We enjoyed the report on the "Curating The Net" seminar
(see "<a href="/cgi/to.cgi?t=1166">Curating
on the Edge of Chaos</a>").

First, a debate that discusses current web technologies in post 20th
Century cultured Europe seems ridiculous without plain-vanilla AC. It
also seems to us that its spirit embodies an ultra conservative
approach, in which, the "Curators" treat "the Artist" as a little
cry-baby/demigod who needs to be "represented" and serviced in an
appropriate manner.

The uneducated master/artist intention must be accurately translated to
bits by a group of non-creative expensive technicians whose sole purpose
is to implement it as is. It's natural that we experience tensions
between people who control the means of expression in a given medium and
the ones that labor on it.

What about a collaborative evolving effort by programmers, designers and
artists in creating a digital networked artwork?

The net makes this collaboration technically possible and we should be
careful of absolute determinations of roles in a post-modern networked
society. The artist is the technician, is the producer, is the curator,
is the programmer, is the artist.

We can't attempt to deal with the digital medium without first adopting
a digital frame of mind.

Aurora reports about the seminar's worrying consensus that artists needs
to be "translated' by curators, programmers and designers and that this
process can be costly. We are faced with a danger of the artist
controlled by the technician. From this, we conclude that we can cut
costs and solve the dilemma by claiming that creative technicians are
the new digital artists. Imagine an arts-seminar raising concerns about
the cost of hiring qualified painters for artists who can't hold a brush
but would like to fill a canvas.

Come on; give us a break! Millions of people worldwide command HTML to
some extent but it seems that every time an artist produces a web work
we are supposed to applaud the accomplishment.

If we hold that the artist can conceptualize the art work and hand it
over to web designers for implementation than we may conclude that all
digital art is conceptual art.

Do we really mean this? The artist should be familiar with the tools of
his trade. What can me more basic?

We know that any translation implies interpretation. The new artist
wants to produce digital art without control of the tools and without
any interoperation by its apprentices–this tension is clearly
impossible to resolve in any seminar. We also have personal computers to
serve us as tools to create digital content. Don't we?

Maybe the seminar should have asked who needs a curator in this "edge"
environment? But it seems an unlikely question since the seminar was
probably organized by and for curators who try to preserve their
traditional role in a post-modern "edgy" form.

Any talk about freezing the process misses the point of digital art. Why
freezing it if we can modify and evolve it without the limitation of
form and atoms of physical mediums?

[Aviv designs multimedia software for the web at Microsoft. Shirley is
an artist and freelance journalist who deals mostly with issues of art,
technology and culture. They moved from Israel to Seattle last may and
hope to get involved in the digital art scene. They do physical
computing installations and write Articles together. They are also
married.]