Victory Media Network is a strange Dallas art boondoggle located down by the American Airlines Center — a big development with 8 gigantic, super-bright video screens mounted along a promenade that bills itself as "the first large-scale, outdoor digital arts gallery in the world." It's bad ad agency art — the kind of thing that could have been good if they'd gotten a good video curator, but instead was a PR flash-in-the-pan that's faded from view because (as one Dallas artist put it) it's awesome, but not in the way they want it to be. Here's my conversation with Paul Slocum, GT's upcoming Virtual Resident, about VMN: "Do you know about this?" "Yes." "Is it ridiculous?" "Yes." "Does it suck?" "Yes." Slocum pointed out that, for one thing, the content is lousy (one category in their recent juried competition was "Funnybone: Playful animation, fun live action and anything else that gets the whole family laughing." Significantly, there were no artists or curators on the jury). In addition, there are dumb MTV-ish ads between the "art" videos, and VMN failed to make a deal with the American Airlines Center, whose own giant high-def screen at the end of the plaza screens news and overpowers everything else. Why even bother mentioning it? Because it's yet another example of money being thrown at a project in the name of art by people who may be well-intentioned, but who end up with a failed project that assumes the audience are idiots. Get a curator, VMN!! Commission work from some actual good video artists (none of whom will currently touch your project with a 50-foot pole)!!
Let’s start with the name
