Public Art Review issue 13 - 1995 (fall/winter)

Technology Issue: • Public Art Anarchy • Otto Piene

• CyberCities • Wrapped Reichstag • Leicester vs. Batman • Reviews and more •••

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FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 3

,'All

CONTENTS

FOREWARD

th at is solid me lts into air." Karl Marx wrote these words in 1848, impressed by the power of techn o log ical developments in his day to transfo rm the fi xed relations o f society. FactolY producti on, rail ways and canals, the applicati on of chemistry to industry-all these revolutioni zed produ cti on, chang ing fo rever the socia l co nventi o ns of fe ud a lism. Marx foresaw the co nti n ual recas ting of produc ti o n, and , as a conseque nce, unre lentin g di sturbance of soc ia l co nditi ons. He predi cted "everl astin g un certainty."

Ambi guity, if not un certa inty, is an un seen feature of much o f the wo rk in thi s iss ue of Public A rt Review, devoted to arti sts working with tec hn o logy o r re lated iss ues. We acce pt nea rl y matter-of-factl y th at scie nce and tec hn ology present du al possibili ties: liberati on and perh aps upheava l; in venti on, but potenti all y des tru cti o n.

Arti sts in the first industri a l revo luti on were optimistic ex plorers, co nfident th at new tools would deliver new artisti c di scoveri es. In due cour e, thi s pos iti ve noti on of tec hn o logical " progress" woul d g ive way to suspic ion. But at the daw n o f modernity, arti sts did not think in these term s. They saw art and science, techn ology and nature as a continuum o f crea ti o n and the qu est for knowledge as a co mm on activity, shared by chemists and poets, painters and eng ineers, in ventors and philosophers a like. In 1937 , Hun ga ri an-born artist Lasz lo Moho ly-Nagy fo und ed the New Bauh aus " to fo rm a nucleus for an independent reliable center where art, science and techno logy will be united in a creati ve pattern ."

These euph ori c adventures co ntinue. As late as 1993, Geo rge Rickey, one of the kineti c art movement 's leading spokespeople, described how he i inspired by the primari ly tec hni cal and scientifi c challenges of mathemati ca l relati on and optical pheno mena. At the sa me time, and in co ntrast to ea rli er generati ons, today's techn ological arti sts are full y implicated in the econo mic and cultura l effects o f our tec hn ological co ming-oF-age. Jenn y Holzer's public art medi um is computer-dri ven LE D signs, and the messages are so metimes disturbing ly fa mili ar bi ases, but we are equ all y pro voked by the gender, class, and special interes ts of what we tend to think of as a neutral techno logy.

Now Karl Marx's metaphor o f di ssoluti on is perh aps even more apt.

A new revoluti on in techn ologica l development is in prog ress, based on the transmi ss ion of in visible bits of informati o n through space. Video, co mputers, and te lecommuni cations netwo rks are th e techno logical in fras tru cture o f th e late 20th-ce ntury info rm ati o n eco no my. " Mechani cal metaphors of prev ious eras are be ing superseded by e lectroni c metaphor ," write author Ri chard Kaz is in Siting Technology.

"Mass gives ways to fl ow; so und to light; the conc rete to the abstract; the ca u al to the interconnected. The words and images widl whi ch we ex pl ain our world to ourselves are rapidl y beco ming the word s and images of the seco nd industri al revo lution."

The imagery and per pec tive pub lic arti sts ca n g ive to th is second revoluti on is important, and the acti ve relati on with the public is one inherent feature always found hi storicall y in tec hno logical art. What co nte mporar y arti sts in thi s iss ue of Public Art Review have in common with Moholy- Nagy is their des ire to engage the world at la rge-its perceptu al and social enviro nment-and to bring to it an y mea ns and medi a dee med appropri ate.

-Deborah Karasov

NEXT ISSUE: RHHINKING MEMORY &COMMEMORATION !

FEATURES Public Art Anarchy

by Nicholas Drake . . . . ... . ... . ... . .... .... . 5 Private Broadcasts/Public Conversations

by Colette Gaiter . . .. .. . . . . .. .. .. ... . . . .. . . 8 Piene Interview

by Nicholas Drake . . ... . . .. .... . .. ... .... . 12 Tools for Vision

by Deborah Karasov . . ..... .. .. .. . .. .. . . ... 13 Natural Science

by Heather Wainwright . ... . . ... ... ... .. . ... 16 The Sounds of Science

by Robert Schultz .... ... .. .. . ..... ... ... .. 20 CyberCities

by M. Christine Boyer ... . . . .. .. ... .. ..... . . 22 Culture on the Brink

by Hilde Myall . . ... . ...... . ..... . . . .... ... 23 Scanning the Spectrum

by Jack Becker .... . .... . . .. . . . .. . .. . . ... . 24

DEPARTMENTS REVI EWS It's A Wrap!

by George Armaos . ... . . . .. . .. .. . .. . . ... .. 28 Future Visions

by Linda Johnson Dougherty .... . . .. . .... . . . 30 Breaking Down Barriers

by Gerald Moorhead . ...... ... ... . ... . ..... 31 BOOK REVIEWS The Benefits of Public Art & Culture in Action

by Bruce Wright . . .. ...... .... .. .. . .. .. .. . 32 Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs

by Laura Weber ..... . .. ...... .. .. ........ 32 Balance: Art and Nature

by Patricia B. Sanders ... ... . . .. .. . .. . .... . 33 PUBLIC ART SCHOOL Rooftop T.E.A.M. Building

by Celeste Connor .. ... . . ..... .. .. . .. . . .. . 34 Go Public!

by Linda Johnson Dougherty ... .. .... .... .. . 36 PU BLIC ARTICLES I Leicester vs. Batman

by Laura Danielson .. . .. ... .. . .. . ... ..... . . 37 IN TERN ATIONAL BRIDG E Continental Drifting

by Leni Schwendinger and Mark Kramer. . ... ... 38 PUBLIC ARTICLES II Undesirable Attention

by Regina Flanagan . . . .. . ......... . ....... 40 COMMENTARY Radiodeath

by Jacki Apple ... . . . . .... .. .. ..... . . ... . . 41

ote: If you are not a subscriber, and would like to obtain a free copy of the Arti sts' Opportun ities listing and the Internet Directory printed on the mailing sleeve, send a SASE to Public Art Review-Li stin gs, 2324 Uni versity Ave. W., teo 102, SI. Paul , MN 55 11 4.

Cover: Images fro m Web Sites, incl uding Pi otr Szyhalsk i's The Spleell and Jill Scott 's Frollliers oj Utopia , are both fea tu red in Colette Gaiter's essay, beg inning on page 8.

4 PUBLI C ART REVI EW FALL/WINTER 1995

LIST INGS Exhibits, Conferences, Recent Projects, Publ ications, News & Views compiled by Jack Becker . ...... . . .. . .. . . .. . 43 Artists' Opportun ities and an Internet Directory compiled

by Paula Justich are printed on the mailing sleeve.

ad the Internet existed in ancient times, its description might have sounded much like the Hindu parable about the blind men and the elephant, in whi ch the men identify the various parts of the elephant's body as ropes, boulders, and tree mmks. The blind men would have described the Internet with analogous misinterpretations.

The moral of the parable is stiJJ the same: The Internet- like dle elephant-is too vast for the unsighted to understand, because it is more than the apparent sum of its parts. Yet what other approach is there, especially fo r those in the visual arts, but to fumble blindl y about its appendages?

If this metaphor sounds a bit too mys ti cal a descriptio n of the Inte rn et, take note th at Jesuit priest Pien'e Teilhard de Chardin imagined a layer of infOlmation covering the earth some 50 years before the advent of the Internet. This humarl metaconsciousness was a visionary leap by any definition. What this metaphys ical thinke r didn 't envision were the technological whisdes and bells necessary to making thi s info rmati on system function. But the point is that he did conceive this global membrane widlout being a technocrat.

Since the Net is a technology-dri ven medium, artists have tended to shy away from entering this mysterious new realm . The mania for getting connected has most recend y reached beatnik-like "be there or be square" proportions, putting social and creati ve pressures on reluctant

H

technophobic artists. But the creati ve possibilities are becoming ever more difficul t to ignore, and the Net's ex ponential surge in growdl, due to the point-and-c1ick ease of the World Wide Web, is helping to commercialize the online experience. Mainstream Ameri ca is on the verge of fl ooding into the Web, making it a relati vely direct way to reach new audiences.

The issues sUITounding cyberspace are extremely complex and vari ed.

From the perspective of Public Art Review, there are certain basic questi ons to consider: How do artists approach this phenomenon? What ki nd of space is cyberspace? Is it a public or pri vate space? What kind of alt exists in this space, if it can even be considered a "space"? Who wiJJ define the new aJt thal might evolve there-lie old guard, a new kind of artist, or not an artist at all ? How should all of this be conceptualized?

A good place to start aski ng questi ons was at the Medi a Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The lab's director, Nicholas Negroponte, gave his usual fast-forward hands-on view of the new fro ntier.

Author of the recent book Being Digital aJld populaJ' column ist for the cyberpunk bible Wired magazine, Negroponte offers an insider's perspecti ve that blends the pragmatic with the visionary.

Appropriately, I conducted my interview with Negroponte via e- mail whiJe he hopped continents, from Greece to the United States to Brazil. I asked him to consider public art in cyberspace, using the example of the public's access to such spaces as parks. Negroponte began in concise, nearoxymoronic statements.

"The parks in cyberspace aJ'e different. They are more pri vate and can be likened more to a refrigerator door than to Paley Park or, for that matter, to dle MIT CaJllpUS, whi ch has a terrific outdoor sculpture collection. The issue in cyberspace is expression more thaJl statement. The half-li fe of cyberart may be minutes. The two opposing forces seem to be standardi zation versus di versificati on.

"Cyberspace is not like TV, a mass medium, whi ch is dri ven more by Crest toothpaste and General Motors than by human creati vity. The audi -

From Chris Romano's "e-zine" Dreamboy. (artwork: the artist)

FA LL/WINTER 1995 PUB LIC ART REVIEW 5

ence is not dumb, but needs to be in sufficient numbers to jusltify the ad dollars which make that rut (if it is such) possible. By contrast, the entry cost on the Net is low, the audience can be tiny and the value much more fleeting (in the best sense of that word). This is not all rut, obviously, but a new medium to be explored."

Negroponte's writing has promoted the idea of process over the product of rut and of an immense cybergallery for all the world to see. I asked him how he thinks this wiJJ affect the elites of the rut world, especially when considering his prediction of ever more visuaUy literate consumers remaking themselves into "Sunday painters."

"I find the notion of hi gh and low rut a bit off-putting (to put it mildly).

Art is in the eyes of the beholder. Later, history makes those judgments. The return of the Sunday painter is about the quality of life of the: ruttist, not the critic. Artistic elitism is like computer hacking. A small group in the know makes you feel like the rest of us must be dummies. This is why computers are hard to use. That may be why rut is often hard to understand."

Continuing my cyberquest, I turned next to New York-based conceptual ruttist Ronald Jones. Some three years ago, Jones became fascinated with the computer and its possibilities. The ruttist's recent work includes composing and designing operas via com puters.

Jones discussed what led him to enter the realm of digital rut. "As I looked around at the situation we are now facing culturally, it occurred to me that deep thinkers, cultural theorists, and ruttists whom I deeply respect were beginning to fundamentally bypass the rut world on their way towards what I would describe as the leading disciplines of our culture.

"These leading disciplines are those that understand that the computer is a kind of emblem that is going to be key in the restructuring of what the info nnation society will be. It seems to me that we are moving away from

a media society, which the rut world was possessed by over the last 15 years, and moving towards the information culture.

"These cultural thinkers and ruttists are becoming involved in using highly advanced computer techniques. These are ruttists like Philip Glass and Steven Spielberg.

By ruttists I mean a fairly wide range of folks-not so many people in the visual ruts, of course, because the technology hasn' t sifted down. My point is that at this moment our culture is shifting paradigms of influence away from a fascination with media-let's say television-towards an adoption of the computer.

"It seems to me that the rut world has been left on the other side of a widening gap between developed and developing disciplines. It is a gap that

6 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

mirrors the disparity between developed and developing countries. I wanted to be sure that at least some of us were on the right side of that gap, because I run mindful of the observation of Jack Burnham. Twenty-five years ago he pointed out that within an information culture the idea that a tiny output of objects could somehow beautify or enhance the world was simply naive. It's not that those things shouldn't take place. It's just that the culture is moving in another direction. And I'm convinced that the rut world is largely being left behind."

Cultural thinkers like Jones recogni ze that each new medium has an inevitable impact on society, which, though unpredictable, will be too important to be left to others. The MTV paradigm demonstrates how a rel ativel y obscure but innovative art form transformed the industry that gave birth to it. MTV, with its crude video experimentalism, went on to change the entertainment industry, both structurally and aestheticall y.

Another media comparison is poignant here. There should be little surprise that much of the rut online seems trite, and that computer-generated rut has a rather tawdry reputation within serious rut circles. For the most prut, computers are used to process stale ideas and aesthetics.

Keep in mind that it took about 30 years before someone thought to move the crunera when making a motion picture. An obvious concept to us now, it took a substantial shift away from the rigid point of view of the theatri cal stage before a revolution in filmmaking could occur.

But what does this have to do with public rut? The Internet is an interactive medium, not just a one-way conduit like conventional media. In some ways, it is as much a public space as is the public square. Artists in cyberspace will inevitably have to wrestle with some public rut issues.

Jones sees the development of public rut within the Net in terms of its regulation and the new frontier/outsider mentality that has existed there since its establishment.

"When we think about public rut, outside of the computer, we are talking about commissions and generally large sums of money in order to realize those projects. In the Internet, no .c ommittee decides. It is a public forum , and public rut is one kind of address found there. But I don 't think it is comparable to thinking of public rut as the big orange sculpture in fro nt of the post office. It's a public rut formed by a kind of outlaw mentality. Anything is possible, and there are no regulations. It can be like graffiti rut. And certainly the desire to curb pornographic transmissions on the Internet will contribute to its regulation. Then, like in inner cities, where they have designated walls for graffiti ruttists, regulation of expression will defeat its whole purpose."

With the impending regulation of the Internet, public rut issues will come to the forefront. As the issues of regulation and censorship are debated throughout society and Congress, spurred on by issues like pornography, the "anything goes" character of the Internet will be threatened. Civillibertarians are expressing outrage at legislators who attempt to regulate a medium they know little or nothing about. This seems fruitful terrain for ruttists, especially for those politically inspired. The Internet is touted as the most democratic medium of all because of its interactivity and freedom of access, but those qualities are now apparently threatened.

Since I have both an ruts and physics background, it seemed natural for me to enter this environment years ago. I met any number of people, and established long-running relationships with them through e-mail correspondences and live online chats. I found many of the ruttists to be academically naive, even though they were si ncere in their love of rut and their dedication to producing computer-generated imagery.

What I found were reservoirs of resentment. During discussions of fairly high-level rut issues, I fended off outrage and accusations of elitism. I defended traditionally accepted issues in the midst of "flrune wars" (emotionally charged onslaughts of e-mail exchanges).

West Coast ruttist Chris Romano received a traditional university education in rut while successfully making the transition into the commercial end of computer rut. Romano authors a monthly "e-zine" (online magazine) called Dreamboy. His animation work includes projects like the film Mortal Kombat and the Power Rangers movie, as well as an upcoming Tim Burton fIlm. Romano has a critical view of cyberspace. "The Internet is not the right forum for people to discuss ideas. It's a place where lonely pedestrians can comfort themselves with birds of their feather. Art forums cater to the lowest common denominator, just like [the usenet site] a1t.sex. beaver. I was a fool for thinking anything else was possible.

and fidd ling with a PC don ' t mix. It ha al 0 put a damper on my social life except onli ne. I find the people online more interesting than socializing with my alcoholic and druggie neighbors, who sit in front of their boob tubes watching sports and slurping beer by the case."

Another artist, Jean Ravin ki , says, "There is a voyeuristic factor that is a big wlinkle in this cyberart world, because the rutists and viewers are extremely titi llated by the nude. This used to annoy me when I first came online. Now I just don't care.

They love drawing and painting lots of women with huge breasts that are physical impossibilities. This is taking on the proportions of the Venus of WillendOif and the caves of Lascaux.

"As an art anarchist, I believe in tearing dow n, deconstructing, and demolishing any signs of an estab lishment in the ruts. I believe that I wou ld feel dlis way even if I were the type of artist who wanted to make "To some degree, I find the pursuit of art and cyberspace to be equally retarded. Computers, at best, are just a tool. They are not a new form of art.

I've done and been around enough high-end computer animation to say that with confidence. While I find form to be extremely important, it takes up onl y 50 percent of the pie. Content is its equal, and content is extremely lacking in cyberspace. At best, artists are stil l figuring out new things to do with the technology. Let's not pretend that's interesting, or a substitute for content. Actually, both form and content are lacking, which I think is pretty self-evident. Handing something over to the masses, like technology or whatever, is the quickest road to destroying its standards."

Romano 's elitist view of the masses zooming through cyberspace isn't yet a reality. Only 7 to 8 percent of U.S . households subscribe to some kind of online service. Though the growth rate is phenomenal (some 14,000 people a day get connected), the Internet is still a long way from becoming a mainstream medium.

Sidestepping the cruci al issue of access, the Net appears to be rutistically democratic. Artistic or academic training seems inconsequential to the process of making compulter art. But advanced hardware and software ru'e all-important, and economics still dictate which high-tech materials the rutists Crul afford.

Another of my online interviews was with Lawrence Gartel. His book Cybernetic Romance is the first computer-rut monograph on an individual rutist's work. Recognized for his pioneering work in computer graphics, and the merging of traditional rutistic techniques with those of new digital technologies, Gartel's perceptions crulied a "been there, done that" character.

"Cyberspace is a way to have people write in whatever manner suits them, but as far as fme art on the screen, it has no place in the hierarchy of fine art. This may sound like disappointment for the medium, but as Chuck Close once said, 'There is art history and there is slide history.' Cyberspace offers no advantage to viewing an image. What it does do is get artists talking. That is a good thing. I have been living a very cyber life for many years.

I must tell you there is nothing like going to a real museum and seeing art.

Cyberspace cannot offer this. Though art Crul be seen by millions of people, and a 'nrune' can get around, no one will ever say, 'I saw your work over the Net and you are a true genius of your medium.' You must view art in person."

Unlike Romano and Gartel, many self-taught computer rutists think that computers and cyberspace are not mere tools. They ru'e total lifestyles. Of the many online exchanges I've had, two illustrate the seductiveness-and perhaps the occasional adolescence-of that community. One creator, Roger Bruno, expressed it this way: "It completely altered what I was doing. I have rru'ely visited the bar scene since. It curbed my consumption of alcohol almost to nil. Drinking

art for big bucks."

In my quest to discover what rutists experience within the Internet, I have tried to accommodate as many vruied viewpoints as possible. For, li ke the blind men with the elephant, they are all a li tde right and a great deal wrong. In my mind the new medium is still unrealized.

The best of players stretch their fmgertips gingerly out from conventional formu las and paradigms. Whether with Ronald Jones' computer-created operas, or the process-driven Sunday painters of Negroponte's populist vision , these expressions maintain strong links to conventional art forms as translated through the new tools available.

The future direction of rut in cyberspace lies in its interactivity. This interactivity surfaces in real-time online activities, like those games of war in which players separated by thousands of miles batde each other in surreal environments via enhanced graphics and telecommunications.

Today this kind of art is enacted by rutists like George Coates, the San Francisco perfOimance rutist and computer visionary. In a conventional phone interview I had widl him in 1994, he described his virtual interactive theater work. "Now we' re working on a piece called Nowhere Now Here.

It's a performance loop that will pass through our theater on its way back out to the Net. It's a telecommunications piece. We' re going to use highspeed, high-bandwiddl transmission lines to create Internet theater. We' ll ask rutists for online submissions. I'll have people on stage, and maybe a multimedia digital band. The information that comes in will be the fuel that we work with in each evening's performance. Then we' ll take that performance, add it to our database, and feed it back out into the Net, so people can download it. Hopefully that will generate response data that will come back to us and will continue to evolve."

In this process-illi ven art fOlm , Coates merges conceptual high-art tendencies with outsider sensibilities, while creating an electronic public rut space that could exist only with in this specific medium. Coates' concept al lows high and low art to merge or clash in a serendipitous environment reflective of real-life experience, but heightened by the surreal context of the ephemeral and multicultural character of cyberspace.

Finally, atjoumey's end, it is still hard to say what this planetary behemoth really is and what it will tum out to be in the future. One thing is for sure: Marshall McLuhan has once again turned out to be the prophetic oneeyed man in the kingdom of the blind. Or as James Carville might put it: It's the medium, stupid.

The Internet i:s not the right forum for people to discuss ideas. It's aplace where lonely pedest,lians can comfort themselves with birds of their feather.

-Chris Romano

Nicholas Drake is an artist and critic living and working in Charleston, SC (ndrake @awod.com).

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 7

PRIVATE

COl\TVERSATIONS

by Colette Gaiter

nteractive computer works fall somewhere within a range of single-voice " private broadcasts" and collective " public conversations." In a private broadcast the artist has something specific to show or say and engages the audience's attenti on by allowing each viewer to navigate through the piece in an individualized sequence. I characterize these works as " broadcasts" because they can be widely di stributed by individuals, but their essential content cannot be changed by viewers. Yet the most fascinating possibility for art in " public" spaces via computers is for true interaction between the viewer and the creator, and among viewers. Communication no longer need flow in one direction , from artist to audience. All of our cultural ideas about authorship, artistic voice, and vision could ultimate ly be challenged.

The truly interactive " public conversation" that is visual in nature is still evolving as an art form. There have been scores of experiments where images are sent back and forth between remote locations, but what do they add up to? Usuall y not much except novelty and spectacle.

They are li ke mail art, in that part of the wonder is simply that they were received . The potential of public art via computers-on the Internet, World Wide Web, CD-ROMs, or whatever future venues might evolve- is for the creator to "aesthetically direct" the visual communication as a kind of public conver alion .

I

8 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

Two questions emerge. What is "public" about these new technological interactions and where is the "art"?

In thinking about how technology-based art can be considered " public," one obvious criterion is accessibility. The word "public" implies "open to everyone" and possib ly "free." When "public" is applied to a school , library, park, or building, these assumptio ns are true-or partially true. Public art may be physically accessible to anyone, but often has psychological and cultural barriers attached to it. Some locations, although free and open to the public, have subtle and unacknowledged admission criteria-inevitable in a society segregated by class and race.

Invi sible signs are everywhere indicating who is welcome to participate and who isn't. We can pretend to say we have a democratic society only because in many of these situations a person can be allowed to participate even if that person is not welcome.

To the artist, cyberspace is more accessible than traditional public art.

One advantage is that an artist can bypass the process of public approval and fu nding to create and install the work. At this point in time, however, in terms of demographics and class, cyberspace is neither truly public nor accessible. Most Americans who have access to computers, modems, and on line services are white, educated , and middle class. For technology-based art to be truly public, every person should have free access to a computer and online service. One hopes that in the near future, net-

worked computers will be installed in public pl aces li ke li braries and will eventuall y be as accessible as public (if not free) telephones.

If the first crite ri on fo r publi c co mpute r art is access to the machines, the second would be the public nature of the art itself, or in.teractivity. Audie nces should be able to affect the reception of the message, all owing the viewe r to become a collaborator to some ex tent. But, as always, the ideal and the reality are not the same.

Technological limitati ons, mostl y, prevent pure interacti vity.

In additi o n to creating work that has aestheti c and intellectu al integrity, arti sts wo rkin g with computers feel compelled to push the envelope in te rms of technology. They abso rb o ur c ulture's pro pensity toward "progress" in science and techn ology and to produ c ing some thin g th at is new, more, or better-ideally all three.

Thi s chall e nge is nea rl y a require me nt fo r those arti sts whose wo rk is in teracti ve and " publi c" in the broades t sense.

Artists des ire to make work th at is in teracti ve with tools th at don' t rea ll y all ow it. Compute r programs are inhe re ntl y closed syste ms. Advances in sto rage and me mo ry space are maki ng th e closed syste ms bigger, better, and fas ter, but they are sti II closed.

Essentiall y, all one will get out of a computer program is some variation of what was put into it. Socalled ex pert systems (pseud oartifi cial intelligence) and real artificial in telli gence systems are the future key to prov iding true unpredictable interacti vity.

Within these technological limits, the most compelling wo rk is by arti sts who have chosen, deLiberately or by default, to maintain the power and auth ori ty of the indi vidual a rti sti c vo ice whil e allow ing the viewer some meaningful level of interaction with the co nte nt. The most elegant such work intimately co nnects with the viewer much li ke a perfo rmance, albeit for one, in a public space.

True interacti vity (where the viewer 's input leaves a perm ane nt mark or change on the work as opposed to a viewer simpl y making choices within a closed syste m) is held out as a utopi an ideal, but fo r now, the power of a strong point of view and aestheti c makes the difference between tec hnological experiment and compelling vicarious ex perience.

A final criteri on fo r online public art is content. T he words "public" and " private" have opposing co nn otati ons within the broad fields of "medi a," "powe r," "broadcast," "conversati on," " perfo rmance," and " revelation ." With technological and public constructi ons like the World Wide Web and deskto p multimed ia publi shing, anyone with a computer and the proper co nnecti ons (l iterall y and figurati ve ly) can create, distr ibute, and broadcast medi a. Most of us agree that medi a e mpowerm ent is a good idea, but the inev itable questi on becomes: Now th at yo u have

people's attention', what are you going to do with it? Most Worl d Wide Web sites are purely info rmati onal and minimall y in teracti ve. T he medi a, the conversati on, the revelati on are on a limited private level. The ones that cross over in to public art are those th at are dealing with societal and cultural ideas in an aesthetic way.

