What is Curatorial Design?

Steve Gibson performing When Ghosts Will Die, Victoria, BC, spring 2005

digital media

Artist-curator Blake Shell looks at her work of art at “Windows into Art,” June 2010; photo by Christina Broussard-Pearson.

Like painting, sculpture, etc. we talk about it as both a form and a technology, but its make up and the way we experience it differs widely.

Kathi Rick and Anne John’s video installation at “Windows into Art,” June 2010; photo by Christina Broussard-Pearson.

Ephemeral• Embodies both the spatio-

temporal positioning found in the preposition, epi––“on, “upon,” “on the surface of”––and the noun, hemera, day: upon a day

• Suggests a state of temporariness, an object existing but for a fleeting moment

• Involves an aesthetic of beauty found in the moment, of loss and of passing

From Dene Grigar’s “E-Ject:  On the Ephemeral Nature, Mechanisms, and Implications of Electronic Objects”

Dene Grigar performing “Things of Day and Dream” in the MOVE Lab, a black box site; photo by Jeannette Altman. Live performance constitutes an ephemeral art form.

Dene Grigar, experiencing Simon Biggs’ work, “reRead,” DAC 2009, UC Irvine, December 2009

Immersive

From the Latin verb, “immergere,” or to dip, immersion is a quality of digital media where the “active creation of belief” (Murray 319) occurs so effectively that one dips into a new reality, a new space, and a new world different than the one usually occupied (Grigar).

“They created an appearance of reality by tricking the senses through a mix of technical manipulations” (Dziekan 76).

From “Optical Illusions 4 Kids,” http://opticalillusions4kids.blogspot.com

DIGITAL MEDIA IS AN ANCESTOR OF THE OPTICAL ILLUSION

Curating involves Aesthetic, Material, & Spatial practices

Curator’s

aesthetic

Audience’s

aesthetic

Space

Material Object

“A dialectic of relational thinking that points to the inherent tension that exists in the very structure of their exhibition” (76).

Virtuality

. . . has “a dialectical nature: its cross-referencing of what is being experienced through imaginative immersion ‘within’ the artwork with what remains ‘without” (Dziekan 80).

Steve Gibson and Dene Grigar perform Virtual DJ over the net, with Gibson in Victoria, BC and Grigar in Dallas, TX; spring 2005; photo by John Barber

Curatorial Design

Dene Grigar captures the photo she takes of herself with an iPhone in real time for an online site

“. . . how the overlaps and exchanges that characterise the integration of digital media in real space [may] lead to a reconsideration of the exhibition interface” (Dziekan 83).

The 3D image of an engine seemingly pops up out of the iPad frame with the help of the augmented reality program, Metaio; “Autovation,” by CMDC OMSI Fellows, spring 2012