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Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology and Society 2005 As you walked into one of the ARS Electronica venues, the OK Centrum building, it was hard to miss the Run Motherfucker Run (Marnix de Nijs) installation. A large screen glowed from the gloom and cast a faint glow on a monster running machine stationed at the far end of a long room that pulsed with booming bass frequencies. Holy shit. A haunted house in the age of multimedia. It was hard not to concede that the installation backed up the bravado of the title, yeah, run, muthafucka, run.
Poetic Uselessness
How does it work? Climb on the running machine, start running and watch as a projector (powered by your feet) plays scenes of urban desolation. What's that all about? Maybe paranoia and personal safety – who knows. If it were a game its object would be the same as television series Survivor except it might be called Running Survivor. But the difference is that in this "art" series no-one will win the bag of cash and if you stop running the scene fades to black and it's "Game Over". In this work the possibility of failure is amplified to the point that the installation could advertise using the slogan "Failure Guaranteed". Yet ultimately you'd be better off playing Resident Evil if you wanted thrills because despite the punch-in-the-face title and the moody set up, the object offered little interactivity for the participant.
But it didn't matter because Run Motherfucker Run had pulling power and people were cuing up for the experience. So, too, people curiously watched the displays featuring singing flames (Firebirds, Paul DeMarinis) and musical digital pens (SonicWireScuptor, Amit Pitaru) and a game simulation that revived cult leader David Koresh in Waco Resurrection (Team Waco). On one level these works all suffered because they were insufficiently useful as objects nor were they particularly resonant as art objects. Yet taken collectively they are interesting because in their variety they refer to the glowing saturation of our culture in technology. These objects are also significant because their utility is ambiguous and yet by virtue of their programming they should be grouped with other technological devices such as mobile phones, game machines and palm pilots. But these exhibits don't fit comfortably in this category because their function is neither business nor entertainment. Today we are sold a steadily increasing variety of products that offer function upon function and there sometimes seems very little time for the subtlety or ambiguity of art. And besides, it's hard to concentrate on art when you are listening to your iPod.
High Concept
If you log on to the The Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia and search for background on ARS Electronica you will discover that it is an institution based in Linz, Austria and is dedicated to the creative use of technology. After that, things get a little complicated. The organisation consists of a trinity of departments referred to as the ARS Electronic Center – Museum of the Future, Futurelab – laboratory for future innovations, ARS Electronica Festival for Art, Technology and Society and finally Prix ARS Electronica – International Competition for CyberArts.
During the festival events were spread between a variety of venues that shared these institutional names and included yet further distinctions such as Events, Electrolobby, Exhibitions, CyberArts 20005 and Hybrid Creatures and Paradox Machines. Wikipedia also mentions that the Prix ARS Electronica "is often referred to as the Oscar of computer art". The reason I mention Wikipedia is because it seems appropriate to be sourcing material about a CyberArts festival online and also because this website received an ARS Electronica award. It's serendipity, a technological loop also worthy itself of winning an award.
The festival started in 1979 and since 1987 the event has been conceptualised by titles such as Endo & Nano – The World From Within (1992), Memesis – The Future of Evolution (1996) and NEXT SEX – Sex in the Age of Procreative Superfluousness (2000). The title operates as a theoretical and philosophical platform and this year exhibits and seminars discussed the theme Hybrid – Living in Paradox. This topic was iconographically visualised in publicity material by a digitally remixed picture of a man/ape, by New York artist Daniel Lee (Origin, 1999).
Hybridity
Perhaps the most elegant expression of Hybridity was the solar powered digital insects (Electronic Life Forms, Pascal Glissman and Martina Höfflin) that were anonymously hidden in a planting box of greenery stationed in the foyer of a festival venue. These minute creatures twitched and sang as the crowd walked to seminars, made phone calls and everywhere people peeled open powerbooks to wirelessly surf the web. It was an exhibit that simply looked like garden decoration except if you looked closely you could see the small solar panels and wire configurations hanging from the branches and leaves.
On a rubber mat beside this green enclosure rolled a three-wheeled vehicle that seemed to me to be one of the most dim-witted hybrid creatures on exhibit. The cock(roach)pit of this vehicle was a steel clamp that held a "giant hissing Madagascan cockroach" perched above a ping-pong ball (Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #2, Garnet Herz). The cockroach was controlling the vehicle by attempting to walk on the ping-pong ball and you don't have to be from the Animal Liberation Front to realise that this is not kind. Also where are we heading with cockroach-controlled cars? I remember reading somewhere that only cockroaches will survive a nuclear apocalypse. Maybe if invincible cars could also be made, the only other thing that will survive the big boom will be traffic.
Hopefully there won't be a nuclear war but there is surely still a risk that we will consume ourselves into non-existence. If this happens maybe the Strandbeests of Theo Jansen will outlast civilisation and comb our beaches feeding on air. These skeletal beasts could be seen as they grazed on a large square of sand in the middle of the Linz main square, Hauptplatz. Jansen often walked amongst his children and demonstrated how these giant creatures could move. He explains that in the 1980s he had a brainwave, the PVC plastic tube. He started running algorithms on his Atari computer to figure out the ideal length with which to create a foot that would travel in a straight line along the ground. When strapping this combination of tape-bound plastic tubes to a backbone, he created life.
After the design or conceptual birth stage the cyber cord is cut and these analogue monsters use a walking movement Jansen describes as "the 11 holy numbers". Since this point development has been an incremental work of movement and skill as the beasts learnt to sense water and protect themselves against storms. They evolved physically and developed a lemonade bottle "stomach" and tubing piston "muscles" and "nerves" for propulsion. Jansen envisions a world where these creatures will be developed to the point where they will battle and the victor will devour the components of the loser and become stronger. At least he's dealing with that issue of overpopulation and maybe in the future we will be ruled by a single plastic tubed creature (I think I saw a Japanese animation with the same plot).
