Dear Joan Campas Montaner,

After thinking about your questions for sometime, I decide to answer in the form of an action. On December, 8, 2004 I posted your questions on the MTAA blog with a plea for someone to take on a reply. I stated that any answer would be passed on to you with the person’s name. So here is the reply from the artist and net art guru Robin Murphy.

http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/mriver/helpout.html

murphy@thing.net says,
Difficult Questions… Yikes!

Q: What is your opinion regarding the political commitment of digital artists in the complex reality of today’s world?

Robin: Well, obviously, the Dean blog revolution didn’t have much effect on the election, and moveon.org turned into a therapy group. I’ve said elsewhere that Americans aren’t very good at political art — it’s usually either bad politics or bad art — but I do think the opportunity to network with people from other parts of the world with different aesthetic agendas has been one of the great breakthroughs of digital art.

Q: What is your position on the type of political activities that digital artists should be undertaking?

Robin: Digital artists should be good citizens and seek to understand how the technologies they are using can help them be good citizens.

Q: What social function do you believe digital creation plays — or should play?

Robin: To encourage thoughtful skepticism in our social lives.

Thank you for your questions. I hope this is of use to you. permanent link to this post