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April 2, 2001, 5:19 p.m. || i'm not an artist, i'm a draw-er

These are the questions I'm being asked to address for the MIT conference on "race and digital space:"

QUESTIONS FOR AUTHENTICATING DIGITAL ART: EXPRESSION AND CULTURAL HYBRIDITY

Artists encounter new challenges and opportunities as they work to build and define what are proposed to be the most sophisticated and powerful communication networks our culture has encountered. As the organization of knowledge shifts away from the linear motif, how has the use of digital, as well as analog tools, led to the creation of culturally hybrid "cut-and-mix" work? How does this "collage aesthetic" influence the artistic expression of identity, race, and nationhood?

How can handheld devices or technology that we "tote" (cellphones, two-way pagers, boom-boxes,walkie-talkies) and other forms of technological immersion (such as video games) have the potential to influence and/or inspire new types of creative encounters? Conversely, how can creative efforts in cyberspace translate into cultural and political change in the "real" world? How has hip-hop culture been influenced by technoculture?

How have aural texts and graphic symbols (such as graffitti) been reconfigured and interpreted across the globe? How does the experience of racial and colonial oppression relate to the importance of documentation and subjectivity in digital space? How does your work address machine/human interface and disembodiment? How does the play with multiple identities inform artistic expression and cultural hybridity in digital space?

Many electronic media artists assert that the narrative forms of non-Western cultures offer languages compatible with the sophistication of new Western technologies. How have vocabularies derived from non-Western cultures (accents and intonations, ethnic codes of speech, body-language and self-representation) influenced your work?

In many respects, our daily encounters with new technology comes in the form of media created using desktop tools. How has tweaking, layering, manipulating and appropriating sound and image changed our world? What is the real "state of the stream"? Has the popularity of on-line cinema and the use of digital cameras resulted in a more democratic form of image making? Has it inspired real social change?

This conference employs the term "digital space" with an inclusive spirit to encompass all types of technology. As an artist, how are you influenced by scientific revolutions and how does your work push the boundaries of the technology that you employ? Do digital tools enable artists to produce work that is more conducive to collaborative art processes?

In the late 80s, artistic response to conservative politics inspired critically defiant work. In the 90s, we witnessed descresing support of federal arts funding. What type of work do you think the current political and economic trends will inspire? Compare the present emergence of computer-mediated communication with a prior moment of technological change in the past two centuries--how has this dialogue influenced your work?