Another introduction - I'm Francis McKee, head of digital arts and new media at CCA. Thinking about how I'd introduce the idea of my post in the organisation to ambit i was taken by Mandy McIntosh's comment that 'It might be more interesting to consider how institutional policy regarding technology has shifted in response to pioneer work by artists who were engaged with technology before it was recognised in the main stream as culturally crucial to the arts as well as commerce'
One of the reasons for the refurbishment of CCA was the dilapidated state of the original buildings and the increasing difficulty in repsonding to the technical needs of artists. It was only after the building closed that CCA got it's first computers that could communicate with each other internally and provide staff with links to the outside world through email and the web. (previously there was one jealously guarded machine and email had to be printed out). Our new building is wired to give artists as much flexibility as possible with technology and to accomodate future developments- as difficult as that can be to forsee... My own post is tentative - one day a week with a modest budget. Going back to Mandy's comment it seemed to me that institutions have to move into this area with some degree of humility. Artists have been working in digital field for some time with no official recognition and have built their own networks, worked from their own sites and their own servers quite successfully without many of the institutions that now want to get involved with their work. It is inevitable that as new media becomes more successful institutions will want to work with those artists but it seems sensible to do some research into what might be a useful role for the instititions in that situation. Someone else in their introduction mentioned distribution and this might be a key role for the institutions - providing platforms for the work to a wider, non-technological audience, spreading knowledge of the work further afield and putting strength of institution's name behind the work... Commissioning might also be a role and more specialised institutions could provide technical facilities for completion of work (editing etc). This is getting long so I'd better stop soon. Hopefully I can come back and elaborate on CCA's policy in the near future and talk more about our first steps. The commissioning of JODI for the launch, for instance, was primarily out of admiration for their work but also a conscious learning exercise - working candidly with very experienced artists to ensure we were establishing good practice for the future... ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
