Your Boston Cyberarts Festival experience

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Permalink Reply by Rolf van Gelder on August 4, 2008 at 5:17pm

The biggest change since 1999 imho is that cyberart is taken far more serious nowadays. Now it's more considered as 'real art' than back in 1999.
For instance: even the 'traditional' visual art galleries (like the Judi Rotenberg gallery) are willing to host Boston Cyberarts events now.
That's a big step forward!
For me, as a cyberartist, the festival is a very nice stimulance: the quality of the contributions in general is quite high. Therefore I try to come up with a very interesting piece for every edition of the festival.

Keep the festival going!

Peace,
Rolf van Gelder

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Hall on August 28, 2008 at 9:41pm

1. What do you see as the biggest change in the world of cyberart
since 1999 (the year of the first Boston Cyberarts Festival)?

Digital is ubiquitous and cyber-in-art has also become more so than
the start of festivals 10 years ago. Is there anything at this point that stands
cyberarts unique from the rest of contemporary practice? I don't know
myself, but I think it is a question at the forefont for me.

2. Has your participation in the past Festivals had any direct impact
on your work in subsequent years?

As an educator is has been a wonderful resource. Participants have been
very generous (as you have, George) with my students as they have gone
to events, asked questions, interviewed curators and artists. From my
perspective, this has been a tremendous asset to the Boston community
over the last decade.

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Permalink Reply by Nick Montfort on August 29, 2008 at 3:27pm

There was a lot of excitement about digital media in the late 1990s, but people also had the sense that creative uses of computers might be a fad - the bubble would just burst and that would be all. That's much less the case now, thanks to museums and artists, performers and venues, writers, and regular events like the Festival. Public perception has moved past novelty, now; people who appreciate art can more often see that digital art is about using the medium of computing and the network to explore significant questions and to develop new aesthetics.

Among other things, my participation in the Boston T1 Party in 2001 helped to connect me to a community of electronic literature writers and showed me that e-lit could appeal to a broad audience.

As for an anecdote - this one isn't particularly funny, but it's relevant: Twisty Little Passages (2003, MIT Press), the first study of interactive fiction and my first book, begins with two pages about the 2001 Boston Cyberarts Festival's Boston T1 Party.

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