Linz: Ars Electronica
2002
|
|
|
Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer, Body Movies - Relational
Architecture
No. 6, 2002, installation shot in public
square, Linz;
photo Sabine Starmayr; courtesy Ars Electronica
|
Pain was a prominent
feature of this year's Ars Electronica Festival (prixars.orf.at)
in Linz, Austria, whether the pain was that of loss due
to 9/11, the cultural isolation of being unplugged from
the global electronic culture, or the literal pain of electric
shock. This year's Ars Electronica, entitled Unplugged,
was foreshadowed by the flooding of the Danube beside which
much of it takes place. (In a possible indication of Divine
approval for the high-minded tone of the event, the waters
receded before the week scheduled.) The annual festival
includes a symposium, performances and an exhibition of
notable entries in the areas of interactive art, net art,
net excellence, computer animation and digital music. There
is also an under-19s section. In addition the Ars Electronica
Center, the 'Museum of the Future' (aec.at) provides
a year-round, accessible and user-friendly display of current
developments in virtual reality and interactivity. A reminder,
perhaps, of what Dublin's Arthouse might have been, if Dublin
had as much cop-on as a provincial city in Austria...
This year's themes
included - perhaps coincidentally - that of flood itself,
which featured as the subject of a concert coordinated by
Detlef Heusinger, including video, orchestra and electronic
instruments and based on ancient 'flood' legends - the concert
recalled the work of Abel Gance and Tarkovsky. In this context
also, artist Peter Fend used his work in a prominent display
to illustrate alternative approaches to managing ecosystems.
Highlighted during
the theoretical discussions was the unplugging of much of
the 'Third World', specifically Africa, from the mainstream
of electronic culture. This issue was vigorously debated
by speakers, including several from Africa, and illustrated
by a video of how the inhabitants of archetypally remote
Timbuctoo have gone on-line. (In ironic illustration of
the 'unplugged' theme, an African hip-hop band, supposed
to appear at the festival, found themselves stranded in
Paris as a result of an airline strike, unable to travel
to Linz due to EU immigration laws.) The multicultural focus
of the festival provided an antidote to some to the poor
publicity Austria has received in recent years as a result
of right-wing domestic politics. Liberal themes received
a further boost with a focus on the crucial issue of privacy
in the electronic age, to which Joichi Ito made a thought-provoking
contribution.
African speaker Davis
O. Nejo intriguingly linked new technology to issues in
traditional African spirituality: technology shows us people
who have passed on, as if it were giving us access to the
spirit realm. (Also featured at the event was an impressive
display of ornamental objects from Africa made from recycled
materials such as Coke cans.)
Jeremy Rifkin, author
of The Age of Access and, with Paul Virilio, one
of the big intellectual names featured at the festival,
expatiated on the concept of the 'access-based' new economy
and on what he believes to be the fundamental role of culture
in society and the exploding of historical materialism by
events in post-Soviet Russia (the free market failed because
the culture wasn't there to support it). Rifkin, ethicist
and animal-rights advocate, urged the extension of the golden
rule ("do unto others...") to animals as well as to humans.
Virilio, who - appropriately virtually - appeared on a live
video-link from Paris, drew some thought-provoking parallels
between developments in contemporary global politics and
issues in ancient Greece.
In contrast to the
controversial topics raised in previous festivals (e.g.,
rape, genetic engineering) the post-9/11 Ars Electronica
was characterised by an air of sobriety and responsibility,
intensified by the fact that this year's event coincided
with the first anniversary of the attack on the World Trade
Centre. (Included was an inevitably emotional filmed account
of the reaction of New York artists to the attack.)
|
|
|
Volker
Morawe and Tilman Reiff: PainStation,
installation shot; photo Otto Saxinger;
courtesy Ars Electronica
|
For the irreverent,
however, all was not lost. A couple of the interactive art
installations had a flavour of S&M about them (as usual,
the most interesting exhibits were in the area of interactive
art.) PainStation by Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff
was a simple but effective concept. A 'Pong'-like game is
played by two people standing on either side of a horizontal
screen. You play by twiddling a knob with your right hand,
while the left is positioned on a sensor field, from which
it is subject to an electric shock if the ball misses the
bar bat operated by the player, and strikes a particular
symbol on the screen. The game is won as soon as one of
the players is forced to remove his/her hand. The experience
is quite painful as I can attest, having lost to a young
female player from Linz. A sign above the table - in German
only - warned children and people with pacemakers not to
try it. (Would a project like this even get off the ground
in Ireland, where lawyers and insurance companies rule unchallenged?)
|
|
|
Crispin
Jones: An Invisible Force, installation
shot;
photo Otto Saxinger; courtesy Ars Electronica
|
A similar concept operated
with Crispin Jones' installation An Invisible Force.
