Brian Wallace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Er, Robin--or rather, Nick Negroponte--how many people just watched the
> Super Bowl? I haven't noticed many changes since last weekend. I'm
> familiar enough with your thinking,Robing, to suspect/hope that there
> was at least a smidgen of irony in your post.
>
I don't swallow Negroponte's techno-faith anymore than I do all this
third wave stuff. But I do know that there is a shift in perception
going on right now that is at least as important as the invention of
photography. I'm also quite absorbed by the notion of hypertext, which
goes back to the Talmud through attempts to describe the quantum particle.
 
My main point is that museums shouldn't feel as though they have to
invest a lot of time and money in technology when they already have
what the technology can offer in the form of the museum itself, at
least in a basic form. An art object is also a link to other objects
and ideas and is virtual in the sense that it's not wholly present.
Art historians spend their lives investigating those links. What
Negroponte and others are suggesting is that technology may provide
us with new tools, including the one I'm using now to send this
message, something that couldn't be done (at least by me) five
years ago.
 
One more thing. I'm involved with a project for the web called
"The Greenberg Symposia" that is, in part, about naming art
and art movements. Artists like Pollock described what they did
while critics like Harold Rosenberg gave it a name (and to Clem
Greenberg, killed it). I keep thinking about those towns in Wales
with names a hundred letters long because they aren't actually
called by a name but by a description (the town down the road past
the church...). Negroponte's bits are a lot like that Welsh town.
So, too, are projects like the Getty's Art and Architectural Thesarus.
 
My last thoughts on this thread.
 
Robbin Murphy
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