Between the Virtual and a Hard Place: The dilemma of digital art museums

During the last two decades, the emergence of fresh categories within new media art has posed unprecedented challenges to museums, motivating the creation of new institutions specifically designed to house and display works of this type. Therefore, digital and Internet art have configured an interesting field for architectural research. Frequently, the architecture of these new museums has revealed utopian visions that derive from profound contradictions between the intangible world of communication technology and the conventional requirements of physical spaces. Just as in previous periods of art history, some of the most ground-breaking projects did not end up as finished buildings, either because their construction would be too expensive and technically problematic, or just because they were deliberately conceived as virtual spaces. However, and surprisingly enough, even these web-specific museums sometimes proved to be too ambitious or ahead of their time. In this scenario, and drawing on a set of emblematic projects, this paper seeks to discuss a topical question: how can museum architecture deal with the intangible, unstable and ubiquitous condition of digital art?

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Helena Barranha

Conference

Publication date: July 2016

Publication date (Print): July 2016

Pages: 229-236

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[0001]CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

Av. Rovisco Pais, 1

1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.45

SO-VID: 98376e26-d518-4b71-93b9-f5777b26d47e

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

Conference acronym: EVA

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Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 12 - 14 July 2016

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.45

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Adobe 2010 Adobe Launches Adobe Museum of Digital Media (Press Release Sept. 20, 2010). URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/201009/092010AdobeMuseumDigitalMedia.pdf">http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/201009/092010AdobeMuseumDigitalMedia.pdf 20 March 2016

[2] AMODA - Austin Museum of Digital Art 2016 About AMODA URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.amoda.org/about/">http://www.amoda.org/about/ 17 March 2016

[3] H. BarranhaS. S. MartinsR. X. MonteiroR. Pereira 2015 How digital is the digital art museum? [poster] H. A. Dirim Urban Identity, Space Studies and Contemporary Arts Contempart’15. DAKAM - Eastern Mediterranean Academic Research Centre Istanbul URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://unplace.org/sites/default/files/HowdigitalIstanbulposter.pdf">http://unplace.org/sites/default/files/HowdigitalIstanbulposter.pdf 18 March 2016

[4] R. Ascott 1996 The Museum of the Third Kind InterCommunication 15 1996 URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/icmag/ic015/ascott/ascotte.html">http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/icmag/ic015/ascott/ascotte.html 21 March 2016

[5] M. Castells 2001 Museums in the Information Era: Cultural connectors of time and space ICOM News, Special 54 3 4 7

[6] CTRL+SPACE 2014 Madrid Digital Arts Museum Ideas Competition - Competition Brief [PDF] URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.ctrl-space.net/madrid.html">http://www.ctrl-space.net/madrid.html 5 August 2014 ; the PDF file is no longer available online)

[7] DIAS - Digital Interactive Art Space 2016 About DIAS URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://diaskunsthal.dk/about/?lang=en ">http://diaskunsthal.dk/about/?lang=en 24 March 2016

[8] S. Dietz 1998 Gallery 9 - Walker Art Center URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://gallery9.walkerart.org/">http://gallery9.walkerart.org/ 21 March 2016

[9] E. Diller 2002 Eyebeam URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.arcspace.com/features/diller-scofidio--renfro/eyebeam/">http://www.arcspace.com/features/diller-scofidio--renfro/eyebeam/ 17 March 2016

[10] EIA - Electronic Arts Intermix 2013 Media Art Resource URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/">http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/ 21 March 2016

[11] Eyebeam 2016 Eyebeam: About - History. URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://eyebeam.org/about">http://eyebeam.org/about 17 March 2016

[12] L. Grozdanic 2011 Adobe Museum of Digital Media / Filippo Innocenti eVolo Journal online, Oct 31 2011 URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.evolo.us/architecture/adobe-museum-of-digital-media-filippo-innocenti/">http://www.evolo.us/architecture/adobe-museum-of-digital-media-filippo-innocenti/ 21 March 2016

[13] E. Huhtamo 2010 Pre-envisioning Mediatecture: A Media-archaeological Perspective C. Kronhagel Mediatecture - The Design of Medially Augmented Spaces. Springer Vienna

[14] R. Koolhaas OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture (1989) Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://oma.eu/projects/zentrum-fur-kunst-und-medientechnologie">http://oma.eu/projects/zentrum-fur-kunst-und-medientechnologie 18 March 2012

[15] M. Olson 2011 Postinternet: Art after the Internet J. McNeilD. Quaranta 2014 Art and the Internet. London Black Dog Publishing

[16] C. Paul 2002 Renderings of Digital Art Leonardo, 35 5 Tenth Anniversary New York Digital Salon 2002 471 474 URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577254">http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577254 17 March 2012

[17] A. Picon 2003 Architecture and the Virtual -Towards a new Materiality? Thesis - Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 3 107 111

[18] L. P. Puglisi 1999 Hyper Architecture: Space in the electronic age. Birkhäuser Basel (original version in Italian 1998

[19] H. Rashid 2012 Interview by Norman Kietzmann Kietzmann, Hani Rashid / Asymptote Crystal Talk URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.baunetz.de/talk/crystal/index.php?lang=en&cat=Profil&nr=17">http://www.baunetz.de/talk/crystal/index.php?lang=en&cat=Profil&nr=17 16 March 2016

[20] H. Rashid 1999 The Museum as a Digital Experience Proceedings of the ICOMON meetings held in Madrid, Spain, 1999 2001 Museo Casa de la Moneda Madrid

[21] J. L. SertF. LégerS. Giedion 1943 Nine Points on Monumentality J. Ockman 1993 Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology. Columbia University New York

[22] E. A. Shanken 2009 Art and Electronic Media. Phaidon London

[23] Tate 2000 Between Cinema and a Hard Place URL: ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/between-cinema-and-hard-place">http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/between-cinema-and-hard-place 17 March 2012

[24] M. VallicelliL. Sant’AndreaN. Troianiello 2014 Urban Interface - A Meta-Museum for Digital Arts. Madrid Digital Arts Museum Ideas Competition (unpublished - courtesy of Michelangelo Vallicelli and CTRL+SPACE)

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