SITUATED

You can also look at basics of Media Art as production tools or as technologies for representing tools. Or as tools for collaborative or activist interventions. An example of a production tool is an auto illustrator which critically engages with adobe illustrator and photoshop, which shows the specific software by critically questioning and undermining them. And then you have a lot of pieces about technologies in communities. Mongrells 9 would be an example. It basically invites people to create knowledge maps of their experiments in sets of nine images. An example of a collective or activist project is the Bureau of Inverse Technologies that has created all these types of products that might be useful in an activist context, for example the Bits Rocket which is basically this little toy rocket that enables you to do for example crowd control during demonstrations. You can count the people that are out there and you can get more accurate accounts then the media are giving you. And then there is the Critical Art Ensemble which created a lot of technologies which help you criticize genetic engineering.

So this is just one way of looking at different forms of basics here. And I don’t want to say that New Media Art is art that has all of these things. But the works here in the exhibition from Victoria Banks living room with a very modular narrative to Uterbachs works, where again you have a modular generative which questions the composition of painting. It is just one of the inherent characteristics. And what I haven’t talked about is art that uses digital technologies as a tool that creates photographs or a painting. But at a festival such as Transmediale you are potentially looking at photo’s such as a painting or a photograph that critically engages with the effects of new technology. And I think it is actually crucial for the reintegration in the realm of fine arts to look across media.

Everybody complaints today that New Media Art is very much in a gettho today, and there are so many attempts to integrate it more, and I also think we should get out of the media category. In ordre to do that on the other hand as you see just how hybrid this territory is, there are various problems connected to that and we will discuss that later so I will end it here. Thank you very much.

Gunalan Nadaradjan – LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts – Singapore

I have two or tree points I would like to make. I would like to start with this difficult question of what it is this New Media Art. We must understand that the field is a relatively new field in terms of attemps of trying to define it. And in some senses this defining difficulties of categorizing and the multiplication of media based, form based, material based categories and taxonomies is very characteristic of a relatively new field. And I think it is useful for us to look at and to think about whether we should be in such a hurry to make these classifications. I think I would like to suggest that it is not a bad thing to not have categories that are not set and defined.

One important benefit is that you are enabled by this lack of categories to make hybrid connections and associations that the field of New Media Art or how you would like to call it actually celebrates. If one looks just within this audience where they say: “I’m not really an artist I am coming from this field”, or “I started with something else and now I am doing this”.
I think one of the interesting aspects of what is going on in this field is that it isn’t fixed and I think that the benefits of connecting to other fields is a beneficial thing it should be encouraged. And I think that to have defined categories which put up borders to say: this is what constitutes Media Art and everything else is not, the us vs them idea would not be very beneficial for the field.

Having said that, provocatively I also want to suggest that the field itself has got a longer history and the history itself would not be able to be explored if we are to define the field as it is right now. A conference will happen in Benth (?) in October this year on Media Art. And one of the issues of the conference is, what are the historical precedents that have contributed to some extent to the development of New Media Art. Even when we look at the initial proposals that are being done in terms of papers, we realise that we are getting papers from such varying fields and we are discovering that there are genealogies and connections and histories that go back to the thirteenth century and to the third century. Or to some obscure city or to some obscure group that is functioning in one particular city and doing interesting stuff.

So the potential of developing these connections to these many different historical movements just becomes that much more complex. People have started to define the field already. Now, to give an example of that history thing. One of the works that I am doing right now is to look at the histories of Robotic arts. There have been histories of Robots that go back a rather long time. But these have not been seen as predecessors of automatisation or automata. And one of the things that I am interested in the research that I am doing on Islamic Robotics is that in the 9th century to the 13th century a whole range of interesting examples of automated devices was created in the Muslim world. And these represented interesting ways of thinking about programming. Programming movements, e.g. movements that would elicit pleasure. And a lot of the devices had interesting potential to be developed further. But out genealogies of robotic arts have placed themselves somewhere back in the 50s or 60s. Part of this has to do with the fact that we think that robotic arts hold this particular set of imperatives and this is what we think and are trying to respond to.

I think that the lack of having categories predefined would help us to explore some of these historical possibilities. The relationship between a lot of national magic examples of experimentation where forgotten. These are also interesting examples of installations that had interesting elements of creating a response from the audience. Making an audience wondering about how nature operates. These are points of historical discontinuities that I have tried to show and that I think we should actually exploit. And we would probably be losing that possibility by simply saying well look this is what it is and this is what it is not, its genealogy begins in 1928 or 1930 or 1950. We would miss an opportunity.

One other issue that is worth while talking about is the unproductive division that exists today between Media Art events and Media artists, and Contemporary Art events and Contemporary artists. There are very few contemporary arts festivals that are consistently showing Media Artists. And part of the problem has to do with the extent to which contemporary art understands the necessities, the aesthetics or the logistical support that is needed for Media Arts. And we are perpetuating that division by closing down our bridge already. I we should start exploring the continuities and relationships and affiliations between contemporary art movements and practices with New Media Art. E.g what are the relations between early conceptual art working with information and data to database works. How can we start at a different way of conceptualising database art works that are happening primarily in Media Arts but that are connecting up to a different history so you start to create a different kind of a dialogue. To create possibilities or a different kind of audience. I think that the unproductive division that exists between contemporary art and Media Arts needs to be addressed at some point. If this is not addressed, what is going to happen is that we are more and more marginalised in terms of that we are going to have our own events. How many biennales are actually seriously considering what is going on in Media Arts? There are very few Biennales that actually dealt with Media Arts. I think that division and that lack of understanding is just being perpetuated and continued by the fact that we are not engaged in that world and I think we should engage in that world by trying to open something up of the borders. And one way to open it up is by keeping the categories open.

