Cornell exhibit spotlights new media art collection

A unique and interactive Cornell University Library exhibition will showcase 50 years of new media art in Cornell’s collections, from the earliest emergence of 1960s single-track video art to the Internet art of the 21st century.
 
The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections’ exhibit, “Signal to Code: 50 Years of Media Art in the Rose Goldsen Archive,” traces the rise of new media art as the Internet and new technology helped it to flourish into a vibrant international art form, crossing artistic boundaries and geopolitical zones.
 
Visitors to the exhibition, open March 17 to Oct. 14 in the Carl A. Kroch Library, will be able to view and experience artworks at 15 different stations in various formats, including CD-Rom, sound art and Internet art, from Cornell’s pioneering Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art.
 
“It’s going to be a very interactive exhibit,” said Tim Murray, curator of the Goldsen Archive and the exhibit, and professor of comparative literature and English. “We want visitors to appreciate the deep history of 50 years of media art that we’re fortunate to maintain in the archive, and we’re hoping that Cornell and the Ithaca community will celebrate their important place in this history.”
 
Central New York played a significant role in the rise of media art. In the 1970s, Philip Mallory Jones, a prominent new media artist who received his MFA from Cornell, created the influential Ithaca Video Festival. The Experimental Television Center, based in Owego and in operation from 1969 to 2011, was one of North America’s preeminent centers for experimental video art.  Cornell University Library also hosted the largest international exhibition of CD-Rom Art in 1999, as well as the innovative online net.art journal, CTHEORY Multimedia.
 
Today, the Experimental Television Center’s collection of more than 3,000 works of art is part of the Goldsen archive. Jones’ Masters thesis, as well as screening tapes from the Ithaca Video Festival, will be on display as part of the exhibit.
 
Among the first collection of its kind anywhere in the world, the Goldsen archive was founded in 2002 and named after the late Prof. Rose Goldsen, a pioneering critic of the commercialization of mass media.
 
Though the collection has strong local roots, it also spans continents, and includes the Wen Pulin archive of Chinese avant-garde art, 360 hours of videotape documenting Chinese contemporary art and culture.
 
Works from the Pulin archive will be on display, as will an interactive simulation of 1960s, 70s and 80s-era tools used to create new media art in its earliest forms.