Negociate Practice A
Hack-able Curator
Critique by Anaisa Franco
http://www.hackablecurator.org.uk
Nowadays the institutions and the art objects have expanded their configurations to new areas to be explored. In 90’s with the digital revolution, the process of creating art relies on collaborations between artists and a team of scientists, designers and engineers; consequently, digital art collapses boundaries between those disciplines. Since late 90’s digital art officially entry into the art world, when institutions began to incorporate the field in their show and exhibitions, although, digital art shows was mostly take place at Media Centers, that was created to host and develop this contemporary field, such as ZKM, Ars Electronica, ICC. Hack-able Curator was developed in collaboration in a team of seven people whose primarily professions are artists, designers, programmer, law and marketing.
In the beginning of the century art was easy categorized as painter (bidimensional) and sculpture (tridimensional), nowadays it is difficult to categorize because the works interconnects various elements, for example Hack-able Curator is an interactive physical installation using robotics, internet component, mobile phones. The writer Christiane Paul, mention in her book Digital Art [1] “It is problematic to claim that all digital works can be neatly categorized according to different forms: most of the time this works combine various elements and defy a purely formal classification.” “Among the forms that a digital art work can take are installation; film, video and animation; Internet art and software art; virtual reality and musical environments.” Page 70. The artworks have been created according to the availability of tools and technologies of their time. The artists have always been the first to reflect on culture. As a result of this, they are frequently creating new steps and new categories for the art world. This movement will never stop.
The history of digital art has been shaped more by the history of science and technology then art historical influences. The use of technology was mostly inspired by military, industrial, research centers and consumer culture. In the 60’s the industrial age made its transition into the electronic era and the artists became very interested in the intersection between art and technology. With photography and video become possible instant copying and series reproduction, as a result, the concepts of authenticity, authority and aura was modified, consequently causing debates, it definitely undergone profound changes in the art world and art market. As Walter Benjamin suggested in his 1936 essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ [2], which has become one of the key texts in the discussion of the social and artistic significance of the technical visual media.
Through out the 70’s and 80’s artists increasingly began experimenting with computer, video, performances and installations. The feminists were complaining for acceptance and recognition into the art world galleries, institutions and universities. Guerrilla girls did a poster “Do women have to be naked to get into museums? Less than 5% of the artists in the modern art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.”[3]. In the 80’s and 90's with the improvement of computers, the automation technology, the biotechnology, and the Internet, the artists continuously are expanding to those new areas, generating new concepts and categories as bio art, satellite art, and so on.
In the beginning of the century, the functions of the institutions were to collect and preserve the art objects, but with all new necessities those functions expanded, consequently, are occurring interesting online deliveries of museum content hosting a variety of online art into specifics websites that function as hosts such as Rhizome [4], Crumb[5], Kurator[6], Digital craft[7], Metamute[8], ReadMe RunMe[9], Generator [10], Whitney Artport [11], Low-Fi [11] and so on.
Nowadays is very difficult to be connected and networked with all the news delivered in the world. The world has transformed in a huge complex environment with thousand miles of knowledge, information and happenings, moreover, with the Internet seems that you have everything available in your hands, unlike it is not true and people can get paranoid and confused living in this exaggerated and chaotic environment. Reflecting into all these facts mentioned above we created the Hack-able Curator, a collaborative work that might help the role of curating once the human curator becomes frustrated by too much information and not enough time to do the work. Nonetheless, this work does not intended to replace human curators and it works as both de-construction and reflection about the emerging tools for curating in a collaborative context and about the practice of hacking both devices and software as creativity. Hack-Able Curator is a robotic arm that makes curatorial decisions by using an algorithm it chooses images from the popular photo-sharing website Flickr, but someone can hack the system influencing in the curators decision. It is 'hack-able' because everyone can add images to the main resource by uploading them to Flickr or by voting for any images displayed on the website by sending a SMS message to the system. In both ways, the general public can influence the decision the robot curator makes.
The Hack-Able Curator is a playful interpretation of the curatorial system with an alternative understanding of the traditional role of curator. As a consequence of changes in technology, the role of a person involved in a cultural institution who cares for its collections has changed. It is possible to collect and categorize data in new ways that undermine traditional practices and suggest more democratic solutions. For example the Flickr website. The Hack-Able Curator is intended to trigger off discussion about the new challenges and new possibilities for curators. The project asks whether the availability and popularity of social technologies suggests that the curator is redundant or indeed that everyone now can be a curator of their own images? By providing a mechanism for 'hacking' this curator's choice making process, we are seeking to ask questions about the democratization of the otherwise subjective role of the curator.
Hack-Able Curator is a project produced in collaboration by the students on the master’s programme in digital art and technology I-DAT, university of Plymouth that are Anita Barwacz, Lindsey Bedford, Andy Bennett, Anaisa Franco, Martha Patricia Niño, Richard Wilkes. The students all come from different areas such as visual arts, interactive design, marketing and law, consequently the tasks was divided individually with occasional group meetings to discuss the development of the project. The tasks was divided as:
Anaisa: Robotic parts and mechanims;
Anita: Developing the initial search criteria, press release, and developing blog;
Andy: Designing the web interface and flickr search;
Lindsey: Designing the web interface and flickr search;
Martha: Developing the Internet connection with the physical device and robotic parts and mechanisms; Richard: physical parts and help at Developing the rules for the curatorial texts and research about curating. The tasks were successfully done and the project was all developed in 3 months.
The first exhibition was from 19th of January until 18th of March 2007 at Plymouth Art Centre as part of SLOW Exhibition, Plymouth, UK.
Exhibitions presented:
From 19th of January until 18th of March 2007. Plymouth Arts Centre as part of SLOW.
Web sources:
http://dorkbotbristol.wordpress.com/news/
http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/003649.html
http://www.freedomcrowsnest.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=53162&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight
References:
1. Paul, Christiane (2003), Digital Art, London: Thames & Hudson.
2. Walter Benjamin (1999 [1936]) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, trans. Harry Zohn, in Illuminations, London: Pimlico.
3. http://www.guerrillagirls.com/
4. http://rhizome.org/
5. http://www.newmedia.sunderland.ac.uk/crumb
6. http://www.kurator.org
7. http://www.digitalcraft.org/
8. http://www.metamute.org/
9. http://readme.runme.org/
10. http://www.generative.net/generator/
11. http://artport.whitney.org/ Artport is the Whitney Museum's portal to net art and digital arts, and an online gallery space for commissioned net art projects.
12. http://www.low-fi.org.uk/
13.ZKM: its work combines production and research, exhibitions and events, coordination and documentation in the field of Media Art. http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/
14. Ars Electronica: http://www.aec.at/en/
