Museum of Rumour

Abstract

Research Background Digital networked culture shifted the focus from discrete objects and individuals to networks of communications. Meanwhile new media art's interactivity and approach to archiving remained somewhat static, untouched by theories and practices of performativity and the fictive (at the porous edges between fact and fiction). The potential for spatial audio to be used in an intimate, rather than spectacular way, to disturb and dislocate identity and space also needed development in new media art. Research Question Museum of Rumour is primarily a net.art project, whose 'objects' were networks and flows that spread and leak. This fictive project worked with the imaginary science of 'pataphysics -- a non-sense 'science,' which sits beside and perturbs Science. This work innovatively used a fictive mode and spatial audio to open an important space for a play with identities, including the proliferation of personas and personalities, 'real' and fictive, who appear in the work. It contributed to the development of more complex understanding and practices of archiving and networked interactivity in new media art. Research Significance The significance of this research is demonstrated by the invitations for numerous international internet art festivals and exhibitions of net art work, most notably the prestigious The Blur of the Otherworldly: Technology and the Paranormal, Center for Art and Visual Culture, Baltimore, October, 2005. Its significance is further demonstrated by the selection by Turbulence, the internationally renowned portal for Internet works, for one of their (highly competitive) Studios. The artists were granted a highly competitive stipend to attend and present the work at Trace Symposium. "This is a good-humoured, finely made, altogether eccentric museum that suggests different ways of archiving experience and tracing the lateral paths of memory and association. " Keith Gallasch, "Remapping the World" RealTime59, 2004