[spectre] When New Media Was New

[oliver grau]

When New Media Was New

Despite a history stretching back to the 1950s, art made using what are now 
called new media has been neglected by the mainstream art world.  This 
series of talks and seminars looks at the history of new media art from 
experiments with computer art in the 1950s and 60s to the emergence of net 
art in the 1990s.  It features three curators/critics who have pioneered 
and supported new media art over the last forty years: Jasia Reichardt, 
Christiane Paul and Peter Weibel.  The aim is look at landmark works and 
exhibitions in the field of computer art, digital and electronic media, and 
internet art, and discuss their relationships with mainstream art practice 
and with technological developments in the wider world.

In conjunction with the three talks, Tate Modern is running a seminar 
series on the same topic. Reichardt, Paul and Weibel will each lead a 
session focusing on the themes of Cybernetics, Telematics and Performance 
respectively themes that have been central to their work.  The seminars 
will also feature contributions from other leading figures involved in the 
development of new media art today. When New Media Was New is organised and 
moderated by Charlie Gere (Birkbeck College), author of Digital Culture 
(Reaktion Book, 2002). It is a collaboration between Tate Modern 
Interpretation and Education and the School of History of Art, Film and 
Visual Media at Birkbeck College, and has been made possible by an AHRB 
'Changing Places' research grant.

THE TALKS
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern
240 places
Tuesdays 30 Sept, 14 and 28 Oct.
Start 18.30, ends approx 20.00
Drinks reception
Tickets £5 (£3 concs) each event

Tues 30 Sept.  Jasia Reichardt
Writer and curator Jasia Reichardt was Assistant Director of the ICA 
(1963-71) and Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1974-76). She has 
taught at the Architectural Association and elsewhere and published widely. 
She is interested in art that encroaches on other fields: science, music 
and literature, and has spent many years following up the connections 
between art and technology. Among her exhibitions staged in Britain the 
best known is Cybernetic Serendipity (1968), a landmark show about the 
computer and the arts. In recent years she has spent considerable time 
working in Japan.

Tues 14 Oct.  Christiane Paul
Christiane Paul is the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney 
Museum of American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service 
organization and information resource dedicated to digital art. She has 
written extensively on new media arts, including Digital Art (2003). She 
teaches in the MFA computer art department at the School of Visual Arts in 
New York and has lectured internationally on art and technology, while 
organising a number of shows of new media art in the States and elsewhere. 
She also runs Artport, the Whitney Museum's online portal to Internet art.

Tues 28 Oct.  Peter Weibel
Peter Weibel has been head of the ZKM_Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 
since 1999. Besides his activities as artist and curator, his publications 
about art and media theory earned him international renown. Since 1976 he 
has lectured widely at universities and academies in Europe and the US. 
After heading the digital arts laboratory at New York University, he 
founded the Institute of New Media at the Städelschule in Frankfurt-on-Main 
in 1989.  He was in charge of the Ars Electronica festival in Linz as 
artistic consultant and later artistic director (1986-95), and has 
commissioned the Austrian pavilions at the Venice Biennale.

THE SEMINAR SERIES
McAulay Studio B, Tate Modern
40 places
Wednesdays 1, 15 and 29 Oct
14.00-17.00
Tickets £45 (£30 concs), includes admission to all three Tuesday talks

Wed 1 Oct.  CYBERNETICS
Paul Brown, artist and Senior Research Fellow for the AHRB-funded Computer 
Arts, Contexts, Histories, etc& (CACHe) project, studying early British 
computer art, in the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, 
Birkbeck College, and Helen Sloan, Director of Southern Collaborative Arts 
Network (SCAN), will join Jasia Reichardt and Charlie Gere for a seminar on 
questions arising from her talk.

Wed 15 Oct.  TELEMATICS
Giles Lane, founder and director of Proboscis and Associate Research Fellow 
of MEDIA at LSE in the London School of Economics, and Josephine Berry, an 
editor of Mute, a cultural politics and technology magazine, and author of 
a PhD in site-specific art on the net, will join Christiane Paul and 
Charlie Gere for a seminar on questions arising from her talk.

Wed 29 Oct.  PERFORMANCE
Hannah Redler, curator at the Science Museum, and Sarah Cook, independent 
new media curator and co-editor of the Curatorial Resource for Upstart 
Media Bliss (CRUMB) website and listserv, will join Peter Weibel and 
Charlie Gere for a seminar on questions arising from his talk.