“Qu'est-ce qui rend les arts des nouveaux médias si différents, si séduisants?”


Steve DIETZ

Directeur artistique de ZER01+ et de la 2ième Biennale 01SJ (San José, Californie).
Précédemment Curateur Nouveaux Médias au Walker Art Center de Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“The distinctive features of new media art do challenge many of the conventional notions about art, but many respected – and collected – non-new media artists have used these same strategies in their work. I have no doubt that eventually new media art will be as much a part of institutions’ collections as photography, video, and installation art have become. In the meantime, however, there is a crisis at hand. We are in danger of losing 30 years of new media art history. It is important to learn now how to collect new media art, if there is to be any hope of preserving its recent past.
If magnetic tape has a “half life” of approximately 30 years – the point at which it starts to significantly deteriorate – the half life of digital media can be days. In 2002, the average lifespan of a web page was just 74 days. In addition, the software that drives many new media applications might change every 6 months – and it is not always backwards compatible.”
“Collecting new media art is first and foremost a curatorial issue. The medium poses challenges to traditional notions of collecting but little more than much contemporary art. Proven ability to preserve and conserve new media art remains at the theoretical level, but this will be a moot question for a vast swathe of contemporary artistic – at least for museums – unless they take the first step and begin to collect, critically and assiduously.”
Excerpts from: Steve Dietz, “Collecting New Media Art: Just Like Anything Else, Only Different”, in Bruce Altshuler (ed.), Collecting the New, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2005.