In this discussion, art produced and viewed in cyberspace can be considered public art because of its access ibility, inte ractl vlty, anel/or content. If a piece of work has two of the three criteri a, I consider it public technology-based art. An interacti ve CD-ROM, even though it may be marketed and sold as a consumer product, can be considered public art if it deals with cul tural and societal issues in a way that encourages its audience to parti cipate in and respond to the content. The art is created for a public purpose.

Arti sts workin g in new interactive media wrestl e with our preco nceived cultural ideas about what in timacy, revelati o n, and conversati on are in these public venues. Arti sts ask viewers to respond to their work publicly and pri va tel y. The work is intensely personal, but is broadcast through medi a that are anythin g but pri vate. These works are public intimate co nversati ons.

I saw a perfo rm ance piece in April at "Utopi a/Dys topia: The Third Annu al Confe re nce o n Feminism Acti vism and Art" in San Francisco, by the video and Intern et arti st Barbara Hammer, in whi ch she responded to recorded phone conversati ons among her fri e nds that were about her.

What her fri ends had to say about her was more revealing than what she pro babl y wo uld have said about herself. Maybe thi s is the promi se of true interacti vity. The true art will be in th e blending of observati on and revelation. The arti st a nd th e res pondent will each be e nh ancing each other 's co ntributi on to the work.

Hammer has created an Internet site called Lesbian.s whi ch is an example of a trul y interacti ve work th at can be altered by viewers. It is an archi ve of stori es f rom lesbians on a variety of su bjects. The site includes a fo rm that viewers can complete to share their ow n stori es, pi ctures, and vo ices. From the Lesbians site, parti cipants can connect to oth er Web sites .

Even though thi s is a wonderful way to gather info rmati on and a sociologicall y important piece of work, the lac k of editin g and foc used agenda makes it less an artwork and more of a bulle tin board. In the most provocative electroni c- medi a art, the artist holds he r/hi mself up for compari so n to the rest of a given c ultu re and society, po inting out the simil arities and di ffere nces and de mandin g th at we (as audi ence)

FA LL/WINTER 1995 PUB LIC ART REVIEW 9

noti ce, conte mplate, and, ideall y, respo nd, These artists are looking into delayed response at best.

Buth of the pieces discussed below (one each by Tamblyn and a mirror that is li kt:: tht:: three-way mirror in a department. store dress ing room that goes on to infinity. In this electroni c mirror, though, each of Szyhalski) work fine as meditative performances. They are autobiographical with wider implications. Each artist takes artifacts from mass media to the reflected images is getting a response from a different viewer. use as backdrops for his or her point of view. The result is a magical A successfu l exa mple of this interactive CD-ROM work is George moment of recognition and discovery. The viewer has a sense of returning Legrady's Anecdoted Archive of the Cold War, which received an to a familiar place that is completely different. awa rd at last yea r 's "New Voices, New Visions" competetition sponChristine Tamblyn has produced a CD-ROM called She Loves It, She so red by Voyager Press. He uses factual information a nd photographs Loves It Not: Women and Technology. It begins with a QuickTime movie as the fra me of refe rence for himself as a boy growin g up in Hungary of her introduction to the audience: "Hello, my name is Christine. during vario us states of political upheava l. Hi s perso nal story is the Welcome to my mind. I want to interact with you. I am a woman who is point of reference that human izes the hi stori cal facts and makes them now appearing to you as a virtual subject. I have prepared some perforund e rsta nd able to the viewer. Home movies of him self and hi s pare nts pro vide a co unterp oin t to im ages of soldi ers, public atroc iti es, and the stark bl ack-a nd-white grittiness of NOLOGICAL ,EXPERTISE Eastern European Cold War oppressio n. Classic graphic des ign and the D GENDER INEQUITIES elega nt metapho r of rooms in a museum make the piece simple and accessibl e, even th ough mu ch of the content is disturbing.

Other artists commenting on their public selves work fro m outside of the "master narrative," as the writer Toni Morrison calls the white middle-class archetype we have been taught to believe is "normal" in this society. In these instances, the artist's private broadcast tells us a story we haven't heard, one that was left out of the master narrative.

Jill Scott's Frontiers of Utopia is an that women are in an interactive videodi sc piece about powerless pOSitIOn IS that women in 20th-century Australia. The V.,..,",I P" a fraction of the world's system is closed, but the viewer can no'lo~lI<lr;al expertise. Knowledge about choose the time frame and story, such as ng tools or machines makes It the yo ung C hinese refugee from those who have it to dominate Tiananmen Square, or the Aboriginal and other people. woman who was taken from her family as a young child and assimilated into English culture. In one segment, the viewer can choose which two women wiLl have a conversation, then listen in.

This segment is a tease for true interactivity, with more varied and unpredictable combinations. The piece is an absorbing blend of personal and historical information. Each woman's narrative is a window on a particular space in time. The interface metaphor is a suitcase, with the viewer choosing objects to further explore. The women in Scott's p.iece are sharing their personal and cultural baggage with the audience.

The artists who work in cyberspace are banking on the inherent cultural authori ty of medi a to generate an audience. Web sites are still novel enough to distinguish them fro m artworks that have previou ly been created. Yet, although infOlmation is distributed to a large group of people, the bulk of online work implies little more than the possession of resources and power. Only the rare artist has something important to communicate.

The idea of egalitarian or populist media is a relatively new one, and artists taking control of their broadcast voices is a flrst step in true democratization of media. Two other arti sts whose interactive work I have looked at closely, Christi ne Tamblyn and Piotr Szyhalski, both do work that is intimate, yet political in the manner of provocational theater. It is no coincidence that they are both performance artists. mance loops about women in relation to technology."

Both of the e artists want more oppOltunity for direct response and The main interface screen is a circle of daisy petals viewers get to interaction from their audiences. They talk about the audience as an inte- "pluck" to find out if they really love it. Each petal has a subject name gral palt of their work. Szyhal ki goes so far as to say, "Art is audience." such as "The Other," "Homunculus," "Representation," and so on.

Both artists lament the lack of real interactivity avai lable to them because Clicking on one of these petals takes tile viewer to another screen that of the technological limitations. But I suspect that even though they may offers a variety of choices. One essentially chooses a certain chapter of a believe they want more interaction, they are still worki ng in the psychobook. Within that chapter, the viewer can listen to a robot's voice, read logical realm of author/perfornler talking to a relatively, but not complete- text, read a letter from Christine, or see a video clip from a movie about ly, pa sive audience. We currentl y have no model for anything else. Truly people (particularly women) interacting with technology. After looking at interactive artistic communication has yet to evolve. The closest these a couple of chapters, the viewer recognizes a pattern to the sequences. artists get to real-time reactions is letters and e-mail from viewers-a Even though Tamblyn makes full use of multimedia-using sound, video,

10 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

animation, still images, and text-the different components don ' t blur together. Each remains disti nct.

Tamblyn sets up the intimate nature of the piece from the very beginning by putting her image and voice-her virtual self-right up fro nt as the "being behind the thinking." She writes letters (accessed by envelope icons) to her readers. The letters are among the most intimate parts of the work. On the nature ofthe relationship of the "real" self to the vutual, computerized self she writes:

Dear reader, Creating artificial life is tantamount to usurping the function of God. If interpreted in Judea-Christian terms it entails a cel1ain elemen.t of Satanic hubris. 1 initially started working in multimedia because recording and editing magnetic or chemical traces of light seemed to impart alchemical powers. I could en.act the life of an alternative persona with different characteristics than the "real" me on film and video.

Regards, Christine In these new technological artworks, the viewer is invited not to eavesdrop, but to listen, in a kind of warped real-time, to the intimate thoughts ofthe artist. For now, the abiJj ty to customize the message is Lirnited. These

are tape-recorded intimate conversations, with variations. They are like fortune cookies: Even though we know the fortunes are mass-produced and that the identical message is distributed to many other people at the same time, we sti ll hope to get a fortune that applies to our particular situation. As with all good writing or art, the value of the work is measured by the relevance of the creator's thought processes to those of the audience.

Piotr Szyhalski's World Wide Web site, called The Spleen, is highly conceptual. It is an interactive site; viewers set their own pace and choose their own path as they move through it. The Spleen is also very visuall y sophisticated and seductive. The artist was trained in Poland in clas ic graphic design, a background quite evident in the work.

Szyhalski is a propaganda artist, wi th a large body of hi work, and part of the Web site, consisting of agitprop posters. In one example, a screen comes up with an image of a man and woman facing off, confidently wielding hatchets. The text on top reads, "Nothing could be more true than this." Large type across the bottom reads, "YOU CAN WIN." The words "BUT YOU WON' T" shortly dissolve onto the page under the other text.

Szyhalski is effectively mimicking the suggestibi li ty of advertising and other media propaganda. There are many of these posters, so one can, a he says, "go in deeper and deeper and deeper." The propaganda posters become animated in Szyhalski's clever use of "di ssolves" to change content. When the message changes to an equall y plausible opposite after the viewer has already silently agreed with the original premise, one is struck by how effective propaganda is.

His use of the HTML scripting language (the language that operates Web pages) takes advantage of its Limited interactive capabilities. One sequence is a "play" whose script, made of fo und text from a 19th-centu ry book, Mental Photography, reads out in a seemingly endless horizontal scroll with intermittent images.

Szyhalski believes that art is the audience. The Internet is his perfect medium because of the directness of the communication and possibility fo r interaction with the audience. While he does not have a specific audi ence in mind when he is creating his work, his commentruies deal with a certain type of person. His public issue is the process of public indoctrination to ideas. In one training exercise, the viewer is asked, "Are you prepared to draw a clear line of distinction between you and them?"

For Szyhalski , the promise of interactivity wi ll be in bypassing the creation of beautiful objects. "Art" occurs at the other end of the process-through the viewers and their perceptions. This is perceptual interactivity. Rather than just tell something, he allows the message to emerge in viewers' minds. Like in the best of public art, there can be alternative readings. "The resulting impulse will release a celtaUl feeling or emotion," he says. "Th is is the art." He describes his current work as an "expression of my hope for art-not art yet, exactly."

These artists-Barbara Hammer, Jill Scott, George Legrady, Christine Tamblyn, and Piotr Szyhalski-are working toward a currently unattainable ideal: true interactivity in a public cyberforum. Their conceptual challenge is to create an art that leaves some control up to tlle viewer; although in terms of technology, the artists are working with one hand tied behind their backs. Because of their pioneering efforts, when true interactivity is possible, we may know what to do with it.

Colette Gaiter is an Associate P.rofessor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she teaches computer graphics, and an artist working in interactive digital multimedia. fURLs (Web sites) pertaining to subjects in this article can be found in the directory on the outer sleeve. } I rec e ived your lett~r today and I try to give adequnt. answers to your questions . I discuReed i t with ./I.a,. ,i and her answers are included .

I rather writ. them on thi s

going from quest(on to question .

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[Gaiter's essay was supported in part by the Center fo r Arts Criticism in St. Paul, MN, with a grant from the National Endowment/or the Arts.}

Baby

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 11

II TID UÂŽby t10 Piene, forme r di rector of the Center fo r Advanced Visual Studies (CA VS), Massa chusetts Institute of Technology [see next page ], has been a trailblaze r in the intermingling of technology and art since th e 1960s. In 1968, Piene went to MIT to become the Center 's f irst f ello w. In 1974, he became its directOl; holding th e position for 20 yea rs. After he retired in 1994, he took the position of director emeritus. Piene now has time to concentrate on his own special interests, and he took some time out from them to refl ect upon his career:

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"Du ring one of my New Yo rk shows at the Haro ld Wise Gallery, titl ed Light Ballet, Gyo rgy Ke pes wa lked in. He ex plained to me that he was abo ut to fo und the Center fo r Adva nced Vi sual Studi es at MIT, and asked me if I woul d be the fi rst fell ow.

In the earl y yea rs everything was low tech. The fact that there was any tech in volved was an aberrati on in the eyes of the tradi.ti onalists. For exampl e, befo re my in vo lve me nt at th e Center, the Haro ld Wi se Gallery focused on kinetic art and light art, and was the fir st gallery to present TV and video art. My work with light was quote-unquote environmental.

M y appointment at MIT was a doubl e appointment; I was also a professor in the Department of Architecture and Environmental Art. One of the firs t things that I did at the Center was take up video work.

I had already done video and performance wo rk in New York City, where I fo rmed and operated a place called Bl ack Gate T heate r. T he n in 1968 I was one of the peop le who did the first artist television programs in the Uni ted States. Befo re th at, in 1967 , I had already do ne th e first li ve art i t's telev ision progra m fo r publi c te lev ision. So that's how we moved from low to hi gh tech. We not o nl y moved towards video an d televi sion and broadcasting, but al 0 towa rd synthes ized techniques and pro grams. The broadcast of thi s program wa ca lled Th e Medium Is The Medium. The other participants were All an Kap row, Nam June Paik, and Jimmy Seawri ght, along with a few others.

At the Cente r certain med ia were usually represented by the artists that were pursuin g th e evo luti on of these med ia. Besides video and broadcast work, the re was computer wo rk by Stan Va nDerBeek, or laser wo rk by Rockne Krebs and later Paul Earl s, holog rap hy rep resented at th e time by Fredrich St. Flo ri an. Artists were invited into the Center and th en they bro ug ht their intere ts, work, and experience in specific areas, broadening thi s base by coll aboratin g with scienti sts and e nginee rs at MIT. T here were quite a few scientists and engineers at MIT that were rea ll y in terested in collabo ration. T hey rea ll y contributed a lot and inspired the artists and at the same time fe lt inspired by the m as well.

It wo rked. Over the 20 year that I was there we had roug hl y 250 res iden t fe llow . We had a grad uate program th rough whi ch about 150 people went and about a hundred gradu ated with a master 's degree in math and cience of vi ual studie .

Whe n I became the director I increas ingly e ncouraged commun al proj ect that wo uld in vo lve seve ral arti st , engineers, scie nti sts, and grad uate stude nt . A number of the m beca me large-scale proj ects.

O ne of the m that ticks out was ca lled Center Beam. Center Beam

12 PUBLI C ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

Drake had some 27 o r so artists parti cipatin g, first for the Docume nta in Kassel, Germ any, in 1977. Then a year late r it went to the nati onal mall in Was hington, where it was accompani ed by pe rform ances and by 22 sky events. M y parti cul ar e mphas is in my work was in sky art -large-scale infl atables up to 250 feet in scale operated by large groups of peopl e in public spaces . Be tween 198 1 and 1986, we had fo ur inte rn ati onal sky-art confe re nces . The first one was at MIT; the second at Linz, Aus tri a, in vited by the Ars E lectroni ca; th e third was in Munich in 1983 , spo nso red in part by BMW; and fin all y in 1986 at MIT aga in. We had other confe re nces on th e the me of en vironme ntal art, art and technology, and art and science, as well. In 1975, l organi zed Art Transiti on, which was a confe re nce of man y arti sts parti cipatin g from the new medi a.

The science as pect of the Center's work is as important as the art, since science is the mother of engineering. There are arti sts at the Center who wo rk with scie ntists predominantly, a nd prefer wo rking with th em to wo rkin g with the medi a or th e enginee rs onl y. Once the art fo rms I have me nti oned become medi a, they essenti all y te nd to be in the hands of engineers and industry. That's how yo u es tabli sh conventi ons and ro utine. That's what I see happe ning already. In 1992, I wrote an arti cle fo r MRS Bulletin. In it I wrote a repo rt of what was happe nin g at the Center at the time . It was call ed ' Art and Technology: Recent Effo rts in Materi als and Media.' I mentio ned quite a few efforts to work with scie nti sts, such as in biotechnology. We've had arti sts who worked with the consequen ces of using, say, bacte ri a as a fo rm of publishin g .

At first we had the onl y prog ram of its kind in the world. We were alone fo r the first 10 or 12 years. Those were, of course, very exciting days, because everythin g was new and unproven. It was engaging to watch these things happen as new phenomena.

Nowadays, there is a catalog of 800 or a th ousand institutes a nd programs. A kind of tid al wave occurred, and yet the re still are a lot of peo ple that are skeptical about scie nce and techn ology. There are also many people that are e nthusias ti c about it. It's all about netwo rks.

Now, with the Internet, there are all these electroni c co nnecti ons th at, on the one hand, make communicati on easier, very in viting, and sometimes faci le, the n on the other hand are mov ing in the directi on of intangibility. So what I see as necessary- I see as something to be continued-are the phys ical aspects of art and communi cati on th at cann ot be neglected or fo rgotten while everythin g has turned electronic. We ha ve gone through a period of demateri alization . And periods of de materialization usuall y get augme nted by-or juxtaposed by-periods of remateri alizati on. I think that is what we need now. That is what we have to go on practicing, th at we use all those great electronic ex peri ences and devices and medi a to create new foci of integrated acti vity.

T hi s acti vity must integrate body and soul al ong with electroni c impul se and the communicati on networks that span the globe- and of course beyo nd . The communicati on networks reach into space, and th at's just fin e. We' ll all meet the re in the 2 1st century."

Nicholas Drake is an artist and critic living and working in Charleston, SC. ndrake @awod.com.

Tools

ur di sciplines are so specialized that it is hard to imagine a sin gle pattern enfolding all arti stic and intellectual work. Yet the Cen ter for Ad va nced Vi sual Studies was co nceived in 1968 in just that spi rit. Its foundin g phil osophy reac hes fa r back to the first decades of thi s century, wh en sc ie nce was racin g ahead, impelled by 200 years of traditi on and momentum , but w he n those acco mpli shme nts remained largely irrelevant to man' s inner life.

Gyo rgy Kepes, the first director of the center, likened the situati on to an orchestra, where the instruments lie already tuned but every musician is cut off from hi s fellows by a soundproof wall.

In France and in Italy, though, Cubist and Futuri st painters pioneered a thorou ghly ava nt-garde art extending the scale of vision as contemporary sci ence extended the laws of matter. They tried to represent, by means of the im age, the same attitudes and perceptions that were expressed in the physical sciences, in psychology, in literature, and in all the mechanical arts. Our time, the Bauhaus arti st Laszlo Moholy-Nagy declared in the 1930s, is one of transition and stri ving toward a synthes is of all knowledge.

At thi s time, there was no institution that helped the arti st to understand the interrelation s that ex isted between the diffe rent sciences or between the sciences and the realm of fee ling. In its ex perimental state, the B auhaus School in Germany could serve onl y a small group of students. To such immi grants as M oholy-Nagy and Walter Gropius, American soil became the ideal ground on which to work out an educational principl e that strives for the closest: connection between art, sci ence, and technology.

When M ohol y-Nagy was invited in 1937 to establi sh a New Bauhaus in Chi cago, he asked the Hungarian-born Gyo rgy Kepes to fo und the light and color department, the first of its kin d in thi s country. Moholy-Nagy wanted " to form a nucleu s for an inde pendent

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reliable education al center, where art, science, techno logy will be united into a creati ve pattern ." Thi s is one of the main the mes-w ith its antecedents in revoluti onary artists of the Hungari an Mun ka or "Work" Circle, the Russian Wchutemas, and the Bauhaus-that returned enriched and significantl y deve loped by Kepes 30 yea rs later in hi s aim s for the Center for Advanced Vi sual Studi es at the Massachu setts Institute of Technology.

"The language of vision," Kepes sa id in hi s first book, based on hi s Chi cago years, "is one of the strongest potential mea ns both to reunite man and hi s kn ow ledge and to re-fo rm man into an integrated being." For Kepes thi s new arti stic language could become a new popular art, a modern version of fo lk art that portrays the uni on between humans and the enviro nment.

Up to thi s point, Kepes had been exposed to the general philosophy of science, but at MIT, where he was in vited in 1945 to establi sh a program in visual des ign, he had the chance to move in to the center of the world of sc ience and technology. Specific pl ans fo r the Center fo r Ad vanced Visual Studies were first fo rmulated in the ' 50s, a jubilant and confident time of major breakthroughs such as Norbert Weiner 's ideas on cybernetics and fee dback systems and Warren S. McCulloch's views on the discerning abilities of neurological systems.

In 1967, the center opened. Kepes described its aim s in a catalog marking the occasion: "The Fellows of the M.I .T. Center for Adva nced

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 13

Vi ual Studies, now engaged in preliminary exploration of a major project, recog nize objectives simil ar to those of other collaborative groups: absorption of the new technology as an artistic medium ; interaction of artists, scie ntists, engineers, and industry ; the raising of the scale of work to the scale of the urban setting; media geared to all sensory modalities; incorporation of natural processes, such a s cloud play, water flow, and the cyclical variations of lights and wea.ther; acceptance of the participation of 's pectators' in such a way that art becomes a confluence rather than a dialogue."

The catalog presents themes for collaborative projects that develop c reative principles for an environmental light art. Among the initial projects, Kepes suggested the orchestration of the " urban nightscale" by "deve loping simul ation devices of light patterns coupled to a computer," in order to achieve "creati ve use of kjnetic light designs on an e nvironmental scale."

Another related but more ambitious project was the development of a " monumental kjnetic li ght form" for the middle of Boston Harbor, to provide the urban environment with a focal hearth , a monumental gateway "matched to the age of flight." Such a project would engage arti t ; structural , electronic, computer, and systems engineers; a city plann er; a p ychologist; and a sociologist.

Kepes proposed installing floating mirroring buoys in the harbor and a mil e- long programmed luminous wall. Otto Piene , one of the center's f ir t fellows and its second director, des igned an artificial rainbow for the project th at was constructed four years late r for the 1972 Munich Olympics. These works were intended to have a festive qu ality, " to compensate for the lost pagea ntry of nature." Kepes wi hed to introd uce a new aestheti c dimension to the urban landscape, exploiting the " luminous acc idental richness of the urban ni ghtscape."

14 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

Though not all such projects were realized, the center communicated its goals through exhibitions of the associates' work, including indi vidual pieces, maquettes, and drawings for a large-scale environmental art, scaled to the expanding scientific-industrial world.

Kepes' world was innocent; hi s luminous forms celebrated "civic pride in our knowledge and high technological achievement." In The MIT Years he described scientists and artists as hav ing common goals and intellectual values, working together in a " humanistic spirit for a better spiritual and physical environment."

"Each new tool of vision that science and technology prepares for us opens up a new landscape that compels us to see in its interconnectedness that the farther we can tra vel a nd the fas ter we move, the more we see, understand, and learn about other parts of the world and other people 's lives. The more sensitive and embracing our feelers of vision, hearing, and thinkjng become through radio, television, and computer technology, the more we are compelled to sense the interaction of man and his environment."

However, after environmental devas tation entered the political di scourse-the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, for instance-the technological optimism of Moholy-Nagy and Kepes could not stand unmodified.

In contrast to Kepes, Otto Piene began pointing out differences rather than commonalities among artists and scientists soo n after he assumed responsibilities for the center. Technology merely facilitates art, he says, pointing out that artists "used to lead vision during historic periods of reli gious guidance." Piene wonders where the artist is in this time when research has replaced prayer for enlightenment.

"Leonardo designed flying machines but did not fly. Albrecht DUrer may have had visions of nuclear holocaust but he did not build the atom bomb. The atom bomb, along with many other products of 'scientific objectivity' and resulting engineering, was built by scientists and engineers," he says in 5 Artistsl5 Technologies. 'The artistic commitment to imagery confines the artist to the freedom of playvisual, musical , 'environmental.' Play is often spiritually serious but ' practically ' frivolous-whereas ' reality' including much scientific and engineering reality-is often practicall y serious but spiritually frivolous and invokjng fatal danger. Art does not kjll-but for better or worse-its healing capacity is less measurable than surgery and medically applied radiation ."

As pointed out in the interview accompanying this article, Piene also increasingly encouraged communal projects that would involve several artists, engineers, and scientists.

The future of the center under newly appointed director Krzysztof Wodiczko has yet to be articulated. Since its establishment in 1968, researchers at the center have pioneered the use of computer and video

technology, lasers, and holography as tools of creative expression, and the tradition described here of innovative work in public and environmental art is widely heralded. But Wodiczko would challenge us also to question the social construction of these tools. Already he notes the dilemmas and opportunities posed by the end of the Cold War, with its legacy of obsolete military technologies and the still-potent arsenal of ideologies to be diverted into cultural projects for peace. Certainly, artists of the initial Center for Advanced Visual Studies were not totally unaware of the destructive possibilities in new technology. As Kepes said at the time, "What we now face are destructive forces of a completely new kind-man-generated, cumulative, and of almost cosmic proportions. " Whether utopian or apocalyptic in their world view, arti sts of the early center and of the contemporary one have constantly assimilated new media into their work in order to probe the public world at large.

Their work is among the best of public art, questioning and challenging our social vision.

Associate Editor Deborah Karasov is director of the Landscape Studies Center at the University of Minnesota.

Sources: Gyorgy Kepes. The Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

Cambridge, MA: Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967.

Gyorgy Kepes. Language of Vision. Chicago: Paul Thobald and Company, 1944.

Gyorgy Kepes. The New Landscape in Art and Science. Chicago: Paul Thobald and Company, 1956.

Gyorgy Kepes, ed. Vision + Value series: Arts of the Environment.

New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1972.

The MIT Years: 1945-1977. A catalog including Kepes' work at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, 1978.

5 Artistsl5 Technologies. A Grand Rapids Art Museum catalog of environmental light works by Peter Campus, Harriet Casdin-Silver, Paul Earls, Otto Pi ene, and Alejandro Sina, 1979.

FALLIWINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 15

n the eve of the year 2000, the Science Museum of Minnesota will celebrate its grand opening on the banks of the Mi sissippi. More than a new building and new address, the facilities will include a Science Park, with a four-season outdoor ex hibit hall ,

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tures. The Science Park represents a new perspective on amphitheater, and wetland garden, among other feamany different levels. Not on ly will it in vite visitors and museum staff to see and engage science differently, it will challenge our vision of the river, the water hed, and the city. Together, these differences could provide a new paradigm of experience. This article looks at the interection of art and sci<fnce created by the invitation to artists to help explore this potential. By paying close attention to the artistic aspects of this process, I hope to reveal how artistic contributions, in particular, guided museum staff in their thinking of the park, and I hope to suggest ways in which future contributions of art could change our understanding and experience of science.

