Projects reviewed in this article:
Documenting an exhibition of new media art in a print catalogue always entails a serious "translation" problem: forget about multi-media, digital art works are reduced to screen shots and what about interactivity? The ideal solution to this problem seems to be the CD-ROM as it allows rendition of new media within the digital medium. As "InfoART"--an interactive CD-ROM art catalogue featuring the works exhibited in the InfoArt Pavilion at the '95 Kwangu Biennale in Korea--shows, producers of this kind of catalogue still have a few problems to solve. "InfoArt" was produced and edited by digital art authority Cynthia Goodman who co-organized the exhibition jointly with Nam June Paik. The CD-ROM catalogue presents the works of sixteen leading artists in the field of new media, and each work is represented by an artist's statement and biography, detailed technical information, and a video clip featuring an excerpt of the work. "InfoArt" by far transcends what a print catalogue could ever achieve, preserving many characteristics of the medium and giving a certain idea of what the artists accomplish through the use of technologies such as VR, synthesized music or three-dimensional laser imagery.
Users of the CD-ROM are invited to "fly" through Benjamin Britton's Virtual Lascaux, an interactive virtual reality 3D reconstruction of the ancient caves of Lascaux, France, and view paintings of animal figures. Although the CD-ROM gives a good impression of Britton's work, the sense of interactivity is limited. In the actual installation of "Virtual Lascaux," users don wraparound video glasses and use a joystick to navigate through the cave. They may find interactive images hidden in the niches and, studying a figure for a period of time, they can trigger an interactive sequence: the painting dissolves into a full-motion film clip of the animal or its modern equivalent, then dissolves back again into the cave drawing. Users of the CD-ROM cannot experience this feature since they have no way of influencing the film clip shown to them. This is a problem that many of the works shown in the InfoArt Pavilion present since many installations use interactive features that cannot be translated into the CD-ROM medium.
From Christa Sommerer's and Laurent Mignonneau's A-Volve.
Christa Sommerer's and Laurent Mignonneau's A-Volve (see IA Vol. 1 No. 1, "Missing Links of Digital Evolution"), for example, transfers digital creatures to a natural environment (a water-filled glass tank) by allowing visitors to 'paint' the shape of the creature on a touch screen; the shape then evolves into a virtual three-dimensional creature that appears to swim in the actual water of the pool. The clip from "A-Volve" featured on "InfoArt" can hardly give an accurate impression of what the actual installation looks like.
Another project extremely difficult to translate into the CD-ROM medium is David Rokeby's Watch, a reflection on time-based work and the sculpting of time. Visitors to the installation walk over a bridge, thereby crossing a room where video images are projected onto slightly angled planes at floor level. The video images are taken by surveillance cameras that watch a public section of the exhibition gallery. The images are processed in two different ways: in the first process, objects are only visible if they are in motion, in the second process they are visible only if they're still. Rokeby's time sculpture is accompanied by the sound of a beating heart and a ticking clock. Although this process is far more accessible once you see the visual material on the CD-ROM, the time-based component is lost completely.
From Paul Earls' Laser Music Room.
Some of the works featured on "InfoArt"--e.g. Paul Earl's Laser Music Room, Steina Vasulka's Violin Power or Grahame Weinbren's Sonata--use music to accompany an exploration of form, a feature that would be difficult to convey without the sound capabilities of a CD-ROM. In "Laser Music Room," spectators enter an area saturated with moving spectral patterns and laser-projected images (animals, faces and masks), modulated by online synthesized and sampled musical gestures. Several viewers together can modify and control the music through their movement on and around unobtrusively placed sensors in the installation area.
"Laser Music Room" and Nam June Paik's Laser Experiement #5, as well as Tsai Wen Ying's Triangle, Circle, Square explore the essence of forms. Triangle (six units of standing waves in triangular formation), Circle (a wall-mounted circular multicolor vibrating work), Square (a square-shaped ceiling-mounted upward falling fountain) is a cybernetic interactive environment endowed with virtual intelligence. As visitors enter a darkened space, their presence is sensed by the sculpture's infra-red and audio-antennae. Through their movements, visitors stimulate and destabilize the sculpture from normal/relaxed state to rapid palpitation. "InfoArt" aptly illustrates how interactive media have transformed the notion of the art object into that of a sculpture in process, a progression resembling a physical trajectory that has to be constantly reinvented.
Two works featured on the CD-ROM--Luc Courchesne's Family Portrait and Grahame Weinbren's Sonata--could have been translated into the CD-ROM medium without losing their interactive features and since that didn't happen, the viewer feels rather detached from the actual work. "Family Portrait" engages the user into a conversation with a video portrait, a person appearing on a screen. Users may pick a question from a pre-established set on the screen, and the portrait answers it; a new set of questions appears and a virtual conversation--pre-recorded but still reaching a surprising level of intimacy--unfolds. Users of the "InfoArt" CD-ROM watch a visitor to the installation pick questions, but cannot choose for themselves, a slightly frustrating experience. A similar effect is created by the clip from "Sonata," an exploration of cinema and narrative perspectives based on Tolstoy's short story "The Kreutzer Sonata," which culminates in a man's rage as his wife and her violinist friend practice BeethovenŐs music behind closed doors. "InfoArt" features a clip from the work, but doesn't offer users the option to explore and change narrative perspective by using the cursor to navigate through the story.
Paul Garrin's White Devil, on the other hand, creates an amazing level of immediacy even without its interactive features--probably because Garrin's work makes the most theatrical and disturbing use of interactive technology. Consistent with his vision of the camera as a tool, weapon, and witness, Garrin uses video both as a means of and weapon against surveillance. Viewers of the "White Devil" installation 'enter' the grounds of a villa (video projections behind an iron gate show the neighboring villas in flames) and encounter an aggressive pit bull that 'lives' in a pit of twelve large video monitors. Controlled by an interactive system which 'sees' the participants via a video camera and lets the dog react to them (their position in the room that is), the animal seems to attack the viewer. Even though the dog can't 'see' the user of the CD-ROM, the threat is there.
"InfoArt" is an effective introduction to the state of new media art at the end of this century, and makes you long for experiencing all of the featured works in their actual form as installations--an achievement in itself.
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