Using the Education Kit - Casula Powerhouse

Education Kit

Using the Education Kit
This Education Kit investigates and develops an understanding
of the themes and concepts within Cyber Cultures:
Sustained Release. Students will focus on the significance of
each artist involved as well as investigate the complexities that
surround the development and utilisation of new media art.
The Education Kit is designed to be used in conjunction with
the Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release catalogues. The
images and information in the catalogues can be extracted and
used with the other Education Kit materials and activities.
The Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release website is an
integral part of the Education Kit. The website includes
information about the artists and their work as well as
catalogue essays and links to many of the artists’ websites. The
archive section of the website also links to earlier Cyber
Cultures exhibitions and catalogue essays.
www.casulapowerhouse.com/cybercultures

Introduction
Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release includes four themed
exhibition capsules: Infectious Agents, Posthuman Bodies, New Life
and Animation Playground, featuring the work of artists who are
at the leading edge of innovative developments in digital new
media practice.
Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release allows the viewer (or
user) the opportunity to explore a range of themes and ideas
including: identity, culture, authenticity and artistic production.
The exhibitions deal with themes of contemporary identity and
experience from popular culture, games and the Internet, to
genetic engineering, explorations of posthuman identity and
artificial life.
Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release traces the relationship
between art, technology and culture and illustrates how visual
conventions and modes of representation are reworked and
modified within new media art practices. Virtual reality,
cyberspace, multimedia and interactivity are some of the new
terms that are added into the lexicon of art making and
perception. The exhibition offers a portal into the emerging
expressive form known as new media art.
“We are entering a world where there won’t be one but
two realities: the actual and the virtual.”
Paul Virilio
Image detail: Posthuman Bodies, Jane
Prophet, Internal Organs of a Cyborg,
Installation view @ Casula Powerhouse
Arts Centre, 2000.

In the preceding quotation, Virilio, a cultural theorist, identifies
the shift in perception that has occurred with the advent of
virtual reality and digital technology. Cyber Cultures:
Sustained Release alerts the audience to the dynamic shifts
within Visual Arts and explores the ways in which computer
technology has shaped and forged new stylistic innovations and
thematic concerns.
The term ‘cyber’ in it’s current usage alludes to the
phenomenon of experience within a virtual world. Cyberspace
is a place where ‘reality and life’ are reproduced and reinvented.
Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release explores the current
manifestation of society’s use of technology as a system of
knowledge which impacts on the physical and virtual realms.
Technology suggests the development of systems employing
means and methods that include personal, psychological,
technological, spiritual, social, cultural and biological
investigations. New technologies have become a part of our
everyday existence. Through video, photographs, telephones,
television and the Internet, we have become part of a global
village.
The artists and works in Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release
take new media technologies beyond the realm of everyday
experience whilst at the same time examining that experience
more closely. Computer based games and entertainment play a
large role in our recreational activities, especially for young
people, through entire arcades devoted to experiences from onscreen
games to virtual environments. The artists use or
appropriate forms we are familiar with from popular culture such
as games, cartoons, the World Wide Web, digital images and
special effects such as those we see in films, television and
advertising. By taking the technology out of the arcade, the
home and the work place and situating it in an art gallery, Cyber
Cultures: Sustained Release changes our relationship with
the technology and the questions we ask of it. Implied in this is
the notion of parody, where artists copy other forms in order to
examine them and their effects on us more closely.
Image detail: Infectious Agents, Linda
Dement, In my Gash, 1999.

Throughout history, artists have utilised the developing
technologies of their time. Photography can be used as a
comparative example. At the outset, photography was viewed
as a purely documentary form rather than as a potential art
form. Now, more than one hundred years after its invention,
and with cameras in most homes in the Western world, we are
easily able to acknowledge the creative possibilities and realities
of photography. A similar process has happened with film and
video, and this is also the likely route to the acceptance of new
media technologies: as they fill our homes, work places and
entertainment venues, so does their creative potential become
more obvious and utilised.
The more mediated the creative process (i.e. the more an artist
uses machines and technology to make an artwork) the more
the authenticity and originality of the artwork is questioned.
Nevertheless, as artists and audiences become more familiar
with new media technologies in everyday life, the more
acceptable they become as potential art forms.
Questions about authenticity also arise regarding new media art
which are not shared by more traditional mediums. New media
technologies provide artists with the ability to make works that
are both infinitely reproducible and can be modified so that
different versions can be exhibited at different stages of
development. The interactive nature of new media art also
means that audiences can experience different versions of the
work depending on which pathways they explore in the
interaction. All these factors bring into question traditional
artistic notions of the ‘original’ and the ‘authentic’.
The role of the audience also takes on a special importance in
interactive new media art. The audience member is
transformed from viewer to participant and their interaction is
an integral component in the structure and experience of the
work.
While new media art is still a relatively new art form, it is set
to play a key role in cultural production in the new century
introducing new modes ofartistic expression and new forms of
representation. Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release
invites teachers and students to explore the work of some of
the leading artists in this field and to assess the contibution of
this new art form to Visual Arts practice.
Image detail, Posthuman Bodies,
Gary Zebington, Bodyssey, 2000.