In the early spring of 1995, the Science Museum of Minnesota, in conjuncti on with the University of Minnesota Landscape Studies Center, and the Department of Landscape Architecture, embarked on a three-month venture to exp lore design principles and concepts for the mu eum 's much-anticipated Science Park. Organized by Deborah

16 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER J995

Karasov , Landscape Studies Center director, and Thomas Oslund , an adj un ct facu lty member with the landscape architecture department, this project brought together the efforts of a lO-week student design studi o with those of the Science Museum's administrative Science Park Team.

WHY COLLABORATE? From the outset, the museum intended to maintain an active role in all aspects of the site design, but also to invite community participation in that process. Thus the initial goal of the university venture was not to produce final schematic designs, but rather to have "the hj ghest quality conversation about what the park could be," as Science Museum staff

ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS Energy, creativity, and commitment: A ll were attitudes witnessed at the March 1995 charette, which brought together nearly 30 people representing more than 10 disciplines. In additio n to museum staff and university students , participants included ecolog ists, historians, ed ucators, area museum programmers, landscape archi teets, and local an d nationa l artists.

Representing cu ltural as well as art istic diversity, the artist participants were Kinji Akagawa, Doug Hollis, Seitu Jones, and poet Roberta Hill Whiteman.) Their role: to fue l the visionary process; spark imagination; suggest creative solutions to challenging problems; and begin the concrete exploration of metaphors and concepts that could serve as design principles. In this way, the artists were instrumental if not essential in an imating the subsequent in-depth work of the student studio.

CAPTURING THE IMAGINATION

m ember Don Pohlman stated it. For this reason, as well as fo r economic reasons, the museum staff chose not to organi ze a design competition, which did not allow enou gh interaction in the germinati ng ideas.

The uruversity collaboration provided just such an opportuni ty. Its beginning point was a two-day intensive workshop, or charette, wh ich reinforced principles for the design explorations that followed.

Although charette participants worked in four groups, their ideas overlapped in the fo llowing common issues.

-Metaphors & holistic thinking. If there was one point that stood out as unilaterall y and unequivocally stressed, it was the need to treat the site as a unified whole. The vision should be of one site: Rather than a building with a separate park, a series of independent programmatic elements, the park instead should be treated as an organic unity. In particular, artists Akagawa and Jones called for a single metaphor around which the site design should be orgaruzed. More than the mission statement, more than any textual or cognitive element, the site itself would most powerfully express the museum's relationship to the city, the river, and the neighboring communities. In other words, people's physical, visceral, psychic response to the site would create and inform their experience and understanding. Thus, in spite of the demands on the site,

Artist's ren ering of the new Science Museum of Minnesota. (illustration: courtesy Ellerbe Becket)

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 17

arti sts fe lt that the museum need not and should not let go of the opportun ity to make a strong phys ical-symbolic statement via si te des ign.

Jones ex pl ained thi s statement as a phys ical and programmatic presence-one that would encourage people to come and experience the site, to return to this particul ar place where dle city was born .

Charette par tic ipants developed exampl es of both phys ical and conceptua l orga ni zing meta-phors. Instances of the fo rmer included the notions of " museum as bluff," where the museum andl park wo uld archi tecturall y reflect the river bluff, and " museum as link," where site des ign wo uld emphas ize the ro le of the museum as a connlecti on point between the ci ty of St. Paul and the M ississ ippi Ri ver; the upland and low land areas; and Irv ine and Ri ce parks. In each case, parti cipants envisioned the buil ding and park site as a seri es of descending terraces, where each level could prov ide program ming opportunities.

Serendi pitously, qui te independent of the co llaborative charette work, the museum 's consulting fi rm Ellerbe Becket developed a des ign fo r the building that brought together the same metaphors.

Exampl es of conceptual metaphor were " museum as catalyst" and "museum as advocate." "Museum as catalys t" advanced the notion of the museum as an ed ucational insti tution and a transformer of atti tudes and perceptions. In other wo rds, the artists wa nted to use site design to change the way visitors think-about the museum, science, and the M ississ ip pi. "Museum as advocate" was about community restorati on.

Here, "communi ty" meant the M iss issippi Ri ver watershed and larger ecosystem, as well as the surroundin g human communi ties. This metaphor could be manifest at the programmatic level, via small-scale restorations, nati ve pl anti ngs, and didactic displays. The museum could simil arl y support the health and integrity of the human community w ough inspi red programming for dle celebration pl aza.

-Engagement & connection . In additi on to the larger-scale connections suggested by the metaphor of "mu seum as link," artist parti cipants attended to the more personal connecti ons betwee n site and visitor. In parti cul ar, poet Roberta Hill W hiteman, artist: Jo nes, and landscape archi tect Julie Barg mann stressed the im portance of visitor engagement. Bargmann and Jones proposed a flow of experiences at diffe rent phys ical, cogniti ve, and temporal scales . Site design and prog ramming could provide ways in which a visitor can engage not onl y the outdoor exhibits and the river, but also the larger landscape: the neighborhood, the city, the ri ver corridor, and the continent.

As a bold and very physical expression of engagement one of the charette groups ex pl ored the idea of restoring the flood-pl ai.n fores t.

Us ing draw ings, they demonstrated what the site mi ght l ook li ke by the yea r 2040, when the woodl and canopy w0 uld have reached 30 fee t. Such a fo rest would be a strong personal connection fo r all th ose who would peri odically visit it, experi encing its growth and development over their life time. Mike D avis of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources co mmented that "engaging with the site is about intimacy and understanding the river. And understanding the ri ver is ta ntamoun t to understanding ourselves."

H ill Whiteman spoke about the way the museum needed to guide and potentia ll y transform visi tors' ex peri e nce of e ngageme nt.

Contemporary U.S. culture inculcates a devastatin g sense of ato mism.

When, if at all, peo ple sense connecti ons, they typicall y ex peri ence them in a mec hanistic way, as a linear and unidirectional series of causes and effects. Such a model of experience, while conceptually appea ling, is flighteningly out of kilter with the workings of our ecosystem, and of science. We badl y need a corrective. As a starting point, Hill Wh iteman put fo rward the im age of a web-a web of connections-to help visitors reorient their ac tions and thinki lllg. Didactic ex pl anati ons need not acco mpny such a symbolic gesture, she said.

Indeed , it is often more effective to let the im age make its own statement, as the power of images li es chiefly in their capacity to touch us on an intuitive level.

-Tensions and transparencies. When Hil l Whiteman, arti st Doug Hollis, and landscape archi tect Robert Close shared their fir st impres sions of the si te, they spoke about the inherent tensions and ambiguities of the place: dle tension between bridges and barri ers; the contrast of the city grid to the river landscape; dle poetry and drama of the 90foot drop of the bluff. They also spoke about the obvious tensions the museum would encoun ter while developing the site: the ban'iers created by the positioning of Shepard Road and the Soo Line R ailroad; the

18 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

nearby presence of the high-tension power lines and District Energy.

But instead of finding these fea tures obtrusive and problematic, the artists fo und them inspiring, even essential. "The best art and best science," refl ected Close, "happen at the point of greatest tension." Thus, rather than hide or mask these elements, the artists' strategy was to make the tensions transparent- to look to the innate drama of the site and draw it out.

-The river! Of course, the most spectacular fea ture is the Mississippi Ri ver itself. And as resoundingly as dle artists called for a unifying metaphor, dley called fo r a vision of the site that brought the river in .

"The most outrageous thing about this site," remarked Kathleen Wallace of the Department of Natural Resources, "is that you can' t get to the river! " Clearl y sharing Wall ace's fru stration, each team sought ways to make the river direcdy accessible, whefuer by removing the concrete barrier wall , pumping water into the site to create a lake, or building a channel. "This liver is legend," Akagawa reminded. Adults and children all over the world know of this ri ver that Twin Citians take for granted.

"Science Park is about the ri ver. People need to be able to come here to touch dle water- to remember what it is they are a part of."

INFLUENCE AND CONFLUENCE To the creati ve seeds planted at the charette, the Uni versity of Minnesota landscape architecture students added their own artistic vision and 10 weeks of intense studi o work. The final five schemes were titled "The Ri ver Bluff Reinforced," "The Ri ver Barge Analogy," The Hum an Analogy Theme," "Water as a Form Determinant," and "The Essence of Site Explorati on. " While it is impossible to look at the studio work and trace the arti sts' influence in terms of cause and effect, there are several obvious lines of connection : i.e. the students' choice to use organizing metaphors both phys icall y and symbolicall y; to foc us on connections and multiple levels of ex perience; to draw out and make concrete the underl ying tension of the si te; to bring in the river. All of these choices can be linked back to ideas born out of the initi al charette.

Still more discernibl e and arguably more interesting than these influences are the influences of the studio work and charette on the Science P ark Team, the museum staff studying the park. In July, after the studio quarter, I had the opportunity to speak with museum administrators and team members about the coll aborati on.2 When I asked fo r overall impressions, the res ponses were overwh elmingly positi ve. Museum participants repeatedl y spoke of the studio work as the highlight of the process, and all considered it instrumental in bringing the museum to a fuller appreciation of the site's potential.

The student work gave museum staff a chance to see choices in action, in physical fonn . The models provided both a frame of reference for discussion and a context in which to consider and imaginativel y experience the site. As team member Don Pohlman remarked, "The opportunity to bounce ideas off concrete designs helped shepherd team thinking about the park development, both physically and programmaticall y." In this way, the studio work was key in creating a "common language" for the team.

The development of this language, though, was not always a smooth process. Some parti cipants, at first intimidated by the boldness of student schemes, were hesitant to embrace full y what the studio had to offer. In retrospect, however, participants came to appreciate the value of student liberties. By ignoring some of the physical and political limitations of the site, students were able to explore design concepts thoroughly. Pushing the edges in this way challenged fue museum's team to broaden its vision and think more imaginatively. It also resulted in uncovering some of the hidden richness of the site.

When I asked museum team members how their thinking changed as a result of the studio efforts, the responses were remarkabl y consistent. Kathy Wil son seemed to put it best when she said the students' "broad-brush approach" was "invaluable" to the team . Prior to the collaborative process, team thinking was fairly narrowly focused on the programmatic elements of the site. In this way, the museum saw the park simply as space to house dlese el ements. "The student work blew that open." By exploring design principles dlat physicall y and conceptuall y unified the site, the studi o work transformed the team's perspecti ve toward "one park widl many connected elements." Relatedl y, the student work also demonstrated a major principle of the charette:

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The second way the studio influenced team thinking connects with the museum 's vision of the river. While the museum aspired to bringing the river into the park, it imagined that the obstacles to such an undertaking would be too great; the administration had all but aba ndoned the idea. The studio collaboration turned that around. While it remains to be seen whether the museum board wi ll endorse this vision, and if so, how it will choose to present it, the charette and studi o work have clearly kept this conversation alive.

FUTURE COURSE At the beginning of the two-day charette, artists were asked to identify three key issues that they believed should guide site design.

Their response: one site, one metaphor; bring the river in; and foster a paradigm shift. Encouraged by the collaboration with the Landscape Studies Center, the museum has already taken up the first and second issues. In reflecting upon the potential role of art in the museum's future, I would like to suggest we look to the third issue: fostering a paradigm shift. Just barely touched upon in the student work, this issue is fertile ground for both the museum and the artistic community.

But exactly what does it mean to foster a paradigm shift? And how does this translate into artistic involvement? For me, fostering a paradigm shift means seeing science as humanism. It means letting go of the mechanistic model of science in favor of a synergistic one. It means trading in the old science's countelfeit claims to universal objectivity and value neutrality for the more modest, and honest, acknowledgments of value-laden theory and socially-constructed knowledge. It means abandoning the Enlightenment myth that wisdom of the world will come from dissecting and scrutinizing all the pieces, and rec:ognizing the limitations of the analytic method. Finally, and perhaps most relevantly to Science Park, it means rethinking the relationship of nature and science. In the words of Roberta Hill Whiteman, it means "transforming our technology of knowing into a technology of healing."

I n terms of artist i c in volvement, a technology of healing wou ld broadly translate into using art to reveal, rather than to hide.

We must challenge those notions of landscape design that use art as a tool of deceptive beautification. We can no longer afford to deceive ourselves about the impact of our technology on the environment. But before we can transform those technologies, we must first be able to see them. To this end, artists could be invited specifically to address some of the physical necessities of the site such as run-off, water purification , erosion, and deposition . As museum staffer Margaret Ritter suggested, "Instead of capturing, diverting, and hiding these processes, why not invite artists in to see what creative, transformative solutions might be found?"

To the museum administration's credit, none of these ideas is particularly new to the museum , and the informal policy has long been to promote science as humanism. Furthermore, art, both in exhibits and interactive displays, has been a prominent mechanism. As the museum clearly intends to bring artists ' work into Science Park, the interesting question may not be whether art wi ll be involved, but rather, what will the distinctions of art and science mean afterwards?

Heather Wainwright is a Ph.D. candidate and instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

Notes: 1. In addition to the author and the artists already mentioned , charette participants included: Chris Burda of the Children's Museum ; Mike Davis, M innesota Department of Natural Resources; Curt Meine, historian and conservationist; Catherine Murray, landscape architect; and Kathleen Wall ace, Department of Natural Resources.

Participating Science Museum staff included: Dick Leerhoff, J. Newlin, Margaret Ritter, and Karen Wilkinson . University of Minnesota landscape architecture students included: Patrick Andrews, Liz Anderson, Nathan Anderson, Chad Baker, James Galbrecht, Jian Wei Li , Finette Magnuson , Bob Near, Cory Tauer, Meli ssa Wain , and Ming Zhong.

2. Museum staff consulted were: Dick Leerhoff; J. Newlin; Don Pohlman ; Margaret Ritter; Karen Wilkinson; and Kathy Wil son.

FALLIWINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 19

1e nce Center 1997 Arizona Sci by Robert Schultz s Phoeni x broil ed in one of its hottes t and dri est :summers on record , the new Arizo na Sc ience Center was being built w ithin a redevelopment bl ock on one edge of th e city's dow ntow n core. Part of a ve ritabl e ex pl os ion of cultural fac iliti es constructi on in thi s spraw lin g desert metro poli s, the completed Sc ience Center will boast what few science mu seum s can match: a substantial public art component.

Of co urse, the large-sca le integ rati on of public art and science is not a who ll y new pros pect. T he f inest such exampl e can be fo und in San Franc isco at th e Ex pl oratorium , an incubator for mo re th an 650 co ll aborati ons, ideas, and ex perim ents housed in th e stri kingly bea utiful Palace of Fine Arts building. The Ex pl oratorium serves as "The Museum of Science, Art and Hum an Percepti on." Working arti sts are on site and visible to th e publ ic as th ey create fasc inating interacti ve di spl ays, and a weeke nd film program of new or unusual short film s comp le ments the ex hibi ts. As the Ex pl oratoriu m brochu re succ inctly states, "Though the ir app roac hes may di ffe r, both artists and scientists try to understand and illuminate aspects of nature."

Percent-for-art proj ects in new sc ience mu seum constru ction are re lat ively rare. However, in Ka nsas C ity, Kansas, plans are underw ay to resto re U ni on Stati on and co nstruct a science center, whi ch in turn will in clude an art proj ect fun ded th ro ugh the city's publi c art pro gram. Heid i Bil ard o of th e Kansas City M uni cipal Art Commi ss ion repo rts th at construction should begin within three yea:rs , with th e project bu dget in the range of $ 150 milli on--'-though no t all of th at tota l will be e li gibl e fo r percent-fo r-art ex penditures. The city of Oakland, Ca lifo rni a, is beginnin g des ign wo rk on th e new Chabot Observa tory an d Science Center and has earm arked $192,000 fo r a public art proj ect of " perm anent, interactive ex hibi ts and related des ign fea tures , loosely based on th e Ex pl oratorium concept," says publi c art project coordin ato r Regina Almag uer of th e city's Cultural Affa irs Di vision. Constru cti on is ex pected to be compl eted in late 1997. Other sc ience museum s with art components or pl anned art co mpo nents include the Franklin Institute in Phil adelphi a, the New York Hall of Sc ience, and th e Science Museum of Minnesota, in St. Paul [see preceedin g article].

Mea nwhil e, back in the dry heat of Ari zo na, a Science Center is ri sing, born of a mass ive $1 billi on, vote r- approved 1988 city bond iss ue. T he bond iss ue conve ni entl y added milli ons of doll ars to the bud get of the Phoeni x Arts Co mmi ss ion 's fl edgling publi c art program. As art proj ect coordin ato r Ali son Kukl a obse.rved, "The Phoeni x bond vo te secured the Arts Commi ssion's fulture role in plannin g art projects for cultural fac ili ties." Thi s inclu.des several substanti al cultural projects in the 1990s: a maj or ex pansion of th e Phoeni x Art M useum, and constru cti on of a dynamic new central li bra ry, a dow ntown sports arena, the Phoeni x Museum of Hi story, and the new Arizo na Sc ience Center, a 120,000-squ are-foot fac ility des igned by architect Anto ine Predock of Albuque.rqu e, New Mex ico.

In April 1995, the $ 125,000 proj ect commi ss ion was award ed to the artist team of B ill and Ma ry Buchen of New Yo rk C ity. Other f inali sts inc lu ded Chi cago art ist Evan Lew is, who in 1992 completed an in tri gui ng $25 ,000 kineti c scul pture at Phoeni x's 9 1st Ave nue

A

20 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

Was tewater Treatment Plant, and the Ex ploratorium-associated team of Mi chae l Oppenheimer and Peter Ri chards. Sheil a Grinell , executi ve director of th e Ari zo na Sc ie nce Cente r and form er Expl oratorium staff member, was a member of the selecti on panel th at reviewed the work of 45 entrants. " Arti sts were allowed to dream, to build a model of what they wo uld put here," she says. " Our choice will serve the city, its peo pl e, and the in stituti on." Grinell says she was very pleased with the publi c art selecti on process , and praised Kukl a fo r her coo perati on, her know ledge of th e potential interacti on of art and sc ience, and her vigoro us representati on of the needs and th oughts of th e arti sts.

The theme of the interacti ve science ex hibit/art proj ect is "How We Li ve With the Sun. " The Buche ns' pro posal is titl ed "S unCatchers" and consists of a series of five wind-acti vated ki neti c dev ices mounted on poles th at reflect sunli ght and create musical sounds. The dev ices are composed of stainl ess steel and holographic glass . They will be sited on th e bu sy corn er of Was hington and Seventh Street, a hi ghl y visibl e locati on viewed by th ousands of residents and visi tors every day. A prototype of th e "SunCatchers" already exists, whi ch Ku kla notes was " an appealing as pect to th e selecti on committee-there was the certainty th at it wo uld work. " The conceptual idea fo r "Sun Catchers" is "five way stati ons on th e passage through th e desert." Wind dri ves th e propellers, and vanes of glass ac t as prisms to refl ect sunli ght and cast rainbows to the gro und below. R otatin g " mallets" strike bars tun ed to th e pentatoni c scale fa miliar to th e musical traditi ons of several cul tures. The mu sic serves as a relief from th e harsh no ises of the city and nearby traffi c .

The proj ect's budge t includes about $72,000 fo r materi als, installati on, shipping, and fa bricati on labor. The arti sts' design fee is $25,000 (20 percent of th e total budget), with th e remainin g expenses spread among consultants' fees , transportati on, lodging, per di ems, in surance, offi ce ex penses, proj ect documentation, and a 10 percent contin gency.

Since 1972, th e Buchens have successfull y designed so und installations fo r va rious museums, galleri es, and public sites thro ughout the United States. Their pursuits center on the stud y of environmental phenomena examined thro ugh th eir appli cations to science, architecture, ecology, and di verse world cul tures. Recent publi c art co mmi ssion s include "Sound Carni val," an interac ti ve sonic pl aygr ound fo r a publi c school ; "Big Eyes/Bi g Ea rs: Science Playground ," an interac ti ve park install ati on; and "Sound Observatory," a proj ect at Socrates Sculpture Park in L ong Island City, described as a " parti cipatory so und park in stall ati on designed for th e waterfro nt site."

The Ari zo na Science Center, scheduled to open in late 1996, seems a natural opportunity fo r th e Buchens to continue applying art to science, refine their prototype "SunCatchers," and encourage a "di alogue" between th e center 's visitors and the environmental entities of sunli ght and wind.

Robert Schultz is visual arts supervisor with the City of Mesa, AZ, and a free-lance writer on public art, community art, and arts advocacy issues.

FA LLIWINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 21

Editor:S- Note: CyberCities is a brilliant and provocative new book of essays in which M. Christine Boyer stands against the outpouring of enthusiasm over our predigested, reconfigured digital world. "If we draw an analogy between the computer matrix of data management and the city, " she writes, "then it is precisely the spaces of disjunction between the rows and columns of the data entries that represent the forgotten spaces, the disavowed places, and the bits eradicated because of the noise and redundancy they generate." Excerpted here is the final chapter of the book.

Chapter 5: Electronic Disruptions and Black Holes of the City: The Issues of Gender and Urbanism in the Age of Electronic Communication

T

he structure of the public sphere is undergoing profound changes, not only as telecommunications increase personal choices over a variety of publi c communi cation systems, but also as these same technologies are consumed increas ingly in privati zed and do mesticated forms. The Internet is perhaps the best example of the reach of the new communications web: accessed by more than two million computers, it is worldwide and open twenty-four hours a day, and it represents both a vast new marketplace for the future and a new public sphere for debate and argumentation . As one enthusiastic user re lates, "Internet is a sort of international cocktail party where you can talk to people from all over the world about all sorts of things that interest you . .. .It's informative.

You need a piece of information ?

Post a questi on to the right gro up and you will get what you wanted and a dozen more related references .

Also, sometimes information ... just comes to yo U. "l Essentially free to approximately 25 million people in 135 countries who have access to one of the 32,400 connected computer networks sponsored by governments and universiti es, it is not a service open to everyone. 2 Created in the 1970s by the United States Defe nse Department to facilitate the exchange of information among its workers, the Internet was also connected to research stati ons at uni versities, where students and researchers transformed it into the freewheeling global communications system of today.3 Nevertheless, as we grow reli ant on communicating through machines and on transporting objects by transmitting the necessary information acros telecommunication devices, we find--to quote Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen-that "the modern metropolis is being di spl aced by the postmodern netropoli s" and " the space of the netropo li s is cyberspace."4 In addition, this new public space for open dialog and debate is threatened with acts of regul ati on. The United States government is

22 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

currently in the process of shifting the cost of operating and maintaining the Internet to the private sector, in a gesture that may create an extremely inequitable as wel l as a tightly-regulated system.5 Online services are already delimiting the range of topics available, and closing down certain "chat rooms" because of their indecent content. At the same time that cities and regions of this country are being di vided into homes that have access to the " information highway" and those that do not, some districts of the city are being prepared to receive advanced communication serv ices such as video, voice, and computer communication s while others are experiencing what has been called "electronic redlining."6 Thus the city, the region , and even the world can be grouped into lnformation-rich or informationpoor societies in the same manner as there were once societies with hi story and those without.

We are also witnessing the growth of a global system of mediated communications-an increasingly privatized and commercialized information society. Projecting on present trends, futurists foresee that by the turn of the twenty-first century, "five to ten corporate giants will control most of the world 's important newspapers, magazines, books, broadcast stations , movies, recordings, and videocassettes."? This gloomy account also includes telecommunication infrastructures and data networks. The privatization of public television , school systems, research institutes, and communication networks means that market profitability becomes the sole criterion for the production of culture. Public access to these channels of telecommunication is far from guaranteed, and their content and subject matter are most often mediated or constructed by the program formats of serial soap operas, news broadcasts, or advertising messages. 8 Telecommunications are being orchestrated by interest-specific market niches at the expense of more generalized commentary, and their former collective nature is being further eroded by commercialization and corporate control.

In consequence, the city and its public sphere become increasingly virtual as we move toward interpersonal systems of communication and the "netropolis" at the expense of face-to-face communication in physical and public space. Since teleoptics has the capacity to join and yet simultaneously separate individual viewers, it produces what Jean-Paul Sartre referred to as "serial unification."

Television 's unifying policy, he criticized, "is negative and consequentl y serial. Saying what pleases everybody. But nothing pleases everybody. So you have to say nothing. On this basis, there is TV thought, TV behavior, etc., which belong to the practio-inert. It is simultaneously other-directed and senseless discourse."9 And some critics of the Internet feel the same: "Subscribers who di al up America Online find themselves in the most familiar of settings, navigating

with a computer interface that is meant to look like a mall. But to some, that sense of Any town, U.S.A., a faccless environment thal reflects mass tastes, is exactly what is wrong with cyberspace."l o Notes:

I. Linda M. Harasim, "Global Networks: An Introduction," in Global Networks: Computers and International Communication, ed. Linda M. Harasim (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 17.

2. Peter H. Lewis, "Getting Down to Business," New York Times, 19 June 1994.

3. Ashley Dunn, "Information Freeway?" New York Times, 4 August 1994.

4. Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen, Imagologies (New York: Routledge, 1994), unpaginated.

5. Peter H. Lewis, "U.S. Begins Privatizing Internet's Operations," New York Times, 24 October 1994.

6. Steve Lohr, "Data Highway Ignoring the Poor, Study Charges," New York Times, 14 May 1994.

Culture on the Brink Ideologies of Technology edited by Gretchen Bender & Timothy Druckrey Seattle: Bay Press, 1994. 364 pp., $18.95 paper.

