Collecting the Cloud, Feeding the Crowd

Peter SamisAssociate Curator,Interpretive MediaSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art

ALI-ABA 2012 San Francisco March 19, 2012Jochen Gerz, The Gift (detail)

“Knowledge… has broken out of its physical confines (the pages of a book or the mind of a person) and now exists in a hyperconnected online state.”

–David Weinberger via REBECCA J. ROSEN

As if to confirm…

“For the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument.”

“the smartest person in the room is no longer a person but the room itself.

“this also means that if the room — the network — is stupid, we ourselves will be made more stupid.”

–Rebecca Rosen in dialogue with David Weinberger“our task is to learn how to build smart rooms.”

That’s what’s known as Curating.

Both in the museum…

And on the Web. Here’s an early example.

Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July’s Learning to Love you More

[In 2002, before the rise of the blogosphere and Web 2.0 platforms, Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July launched a collaborative online project that invited people all over the world to perform and respond to creative assignments: a kind of socialized ‘art school.’ Participants followed the artists’ simple instructions and submitted documentation or “reports” on their assignments to the project’s website.]

This was the last assignment.

The site became a book, which you can buy at Amazon… (or at the SFMOMA MuseumStore!)

When SFMOMA acquired this collective artwork, we got more than just a website. Here’s a glimpse…

[And here are some of the drawings and photos a year later, archivally matted and stored.]

Social practice art = relational aesthetics

[Let's listen to the artists themselves give a little background on the project and the unforeseen sequels that ended up being cross-woven among participants from all over the world. This anticipates the social web, which we will discuss in more detail later.]

An example of piggybacking:Assignment #12:Get a temporary tattoo of one of Morgan Rozacky's neighbors.

And in the gallery:

[In 2010, as part of the exhibition The More Things Change, SFMOMA invited Bay Area artist Stephanie Syjuco to develop an in-gallery presentation of Learning to Love You More. Rather than making a curatorial selection of a few assignments, Syjuco opted to translate Fletcher and July’s online artwork into a different time-based medium—a digital slideshow in which all contributions for all the assignments were presented: two assignments a day, projected side by side.]

And in the gallery:

Collecting works like this leads us to…

[Technology issues are now Intimately interwoven with curatorial and aesthetic issues.]

And internally, across departments:

Team Media: • Curators• Conservators• Registrars• Media

technicians• IP managers

Addressing time-based and digital art issues… since 1996!

Some of those issues are technical: think of the ever more rapidly evolving media format and hardware standards.

[From the job description for the New Media Conservation Administrator]

Besides, what’s the shelf-life of a standard these days?

“The content has a longer lifespan than the technology does.”

Photo: SMcGarnigle

Piggybacking —>Linking w/ an attribution

—> Pirating

?In the world of copyright, where does building on each other’s work become uncool? Or in a world where everybody is borrowing sentence fragments from everyone else, be they visual or linguistic, what’s a copyright lawyer to do?

On the Web itself, a lively debate ensues.

The Internet is inherently a CULTURE OF LINKING:

“the emerging sense of the author as moderator — someone able to marshal ‘the wisdom of the network.’”–Bob Stein via Maria Popova, aka @brainpicker

“It’s all about LINK LOVE."–Maria Popova

Here’s a flaming retort: is CURATING just a grandiose term for SHARING?

“IP, as a term, is inherently flawed and anachronistic in its focus on ownership (“property”) in an age of sharing and open access…"

Continuing with Maria for a minute:

Personal reflection writ large as social sharing… with artwork as an impetus.

[Inspired by the current Rineke Dijkstra show]

Or at a simpler level:

[Whether it’s through a Pin or a tweet, pictures of our artworks seep into the Web through many ports.]

Where does that lead a museum that wants to be…

It’s clear that our visitors—both on-site and online—want access to our material

• For creative use• For personal reflection• For projection into the

public sphere as part of their own life and identity

Are the artworks* ours to give?

*or rather their representationsAre they ours to withhold?

• For the artists?• For their descendants/Estates?• For the visitors who pay at the

gate?• For the visitors who find us for free

through a link on the Web?• For the Future?Just who is the Future—and where are they

today?

For whom do we hold these works in public trust?

Thank you.