Streaming Museum at 15
and what influenced its development
International Programming
Streaming Museum launched on January 29, 2008 at the cusp of a new wave of internet, mobile and screen culture, to bring art to people in public spaces on 7 continents and the web, to reflect the interconnection of cultural knowledge around the globe.
Streaming Museum's first program was a video version of the 1984 satellite transcontinental extravaganza, Good Morning, Mr. Orwell by pioneer video artist Nam June Paik. The work was shown simultaneously on a public screen in all seven continents. In the 1970s Park had envisioned the Internet, predicting an “information superhighway” as an open and free medium for imagination and exchange of cultures. Also presented for the launch was Art and Pop Culture in a Modern Mix for the Electronic Superhighway featuring the artwork of 21 international multi-media artists, which was Streaming Museum’s first online exhibition and also presented in public spaces.
Good Morning, Mr. Orwell 1984 by Nam June Paik (video still)
Over the years Streaming Museum expanded to include a broad range of international exhibitions and programs, publications, and feature stories. With Network partners Streaming Museum brings together art, culturally diverse audiences, and professionals across disciplines who sharpen how we see the world and create innovations that influence how humans and nature coexist.
Five projects that influenced the creation of Streaming Museum
1. Chelsea Art Museum - The Project Room for New Media and Performing Arts 2003-2010, an incubator of new ideas in NYC
The Project Room for New Media and Performing Arts showcased groundbreaking concepts in all art mediums, and the intersection of the arts and technology. Initiated in 2003 at Chelsea Art Museum by curator Nina Colosi (founder of Streaming Museum), over 350 international emerging and established artists were presented in exhibitions, performances, symposiums, meet-the-artist programs, and workshops. The public art project Streaming Museum was launched on January 29, 2008.
2. Peoples’ Portrait -- the "Aha moment" that sparked the idea for Streaming Museum
The "Aha moment" for creating Streaming Museum happened in 2004 while Nina Colosi was presenting an opening event at Chelsea Art Museum for Peoples’ Portrait, a global portrait of people around the world created by artist Zhang Ga. He had set up a network of big screens in international cities - Rotterdam, NYC, Singapore, Linz, and Brisbane, that were connected to kiosks where people could snap their pictures. These images were uploaded to a central server. People could see themselves on the screen as well as pictures of people participating in other cities. The portrait project was also viewable on websites. The success of Peoples' Portrait lead Colosi to put together a network of big screens in public spaces around the world to show ongoing art exhibitions. The exhibitions would also be available and archived on the web.
Zhang Ga's Peoples' Portrait connected people around the world, using technology in relation to virtuality and reality, using speed and time, and the local and trans-local. Peoples’ Portrait questioned the notion of interaction and authorship and expressed a humanist concern in the age of technological supremacy.
In 2006 an exhibition event in SoHo introduced Streaming Museum as a work-in-progress with the support of founding sponsor FJC Foundation. A second presentation of Peoples Portrait was installed and guests participated in the global network that included London, Adelaide, Seoul, Beijing, Linz, and NYC.
3. Codes of Culture, arteBA, Buenos Aires 2006
Codes of Culture was an exhibition of video art for arteBA, the contemporary art fair established in 1991 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The exhibition, curated by Colosi, presented the perspectives of emerging and established international artists on codes of culture in their countries.
4. Vectors: Digital Art of Our Time 2002
Nina Colosi, founder of Streaming Museum, was the New York Digital Salon Consulting Producer, Creative Development for the School of Visual Arts New York Digital Salon 10th anniversary program. Ten international new media curators were invited to present ten new media artists. The results were presented in the MIT Press publication, Leonardo. In 2003 artwork from Vectors: Digital Art of Our Time was exhibited at The World Financial Center Courtyard and Winter Garden, newly reconstructed after having been destroyed during the World Trade Center tragedy.
5. Evo1- 2001, artists responding to a world increasingly influenced by technology
Nina Colosi was invited by New York City-based Russian artist, Anna Rochegova to produce an exhibition of new media art at Gallery L in Moscow. Evo1, showcasing visual and sound artworks by established and emerging artists, was scheduled to open September 19, 2001. The World Trade Center tragedy pushed the opening date to October 4, 2021.
Despite security concerns, artists Agnes Denes, Marty St. James, John Klima, Jacqueline Bates and David Bates, Jr, and curators, Nina Colosi and Christiane Paul, bravely boarded nearly empty planes on October 2 and headed to Moscow. They were determined to open Evo1 which addressed social, commercial and environmental issues at the beginning of the 21st century. Gallery visitors were particularly moved by Agnes Denes’s Wheatfield—a Confrontation (1982), a conceptual land artwork on the undeveloped Battery Park City property with the World Trade Center buildings in sight, that addresses human values and misplaced priorities.
Evo1 included Internet art, digital art, video, computer animation, documentary photo collage, multi-media, light art, and environmental art from Russia, the United States, and Europe within a soundscape of electronic music.
The Internet art selection was curated by Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of new media arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This was one of the first displays of Internet art in Russia, and included recent work from the 2001 Data Dynamics exhibition at the Whitney Museum.
Evo1 also presented a collection of sound works created with digital technologies, entitled Bitstreams, that had been featured in Data Dynamics, curated by Debra Singer, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney, with advisor Stephen Vitiello. The Internet art was also presented at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and a conference with artists and curators took place at the House of Journalists.