A fortune-telling machine laboriously spells out, through
raised squares on a table, the supposed answer to the inquirer's
question, while a plate under the person's left hand grows
progressively hotter. If your curiosity is stronger than
the pain, you have beaten the system. In theoretical terms,
the artist is interested in exploring parallels between
computer technology and traditional divination. Other notable
entries in the area of interactive art were Luc Courchesne's
video installation operated by spoken numbers, Ranjit Makkuni's
interactive crossover between traditional Indian culture
and new technology, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Body Movies,
influenced by the Dutch seventeenth-century artist Samuel
van Hoogstraten's engraving The Shadow Dance. Lozano-Hemmer's
project involved a huge screen set up on a building in the
main square of Linz, where passers-by could interact virtually
through shadow-play, their images projected by powerful
searchlights on the white vertical surface. Participants
could also intervene by lining up with projected figures
on the screen. When the line-ups are identical, the scene
is changed to the next set of portraits. Intriguingly, in
Linz the virtual shadow-play tended to be only with people
known to the participants - perhaps things are different
in some of the more laid-back venues where the installation
has operated.
The winner in this section was David Rokeby's
remarkable n-cha[n]t, influenced by the sound of
collective praying that intrigued him as a child (his father
was a minister of religion). A number of computers hang
from a screen in a room, their voices chanting in unison.
Images of the human ear appear on the screens. If the ear
is not covered by a hand, you can talk to the computer through
a microphone. The computer falls out of the chant, builds
up word-associations from the speech it hears, communicating
the new input with the other computers so that the chanting
loses its coherence before building back up again. In the
artist's terms, "The systems feel their way towards each
other, finding resonance in synonyms and similar sounding
words, working through different formulations of similar
statements until finally achieving unison." The piece obviously
illustrates crucial philosophical questions which, from
2001: A Space Odyssey to the recent AI, have
been to the fore in popular culture. Could there be such
a thing as artificial intelligence or consciousness? In
Rokeby's terms, though, his machines "represent nothing
more than themselves...indentured slaves of this particular
programmer, granted a fraction of some freedom they are
utterly incapable of desiring."
First prize or 'Golden
Nica' in the Net Vision section went to the Radical Software
Group for Carnivore, inspired by FBI software and
based on the theme of surveillance. Josh On/Futurefarmers
pulled off the Net Excellence award for They Rule,
a thought-provoking graphic display of the internal relations
of the economically dominant class in America, based on
a database of the Fortune 100 companies in 2001, and elaborating
the idea that the American economic system encourages conspiracy.
They Rule seems particularly relevant in the aftermath
of the US financial scandals which have put the financial
welfare of so many ordinary people at risk. In the creator's
terms: "Perhaps it will inspire people to try and find out
how it is that such a small percentage of the world controls
so much, and how this situation can be described as a democracy."
Monsters Inc.
claimed the first prize in a (generally disappointing) Computer
Animation/Visual Effects section, raising the issue as to
whether it is fair to allow an open competition for large
studios, small studios and student work in this category
(the organisers believe so). The Golden Nica in Digital
Musics went to Yasonao Tone for Man'Yo Wounded 2002,
an out-take of his Musica Simulacra, while the winner
of the under-19s section, Karola Hummer, pulled off the
top award with an ostensibly perverse project: drawings
laboriously made by programming a standard school pocket
calculator. (It was, apparently, the uselessness of the
project that captivated the jury, which perhaps says something
about the survival of nonutilitarian values in Linz.)
In the Ars Electronica
Center, Johannes Deutsch's installation in the virtual reality
CAVE was entitled Gesichtsraum (Space Face).
The drawback to the CAVE is that - any time I've been there
anyway - a demonstrator operates the interface for a group,
so the sense of interactivity is diluted. Also featured
in the Center was some advanced interactive experimentation,
including a 'Future Office Project'. There was also the
lifelike Cyclops, an unsettling machine with a flexible
spine and single eye that appears to observe the observer,
its field of 'vision' available on a screen. In the attached
Future Lab a demonstration of an 'augmented reality' video
game was on display - as if you could play Quake in the
real world, wearing the equipment on your body. This obviously
raises the issue of military applications - the project
is supported by the Australian Ministry of Defence - which
a presenter somewhat defensively fielded at a seminar. Australia,
he pointed out, is not trying to take over the world (has
he ever tried to order a meal in a Dublin restaurant?)
Despite its occasional
flaws, Ars Electronica has become the premier world focus
for art in the realm of new media - an indication of how,
with the support of enlightened business people and politicians,
a globally recognised intervention in the area of interface
between culture and new technology can be made by a relatively
small community. Could we organise a compulsory trip to
Linz for those who call the shots in Irish cultural politics?
Paul O'Brien
(obrienp@ncad.ie) teaches
at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
Ars Electronica, Linz,
September 2002
Do
you have an opinion on this article? If so, please click here for our comments form.
| No reader feedback so far - awaiting your input! |
Back
to top of page
|
|
