Issue 118, Winter 2006 - Linz - Arts electronica 2006 - August, September 2006.
Circa 118: Review Ars electronica 2006  | | John Gerrard: Smoke tree – a virtual sculpture ; courtesy the artist/ Ars Electronica Center | This was the year that Ars electronica got religion. Or at least, the participants, from many different countries, took a day off from downtown Linz to relax in the sun-drenched splendour of the baroque monastery of St. Florian, about a half-hour’s drive from the Austrian city. ‘Simplicity’ was the title of this year’s Ars electronica , a value reflected in the space offered by St. Florian for relaxation and meditation with both a Western and Eastern flavour (Japanese archery and origami were both on offer within the precincts). As a counterpoint to all the spirituality of various kinds, Italian photography star Oliviero Toscani (his work is familiar from the Benetton ads) injected a note of acid secularism in his talk. Japanese interactive media artist Toshio Iwai featured prominently. (Having got lost in the labyrinthine precincts I missed his contribution, but was told it was awesome). Music of both a traditional and experimental kind was to be sampled, including a composition by Michael Nyman for the bells of the monastery. Japanese-American computer artist/ academic John Maeda was to the fore in the discussions in St. Florian and in the Danube-side Brucknerhaus – Maeda has written a new book called The Laws of simplicity . Some of his (large-scale, kinetic, abstract) work was on display in the Lentos Kunstmuseum, a building which glows blue and purple at night, overlooking the river nearby. Part of the intellectual fare consisted of a day-long seminar in the Lentos building entitled ‘When cybernetics meets aesthetics’, where issues around prominent names from Joseph Beuys to Norbert Wiener were discussed. A spectacular Moon ride took place in Linz’s main square, with riders of stationery bicycles generating power for a large balloon hovering over the town centre, which with a bit of imagination took on the appearance of an extra moon. Paul de Marinis was the star of the Interactive art section, winning the Golden Nica award for The messenger , a system whereby the individual letters of e-mails sent to him are laboriously spelt out in receivers (bowls, jars and dancing skeletons). The work made reference to some anachronistic telegraphic theories and also to the ‘dead letters’ of the digital age, the lost and meaningless messages that circulate around cyberspace. Also of note in this category was The robotic hair (Raffaello d’Andrea, Max Dean, Matt Donovan) which perpetually falls apart and puts itself back together again. Seriously cool in the Digital musics section with an honorary mention was Sonic bed_London by Kaffe Matthews and Annette Works: you lie down on a large bed and feel the sound of the music with your body as well as hearing it. It really does work, and opens up possibilities in the currently underdeveloped tactile region of virtual or immersive reality. The main prize in the music section was won by veteran French composer Eliane Radigue for her haunting work L’Ile re-sonante . More ‘traditional’ visual VR was to be sampled in the CAVE of the Ars Electronica Center, where one could wander through a number of immersive, three-dimensional VR worlds, including one based on an imaginary Renaissance city which was brought to virtual life. Elsewhere in the Ars Electronica Center was a treasure-trove of interactive installations. These included Smoke tree , a virtual sculpture of a carbon-producing tree by Irish digital artist John Gerrard, with unsettling environmental references, and Morphovision (Toshio Iwai, NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories) where a rotating solid object illuminated in a special way appeared to liquefy like a computer-animated object – life becoming film. The winner of the Computer animation section was 458nm by Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck and Tom Weber, a film affectingly depicting a romantic encounter between two clockwork snails. Of note in the Digital communities section was Roman Bleichenbacher’s Codecheck (www.codecheck.ch) a project that allows users to access information on products from a wide range of sources including consumer organisations, thus potentially enabling feedback and empowerment on the part of the purchaser. The issue of imparting power to consumers has been a relatively neglected one in political terms, but will probably become increasingly important in an era of growing health-consciousness. The winner in this category was Antoni Abad’s canal*ACCESSIBLE, which enabled people with mobility problems to create a digital map of Barcelona, signposting inaccessible places. Again, empowerment was on the agenda, and given due recognition. The winner of the Net vision section was The road movie by exonemo, a combination of road trip, video and origami (that’s right). An intriguing project on display in the Brucknerhaus was REGRETS Linz (Graham Budgett and Jane Mulfinger). People walk around with computers mounted on a kind of backpack, inviting participants to list the things they regret in their life, for public digital display. Feedback is available from previous users with similar regrets. The metaphor is to offset your mental burden onto the back of another – an intriguing exercise in social psychology and one, no doubt, with potential for future development. Some of the contributions were painful and poignant. In the Electrolobby beneath the Brucknerhaus were some ‘hands-on’ workshops on computer hardware entitled ‘Make it simple’ – a flourishing dork paradise or nerd nirvana. At the other end of the eschatological scale, metaphorically speaking, was the highly-addictive computer game Snowman in hell . The game, based on Dante’s Inferno, is by students from the University of Art and Design, Helsinki (Janna Kaasalainen et al), and was on show at Linz’s Kunst Universität. The game is available at mlab.uiah.fi/snowman – check it out, and help to release the poor snowman from the infernal regions. (Although I didn’t succeed I’m told it’s possible – perhaps a suitably theological note on which to conclude the report on this year’s Ars electronica .)  | | Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea, Matt Donovan: The Robotic chair ; courtesy rubra/ Ars Electronica Center | Paul O’Brien (obrienp@ncad.ie) teaches at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Linz - Arts electronica 2006 -
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