Polemic: An Allergic Reaction - The eminence grise in our Art Schools

Artist/academic Pat Hoffie has been brooding on the rise and rise of the éminence grise in our teaching institutions and warns of the perils of giving in and being swept along by the current of the times. She is not the only commentator to observe that the visual arts created an irritating skin condition for itself in the eighties when, in search of institutional support, it mimicked the language of professionalism and thus unwittingly exposed itself to the corrosive influence of bureaucracy. This is here discussed.

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Fresh Portals for the Caravanserai: art and new media in India and Australia

In Delhi early in 2001, a new media research and development program Sarai: The New Media Initiative was launched carrying the energy and quality of intellectual exchange embedded within the history of the caravanserai, translated through the colourful codes, cants and images of public urban life within India's cities. Sarai is a bold initiative facilitating formal and informal partnerships within India and internationally between the likes of hackers, philosophers, artists, media theorists, graphic designers, anthropologists, filmmakers and software developers. Some of the names which appear in this article include Meena Nanji, Rehan Ansari, Graham Harwood, Monica Narula, Sarah Neville, Mari Velonaki and Mukhul Kesevan.

Samara Mitchell

Jon McCormack's Evolving Ethics

Most readers would probably have noticed that talk about A-life technology (or any technology for that matter) has a definite shelf life. Liminal Product [LP] quizzed internationally acclaimed computer artist Jon McCormack, whose paper [Re]Designing Nature given at dLux media arts FutureScreen symposium on Artificial Life in October 2000, and recent piece, Eden exhibited at Cyber Cultures, Casula Powerhouse, in the same year, articulate many of the concerns about A-Life that Australian artists grapple with.

Liminal Product

Do Art-droids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Peter Robinson and Jacqueline Fraser were the first two New Zealand artists ever to be included in the Venice Biennale. Both were chosen as a result of their work, rich in conceptual layering and with roots in Maori culture, but wrapped in appealingly conventional presentation styles with plenty of hooks for an international audience. This fact leads Butt to the discussion surrounding the support for New Zealand's arts and culture sectors, pointing to a few examples such as Cuckoo, The Physics Room web project series and artists such as Sean Kerr and Warren Olds.

Danny Butt

Is Any Body Really There? Hybrid/Performance Arts

In a work that refuses language and conventional psychologising, Mary Moores production Exile, which opened at the Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music at The Studio, Sydney Opera House in 2000, the ascribed meaning is an experience rich in identification. This is pleasurably disorienting theatre that says it all about the immersive experience from 3D to Cinemascope to TODD-AO to Cinema to VR. Other new media performance and installation works are brought into focus such as the Melbourne-based Company in Space work Trial by Video (1997), Liquid Gold by Lisa O'Neill, that of Queensland media artist Keith Armstrong and the Melbourne performance company The Men Who Knew Too Much.

Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter

The E-volution of New Media Art

Kathy Cleland

Australian New Media: An Active Circuit

Through a process of active lobbying by various people around the country in the mid-eighties, the funding and institutional support for art and technology practice in Australia began to materialise. Some key figures in this push were Stephanie Britton, Louise Dauth and Gary Warner who saw the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) come into existence. The progress of the Australian new media arts scene is here documented from these early years and the various initiatives and supportive programs and events through to what is now the fundamental arts and cultural practice of the twentieth century. Artists Maria Miranda, Norie Neumark and Mari Velonaki are featured.

Julianne Pierce

Out of Australia: International Exposure

This article poses the question of what new media art exhibitions, as international exports, can offer to us as a nation, as a new media community and as individual artists, and of how they can function in terms of the transmission and propagation of certain ideas and images into what might be called the world brain. To discuss this Wallace looks at the structure and outcomes of PROBE, the first large-scale exhibition of contemporary, new media art ever held in Beijing which featured the work of Patricia Piccinini, Justine Cooper, Leon Cmielewski/Josephine Starrs, Brenda L. Croft, Zen Yipu and Jen Seevink, as well as including a range of internet sites.

Linda Wallace

Caspar Fairhall Paintings Constructions Drawings Digital Works

Galerie Dusseldorf 13 May - 6 June

Robert Cook

Between Phenomena

curated by Raymond Arnold Plimsoll Gallery Centre for the Arts Hobart 30 March - 22 April 2001

David Hansen

Stephen Wickham/Stefan Weisz: Photographs

Stephen McLaughlan Gallery Melbourne 6 - 30 June 2001

Christopher Heathcote

No access, Terry Summers Head-on, Kim Demuth Full stop, Sam Sexton

Soapbox Gallery, Brisbane 1-27 June 2001

David Broker

Winterbodies

Agnieska Golda, Zofia Sleziak, Stephanie Radok, Frances Phoenix, India Flint, Lisa Harms, Julie Robinson Wayville Showgrounds Adelaide 17-24 June 2001

Cath Kenneally

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