Articles

Virtual Museums on the Internet

March 1998
Salzburg, May 8-10, 1998

A Symposium organised by the ARCH Foundation
in collaboration with
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, (United States)
The ZKM - Center for Art and Mediatechnology, (Germany)
Illuminations, (Great Britain)
The Universtiy of Applied Arts (Austria) and Techno-Z (Austria).

The proposed symposium on virtual museums is aiming to define the dimensions of new a museum space which has no real world manifestation. These definitions will form the core of the ARCH Virtual Museum, within which all appropriate artworks dedicated to STATE OF THE ART project can be experienced.

The ARCH Foundation's mission is to communicate an awareness initiative for the preservation of the world's cultural heritage through the intervention of contemporary artists.

ARCH is trying to define how artworks created through the use of new media can become an important and effective communicator of the intrinsic value of cultural heritage. New forms of creative interactive dialogue and visual interpretation using ever evolving technology offer a provocative dimension to artistic expression. We hope that the challenge of multiple contexts will generate results that will stir the artistic community, as well as stimulate participation of a new audience into communities of interest. We want to put people in front of cultural heritage, and to bring the values it symbolizes to life.

The speakers of this symposium are :

• James Boyle, Prof. of Law at American University, Washington (US)
• Peter A. Bruck, Managing Director, Techno-Z R&D (Austria)
• Graham Defries, Attorney, Bird & Bird, London (UK)
• Matthew Drutt, Associate Curator for Research, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (US)
• Volker Grassmuck, Sociologist (Germany)
• John Handardt, Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (US)
• Lynn Hershman Leeson,Media Artist and Professor for "Electronic Art" at the University of California, Davis (US)
• Tom Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (US)
• Michael Naimark,Artist, Interval Research Corporation, Palo Alto (US)
• Hans Peter Schwarz, Director ZKM, Media Museum (Germany)
• Jeffrey Shaw, Director, ZKM, Institute for Visual Media (Germany)
• Charles Symonyi, Chief Architect, Microsoft Cooperation (US)
• Peter Weibel,Media Artist and Curator (Austria)
• John Wyver, Chairman, Illuminations (UK)

...and the list is not closed yet

A little background information :

The ARCH Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 by Francesca von Habsburg and its international headquarters are located in Salzburg, Austria. The foundation dedicates itself to the preservation and restoration of cultural heritage. Its focus was to promote and restore cultural heritage from Central and Eastern European countries. ARCH's latest project is a global awareness campaign which seeks to generate support for global cultural conservation.

ARCH has turned to the medium of new media art, and has begun asking the most influential as well as emerging artists to articulate this mission so as to engage a young and captive audience to this cause. Our aim is to combine the future with our past in a compelling and imaginative way.

Titled STATE OF THE ART, the project was inaugurated in Salzburg in the summer of 1997 to great critical acclaim. Each of the participating artists have dedicated works of art corresponding to chosen restoration sites. As a first step, both the artworks and panoramic photographs of the sites themselves were then mounted onto larger than life size projections onto the famous Munchsberg rock in the center of Salzburg. The sensational projections were approximately 8000m^2 in size and were projected from an impressive Communications Tower. The problem on how to store these "light sculptures" and to exhibit them in the alternative world of cyberspace in an innovative way was the initiating spark behind this symposium. Being experts in conservation rather than in new media, we seek to define, with the help of international experts, how the combination of man's greatest achievements of the past can be brought successfully into the future and be experienced under new and exciting conditions and environments.

In concordance with the foundation's motto: "Engaging the past into the present is synonymous with participating in the future."

ARCH will be inaugurating this summer in Salzburg, a Communications Center with its own New Media exhibition space, as well as "The Station", an artist-in-residence studio.

For more information about the ARCH Foundation, STATE OF THE ART and the "Virtual Museums Symposium", check our homepage at :

http://www.arch.at

or contact :

Pierre Collet - Executive Director
Verein ARCH Foundation - Gstettengasse 29 - A-5020 Salzburg
TEL: +43 662 84 26 16 0 - FAX: +43 662 84 26 15
e-mail: pc@arch.co.at

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