Reviewed by Hilde Myall he current hype surrounding computer-Internet technology perpetrates the idea that it will transform our Eves. Yet it is hard to predict how a given technological development will or will not affect culture. For instance, telephone technologies are no longer considered revolutionary or transformative since the technologies have been absorbed by mainstream culture. As always, the media tended to overstate the effect, but in retrospect, telecommunications did al ter our society. By the 1950s it was the norm to have a telephone in the home and business, and our expectations of being able to reach out and touch someone were naturalized. In the present it is harder to remember the difference between pre- and post-phone culture and harder also to attribute any difference to the technology itself, since technology is difficult to separate from its cultural context.

Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology is a collection of essays resulting from a symposi um sponsored by the Dia Fou ndatio n for the Arts. The project of this collection is to deconstruct technology, in part by "demonstrating that its effects can rely on superficial notions of progress."

This theme generates questions from which the essays take form: Is technology always necessarily productive? Is it desirable to solve social conflicts using technological so¡lutions? Is technology in the service of culture, or is it the other way around ?

Some of the essays directly relate art and tech nology, including an interesting description of an ongoing collaboration between engineers and artists. As a collection, the essays have fascinating implications for thinking about artists' roles in interpreting and trans-

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7. B. Bagdikian, "The Lords of the Global Village," Th e Nation ( 12 June 1989): 805. Quoted in Howard Frederick, "Computer Networks and the Emergence of Global Civi l Sotiety," in Global Networks: Computers and International Communication, ed. Linda M. Harasim (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 286.

8. Nicholas Gamhma, "The Media and the Public Sphere," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Clahous (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 359-376.

9. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Quintin Hoare (London: Verso Press, 1991),2: 438. Quoted in Ri chard Dienst, Still Life in Real Time (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1984),9.

10. Trip Gabriel, "Virtual Downtown," New York Times, 22 January 1995. {Cybe rCities: Visual Perception in the Age of Electronic Communication by M. Christine Boyer. Princeton Architectural Press, 160 pp ., $34.95. To order contact Princeton Architectural Press, 37 East Seventh Street, New York, NY 10003, (2 12) 995-9620, 1 (800) 4581131 , e-mail sales@pap.designsys.com]

forming the relationship between technology and cu lture, whether the relationship be perceived as "technology: an instrument of cu lture" or "cul ture: Ln the service of a technologica l imperative."

Simon Penny, a professor of art and robotics at Carnegie Mellon Un iversity and con tributor to th.is collection , presents a view of technology in which it is not a messenger of the future but is embedded in cultural context. His paper is "an attempt to place virtual reality and its attendant rhetoric squarely within , and as a product of, the philosophical project of the En lightenment." Penny is the strongest advocate in this collection of the view that technology emerges and funct ions within an hi storical and cultura l context. He notes that "the most familiar mode of critique of electronic media is characterized by antinomies such as natural/synthetic, authentic/fake, real/artificial-critical systems that ultimately call upon the ' natural' as a baseline. But this 'baseline' has been well and truly confounded by poststructural critiqu e, which establishes that the ' natural' is itself sim ply a cu ltural construct."

Thus , technology is not the messenger of a new, scientific value-free way of life. Nor can technologies be inserted "cleanly"-that is, ahi storica lly and without reference to the cu lture from whi ch they emerge-without detrimenta l effects.

This collection lacks a discussion of the ways that technology becomes naturalized within a cu lture. Further, coverage of recent technologies is emphasized over discussion of long-term pervasive technologies. What is the cultu ral effect of the automobile and all the civil and consumer infrastructures that support it? of the telephone? of survei llance technologies? The majority of essays focus on the currently touted futuristic technologies of cybernetics and biotechnologies. Ironically, by their focus, albeit critical , on the new technologies, many of these authors replicate the obsess ion with novelty that is part of the ideology of technology under critique. The authors, with a few exceptions, ignore the process of naturalization and as a consequence camouflage historical continuity.

Hilde Myall , B.A. Arch itecture, is currently pursuing an advanced degree in geography and is interested in issues of public space, technology and urban economic development.

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 23

Scanning the Spectrum Tools and Technology Compiled and edited b1f Jack Becker and Leslie Palmer-Ross AR did a variation of "low-tech" channel surfing last month-without a computer or TV. We used a plain old telephone and the U.S. Postal

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Service. While there are plenty of appropriate artist we couldn ' t reach or who didn't respond, we heard from an impressive selection of American artists working around the world. Their projects, created over the past several years, suggest there's a growi ng demand for public art incorporating fiber optics, video, lasers, steam, Light projection, holography, and sophisticated production methods. As for common denominators, they all involve innovation, determination, and, to varying degrees, visual excitation. And the artists all appear to be dreamers.

The following is a quick take on styles, approaches, forms, and philosophies. With this informal presentation and completely unscientific survey of artists not mentioned elsewhere in this issue, PAR once again merely scratches the surface of a burgeoning field in the even larger arena called public art. To do these and many more artists justice would require an encyclopedia. Of course we'd also like to print full-color reproductions, or even holographic foldo uts, or page-activated sou nd chips, or have a scratch ' n' sniff section .... Hey, why not? We can dream too!

" look and feel of modernist technology ... inspired by Flash Gordon, Jules Verne, Art Deco, transmitter towers, and atomic submarine research laboratories ." Fischer hopes his "technological forms can function as signs and symbols of a collective, forward-seeking optimism understood by all." For Sky Stations, atop the Bartle Hall Convention Center addition (pictured), Fischer used alu minum and stai nless steel, with theatrical illumination. Thescale of the project and its photogenic qualities have generated posters , postcards, and plenty of media coverage for Kansas City. (photo: courtesy the artist)

Michael Townsend, Boston, and Erica Duthie, New Zealand

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n 1995, Townsend and Duthie visited more than 35 states in five months as part of their National Tape Art Tour, sponsored by Manco, manufacturer of pressure-sensitive masking tapes . Their travels have taken them to Oklahoma City (immediately after the bombing) ; St. Louis; West Palm Beach, FL; and Mexican Hat, UT (a Navajo Indian reservation). In Minneapolis, they produced the temporary mural Chains on the side of the Johnny Baker American Legion Post during the week the Twin Cities hosted the NAACP convention . The artists hope to develop a tape made specifically for tape-art projects. During their visit to the Twin Cities, a research specialist from 3M paid them a visit. Among the modifications they wou ld like to see are more flexibility, durability, and recyclability. The artists, having responded to a variety of community situations and concerns, have developed some fairly ophi ticated educational programs that involve chools in the tape-art revolution. For information about their 1996 tour, call 1-800TAPE ART. (photo: Michael Townsend)

R.M . Fischer, New York City ischer's recent work, including Kansas City Sky Stations and Sports Stacks for Cleveland's Gateway Ballpark, suggest the

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24 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

Rudie Berkhout, New York City

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erkhout completed his holographi c sculpture in stall ati o n Light Rain for the College of E ngineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison , in 1992. While the animated nature and fu ll color spectrum cannot be conveyed in any picture, the dynamic ener-

gy emitted by the e ight holographi c pl ates is dazzling. A high chool dropout, Berkhout, who was born in Amsterdam, worked in stage lighting. After moving to New York in 1975 , he di scovered ho lography and hi gh-tech imag ing. With Light Rain, hi s first perm anent public installation , Berkhout so ught to stop people in their tracks. "It's good," he said , "because peopl e are very sleepy, very set in their ways and means. They could use a little jolt." (photo : the artist)

and understandin g the problem-solving fo undatio ns upon whi ch the insights that define our hum aru ity are based. " Delutri is also in vo lved in an effort to merge a com munitybased arti sts group w ith th e Minnesota Museum of American Art, a project that's challenging both the arti sts and the in stitution. (xe rox montage: the arti st)

ed bridge primarily serves school children moving 150 feet between two parks in Phoe ni x's Moon Valley ne ighborhood .

Seeking imagery th at wo uld capture the imagination of yo un g pedestrians, Carpenter began cons idering plant and animal fo rms.

While a grass hopper design was chosen by the community, this design for the prehi storic vertebrate (more expensive and co mpl ex fro m an e ng ineerin g standp oi nt) is hi s favo rite. (computer schematic: the arti st)

Mitch Benoff, Cambridge, MA enoff's Speed of the Earth li ght sculpture was presented in a variety of settings on different occasions, including First Night in Boston [see li stin gs, p. 47] and the State Museum Plaza in Du sseldorf, Germany.

It features 31 computerized strobe li ghts that fi re in succession over a 600-foot run, producing the illusion of a meteor racing pas t at fas ter th an 700 mph-a speed corresponding to that of the Earth's rotation and aligned on an ax is accordingly. It is possible, says Benoff, to a li gn the sc ulpture runnin g cou nter to that of the Earth, thereby sugges ting a stati onar y li ght under whi ch our planet is mov ing (as it does) quick as a meteor. (xe rox montage: the artist)

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Robert Delutri, St. Paul, MN

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elutri employs materials and designs "intrinsic to the technology we create . . . and which, ultimately, we use to create ourselves." This digitized photo of one of his site-s pecific in stall ations is part of a series called Tech-Street Dreams. Hi s in vestigation s ha ve taken him into a wide variety of media and di sciplines, inc luding writin g. "Art and technology should be consciously integrated because they are rooted in the same human solutional impul se, a process which tends to induce new ways of knowing, thinking about,

Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, Ojai, CA

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nown fo r her innovati ve work with g lass, Stin smuehl en-Ame nd rece ntl y began wo rki ng in new materi als and on a larger scale, with the help of art fabricators at Peter Carlson Enterprises, Sun Valley, CA. Workin g for the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) fro m 199 1 to 1994, she was lead artist on the design team for a Ho ll ywood Boul evard improvement project. Her Ivar Intermission fea tures colored concrete tiles employing a new ly developed process fo r creatin g painterly effects. Embedded also in the concrete are etched bron ze stars and letters, and co pper tubing plugs with molten colored glass which reflects depth and light. Her elaborate wrought iron-fence backdrop for the performance space was added later, with landscap ing and lighting. "The vibrant colors will last as long as the concrete and will likely lead to new kinds of paving projects," says Mickey Gu stin , public art directo r at CRA/LA. (photo: Chris Morland CRA/LA)

Ed Carpenter, Portland, OR enowned as a glass designer, Carpenter co mpleted a large-scale sta ined glass installation at 1251 Rockefe ller Center in New York City in 1992. More recently, for the city of Phoenix , Carpenter designedwith the help of local eng in eer Jerry Ca nnon-a series of pedestrian bridges .

Scheduled for com pl eti on in 1996, th e select-

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Laurie Phillips, St. Paul, MN or Vertical Sidewalk Phillips co ll aborated with artist Scot Torkelson and writer Jon Spayde in 1993. A rearview mirror attached outside the window of Second Story Books in Minneapoli s deflected a slide-projector beam down to the sidewalk. Peop le walked through ni ghtl y proj ecti ons of images and text address ing notions of " up" and "dow n. " Phillips stated, "I want both ' up' and 'down' to be freed for vis ion and dreaming. I appropriated public grou nd to consider these iss ues. [People] responded in va ri ous engaging and surpri sing ways to these images of the relationships between directionality, power, and memory." (photo: the arti st)

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Ellen Burchenal, Baltimore, MD

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he co lorfu l sheathin g at the platform level of Baltimore 's Shot Tower station is among the first examples of ChromaF usion ÂŽ Architectural Glass . Burchenal's design was e lectroni cal ly transposed into an

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 25

imprinted thermoplastic interlayer, then permanently encapsulated between two plies of glass. Developed jointly by Cesar Color Inc. and E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co., the process reportedly ensures exact reproduction of the artist' rich color densities and graphic detail. Completed in May 1995, the mural's repeated motif features more than 400 connecting panels measuring 48" x 54" (photo: Cesar Color Inc.)

observer rode on the old industrial lift, whi ch is ca lled the incline plane." (photo: the artist)

tempered glass , utilizing metallic and nonmetallic vacuum plating he developed, and installed in 1992 at the University of Wyoming in Laramie for the school's exhibit American Sculpture, Contemporary Perspectives, through August 1996. The work-one of only a few accessib le, large outdoor glass installations in the United States-was commissioned for the town of Arolsen, Germany, and fabricated in Europe. As Viet Coers noted in his essay for the Arolsen catalog: "The multiplicity of the reflections and views is overwhelming and a revelation for even the most jaded observer of such use of color and material." (photo by Susan Moldenhauer, University of Wyoming Art Museum)

Leni Schwendinger, New York City

Doris Vila, Brooklyn, NY

chwendinger, an artist and lighting designer, creates urban light projects all over the world. For the 1995 651's World Series Fes.tival in New York, she projected onto a three-story wall expressions of "the programming concepts of the multicultural event." The artist describes her Off The Wall project as a "symphony of words." Text images were developed with comp uter graphics and produced as large-forma t slides. A computer sequence "animated" the images in real-time fo r audiences standing far away as well as inside the parking lot where the projectors were mounted. [See also Schwendinger's report on Europe, p.

42.] (p hoto: the artist)

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Rockne Krebs, Washington, D.C. rebs pioneered the use of lasers in art.

His first patented 3D laser beam structures were among the first city-scale artworks. The Inclined Planes was commissioned by the city of Johnstown, PA, to commemorate the victims of the 1889 Johnstown Flood (among the worst disasters of that time). Krebs created light lines at night that extended from a mountaintop two miles away to mirrors on city rooftops and skyward. An observer 's experience of the installation included a ride up or down the mountain through the light structure on a 1880s vintage incline lift that carried up to 100 people at a time. According to Krebs, "This was an ideal situation to experience these spatial changes; the tatic structure of laser light would move through one's fie ld of view in slow dramatic linear swoops as the animated

il a creates responsive installations where stories stretch out in space, rather than over time. Spanning a range of technologies, these environments often allow the viewers' bodies to trigger sounds, video events, and holographic scenes. This image is a sti ll from A Flock of Words, a cross-media collaboration with composer Robert Rowe, performed at New York University, spring 1995. With a text from Canetti's Crowds and Power, an artificial life algorithm swarms in and out of linear readabllity, set off by computer music signals. For her upcoming project Theatermachine in Germany, viewers/players cross a large interacti ve arena. Their moving bodies trigger famo us key fragments from opera and film and music, as they travel from zone to zone in the room. Their gestures also spark digital video projection onto three 8-foot spherical screens that float and bob overhead . (photo: the artist)

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L.arry Bell, Taos, NM

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n innovator since the early '60s, Bell is highly regarded as a minimalist artist, conceptualist, and sculptor. Made for Arolsen cons ists of pinkrosa and azureblue

26 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALUWINTER 1995

Christopher Janney, Cambridge, MA or Harmonic Runway, completed in June at the Miami International Airport, Janney utilized 132 sheets of colored glass

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and a sound-score based on the natural env ironments of South Florida. Moving through zo nes of color, one can hear distant crickets, frogs, or a flock of birds flying over the Everglades. In addition, travelers passing through the artwork activate photoelectric cells which trigger sounds of melodic instruments. According to Janney, "It's abo ut combining physical space and j azz music, using sound , li ght, and interactivi ty to create an architecture that's reacting, moving, changing ... a 'performance architecture.'" (photo: courtesy the artist)

the Raft is meant to "recollect a dream of summer, of a floating and irresponsible time during adolescence when the local raft meant a taste of longed-for independence." Here, this " unattainable" memory becomes "hazy, suffused, and dreamy as the illuminated water mist blows in the wind, floating offshore on a summer evening." (photo: the artis t)

1,000-meter-long corridor uses neon , aluminum, glass, and mirrors. According to Sonnier, "Once the space was divided in to visual zones, or visual acts, I began to think of the piece as a symphony building to a certain momentum from one movement to another. The initial design drawings [shown] were very much li ke musical scores." He conceives his public works as "both utilitarian objects and functiona l signs .. . serviceable structures that try to render the urban context a more readab le and interactive env ironment. " (drawing/coll age: the artist)

Cork Marcheschi, San Francisco

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archeschi makes art out of energy. His commissioned public sculptures utilize neon, halogen lamps, motors, steel, and plastic.

He uses electricity the way some artists use clay. In hi s 1993 interview with Maria Porges, he states, "Electricity teaches you about itself, as well as the other materials you place it in conj unction with. It has to be happy, because if it isn't, it'll find all kinds of ways to mess up everything." Given his equally time-consuming involvement in various musical enterprises-as a musician and producer-it's not surprising that many of Marcheschi's pieces, including Breakfast With Tesla and Enola Gay, completed in 1994 for the Louisville Museum of Science and Technology in Kentucky, feel like jazz. (photo: the artist)

Joan Brigham, Cambridge, MA

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righam's Light Raft, photographed during a test in August, was presented at the Cambridge River Festival from September 8 to September 10. This 50' x 30' structure of 84 nozzles, two submersible pumps, and 15 lights is powered by a 50-kilowatt generator onshore. The water mist climbs 25 feet, producing an effect each evening of a luminous apparition, masking its technological workings. Accordi ng to Brigham, adjunct fe ll ow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies,

John Rogers, Portland, OR ogers' Fence Project for the Beaumont School in Portland, OR, features " tools of education" in a whimsical assemblage featuring oversized pencils, computer disks, and compasses, etc. In add iti on to linking the school buildings visually, the fence art ties them together in a practical way. The project utili zed a wide variety of sophi sticated fa bri cation methodologies and tec hniques. Rogers is currentl y working on a 450-foot -long dichroic glass and aluminum installation for the Miami International Airport with artist Ed Carpenter. (photo: the artist)

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Keith Sonnier, New York City or more than 25 years, Son nier's public co mmi ssions have demanded public attention, and a considerab le amo unt of time spent in preproduction. For Lightway at the Munich Airport, hi s largest installation to date, he wa forced to work more conceptuall y because one cannot physically see the entire artwork at one time or place. The

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Paul Earls, Cambridge, MA ince 1970, Earls has been a fe ll ow at MIT's Center for Advanced Vis ua l Studies, developing integrated musical-visual techniques and prod uctions with recent emphasis on the use of lasers and music. He admits his efforts are often mistakenly promoted as entertainment spectacles; however, to Earls, the laser is " like a piano, an instrument capab le of producing "Chopsticks" or Beethoven." His next permanent installation is an interactive one in a multimedia subway station in Co logne, France. "Interactivitythe current fashion-is a powerful, but dangero us element. [It's] too easy to build an arcade game ... a non-societal experience (virtua l reality). Any artist working in thi s media is also a social engineer." (photo of Windows, 1988-93: Walter Zeugerle)

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FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 27

REVIEWS

It's aWrapl

by George Armaos n Eu rope of the la t decade, art is something one sees in museums on weekend visits. There are two major problems arisi ng from thi attitude of the public. On the one hand, with in a museum the works often resemble butterflies pinned on a board for science lessons. On the other hand, visitors look at them and make their comments without really eeing them. Besides, Western European art is still afflicted by the ancient Greek syndrome of yearning for immortality.

Enter the Wrapp ed Reichstag

by Jeanne-Claude and Christo, with its presence outside a museum, in a public area with a rich hi storical past, and with its ephemeral character in a country where things are built to last. From June 17 to July 6, an effort of over two decades reached its summit in thi s project, the mo t popular event of th is ummer, overshadowing the Venice Biennale and its centennial celebrations .

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Having attracted some 5 milljon visitors in Berlin , the Wrapped Reichstag was the most successful work in the careers of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The public debate that preceded implementation was focused on the artists' use of a historic symbol like the German Parliament. Nevertheless, the outcome proved that it was nothing less-and nothing morethan a work of art. The historical essence of the building d.id not suffer in the least by the

28 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

incredible metamorphosis to which it was subjected. During the wrappi ng process, all spectators had the opportunity to see for themselves the various difficulties as well as the loneliness of producing an artwork. Some people pronounced it "the most spectacular cooperation between art and politics in the last decades"-and a successful one, too.

The Platz der Republik, where the Reichstag stands, is not a place one visits often; but while the work was on, people would go there many times, on different days and at different times of day or night.

Attendance was greatly helped by the unexpectedly good weather: "It was like a beautiful rock concert, like a big-scale Woodstock-a positive collective experience."

In addition to the scale of the work, which was unusual by European standards, a decisive factor in its aesthetic success was the use of the fabric. At close range it was as rough as a mail bag while fro m a distance it looked as weightless as silk,

Equ all y important to the exacting German , the State did not have to pay one pfe nni g towards the 13.5 million Deutsche marks the entire project cost, while the materi al used are recyclable to the last ounce.

For Jea nne-Cl aude and Chri sto there was no overt symbolic meaning in the wrapping of the Reichstag. For Christo, it incarn ated freedom and the nomadi c nature, as is the case with many artworks of the end of this century.

In the eyes of the average as well as the intellectu al German, the wrapping desecrated a building with a hi ghl y-charged histori cal past.

This was probabl y the first rebirth of a 100year-old building; through its transmu tation into a work of art, a new symbol of freedom and democracy was born .

Many Ge rm an slep t on the Pl atz der Republi k in their sleeping bags so that they could meet the artist in the morning and secure an autograph or a piece of the fa bric used in the wrapping. Within a single day, Christo signed 15,000 autographs. So overwhelming was the public's res ponse th at bus services ran on a 24hour bas is. The mayor of Berlin , Eberh ard Die pgen, who had been in favo r of the proj ect for years, as ked fo r an ex tension of the work 's life, whi ch Chri sto declined, apparently du e to health problems.

The Wrapped Reichstag confirmed for one more time Berlin 's dynamism in compari so n with o th e r E uropea n cities li ke Pari s o r Lo ndon, not onl y in the areas of econo mics and politics but in artisti c terms as well. It would be very diffi cult for another artist to attract so mu ch interest with a single work; to reach so deepl y into the heart and soul of all Europeans, regardl ess of nati onality or race.

George Armaos is preparing a master's thesis on Gary Hill at the Sorbonne-Paris I University. He also works as correspondent for the Journal of the Arts (GR ed.). co nstantl y changing under the Berlin sky and rippling in many pl aces as the wind blew.

Early in the mornin g the Wrapped Reichstag

resembled an iceberg, li ke the one that sent the Titanic to the bottom of the ocean. In the afternoon it looked as light as a Fata Morgana; like somethin g out of a toyland . In the ni ght, whe n all the stree ts in the Tiergarden were closed and one had to walk to it, it was totally metaphysical, like an ancie nt statu e lit in the clearing of a wood. It looked very mu ch li ke a temple o ne vis its with religious fee lings, res pect, and introspecti on.

Since every work of art has its own life and is subj ect to the critical eye of its viewers (uC'est le regardeur qui fa it le tableau "; M .

Duchamp), the Wrapp ed Reichstag could not escape the fin e-tooth comb of subj ecti vity. The negati ve view had it belonging to our co nsumeri st society, treating it as an ephemeral even useless-obj ect. The pos iti ve view was that of two arti sts and their team wrap ping the fo rmer and futu re headqu arters of the German Parli ament and making it vanish from sight.

Translatedfrom Greek by Tony Moze r. The author wishes 10 thank George Lidovoisfor his generous assistance with this review.

FA LL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 29

REVIEWS

Future Visions A Forum on Public Art

by Linda Johnson Dougherty

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oll abo ration, community involvement, and education were the key words used by most of the speakers at Future Visions: A Forum on Public Art, a one-day symposium held at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, on April 22, 1995. The forum was organized and introduced by Dr. Arlette KJaric, assistant professor of design history at Buffalo State College, New York, and former curator at the Weatherspoon. The speakers included Vivian Rodriguez, director of the Metro-Dade Art in Public Places Program in Miami; Mary L. Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection at the University of California at San Diego; Vincent Ahearn, coordinator of public art at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa; a nd two artists, Mel Chin and Mary Miss. The forum was described in a mailing bro-chure as an opportunity for these speakers to "prese nt their visions for the future of public art," but most of the day was spent with each panelist describing and showin g slides of past projects, with very little actual speculation on the future of public art.

The most eloquent and articulate of the speakers, Mary L. Beebe, outlined the program she oversees at the University of California at San Diego. The Stuart Collection invites artists to create works of art for particular sites on the campus. Although the program obviously serves the university students and faculty, Beebe sees the collection as more artist-based than community-based, a public art program that serve artists by helping them realize a vision or idea that is integral and specific to the site. With a highly-regarded reputation for seeking challenging works of art and successfully making them a part of the university and its activities, the Stualt Collection includes works by Niki de Saint PhalJe, Robert Irwin, Terry Allen, Alexis Smith, Nam June Paik, William Wegman, and Bruce Nauman, among others. The completed works include a tiled "snake path" that leads to the library, an indoor and outdoor video and television in tallation, and a neon sculpture that wraps around a building.

Vivian Rodri guez presented slides of several completed commi ions and the plans for

several works in progress for Miami's percent-for-art program. The Metro-Dade Art in Public Places Program is one of the oldest in the country, having originated in 1973. Since its inception, the program has commissioned more than 500 works of art by more than 350 artists. Rodriguez described the program as a way to give artists a voice in the vision of public buildings, and noted that artists can often come up with innovative solutions for standard building el.ements, such as carpets, tiles, lighting, etc. In her projects, artists often have to work with tradesmen, architects, and contractors, and in her experience, these "colJaborations" are often better described as "tolerations" because each person has such different agen das and such different languages.

Rodriguez suggested that public art has shifted its focus from artist and product to audience

and process, and that in addition to giving the artist a voice, public art is a way to give the community a voice in the design of public buildings. The Metro-Dade program holds community open houses to encourage participation in the public art process. It also has an active education program that includes a public art curri c ulum, teacher training, and tours, and works with local universities, high schools, and elementary schools.

The program currently has several works in progress at the Miami airport. Rodriguez described the role of public art at the airport as a way to create a sense of place, so that even travelers just changing planes wou ld know they were i:n Miami and not any generic airport. The planned works of art include terrazzo floors designed by artists, sound and light sculptures, bronze floor inl ays, an exterior park, and sound walls located on the highway surroundin g the airport.

