Since the establishment of the World Wide Web, questions have proliferated around the possibilities, value and collectability of its associated contemporary art forms.
The web provides a single site for the creation (and sometimes co-creation), distribution, review and remix of an art form that takes as its medium: code, images, text, video, music and social relations. Historically, the value of an artwork resided in its uniqueness. Now artists, audiences, curators and collectors grapple with an infinitely replicable and distributable art form. This panel discusses an electrifying cluster of controversies: the subversive intentions and emancipatory motivations of many media artists; the needs and concerns of public art collectors and conservators; the opportunities for private collectors and the interests of high art market speculation.
This panel is chaired by Ruth Catlow, artist, co-founder and co-director Furtherfield, established in 1997 for art, technology and social change.
Steve Fletcher – Co-founder of Carroll / Fletcher, a recently established commercial gallery specialising in contemporary socio-political, cultural, scientific and technological themes
Lindsay Taylor – Salford University Art Curator who established the first UK public digital arts collection at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery
Please visit this page to register for this talk.
1) purified social process. Screenshot from VisitorsStudio, by Furtherfield 2011
2) The Lover by James Coupe. Surveillance video installation commissioned by Harris Museum, 2011