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Tate drawn into the web
5 October 2000

Chlo‘ Veltman ponders the future for technology artists in the institutional world of bricks and mortar galleries

The description of Tate Britain as "the home of 500 years of tasty babes" rather jars with one's normal impression of the art gallery, particularly when it goes on to mention having "psychological props of the British social elite".

It might strike you as a rather odd advertisement for this pillar of the British art world. If you click on "Tate Art Projects Online" on the Tate web site, then go into the oddly named "Uncomfortable Proximity" icon followed by "Britain", you may be surprised to find works by William Hogarth or Thomas Gainsborough defaced with the side effects of syphilis.

So, what exactly is going on at the Tate? You can ask an artist called Harwood, a "new media artist" of the Mongrel collective who doesn't like to use his first name, Graham. The Mongrel is a group of technology-based artists and designers.

In his own inimitable words, having been forced into "an uncomfortable proximity with the economic and social elite's use of aesthetics in their ascendancy to power", Harwood has created "a legitimate counterpoint" to the Tate's institutional agenda.

Far from resenting Harwood's kamikaze assault on its collection, the Tate has embraced it, commissioning the work alongside a piece entitled Le Match Des Couleurs by the multi-media artist Simon Patterson.

It forms part of a new digital arts initiative, which was launched in June. Sandie Nairn, director of national programmes at the Tate, said: "The Tate is not an experimental digital centre, but we've long had a vision to work directly with digital artists."

"Net art", as it is called, has grown significantly from its roots on obscure web-based mailing lists and dedicated web sites in the late 1980s. A slippery phenomenon, described by the American digital art critic Rachel Greene as a mixture of "communications and graphics, email, texts and images," net art can encompass anything from an aesthetically driven video game to a screen saver, a digital painting or a piece of installation art. As with modern art, anything goes - you can even bring your dirty bed along as long as there is a computer screen on top.

Infinitely reproducible and lacking (at least for the moment) in any real material value, art works created for the internet ostensibly would be of little interest to traditional art museums with their collections of unique and far more valuable objects.

With the prevalence of the internet in people's lives and the potential for attracting sponsorship deals from major technology corporations, galleries and museums can no longer really ignore new media. Even the most traditional of museums and collections are beginning to understand the web's potential beyond the simple stuff, such as opening hours, current exhibits and parking facilities.

Collections such as the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection are engaged in long-term projects to digitalise their holdings so that all the works are stored online. Although the Wallace Collection does not commission or acquire new art, plans are in motion to develop educational resources online through quizzes and interactive games based on the museum's works.

Colin Jenner, web manager at the Wallace Collection, said: "Although our web site is mostly about encouraging people to come to the gallery, we don't just want the site to mirror what's in the museum itself."

In the past, specialist digital art agencies such as Liverpool's Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Hull Time Based Arts and the Digital Arts Development Agency, in Bristol, have provided most of the support for digital art projects. More recently, site-specific arts venues such as The Lux Centre, The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and the Whitechapel gallery and the Arnolfini in Bristol have started to present digital art.

Matthew Fuller, a London-based digital artist and author, said: "Galleries can be useful to net artists. They focus public attention on the work and engender different kinds of debate."

However, the relationship between mainstream galleries and the fluid genre of digital art is far from harmonious. Fuller explains: "For the last 10 years, the web has been a very democratic space for art. But the involvement of large institutions may introduce a certain level of elitism."

He feels that museums could do a lot more to exploit the possibilities of new media art within their buildings. "When museums show web art, many of them stick a bunch of PCs in a room and think that's enough. There's no real sense of the phenomenon of the network."

Fellow digital artist Simon Patterson is equally at home creating art works from daylight firework displays to the truly unusual idea of matching shades of the colour spectrum with French football league results online. Digital art, says Patterson, is "just another art form, like fax art". But for Michael Atavar, the first artistic resident in the ICA's new Digital Artist's Research and Experimentation programme (Dare), the possibilities of net art seem limitless.

"I'm interested in moving into a three-dimensional virtual space, to create deeply immersive environments," says Atavar. "I'm making work for technology that doesn't yet exist." The main thing standing in his way at the moment is the limited size of the computer monitor. "We need a new generation of computer screens," he says. "In fact, I'd like to build a browser window a mile long and just as high."

Net art: Where to go to see the shows

New Media Centre: ICA (opened October 1)

The Institute of Contemporary Arts launches a new wave of digital projects, which range from exhibitions of online work to a selection of screensavers from artists and designers. It will also be hosting the digital web toy called Sodaconstructor, an interactive model. www.ica.org.uk

Tragic Data: The Lux Gallery from September 19 - October 15)

The Lux Gallery in London's super-cool Hoxton has invited a selection of artists working in a wide range of media to come together. Tragic Data ranges from a full-scale inquiry into the machinations of Microsoft Word by Matthew Fuller to the byte-like chainmail sculptures of Philippe Bradshaw. www.lux.org.uk

Root Festival: Hull (from October 22-22)

Hull's Root festival comprises a weekend of performance, installation, film, debate and webcasting. Root examines the tricks, pranks and interventions of artists from historical jokers to contemporary media hackers and marketers. www.timebase.org