Media Arts commentary and criticism.

 DAM!
The retro, anti-tech Webwork "Gynadome" is Dyke Action Machine!'s latest campaign to jam lesbian images into public space. The dynamic duo talks with Robert Atkins about waging art in the streets and online.
BROWSERDAY
From bandwidth increased by a hand crank to contact-lens display screens, the three-minute presentations of International Browserday challenged the corporate monopoly on information access. Media Arts Editor Robert Atkins reports.
JOHN SIMON
Is new media art circumscribed by commercial software packages? Are the prevailing conventions for user interfaces another example of American cultural imperialism? Artist-programmer John Simon talks with Robert Atkins.
WARREN NEIDICH
The 1990s' transformation of news into infotainment is echoed in today's instant diffusion of art into mass media, says Warren Neidich. The artist/neurobiologist/ophthalmologist spoke with Media Arts editor Robert Atkins.
DOT MUSEUM
The structure of the Internet can shape the culture of cyberspace. Now that .museum has become a new domain name, a curator warns, the vitality of online art maybe at risk.
CHICKEN CENSORSHIP
The two chickens starring in an art gallery exhibit also had their own Webcam show — until animal activists shut it down.
POLITICAL ADS 2000
A video of American presidential campaign ads shows the devolution of political advertising, from an attempt to present views seriously to content-free candidates who are sold like soap.
(Hank Morgan /
Science Photo Library /
CONTRAST)
ARS ELECTRONICA
Electronic art explores the sticky questions of sex and science at this year's Ars Electronica festival. Sperm races, public orgasms and a post-holocaust monorail take us where media fear to tread.
MESSAGE ON THE WALL
What happens when a noted American muralist runs up against the ahistorical notion of political correctness? Robert Atkins interviews Mike Alewitz about the roles of race and rifles in his latest controversial project.
OPIUM
The mainstream media's relentless (and simple-minded) antidrug drumbeat gets a little competition from a thought-provoking museum in construction: Thailand's Hall of Opium. Philip Cunningham reports.
EYE OF THE STORM
Art as complex as the war in Kosovo? Brian Holmes reports on a pioneering and revealing exhibition held recently in Portland, Oregon, which transcended the sum of its parts.
THE WAITING ROOM
To artist Richard Kamler, the American media are failing to engage any "responsible social or cultural conversation" about capital punishment. Melody Ermachild Chavis, a private investigator specializing in death-penalty cases, finds Kamler creating just that in Huntsville, Texas.
CENSOR SENSIBILITY
For 30 years Antoni Muntadas has been using his art projects to analyze the "media landscape." From his interactive censorship archive, "The File Room," to his current exhibitions in New York, Muntadas has undertaken "an investigation of contemporary consciousness as created by powerful individuals and institutions." So says MediaChannel Media Arts Editor Robert Atkins, who recently spoke with Muntadas about media, art and the audience.
EBAY ARTISTS
eBay, the online auction site, has become a winning combination: it's profitable, addictive and riding high on the stock market. What's more, writes MediaChannel Media Arts Editor Robert Atkins, it's an art form. From Cary Peppermint selling himself as an art medium to art students selling gallery space, conceptual art via eBay is practically a genre unto itself. But are these artists actually challenging the "cultural illness" represented by a site that allows everyone a piece of the e-commerce action, or are they just being consumed by it themselves?
THE MEDIA VS. ART
Though shared concerns over free expression and censorship would seem to create a natural alliance between journalists and artists, media coverage of the art world is often not only shoddy, but downright hostile. In light of the recent controversy over the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection" show, where the press was all too willing to accept the mayor's attacks on the artwork (sight unseen), Media Channel Arts Editor Robert Atkins asks, "When did the media start hating artists?"
LOWELL DARLING
Presidential contender or performance artist? Lowell Darling throws his hat in the ring. But it's no ordinary hat--or ring.

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.