Report From Ciber-Art Bilbao Conference

Report from Ciber-Art Bilbao Conference
April 25-29, 2004
Bilbao, Spain
http://www.ciberart-bilbao.net

By Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah_at_coin-operated.com)

Set in the post-industrial city of Bilbao, Spain, the Ciber-Art
Bilbao conference was a lively mix of interactive art exhibitions,
performances, concerts, and a comprehensive paper session where
artists and practitioners presented their work and theories on the
future of digital culture. The festival's main objective was to
situate Bilbao on the digital art map by creating an event with
global participation from internationally known media artists.
Although the art exhibition opened a week earlier, I arrived as the
five day long conference sessions began. One problem with the
structure of the conference was the attempt to integrate the local
media art presence, since the program booklet failed to translate
Spanish speaker's talks into English and vise versa. This is an
account of what I was able to experience, although with concurrent
panels running back to back, the breadth of the conference was
impossible to completely cover.

The opening presentation was by "Free Software" pioneer and
grassroots hero, Richard Stallman. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Stallman, who wrote the GNU (which stands for GNU's Not Unix)
operating system as an alternative to proprietary systems like
Windows, outlined the four tenets of the free software movement: 1)
The ability to run a software program, 2) The freedom to help
yourself to the source code and change it, 3) The freedom to
distribute copies of your modifications, and 4) The desire to help to
build your community by publishing a modified version. His talk
outlined why these freedoms are important to the premise of giving
you complete "control" over your computer and your ability to use it
freely. Having unrestricted access to source code and the work of
like-minded programmers perpetuates the proliferation of goodwill and
exchange among independent producers. He went on to demonstrate
whether or not these ideas applied to hardware, as well as software
by trying to deconstruct the use and misuse of a physical object: a
chair. However this argument fell short because software allows for
an economy of scale. When creating software it is easier for an
individual to create many copies than one, whereas with hardware
making many copies is more difficult and costly.

The paper topics presented over the next few days ranged from
examinations of online memes, location-based GPS art projects,
networked accessories, and formal overviews of art and technology
practice. Mirko Tobias Schafer, from the Institute of Media and
Re/presentation at the University of Utrecht spoke about how the
hacking and modification of existing technology has been integrated
into the next versions of the hacked object. One example is the
website, Aibohack.com, which profiles a hobbyist's software and
hardware mods of the popular robotic dog, some of which Sony plans to
integrate into their next version. Giving an overview of academic
institutions in the US supporting art and technology, was Duke
University's Edward A. Shanken. Shaken sees collaborations between
artists and scientists as an interface for research to engage with
the public. This attitude was also prevalent in Susan Kozel's keynote
address where she outlined details of her wearable projects that aim
to engage the public through social performative experience. Kozel, a
professor at Simon Fraser University, outlined her aim to develop
clothing that can connect its wearer's biometric data with others
over a local network and produce vibro-haptic feedback on the surface
of the garment. Thus the clothing becomes a relay of mood and emotion
within social proximity.

Also exploring immediacy of interaction, Eric Paulos of Intel
Research Berkeley, gave the third keynote about his recent work in
"Urban Atmospheres". The project is a detailed account of the
proliferation of close-knit urban spaces where public passivity often
upstages collective engagement. His aim is to reverse this assumption
through a "carnivalization" of everyday encounters into playful
interventions where everyday individuals can engage with the people
or strangers occupying similar spaces. His latest project,
"Jabberwocky" manifests itself as a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone
application that connects to others to visualize and encourage
connections between 'strangers' who frequent similar spaces. Paulos
was asked if this type of community reflection could have a negative
effect for people who enjoy their anonymity. Like most tracking
related projects, the obvious answer is that most people give up a
certain amount of freedom regardless of their desire to be tracked,
simply by owning a mobile phone or using a credit card. This type of
surveillance fear was debated through the conference as the promise
of technology in most presentations often left out the repercussions
and baggage it entails.

Across town, in a large warehouse space, the art exhibition featured
several large-scale interactive installations, and hundreds of
screen-based terminals behind giant car-wash plastic flaps. "Evident
Traces", a mini-show at the festival, curated by Christiane Paul,
featured several works that attempted to engage the user on a
physical level. One of these projects was NYC-based artist, John
Klima's long awaited "Terrain Machine", a real-time depth display
with hundred of motorized potentiometers with stretched spandex
connecting each point. The result is a moving "terrain" with a
projected image of a woman floating on the surface, allowing users to
manipuate the depths of the pots as they cast a shadow. Also in
Paul's selection was Susan Kozel's "Between Bodies", the second phase
of the wearable sensing project, "whisper",but featuring a series of
skirts that send signals amongst each other via PocketPCs to effect
physical stimuli such as electric fans and motors. Also present were
Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth's "Instant City", a tangible
sound installation that allows people to create sound mixes by
placing translucent plastic blocks on a light table. Depending on the
amount of light that passes through the stacked blocks, different
sound samples would play. Other notable additions were NYC based
artist Daniel Shiffman's "Reactive", a particle-based video parser,
and MEART - The Semi Living Artist's "Symbotica", which used
artificial life simulations coupled with a pneumatic robotic drawing
machine.

Leaving the conference early, I missed out on the Planetary Collegium
events scheduled for later in the week. Regardless, it seemed as if
the prevailing attitudes expressed outlined how the promise of
technology as a social leveler becomes more evident with
re-appropriation and disruption of existing contexts of interaction,
place, and social engagement. Is creativity the ultimate social
equalizer? When does technology lose relevance to the idea trying to
be conveyed? From the numerous installations that challenged how
forms of media can displace their traditional modes of
representation, to papers that explored how the proliferation and
mutation of ideas is causing a rift in popular culture, the Ciber-Art
Bilbao provided an interesting perspective on the role of the digital
instigator.

-Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah_at_coin-operated.com)
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Jonah Brucker-Cohen | Human Connectedness Group
PHD Candidate | Media Lab Europe
NTRG, Trinity College | Sugar House Lane, Bellevue
Dublin 2, Ireland | Dublin 8, Ireland
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http://www.coin-operated.com - projects and work/blog
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