Theo Jansen: Strandbeest; courtesy Ars Electronica

Appropriate to the weather, the Dutch artist Theo Jansen's wonderful Strand beasts stole the show. Consisting of vast wind-powered, computer-designed skeletons constructed from electrical tubes by the Dutch artist, these gentle, lumbering creatures evoke similar feelings of amused affection as the more high-tech robot-dogs on display in the Ars Electronica Center, and bring up questions of evolution and design - the artist as substitute creator. (One wonders, though, how long the sand animals - devoid of anti-vandal defence mechanisms - would last, say, on the beaches of north Dublin...)

A special award was given to Jansen, as there was a question whether the work fitted comfortably into the Interactive art category. The clear, though somewhat unlikely, winner in this category was MILKproject by Esther Polak and Ieva Auzina, which used a GPS navigation system and documentation to analyse the cross-Europe production of cheese, from Latvia to the Netherlands. The work was rich in sociological implications - deconstructing the complicated but usually hidden relations of production and distribution within the agricultural economy, and giving ordinary people the opportunity to reflect on and communicate details of their lives which usually remain hidden - a defetishisation of the commodity, one might say. The work was socially informative, but perhaps questionable in terms of aesthetic content. ('Is it art?') Also striking in this category was Run motherfucker run by Dutch artist Marnix de Nijs, an interactive installation involving a treadmill and a display of empty city streets through which the participant runs. (Shades of artist Jeffrey Shaw, who offered in one of his works the opportunity to cycle through a virtual city, and perhaps also of a recent video piece by Ireland's Willie Doherty.) Clearly, there was a strong Dutch presence at this year's Festival, perhaps reflecting generous support of the arts in the Netherlands.

Tomek Baginski/ Platige Image: Fallen Art; courtesy Ars Electronica

The winner in the Computer animation/ visual effects section was Fallen art by Tomek Baginski of Poland, a striking piece of grotesquerie with a strong antiwar flavour (an element which was, however, downplayed by the artist himself). The film effectively brought together computer animation and traditional hand-painting, giving a painterly effect to the piece. Also outstanding in this category was Man OS 1 / extraordinateur, which amusingly brings a Mac interface alive and literalises the metaphors (for example, the Norton Disk Doctor is a real physician and the CD burner catches fire).

The winner in the Digital communities category was Akshaya, a worthly – if less than riveting – project involving networked information cebtres in the South Indian sstate of Kerala. The first prize (or Golden Nica) in the Net Vision section was won by Processing, an open-source programming language created to impart the basics of computer programming from a visual point of view. Freely available and especially suited to those who think visually and spatially (like most artist) Processing expands the bounderies of the gift economy in an area where corparate control of the computer industry is an ongoing spectre. In a spin on the relationship between capitalism and democracy, [V]ote-auction by Hans Berhard and Lizvlx offered, tongue-in-cheek, the opportunity for American citizens to sell their votes. The predictable legal difficulties that ensued were no doubt due to the failure of the US authorities to understand the aesthetic-political logic of pushing the capitalism system, and the corporate control of media, to its logical conclusion. Whether such a project could have any serious impact on the dire state of democracy in the US is another question (but perhaps it's just art.)

The Digital musics category is always a little separate from the main visually oriented events.An exceptio this year was Paul DeMarini' intriguing Firebirds – exploiting the relationship between fire, sound, totalitarian politics and concepts of the afterlife. The winner in this category was Maryanne Amacher's TEO! a sonic sculpture, based on recordings of muons (charged particales) made under the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico.

John Gerrard: The ladder, 2005, courtesy Ars Electronica

A multitude of events and exhibitions was scattered aroound Linz as part of this year's Ars Electronica. John Gerrard, a rising figure from Ireland in the international new-media world, displayed an impressive mixed-reality piece entitle The ladder, which attracted a steady stream of visitors. Also memorable was Barbara Siegel's evocative derelictedATMOSPHERES, a 360 degree black-and-white video installation consisting of a projection of French chateaux, reminiscent of the panoramas that preceded film as an audience spectacle (and also of Last year in Marienbad, arguably the finest film ever made).

Apart from the prize-winners and runners-up with their persistent – and laudable – references to political freedom and empowerment, there were the usual fun things at this year's Ars Electronica: electronic creatures inhabiting vegetation, and a mobile machine operated by a captive live cockroach (happily, the Insect Liberation Front stayed away). Reflecting the title of this year's Ars Electronica (Hybrid: living in paradox) and the associated intellectual debate – the main intellectual reference in this area being the work of Donna Haraway – these installations played with the ideas of crossover between human, animal, plant and machine. An invisible skipping rope operated by video characters was greatly enjoyed by younger visitors to the Ars Electronica Center, while else-
where, in the downtown OK Center which hosted the bulk of the interactive art pieces, one could play a game of virtuel tennis with mobile computer screens instead of tennis racquets. The prevailing dystopian nightmare – of developing human inertia contrasted with the growing vitality of the machine – is addressed by such developments. Kids (and their elders) can now get fit on a dance mat or through physically demanding computer games, ratger than sitting for hours putting on weight at a computer screen. Through the Ars Electronica Festival and Center, Linz has reinvented itself as a venue for twenty-first-century culture, hugely increased its tourist intake, and put itself on the global map in terms of digital media. The lessons for Ireland, and Dublin in particular, hardly needs to be laboured.

Paul O'Brien (obrienp@ncad.ie) teaches at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Linz: Ars Electro-nica, Ars Electronica Center, September 2005