DIGICULT

Digital Art, Design & Culture

Founder & Editor-in-chief: Marco Mancuso

Advisory Board: Marco Mancuso, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo

Publisher: Associazione Culturale Digicult Largo Murani 4, 20133 Milan (Italy) http://www.digicult.it Editorial Press registered at Milan Court, number N°240 of 10/04/06. ISSN Code: 2037-2256

Licenses: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs - Creative Commons 2.5 Italy (CC BY- NC-ND 2.5)

Printed and distributed by Lulu.com

E-publishing development: Loretta Borrelli

Cover design: Eva Scaini

Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS

Marco Mancuso The Truth-cinema Of Pierre Bastien ...... 3

Bertram Niessen Atom: Floating Audiovisual Design ...... 10

Monica Ponzini Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Relational Architecture ...... 15

Claudia Moriniello Ankersmit, Side By Side ...... 25

Eleonora Oreggia Sustainable Non-property, The Answer By Estudio Livre ...... 33

Francesca Valsecchi Hackmeeting 2007: Ten Years Nerdcore ...... 37

Gigi Ghezzi The Knowledge Of A Fragile Future ...... 44

Silvia Scaravaggi Scali & Goode: Nan°art ...... 47

Alessio Galbiati Creativity To The Cube ...... 52

Marco Mancuso Todaysart 2007, The Hague International Art ...... 58

Tiziana Gemin Ars Electronica 2007: Goodby Privacy? ...... 64 Isabella Depanis Dias E Riedweg: Politics And Poetics ...... 71

Motor Death 24x, Death And Feticism Of Image ...... 74

Monica Ponzini We Are The…strange Media For Strange People ...... 78 The Truth-cinema Of Pierre Bastien

Marco Mancuso

invisible fat oiling them: do you know the game Meccano? Perhaps the thirty-year olds have in mind it, while the others could have found evidence of it in Internet and Second Life.

Meccano is a model construction kit comprising metal strips, plates, angle girders , wheel, saxles and gears , with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. In other words it is a tool able to To be at a Pierre Bastien’s live show is trigger percussions, movements, always a special event for any lover of rotations, rubbings in space in order contemporary music. And the other to create the sound in two main ways: condition to appreciate the French exerting a physical force on an organic multi-instrumentalist’s music is to instrument, that is to say: playing it, or esteem a slightly poetical and joyful acoustically amplifying its same audiovisual dash. This is a feature of movement. This is what happens in this artist so dear to Aphex Twin who the mechanical orchestras of the has realised Bastien’s production with genial French musician: the his own Rephlex Records. Mecanium, the Mecanology and the newest Mecanoid. Indeed, as many people know, Pierre Bastien is not used to play music with computers and is not at ease in the cold digital aesthetics. Actually, Pierre Bastien plays mechanical instruments, mechanisms, objects and not with electricity, nor flow of electrons nor circuits nor information nor complex robotics instruments and finally nor software. None of all these things, no. Pierre Bastien plays DIY mechanical miniatures and it seems there is an .

3 Every track of Pierre Bastien‘s concert audiovisual impact causes a high shows a repeating structure: the involvement and hypnosis among his musician’s deft hands moving inside public. And this always stuns the ones his mechanical mini-orchestra made who are so patient and willing to of dozens of objects and devices. The approach to his live show. mechanical details create always repeating rhythmical and hypnotic So could someone ask me: but what’s movements in order to establish the digital, technological, experimental in rhythmic base of the track. this? Nothing, that’s right, and so? Infinitesimal but yet still heard sounds Waiting to see him in Florence during are superimposed in order to enrich the second edition of the Screen the sound environment and when the Music at the end of October, I decided hypnotic level reached the pick here to have a little talk with him. you hear the trumpet, of course played live, romantic and sad, ironically contrasting with the physicality all around in the air, with its sound able to call forth strong emotions and warmth.

During the last 10 years the mechanical instruments constructed by Pierre Bastien have been several, as the Mechanical Orchestras and . countless lives performances where he played the role of the main Marco Mancuso: Can you tell me character. It is also true that Pierre about your past as a musician? I Bastien has always paid attention to would like to know about your studies the visual aspect of his work, obtained and your experiences as multi- through a very simple operation of instrumentalist and composer and video-recording live of what happens also your collaboration with on the stage. It’s almost a cinema- Dominique Bagouet Dance truth. On one hand because the Company…. realization of a track is absolutely fundamental, as well as a close-up on Pierre Bastien: At the time I started each single sound with his playing concerts in the early seventies corresponding mechanic instrument. most of the bands were collective: And on the other hand- and this is my every member was composing and consideration- because the building up the general musical

