Report from Ars Electronica 2002

Report from Ars Electronica
Linz, Austria
September 7 - 12, 2002
By Jonah Brucker-Cohen ([email protected])

If you walked barefoot into the lounge at the O.K. center in Linz this week,
you might think you reached the beach of the future. Instead of sand,
millions of tiny plastic beads lined the floor of this blacklight neon room
with low cushions and a fleet of laptops displaying net art projects. This
year's Ars Electronica took the theme "Unplugged: Art as the Scene of Global
Conflicts" a metaphor for the state of post 9/11 artistic practice amid an
international climate of political tension surrounding globalization,
terrorism, and threats of war. As it was my first visit to Ars, I tried to
inhale as much stimuli as possible without suffering my own blue screen of
death.

The festival consisted of 8 venues scattered throughout the smog-infested,
small town of Linz. The museum built specifically for electronic art, the
Ars Electronica Center (AEC), is a fairly antiseptic space, and this year
hosted the "Hidden Worlds" exhibit featuring Golan Levin's "Hidden Worlds of
Noise and Voice." An augmented reality simulation that pinpoints the
location of audible sounds and through display goggles renders 3D worm-like
colors emanating from the source of the sounds. The project gave everything
from high-pitch squeals to bass thumping burps a virtual counterpart. Also
at AEC was Motoshio Chikamori and Kyoko Kunoh's "Tools Life" an interactive
installation consisting of various tools (e.g., hammers, cheese graters)
that launch animations in the object's shadow when touched. The focus of the
work was to illuminate and display invisible data layers moving within
physical space.

The more spacious O.K. Center hosted the honorable mentions and winners in
the CyberArts category, which focused on themes of simulation and
representation. Golden Nica winner, David Rokeby's "n-cha(n)t" asked what it
would sound like if a network of computers chanted in unison - computers
hanging from the ceiling use speech recognition technology to transform
visitor's vocal input into lyrics. Taking telepresence to sonic heights, was
Atau Tanaka and Kasper Toeplitz's "Global String," a long steel cable
stretching from floor to ceiling connected to another cable's resonant sound
frequencies over the Internet. Also inspired by physical movement through
spatial mapping, "Body Brush" developed by a group from Hong Kong, generated
a colorful 3D landscape through "Digital Action Painting" where
visitors could dance on
the floor while their movements and gestures are tracked in space. The crowd
pleaser was Volker Morawe and Tilmann Reiff's "PainStation", a rendition of
Pong in an armored cabinet where users have to place their hands on elements
that quickly heat up or be whipped by motorized strings if they miss the
ball with their paddle. In effect, the threat of physical harm provided a
compelling incentive to engage strangers in the game.

The festival's defining strength seemed to be embedded in the energy and
rawness of the performances. Japan's 66b/cell group upstaged most of the
events with its epic show at the Peter Behrens Haus featuring alien-like
costume design, embedded LED clothing, perfect projection synchronization
with dance moves, techno beats, and a dancer painted in gold with long
spikes emanating from the tips of his fingers. Similarly, "Vivisector" by
Klaus Obermaier and Chris Haring featured dancers moving within video
projections and shifting their bodies to distort and shape incoming light
movements. Rounding out the live events was the "Gameboyzz Orchestra
Project", a collection of six on-stage practitioners creating 8-bit console
sounds through customized sequencers connected to drum machines.

The symposium's focus on global conflict and media representation post 9/11
turned into a backlash against the political motivations of the exhibited
art. Was the art political? Did it have a social message? If so, does this
quality make it more or less valuable? Of the winners, Rafael-Lozanner
Hemmer's full scale "Body Movies" installation addresses the relational
structures between urban landscapes and the people inhabiting them. His
project raised the questions: "What is a city today? When does it begin an
when does it end?" The answer seems to be based more on psychology than
physical boundaries since everyone who answered seemed to have a different
opinion. In Net Vision, RSG's Carnivore project looked at the political
junction of art and government surveillance and how public networks can be
manifested through artistic output with real-world input. Also looking at
public space was It's Alive's mobile phone, location-based, pervasive game
"Bot-Fighters," which tracks the relative position of people through a city,
and engages them in a combat simulation as a robot avatar. Basing game play
on fears of surveillance and tracking, the project transforms public space
into a recreational arena similar to earlier, localized games like
Laser-Tag.

Ars Electronica, the decisive festival for digital creativity, is an
important milestone
for artists working in this realm. The festival's longevity (it was
established in 1987)
stands as its greatest strength and artists have evolved their careers via the
relationships and connections the event enables. Despite its ambition
to be a global
leader in the recognition of digitalarts, Ars seems still committed
and impressed
by the 'little guy'. In the digital domain, the aesthetic pressures
of the professional
art world are present but less obtrusive. There's still no
Michelangelo of digital art
and that's a good thing. Festivals like Ars challenge and provoke us enough to
prove that the promise of artistic perfection is only upstaged by the
realization
that failure is more interesting.

-Jonah Brucker-Cohen ([email protected])

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Jonah Brucker-Cohen|Sugar House Lane
Research Fellow | Bellevue
Media Lab Europe|Dublin 8, Ireland
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