articles

C C - Computer Aided Curating

By Eva Grubinger, 25 September 2008

Contemporary art is reflecting the many questions arising in our current culture. It has been fundamentally altered through the development of new transport and communication media. We now have a totally different world view. Distances count for nothing as an increasingly comprehensive communication network weaves itself around a seemingly shrinking globe. Messages that were previously limited to a physical carrier can now travel on virtual journeys. The immaterialisation process developing in telematic culture raises questions which are of particular interest to younger artists. Themes, techniques and aesthethic strategies are changing.

C@C is a newly developed system concerned with the production, presentation, documentation and distribution of contemporary art in electronic networks.

The graphic interface of C@C makes it possible for even the most untrained user to climb on board the Data Network. The C@CNavigator enables the visitor to view the created Information-works while understanding the relation between the participating artists. In the Public Discussion Area the visitor has the opportunity to take part in the ongoing discourse about a specific piece and in the Business Class the work can be acquired. With the help of a specially developed C@C Editorial system, artists can construct complex works without any previous knowledge of programming.

One of the tasks of C@C, as a forerunner in this new sphere, is to research and further develop the traditional relationship between art and the public.

C@C will go online on the 26th November, and this will be marked in the Berlin gallery EIGEN+ART when the work of the first three users will be presented. The Austrian based artist Christine Meierhofer ( <chrissie AT thing.or.at> ) is reinstating the value of the daily practice of sampling (ie. the use of foreign material). Meierhofer presents a selection of masterpieces stolen from public collections. Through her work Commission Theft she invites commissions where the collector can order an exact replica of how the stolen masterpiece would fit within their home. Meierhofer work refers to the heated discussion about the relationship between the public and the private domain which culminated in the Clipper chip debate.

Through a classically artistic discipline, sculpture, kon Wium Lie ( <howcome AT dxcern.cern.ch> ) refers to the ecological and economical principle of production of C@C. Objects are manufactured only on demand. Like DNA, the abstract description of the sculpture is available through the net. With the aid of a so called Concretisation Machine, the sculpture (a green nose) is being produced. Lie is a Researcher. He works in the European Centre for Nuclear Research CERN in Geneva, where he is further developing the World Wide Web.

Coming from an artistic background, Pit Schultz (pit@contrib.de) from the Berlin Group 'Botschaft' uses quasi-scientific methods. His <PLUG> Orgasmatron 0.1 Alpha is a collection of brain waves that were measured and digitally registered by means of a specific machine during orgasm. Schultz paradoxical archive of data plays with the tension between technological and erotic euphoria.

C@C has an office until September 1995 in KUNSTWERKE/ Institute for Contemporary Art and Theory, and in the course of the coming year will organise several lectures and discussions (C@C Discussions with the Artists December 1994, Don't Postpone Joy, Networking Can Be Fun February 1995, FileOptions Navigate Annotate Spring/Summer 1995).

As an innovative project in the field of art, C@C will be present at exhibitions, art fairs, festivals and lectures in Germany, Britain, Austria and Switzerland to a public outside the World Wide Web.

Eva Grubinger, November 1994. <grubi_AT_contrib.de>