The two artists speaking at the panel gave gene rally di sappointing and unenlightening

30 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALLIWINTER 1995

presentations. Mary Miss, a veteran in the fie ld of public art, read excerpts from various interviews and articles about her work for more than an hour. Her few minutes of extemporaneous comments were so insightful and provocative that one only wished she had given her entire presentation in the same manner. She described public art as a way for artists to attempt a dialogue with the public by making an accessible visual language and by moving art out of the confines of an artworld context and into the real world. In her experience with public art, real collaboration and community participation are myths and rarely result in successful work because each player in the project (artist, architect, contractor, designer) is often very territorial. Miss wondered whether it is possible for any interesting work to come out of a process that requires endless reviews by review boards at every step.

Mel Chin gave a highly entertall1l11g and humorou s, but extremely digressive and rambling, talk about his work. One of the points to be gleaned from his presentation is that, from his viewpoint, public art is political art and the artist is a key social activist. This point was exemplified in slides he showed of his work, such as his Truth Hertz T-shirts, which commented on the OJ. Simpson case, and a real estate ad placed in an Aspen newspaper last summer that described a Rwandan hut as a prime vacation spot. Chin described art as being a vehicle for many different agendas.

Vincent Aheam concluded the forum with a description of the percent-for-art program at the University of South Florida campus and then moderated a panel discussion with all of the speakers. Unfortunately, the format for the forum allotted too much time for each speaker and left little time or energy for a panel discussion at the end of the day. Although it was interesting to see what is taking place at public art programs in different parts of the country, it would have been more enlightening and useful if the forum had actually addressed the issue of a public art for the future and what that might mean, rather than giving a slide show of what has already taken place in the past.

Linda Johnson Dougherty is an independent curator and critic based in Chapel Hill, NC.

REVIEWS

Breaking Down Barriers Laissez-Faire in Houston

by Gerald Moorhead

,'P

ublic Art '95 ," a day long symposi um , was held in Houston on July 15, 1995 . The event was organized by Linda Haag Carter, executive director of the Art League of Houston, and Kevin Mercier, owner/director of Brent Gallery. The objectives of the symposium were to acq uaint the community with national trends in that nebulous creature known as public art, to consider the history of art in Houston's public realm, and to provide a forum for the discussion of the nature and means of public art in the context of this entrepreneurial city.

The symposium opened with several individual presentations followed by two panel groups. Introductory remarks by Paul Kellogg of the mayor's office revealed two themes that would prove to be the essence of the day's deliberations. In the pragmatics of local politics, art is a quality-of-life issue, useful in making the city attractive to business, visito rs, and residents. Public art can give a shared image to a community and foster the development of a group identity. However, accepting the historical fact that Houston is the epitome of laissezfaire government, proponents of public art must also recognize that private benefactors are the real source for both the stimulation and funding of art projects.

Jerry Allen, director of the Office of Cultural Affairs in San Jose, CA, provided an overview of recent public art, focusing on works in Seattle, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

Considering the expansive range of projects accomp lished, from traditional sculpture in plazas to designed sewer lids and temporary festiva l environments, it is clear that the term "public art" is so inclusive and ambiguous as to be nearly undefinable. Allen 's main point, however, was that public art, which he preferred to call "public design," should be a matter for local choice; there are no fixed rules or models except for the "power of good design."

Houston 's basic conservatism in art as well as in politics and economics was chronicled by Stephen Fox , the city's preeminent cultural historian . The need to establish a cu ltural identity and hi storical continuity have been evident from the city's earliest years.

Designs for architecture, landscapes, and art were expressed in the context of current national trends, such as the City Beautiful movement, social concerns of the Progressive Era, and the abstractive character of the modernist period . Houston continually shapes itself in the most conventional cu ltural terms of the times rather than seeki ng a unique local identity or artistic voice. Recent efforts of art in public places have been just as traditional , if not severely limited: sculpture in plazas (" plop art" ), murals on blank building wall s, fountains, memorials, and

"folk art" constructions. Of more than 75 examples listed by Fox , fewer than half of them are actually on public property (including several uni versity campuses) and nearly all were privately financed . A broader understand ing of the scope of the "publi c realm," and the range of possibilities, has yet to find expression in Houston.

Despite its seeming ambivalence toward a civic-minded milieu and an apparent reluctance toward improving that shared environment, Houston city government does have an arts bureaucracy. The Cultural Arts Council of Houston, a nonprofit agency charged with

... there

lire no

fixed rules or models except for the "power of good design." "enco uragi ng the arts and entrusted with allocating public funds to artists and arts organizations ," recently expanded its role by hiring Jessica Cusick as its first director of public art. With experience in arts organizations in Los Angeles and New York, Cusick elaborated on the three elements of a successful public arts program: vi sionary leadership; comprehensive, coordinated planning ;

and enabling legislation. Working to implement Mayor Bob Lanier's concept of Houston as an " un commonly beautiful city," Cusick's program aims to initiate pilot projects, ease the process of approvals and acquisitions, and create a "framework plan" for art in urban Houston. Although Cusick hopes to organize an "ambitious communityoriented planning process," one may question whether Houston's native bias toward private initiative will be stifled by too much governmental " process. " Following these speakers, two panel discussions brought together a diverse cross section of intellectual Houston: arts administrators, museum curators, architects, planners, developers, politicians, a philosopher, a mathematician , a poet, and artists. The first group, considering the strengths and weaknesses of the current situation , asserted the need for education to improve public comprehension of the role of art in the cul ture of the city. Political leadership and public process to assist private sector initiatives, combined with grass-roots commitment to art, will be necessary for art to achieve its potential as a bridge across the cu ltures of the city and its ability to identify and give meaning to a place.

The second panel deliberated the definition of art, seeking the ideal in public art.

"Public art designates a place where people are welcome, a place that is ours." "We live in non-places-malls, TV-no center, no substance." "How to change an essential va lue scheme in this country that doesn ' t value art?" Poet Lorenzo Thomas sensed the irony of a debate about the purpose of art: "I cannot imagine a group of people in Oaxaca or New Guinea gathering to discuss art. It's just something they don ' t need to do."

Unfortunately, the symposium gave a negative impression of the status of the public art movement in Houston. In fact, there is quite a bit of public, private, and public/private partnership activity. Most recently, the Arts Task Force of Houston and Harris County prepared a "Cultural Arts Plan" in 1993. The Task Force itself was extremely broadly based in the arts, business, and political commun ity, and the plan was very detailed. Covering areas of economic development, the physical environment, art in neighborhoods, education, and budgets and funding, the plan contained a report for a public art program , including policies, procedures, and strategies for implementation. The symposium chose to operate in a self-imposed vacuum , ignoring all this grou nd work already in place, rather than building upon it and taking the next step to implement ideas and programs already laid out by the Arts Task Force.

Gerald Moorhead (FAIA) is architect, photographer, and writer working in Houston, TX.

FALLIWINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 31

BOOK REVIEWS

The Benefits of Public Art The Polemics of Permanent A rt in Public Places

by Sara Selwood Londo n: Policy Studi es Insti tute, 1995.

Avail able th rough BEBC Distribution Ltd., P. O. Box 1496, Poole, Dorset, BHl 2 3YD. 367 pages, ÂŁ27 .95, paper.

Culture in Action

by Sculpnl re Chicago, with essays by Mary Jane Jacob, M ichael Brenson, Eva M . Olson Seattle: Bay Press, 1995.

144 pages, $20, paper.

By Bruce N. Wright In the 1980s and early 1990 , nonpubli c or "museum" altists saw their professional outlook change signi fic antly as the deeper know ledge of tlle plu ralistic and communi ty-based public artists emerged to seriously undermine tile notion of tile "individual creative geni us"-an inheritance of past We tern cul tural trad itions. Until then, public

art generally had been viewed simply as museum art taken outside, large-scale sculptures placed as objects on tile public landscape.

A pair of recent books attempt to recast tlle role and importaJlce of public art in contemporary society. One is Briti sh-The Benefits of Public Art, by Sara Selwood-the other A merican--Culture in Action, published by the independe nt arts orga ni zati on Sculpture Chi cago. Both books document art tIlat was conceived in reaction to Western modernism.

In both books, tile public's presumed understaJld ing of what constitutes art is challenged.

Selwood says tlle public responses to six public artworks "'were often determined by certai n expectations of art. These were implicit ratller tIlan ex plicit and were, tIlerefore, rarely articulated." These included tlle assumption tIlat art "should be attracti ve, appropriate, inoffensive and give pl easure ratller tIlan being 'challenging' or stimulating; it should be figurati ve ratller than abstract or conceptual." The aJt works examined in Selwoocl's book seldom fi t tIlese expectations.

Culture in Action is naJn ed after aJl ambi tious effort (also called "Cul ture in Action") conducted

by Sculpture Chicago to produce eight temporary artworks tIl at took place tl1roughout Chicago over a two-year period--experimental projects intended to "help to build a new model for public art," says Sculpture Chicago curator aJld project maJlager Mary Jane Jacob, who writes in Culture in Action. "The projects in 'Culture in Action' did not claim to provide solutions, even aJlswers, to ... complex concerns, but tIley did take a constructi ve approach." These projects were as much about tile puulic as about art. "['Culture in Action'] revolved around notions of public or social space: contested public space (tile street, tile market); public housing; caJldy counters aJld hardware stores; public education aJld the envirol1lllent; public healtll; aJld tile public telephone."

The Benefits of Public AJ1 is written fro m aJl Qbjecti ve, administrati ve point of view (Selwood works for the Policy Studies Institute, one of Europe's leading independent research orgaJlizations), whereas Culture in Action is written from a more subjective, altist's point of view. Tlus necessarily presents tile public artist's role in society in contrary positions; the former questions tile altist's role as being somewhat elitist, the latter presents tIl¡e altist as democrati c community ombudsman. Anotller major difference between the two books is tile type of art discussed. In The Benefits of Public Art, tile majori ty of art studied is objectlike and less environmentall y engaged (artist as master creator), whereas in Culture in Action, all case studies examine art installati ons tIlat emphasize process aJld communi ty interaction (altist as agent).

The Benefits of Public Art is pessimi sti c about tile fu nlre impact of public art; Culture in Action is idealisticall y hopeful. "The received wisdom of professionals engaged in public art is that tile public may grow to appreciate public artworks in tile long term on tile basis of familiarity," says Selwood. Imcluded in the book's appendi x is a survey that reviews the 10ngest-staJlding case study on the subject, whi ch suggests that this was not necessaril y so. "By the same token, messiaJlic promoters of public art sometimes suggest tIlat the burgeoning of public art outside the gaiJery

32 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

may contribute towards the creation of new audiences fo r aJt . We found nu evidence to support tIlis." For Sculpture Chicago's Jacob, "In tile 1990s tile role of public art . .. shifted fro m that of renewing the physical environment to that of improving society, from promoting aesthetic quality to contributing to the quali ty of life, from enr iching li ves to saving Li ves."

While Culture in Action presents a pluralistic view of public art, one necessitating multiple audiences, it stops short of prescribing uni versal solutions to pu blic issues, preferring instead to present eight case studies as proof of altistic val ue. Selwood, however, takes the discussion one step further. In the last chapter of her book she discusses poLicy issues and boldl y makes recommendations, such as requiring contracts between artists and tIlose who commission the artworks. "Such agreements should specify tile requirements of tile commission, allocate function and responsibilities, uphold tile rights of those involved aJld guard agai nst potential contention." And most significaJltly, Selwood recommends a fo rmal eval uation aJld moni toring of projects be conducted to ensure that public art follows tl1rough on any claims of introducing palticul ar qualities.

Both books thoroughly document the art through tile use of case snldies, which greatl y help the reader in understanding tile complexity and political problems associated with this art form. However, because many of the references in Selwood's book are unfamiliar British orgaJlizations or locales (to tIlis AmericaJl reviewer), it would have been more helpful if tIlere had been more and hi gher-quality photographs included.

Cultu.re in Action, in tIlis instance, does a better job, especially in prov iding a context fo r tile projects. Selwood's book, witll few exceptions, restricts images to a single, tightl y-cropped photo of a project, witll SCaJlt background in sight.

Nevertheless, both books are good references for arts admini strators, governmentibusiness administrators concerned witll corporate art programs, aJld altists plaJlrung to produce art for tile public aJ'ena tIlrough programs such as a percentfor-art program.

Bruce N. Wright is a critic and architectural historian. In 1994 he served as associate editor for Public Art Review.

[See Culture in Action review in PAR #8, page 4]

Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs Public Art & Cultural Democracy in American Communities

by Erika Doss Washington, DC: Smithsonian Instituti on Press, 1995 . 278 pages, $ 15 .00 paper.

By Laura Weber During debate over a design fo r a proposed sculpture garden in a fo rmer city dump in Boulder, CO, Arts Commission member Erika Doss gave a speech to the City Council. At one point in her speech, Doss made reference to a large crowd that gathered in Cincinnati to ex press

BOOK REVIEWS their opinions about the " flyin g pig" sculptures proposed to soar above Andrew Leicester 's Cincinnati Gateway project. "The last thing I want to see," repli ed the mayor of Boulder, " is hundreds of people talking about public art in these chambers."

It is precisely such a scene of engaged citizens, repeated in communities across the United States, that Doss, also a professor of rut and American studies at the Uni versity of Colorado, would llke to see. In her ambitious, thought-provoking study of recent public art controversies, Doss argues that despite its name, public art, pru·ticularly that created by what she calls the public rut mdustry (ruu sts, arts agencies, and consultants), often fall s to "engage citizens effectivel y in development of civic culture." When these projects land in people's parks, pl azas, and streets, the projects-not surprismgly--often generate controversy.

ing measures of ''how important issues of cul ture and power are to [those] Americans often cynically miscast as passive and uninformed."

The bulk of Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs consists of six imaginati vely researched case studies featuring controlled, often witty prose that effecti vely builds suspense toward the inevitable scenes of conflict: Barbara Kruger's Un titled (Questions); [see PAR #12, page 16]; Gru·y Rieveschl 's Concord Heritage Gateway; Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Free Stamp; Michael Heizer's Effigy Tumuli; Judy Baca's Guadalupe Mural; and Leicester 's Cincinnati Gateway.

Doss' American studies perspecti ve is evident: The public rutworks and the communities in which they are located are given historical, anthropological, and political dimensions. The case studies she has chosen allow her to question urban plannin g noti ons of consensus and the role of modern art aestheti cs m attaining such consensus; eco-art aIld its frequent complicity with polluters; corporati ons' uses of public art to sway public opinion ; and public art as a tool for ethnic communities to defm e themselves.

Doss uses critical theory (without much jargon) to take a number of provocati ve positions that do not hew with mindless consistency to either side of our currently polarized public culture debates. So accusto med am I to such either/or di chotomies that I was lnitially perplexed at my nnabili ty to pigeonhole the author's perspective. Though I did not accept all her arguments, Doss's independent and original thinking won me over :m the end.

Laura Weber is a Minneapolis writer and historian.

Balant:e: Art and Nature

by John K. Grande Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1994.

250 pages; $ 19.99, paper; $38.99, cloth .

By Patricia B. Sanders The public outcry is not the res ult of philistines who don' t know what's good for them, as many m the public art establishment would like to believe, Doss claims. Stylistic concems are a mask for deeper concerns. People feel their authority in the public sphere slipping away, while questions about public art-what is it? whom is it for?-remain unanswered and open to interpretation. Thus, Doss clai ms, "many Americans have opted to vent their frustrations and mherent ambi valence about how to deal with social problems by assailing public rut ."

Despite these and other provocati ve, even contentious, claims, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs is not a Helms-style di atribe against public rut .

(Nor, for that matter, is it on the level of the National Enquirer holding a reader poll to vote for America's "ugliest tax-funded sculpture," a contest won by one of Doss' subjects, Concord Heritage Gatewa)\ commonl y known as "Spirit Poles.") On the contrary, Doss believes strongly that public art can "serve as a catalyst for increased populist involvement and authority in the public sphere." Public art controversies are not to be feared, she writes, but instead are encourag-

A slow transformation fro m the "New World Order" to a culture in balance with nature is OcculTing, and art is playing an important part. So says John K. Grande, and I hope he's ri ght. Gi ven our political cl imate, he seems overl y optimistic.

In this anthology of essays and reviews, the Montreal rut critic expresses what he thinks is wrong with our consumerist order and how certain rut fo rms merely reinforce it. He also defmes a future where small-scale societies exist in harmony with their individual bioregions, and he fmds art that mticul ates this vision. From this perspecti ve he chastises formalist, conceptual, and postmodern rut and praises a surprismgly broad rrulge of alternati ve art.

Since Balance: A rt and Nature is a collection of think pieces and reviews, not a treatise, Grande offers blief comments on trends and indi vidual mtists-both internati onall y known and less familiar Canadians-rather than a systemati c ru·gument. Usually his writing is clear and blessedl y free of postrnodernist jargon, but there ru·e dense passages where Grande's plethora of ideas about art, society, technology, mass media, and

the individual are in lI ffi ciently ruticlllated or where neologisms fo r pet concepts, uch as "technoculture," "techtopic," and "med iatic," are used. Yet he often makes such unexpected connections, giving new insights into contemporru)' art, that it's worth the effort.

In brief, Grande is for an art that rejoins us with nature, that is sociall y in volved. He is for art that is intuiti ve, sensual, and inclusive. He likes rut that is ephemeral, including temporal), f0J111S of public art, to whi ch he devotes an essay.

Finall y, Grande revives the old truth-to-materials philosophy and gives it rul ecological twist. These ideas achieve nuance in essays on indi vidual arti sts, including And y Goldswordl Y, Anish Kapoor, Duane Hanson, Armruld Vaillancoult, and Antony Gorml ey. Several Canadi ans are the subject of separate chapters, but, surprisingly, women mtists ru·e onl y discussed brietly, despite Grande's acknowledged debt to feminist theory.

On the other hand, Grande takes a very dim view of art that severs our connection to the natural world-art that uses mass-med ia technologies and Literal messages, reinforcing the status quo, focusing on the personali ty of the individual mtist, and overrationalizing ex perience. By this reckoning, most contemporary rut, even that of cli tical mtists like HrulS Haacke, fails.

These ideas are reminiscent of those m Suzi Gabli k's Reenchantment of A rt (199 1), but Grande appru·end y developed them independently, with msights from environmental dlinkers like Mu rray Bookchin and Thomas Berry, who see social realities as mextricabl y intertwined with environmental problems.

While this book is not without its flaws-citation style is inconsistent, Gauguin is repeated ly misspelled-dle essays collectively offer a viable social-environmental framework fo r evaluati ng contemporary rut and insights into art's actual and potential roles.

Patricia B. Sanders teaches art history at San Jose State University. She has curated exhibitions of, and written about, ecological art.

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUB LIC ART REVIEW 33

PUBLIC ART SCHOOL

Rooftop I.E.A.M.-Building

by Celeste Connor {For this new department, PAR takes a look at public art and educational institutions. We'll explore artists working with schools, utilizing public space, teaching public art, and demonstrating that public art can be an effective educational tool. We welcome new information regarding these topics, including course curricula and project documentation.} an experimental art and experimental education get together substantively for the common good? Allan Kaprow socratically poses this question in a recent essay on one of his collaborative activist projects of the late 1960s. 1 The essay recounts an experiment undertaken in an ethnically and racially mixed Berkeley public school with the dual purposes of bringing art into a central role in the school's curriculum and "merging the arts with things not considered art, namely training in reading, writing, and so on."2 In 1968's Project Other Ways, Kaprow and educator Herbert Kohl led a group of students labeled unteachable illiterates through a creative process of deconstructing and reillustrating the stereotypical Dick and Jane primers. Kaprow reflects that his prototypic artIeducation hybrid would have been impossible in the average classroom setting since, in his view, uch activist work necessitates a radical revision of educational theory and teacher training. Suzanne Lacy's most recent-indeed, ongoing-art/education collaborative experiment undeltakes to do both.

In spring of 1994 a group of San Francisco Bay Area artists, educators, and acti vists called T.E.A.M. (Teens+Education+Art +Media) culminated three years of collaborative work directed by performance artist Lacy, photographer Chris Johnson (both educators at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland), and theater director Anruce Jacoby.

The most visible results to date of this cooperative effort are an interactive multimedia production titled The Roof Is On Fire, presented to the public last June on the rooftop of a new parking structure in the heart of downtown Oakland, and an hour-long, award-nominated public television program documenting the event. 3 As the audience filed into the public garage, 350 student performers took assigned seats in parked car and di cussed topics they had cho en in advance: sex, violence, family, friendship, money, and power. This was a historic moment in the project- the chance for students to repreent themselves as they know themselves to be.

Audience members were instructed to walk silently from car to car and Listen hard to the testimonie offered . This impressive public artwork pushed Kaprow 's concept of a quarter century ago toward its logical conclusion. Yet the performance, in itself, is 'not the sole intention of its many collaborators. T.E.A.M., in addition to creating a celebratory ritual drama-

C

tizing the achievements of three years' work, had from the start an equal investment in the educational component of the project. It is this less visible aspect of the collaboration that I wish to focus on here.

Members of T.E.A.M. came together in acknowledgment and support of the Bay Area's unique pluralism . The region 's teenagers are seen by the group as models of the kind of ethnic and racial mixing that holds great promise for America's future. Under the skillful guidance of educational director Chris Johnson and his assistant, Eric Tam, T.E.A.M. articulated and implemented its plans to develop media literacy within a target group of Oakland public hi gh school students by establishing a coalition of high school administrators and self-selected faculty.4 The creative reconfiguration of standard

34 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

classroom practices and rethinking of class curriculum that resulted were facilitated by a series of eight workshops organized by Johnson.

Workshops were informal lecture-discussions led by respected theorists in fields related to media studies. Topics included "Media Literacy Curriculum Development," "News: The Shaping of Opinion," "Image and Reality in Popular Culture," "Gender Issues in Media," "Race Issues in Media," and "New Practices in Public Education." These forums went beyond providing faculty with cun'ent theories of media, suggesting innovative classroom practices and materials.

In addition to attending the workshops, participating faculty m-embers held bimonthly meetings to plan the performance and to construct classroom exercises and lesson plans

BLiC ART SCHOOL

that incorporated their own updated literacy in media issues. These inventive in-class exercises ranged from family oral history projects, to critiques of the stereotyped representations of race and gender in customary ass igned reading, to exploratio ns of the political components of identity construction. In as many cases as possible, video and audio eq uipment was placed in students' hands, enabling them to create their own representations.

By working collaboratively to integrate what transpires in classrooms with the every-

day mediated reality of inner-city life, students, educators, and artists were able to realize very concretely that their shared daily experience and the common concerns aris ing from it have true social value and hi storical relevance. T.E.A.M. provided committed high school teachers, strapped by the scarce resources of a densely populated urban locale, with material support to realize their aspirations for professional re-education. Students were encouraged to develop both a critical awareness of the effect of media on their decision-making processes and an updated, responsible code of ethics.

In the current attempts to form ulate a persuasive body of theory to support new genre public art, it has sometimes been speculated that if such an art can ever playa truly effective public role, it must align its premises with a theory of public education. The history of art si nce the late 18th centu ry lends support to this contention,5 as do ongoing collaborations such as the one outlined here. As Kaprow reminds us in his thought-provoking essay, "It is what happens over the long term that matters."6 He further suggests that replication of an experiment and sustained instruction are necessary fo r lasting impact. I believe T.E.A.M.'s ongoing experiment addresses these considerations as wel l. Out of Roofhas grown a series of public conversations between Oakland teenagers and officers from the Oakland Police Department. And as I write, Roofis being considered as a model for a larger performance, Theatre of Respect, that will take place simultaneously in five Bay Area cities. Where will the continuing discussions lead ? As does Kaprow, I believe only time will tell.

But before the Roof project expands, the question of its audience and who will have access needs reconsideration. T.E.A.M.'s defini-

tion of "the public" mu t be rethought in response to students' concerns, and as a result its community outreach must become more inclusive. The perception that ome student performers had of being viewed as anthropological objects on display for middle-class whites could be alleviated by the purposeful broadening of audience that I propose, and the simu ltaneous reeducation of the public gaze through continuing dialogue on and clarified perception of class, socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial differences.

Celeste Connor is an art historian, theorist, and critic who teaches at the California College of Arts and Crafts. She has been documenting T.E.A.M. 's project since January 1992.

Notes: 1. Allan Kaprow. "Success and Fai lure When Art Changes," in Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, ed. Suzanne Lacy.

Seattle: Bay Press, 1995, p. 156.

2. Ibid.

3. The performance drew an estimated one thousand members of the Bay Area public. The aud ience was predominantly white and middle-class. A potentially larger and more diverse audience was reached through the television documentary, which has been aired several times on local TV and at community meetings.

4. T.E.A.M.'s project won full endorsement and cooperation of Oakland Public School's superi ntendent, Pete Mesa, and Oakland's mayor, Elihu Harris.

5. For a foundatio nal study specificall y focused on the expanding role of the public in the history of modern art see: Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, The Triumph of Art for the Public, New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1979.

6. Kaprow, p. 156.

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 35

PUBLIC ART SCHOOL

Go Public

by Linda Johnson Dougherty

T

hi s past April , the North Carolina Arts Council invited 20 artists (a ll residents of North Caro lina) to participate in a daylong public art works hop with Jack Mackie, an artist based in Seattle with ex tensive experi ence in both creating and faci litating art in public places. The wo rkshop was described in advance by the counci l as an "opportunity for [artists] to explore the transition fro m studi o or private work to work conceived in and for the public realm ." The workshop presented an in-depth look at the entire process of app lying for a public art co mmi ss ion, from the initial proposa l up through the f inal installation.

The purpose of the wo rkshop was twofold. First, it directl y served the arti sts of the state by providing handson training in preparing public art proposals. The less obvious benefit of the workshop was to serve the Arts Council and the citizens of North Carolina by increasing the pool of applicants for North Carolina's " percentfor-art" projects with more knowledgeable arti sts.

Unfortunately, a month after this workshop took pl ace, the North Carolina Legislature repealed the Artworks for State Buildings law (North Carolina's percent-for-art program).

