“Makeshift Museums: How the New Spaces of the Web are Shaping Art Experience.”
Here is my Ontario Graduate Scholarship application in full. Not sure how happy I am with it, (just as any writer, nothing is every really perfect for me) but it’s meant to be a brief one page introduction to the area of study I’m interested in:
The virtual world of the Internet has been described by many as a kind of new public space in which users are connected to a wide range of communities and channels of information. The recent shift in the web toward non-hierarchical, socially shared, participatory, and user-created knowledge has been called web 2.0. Artists have responded to these trends with new media artworks that harness the interactivity and user participation of technology to engage their audiences. While the burgeoning scholarship surrounding cyberculture and new media art has sparked lively conversation in the art world, in-depth research into the implications of the digitization of artworks and the vehicles by which these digital reproductions are disseminated remains largely unexplored. Taking hold of the intersection of art history and the areas of web technology and museology, I will conduct interdisciplinary research on how digital artworks are being exchanged on the web, posing challenges to the real world institutions that house the “originals” of these artworks. Examining a range of techniques art institutions such as ArtBase and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have employed in their web projects, I plan to suggest ways in which the museum can respond to these challenges to effectively engage with a new and interconnected art audience.
My research on the museology and contexts of digitalized images in web spaces will be derived mainly from the vast array of online resources in the field; the libraries of cultural institutions in the national capital region such as the National Gallery of Canada; research at Montreal’s Fondation Daniel Langlois which has a notable centre for Research and Documentation in the realm of art in its intersection with technology; as well as primary research in the form of potential interviews conducted with art institutions engaged in web projects. Significant writers for examination include Jon Ippolito, Lev Manovich, and Friedrich Kittler, as well as Deleuze and Guattari in their exploration of the rhizome metaphor.
The most pertinent vehicles of art exchange on the web to my research include the display and writing about art in the personal (we)blogs of art admirers, artist-designed websites, professional sites of art institutions, and the virtual exhibitions of the Second Life multiplayer online role-playing game. The ‘amateur’ blogs and fully independent artist sites both function as makeshift gallery spaces, accompanied by an immersive environment designed with consciously chosen images and layout. In the seeming chaos of the popular web 2.0, however, the voices of scholars are largely silent. A recent article by a notable art blogger, Modernkicks, poses the question: “Why are there no great art history bloggers?” Museum and gallery websites often provide a professional and impersonal face to the web. While often displaying effective virtual exhibitions, there remain limitations to the user’s access to artworks in the museum collection, as well as to any form of individual contribution to the knowledge process. And yet, with the confusion and plethora of images on the web, a mediator between art and the viewer has never been more essential to facilitating understanding and education.
I intend to explore the use of web 2.0 technologies as a largely untapped area of potential to engage audiences for today’s art museums. This research comes at a point where the web is becoming a primary mode of interaction for a large part of the population, and also at a moment where art gallery attendance remains a challenge. Taking into account the pertinent issues of a possible digital divide preventing full online participation of an active audience and the details of copyright law for digital images, this research will serve as an important contribution to the fields of cyberculture, museology, and art historical studies.
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