum experience? And is there a place forme?If you think of the Internet as a globe made of criss-crossed links among computers, the World Wide Web is a pre-packaged tour of possibilities. Hypertext pointers - bits ofinformation corn-monly displayed as underlined and coloredphrases which provide the "interlink" between documents - letyou move around from page to page, site to site in the sameway that your mind darts from one topic to a related one andthen on to a new idea. A land of free-association for thecomputer literate. You can access the Web through a varietyof means. There are a number of local service providers andseveral national companies (such as America Online,Compuserve, and Prodigy) that connect your computer'smodem with the greater universe of computers. The nationalcompany I use wooed me with 10 free hours online and a fairlyeasy-to-understand graphics package that encourages slow,self-guided tours. I starte4 by trading e-mail with family andfriends. Then I began to use the Web browser, searching forkey words (topics) or a specific Internet site, such as theAustin Chronicle's address (URL -universal resource locatorhttp://www.auschron.com/). Now I wander from oneHypertext path to the next, taking small steps into newterritory, then doubling back quickly so I don't lose my way.The first time my Web browser asked me what word I wantedto search for, I typed in "art." There were an endless number ofpossibilities -continued on p.30Why Net ART?nationally and internationally - related to myfavorite topic At first, my efforts weredisjointed, disorienting, and mostlydisappointing. It was like being lost in NewYork City: I couldn't find the good stuff for theendless distractions. l tripped into one blindalley after another. Then I stumbled into aHouston cyber-gallery displaying work by anartist with whom I was familiar. I compared theimages I saw on my screen with my recollectionof the actual work and began to evaluate howthe computer represented the artist. AtViewtopia, an Austin cyber-gallery, I saw evenmore artists whose names and work I knew. Idecided to do my research close to home. Thispast September, two Austinites who receivedComputer Science degrees from the Universityof Texas in the mid-Eighties decided to start agallery.” I understand the impulse, needless tosay, having run a low-tech gallery myself foreight years in Austin. With a mix of righteousoptimism and entrepreneurial lust, you convinceyourself you can help artists sell their work aswell as run a profitable business. Rather thanrenting space with tall white walls and buyingpedestals for sculpture, Roxanna Nematollahiand Jonathan Lahr purchased access to the Net(through Zilker Park Internet), an imagingmachine, a laptop computer for on-sitedemonstrations, a scanner, and a high-resolution monitor. Then they set aboutconvincing art types to trust them. According totheir introductory brochure, "The ViewtopiaOnline Art Gallery exhibits avariety ofcontemporary visual arts in a tastefulenvironment via the Internet computer network.We use state of the art technology withbeautiful full-color images and descriptions ofeach artwork. We use the power of the WorldWide Web to display art in a way that isversatile and easy-to use. “Actually, Viewtopiais less like the traditional gallery and more like"an electronic art magazine where exhibitorscan buy space, says Lahr. Viewtopia providesone-stop shopping for its audience. Visitors totheir site (http://www.viewtopia.com) canview an extensive collection of artworks,accessing information by artist's name, medium,or subject. Prices are provided in some cases,but contact must be made with individual artistsor galleries to make a purchase or see actualwork. In this way, Viewtopia has no aspirationsto replace "real" galleries artistis’representatives, but rather to provide analternative advertising medium (complete withrate card) to expand the audience. "We puttechnology to work for you," they say, pointingout that the Web is available 24 hours a day andapproximately 20 million people internationallyhave access to the Internet. Since earlySeptember, there have been over 21,000 visitsto pages at the Viewtopia site. According toNematollahi, she can pull out information aboutwhich individual pages were visited, but fornow she has only raw data. There is no way ofknowing if one single user accounts for anumber of different page visits. On the otherhand, Viewtopia has received e-mail fromartists interested in their service from as faraway as Siberia. An introduction to Viewtopia,Lahr and Nematollahi offered free imaging andtime on the Web to several artists andorganizations, hoping to lure them intocyberspace. Women & Their Work Gallery(W&TW) and the Texas Fine Arts Association(TFAA), as well as several individual artists,participated last fall. The remnants of thatexperiment remained last week, including 1995exhibition schedules that had not been updated.I called W&TW's director Chris Cowden andTFAA's Sandra Gregor to ask what happened.Both say the Internet is not a high priority ontheir organizations' agendas. Having beenspoon-fed - as they were by Viewtopia duringits introductory offer - they were unafraid totaste, but neither is looking for more. Gregorcan envision listing TEM calls for entry forjuried shows, exibition schedules, andmembership promotions, but says he wasunprepared at this time to fully realize thepotential of the


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