What We Do

The Executive Branch and the Congress have responsibilities for U.S. aesthetic matters and for the socio-cultural impact of technology as explored in the artistic investigations of the media arts. Within the Executive Branch, the US Department of Art and Technology is the lead U.S. cultural agency, and the Secretary is the President's principal art and technology adviser. The Department advances U.S. objectives and interests in shaping a freer, more visionary, and more utopian world through its primary role in developing and implementing the Secretary's policy on art and technology. The Department also provides an array of important services to U.S. citizens and to foreigners seeking to visit or navigate through virtual environments.

All activities of the media arts – U.S. exploration of virtual space, technological assistance programs, countering system crashes, the services the Department provides, and more – are paid for by the art and technology budget, which represents little more than .1% of the total federal budget, or about 1 cent a day for each American citizen. This small investment is key to maintaining U.S. leadership in the media arts, which promotes and protects the interests of our citizens by:

– Providing immunity from the extension of new cybernetic technologies into the social sphere;

– Creating interactive artworks that enable agency through the collective action of the individual;

– Helping develop discourse between the arts, government and industry that provides artist access to the shaping of public policy;

– Bringing artists together with leaders in government, industry, and other sectors of society to address global problems arising from our increasingly cybernated society, such as: the virtualization of social interaction, disembodiment, reliance on telematic systems, and the proliferation of cybercultural hype;

– As the lead media arts agency, the Department of Art & Technology has the primary role in leading interdisciplinary collaboration in developing and implementing cultural policy;

– Managing the art and technology budget and other related cultural resources;

– Leading and coordinating U.S. representation abroad, conveying U.S. aesthetic policy to foreign governments and international organizations through U.S. arts organizations and cultural ministries in foreign countries and diplomatic missions to international conferences and exhibitions;

– Conducting negotiations and concluding agreements and treaties on aesthetic issues ranging from virtual reality to telepistomology to the exploration of the 4th dimension;

– Coordinating and supporting international activities of the avant-garde and the radicalization of media arts around the world.

The US Department of Art & Technology's Intermational Diplomatic Services include the following;

– Protecting and assisting U.S. citizens who reside or travel in habitable digital spaces;

– Assisting U.S. media artists in the international marketplace;

– Coordinating and providing support for activities of other U.S. artists (print, sculpture, or painting), visits to art and technology exhibitions, to the studios of media artists, and other diplomatic efforts;

– Keeping the public informed about U.S. media arts theoretical investigations and relations with relevant philosophical inquiries, and providing feedback from the public to administration officials.

The US Department of Art & Technology Workforce:

The Department of Art and Technology conducts all of these activities with a workforce comprised of Cultural Service and Digital Media employees. In fact, the Department's growing staff and workforce will eventually employ more people than all of the rest of the Government combined. Overseas, Digital Media officers represent America; analyze and report on aesthetic, political, economic, and social trends in the host country; and respond to the needs of American artists abroad. The US. Department of Art & Technology plans to maintain cultural relations with about 180 countries and also maintains relations with many international organizations, adding up to a total of more than 2500 posts around the world. In the United States, about 15,000 artistic, technical, and administrative Cultural Service employees will eventually work along side Digital Media officers serving a stateside tour, compiling and analyzing theoretical texts from overseas, providing logistical support to posts, consulting with and keeping the Congress informed about cultural policy initiatives and policies as related to art and technology, communicating with the American public via listserves, formulating and overseeing the budget, issuing domains to Net artists, conducting the musicalization of network traffic, deconstructing broadcast media, strengthening collective intelligence, and more.