This law had required any state-funded construction or renovation of more th an $1 milli on to put 0.5 percent of construction costs into an art re erve used to com miss ion artwork for that specific building. Projects in progress and projects that have already been all ocated will still take place, but any new state-funded construction projects wi ll only participate in the Artworks for State Buildings program on a vo luntary basi s.

During the first half of the workshop, Jack Mackie provided an overview of public art and pinpointed i sues of the 1990s, using slide and discussions of vari ous public art project. In light of the drastic funding cuts that are affecting the arts all over the country in the 1990s, Mackie suggested that artists look at where society is actually putting its money and try to u e those areas as ources for public art funding. In general , money is going into capital improvement program , and the pecific areas will vary from tate to state, but likely po ibilities are mass transit syste ms,

hi ghway sound barriers or wa ll s, and schools and pri so ns, as just a few examples.

Mackie described public art as a medium in its own ri g ht, like painting or photography.

He sees the key elements of successfu l public art as art that is access ible, inclusive, appropriate, respectful of its community, and reflective of its site and the functions of th at site.

Contemporary public art needs to recognize cultural diversity, and it can be a way to give the disenfranchised a vo ice in society. Public art should be a common ground or neutral territory that can acco mmodate everyone. He described contemporary public art as being audience-specific rather than site-specific.

In contrast to previous public art, which has been desc ribed as plunk or plop art, Mackie des cribed public art as being about a place rather than about itself. In hi s view, art in public sho uld do a job, solve a problem , humanize an urban and/or public space, provide sanc tuary. The artist working in public rarely has a bl ank slate to begin with, and the process of creating and siting an artwork in public often becomes an art of compromise, collaboration , and mediation for everyone in vo lved. Mackie suggested that the artist who works in public should allow the community to be part of the deci sion-making process, and should be responsible to the people who have to live with the art long after the artist has left the site. In this vein , Mackie sees commun ity participation as the primary resource of public art. In order for a work of art in public to succeed, the community has to have enough in vested in it th at they will continue to s upport and maintai n it eve n when the arti st is no longer around.

One of the artists at the workshop voiced a concern about the danger of compromising one 's work too much, of sacrificing higher aes thetics for access ibility and popularity.

There was extensive di scuss ion among the participants abo ut the need for artists working in public to push for challenging work that is also appropriate for a specific site, but not by

36 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

succumbing to the easier acceptance of pop/public art. Several artists worried that the prol iferation of percent-for-art program s would result in a landscape littered with popart images and objects because those seem to be the most acces ible to and successful with the general public. There was also discussion about the nature of the artist's role and responsibility when the artist is using public money to create art, and that an artist funded by the public cannot act as an indi vidual in a creative vacuum but must be respon sible to the community the work wi ll be sited in.

In the afternoon, Mackie focused on the work of individuals at the workshop and offered suggestion s for how they might move their studio work in the direction of public art. He stressed the idea that if one works with only one material , the opportunities for public art wi ll be drasticall y limited. He encouraged artists to transfer their ideas from one medium to another. For example, he suggested that a painter could take the pattern s in hi s paintin gs and use them to design windows. He looked at the small-scale cast-glass sculptures of one artist and re-envisioned them on a much larger scale as architectural columns and bridge supports.

The participants then focused on the actual application process for a specific public art project, with Mackie going over each step. He gave suggestions for how to determine a project budget and formulas for estimating costs.

He discussed how to give presentations and stressed the importance of preparing models or maquettes. The workshop looked at contracts, insurance, and copyright issues, learned how to read construction documents and architectural pl ans, and discussed working with architects, contractors, and tradespeop le.

The workshop concluded with a discussion on the need for more critical assessment of public art, raising questions about that assessment. For instance, if artists chan ge their work and approaches in order to work in public, can the resulting public art be reviewed and held to the same stand ards as studio-based " museum" works of art? It was suggested that criticism should respond to arti sts making the change from the studio to the public realm.

Linda Johnson Dougherty is an independent curator and critic based in Chapel Hill, NC.

URLIC ARTICLES

Leicester vs. Batman [The mechanics of public art involve legal, administrative, fina ncial and public relations expertise, not to mention fa brication, production, conservation, insurance and politics. This department is basically shop talk. }

by Laura Danielson

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inneapolis arti st Andrew Leicester 's recent laws uit against Warner Bros. fo r the un authori zed use of hi s sculpture Zanja Madre in the film Batman Forever has brought to the foreground issues of arti sts' ri ghts in publicly di spl ayed works. It also carries with it important lessons that all arti sts should take to heart.

Leicester's award-winning sculpture, located in a Los Angeles pedes tri an pl aza, is the fa bri cation of a majes ti c, courtl ike e nviro nment with tall steel and cerami c columns.

Warner Bros.' designers, apparentl y considering the pl aza an ideal location for Gotham City, buil t a scale model of the entire sculpture co urtyard and dra mati call y lit it with blue and bl ac k lights fo r use in the film 's street scenes .

Warner Bros. also c reated many pro moti onal products (CDs, t-shirts, comic books, and limited editi on posters) using the Zanja Madre background .

Not onl y di d Warner Bros. fail to ask Leicester fo r permission to re produce and use his scul ptu re, the studi o did not in any way credit him for it. W he n he wrote to the studi o to complain about its fa ilure to seek permission fo r use of hi s artwork, the studi o replied, "What artwork?" Outraged by what he perceived as Warner Bros.' total di sregard fo r hi s ri ghts as the creato r of Zanja Madre as well as by his disgust at the corrupti on of a seri ous artwork in a violent Batm an movie, Leicester sued Warn er Bros. fo r copyright infrin gement.

While the case is still being litigated, certa in iss ues have come to li ght that all public artists should be cogni zant of.

First is the issue of what amount of copyri ght protection is afforded to creators of public works. If a wo rk is publicly visible or located in a pu blic space, can it be used as part of th e background for another creati ve wo rk?

Architecture, fo r example, has limited copyri ghts, all owing pictori al representations by others if the building is visible in public space.

Fortunately fo r artists, public art is distin ct fro m architectu re, and its copyri ght owners have the complete ri ght to control reproduction and the creati on of deri vati ve wo rks . Ty picall y, arti sts retain full copyri ghts to their wo rk and the onl y ri ght that is transferred to dle artwo rk's purchaser is th e wo rk 's titl e. In Leicester 's case, he clearl y has retained the copyri ght to Zanja Madre and is the refore in contro l of its reproducti on.

Second, does Leicester have any " moral ri ghts" to hi s wo rk th at would protect its integrity and keep othe rs fro m uses that distort

the wo rk's ori ginal intention? In the United States, a rtiists' mo ral ri ghts are protected through th e Vi sual Arti sts Ri ghts Act (VARA), whi c h protects artwo rks fro m " modifications ... including distorti ons, mu til ati ons, and destructi on." VARA, however, is limited in its protecti o n o nl y of certain direct mod ifica ti ons of original works in single copies and li mited editi o ns. It does not protect reproducti ons that do not di sto rt th e ori ginal works themselves. In fact, the Ho use Report o n VARA cites as an example th at falls outside of VARA's protecti o n a moti on picture th at includes scenes of artwork. It is clear, then, dlat Warner Bros.' use of Zanja Madre is not protected under U.S. moral ri ghts law.

T hird is the issue of the ri ghts of the artwork 's pu rchaser. In defending itself against Leicester's allegations, Warner Bros . asserted th at it had o btained permi ss ion to use the artwork by Zanja Madre's ow ne r. T he studio claimed th at the ow ner had been given such ri ght by Lei.cester in the ori ginal commi ss ion ag reeme nt, whi c h had a simpl e, stand ard clause gran ting permission fo r reproduction of dle work. W hile the sp irit of thi s agreement was clearly onl y to all ow the photographing of the work for pro moti onal purposes, it is now being used to claim th at the ow ner had the ri ght to grant such permi ssion to Warner Bros. for the wo rk' s use in Batman Forever.

Leicester's lawyers are confident that they wi ll prevail in provi ng that this contract clause did

not ex tend to the li censi ng of hi s artwork fo r oth er purpose, in pa rt because Califo rni a ha a statute that construes vague arts contract in favo r of arti sts. It is an im portant lesson fo r arti sts, however, to rea li ze that agreeing to such seemin gly harm less terms in a contract can later haun t them. It is better that they make sure that the in tention un derlying such agreement (in this case that the wo rk was to be re produced fo r promoti onal purposes on ly) is spelled out clearl y.

Finall y, and most im po rtantl y, is the iss ue of how much money Leicester would be enti tled to fo r the infringement of hi s work. In thi s regard Leicester has learned a most pain ful and little-know n lesson. T hat is, while an arti st ow ns the copyright to an artwork fro m the moment of its creation, that copy ri ght must be reg istered with the U.S . Copyright Office pri or to the wo rk's infringe ment in order fo r the artist to be awarded "statutory damages" and attorneys' fees. "Actual damages"- the amoun t calcul ated to be the actual amount the artist was harmed- are available whether the arti st registered in time or not. "Statutory damages" are used to by a court to puni sh an egregious act of copyri ght infrin gement and can be much hi gher th an the diffic ult-to-calcul ate actual damage. As a practical matter, even when an arti st has clearl y suffered a violation to his or her copyri ghts, the cost of li tigation can exceed the amount of the actu al damages, and if the artist cannot recover statutory damages or attorneys' fees, it may not make sense to pursue the case.

Fortunately, in Leicester's case dlere is still ample reason to pursue liti gati on, es peciall y as certain infringing acts (such as the reproducti on of Batm an merchandi se with the Goth am City background) may well have occurred after Leicester registered his copyri ght. He reported th at he was shocked, however, to learn about the conseq uences of his fa ilu re to pay a simple $20 registration fee to the U.S. Copyri ght Office, es peciall y when he has always taken care to protect hi s artwo rk through proper contracts, insu rance, etc. He said, "In al l the years I' ve been producing artwork and consul ting with vari ous advisers, no one has ever info rmed me about the importance of registering my copyri ghts." He said that if the readers of thi s arti cle come away with nothin g else, he hopes they all rea lize they should register their copyri ghts immedi ate ly upon their artworks' creation. Proper registration, coupled with a caref ul and tho ro ugh comm iss io n agreement, should serve to protect artists fu ll y aga inst futu re infringement such as that e ngaged in by the makers of Batman Forever.

Laura Danielson is an arts and entertainment lawyer practicing with the law firm of Patterson & Keough, P.A., Minneapolis.

The author acknowledges the assistance of Ann Dunn and Peter Mason in researching this article.

FA LL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REV fEW 37

Continental Drining Vievv from the Chunnel

by Leni Schwendinger and Mark Kramer [International Bridge, a new column about public art around the world, will present a broad spectrum of public art news and views from the global village. We welcome communications from artists in the field and encourage arls administrators from outside the United States to send information about their current projects.

Send information to the writers at 448 West 37th St., 8G, New York, NY 10018.J lthough Walter Grop ius' concept of " integrating the arts" would come to nourish tlle study of design here and abroad for 60 years, one wonders today if the Bauhaus co-founder realized he was defining a praxis that would come to be known as "public art." Certain ly Gropius seems to have divined the futu re of the then-embryonic medium when he proclaimed, in 1919, "Together, let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one uni ty."

A

In an epic reversal of such global trends as the crumbling of the old order in Europe that brought Gropius to these shores, public artists from the United States' ateliers and academies are now emerging to meet the millennial impulses of another Europe altogether. Europe's legacy of art-in-architecture-typified by "classicaJJy" planned cities of statuary, fountains, and artisancrafted decorative architecture-has resonated through percent-for-art and other collaborative U.S. public art initiatives, and is now being further defined by the interdisciplinary descendants of Gropiu . Practitioners of integrative public art beyond our shores include U.S. citizens and residents such a Alice Adams, Dan Grallam,

Nobu ho Nagasawa, Claes Olden berg and Coosje van Bruggen, Ann Hamilton, Buster Simpson, Jonathan Borofsky, Jack Mackie, and others too numerous to mention.

Also ill ustrative of this "continental drift" is the fact that two of America's most respected arbiters of public art policy recently studied public art issues, exhibitions, and organizations in five European countries under NEA auspices.

One of them decided to extend her exploration indefinitely.

Sandra Percival, formerly director of Washington State Art Commission's Art in Public Places Program, is now director of the non profit London's Public Art Development Trust, which is increasingly known for its public art programs at Heathrow Airport, the Thames River, and the King's Cross vicinity of Central London. Diane Shamash, formerly of the Seattle Arts Commission 's Public Art Program, is now executive director of Minetta Brook, a nonprofit organization in New York, and will be in volved in The Thames & Hudson Rivers Project, a cross-continental program with the Public Art Development Trust.

Percival noted that their findings have influenced and reinforced their approaches to the processes of developing and exhibiting art. "One of our priorities is to support the artist's process ftJlly. We are now offering artists longer timelines to research and build on ideas." Redefining networks for presentation, "moving beyond Andre Malraux's Museum Without Walls," she is looking at the city as museum, as a way to recontextuailize artworks and collections.

The research of Percival and Shamash, along with the scores of U.S. artists and designers now being awarded commissions abroad, also suggests that a certain global osmosis is taiking place. U.S. artists, and the cultural pluralism and diffusion that typifies the United States' public art contexts, are increasingly relevant to the often cataclysmic changes underway in Europe.

It is to this dynamicalJy real-time tradition that Penny Balkin Bach refers when she observes, "The global battlefield is cultural."

Bach, director of America's oldest and most revered public-art organization, Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Art Association, theorizes that modes of expression-along with notions about public art-are evolving simultaneously on a local and a global scale. "If public art is a metaphor fo r our time and place," she explains, "then given these changing times and passionate debates, we stand to benefit tremendously from a less myopic world view. As Americans we tend. to think that we invented contemporary public rut, and we lose sight of the long-standing tradi-

38 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

tions worldwide that have honored and provided for the role of the artist in community life. As these traditions are threatened in times of crisis, we may be more alike than different from our global counterparts."

In many vital respects, America still looks to Europe as both muse and public-art test kitchen.

Public Art Development Trust's Central London King's Cross/St. Pancras project-sited in and around two existing major railway stations dating from the mid-1 8th century-in particular seems to pragmatically apply Gropius' extravagantly utopian manifesto.

Conceived with respect to its eventual Channel Tunnel (popularly known as the "Chunnel") raiJ linkup in the year 2001, this program simultaneously addresses issues of transportation and new geographic possibilities, land reclamation, fi ne art, urban design, and perhaps most importantly, the everyday needs of its residents.

The Channel Tunnel itself has great symbolic vaJue, both in its innovative-but-uncertain "solution" to one of the planets most epic waterways, and for its highly speculative role in making Great Britain "more" European.

Even in its slightly loony name, "Chunnel" evokes the theatricall y futuristic visions of World 's Fairs and expositions through the decades-much the same expansive spirit that visionary public art evokes.

The King's Cross project is also a response to the failed real-estate and development deals of the 1980s that had left the King 's Cross vicinity a blighted, derelict remnant of railroad yards gone to seed over the last two or three decades.

Integrating the formal lessons of tlle past whi le anticipating the future, the King 's Cross project seeks nothing short of remapping the history of the community it inhabits. Its ultimate objective is to reimage, or re-envision, the area through a gradual process using both temporary and permanent artworks.

Phase 1 of King's Cross entails the instaJlation of ephemeral works for the rai lway lands by international artists Buster Simpson (United States), Magdelena Jetlova (Germany), Roman Signer (Switzerland), and Max Neuhaus (United StateslFrance), and London-based artists working in the residential context: Tracey Emin, Anya GaJlacio, Jain Jun Xi, and German artist Lothar Hempel. Sandra Percival has emphasized the transitory nature of these initial works: "The ephemeral artworks act as 'tension points' and 'explosions' withi n the landscape." She asserts, "If we are to move beyond the entertainment value of short-term experiences, artists must be given the opportunity and resources for research,

long-tenn observation, and pamclpation in a place over years, not days or weeks." Residents become part of the creative algorithm-part of the cumu lative visual and environmental history of their community long-tenn, as eight artists, both international and local, pursue ongoing projects to evolve over three to 10 years.

Temporary/permanent programs also underway in England include "Out of Darkness" in Wolverhampton, a program initiated by the Public Art Commissions Agency of Birmingham. Using the medium of light, up to 12 installations will rei mage Wolverhampton, a depressed industrial town in the M idlands. In 1993, culled from a group of 72 international and regional artists, 13 were invited to propose projects for such wide-ranging sites as a road-

way roundabout, art school , parking garage, library, Victorian park, and sports arena. Some proposed light projects for several sites. Based on criteria of "imagination, workabi lity, impact on surroundings, attractiveness to the people of Wolverhampton, visibility, and maintenance," the field was narrowed to 13 permanent and six temporary projects. illuminating the nature of short-li ved installations, Geoff Wood, deputy director, asserts that "these works can etch themselves into audience memory and take on a lasting presence."

He feels that artists can take greater risks with temporary works, and thus "they enter local folklore after becoming substantiall y enhanced through hearsay. " The "Out of Darkness" projects are slated for 1996-98.

Percival maintains that an important distinction between the United States' and Europe's approach to public art development can be found in the manifestations of exhibitions and collections. Since World War IT, Europe's giant international exhibiti ons such as Documenta (Germany), Venice Biennale (Italy), and Sonsbeek (Netherl ands)-and World's Fairs as well-have addressed wide populations and urban economic structures. These exhibitions tend to be multi-sited and accessible to the general public, !both local and global. On the other hand, in the last 30 years American public art has referenced the permanent in stal lation of objects-"an accumulation of collections within cities," as Sandra Percival tenns it, "focusing on the physical experience of city life, our 'City Beautiful ' roots ." These broad, contrasting

strokes reveal differing values regarding the interplay between "social aspects of a place versus physical infrastructure of a city." These are constantly reversing: From the late 1980s onward, large-scale exhibitions have proliferated

in the United States, and now European cities can track their public artworks thanks to percentfor-art and private initiatives. This analysis contextualizes mainstream trends, and puts into perspective the uphill battle of artists working with new public art genres, especially perfonnance events, collaborations, and community-participation projects the world over.

Leni Schwendinger creates environmental light and sculpture installaljons all over the world.

Mark Kramer creates textual installations for such publicly accessible sites as Newsday, Spy, and New York magazines.

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 39

PUBLIC ARTICLES

Undesirable AUention Surviving a Media Investigation

by Regina M . Flanagan ne day in early Janua ry 1995, a reporter sorting through a stack of state contracts encountered several for artwork in state buildings and called with some questions about Minnesota Percent for Art in Public Places. The prog ram has completed more than 50 projects throughout the state since 1984, and this was theftrst time in its histOIY tha t it had aflracted significant attention from broadcast media. We were about to join

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the ranks of at least fou r other states' programs which recently have been the subject of "Waste Watchers" or "You Paidfor It" investigations, coincidentally produced by CBS affiliates around the count/yo This column recounts one of the most challenging experiences I have faced as an administrator and describes what strategies worked and what I learned.

Accord ing to writings on medi a strategy, there are fo ur types of in terviews that are ranked by risk, fro m a general in terv iew where

40 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

the content is mai nl y contro lled by the interviewee, to a high-risk in vesti gati ve in terv iew where the interviewee is address ing a negati ve conditi on in a context out of her/his contro l.

Had our contracts stood out to th e in vesti gati ve reporter because they contained the word "art," a regular target for criticism in the 1990s? It seemed probabl e that the coverage would attempt to re info rce stereotypes the pu blic is presumed to hold, and that viewers woul d agree that spendin g money on art is was teful.

The investi gatio n began in the mjddle of the 1995 legislati ve session and had the potential to be very damaging. Marjorie Casey, the Minnesota State Arts Board's communicati ons director, and I, realizing we were on the defensive, wanted to avoid an adversarial relationship with the reporter, so we fully coo perated with him over the fo ur-month in vestigati on .

We viewed this situation as an opportun ity to convince the reporter, and by extension, the public, of the value of our program.

The reporter arrived at the first meeting at our office with a cameraperson in tow. The stated reason for the meeting was research, not an in terview, but the reporter had coun ted on surprise to disarm us. We learned the first of many lessons: In the fu tu re, we would not appear on camera without havi ng previously agreed to do so.

When the reporter expressed in terest in particul ar proj ects, I called the artists to alert them, and fo und that most never watched the local news. Apparently many public artists have come to expect only negative attentio n from the mainstream medi a and have decided to tune it out. However, while the investigation was going on, two artjsts received major coverage about their projects in the print medi a, which helped pubLi c perceptio n of the state's program .

We decided the best strategy was to have lay people, rather th an members of the arts commun ity who mjght be viewed as speakjng fro m self- interest, comment on behalf of the program. The in tenti on was to co unter the stereotype that only a few select peo ple care about art. We identified people for the reporter to interview, incl udin g the state representati ve who had introdu ced the program's legislati on, as well as people at the recipient agencies, who had been invo lved in selecting th e artwork fo r their buildings and coul d speak eloquentl y about the program's va lue.

As the in vestigation continued, we promptly responded to the reporter 's questions about the progra m, prov ided lists of proj ects along with financial info rm ati on, and duplicated slides. Noticing th at the reporter was not going

COMMENTARY

Radiodeath The Expulsion of Art from the Airwaves

by Jacki Apple ecently, on one of those Nightlinestyle j ourn ali sm talk shows on public radio, a proselytizing co nservati ve congressman with a Southern twan g declared th at one reason the government need not continue to fund " public" broadcasting was that as ide from its "libera l" bias, its programming was just for the pleas ure of "educated people" and therefore didn't serve the average tax- pay ing masses or the poor. One implication of this kind of thinkin g is that the socall ed ignorant populace should not be polluted by ideas th at might "educate" them and get them thinking abo ut anyth ing not generated by corporate cu lture lest it cause the m to question th e ir status. Anoth er is that the masses are incapable of making that lea p and li ke it th at way. Artists and social activists who have participated in pub lic radio for the past two decades know otherwise. We too know the power of the media and how to use it in another way. Thus from the point of view of right-l eaning e liti sts in drag as popu li sts, blow ing the hot wind of demagoguery on the airwaves, the thing to do with heretics like us is to throw us to the li ons of the marketplace and if we fail to survive it proves their point.

Equally insid ious is the conciliatory arg ument made by the socall ed other side. The representati ves for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Natio nal Public Radio have advoca ted the passing of a congress ional bill that would phase out the present system into a " trust fund" that would raise part of its fund ing the good old-fashioned way-corporate sponsorship (w hich is just another form of advertising). The two ways of reading the phrase ''' trust' fu nd" coul d be taken as parody if it were n't such a mockery. Those neocon capitalist hyenas hiding out in liberal shee pskin flash us their privates. Bill Clinton 's politics of appeasement win this round. The irony is that commercial broadcasting's measuring devices for "value" an d viability of programm ing as dictated from the nati onal level have been gri ndin g away at

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local li stener-spon sored stations for quite so me time. It 's ca lled market demographics, Arbitron ratings, syndicated prog rams, etc., wh ich have gradu all y pus hed the origi nal, offbeat, interest-specifi c, cu lturall y di verse programs and independent producers off the air. Thi s is parti cularly true of audi o arts, independent music, and cul tura l programs with a political cast. It's the mall concept applied to broadcast space. No innovative designer boutiques with affordable pri ces need apply.

When it fin all y happe ns (as it has) at Pacifi ca Radio, and in particul ar at KPFK, Los Angeles, perhaps th e most independent

and left-leaning public radio in the country, you know it's over for arti sts, art radio, and progressive alternative social and cultural vo ices hailing access to medi a space. You know the whole concept of li stener-sponsored, locally controlled community radioand th e free-speech movement that spawned it-has seen its day.

Speaking of free speech, maybe it is time to question th e very constitutionality of the FCC's control of the airwaves. Any interest group who can put together enough cash or credit can publish a magazine and di stribute it. (First Amendment rights and all that. ) What makes airspace any different than either the printed page or cyberspace? It's

public space, isn' t it? So why houl d access be controll ed by the federal government? Ask yourself why all those freaks li ke G. Gordon Lidd y can shoot their mouths off, and art i t are in the process of being expell ed from th e small local for ums th ey had on public radi o.

The ai m of those of us who produced art for the airwaves, and hosted programs that presented it, was to reach a diver e audience of li steners, many of whom were previously unexposed to both the form and content of the work. The answer fro m inside the public rad io system itself is th at there is no audience. The message to artists is spoken with a forked to ngue . "Serve yo ur co mmunity.

Make art fo r public consumpti on. But stay OUl of the public media because no o ne is li sten in g."

Those program mers who have for the moment survived the slash-and-burn reprogramming strategy at Pacifica have been relegated to the II p.m. slot or the after- midni ght ni ght ow l's broadcast wasteland . That 's one way to guarantee los ing th e more di vers i fied audi ences we've all individu a ll y nurtured over th e last decade, without the aid of any station pub l ic relations effo rts or communi ty outreach.

After 14 years on the air broadcasting a vast range of mu sic, sound art, and peiformance and radio art-voca li sts li ke Christine Baczewaka, Anna Hotler, She ll ey Hirsch , David Moss, the poetics of Jane Cortez and Robert As hl ey, art PETE WAGNER radio works wi th a soc iopo li tical bent by Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Terry Allen, Don Joyce, Donald Swearingen , and others who explore both the media landscape and speech as cultu re, along with Tuvans and Tibetans, and jazz from the Arctic, Japanese noise bands, New York im provisers, and German ava nt-gardi sts, ambient minimali sts, and techno-ex perimenters, to mention just a few-I can tell you that lots of people were listening.

Music finds its way into the world with or without radio. But radio art-the whole range of talking pictures, orchestrated texts, sonic architecture, imaginary geographi e , trompe l'oei l documentaries, and broadcast interventions using media as ource and site-is just

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 41

th at. Artwo rk created fo r radi o space. Free art for anyo ne whu lunes in . You can' t get any more publi c than that. And yes, th e truth is th at art radi o is an incursion, and a sub version, o f homogeni zed " mass" culture, i.e. corporate culture. It offers a coun ter-vision and a deco nstructi on of official language.

