by Lorena Zevedei and Sandra Fauconnier

The Netherlands Media Art Institute, one of the project partners in Culture Vortex, participated in the 4th edition of Virtual Platform Hot100 at PICNIC, with a challenge/case related to its online collection.

This edition of PICNIC Hot100 was organized in the Amsterdam Westergasfabriek, on 23 September 2010. Talented alumni from many Dutch media/design academies and media studies courses were invited to discuss interesting challenges and problems presented in seven cases by: Netherlands Media Art Institute, NLArchitects, NRC, Eindhoven Municipality, SetUp Utrecht, Cultuurpark Westergasfabriek and Nederlands Uitburo.

This year’s edition had a central focus themes related to Life, City, Media and Design and the cases were structured in this direction. Two inspiring speeches preceded the afternoon discussions. One held by designer, entrepreneur and founder of Superflux, Anab Jain and the second one by Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at The Powerhouse Museum, Seb Chan.

NIMk’s round table focused on the following case: distribution of new(er?) media art: how to address to it in a creative way?!?
NIMk currently distributes successfully 90% video art and 10% installations. The next step is the distribution of new(er) media art: net art / software / hardware / interactive installations.

In order to come up with ideas some questions were formulated:
What is the value of NIMk, in distributing and promoting these types of media art that are mainly online already? And does it make sense to do it? When these works are already in the collection, what are the next steps?
Many keywords were put on the table and distributed around two main issues that were largely discussed: making the works and distribution more personal and unique, and promotion.

Personal/unique value of each work: internet-based works can be exhibited in many different ways and made more interesting in physical presentations. NIMk can encourage and discuss with artists possibilities to show the works’ unique value in better ways to various audiences.

Promotion: this is one element that NIMk has to open up to a lot in order to reach all types of audiences, from non-professional to professionals. The group came up with some ideas of how to improve this. The term ‘pushing’ was proposed in this context: making use of sharing tools, such as social media networks and its own website for promoting the distributed works to various target audiences , and allowing user generated data: from semi-professionals (students with their papers, thesis, projects) and experts (curators and writers with reviews, papers, presentations). NIMk could also appoint ambassadors: enthusiast and prominent members from the NIMk network who promote the institute by their own initiative. Other suggestions included: specific projects/courses, key-works newsletters, see trends that develop and use them by personalising the collection.

All these ideas and proposals were exposed in a final presentation together with the other six cases presentation at the end of the afternoon.