PORT: Navigating Digital Culture Organized by a r t n e t w e b MIT List Visual Arts Center January 25 through March 29, 1997

FROM YAHOO by way of
Craig Calder
Associate Creative Director
Eagle River Interactive
212-572-4826
mailto:craig_calder@eriver.com
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* ARTNETWEB & MIT LAUNCH PROJECT . . . New York's innovative digital art community will be joining this month with the wireheads up north at MIT for an innovative experiment in online art and community, using the Internet to invite the audience into the process of building art and curating its exhibition.

The project, called PORT: Navigating Digital Culture, is a joint venture of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and artnetweb, the Silicon Alley Webzine and community space for New York's online art community. According to Robbin Murphy of artnetweb (http://artnetweb.com), the new exhibit will invite the cyber audience into the creation of art and the process of curating the exhibit. The works themselves--by local artists like G.H., Hovagimyan of the Art Dirt show on the Pseudo Online Network, and Adrianne Wortzel's Starboard--are interactive in nature. They will be projected in real time in the Cambridge gallery space according to a set schedule. But the works will be accessible via the Net during the entire course of the exhibit. In addition, the MIT gallery space will be outfitted with surfing stations as a way of luring gallery visitors into the interactive online experience.

One example is Starboard, an online, interactive, multimedia creation of Wortzel and Heather Wagner, another New York artist. The artists describe the project as "an on-going interactive, operatic, serial broadcast drama . . . partly scripted and partly open to improvisation with 'joiners' inside and outside the studio--by phone, by CUSeeMe, by the physical appearance of participating guests." The project will be a sort of art-damaged MOO.

Although the gallery show will begin January 25 and run through March 29, the virtual show has already begun. That's because the organizers are inviting the audience to become part of the planning process via the Net. It's all part of the show's mission to experiment with the social, interactive possibilities of Internet art. Artnetweb has erected a PORT Website at http://artnetweb.com/port where artists can submit proposals for pieces to be shown. In addition a listserv discussion group will engage artists, curators, and the audience. And surfers can take a VRML tour of the MIT exhibition space.

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