So where do we go from here? Do we aband on the airwaves as they e ither churn out prepackaged bl and mush or turn into a toxic waste dump fo r a ll th ose peo pl e sp illing th eir pain and bile as th eir rage and fea r gets whip ped up fo r ratings? Or do we take a cue from Bl ack Liberation Rad io, whi ch broadcasts in small local areas via mi crowatt, whi ch bypasses the entire system, including FCC licensing? Do we create a network of sma ll independent art cell s-not pirate radi o, but ne ighborh ood radio onl y on at certain hours? Granted small mi crowatt systems' ra nges are short, but th ey ' re also low-cost, an d th ey defy th e corporate mo nopoly of the medi a, as did th e man in Ja pan who ran a subscription-based stati on th at played nothing but the so unds of the natural enviro nment 24 hours a day.

At thi s point the In ternet isn' t a viable al ternati ve. You can' t log on in yo ur car, or while you are doing the ironing or riding a stati onary bi ke at the gy m. Besides, the very premise of radi o art is to free the imag inati on from the conf ines of the screen and the image. It's about the aural environm ent, which is a very different mode of percepti on. It was a virtual reality space before there was vi rtu al reality.

Also kee p in mind that by the time thi s is published, it's likely that Di sney will own ABC and Westin ghouse will own CBS . So don' t be too surpri sed if they also contro l the nex t round of technology that may poss ibl y bring us portable " radi o" off the Net via satellite. L ike cell-phone radi o. Cable radi o. That means it will no longer be free. Maybe arti sts and/or arts groups should start pl annin g now how to sell subscriptions fo r a future " radio" site on th e World Wide Web. In the meantime, I' m reminded of a story that arti t Terry Allen told me about how when he was in high school in the 1950s in Texas, they'd dri ve out to a field and park th e cars in a big c ircle with the lights on. And they ' d all tu ne in to the same radi o station with the vo lume up loud-may be it was Wolfman Jack-and then they would dance to rock mu sic. I re member the governm ent wa nted to keep rock ' n' roll off the airwaves then because they thought it was "sub versive," a threat to the Ameri can way of life.

Funn y thing is, the 1960s proved they were right ! Now a com mercial FM station in L. A. has repl aced class ic rock with Kato Kaelin , ex perimental music and art radi o have been superseded by 1970 disco rev ivals and dance c lu b M uzak, and pu bli c radi o no longer serves the pub lic that supports it.

Jacki Apple is a visual, performance and media artist, writer and audio producer living in L.A. She teaches at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena and UCSD, LaJolla, CA.

Undesirable from page 40 out of his way to interview the peop le we recommended, Casey became acti vely in volved in scheduling interviews. She maintai ned dail y contac t with the reporter, and talked with people after their interview, tracki ng how the story was progressing. I agreed to appear on camera onl y after the reporter had completed his other interviews and chose a favo rable locati on fo r the interv iew.

The most helpful advice I received as I prepared for my interview came from two people who had been advertising executi ves. One counseled me to remember that I was speaki ng to the tax payer who wants to know: "What's in it for me? How do I benefit?" The other suggested that before appearing on camera, I write, memori ze, and rehearse a 60-second introductory statement that would emphasize no more than four or five main points. Casey and I drafted a statement with fo ur anchor points: 1) public art provides a perman.ent legacy of our times; 2) it is a good in vestment, cultural ly and flI1ancially; 3) money for the program comes fro m funds which can onl y be used to pay for constructing or remodeling bui ldings; and 4) artwork is chosen by the community where the building is located.

During the interview, all my answers led back to one or more of these anchor points, so that no matter how my comments were edited, at least some of our message might emerge.

On a Tuesday night 10 o' clock newscast during sweeps week in May, the "Waste Watchers" segment called ''Taxpayer 's Gallery" appeared.

The comments made by the anchors leading up to the segment suggested that viewers were about to see something reall y scandalous: provocati ve and expensive artwork purchased with tax dollars hanging in government buildings, much of it unavailable unless you happened to be in prison.

During the segment, interviews alternated with comments about specific artworks fro m 'people pass ing by. The reporter asked what people thought of the artwork and how much it cost.

As many people appreciated the work as disliked it. A uni versity president called the artwork a sound investment, and remarked that "art affects how we feel about our lives, and how we do our j obs." Almost no one was able to assess what the work was worth. One woman, identified as an art dealer, was walking past a $ 142,000 three-dimensional glass and steel skylight. She guessed the 7-ton work, which is a spectacular achievement of art and engineering, cost $20,000 or $30,000.

Probably the most damaging aspect of the segment was its negative coverage of the program's prison projects. According to the reporter, the program was beautify ing prisons with work unique enough to be in many museums. A freshman Republican legislator weighed in against the prison projects, and the Democrat who had sponsored the percent-for-art legislation defended them. The real val ue of these projects, in prisons, which had been described to the reporter, was ignored al together. The progranl supports the correctional system's mission for rehabilitati on, and usually employs inmates to work with artists in the production of artwork.

The segment featured 10 seconds of my introductory statement, in which I commented, ''The

42 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER 1995

rutwork provides a pennanent legacy for our time, reflecti ng our history, culture, and landscape, as well as our di verse people." As for the artwork itself, it looked beautiful on camera, indicati ng that the camerapeople obviously fo und the work visually stimulating.

The six-minute segment left the impression that the artwork acquired by the state was not only expensive, but overpri ced. The reporter did not provide viewers with enough infOlm ati on to enable them to understand the real monetary value of the work, so they could make up their own minds about the worth of the state's investment. Furthennore, viewers were led to believe that most of the progrrun 's money was being spent on prison projects, which is not true.

After the segment aired, I heard fro m many people who had called the television station's response line to complain about bias and what they felt were editori al view points masquerading as in vestigati ve reporting in the "Tax payer's Gallery" segment. A local architect wrote the station's news director to comment, "We li ve in a tough world these days, pruticularly as characterized in the TV medi a. This would trul y be an ugly world if it were stri pped of art and culture. If art is important- and it is-then it comes with a cost. In this day and age, you simpl y cannot place enough val ue on those things that elevate the human spirit."

In retrospect, the most difficult challenges we faced were portraying the intentions of the program and defeating the stereotypes that caused the investment in art to be a concem in the first place. Although I believe our vigorous cooperation with the reporter may have affected his perception of our program and helped to defuse some of his rhetoric, we were still left with a sensationalized profi le of a wOlt hwhile state program. Our strategy of having lay people speak on behalf of the projects seemed effective. The segment could have been far more negati ve, and it appears no lasting damage has been done.

However, several questions of a philosophical nature remai n. Was it better to defend the program with laypeople, or should we have brought out an impressive art authority to speak on its behalf? What is the role of the artist as an advocate for public art when herlhis work is being attacked? How can artists be helpful when the context for discussing their work is very negative and polarized?

The reporter was given detailed fin ancial statistics about the program, including that typicall y up to 80 percent of a project's budget goes directly back into the local economy. But the segment confused aesthetic worth with monetary worth, and reinforced the view that the value of artwork can only be judged using personal and subjective standards. Ironically, would we have been more successful using predominantly aesthetic arguments, rather than monetruy arguments, while defending the val ue of the program during an in vestigation of government expend itures?

Finally, is it ever possible for this type of in vestigation to have positive results?

Regina Flanagan is a photographer and art administrator living in St. Paul. Since 1988, she has directed the Minnesota Percent for Art in Public Places program.

Compi led and edited by Jack Becker

inti Public Art Conference Announced The San Francisco Art Insti tute and the Public Art Fund, New York, just announced an intern ational conference to be held in San Francisco Ju ly 8-1 2, 1996, called "Veiled Histories: The Reinterpretation of Place Through the Work of Contemporary Public Artists." Whi Ie we go to press, the list of participants is being finalized, and it's an impressive roster! For more information, contact: Professor Anna Novakov, Art History, Theory, and Criticism, San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut St. , San Francisco, CA 94133.

EXHIBITS &CONFERENCES Visionary Museum Set to Open The soon-to-open American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore is likely to change the way self-taught artists are viewed in this country. With a broad enough definition of visionary art to fill several museums, this effort is, like most of the museum 's contents, atypical. According to founder Rebecca Hoffberger, "Along with visionary visual art, the museum will feature examples of breakthrough creati ve achievement in other fields, and attempt to convey a deeper appreciation for the roots of visionary art and thought."

Gi ven the scale of the effort it took to get the museum built and federally sanctioned (in 1992), it's not surplising that Hoffberger is excited about opening the doors. The museum's grand opening is scheduled for November 24, with the inaugural exhibition Tree of Life, curated by Roger ManJey. More than 400 works made out of wood and tree products will be featured. Visionary artist Ben Wilson will serve as an artist-in-residence for one month during the exhibition. While there, Wilson will create a wooden altar to be used for special ceremonies in the wildflower garden. For more information, contact the American Visionary Art Museum, P.O. Box 287, Stevenson, MD 2 1153; (410) 653-5202.

Rauschenberg to be Honored at Conference Robert Rauschenberg has been named as the recipient of the Intern ati onal Sculpture Center's 1995 Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture. ISC's nine-member nominating committee un animously recogni zed Rauschenberg's histori cal contributions to sculpture, fro m "his earliest three-dimensional work to his leadership in arts and technology."

The artist will be honored at ISC's upcoming Sculpture Conference in Providence, RI, from June 4-6, 1996. For more inform ation about the conference, contact Mary Catherine Johnson at (202) 785-1144.

NASAA Addresses Change The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies announced that its 1995 annual meeting will be held [where else?] in Providence, RI, from November 16-19, hosted by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. In addition to keynote speaker NEA Chair Jane Alexander, Dr. Sherry Schiller, an expert in managing organizational change, will lead participants through a one-day working session to identify the challenges, strategies, and tools needed to exert leadership in the changi ng environment of public arts support.

For a complete agenda and registration form, call Nancy Sull ivan atNASAA, (202) 347-6352.

Memphis will be the site of the 1996 conference.

November Must Be Digital Month The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Phi ladelphia will host SCAN 95 : 15th Annual Symposium on Small Computers in the Arts from November 3-5 . According to informati on on the World Wide Web, organi zers seek to "demonstrate previously impossible synergies

kes, My Becky, Woman of the from "The Tree of Life." rtesy the American Visionary Art

between artistic disciplines based on mass di gital storage and related user-interfaces for the production and use of 2D, 3D, time-based, and audio artwork .... Computer literacy has become an entry-level ski ll . The world is smaller, the pace is faster, where only knowledge and experience are worth real gold." Presentations, performances, workshops, computer art, and terminal displays are all on the bill . For more information contact Rick de Coyte at (215) 238-6060.

The Third Annual New York Digital Salon will take place in NYC and on the Internet from November B -27, 1995. An international jury, including Ken Feingold, Annette Weintraub, Wong Wo Bik, and others have selected works for an exhibition of computer artworks and a screening of computer animations (both at the Visual Arts Museum and Amphitheater).

Internet-working will take place on the World Wide Web a.nd a catalog of works with critical essays will be featured in a special issue of Leonardo, the journal of the Intern ati onal Society for Arts, Sciences, and Technology (published by MIT Press) . For more info: http://wwwsva.edu/salonlinfo. htrnl.

Beginnin g November 17, New York City hosts the Virtuosity International Art Fair, with galleries around the world presenting themselves via computer termin als . Seekin g to demonstrate the viability of new technology for marketing fine art and enhancing the presentation of artworks, the fair 's success will depend largely on the user-friendliness and sophistication of color reproduction on computer. While it's clear that art dealers with CD-ROM portfolios are behind this development, the impact of this technology could be profo und: bringing global art acti vities together in one room, and opening the art up to a variety of audiences (artists, criti cs, historians, PR firms, and even the "public"). The system essentially removes the restricti ons of time, travel, and personal contacts from the art market. For more info about Virtuosity Fair, call the organi zers Art Communication International at (215) 790-2554.

Cities Set Aside Space for Sculptures Accordin g to the September iss ue of the Intern ati onal Sculpture Center 's Maquelte, which features a directory of 180 Master of Fine Arts Sculpture Programs in the United States and Canada, several cities across the United States are encouraging outdoor sculpture exhibitions. The Belmont (CA) City Council recently installed eight outdoor works along Ralston, the "Avenue of the Arts"; Grand Junction, CO, continues its "Art on the Comer" program, begun in 1984, in which a "People's Choice Award" each year supports the purchase of one sculpture; the Art in Public Places Program in Palm Desert, CA, selected 14 outdoor sculptures for the median islands of El Paseo, an exclusive two-mile shopping boulevard; and Stamford, CT, is hosting its second annual "Sculpture in the Streets" exhibition, with 75 works lent by national and international artists.

TURNOVERS Parsons School of Design has appointed New York architect Karen Van Lengen chair of its architecture and environmental des ign department. Van Lengen succeeds Susana Torre, who left the position to become director of Cranbrook Academy in Michi gan. Parsons is one of the largest and most comprehensive design programs in the United States, with branch campuses in Pari s, Japan, and Korea. It has become well known for its efforts to infuse computer technology in all its visual design programs.

Barbara Anderson Hill has been appoin ted coordinator of Tampa's Art in Public Places program, replacing Marianne Eggler-Gerozissis, who will pursue a Ph.D. degree in New York City. Hill, an exhibiting sculptor, returns to head the program after a three-year absence.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago appointed Hope B. Spruance its new associate director and chief operating officer.

Spruance will oversee all operati ons of the museum as it prepares to move into its new building and sculpture garden, scheduled to open Jul y 2, 1996.

Krzysztof Wodiczko has been named director of MIT's Center for Ad vanced Vi sual Studies, repl acing Otto Piene, who stepped down after 25 yea rs. Romani an-born Wodi czko had been serving as assoc iate professo r there. [see essay and interview, p. 12- J 3 : and PA R #9, p. 26]

FALLIWINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 43

LISTINGS

RECENT PROJECTS (Mostly Stones and Trees)

trees, 10,000 peo pl e, and 400 years is a li ving fo rest on a huge elliptical mound (420 meters by 270 meters, 2& meters hi gh). People from around the world are in vited to pl ant a tree which will bear dleir name and dlose of their respective heirs and descendants. If you want to plant a tree (or have one planted on your behlf by a Finni sh child) contact Kirsi Kaunisharju , Tampere Art Museum , P.O. Box 87, 332 11 Tampere, Finl and (+358 3 1 2 110459). Nancy Holt's Up and Unde r will also be compl eted in 1996.

The Puebl o Levee Proj ect claims to be the longes t mural in the wo rld . It runs 3. 5 mil es, or 178,200 squ are fee t of connected panels.

Arti st Cynthia Ramu , of Red Wing, CO, works with yo un g artists and graffiti writers in the Puebl o area to continuall y add to the mura l, co ve rin g a le vee wa ll alo ng th e Arka nsas Ri ve r. Organi zers of the proj ect, whi ch began in 1979, have submitted th eir meas ure me nts to th e Guinness Boo k of World Records.

Artist Craig Cree Stone's Shadows Casting on the Shore is part of Belmont Shore, CA's street improvement project fea turin g more than 100 images spanning 14 city blocks. "Shadows" are cast onto sidewalks, painted on buildings, and etched on median boulders to create a lasting visual record of Belmont Shore's history and its contemporary life. Sponsored by the Public Corporati on for the Arts, this concept is likely to catch on. For more inform ati on, contact the PCA at (3 10) 983-3820. [photo: PCA]

Artist Joel Sisson 's fo llow-up to las t year's Green Chair Proj ect (i n whi ch 9 18 Adirondack chairs were pl aced fo r one day on dle front law n of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul) is-what else?-the Big Green Chair Proj ect. Sponsored by FORECAST Public Artworks, fo ur 13-foot-hi gh sea-green chairs were built by teenagers and di splayed at highprofil e sites thi s fa ll in Minneapoli s before mov ing to vaca nt lots in Twin City neighborhood . De igned to spur communi ty development effo rt , the big chairs became instant landmarks . Nex t year Sisson wa nts a chair on the White House law n. (photo: Jack Becker, IDS Center, Crystal Court, Minneapolis, MN) Agnes Denes ' Tree MO Lintain in Yl oj ar vi, Finland, is bodl a monumental earthwo rk and a new kind of land reclam ati on effort, conceived in 1982 and schedul ed fo r completi on in 1996.

Thi " li ving time capsule" in vo lving 10,000

After Malcolm Cochran had finali zed plans fo r Field of Corn (w ith Osage Oranges) he learned dl at the site in Dublin, Ohio-about 10 mil es north wes t of Co lumbu s-was once owned by Sam Frantz, a pioneer in corn hybridi zati on. The park has since been named the Sam and Eulalia Frantz Park after Sam and hi s wife. The work was commissioned by the Dublin Arts Coun cil as part of their Art in Public Places program . Since the 109 ears of concrete corn were completed in 1994, an Associated Press photo of them has gained national renown. [photo : Chas Krider] Building Sweeps is a yearlong site-s pecific "art acti on" by Michael Bramwell, sponsored by Creati ve Time in New York City. Anyone interested can join Bramwell every third Sunday, between 10 a. m. and 12 p.m. at 64 West 128dl St. Exploring dle simple acts of sweeping, mopping, and cleaning-in this case a city-owned Harlem tenement building-Bramwell effecti vely blurs dle boundaries of art, performance, and cultural acti vism. For more information contact Creati ve Time at (2 12) 206-6674.

A mini ature park in dle West Seventh ne ighborhood of St. Paul , MN, is now home to a newl y created work by sculptor Zoran Mojsilov. According to an arti cle in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, dle piece remains untitled ; M oj silov is quoted as saying "I'll let the neighborhood fight over what to name it." A web of steel rods weaves throu gh holes in limestone slabs and boulders forming a "cap" with its peak leanin g toward th e Mi ssissippi Ri ver. After vo lunteers pl ant ivy at its base, the green of the leaves will eventuall y mi x with the rustin g rods "like a patina." Moj silo v, 40, is a Yugoslav-born sculptor living in Minneapoli s. "My main interest is how th e stone can be shown in di fferent ways." [photo: Irene Krug Moj silov] One of th e three outd oor sculptures commi ssioned by th e Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind is by Meredith Bergmann , of New York City. Entitl ed A lma Mater, the pi ece depicts a youn g wo man sitting as she reads braill e with one hand and signs with the other. The five senses are portrayed in relief around th e hexagonal base. According to AIDB pres ident Joseph Busta Jr. "These sculptures are the beginning of what we hope will som eday be dl e first co llecti on of outdoor public art des igned es pec iall y for deaf and bli nd individu als.

44 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FALL/WINTER J995

Melinda Hunt's latest New York City endeavor in vo lves trees and wri ting. Letters to a Forest was presented September 30 at Long Meadow in Prospect Park. The project honors the restorati on of the hi stori c woodland of Prospect Park and features a seedling fo rest widl letters by audlors in response to public school students. Edward Hoagland responds to student Lewis Yung: "From my childhood afternoons in ... Pros pect Park .. .I grew to love New York's di verse greenery and blue-water public parks. Now I li ve in dle coun try, but my first feeling for trees was engendered in New York."

For more inform ation call (71 8) 965-8961. (illustration: courtesy the artist)

LISTINGS

PUBLICATIONS Time Capsule: A Concise Encyclopedia by Women Artists, edited by Robin Kahn , comme morates th e Un ited Nation s' Fourth World Conference o n Women he ld in Beijing. Thi s 700-page anthology of visual and written essays by more th an 500 women artists around the world is publi shed by Creative Time in conjunction with S.O.S. Int ' l, featuri ng Gu e rilla Girls, Lynda Ben g l is, Barb ara Kru ge r, Caro lee Schneemann , and many more . Kahn is a foundin g member of S.O.S. Int'l , an open co ll abo rative which creates monuments in th e form of books. She is also a fo undin g member of Agencia de Vi aje and other col laborati ves that produce artworks made by and fo r the public . For information, contac t Creative Time (2 12) 206-6674.

The Cultural Battlefield: Art Censorship & Public Funding, edited by Jennifer A. Peter and Loui s M. Crosier ($ 19.95 ; Gilsum , NH: Avocus Publi shing, 1995). Thi s book offers straightfo rwa rd perspectives on the validi ty of publi c funding for the arts. The meaning of obscenity and targets of censorship are presen ted throu gh real-life stories of arti sts and arts ad ministrators, including Denni s Barri e, Jock Sturges, and Susan Wyatt.

Art Lessons: Learning From the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding , by Alice Goldfarb M arqui s ($25.00; New York; Bas ic Books, 1995). Thi s book takes a fresh look at how Ameri cans fund the arts-and why. Our arts institution s have absorbed billions of dol lars over th e past 40 years , and now its time for a change. For those of us smaller victims caught in the middle of th e bloody NEA battle, it fee ls like thi s story is still being told.

Let's Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance , edited by Catherine Ugwu ($ 18.95 paperback; Seattl e: Bay Press, 1995). In recent years, perform ance art has become th e primary medium for challenging the boundaries between art and politics , as arti sts have creatively used its strategies to res pond to contemporary soc ial iss ues. Let 's Get It On is a long overdue hi story and stateof-the-art survey focusing on the performance art prac tice th at has emerged fro m the multicultura l centers of Brita in and th e United States.

The WPA Guide to NYC, Federal Writers Project, with introduction by Willi am H. Whyte ($ 15.95 paper; New York: The New Press, 1995). Ori g in ally publi shed in 1939 at th e time of the World's Fair, thi s " reprint," with man y maps , prints, and photos, was hail ed by th e New York Times in 1995 as one of the 10 best books ever written about the city. Thi s tour guide fo r time travelers offers New York-lovers and ' 30s buffs a fascinating look at life as it was li ved in the days when a trolley ride cost five cents and a room at the Plaza was $7. 50.

Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments , edited by Mary Anne Moser

Gardens of Revelation: Environm ents by Visionary Artists , by John Beard ley ($60;

with Doug las MacLeod ($40 ; Cambridge, MA: MIT lPress, 1995). Thi s book brings togeth er cri tical essays along with arti sts' projects to explore th e man y iss ues raised by th e creati on of virtual enviwnments and to provide a g limpse into wor lds that have been much discussed but rarely seen. In addition to 11 essays addressing th e social and cu ltural as pects of cyberspace, nine virtual environmenlts are presented, created over a three-year period as part of the Art and Virtual E nvironments Project at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

New York: Abbeville Press, 1995). This book indeed reveals in spirational images of dreamlike spaces. Author of Earthworks and Beyond (and articles for PAR) , Beardsley here investigates gardens, installations, and unique environments fro m France and Indi a, to Los Angeles and Houston. As professor and author Roger Cardinal (Ou tside r Art) dec lares: " [Gardens of Revelatiol/s] should be seen not so much as a compendium of treasures. Text and illustrati on combine to earn it pride of place on that select shelf of works true to the spirit of these exempl ary creators."

Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances, edited by Lynne Cooke and

Land Art by Gilles A. Tiberghi en ($65.00

Peter Wollen ($ 16.95 paper; Seattl e: Bay Press, 1995). Rev ealing th e "other side" of the spectacl e-th e production of images rather than the co nsumption of th em- thi s publication attempts to place the myr iad contemporary fo rm s of di spl ay in a hi storical context. Richly illustrated, with a diverse array of essays, Visu al Display covers everything from sci-fi movie special effects and modern medical imaging to 18th-century cab i nets of curiosity.

Saint Paul Cultural Garden , ($ 15; self-publi shed, 1995) with essays by Lucy Lippard , M ar y Jane Jacob, and others. T hi s hand some document of a unique pl ace created by poets and artists a:long St. Paul 's Mi ssiss ippi riverfront captures the special qualities of the project, and pro vides a hea lth y mi x of we ll written public art perspecti ves . To order, write Hamline Univers ity, Cliff Garten/Box 41,1536 Hewitt Ave., St. Paul , MN 55104.

ArtistWriter, a new bimonthly journal, was announced in July by Studio 25 00 Press in Pleasa nton , CA. Seeking to identify new trends in the arts, the journal uses independent writers from San Franci sco's B ay Area, includin g critic Dr. A lfred Ja n, curator George Rive ra, and writer Salli McQuaid.

For a free sample copy, write ArtistWriter, 4265 Diavila Ave nu e, Pleasa nton , CA 94588-8375 (e-mai l America Online: ARTISTWRIT @ao l.com), or phone (5 10) 846-4082. Subscription rates are $ 15 a yea r U.S., $20 Canada.

New York; Princeton Architectural Press , 1994). Earthworks of the late 60s revolutionized how art is created and perceived. Land Art examines th e movement close up, with such arti sts as Ch ri sto, Wa lter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Robert Smith son and others. A mu st for any coffee table.

ArtNetwork

Yellow

Pages ,

($ 12.95;

California; ArtNetwork, 1995). Th is is simpl y one of the most comprehensive reference books avail ab le to an arti st, with over 3,000 li stin gs . One can find lawyers and accountants, grants and grant writers, publi shers and packers. If it's not in here yo u probabl y don ' t need it.

A rt Without Rejection , by Sheila Re id ($ 18.00 ; France; Rush Editions, 1995). Thi s book has a personal tou ch that can be uplifting at times, yet unpoli shed at oth ers. It's refreshing to see a thoughtful treatment given to the subject of rejection (a nd creative blocks), with suggestions for arti sts, writers, and creative thinkers. With so many new co mmunications too ls ava il able, arti sts are beginning to redefi ne the role of agents and dealers; thi s book sugges ts new paths to take.

Five Years of Art in the Public Space (no pri ce; The Hague; Stroom haags centrum voor beeldende kunst (hcbk), 1995) For th e las t five yea rs Stroom hcbk in th e Netherlands, has sponsored a wide variety of artists, including most recently Amdrea Blum , James Turrell , and Vito Acco nci. Thi s hard-to-find catalog is j am med pack with great documentat ion of many great proj ects.