General Exhibition Activities for
Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release
K-6
1. Look at the design logo produced
by Martine Corompt. Design
your own logo for Cyber
Cultures: Sustained Release.
2. What do new technologies share
with other media? Consider
printmaking, film and
photography.
3. Most of the artworks in the
exhibition rely on interactivity
with the audience, that is to say
that the artwork must be
touched and handled by the
audience. Design your own
interactive artwork and explain
with the aid of diagrams what
your artwork does. You must
include a title for your artwork.
4. Select one of the artworks and
give the work a new title, which
you think is more appropriate.
Explain why you gave it this title.
5. In groups of 2 to 4, select one of
the artworks and write a review
of it. In your review you must
write at least one sentence that:
• Describes what the artwork is
and how it appears.
• Explains what the artwork is
about.
• Evaluates the artwork in terms
of whether you think it is
successful as an artwork.
6. Select the artwork you think is
the most exciting and list 20
words that best describes the
work. Use these words in
sentences to construct an
appraisal of the artwork.

7-10
1. Most of the artworks in Cyber
Cultures: Sustained Release
construct installations. What is
an installation? As a group
exercise construct your own
installation in some part of the
school.
2. Design a poster for the Cyber
Cultures: Sustained Release
exhibition. This could be mixed
media, drawing, or it could be
done on the computer after the
exhibition. The important thing
is that it refers to the exhibition
and suggests an exciting and
futuristic show.
3. Create your own interactive
artwork on the Intranet at
school or the Internet at home.
Consider aspects such as: the
audience, theme, the
development of a style or look
to the artwork, and its overall
presentation. If you haven’t
access to a computer, draw up a
‘story board’ that shows
individual web pages and the
way these pages are linked.
4. Some artists’ work in the
exhibition deals with important
social issues. Select such an
artwork and tell us what issue
you think the artist is dealing
with and evaluate the success of
the artist’s work in terms of the
issues being addressed.
5. In your own words describe what
the word ‘cyberculture’ means.
6. Divide the class into two groups
and develop a debate on the
following topic:
“Painting and photography
are dead. Only ‘computers’
can make new art.”
7. Select one artwork and write a
critical review. In your review
you must:
• Analyse the artwork in terms
of what it does and how it is
similar to or different from
other artworks you have
studied.
• Interpret the meaning of the
work. Discuss how the
artworks can have different
meanings for different people.
• Judge whether you think the
artwork is effective and has
captured your interest.
11-12
1. Digital art provides for new
possibilities within visual arts.
The artwork can be interactive,
continually changing in
appearance, and non-linear in
presentation. Examine one or
all of the artworks and consider
the following:
• Method of construction
(program, software and
hardware)
• Mode of presentation
(is it private or public?)
• Visual conventions
(is it static, dynamic and/or
interactive?)
2. Research artists such as Marcel
Duchamp, Nam Jun Paik, Jeff
Koons, Barbara Kruger and
Jenny Holzer. How is, or were,
the technologies used by these
artists accepted and judged?

3. Art is always in a state of
constant evolution; technology,
beliefs and ideology shape the
way that artists think and
determine what media are used
and how the image/object may
appear. Art, like fashion,
changes with the times. What
do you think digital art in the
21 st century will offer to the
audience? How will this differ
to what is offered in painting,
photography, sculpture,
drawing and architecture.
5. Two essential criteria in assessing
artworks are:
• Technical proficiency, which
refers to way the artwork has
been constructed and the
appropriateness of the
materials used to convey
meaning to the audience.
• Conceptual strength and
meaning, this relates to the
clarity of meaning and the
development of ideas
communicated by the artwork.
Select one artwork and
investigate its technical
proficiency and conceptual
strength and meaning. Make a
list of the artwork’s
characteristics in the table
below.
4. Cyber Cultures: Sustained
Release demonstrates the
constant process of
technological evolution and
stylistic renovation within visual
arts. Discuss the impact of
digital technology and
postmodern theories on
contemporary art practice. Use
artists from the exhibition to
support your ideas.
Name of Artwork: ______________________________________
Technical proficiency
Conceptual Strength and
Meaning

Acknowledgements
Curator - Kathy Cleland
Education Consultant - Craig Malyon
Editors - Kathy Cleland, Lisa Havilah & Sarah Vyden
Education Manager - Sarah Vyden
Graphic Design - Milk Bar Studios
Published by the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
ISBN 1 876418 17 6
© 2001 Authors, Artists & Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
No material whether written or photographic, may be
reproduced without the permission of the artists,
authors and Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
To place catalogue and education kit orders please
contact Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
PO Box 190
Casula, NSW, Australia 2170
Tel. 61 2 9824 1121 Fax. 61 2 9821 4273
Email: admin@casulapowerhouse.com
www.casulapowerhouse.com/cybercultures
Cyber Cultures: Sustained Release is developed
Image detail: Posthuman Bodies, Jane Prophet, Internal Organs of a
Cyborg, Installation view @ Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, 2000.
and toured by Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
The tour of this exhibition is made possible by
AUSTRALIAN
FILM
COMMISSION