Video Avant Guardian

George Fifield, curator of new media at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Mass., has always been fascinated by the word “avant-garde,” a French term derived from the common military practice of deploying a small troop of highly skilled soldiers ahead of a large, advancing army. Over time, Fifield says, the term has lost its meaning.

Missiles and Burgers Redux: A Collaborative Video Extravaganza by Liz Nofzinger and Eric Freeman was one of many digital arts installations displayed in the Digital Disclosure exhibit at the Boston Cyberarts Festival, April 22 to May 8.

“As it pertains to the art world, ‘avant-garde’ has come to mean ‘to shock,’ but that's not at all the historical connotation of the term,” says Fifield. “The ‘avant-garde’ is really those people who are looking at new media and how it impacts our lives and then reporting back to us.”

Once upon a time, Fifield may have even considered himself an avant-garde artist. After getting his start in television production, he began making art videos — mostly experimental documentaries — in the late '80s, not long after Sony introduced the first 8mm camcorders. He even exhibited some of his work in a number of prestigious galleries, including The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

But Fifield found his true calling in the early '90s when he began organizing exhibitions for other media artists and promoting their work. In 1991 he founded VideoSpace, a collective of Boston area media artists who have exhibited throughout New England for the past 14 years. His success with VideoSpace led to a position as curator of video art at DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in 1993. Around the same time, he also began writing a new media column for a regional art magazine — an experience that had a profound effect on Fifield.

“The column really opened my eyes to the immense history of artists working with technology in the New England area,” Fifield says. “Boston has always had a second-city reputation because it's so close to New York, but the history of new media artists in the area goes back more than 50 years.”

One of the first new technologies that Boston-area artists exploited was video, and there's no better example of that than the New Television Workshop at WGBH, the city's PBS affiliate. The workshop, which began in 1974 and existed in one form or another until 1993, gave hundreds of artists access to low-cost video equipment and editing facilities through experimental “labs.”

Inspired by his own interest in video and new media and after learning about the avant-garde work that had come from the New Television Workshop through shows like “The Medium is the Medium” and “Video: The New Wave,” Fifield began looking for ways to carry on the city's legacy of experimentation with new media. In the spring of 1999, he produced the first Boston Cyberarts Festival, the nation's first and largest all-media cyberarts festival. The two-week festival included more than 100 events organized by 60 cultural and education institutions in the Boston area.

“In part, the festival was designed as a celebration of new media in Boston,” Fifield says. “But it was also designed to show how artists use technology to express themselves. There's a certain type of artist that's always looking over the shoulder of researchers and technologists. And as soon as new technologies come along and could possibly be expressive, there are artists there expressing themselves.”

And that tradition continues today. In May, the fourth biennial Cyberarts Festival concluded after more than 70 events in 50 venues. This year's festival included events and installations in all media, including electronic literature, performance art, public art, web art, sculpture, dance, music, and theater. As in previous years, one of the common themes — part of cyberart's appeal — was the interactivity of the installations.

“One of the things that computers and video allow is a creative relationship between the artist and the viewer,” Fifield says. “In some cases, the art doesn't exist until the viewer steps into the picture. The viewer completes the artwork.”

Cody Holt is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Email him at codyholt@kc.rr.com.