“Presenting “Piazza Virtuale” in five different ways: On using common.garden and other media for access to archived media art works and academic research” presented by Baumgärtel

Presenting “Piazza Virtuale” in five different ways: On using common.garden and other media for access to archived media art works and academic research

“Piazza virtuale” by the art collective Van Gogh TV” was one of the most ambitious and probably the largest media art project in history. The group created for more then three month a daily television program at the 1992 documenta in Kassel from a container studio right next to the Fridericianum that was broadcast by a public cable television station, by various other TV stations in Europe and internationally via satellite. The goal was to include the audience in as many ways as possible into the program: “Piazza virtuale” therefore was interactive television and an early Social Medium. The viewers could call in and discuss during the show or trigger various application with their touch tone phones. This paper describes some of the findings that we came up with during a three year research project on “Piazza virtuale”, but more importantly the different ways and media that we used to publicized the digitized and archived material from “Piazza virtuale” as well as our own research. Apart from a book and a website, there are also a video documentary, an exhibition and a permanent online exhibition with the new and innovative tool common. garden that was developed during the COVID epidemic by Dutch artist Constant Dullaart.