Michael Molinari: What's your cultural and artistic background.

Robbin Murphy: I grew up in Spokane, Washington in the Northwest U.S.
where I studied painting at a small college run by nuns. I then received
a fellowship to do graduate work at Indiana University but left after a
year and moved to New York. I've been here ever since. The first ten
years I waited tables, did construction work, proofread and typeset,
worked at a magazine and had many other occupations to support my art
work. People finally started to notice what I was doing and I had shows
in galleries in New York and LA. Then the art market collapsed and I
decided to go back to school in Museum Studies at NYU where I first
gained access to the Internet and developed an interest in new media.

MM: What's your definition of art.

RM: My working definition of art is that it is how we make things
leading then to why we make things and how we use them. Any made thing
can be considered in terms of art but I'm most interested in things that
are usually considered art works.

MM: What's your definition of New Media Art (or net.art or Digital Art).

RM: I try not to categorize art that way. Artists should feel free to
use any tools or material they want to. But I also think there are
aspects of new media and digital technology that are different from more
traditional tools and material especially because of the fact that they
can often be *both* in the case of the net.

MM: Have you ever done any NMA, why do you do NMA?

RM: I've been using new media (the internet) and digital technology
(computers) in my work for about ten years now but try to integrate them
into my ongoing art practice. Sometimes the result takes the form of a
painting and other times it's only manifestation is on the web. I'm only
now beginning to understand what I'm doing.

MM: What do you think about the relation between art and digital: pros
and cons. You did art with brushes and color or others more physical
media before, is there something you miss about those media, and what's
that you like now.

RM: I still use all the tools and materials available to me. Sometimes I
feel the need to make something physically in front of me to look at and
touch in order to continue. What's different now is that I'm not limited
to those physical media and am able to create work that is more process
oriented and ephemeral in nature. I'm also become very interested in the
idea of archives as evolving works.

MM: NMA works are saved on Zips or CDs, and can be easily duplicated.
The concept of originality is it over? What's the influence of that on
the New Media Art market, if there's any.

RM: I think an artist has to consider the ability to copy as part of the
material they work with. To me that's a challenge and I'd rather
concentrate on the possibilities of endless duplication and broad access
than try to circumvent it by falling back on concepts of originality and
authorship that are based in copyright laws and the value of scarcity. I
agree with Esther Dyson when she says intellectual property will not be
as important as intellectual performance in the future. We see this
already in the art world with the growing number of site specific
installations in galleries, museums and festivals. There will always be
descrete art objects to sell because people give them value but there
are ways to support yourself as an artist now that don't depend solely
on making objects for the art marketplace. Artists involved with using
new media and digital technology are slowly creating an economy to work
in that includes site-specific installations, customized digital work,
teaching, lecturing as well as using their technical expertise in the
commercial realm.

MM: Museums are giving more and more space to NMA works. Do you think
NMA needs that space or it should remain on the Net which is open 24/7
and widely accessible.

RM: Most museums still seem to see this work as an extension of video
art or design and deal with it accordingly. A few see it in terms of
education. Most don't see it as art at all. Some, like ZKM or the Walker
Art Center, are beginning to understand that they may have a different
role to play and are experimenting along with artists to find out what
that role might be in the future. If something is digital it can
manifest in a variety of ways (text/sound/image) and so it may be the
role of the museum to encourage different manifestations. Or, as Tom
Sherman wrote in an essay, they may serve best as "technology free
zones" to enable us to better understand new technology in comparison.

MM: What will be the trend and future in NMA.

RM: Artists will continue to confound curators and technocrats with
unexpected uses of the technology.