Fluxus Digital Collection Launches

We are pleased to announce the launch of The Fluxus Digital Collection. This online archive gathers an eclectic range of artworks by one of the most important movements of the twentieth century. Global in scope, Fluxus members moved between the USA, Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere. They worked across and between traditional media, opting for ephemeral materials, participatory approaches, and playful humor.

The collection includes digital tools that make interactive objects and text-based works available to viewers—many of which have not been read, seen, or heard outside of select archives. With technical tools that include 3-D modeling, digital scanning, photography, and film, the Fluxus Digital Collection gives worldwide access to scholars, teachers, students, and art-lovers.

“Video pioneer Nam June Paik organized the first art exhibition on the World Wide Web in 1994,” explains Fluxus artist and collection donor Ken Friedman. “Since then, Fluxus artists and composers have had a durable presence of event scores, images, documents, web sites, exhibitions, publications, and more. Some vanished when links broke and web sites disappeared. Others continue to overcome the limits of fragile artifacts that museums preserve by protecting them from people. The Fluxus Digital Collection brings works back to life, returning them to the world where they belong with a future as lively as the past.”

The University of Iowa Special Collections houses a trove of yet-to-be processed Fluxus art, writing, and correspondence. The Fluxus Digital Collection will continue to grow as we add new content.

Artists featured in the collection include: John Cage, Dick Higgins, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Ken Friedman, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Milan Knížák, Ben Vautier, Nam June Paik, Frank Zappa, Robert Filliou, Mieko Shiomi, Shigeko Kubota, Ben Patterson, Dieter Roth, Eric Andersen, Takehisa Kosugi, Ay-O, and others.

Supporting Partners
The University of Iowa
Digital Studio for Public Arts & Humanities
UI Library Digital Research & Publishing
Special Collections

For more information, contact:
Dr. Stephen Voyce
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Digital Studio for the Public Humanities
University of Iowa
E: stephen-voyce@uiowa.edu
T: 1.319.333.1923

The Fluxus Digital Collection is made possible by three University of Iowa programs: the Public Humanities in a Digital World (PHDW) initiative, Special Collections, and the University Library’s Digital Research and Publishing arm.

PHDW’s focus is the impact of academic work on civic life and society, using the opportunities provided by digital technologies to amplify and distribute broadly what faculty do as teachers and scholars, collaborating with communities on projects that have social and artistic impact, and envisioning new ways of interacting with our many publics.

Special Collections contains over 200,000 rare books ranging in age from the 15th century to newly created artists’ books; over 800 manuscript collections, medieval to modern; and 7,000 feet of records that document the University’s history. The Libraries’ repository of primary source materials includes exceptional literary collections of writers from Walt Whitman to Iris Murdoch; historical collections document the French Revolution, Westward Expansion, the Civil War, Chautauqua and vaudeville performers, the culinary arts, political cartooning, screenwriting, and more. Our holdings also include tens of thousands of pamphlets, photographs, posters, sound recordings, and other formats.

Digital Research & Publishing explores ways that academic libraries can best leverage digital collections, resources, and expertise to support faculty and student scholars by: (1) Collaborating on interdisciplinary scholarship built upon digital collections; (2) Offering publishing services to support sustainable scholarly communication; (3) Engaging the community through participatory digital initiatives; (4) Promoting widespread use and reuse of locally built repositories and archives; (5) Advancing new technologies that support digital research and publishing.