Hello all,
My name is Brian Cavanaugh and I am the New Media & IT Coordinator at the Vilcek Foundation. As an artist and techie, I am always on the lookout for new uses of media and innovative techniques that stretch the capabilities of art and technology.
On a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art to see the exhibition Talk to Me – an exciting exhibition on the interaction between people and things – the underlying method of dialogue, using advances in technology, stood out as both the medium and the message in many of the artworks.
Artists have at their disposal an arsenal of tools for creating, promoting, and distributing work online. Technology gives the artist the power to extend geographical and linguistic boundaries that otherwise hinder a potential audience. Web platforms and services such as HTML5 and youTube are universal; it allows the individual artist to broadcast their work around the world, from anywhere in the world. The Foundation always has an eye – or ear – out for great uses of technology in artistic endeavors online – so much so that the Vilcek Foundation plans to highlight immigrant artists working in the realm of digital art through a new initiative – dARTboard, a premiere digital art space scheduled to launch on Vilcek.org in the winter of 2012.
As I continue to browse the web in search for great uses of technology in art, I’d like to share interesting sites and works from around the web I’ve found to be resourceful, and inspirational.
The Art Project - http://www.googleartproject.com
Where else can you see the classics from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam or stroll through the Central Hall in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, all from the comfort of your sofa? Google’s Art Project uses mapping street-view technologies to bring virtual tours of museums around the world at your fingertips.
Whitney ARTPORT- http://artport.whitney.org
In addition to an online gallery for commissioned net art, the Whitney ARTPORT serves as a portal to some of the best digital art projects online.
The Wilderness Downtown - http://thewildernessdowntown.com
Labeled as an interactive film by Chris Milk, The Wilderness Downtown website uses video and Google mapping APIs to construct a narrative centered on the address of the home where you grew up (user provided).
Dreamgrove - http://www.dreamgrove.org
Dreamgrove is a visually interesting site, divided into two parts: a page where you can read an archive of dreams and a garden where you can listen to dreams. Users are encouraged to write and submit their own dreams, adding to the collective archive.
Nawlz – Interactive Comic - http://www.nawlz.com
Nawlz is an example of interactive storytelling that is described as a “cyberpunk adventure series that combines animation, interactivity, music and text to create a never before seen digital panoramic comic format.”
We would love to know what resources and works of art you are interested in – please let us know in the comments!
-Brian
