Web site offers artists "democratic forum"
Article on media art in Moscow by Dan McKinney, from the Moscow Time, 1996.
The Theremin Computer Center is regularly saturated with
a cacophony of sound. Located on the grounds of the Moscow
Conservatory, the small studio stuffed with electronic equipment
is plunged daily into eerie dissonance as piano scales clash
with viola solos and opera arias. The harmonic melange is
an appropriate backdrop for pioneering Russian computer
artist, Alexei Shulgin, whose dissonant views and eclectic
wit often catch his listeners off guard. "I
see the mundane world around me as an endless absurdity.
My response is art," said Shulgin with a subversive smile.
"Being an artist is the only honest profession. I don"t
claim to be of any use to the world, to society. I just
do what I find interesting." Despite the 33-year-old
Moscow artist"s cultivated air of detachment, his work has
attracted substantial acclaim in Russia and beyond for his
exceptional use of the Internet as an open space for art. The Moscow World Wide Web Art Center, which
Shulgin founded and has headed since 1994, is ranked by
the American computer firm Pointcom as among the top five
percent of the world"s most innovative Web sites. For many
Moscow artists, the virtual art gallery, which currently
is running some 16 original exhibits from photographs to
performance art, gives them a chance to display their work,
often for the first time. Although Shulgin is
the first to admit that art"s position on the Web is ambiguous
at best, he is sure of one thing: "The Internet is the most
democratic forum artists have ever had. It is giving more
of them more access to each other than ever before. Besides its permanent exhibits, the Center recently
created its own award for art excellence on the Web called
"WWWArt Award," which is an effort to recognize outstanding
Web site designs as unwitting art. The object of the award
is to find Web sites that don"t advertise themselves as
art, but deserve the aesthetic distinction. During one of
Shulgin"s recent digital meanderings, he found the winner
for this year"s "Most Subtle Play with Sexual Symbolism"
award, which was an American Web site about the Korean War
that includes pictures of large bombers with risque mascot
maidens painted across the airplanes" noses. "It's
uncertain whether the artist who posted these pictures realized
the potent symbolism of juxtaposing the image of an attractive
woman and the protruding fuselage of an airplane, but I
think it"s pretty clear," Shulgin said. "This is art and
it needs to be recognized." The confusion as
to what does and does not qualify as art on the Web is a
problem of context, said Shulgin, who was an established
and well-exposed photographer before ever beginning his
pioneering work with computers. "If I put on
horns and a tail and run through the streets naked, people
say I"m mad, but if I invite the media first and make an
announcement about a performance - it becomes art," he said.
"Likewise, art on the "Net lacks art"s traditional accoutrements
such as critics, sponsors and, most importantly, physical
monuments like museums and art institutes, all of which
make traditional forms of art legitimate." But,
according to Shulgin"s computer art colleague Tanya Detkina,
her medium"s unofficial status also has a few unexpected
benefits. "So far, institutions for turning art objects
on the Internet into buyable and sellable commodities do
not yet exist. Accordingly, you don"t find the corruption,
hypocrisy and envy that have become hallmarks of institutionalized
art." One of the obvious advantages of the Moscow
Art Center is its wide accessibility, allowing artists to
establish contacts with colleagues the world over. For
25-year-old experimental filmmaker Olga Lialina, the Internet
has been a miraculous resource. "One of the problems with
experimental film is just getting information about it.
With the "Net, I can find stuff in minutes that would normally
be impossible to uncover." Having attended
Shulgin's seminar for the past three months, Lialina recently
started publishing her own online film journal and has been
getting mail from all over the globe. One of her readers
is an experimental filmmaker from Paris, who, since linking
up with Lialina on the Web, has agreed to come to Moscow
in person early next June for a display of his own work
at the Museum of Cinema. About half of the exhibits
currently running in the Art Center are digitalized versions
of photographs and reproductions of art already displayed
in galleries, a sign that the number of artists who use
the computer itself as a medium is still relatively small.
Shulgin thinks he knows why: "Artists are discouraged from
using the computer, because computer art doesn"t exist and
can"t." "The problem is that what an artist
did a year ago already looks shabby and antiquated today
because the technology changes so rapidly," said Shulgin,
who finished a Moscow technical school with a degree in
cybernetics. The artist has a hunch about who is responsible
for the world"s unhealthy obsession with technical progress.
"People like what"s new. Its all part of the American ideology
that everything has to be super - super fast, super convenient,
Super Bowl." Ideally, Shulgin would like to
use technology to try to broaden Internet users" perspective
of what can be considered art on the Web. Despite the artist"s
infectious enthusiasm for the project, he has no illusions
about his equipment. "I have no warm feelings for computers.
The machine is ultimately empty, thoughtless and soulless." To find the Moscow Art Center on the Web,
visit:(http://sunsite.cs.msu.su/wwwart/)
Copyright
1996 Independent Press
The Moscow Times May 21, 1996
