Projects reviewed in this article:
The annually held Ars Electronica Festival--dedicated to providing a platform for
art, technology, science and society--took place from September 2-6 in Linz,
Austria. A two-day symposium, as well as performances, workshops, installations
and network projects, formed the framework for the exploration of the topic
"Memesis - The Future of Evolution." The debate focused on the yet approaching
moment in "digital evolution" at which working with digital technologies makes
the transition from "cultural technique" to second nature. By analogy with
genes, "memes"--a term created by Richard Dawkins--constitute ideas and cultural
information units that replicate through communication, thus "writing" a
culture-based history of development. Memesis in this context denotes the
current acceleration and compression of vectors of development in culture and
technology, resulting in a state of aggregation of the mass-media environment.
The 1996 Ars Electronia symposium had in fact been running since March as a
network symposium. The network debate and the live debate at Design Center Linz
(http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/) featured names such as Richard Dawkins, Mark Dery, Marvin Minsky and Sandy Stone.
The art and events at the festival included computer animations entered for the Prix Ars Electronica since 1987, the European premiere of Tod Machover's Brain Opera as well as the opening of the Ars Electronica Center, which was received with mixed reviews (an often heard complaint was that it was too crammed and that there wasn't enough space for reflection). Last but not least, the Prix Ars Electronica was awarded for the tenth time by the ORF (Upper Austrian Regional Studio) in the category World Wide Web, Interactive Art, Computer Animation and Computer Music.
In the context of the festival's topic, the winners might be understood
as indications of what Ars Electronica sees as the state of digital evolution
and our culture-based history of development. Toy Story by John Lasseter/Pixar
was the winner of the Computer Animation Category and the main prize in the
Computer Music Category went to Robert Normandeau's Le renard et la rose; the
winning entry of the Interactive Arts Category was Masaki Fujihata's Global
Interior Project. The winner, two prizes, and twelve honorary mentions in the WWW category
give evidence of the diversity of approaches contributing to the evolution of
digital networking.
http://www.etoy.com
The winning entry was etoy, promoting "electronic lifestyle for the new
travelling generation - Sex/Action/Beauty/Intelligence." Etoy basically is a
virtual locality that cultivates a model of interaction within the global
network established by the (currently) seven members of its crew. The Web
address is the homebase of the etoy.CREW and the integrative tool for their
location-independent team work. The map featured at the etoy homepage allows you
to visit localities such as "supermarket," "motel," "terminal," "disco" and
"underground." In the supermarket, you may shop for items in the categories
food, software and intelligence (in this case, "globsat mobile equipment"). The
basic structure suggests yet another virtual city, but etoy attempts to
transcend existing concepts; it is based on a "Tanksystem," a work-in-progress
that is supposed to dynamically adapt to the needs of the crew and users.
Interaction relies on the crew's work on the HTML level and on the scripts and
software-agents that allow automated dynamics: etoy's "tank" is newly generated
for each user. If one tries to find labels for the digital existence created by
etoy, 'techno' and 'slightly subversive' comes to mind. The etoy-crew has done
live computer animations for various techno events and festivals, and the
"disco-tank" was the first multimedia platform in the system (you may download
samples of etoy.Tracks from the tank). The part of the site that probably gained
the most media attention is "the digital hijack"--etoy's version of the digital
"net-action-entertainment" for the travelling generation. The place of action of
the digital hijack are the twilight-zones of the Web--the "room" behind popular
interfaces. Etoy's software-agents have placed 700 keywords within the
international search-engines; choose a link and see what happens to thousands of
Internet-users on various search-engines, worldwide--your trapped, in etoy's
version of digital terrorism for the new travelling generation: the links don't lead to the sites you want to visit. 250.000 art-hostages have been taken since March 96, and due to etoy's fight with the search-server corporations, the entries/keywords may change on a daily basis. Etoy may be the most inventive project of its kind, but the concept often is
more exciting than the substance.
http://www.sito.org/synergy/hygrid
The two prizes in the WWW category went to HyGrid
--one of SITO's Synergy projects--and to VVV -
Journey as an exile. "HyGrid" may be described as an interactive image
manipulation game; starting from a grid of five squares that form a cross-like
structure, users/players may generate new squares that serve as links between
multiple other squares. "HyGrid" now also has sound augmentation, so that each
square can have a small sound file associated with it and automatically play and
loop those sounds. You may upload a new square to "HyGrid" or trace the
evolution of several generations of images by comparing dates; "HyGrid"'s major
achievement is that it creates a basis for (inter)actively participating in the
evolution of images.
