Talk:List of Canadian artists

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Category:Art of Canada| Artists]] October 1 2006 Intermedia Arts John m Orser, Intermedia Artist , Canadian

In the early 1980 computer innovation had shown that images and text and sound would evolve in the electronic environment and terms and meaning that were evolving and that those additional meanings would have wide spread cultural standing and would encroach on traditional terms that had nominally evolved in the visual arts. It was a cultural shift. Simply a meaning shift in culture.... a dominance of meaning evolving from new technology. The Computer environment had evolved and terms such as Multi- Media were becoming a term applied to tasking in the computer environment. Multi Media Arts Practice that had excusive use of the term now had competition for common usage . The term Multi Media and it various source practices are quite old with historical roots going back to the very beginnings of culture. As an artist this terminology was becoming confusing when communicating current ideas of contemporary arts practice. The enevitable comparisons with the Muti media tasking in the computer environment obscured the fine arts practices that artists were engaged in that had been know as Muti Media contemporary arts practices; that included multiple layers of meaning and materials. Conversations about contemporary arts practices and those formative aspects of description and those evolving meanings, concepts as used and applied in the visual arts were clearly being obscured.

In 1979 a discussion during Trent University, symposium on Culture (Canadian Images) a discussion with John Wadlen, had posed the question about the evolution of Multimedia Arts Practices and the evolving technology of the computer. Being pressed for clarification I simply divide the discussion on arts development that would illustrate the incorporation of the computer into an arts environment.  I used the idea that the computer would be incorporated into an artistic environment as another tool ….  The term I used was an Intermedia environment. That evolution continues with a history and significant early developments of artists in the visual arts demonstrating those tendencies toward Intermedia, as they had transpired in the arts practices for instance: the early work of Michael Snow, a Canadian artist whose experimentations in film, sound, holography, Installations, performance and painting parallel my own development as an artist… The discussion was forcing me to find a new term that more accurately referred too developments in Fine Arts practices…. At that moment I referred to those practices, such as my own, as Intermedia Arts Practice. Intermedia would allow a sufficient public definition that would not constrain my own work. The concept was broad enough that it allowed me to redirect my discussions on developments in my own arts practice with out balancing the new meanings that were being attached to Multi Media and the Computer. 
By 1996, during Open Spaces, Common Wealth Artist Exchange exhibition Palindrome at my studio site in Victoria, The term Intermedia had comfortably described a direction of contemporary arts practice, as it would evolve in Canada through the 1980s and the 1990s.  
Art Institutions such as the Canada Council for the Arts, that fund Arts Development and the British Columbia Arts Council, in Canada have had difficulty adjusting to these evolutions … Few sustaining programs have been developed to serve fully engaged Intermedia Arts Practices in the Visual Arts in Canada into the Twenty first century. None the less Intermedia has a strong presence in Canadian Arts Practice with a sound basis in the visual arts. Most of the serious development in fully engaged Intermedia Arts Practice, have evolved in the private sector and work such John Orser's the Intermedia Art work entitled: Document 2005 –2008 demonstrates the continued developmental capacity of Intermedia Arts Practices in Canada. Intermedia Arts Practices as they have evolved in the twenty first century have done so as an independent movement, a rarely identified movement in Canada … Private studios such as Visual Arts Studios of Victoria, B.C. Canada have evolved residencies for Intermedia Artist and produce the work of several Intermedia artists, both in Canada and internationally since 1979.  Intermedia work is evolving and it most serious development ties it self to site and situation as its key componet. In the early part of the twentieth century the computer is just another modality, technology that extends Intermedia to a distant audience but it in no way does it dominate Intermedia Practice in the Twenty First Century.

What's the point of all this?Freshacconci 11:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)