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 Page 3 Meanwhile, architects are also determined to find their own digital expression in housing these new forms of art--though at first they were suggesting a near dissolution of the building. In 1989 Rem Koolhaas won a competition to design the ambitious Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, an institution encompassing a museum of contemporary art and several ancillary divisions centered on the primary attraction, a media museum. Eventually aborted in 1992 because of its staggering budget, this plan was replaced by Hamburg firm Schweger + Partner's elegant but far more conventional $85 million retrofit of a behemoth 1918 munitions factory in 1997. Koolhaas's proposal called for the construction of a transparent blue glass cube that was to house a snaking system of ramps around a core of galleries. Its transparency would have revealed the multimedia installations within it as an electronic extravaganza, transforming the building into, in Koolhaas's words, "an arcane block of artificial spaces with constantly changing contents." To some, including German critic and curator Florian Rötzer, the plan didn't adequately address the impact of digitization on architecture itself. He called Koolhaas's cube a "form which serves only one remaining function, namely to protect the contents, [and that] has nothing to do with the digital universal code." Herein lies the predominant point of view in current proposals, one that takes technology as a prime mover: if architecture produces cultural spaces by being both constrained by technology and liberated by its progression--whether it's wattle and daub, post and lintel, the steel skeleton, or reinforced concrete--then digitalization becomes a tool for reevaluating possibilities in form. Hence the so-called "blobject"--that symbol of digital architecture that some, including architect Hani Rashid, predict will have an integral effect on emerging art forms. "Designing a new-media art space is compelling because it's where we get to make a break when the artists are trying to make a break," says Rashid, who with Lise Anne Couture is coprincipal of New York firm Asymptote. With its design for a proposed art and technology gallery at the Guggenheim's satellite space in Soho and its entry in a competition to design a $40 million museum of new-media art for Eyebeam Atelier in Manhattan, Asymptote is hoping not just to house new art, or even to represent it, but to influence it. "It's often said that Frank Lloyd Wright's original Guggenheim altered the trajectory of art," Rashid explains. "Here people could see individual works from further away--across the rotunda--and that helped encourage art to get bigger." If all goes according to plan, lighting, materials, and other features of Asymptote's new Guggenheim space will allow visitors to see artists' works in various dimensions, reflected and projected onto surfaces other than those from which they originate. And with its Eyebeam entry--which joins others by such torchbearing firms as Diller + Scofidio, Greg Lynn FORM, Preston Scott Cohen, and Reiser + Umemoto--Asymptote's unevenly curving volumes, interlocking spaces, and flowing circulation plan are allowing anything but maximum flexibility. "I think the critical question here is, how do you provide artists with spaces that encourage entirely new ways of thinking?" Rashid says. "The space should provoke people to think about things they wouldn't otherwise, and if that means pissing artists off, that's important too." The Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, is also taking a proactive approach with its proposed $90 million expansion designed by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, which among other things recently completed London's Tate Modern museum. The Walker, however, is being even more specific about using the tentatively named Mediatheque component of the addition to not just present but cultivate new-media art. "We're taking the stand that performing arts may be an interesting lens with which to think about new-media art as a visual art," says Steve Dietz, director of new-media initiatives, explaining that the new galleries will adjoin a proposed theater. "These spaces will open into each other where the Mediatheque wall might open up or become transparent or project into the performance area." Dietz adds, "The galleries will be irregularly shaped, with different sizes and feelings. We will definitely be making curatorial statements in spaces that will be both more and less programmed." But others think this is all a little premature. "These projects feel to me like the Guggenheim Bilbao in that the built structure becomes almost as much of a work of art as the art it contains," says Mark Tribe, executive director of Rhizome.org, a nonprofit arts organization. "Maybe they're putting the cart before the horse, and maybe it's time to give more focus and money to the artwork." It's interesting, after all, that there seem to be a lot more well-known architects proposing and designing new-media art spaces than there are well-known new-media artists. Which brings us to a final point: Frank Gehry's Bilbao, Koolhaas's forthcoming Guggenheim Las Vegas, and I. M. Pei's shopping-mall-below-a-pyramid at the Louvre have most clearly articulated the predominant museum-as-destination strategy taking hold in the fleld--and with enough funding, any high-profile new-media art space will be no different. "The funny thing is all you really need is a black box," says Mark Robbins, director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, "so this kind of will-to-force emphasis on the architecture may have something to do with the fact that the museum has become more of a leisure attraction." And so far, such attractions--with their iconic structures, restaurants, and shops--still need physical spaces. How art and architecture will mature in the digital age remains to be seen, and even less certain is how they'll converge. What's definite, however, is that as long as humans have bodies that search for extraordinary sensory experiences, museums will make sure that those bodies come to them. Now all they have to do is figure out what it is we're going to see when we get there. Aric Chen lives in New York. He writes frequently on design, architecture, art, and fashion. |
