Media Art and Future Technologies : Art at the Interface Between Lab and Gallery
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Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2011 Media art and future technologies : art at the interface between lab and gallery Schlachetzki, Sarah M Abstract: The dissertation Media Art and Future Technologies. Art at the Interface Between Lab and Gallery focuses on current interrelationships between art and science. In the past few years, there has been a remarkable increase in attempts to foster the exchange between art, technology, and science – an exchange taking place at academies, museums, or even in research laboratories. Against this background, the dissertation analyzes two case studies on media art at the interface between lab and gallery. The interplay of art and technology is discussed within the context of the so-called Device Art in Japan. Actors in the field of Device Art position themselves in a national funding environment, inwhichart intersects with the promotion of the Japanese ‘content industry’. The second case study on international nanoart highlights interactive installations that are often created by media artists in collaboration with nanoscientists. Nanoart exemplifies the hope of artists, curators, and theorists to overcome thegap between the disparate spheres of art and science in our knowledge-based society. The two case studies on media art within the context of technology and science are bound together in a third chapter. Here, a discourse analysis illuminates the persistence of modernity’s rhetorical tropes in the current ‘art and science’ boom. The artistic positions under scrutiny thus appear as the ongoing attempt to localize media art’s role within technological and societal change. ‘Postmodern’ media art is endowed with modern hopes for the future. Die Dissertation Media Art and Future Technologies. Art at the Interface Between Lab and Gallery widmet sich aktuellen Verbindungen von Kunst und Wissenschaft. In den letzten Jahren ist es zu einem regelrechten Boom von Massnahmen und Programmen gekommen, die den Austausch von Kunst, Technologieentwicklung und Wissenschaft an Akademien, in Museen oder in Forschungslaboren fördern. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich die vorliegende Arbeit zwei Fallstudien zu Medienkunst an der Schnittstelle von Labor und Kunstausstellung. Das Zusammenspiel von Kunst und Technologie wird am Beispiel der sogenannten Device Art aus Japan erörtert. Akteure im Bereich der Device Art positionieren sich in einem nationalen Förderumfeld, in welchem sich die Kunst mit der Förderung der japanischen ‚content industry’ überschneidet. Die zweite Studie zu internationaler Nanokunst beleuchtet interaktive Installationen, die von Medienkünstlern häufig in Kooperation mit Nanowissenschaftlern entworfen werden. ‚Nanoart’ exemplifiziert den Wunsch von Künstlern, Kuratoren und Theoretikern unserer als Wissensgesellschaft beschriebenen Gesellschaft, zwischen den disparaten Sphären Kunst und Wissenschaft eine Brücke zu schlagen. Schliesslich umfasst die Dissertation eine Extrapolation von den kunstsoziologisch angelegten Fallstudien und eröffnet in einer diskursanalytisch angelegten Untersuchung einen Blick auf das Fortleben modernistischer Rhetoriken in aktuellen ‚art and science’ Kollaborationen. Die besprochenen künstlerischen Positionen werden hier mit dem andauernden Versuch kurzgeschlossen, die Rolle der Medienkunst in technologischem und gesellschaftlichem Wandel zu verorten und sie dabei als Kunst der Zukunft zu beschreiben. Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-164008 Dissertation Published Version Originally published at: Schlachetzki, Sarah M. Media art and future technologies : art at the interface between lab and gallery. 2011, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. 2 _____________________________________________________ Media Art and Future Technologies Art at the Interface Between Lab and Gallery _____________________________________________ Thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zurich for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sarah M. Schlachetzki from Germany Accepted in the spring semester 2011 on the recommendation of Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung and Prof. Dr. Dieter Daniels Zurich, 2011 Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................1 I Art and Technology in Japan – Some Intersections.................................12 1. Media Art in Japan – Institutional Structures ...................................................13 2. Device Art – A Very Japanese Media Art ........................................................21 Works...............................................................................................................21 Players and Networks......................................................................................25 3. Japaneseness Sells.........................................................................................30 A Media Art Festival with a Significant ‘S’........................................................33 Media Art Networks in Japan...........................................................................52 A Glimpse at Historiography............................................................................62 II From Disenchantment to Re-enchantment..............................................67 1. Of Silhouettes and Buckyballs.........................................................................67 The 1990s: Nano in Linz, Micro in Berkeley ....................................................71 From Einstein to Artwork: Zero@wavefunction ...............................................76 Mise-en-scène of metamorphosis: Blue Morph ...............................................79 Interlude – Colorful images of invisible worlds.................................................86 Touching the Nano World: Nano-Scape..........................................................90 Nano players, places, networks.......................................................................97 2. Who pays? Big Science and Big Business....................................................101 Art in the Science Museum............................................................................107 3. Beyond popularization: Auratic Science ........................................................118 III Media Art and the Future......................................................................134 Ontologies I: Science in Art – Religious Residues.........................................137 Writing History – On Progress and Futures.......................................................144 Spaces of Open Possibilities – Visions of Art & Technology.........................144 Modernity’s Counter-Worlds ..........................................................................149 Sci-Art as Critical Instance.............................................................................154 Ontologies II: ‘Experience’.............................................................................167 Epilog..........................................................................................................178 Bibliography................................................................................................182 CV of the author .........................................................................................204 Introduction What does the Japanese predilection for tea ceremony have to do with high-tech gadgets in a science museum? What is architect and designer Buckminster Fuller’s connection to nanotechnology? And what does science, what does technology exactly have to do with art? In my dissertation on media art and so-called ‘future technologies’ I want to shed light on media art’s flirt with scientific ideas and technological development. The field of ‘art and science’ is currently flourishing, with a myriad of symposia, workshops, and exhibitions taking place every year that aim at illuminating the interaction of the two fields. At the same time, media art exhibitions and festivals present the newest of electronic art and its interrelationship with cutting edge high-technology of our time. At the latest since the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), launched by engineer Billy Klüver and artist Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1960s, there has been an ongoing artistic interest in what science and technology can offer art – and, likewise, how art can contribute to the sphere of science and technology. Much has been written about crucial differences, structural similarities, and striking interdependences of art, science, and technology. Within the field of art theory, the absolute majority of positions that do not immediately turn their back on an art dependent on electronics and computers has been eager to stress time and again how important the interaction of art and technology on the one hand and art’s critical reflection of science and technology on the other hand have become for the beneficial evolution of our ‘information societies’. In two case studies I want to investigate the meaning of such entanglements. This art does not come out of the blue, rather I analyze it as always being part of a present moment, part of an economic situation, part of a rhetorical framework. In spite of connotations surfacing with the age-old call for its autonomy, art is integrated into current historical contexts with ensuing pre-conditions and restrictions. Media art is no exception,