plexity can arise in art made by following simple
rules, agreed: “I don’t recall ever seeing an
exhibition at a gallery that was billed as SciArt.
A SciArt exhibition will most likely be found at
university galleries and science based intuitions,
like the New York Hall of Science or maybe the
American Museum of Natural History.”
IV. Different Worlds
It’s a good thing for science-based artists that
institutions of science and learning welcome
SciArt, because despite some inroads, SciArt is
a very small part of the mainstream art world.
While there are many pockets of galleries
ranging from “white box” to grungy up-andcomers in New York, the mainstream contemporary art world is epitomized by the Chelsea
galleries, those that line the sidewalks from
19th to 36th streets on the West Side, where
the most famous artists exhibit their work and
where the wealthiest customers buy it. But the
mainstream contemporary art world is “only
one of many art worlds,” said Ed Shanken, a
professor of digital and experimental media
art at University of Washington. He continued, “Over the last 20 years or so a number of
parallel art worlds have grown dramatically, in
particular the New Media art world and the
art-science art world, which are related but not
exactly the same.” New Media art incorporates
the concepts, technologies, and social practices
associated with computers and computer networking in a critical aesthetic investigation of
digital culture.
Shanken, trained as an art historian, discusses
contemporary art, SciArt and New Media art
as being three, of many, separate art worlds that
have developed, in his book Art and Electronic
Media (Phaidon 2009). He noted that the New
Media art world has developed its own set
of institutions, exhibition venues, university
departments, and academic conferences that
are so robust that artists and scholars working
in this field may not feel the need to become
integrated into the mainstream contemporary
art world. This phenomenon has been referred
to as “self-ghettoization”. New Media Art and
SciArt are perceived as occupying the fringes or
the margins of mainstream contemporary art,
but it’s such a self-sufficient, “lavish” ghetto that
there’s little incentive for artists to leave it:
SciArt in America December 2013
“Many artists are perfectly content to operate just in that art world. And the New Media
art world has grown tremendously in the two
decades I’ve been professionally engaged with
it myself. It has an extraordinary infrastructure
for supporting the creation, exhibition and
critical analysis and interpretation of this work.
Artists, curators, and scholars can have quite
successful careers working in this field: successful in the sense that they can travel around the
world like successful mainstream contemporary
artists, presenting their work, organizing exhibitions, lecturing, and publishing. But what the
artists can’t do is sell their work. And they can’t
get their work featured in magazines like Artforum, which really don’t write about it. So there’s
been a self-ghettoization partly because of a
really pretty lavish ghetto to occupy but also
because the commercial engine of the contemporary art world continues to mostly ignore it.”
V. Barriers to the Mainstream
While the SciArt fringe is certainly thriving,
it’s hard to think that if a science-based artist were offered a show at a mainstream venue
that they would turn it down; the galleries are
spacious, well-funded, well-advertised, and well
attended. The venues of non-profits, universities, and science-geared museums are fitting,
and crucial, but a show in a mainstream gallery
would inarguably expand the reach and impact
of SciArt enormously. So why is it that SciArt
remains on the fringe?
“The Chelsea galleries,” Anker said, “are still
very interested in looking at irony, popular
culture, and traditional forms of painting and
sculpture, and SciArt rocks the boat. It also
assumes that the artist has a rational streak,
which goes against the kind of mistaken identity of the artist as a free spirit.” There is a
certain wish for anonymity and freedom of
interpretation of art in most exhibition spaces,
exemplified by the fact that in Chelsea, and
most other galleries, labels never accompany
individual art works.
Along those lines, the educational aspect of
SciArt may in fact turn off mainstream galleries
and their particular audience. In co