CHArt
CHart Student Bursary Awards Conference Report
David Herbert, Loughborough University
PhD Title: Net.art: Collaboration, Interactivity and Audience. A study into collaborative techniques, interactive taxonomies and their relationship to audience.
Attending the CHArt conference was overall an excellent experience which has helped to support my research in a number of ways.
Primarily, it allowed me to gain insights into the current thinking around Net art and other digital media art, through the speakers themselves and the research they presented. Almost all of the presentations had sections that were relevant to my research and have given me a greater knowledge of subject area. Another useful aspect of this was that some of the speakers also highlighted possible further directions that my research could take.
Another interesting aspect of the presentations was the way that they dealt with areas that were previously unconsidered by myself, in particular the issue of how to preserve digital media works and the problems that galleries face in exhibiting works of this kind. It also suggested some of the difficulties that art historians have in contextualizing digital art within current contemporary art practice.
The conference gave me an excellent opportunity to meet people working in my own field of research and in practices related to it. Discussions after the presentations allowed me to gain further knowledge and clarification on the subjects that were being delivered. In particular, I have made several contacts that I believe will serve as excellent sources of future correspondence, providing information and feedback during the period of my research.
Through the papers and presentations and through conversations with speakers and fellow delegates, many new resources were made apparent to me. These included websites, books, discussion groups and arts groups, all of which will enable me to expand the sources of reference for my research.
In summary, the CHArt conference was a worthwhile experience that has inspired my current research path and provided me with many ideas for other interesting areas that I could follow.