"Journey as an exile" relies more on the traditional way of interacting
with images and information, that is on the interpretive efforts of the
reader/viewer. The project was started by four people as "a journey into the
exile of their mind archives." This journey is based on a structure consisting
of four frames that display varying text and information. The travel metaphor is
key here: one frame states, "Travel is useful - it exercises the imagination,"
and, naturally, the associations triggered by the text and visuals in the
adjacent frames let your imagination travel.
http://www.hyperreal.com/~mpesce/we/
http://www.flab.mag.keio.ac.jp/GClock/
The honorary mentions in the category "Use of VRML" are proof again that
the globe and global data have gained new attraction within the global
information and data network. Both WebEarth and Global Clock
are based on "global" images. "WebEarth" builds a VRML model of Gaia drawing from composite satellite photos created by
John Walker. A set of server-side scripts is used to build the model and
maintain the current image database. "Global Clock," a networked collaborative
project organized by Masaki Fujihata, is a visualization of the earth as a
clock, using light sensors connected among sites around the world through the
Internet. Each light sensor transmits its real-time brightness, and the "Global
Clock" server receives the real-time parameters from the light sensors and maps
them onto the image of the globe. Fujihata is currently working on an industrial model of the light sensor unit, which is scheduled to appear in December '96. At the "Global Clock" site, you may view the real-time landscape of the globe as seen from a distance, with the natural phenomenon of the gradual shifting of light and shadows matching the rotation of the globe itself. The view certainly has its aesthetic appealÑand looking at a globe
created through and within the global data network highlights the ideal of "global consciousness" as the spirit of the Internet.
Some of the honorary mentions went to the "usual suspects": Timothy Leary
was (posthumously) "mentioned" in the category "Home," and Suck in the category
"Metazine."
http://www.digicrime.com
DigiCrime--the worst nightmare of every congressman working on
information security issues--received an honorary mention in the category
"Irony." DigiCrime offers valuable services that range from an Internet
Shoplifting Service and custom pornographic blackmail service to airline and
phone rerouting and wealth redistribution services (of course, they don't bear
responsibility for any incident). If you have a need for services not listed at
their site, contact their Thief Scientist (they don't maintain their own
computer system, though, since they find it cheaper to use other people's
computers). Further projects on the winners list are Trevor Blackwell's
Supercollider, as well as Mc Spotlight and The Church of
Scientology vs. the Net (both in the category "New Documentary Form").
http://found.cs.nyu.edu/andruid/chains.html
CHAINS received an honorary mention as a
workshop; the project started as a group of performances in Ghana in 1994, and
its Web installation evolved from the collaboration of African and American
artists who tried to forge a new form for the historical role of tradition in
social transformation. Among the collaborator are Francis Kofi--former master
drummer of the Ghana Dance Ensemble--as well as production designer Melissa Lange and director/composer Andruid Kerne. Based on the premise that the romantic
notion of timeless tradition existing in isolation from modern society is long
dead, "CHAINS" tries to expose the various sides of a singular context that
might otherwise remain hidden from each other. At the website, you may listen to
the sounds of drum language and its spoken images or view stills and video clips
from the performances in Ghana; you may also make your contribution to the
"Coded Messages Graffiti Wall."
http://www.prominence.com/java/poetry
Further categories included in the list of Web winners are netverse and
hypernarratives. The netverse project, Electro Magnetic Poetry, was inspired by Dave Kapell's Magnetic
Poetry Kit. In terms of interactivity, the project's weakness also proves to be
its strength: "Electro Magnetic Poetry" allows you to choose words from a
pre-existing menu consisting of verbs, nouns, pronouns etc., and to add them to
a kind of pasteboard. On the one hand, this means that your options of "writing"
are limited, and, on the other hand, the limited options of the menu provide a
kind of underlying (sentence) structure that prevents the collaborative
composition from falling apart.
http://art-slab.ucsd.edu/ARTSLAB/LisaHutton/LLHpage.html
http://raven.ubalt.edu/staff/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/
The hypernarratives that received an honorary
mention are the mostly visually oriented Variety is... and Stuart
Moulthrop's Hegirascope. Moulthrop is one of
the "veterans" among hypertext authors, and the way he uses the medium makes
"Hegirascope" one of the most enjoyable hypernarratives on the Web.
Even if you don't agree with all the choices Ars Electronica has made for
its list of winners, the selections presented here are certainly outstanding Web
projects that give you an impression of where digital evolution might be heading
in the future. Digital technologies may have evolved rapidly, but there's still
some evolving to do until they make the transition from "cultural technique" to
second nature.
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