The Art of Our Times

Interview with Steve Dietz by Ursula Hentschlager + Zelko Wiener. January 2002 for Webfictions (New York: Springer, 2003).

Hentschlager + Wiener: With the Gallery9 area in the Walker site you have developed a rich offering in the field of actual web- and netart. When did you start with your web-work and why?

Steve Dietz: I started at the Walker Art Center in 1996. At the time, they/we were trying to understand how to intersect with all the techno-hype. My position was quite simple: that as an institution with the mission of being a catalyst for creative expression, we needed to pay attention to the art of our times and what was happening on the net interested me very much.

HW: Are you content with the Gallery9 up to now and which are your further plans?

SD: So, from the very beginning, I thought of Gallery9 as a "space" for native art separate from the communications aspects of the umbrella site. I feel that Gallery9 has made a real contribution at the institutional level, and I love the projects and discourse we have been able to support. While at the time, an online "gallery" made some sense (the 9 comes from the fact that there is no public 9th floor at the Walker), I think it's a limiting notion. At least, we didn't try and do a physical representation! Nevertheless, we are in the midst of a major overhaul of the site, which will be much more about connections (networks + hyper-context).

HW: Which is the current situation with media art in Minneapolis?

SD: There are some very fine artists. Piotr Szyhalski is at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and his Ding an sich was our first Gallery9 commission. There is also a new Institute for New Media Studies at the University, and the Design Institute there, run by Jan Abrams is very interested in new media. There are many other artists, of course, from Colette Gaiter to the conflux site. Still, the "scene" has not taken off as much as one might hope. We recently launched a site called mnartists.org, which is for any and all artists, but in the coming year, we have funding specifically to focus on creating a new media platform for the region, which I hope will spur debate and conversation.

HW: How far is that the typical situation for the USA?

SD: "The situation" is a hard question to answer succinctly. I generally say that with the dismal state of alternative spaces in the U.S., there is not nearly the robust environment for new media art that you find in UK / Europe. On the other hand, there are many committed artists throughout the U.S. with, perhaps areas of concentration on the coasts, although this is not as hegemonic as it once was. In terms of institutions, it seems as if every educational institution is adding a "new media" program, and this can only add to the richness of the environment in the end, although there are probably a number of misguided efforts as well. For museums, net art and digital art are more and more present, although relatively few have made the kind of commitment that the Walker, Guggenheim, Whitney, SFMOMA and Dia have. Is this good or bad?

HW: Commitments concerning the artists or the art per se? Which do you mean?

SD: I can only speak specifically for the Walker, but as an art center the core of our commitment is intended toward the artist. Commitment to the "art per se" is also important, I think. Perhaps an element that museums and educational centres can contribute to more strongly, although even as I write this, the unfortunate truth is that even many of the most serious critical efforts are artist-driven, whether it is Bookchin's line or crumb or your project or Cream.

HW: Which is the big challenge in working with the web?

SD: Everything. I suppose that for me, working in a multidisciplinary institution, one of the most interesting challenges is experimenting with the web as an independent "space" vs as a networked space in a physical location as well as thinking about it as a distinct medium without ghettoizing it from larger conversations.

HW: Which is the meaning of webart within the field of media art?

SD: Webart is a term I almost never use, although I have noticed, lately, a specificity to the term that differentiates it as WWW-based art from network art in general. In the end, it doesn't seem like an interesting or fundamental distinction to me, although it is critical to understand the net as far more than http and html protocols.

HW: Which is the meaning of netart within the field of media art then?

SD: I tend to look at two characteristics - networks and computation. This is brought together in the term telematic, although I would never say that both are necessary. There is also discussion around "code art" let alone transgenic art, etc. So, I tend to think fairly broadly and agnostically at art / culture that integrally uses networks and / or computing, although I recognize this is not necessarily a definitive definition. ;-)

HW: Which criteria do you use in your decision process?