Sally Jane Norman – Culture Lab – Newcastle

My statement will just be a few of basic questions. The decision to abolish categories is a challenging and a brave one. And I feel somehow an instrumental approach to this because we once did an award on Interactive Art and we had such problems with getting our head around how to define Interactive Art. So I think this debate is a really worth while one picking it back up again. And it is really interesting to see the work that has resulted from this decision. And to read the jury statement. Regarding this panels presentation statement, there are a few points that I would like to focus on and exaggerate probably.

So, a first obvious point is the fact that Media Art has developed and is developing parallel to the increasingly generalised use of the technology it is using in many different fields, at home, leisure corporate and many more. Technological and digital literacy at least in the privileged parts of the world which enjoy electricity and phone networks is growing steadily. And creations that surprised 20 years ago for their combined artistic and technological innovation are less likely today although we may remain extremely sensitive to their historic value. I told you this would be a truism.

Technology’s constant and exponential development makes it I think contentious that at a given moment our levels of experience and simulation have at last blessed us with a wisdom and hindsight to leave behind the nodes and bolds of technology and technological questions. And to move on to the nobler debate of the societal and cultural meanings of Media Art.

The claim that yesterdays embryonic technologies are becoming today’s mainstream technologies is of course logical and reasonable. The claim however that this might lead to more laudable artistic pursuits, like a focus on culture and societal meanings is I think a catch 22 claim, if you develop the underlying logic. When today’s embryonic technologies become tomorrows mainstream they will in their turn enhance arts cultural and societal focus. Making Transmediales 05 a juvenile thing hung up on today’s technology. What will our descendants say about work 20 years from now? That artists in 2005 where too overwhelmed by the new technological possibilities to take account of the cultural and societal meanings of new media? But when they finally became mainstream we where able to redevelop this focus?

Where does this reasoning begin and where does it end? It’s like the debate about when we began to become post-human? Which is a funny thing for a species that can’t decide whether its condition should be human or post-human. The revolution is permanent and never over and particularly in art. I think we have to make a careful distinction between the maturity we may eventually have acquired after a couple of decades of digital art, and the assertion that with that sort of maturity we can detach ourselves from certain aspects of technologies in order to embrace broader issues. This assertion has a questionable underlying premise that consists of opposing technology on the one hand and societal and cultural meaning on the other hand.

I do not think that the once tense relationship between art and Media Art has miraculously eased out thanks to the experience acquired during a generation or two. And I am talking about generations as conditions of human beings as opposed for example to generations of software. And I would like to point to Erik Satie who once said that Experience is a form of paralysis. So it is not necessarily a liberating thing. I suggest that these tensions have always existed in the relation between art and new media of its day whether we are talking about pigment or materials or wathever. And I suggest that these tensions have somehow shifted as they always do and always have done. And perhaps right now they are firing the debate that rallies and opposes art and design, entertainment and aesthetics, computational procedures and conceptual art.. They are essential aspects of the creation process, it drives and distinguishes art from other sites of human activity. I also hope that we remain capable of or that we continue to attempt to identify the places where they are active at a given historic moment. That’s what really interests me.

Today at last our experiences have moved us to more interesting reflections on societal and cultural meanings of Media Art. We are in effect indirectly undermining the societal and cultural value of earlier work. This is problematic. Even if we did manage to come up with a consensual definition of what the societal and cultural meanings of New Media Art might be. The fact that we are actually dealing with a more hybrid and historically more accurate history then we actually might think. Can arts societal and cultural meanings be a-historically defined? Like abstract attributes out of context? Are these attributes not rather tightly a meshed in the society and cultural that actually make them meaningful? If so, on what grounds can we presumptuously dismiss historically renewed work as being less meaningful then today’s. And what should stop our descendants of doing the same thing some time after us. How do we deal with ideological wealth bound up in archaeological pasts?

What is implied here is that the pioneers in electronic and digital arts where forced in exploring activities by trying out new tools. And that these exploratory activities where not interested in cultural and societal meanings. But I think this is a suspicious “we are older and wiser” stance that undermines the intentions of our forbearers.

There is an underlying suggestion here then that the experimentation on new tools their affordances and their technical implications are incompatible with a focus on their cultural and societal meanings. So the story of technology being ghettoized because it is blanched from its vital makers and users. It’s also the old story of refusing to contextualise. Of being obliged to consider work of another time that in its respective context probably had just as much cultural and societal significance as today’s works on the Transmediale award.

My real problem is the fact that these plains resuscitate and die hard double bind, that I hope one day will disappear but I suspect we are stuck with it. It is part of our human limits probably. This is the dilemma that rises when you draw up a hard and firm line between art and technology. In short between elements that are still always seen as dichotomous. And in reality the type that even not? The constant co-evolution of humans and technics is such that to my mind at least there is no such thing as artistic experimentation bereaved of social and cultural implications.

Wasn’t it the focus on explicitly engaged work, whatever that means, any more laudable then focus on generic, abstract, communication and interactive functionalities of the tools we are developing. Because these functionalities are powerful conveyors of social activities.

Are we headed for a new kind of social realism? If art is a symbolic system that we humans have contrived to query the nature of the universe and our relations to that nature and to that universe then surely its most burning message now ever and always is to see and question how this nature and these relationships are changing. And as the old dichotomies mentioned earlier (the nature-techniques dichotomy) move away to more disturbingly hybrid constructs, where the definition of life itself is called into question. Surely arts essential societal and cultural role consists of a query of these new arena’s of cultural and conceptual activity and I will maintain that the work that is being showed here does so.

Posted by kris_r on March 30th, 2005 in: Uncategorized.