The real and the virtual: Art and the web

Elizabeth McGuane gave a talk at the Dublin Art Fair 2010 about art and content strategy. The topic: whether art can be translated to the web.

Transcript

1. The real & the virtual Elizabeth McGuane & Jonathan Carroll
2. Grappling with the virtual Elizabeth McGuane
3. Why should you put your work on the web?
4. The web = a lack of control Credit: Matt Stokes et al, Art on the Underground
5. Art can’t be boiled down But the way we present it should be simple and clear
6. Art and technology are not new bedfellows
7. But they don’t have to give birth to this Image credit: Maurice Li, vectorialvancouver.net
9. Option 1 Work can be displayed & distributed online: the web as virtual gallery Website: Saatchi Gallery Online
10. Option 2 Work that engages directly with the web as a medium Website: www.wefeelfine.org/
11. Website: www.wefeelfine.org/
13. The questions you need to ask are the same questions curators have always asked
14. What do we need to know •About the artist? •About their materials?
15. Curation shouldn’t be an obstacle When you go to an exhibition, what do you need to see?
16. Online & offline you need to understand your materials
17. do so many sites look like this?
18. Certain things matter: • Fonts (sans serif for body copy) • Font sizes (large enough to be legible) • Screen space (use it) • White space (use it too) • Image size, weight and format
19. These are the principles of good design
20. Credit: Jason Santa Maria
21. Online Art is not site-specific Installation: Jeff Stark / Photo credit: Katherine Lorimer
22. Online, our perception is influenced by what we link our work to and by the language around it
23. The web lets you speak directly to your audience Credit: Terry Summers - Fox Galleries, Brisbane, Australia.
24. This is terrifying.
25. And it’s where content strategy comes in
26. What is your content?
27. It’s your body of work.
28. Stand back and treat your work as a curator might. Credit: Paramount Pictures
30. How?
31. How? CATALOGUE IT
32. How? CATALOGUE IT
33. How? CATALOGUE IT
34. Next: Decide how to organise it
35. Why does it have to be chronological?
36. What about by series? Credit: Rania Hanssen, goshdarnknit.blogspot.com
37. What about by materials?
38. Does platform matter?
39. No: content strategy is tool-agnostic
40. You don't buy a frame and then paint a picture to fit that size.
41. What matters is your content: it’s the engine for your web presence
42. First figure out what you want to present. Then plan how you want to present it.
43. What next? You’ve built your site:
44. Connecting with the real The web can help you grow without galleries
45. To Tweet or to Facebook?
46. These tools won’t do anything that hasn’t been done before
47. But they can broaden your reach
48. Where to start?
51. Thanks for listening. I’m online at: •@emcguane •mappedblog.com