Curating on the Web: The Evolution of Platforms as Spaces for Producing and Disseminating Web-Based Art

Marialaura Ghidini

doi:10.3390/arts8030078

Abstract

By analysing a series of exhibition projects responding to central changes in web technology since its public unveiling (1991), this study identifies a historical trajectory for discussing the evolution of curating on the web. Such evolution highlights how curators have devised exhibition models that operate as platforms for not only displaying art specific to the web, but also for producing and disseminating it in a way that responds to the developments of web technology—and its socio-cultural and economic impact. With the massification of web tools, in fact, these platforms have generated distributed systems of artistic production free from the physical and conceptual limitations of the gallery and museum space. They have not only become spaces for displaying art, but also platforms that nurture its production, different modes of audience engagement and critique the canons of the institutionalised art world. Originating from the desire to reduce the historical fragmentation of this field of work and its partial mapping, this study follows a periodisation that starts from the early internet, with its BBS-enabled platforms such as ARTEX (1980), to introduce the 1990s experimentations with the web browser and the developments of projects like äda’web (1995). It then dives into the Web 2.0 when, with the platformisation of the technology, curators developed an array of approaches for adopting existing web services, as in the instances of CuratingYouTube (2007–present) and #exstrange (2017). Lastly, it outlines the trends of today’s web, which saw the birth of projects like the blockchain-enabled cointemporary (2014), to then draw conclusions about the relevance of this historical trajectory in the field of curatorial studies and the production of web-based and digital art.

Highlights

Rationale for This Study and Method of ResearchStarting from a personal desire to explore the specificities of curatorial work on the web, in 2009I launched a web-based curatorial platform for producing, displaying, and distributing art that I commissioned for thematic group exhibitions, or-bits.com (2009–2015)
The genealogy of curating on the web proposed by this study shows the close correlation that this field of work has with the history of its own technology, and the increasing commercialisation of web-based art
With an understanding of the web as an alternative space of production for art that did not have a house in the gallery and museum, those curators started to act as nodes of distribution, supporting exchanges and criticism concerning the institutional art world’s neglect of net.art and web-based artworks as art in their own right—as in the instance of äda’web and later Runme

Summary

Introduction

Rationale for This Study and Method of ResearchStarting from a personal desire to explore the specificities of curatorial work on the web, in 2009I launched a web-based curatorial platform for producing, displaying, and distributing art that I commissioned for thematic group exhibitions, or-bits.com (2009–2015). Through the commission of site-specific artworks, I began to expand my understanding of curating site- for the web, and I started to see new possibilities for curating exhibitions across online and offline sites of display. This was because I saw the challenge of responding to different interfaces as a way to develop new modes of engagement with web-based art. I began to curate exhibition projects that explored the relationship between the web interface and offline interfaces, such as galleries, radio broadcasts, books, and the printed page.

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Conclusion