“Is this Thing On?”: Anecdotes from Installing Digital Art

Pulling from conversations and interviews with various art professionals, I aim to reflect on recent concerns about the display, maintenance, shipment, and other logistical concerns unique to the exhibition of digital art and work made with emerging technology. Problems arising from hardware malfunction (both installation and computational), software depreciation, insufficient budgets, and overwhelming deadlines, this presentation will analyze growing issues facing emerging technology in exhibition settings.

Through sharing these conversations and reflecting on the various technical demands posed by digital art, this talk will discuss how these issues manifest in the overall mixed-quality of exhibitions focusing on emerging technology. The technological requirements of digital art pose challenging questions art world professionals, and these get particularly confounded when those individuals frequently lack first-hand knowledge of the proverbial “gear.” As a result of this disconnect — again a growing concern for artists working with institutions mounting their first digital art expo — can often result in misrepresentation, pigeonholing the work, and couching the intellectual achievements of the work into tech-spectacle.

It is the aim of this presentation to imagine better contexts and conditions for digital art professionals to present work in an effort to expand the context of the medium beyond mere tech-fetishism. By sharing stories of the pitfalls and paragons of digital art installation, we can collectively try to elevate the medium beyond it’s ever-worrisome marginalization.