Boxes 1995-1999 (Owner 's Manual) , by Jennifer Sch losberg (self-pub li shed, 1995) .

From th e artist who brought yo u the Bugs of New York [see li stin gs PAR #11, p. 45] comes a series about correspondence. This beautifully produced limited edition essenti all y serves as a catalog, or a "box," containing doc uments of Schlosberg's proj ect. The seri es comprises four pieces, each consistin g of "a varying number of labeled wood boxes and a set of instructions th at enable yo u to create an evo lving self-portrait by accumul atin g and categorizing your mail. " The pi ece you select is custom- prepared for you and will take yo ur lifetime to complete. For more info call (8 18) 783-6209 (LA) or (212) 688-2907 (NY) .

Interpretations of the Interpretations (no price; Ames, IA ; Iowa State U ni versity, 1995) . Publi shed on the occasion of th e ex hi biti on of ph otograp hi c "ex plorations" by Kin g Au of Iowa State's Art on Campus Collection , thi s book considers the many ways in whi ch publi cly sited artworks can be photographed and presented in a gallery setting. Whil e th e res ults are mi xed, as are the subj ects, the effort is innovati ve, suggesting new fo rm s of public art apprec iat ion.

[Send entries for Listings to Public Art Rev iew, 2324 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55114]

FALL/WINTER 1995 PUBLIC ART REVIEW 45

NEWS AND VIEWS The Golden Horses Return Daniel Chester French and Edward Potter 's quadri ga, The Progress of the State, has gleamed fro m its spot on the loggia of the Minnesota State Capitol since 1906. It is one of Minnesota's earliest and best-known works of outdoor sculpture. In the course of almost 90 years' expos ure to the elements, both the bas ic sculpture and its gold leaf covering have been da maged. In 1994 the quad riga was taken to Connecti cut- the first time it had been taken down fo r repair- to Linda Merk-Gould of Fine Objects Conservation Inc. In July 1995 her repairs were completed and the quadriga soared once more to its accustomed location over the Capi tol's front doors. The Golden Horses are back and joining them on the far end of the Capitol Mall are new monuments to Mi nnesota Police and to Roy Wil ki ns, St. Paul-born civil rights leader. [Thanks to Moira F. Harris for this report and accompanying photo] NE A Aftermath E merging While the 104th Congress bulldozed the cul turallandscape this year, here at Public A rt Review, we' re as worri ed as anyone about federal support of the arts. Brian Wallis, reporting in the September Art in America, states: "House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has argued that the arts can subsist on pri vate subsidies, but a new survey, un ve iled by the Rockefe ll er Foundati on in Jul y, reported that 40 maj or foundations said they could not increase their arts Funding, and many intended to reduce their contribu tions. The report stressed that the phenomenal cul tural growth of the past 30 years has been a result of an integrated program of public and pri vate support fo r the arts." In short, "private funding is not in a position to make up whatever funding might be lost in the public sector." According to David Mendoza's letter in the NCFE Bulletin (by the National Campaign for Freedom of E xpression), the overriding debate was public versus pri va te: "public schools vs. pri vate schools, public parks vs. private lands, public telev ision vs. commercial telev ision, public in terest vs. pri vate profit. The government has been made into a scapegoatfo r some, even an enemy-and they are hell bent on dismantling it." He later mentions two efforts that look ahead to a new era of arts support. In September, a group of artists, arts activists, and funders met in Chicago to begin the discussion about how to support individual artists in this country (the NEA was fo rced to withdraw direct support). The NCFE, in partnership with the National Association of Artists Organizations, has created a new political fo rce on behalf of artists: the National Artist Ad vocacy Group. Starting with 20 di verse members, wi th over 100,000 individuals on their combined mailing lists, the advocacy group will " monitor issues including freedom of expression, health care, copyright, telecommunications policy, and public funding fo r culture." For more info rmati on, write the NCFE at 1402 Third Ave. , #42 1, Seattle, WA 98 101 (email : NCFE@ nwli nk.com).

First Night Braces for the Millennium More than 140 communities in the United States and Canada parti cipate in a public art phenomenon th at occurs every New Year's Eve. First Night International, a non-alcoholic al tern ati ve fo r di verse fa milies, is nothing short of a downtown revitalizati on strategy.

This past summer, First Night's board of directors establi shed the Creati on of a Millennium Comm ittee, whose charge is to initiate regional meetings of artists in the United States and Canada with ass istance fro m its membershi p.

They plan to " mobilize public parti cipation and artist in volvement among all First Night communities in the next fo ur years leading up to the millennium. " They hope to expand the idea pool at the local level. Committee member Zeren Earls will fac il itate meeti ngs of regional artist representati ves. First Night's Creati ve Program Awards will commence in 1996 (their 20th year), recognizing unusual use of spaces, unique ways of encouraging public participation and interacti on, innovati ve concepts appropriate fo r New Year 's ritu als, and any original programmati c ideas. For info rm ati on contact Fi rs t Night Intern ati onal, One Internati onal Place, Suite 5 16, Boston, MA 02 110-2600; (6 17) 345-0065.

Father Serra's Rest Stop Want to adopt a mile of hi ghway or a bridge?

Most states would applaud your generous offer of time and energy; they' d happily place your name on their plaque of thanks. But if you've been hired j ust to clean a rest stop, don' t move in and give your spare time fo r free. That, as Cal tra ns (the Califo rni a Transportati on Department) decided, is simply not acceptable.

Jerry Morissette was the first hired by San Mateo Coun ty in 199 1 to clean up a rest site along 1-280 near Hill sborough so uth of San Francisco. Morissette not onl y kept the building tidy, but began pl anting fl owers and fruit trees on the land between the parking area and a huge pointing statue of Father Junipero Serra. Morissette's home was a venerable pink ambulance parked in the parki ng lot and his work was aided by two dogs and three mentally handicapped teenage boys. Travelers and the local community were delighted as the Serra rest stop became both safe and beautiful. But

46 PUBLIC ART REVIEW FA LL/WINTER 1995

In June 1995 Ca ltrans ann oun ced that Morissette had to leave, as they pl anned to ask a corporati on to pay for rest stop mai ntenance.

Letters of outrage fro m the community bombarded Caltrans and numerous reports in the San Jose Mercury News led an about face.

By August 1995 Caltrans backed down, saying th at Mori ssette and his dogs could stay. hi s ambulance would be repl aced by a house trailer and the department even fe lt that his work could serve as a model for other rest stops.

There may not yet be a pl aque of thanks along 1-280, but the bearded caretaker of Father Serra's rest stop knows that the communi ty appreciates the natural oasis he created on a mi sty hilltop in No rthern Califo rni a.

[Thanks to Moira F. Harri s for thi s article]

Pumpkin Art Revival If you li ve in Denver and are getting in to the Halloween mood-or you' re simpl y " into j acko' -Ianterns"--check out the latest development in pumpkin-carving technology. The eighth annual Pumpkin Art Exhibit (October 25-28), at the Norwest Bank Atrium in downtown Denver, has a special secti on of "old masters'" work. Sponsored by Pumpki n Masters, manufac turer of pumpkin- and watermelon-carving ki ts and accessories, the free exhibi t includes more than 100 jack-o' -lanterns designed from various well-known works of art. If you need to spruce up your Hal loween display, get a kit and start carving! (photo: Pumpkin Masters)

NEW FROM BAY PRESS Let's Get It On The Politics of Black Performance Edited by Catherine Ugwu

Joel Shapiro

ISBN 0-941920-33-X $18.95 paperback

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Exuberant and expressive. Shapiro's sculptures balance between the figurative and the abstract. This installation of bronzes in the Garden is the first outdoor exhibition of his works. Included is an indoor component

Both an overdue history and a state-of-the-art survey of the emergence of politicized performance art in the U.S. and Britain.

Visual Display Culture Beyond Appearances Edited by Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen Discussions in Contemporary Culture #10

ISBN 0-941920-32-1 $1 6.95 paperback

A richly illustrated anthology of essays that discuss how different cultural contexts translate the meaning of visual information .

Culture in Action A Public Art Program of Sculpture Chicago

SAVE OUTDOOR SCULPTURE! (SOS!) Register all outdoor sculpture, current and new commissions Sponsor international symposium, Novembelr 16-19, 1996, "Playing for Keeps: A Game Plan to Save Outdoor Sculpture," Washington, D.C. Help sculptors, owners and administrators make informed decisions about new commissions and maintenance

Essays by Mary Jane Jacob, Michael Brenson , and Eva M. Olson This beautifully designed book expands on the underlying concepts of the seminal public art program "Culture in Action ."

ISBN 0-941920-31 -3 $20 softcover

Mapping the Terrain New Genre Public Art

For information about SOS! projects in your area and how to access the Inventory of American Sculpture via Internet, call 1-800-422-4612.

Edited by Suzanne Lacy An evaluation and critique of traditional views of public art. "An essential primer for those interested in what may prove to be the most important current of theory and practice in the art of our time ." -Choice ISBN 0-941920-30-5 $18.95 softcover

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But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism Edited by Nina Felshin A groundbreaking anthology about the recent explosion of art that agitates for progressive social change . "[A] wealth of contemporary art historical information ."

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Interactive Computer Kiosks for the Seattle Arts Commission . © 1994 Wiegman/Krumm.

Cliff Garten

Lake Superior College

Saint Paul, MN

Duluth, MN

George Morrison Minneapolis Community College, Minneapolis, MN

Grand Portage, MN

Jerry Rudquist

February 1, 1996

is the next deadline forthe program's Slide Registry, and several additional sites.

For application information, write to:

Minneapolis, MN

Minnesota State Arts Board

Michael Pilla

Moorhead State

Saint Paul, MN

University, Moorhead, MN

400 Sibley Street, Suite 200 Saint Paul, MN 55101 or call (612) 215-1600 or toll· free at (800) 8MN·ARTS.

THE TREE OF LIFE Inallgllral exhibition of 401() remarkable works created from wood and tree prodllcts celebrating the diversity of life and hllmankind!'s earthly and spiritllal connection to natllre. Cllest ",rator, Roger Manley THE AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM

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INNER HARBOR

INAUGURAL OPENING NOVEMBER 24 T H, 1995 410.653.5202

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BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

GRAND GALA NOVEMBER 11TH

FAX 410.653.5102

Chris Romano's zine, "Dreamboy," is discussed in "Public Art Anarchy." (pages 5-7) http://www.etext.orWZineslUnitCircle/dreamboy/

Pacificia Radio is referenced in "Radiodeath." (page 41) http://www.wideopen.igc.apc.org/pacifical

Dyke Action Machine offers "The Girlie Network" referenced in "Private BroadcastlPublic Conversations." (pages 8-11)

"The Plural Sculpture" is a multi-faceted interactive sculpture

by Jochen Gerz though Purchase College in New York. http://gaudi.va.purchase.edul-plrlartl

http://mosaic.echonyc.coml-damlindex.html

Barbara Hammer is collecting life experiences from lesbians.

The project is discussed in "Private BroadcastlPublic Conversations." (pages 8-11) http://mosaic.echonyc.coml-Iesbiansl

Electronic Exhibitions is a link to digital exhibitions on the web. http://www.uky.edulArtsource/exhibitions.html Electronic Visual Arts Journal is a forum for digital artists. http://www.uwo.calvisartsleva.html The Exploratorium in San Francisco offers electronic resources and exhibits. (page 20) http://www.exploratorium.edul "Exposure" is a on-line zine of digital computer art. http://ww.panteck.comlexposure/

Fine Art Forum is a news service covering art and technology. http://www.msstale.eduIFinearCOnlinelhome.html Fluxus is a virtual art gallery including a variety of disciplines.

A limited public art exhibit is posted from the U.K. http://dougal.derby.ac.uklgallery/maingallery.html

Public Art '95 was a public art conference held in Houston this summer. (page 31) http://riceinfo.rice.edulprojectsldepts.arts!PubllcArt95/ Public Domain is a nonprofit organization exploring the "interface between art, technology and theory." http://noel.pd.org:80/ Seattle offers a tour of public art projects in the city. http://www.seattleweb.com/scenelartlNorthArt.html Samatha Simpson is hosting an interactive life stories project. http://www.siriu.com/-samsimlproject_home-page.html Sonic Architecture is a nonprofit multi-disciplinary public art organization. (page 20) http://www.users.interport.net/-sonarclmaintext.html SPARC is a nonprofit public art center in Los Angeles http://latino.sscnet.ucla.edulmuralslsparcJSPARC.html

http://www.paoo(.comlfluxusl

"High Performance" was a on-line quarterly arts magazine.

Back issues can be accessed. . http://www.trnn.comlCommunitylhighperflHPome.html The International Sculpture Center has a on-line arts registry and information of publications and resources. http://www.dgsys.coml-sculpt/ The Intuit Home Page offers outsider, visionary art online. http://ifc.comlartlhome.htm .

The ISEA 95 page gives information on an international symposium on Electronic Art held last month in Montreal. http://lecaine.music.mcgill.ca/-isea9 5/index.html

Kaleidoscape is a forum for Internet artists. httpt/lkspace-.comi

The Los Angeles Murals Home Page tours L.A. murals. http://latino.sscnet.ucla.edulmuralsl

"The Spleen" is a project by Piotr Szyhalski referenced in "Private BroadcastlPublic Conversations." (pages 8-11) http://www.mcad.edulhome!faculty/szyhalski/Piotr The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose is a science center offering on-line exhibits. http://www.thetech.org/future.htm1l

Underground Art on the Net has links to original net art http://lls.unc.edu/brent/undergound.html The Voyager Company showcases CD-Roms, including works by George Legrady and Christine Tamblyn. http://www.voyagerco.com/.mterface!gallery.cgi The Andy Warhol Museum offers a guided tour through each floor of the building. http://www.usaor.netlwarhoVtour/tour.html The Weisman Art Museum showcases its innovative building design by Frank Gehry: http://hudson.acad.umn.eduIWAMhome.html

Media and Visual Arts displays projects sponsored by the Banff Centre for the Arts. http://www-nmr.banffcentre.ab.ca/

MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies was referenced in several articles in this issue. http://gis.mit.edulcavslcavs.html MIT Media Laboratory is developing "A Day in the Ltfe of Cyberspace," a collaborative project. http://tenten-7.1010.org/DynamolOlO.cgi

Wingspread is the home of the Albuqueque Public Art Program. http://www.wtngspread.comlab/abfa04.html HotWired is the on-line counterpart of "WIRED." http://www.hotwired.coml Selected columns of Nicholas Negroponte from "WIRED" are online. (see "Public Art Anarchy" pages 5-7) http://www.ucs.usl.edul-rgm1572lBook_ReviewslBein{L DigitaUcolumn.html

The Oregon Art in Public Places program has its own page. http://159.121.28.2511artbldg.html

Yahoo is the granddaddy compilation of links to web sites. http://www.yahoo.com/Art!

OTIS (Operative Term is Stimulate) is an art collective with extensive "artchives." http://www.otis.org/

These sites were accessed through Netscape Navigator 1.1 with a 28.8 Supra FAX/modem on a Performa 475. The URL's given are current as of September, 1995.

LANGUAGE AS A CULTURAL TRANSITION AN INTERVIEW WITH SU-CHEN HUNG

B

y

Anna

Novakov

Editor's note: The conclusion of this interview was missing from the last issue of Public Art Review. The following is the interview in its entirety. Our apologies to Anna Novakov and Su-Chen Hu.ng.

Anna Novakov : Often language is not just a practical means of communication, but in fact a fram ework for human identity and a way of understanding the world. In your most recent public project, which will be installed at the International Terminal of the San Francisco Airport, you address some of the intersections between language, culture, and the division between public and private space.

Su¡Chen Hung: I am focusing on the concept of transition, of the airport serving as a gateway between East and West. In addition , I address the concept of evolutionary change, in whi ch transition is "phrased" in a very slow, gradual manner, to avoid shock to travelers and create a subtle sense of arrival.

[The goal is] avoidance of high impact, great speed, and the MTV sensibility.

In 1976, when I first landed in San Francisco, I was very frightened. I came as an immigrant and had to find a way for myself in thi s new space. I had already learned some English in school. When I saw that at the terminal they had written "welcome" in Chinese, I immediately felt warm; my mother tongue was in this new place. That's why I want to includle in my new proj ect as many languages as I can. I want the travelers to feel that they are really welcome.

As an immigrant from Taiwan, I feel that my work is directly related to my personal experience. I hope that extends from my personal experience to a more universal immigrant experience.

Novakov: l find the intersection between different cultures and the intersection between public and private space a very compelling issue in your work.

Hung: As a student, I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, while at the same time I was living in a very traditional family. I was always on the borderline, trying to balance myself. These two extremes became a daily conflict for me.

Novakov: Your work utilizes a number of r~curring metaphors, the most notable being the use o/glass, and in particular the glass of storefronts or kiosks, traditionally arenas of commercial activity.

Hung: In 1985, I was invited by Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco to do a project on the outside of a storefront.

Every night, between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., I projected hair and water on the building across the street while I hid inside t!he storefro nt. It was fascinating to me that the passersby were not expecting to see art and yet in most cases accepted the projecti ons in a very spontaneous and natural way.

Novakov: You also used the glass/storefront metaphor in a video and performance installation [called] Sweet Red #2 at the New Museum in New York.

Hung: I started off as a photographer. I found the reflections of the water and the gl ass of the lens itself very interesting.

Then I started using the glass directly, through the video medium and the glass on the television monitors .

In Sweet Red #2 I pressed my lips against the glass The piece started with a performance on opening night. I was standing behind the glass, and I covered the window with wet rice paper. Between the paper and the glass I placed a piece of red string. I was there pressing my mouth against the glass while sitting inside the storefront eating the string. People viewed the perfo rmance from the sidewalk outside.

When the Sweet Red #2 tape was played back, you really got the presence of the glass. So at the New Museum windows , you have the storefront with the glass, and then the glass on the moni tors, linking everything together.

Novakov: Glass also plays a prominent role in the Market Street project, Silent Voice: I Have Something to Say. In order to give some background information to the reader, let me say that Silent Voice was a collaborative project between you and Gigi Janchang. It involved 25 kiosks along Market Street in San Francisco. This 1993 installation consisted of life-size photographs of immigrants, pressed up against at sheet of glass, set against a street background. They all wear black T-shirts with the words "I have something to say " written in their native language. In the lower right-hand corner they speak about their dual culutural identity. Below that are their names, ages, birth nations, and other immigration information.

It seems particulary important that this project was set on Market Street. If you look at the geography of San Francisco, Market Street is really a central thoroughfare, an artery that bisects as well as connects the city.

Hung: I got the idea in 1991, seven years after I became an American citizen. My first proposal was to have immigrants come 'and talk in a storefront. It would have been a live performance behind glass. This proposal was turned down by the city. I then went back, refined the whole proposal, and applied it to the existing advertising kiosks, in which the immigrants would be photographed and their messages presented behind glass.

The windows, in a storefront are related to commerce. People are expecting to see commodities. I likes to use commerce as a mask to invite people to look at the work and be able in that way to transmit something profound behind the immediate reaction.

Novakov: How concerned were you about using the kiosks, a medium that is usually used for advertising posters?

Hung: Very. That's why I designed the black T-shirts for them to wear. In addition, they all had to wear a black shirt or pants, On the T-shirt. in white paint it said "I have something to say," which was written in their own language. I wanted to work on that fine line between commercial and fine art. I intended to make them look like The Gap ads, whose posters at the time were also black and white. (A reporter from a local newspaper thought that it was a new ad from The Gap.) I wanted to confuse people and to merge art into commerce.

While most of the responses were very positive, it was also interesting that one photograph was stolen the next day, while others were vandalized and had graffiti written on them. In particular, I remember that the pictured Cambodian woman had written on it the words "you have to learn English" and "death ."

Novakov: Several of the images had the illusion that the glass was broken.

Hung: All the photographs were life-sized, so that you really get a sense of their presence pressing against the glass. Three of the posters had the illusion of broken glass on them. The posters are black and white but the crack on the glass is green.

The protective glass of the kiosk acts as a metaphorical barrier between the immigrant and the new culture. The barrier is invisible but solid. Even without language problems, they still feel more comfortable behind this glass, behind the barrier, than in the mainstream.

Anna Novakov writes about art in public places. She is an assistant professor of art history, theory, and art criticism at the San Francisco Art Institute.

ARTIST OPPORTUNITIES Broward Blvd. Streetscape Improvement Project. Deadline: November, 1995. Artists are invited to design the entry corridor to downtown Fort Lauderdale. Scope of services include stlreetscape design, plantings, bus shelters, and decorative lighting. The budget is $75,000. Contact Jean P. Greer, Public Art and Design Program, Broward Cultural Affairs Division, 100 S. Andrews Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 3330 I; (305) 357-7458.

Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. Deadline: November I. Slides are being accepted for a sculpture commission or mixed media piece celebrating the life of a founding physician. South Florida artists are encouraged to apply . Send a portfolio and SASE to Victoria E. Taylor, Senior Project Manager, Contract Art Inc., P.O. Box 520, Essex, CT 06426.

Bush Fellowships. Deadline: November 3. Stipends up to $36,000 are available to artists 25 or older living in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Wisconsin's ninth federal district. Contact Bush Artist Fellowships, E-900 First National Bank Building, 332 Minnesota St., St. Paul, MN 55101; (612) 227-0891.

The Seattle Arts Commission. Deadline: November 8.

Northwest artists are being sought for portable art works for the Seattle Water Department. Contact the Seattle Arts Commission at (206) 684-7171.

Key West AIDS Memorial. Deadline: November 25. The city of Key West, FL announces an international design competiti.on for an AIDS Memorial, scheduled to be completed by fall 1996. Entry fee of $35 plus a letter of request are required to receive an application. Send to Key West AIDS Memorial Fund, 1113 Fleming St., Key West, FL 33040; (414) 276-6355 or (305) 292-7722.

T. F. Green Airport, Warwick, RI. Deadline: December 15.

Three site-specific commissions are available. The total budget is $430,000. Contact Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, 95 Cedar Street, Providence, RI 02903; (401) 521-1351.

Sojourner Truth Memorial. Deadline January 1. Artists are sought for an outdoor artwork to commemorate Sojourner Truth. All media considered for this permanent sculpture, with a budget of $200,000. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Contact the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue Committee, c/o the Northampton Center for the Arts, 17 New South St., NOlrthampton, MA 01060.

Cedarhurst Sculpture Park. Deadline: ongoing. Sculptors are invited to submit slides of pre-existing works for installation in the 85-acre nature park for two to three years. Park will pay shipping, site preparation installation, and artist's travel (when possible). For information, contact Bonnie Anne Speed, Director of Visual Arts, Cedarhurst, P.O. Box 923, Richview Road, Mt. Vernon, IL 62864; (618) 242-1236.

The Pace Roberts Foundation for Contemporary Art. Deadline: ongoing. The foundation offers international residencies in San Antonio, and a London Studio program (for San Antonio artists).You need to be nominated by an art professional who has been asked to nominate artists for the program. Nominations will begin in spring 1996. For more information, contact the Pace Roberts Foundation, 445 North Main Ave., San Antonio, TX 78205.

Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum. Deadline: unknown . Slides of large outdoor sculpture are being cOlllsidered; selected works will be placed in the 250-acre sculpture park.

Pyramid Hill pays all expenses for accepted pieces; sites are chosen by artists. Contact Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum, 1763 Hamilton-Cleves Road, Hamilton, OH 45013; (513) 868-1234.

[PAR publishes free listings for competitions and commissions. If you wish to pursue any of them, please check to verify deadlines and addresses. If you have information to announce, please send them to PAR by September J and March 1 respectively for publication in October and April.]

WEB CONNECTIONS The following is a list of sites on the ~rld Wide Web that may be of interest. We tried to include sites referenced in articles in this issue of Public Art Review. This list is by no means comprehensive, and is only meant to wet the appetite.

New web sites are being added every day and artists are continuing to push the envelope by developing increasingly complex graphical pages. So if you're connected, visit some of these sites and check out the "new" medium for public art.

Public Art Review is planning to join the revolution and have a web page online by November. Initially, we will post the artist opportunities section and a summary of issue contents, but our plans include posting a variety of public art information. So lookfor us this fall.

The Alabama State Council on the Arts sponsored 10 billboards created by local artists. http://www.the-matrix.com!asca/streets/ An Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War by George Legrady is referred to in "Private BroadcastlPublic Conversations" (pages 8-11). http://www.arctlash.com!gallery95/anecdote.html Arc is a interactive juried media festival which offers a gallery of digital projects. http://www.arctlash.com!index.html Art Crimes is a gallery of international graffiti and information http://www~gatech.edulgraf/indexlIndex.Art_Crimes.html

ArtNet ~b gives artists their own digital gallery http://www.awa.com!artnetweb/#top A collective artist gallery called Art on the Net, of artists from a variety of disciplines. http://www.art.netIWelcome.html ArtsWire is a network for communication between artists and arts organizations. http://www.tmn.com!OhlArtswire/www/awfront.html Holly Hughes and George MacLeod have established The Bridge which details their community public art projects. http://www.runt.edul-bridge/homepage.html Breaking Out of the Virtual Closet is the world's longest collaborative sentence, recently purchased by a collector.. http://math240.lehman.cuny.edulart/index.html The Buzzard's Virtual Reality is a list of links to galleries, museums, and digital art. http://www.in1i.netl-cwtIart.html Chiat/Day is an advertising agency offering a virtual art gallery. http://www.chiatday.com/web A graduate student, Serena Lin, has a created a interactive project called the "Collective Memory Palace." http://imda.umbc.edulimda/people/serena/palace.html Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Wrapped Reichstag" project has web site which includes visuals. (pages 28-29) http://www.cs.tu-berlin.del-phade/christo.html The Civilized Explorer is an eclectic list of links to art sites around the world. http://www.crl.com!-philip/Arthome. html The Dia Center for the Arts sponsors a interactive project called "Fantastic Prayers." http://www.d.iacenter.org/rooftoplwebprog/fprayer/fprayer.html

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