Behind the Scenes with Sara Tucker, Director of IT, on Artist Web Projects: 25th Anniversary
By Sigourney Schultz, 2020-2021 curatorial research intern, with assistance from Jacob Sheffet, 2020-2021 public programs intern
In 1995, Dia became one of the first institutions to commission art for the web through a series called Artist Web Projects. Dia’s director of information technology, Sara Tucker, has been involved with the series since the very beginning, working with curators Lynne Cooke, Yasmil Raymond, and Kelly Kivland to commission digital projects by artists working outside the realm of internet art. The digital form of this series meant Dia could work with artists all over the world. Today, Tucker remains integral to the production of the Artist Web Projects and has led crucial conservation work on the series. On the occasion of the series’ twenty-fifth anniversary, Dia interns Sigourney Schultz and Jacob Sheffet interviewed Tucker to hear more about her involvement in its history and conservation efforts.
How did you start working on Dia’s Artist Web Projects (AWP)?
ST: When I started working at Dia in 1991, the web was still in a nascent stage. At that time, Dia’s staff was tiny, and I was working in the curatorial department but was beginning to take on IT responsibilities. Not long after Michael Govan became director of Dia in 1994, someone showed him the Andy Warhol Museum’s website—they were one of the first art museums to have an informational brochure available online. He immediately saw the potential of the internet and specifically the web as a medium for artists. He asked me to make a website for Dia and simultaneously initiated our first commission for AWP. Dia’s IT needs were growing at the same time, so that eventually became my position. I feel that I was lucky to be in the right place at a time when all of this was happening, with a supportive director and our former curator Lynne Cooke, who curated the series for the first fifteen years.
How do you see your role in the development of Dia’s AWP?
ST: I see the role of a producer/programmer for these projects as similar to that of a fabricator in any other medium—it’s about realizing the artists’ visions. I was the person helping them understand the limitations and possibilities of the technology so that they could develop a project that extended the ideas of their practice into this new medium. In the beginning, I programmed the projects, but as Flash’s capabilities expanded with the development of Actionscript, Dia started hiring outside programmers. Three people in particular were instrumental in the success of the series: Yee Peng Chia, Pravin Sathe, and Smita Sathe. Project development is a conversation between the artist, the programmer, the curator, and me.
What was the process of conserving the projects that were created with Flash?
ST: In 2017, Adobe announced that they were going to stop Flash support at the end of 2020. As nearly half of our projects were created in Flash, we debated for quite a while about the best way to preserve them. We considered emulation but decided to ultimately convert Flash to HTML 5 because this would allow the viewer to experience the artwork in a way that was most similar to how they would have interacted with the original piece, while also allowing iOS access. The effort started when Ana Torfs was invited to present her piece, Approximations/Contradictions (2004). I chose a programmer named Bichu P O to convert Torf’s piece and he did a fantastic job, and has since converted our remaining Adobe Flash projects. Throughout his work on the series, he was extremely patient in navigating the tiny decisions and details that were crucial to the artists; we were very lucky to find someone who understood the importance of every small detail.
Ana Torfs, Approximations/Contradictions (detail), 2004– . Collection of the artist, commissioned by Dia Art Foundation for the Artist Web Projects series. © Ana Torfs
The longevity of the series and the conservation of these Flash projects has been thanks to a number of people. Dia curator Kelly Kivland has been instrumental in keeping the AWP series going, and our director, Jessica Morgan, has been extremely supportive of the conservation efforts, as well as new, ambitious commissions, like May Amnesia never kiss us on the mouth (2020-- ) the latest project by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Others who were instrumental to the AWP preservation initiative include Valerie Amend, who managed the effort from 2016–19, as well as Ben Fino-Radin/Small Data Industries, Kirsten Gill-Mairead, Patricia Hernandez, Janeen Schiff, and Max Tannone.
How do artists working primarily in traditional media, such as painting and sculpture, approach the internet as an artistic medium?
ST: Some projects took years, while others came together within a period of months. But the process for each one was unique. Some artists came into the project with a clear idea of what they wanted to do and only needed technical assistance. With others, the process was more collaborative, because they were looking to us to help explore possibilities for extending their practice into this medium.
Molissa Fenley, Latitudes (detail), 1996– . Collection of the artist, commissioned by Dia Art Foundation for the Artist Web Projects series. © Molissa Fenley
This collision of forms can be really palpable in an artist’s work, such as in our piece Latitudes (1996), by choreographer Molissa Fenley. She saw internet art as an opportunity to overcome the physical distance between the audience and the stage. The medium allowed her to highlight details that were important to her practice, such as the influence of sculpture on her choreography. Her whole vocabulary of movement is informed by the sculptures that you see throughout that piece. She used images and small animated gifs to draw attention to certain elements of her choreography, which was something that she couldn’t control in a traditional performance.
What did internet art look like in the late 1990s and how have you seen it evolve?
ST: In the beginning, internet art was largely defined by its limitations, which made for interesting processes and projects because artists had to creatively work within these constraints. At that time, bandwidth was always the big obstacle--artists were using dial-up services during our very first projects. Video and audio had to be short and images had to be small.
Some of the projects aren’t easy to preserve for various reasons. James Buckhouse’s Tap (2002) involved Palm Pilot devices, which had a short lifespan. Others cannot be conserved due to increased security in operating systems, such as David Claerbout’s Present (2000), which installed a small application on users’ computers that displayed a flower over a series of days that matched the lighting of the local system time. Another project, Diller Scofidio + Renfro‘s Refresh (1998), involved the continuous streaming of participants’ webcams. We knew going into that project that not all of the participants would leave their webcams in the same position forever, but they had all agreed to try and keep them there for a year.
Diller + Scofidio, Refresh (detail), 1998– . Collection of the artists, commissioned by Dia Art Foundation for the Artist Web Projects series. © Diller + Scofidio
Luckily, most of our projects remain accessible, and the AWP are an interesting record of how artists coming from diverse media and practices addressed what was happing on the web at the time that they were invited to create these works. The series is unique in that most of the artists had not worked in this medium previously. The AWP gave them a way to challenge their practice with new limitations and the ensuing projects are an interesting reflection of the evolution of the web, reflecting both technical and cultural changes over time.