Jansen is not shy about comparing himself to God or in attributing to himself a major development in the history of humanity. During his deadpan delivery at an ARS "Artist Lecture" he referred to the beast's "genetic code" and "cells" and noted that the walking movement was "the new wheel". Modest. Yet the man is the art and in discussing these tube sculptures he constantly evokes evolutionary metaphors and talks about the increasing intelligence of the beasts and about the dying out of species. During his lecture the crowd repeatedly burst into applause and nobody grumbled that this guy was only using a videocassette for visuals instead of PowerPoint. Nobody blinked (certainly not Jansen) when someone from the crowd suggested that his blend of engineering and art seemed reminiscent of da Vinci. But the guy from the crowd had a point. These were rudimentary forms of artificial life that featured no digital or electronic components and could live in harmony with the environment. The Strandbeests were a mascot that lived at the geographic and philosophical heart of the ARS Electronica because they perfectly encapsulated the paradox not of hybrids, but of media art itself.
Ghost in the Machine
It is a paradox that also lived in the award winning works in the "Interactive Arts" category of Prix Ars competition. The Golden Nica winning MILKproject (Esther Polak, Ieva Auzina) used technology created by the US Department of Defence in a project that considered the production of milk. The subjects of the project were required to carry a GPS device and by doing so they created a personal map of involvement in milk creation amidst a greater commercial narrative. The installation of this work featured a map and documentary that recorded the encounters of the artists as they showed farmers their own GPS paths. Polak remarked that it was perhaps as a result of her previous experiences as a painter that she regarded GPS work as a new form of landscape painting because it created a new perspective. By recording only geographical data its documentary effect provides a far cleaner reflection of reality than reality television series Big Brother. Also by documenting the responses and receiving input from farmers and participants, the work indicates that the artists are engaged with reality. Polak and Auzina provide a mapped landscape of people rather than attempting to digitally cut people out. She left that to prizewinner Mateusz Herczka.
Herczka reversed the creative direction of MILKproject and instead went from life to digital life with project Life Support Systems – Vanda. The artist opened the discussion of his work with a Charles Mingus quote:
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
The installation of this work featured objects that sounded like the start of a bad joke: an orchid, an Xbox and a projector. It was a difficult work to comprehend and after looking blankly between game box, machine and the projection on the wall, I gave up. This is a frustration acknowledged by Herczka who admits that the audience wanted to touch and use the piece but maybe due to the fact that it was standing alone, the installation didn't make sense.
During the discussion the artist explained that he was acting on the idea of immortality and on the possibility that we may at some point in the future be able to download ourselves onto a computer. By reading and recording the electro magnetic signal (something every living being apparently possesses) over a period of time he was able to create a program that replicated the responses of the orchid to a variety of stimulus including light, dark and the stresses of pollution. He downloaded the orchid into the Xbox and the model of the plant was projected onto a wall. He created a ghost in the machine.
But it's not awesome simplicity because it doesn't sound simple and it doesn't look simple yet the work does raise ideas about digital life. In cutting the digital connection between the plant and its Xbox clone does the virtual orchid cease to live? The work seems to rest on a philosophical assumption that we are our responses and that how we relate to people and situations (just as the orchid relates to external stimulus) is the data by which we should be modelled. Yet it seemed hard to regard the projection of data on a wall as a flower, much less an orchid because the model omits other important information. Appearances, sensations and the environment in which we live all seem pretty significant in creating our subjectivity and are therefore essential if your aim is "replication".
Maybe it's easier to start anew and write life in fresh code. This seems to be the aim of Paolo Petta of the Institute of Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna (there's a title). He was speaking as part of the "techno-emotional interactive spaces" ARS seminars referred to as Pixelspaces. His speech described a European union initiative referred to as Humaine. This project seems something like an Artificial Intelligence think-tank established to develop computer systems that can sustain themselves in society. He described how these systems must interact within an unforseen environment and in these circumstances emotion is important. The system needs to plan (don't we all) and when those plans are inappropriate it needs to repair those plans. Further, the machines need "multiple goals" and must arrange their "inherent motivations". The project is visualised in these purely benign terms and by avoiding the comparison with human existence it attempts to avoid the greater task of creation of life itself. This project is devoted to thinking systems. Nonetheless it appears that humanity will be embedded in these programs because during his speech Petta asked that members of the audience log on to the project website in order provide input. This input will be used to develop a set of regularities and assumptions in order to create a "lifeworld" in which the bot can operate. But at what point will these systems not be content with our memories and come to snatch our bodies?
It wasn't all rocket science in Linz and I managed to fit in a few sausages, schnitzels and litres of beer while admiring the local kids because lots of them seem to be metal-heads. As I passed a skinhead with a broken arm and muzzled bulldog on a leash, I wondered how technology would ever be able to reproduce an existence where everyone is a hybrid of intellect, race, religion, sexuality and importantly, relationships. One ARS Electronica project attempted to steal life and put it in a box (Vanda Orchid) while another engaged with life in order to understand (Milkprojectt). At the same time researchers called for help to stock up in human components that will paint the room of a "thinking system" living in a lifeworld (Humaine). Theo Jansen's Strandbeests rearranged intelligent priorities because the existence of these air-powered analogue sculptures ran parallel to the environment instead of chewing it up.
[See our report on Ars Electronica 2004]
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