SD: I have a secret checklist and any work that scores neutral smiley or greater on at least 85% of each of the criteria. . . . When I was studying photography, I always thought that the notion of a masterpiece was absurd. Individual images mean so little outside of their context. I think the same is true for net art. One project may be of immense interest in a particular context and little interest in another. This is not intended to obviate issues of skill, quality, etc. but as I have written ad nauseum, I am more concerned about “understanding” too early in the medium's process what constitutes good than not knowing.

HW: How far are technical criteria helpful to point out single artworks?

SD: I think it is useful to understand the technical aspects of a work, and as with any art from painting to video, there are artists' artists, whose technical mastery is more widely admired than their art. So, there is a little negotiation that goes on, which I don't think is a Catch 22 but which can seem like one. Too many times, knowledgeable art professionals dismiss a net art work because it doesn't behave like the art they know. It is important to understand what is going on under the hood and how this might influence a different goal than with video or photography, etc. At the same time, I think that the most interesting and influential net art will be more than a neat hack.

HW: What about content criteria?

SD: Content criteria reminds me of content filters. I may decide I'm not interested in a particular presentation of content but to say "no xxx" or whatever seems impossible.

HW: To collect webart still is a rather new approach. What will you do, when current systems will be out of use? Do you yet think about that problem?

SD: Yes, I think about the problem. There are many facets to the issue. Collecting some net art is no more than a feeble attempt at documentation. E.g. Lisa Jevbratt's Stillman project, which we commissioned. Other efforts I think remain valid over time, but the technology changes, so what to do? We try and be involved in various discussions about this issue, and are working with Jon Ipolito and Rhizome on a variable media project to test some of these ideas. I still remain committed to the notion that to not try and collect / document these efforts on the web would be an abrogation of responsibility to the culture at large.

HW: Do you see a challange in developing in multimedia formats like flash or shockwave?

SD: My off-the-cuff response is that flash is the revenge of the design community, which (to be overly broad), hated the lack of control of presentation in html. And I think it's also easy to understand flash / shockwave as animation with buttons. Plus a lot of it is a lot of fun. That said, I'm not particularly interested in "flash art." I'm interested in photography but only mildly interested in platinum photography per se. In the same way, flash may or may not adhere as a subgenre (I think it would be odd for a proprietary format to do this - sort of like a brand of pastels rather than pastel drawings), but it's not an important distinction for me. Some flash art will be of interest and some won't be.

HW: Webart / netart actually offers the chance for construction of reality, irrespecitve of the "world", because it is possible to build animated environments and therefore create autonomous subsystems. What do you think about that?

SD: I was thinking about this when I was re-looking at the zeitgenossen site this morning. Very early on, we commissionedMarek Walczak to do a VRML interpretation of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The idea was that it would become an animated environment for artists to work in / with virtually. It didn't really work out that way, and while I think the promise exists, it has proved difficult in reality. Part of it, I think, is simply that claiming a 2D screen is immersive is not entirely true. Immersive-like, perhaps. But this will change. There are very few "immersive" projects that I think succeed. For me, Zeitgenossen approaches success. Melinda Rackham's work and Gregory Chatonsky are some of the few. But I agree 100% that the potential exists, and that is my point about being a curator. It's not to say which direction to go, but to follow where you take us.

HW: There are more and more hybrids between magazines, art collections, exhibition spaces on the one side and on the other side there is a mixing of professions. Artists are organising shows, theorists are working as artists, curators are writing on theory and so on. What do you think about that?

SD: I enjoy the permeability of boundaries, although I don't think we should throw specialization out the window. Certainly, the multi-roles of artists has been absolutely critical to the advancement of the field at all.

HW: The web consists of many single "worlds”. Which community do you think highly of importance?

SD: For me, the ongoing efforts of nettime, rhizome, and thingist, among others, are inspirational. I am very interested in the issues of how "locality" can be expressed / maintained in a global, connected environment. What Andreas Broeckman refers to as the translocal. This is an area of research in the coming year (see http://translocations.walkerart.org).