MediaArtHistories is the first comprehensive survey text on the histories of technological art – a field of practice known broadly as (new) media. In part, the book originates from Refresh!, the first international conference on the histories of media, art, science and technology, which was held at the Banff New Media Institute, Canada, in 2005. I was fortunate enough to attend Refresh! as a poster presenter. My own presentation, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek affair, involved pinning acetate butterflies and typed sheets to my poster board and wafting a hand-held fan around. By doing this, I wanted to demonstrate how established art historical approaches diminish the essential dynamic of (media) art, as Jean Dubuffet has noted:

Considering that, in the domain of art and of the spirit’s very spontaneous inclinations, things have freshness and virtue only as long as they are left unnamed, the cultural club, in its eagerness to heavy-handedly name and endorse, fills a function comparable to that of the butterfly catcher. Culture cannot stand butterflies that fly. It knows no rest until it has immobilized and labelled them.[1]

More specifically, I wanted to show how incongruous it can seem to discuss net art mailing lists, as it were, ‘off list’. And I wanted to question whether academic conferences and books are really the right locations in which to ‘capture’ the meaning of such art forms. In short, I wanted to query the viability of ‘media art history’…” Continue reading Butterfly Catching 2.0? by Charlotte Frost, Mute Magazine.