4 approach of the group. When our Marco Mancuso: How and why did group composed of 4 people reduced you start with the idea of the to a duet with Bernard Pruvost, we “mechanical instruments” and the both tried to fill the gap by playing the project of the orchestra Mecanium for missing instruments. This was the Pascal Comelade’s Bel Canto starting point for multi- Orquesta? At the end, this orchestra instrumentalism. Working with a counted about 80 dance company made us go further: elements/instruments, so how could Dominique Bagouet’s manager was you play/control everything? Are you also in charge of a huge public not using it anymore in live collection of music instruments from performances? all over the world. For the second orchestral score that we composed Pierre Bastien: Mecanium and Bel for the company, we were invited to Canto are two distinct projects. They choose whatever we would like to just crisscrossed my musical life. It play from that instrument collection. took me about ten years from the moment I built the very first machine This was like a super-Christmas gift! in 1978, to the moment I had enough From Tibetan horns to African harps of those robots to perform a full and xylophones, from Asian mouth concert with them: this happened in organs to Arabic violins we 1988 at the Forum Art Fair in Hamburg experimented the sounds of the . In 1983 when our band Nu Creative planet instead of just focusing on the Methods stopped performing live, Western timbres. Years after I like to Pascal Comelade asked me to join the be surrounded with about 150 first concert of his Bel Canto instruments from the five continents. Orquesta. Not only the experience was great, but it also helped me spending all those years without a band on my own.You may think that ten years are a too long period for the purpose of building a mechanical orchestra out of Meccano and small electro-motors taken from old turntables and acoustic music instruments. Nowadays when I want to renew my system and have new machines, the process costs me about . three-months work only. But at that time nothing was clear in my mind: I

5 built the first machine for a short solo Right now I’m starting playing with concert in Paris without thinking that some air-activated machines to get there would have been a second one. some less predictable rhythms and After some time and because of the sounds and more melodies coming nice time I had playing with it, I out of robots. decided to construct two other machines, but the critics were so negative about them that I’ve stopped for some years, until some friends encouraged me to start again.

It is true that I never stopped since then and that I ended with a 80-piece orchestra, though I never performed a concert with more than 15 machines. In 1996 I was proposed an overview exhibition at the Apollohuis in . Eindhoven , Holland . There I installed Marco Mancuso: Can you tell me 66 machines, and it took one week to something also about your set up the whole orchestra: no festival mechanical installation? Do you feel can offer this luxury. As an installation, to belong to the tradition of meccano the orchestra is conducted through musicians starting from the very several mechanical programs. Instead origins of Ballet Mecanique? of playing an instrument, these machines push and release switches Pierre Bastien: The exhibition activity that start and stop several ensembles came by chance: I don’t consider to get the automatic composition myself as an artist. But it is quite nice played. I have not been using this first to think that at the moment I am version of Mecanium for live answering your questions in performances since 1997. Afterwards I Rotterdam, the Mecanoid installation did Mecanology which plays on daily plays in Southern France and the life objects like scissors, hammer, Paper Organs play with the Enclave tooth brushes, tea-pot etc (2). Then I Dance Company in Barcelona or did several versions of Mecanoid Brussels and the Steel-Drum where the Meccano machines don’t Ensemble plays in a museum of music play on instruments or objects, but instruments and some other machines directly on amplified Meccano parts are about to play in Japan or for a more abstract view slowly Portugal…As for the Ballet Mécanique, revealing its potential musicality (3).

6 I feel more on the side of Léger than and well, I am not the right person to on Antheil’s. As I said before, generally complain: in the past I also put the my machines play few notes, not word Meccano in the front and that always in-sync. They create through helped a lot. From then on journalists induction a music that is radically and public have been able to write different from any robotic research. and talk about my music. Speaking Actually my first impulse was not about the medium seems much easier musical: the idea of building an than speaking about aesthetics. But automatic player came while reading you can play music with the last hi- the description of a thermodynamic tech device or with twigs and orchestra in “Impressions d’Afrique” pebbles, as long as you can touch me I by Raymond Roussel. will love your music equally. Something else: I am not a new comer Marco Mancuso: The idea at the base and I was always feeling as an alien of your compositions is very whatever the key word was. In the challenging and original, the final seventies you would have improy result is romantic and sensuous music and punk, in the eighties it was especially when you start playing acousmatic and avant-rock, the trumpet on the mechanical bases, nineties brought electronic and that are really hypnotic and timeless. experimental, there will be more key Don’t you think to be like an alien words to deal with, although as a inside the electronic music world? music maker you should better be Why, in your opinion, are you invited yourself and forget about main and in such a digital art festival (like also even secondary streams. Todaysart)? It seems that your music and your work are important for digital geeks to understand how it could be important to work with materials, to build up something with hands, to be able to play an instrument and to merge different attitudes together….

Pierre Bastien: Medium now seems to become the genre. Don’t you think we are doing a big mistake by . highlighting the tool instead of the result? “Electronic”, “digital”, Marco Mancuso: In your live “multimedia” come first on the bill… performances you pay attention to

7 the visual aspect of your work. There projection. A sort of “cinéma-vérité” is a camera or an operator filming (truth-cinema) about sounds and everything, how do you build up the music. system, how does it work and play? If you look at the screens and you hear the music, the final result is really hypnotic and delicate. Do you think that the visual aspect of your live show is important as an hypnotic addition to your music? Or is it more important as a visual documentation of what you are doing?

Pierre Bastien: To have no mystery about sound sources is my . preoccupation. Once I played in a Marco Mancuso: Finally, how and school for blind students. They when Aphex Twin contacted you? And listened carefully and after the why, in your opinion, did he decide to concert they all came on stage to have you inside his Rephlex label that touch every instrument. I remember normally produces Idm and ambient they insisted asking when exactly this electronic music? one had played, and this one, and this other one. They were re-experiencing Pierre Bastien: I cannot tell about the composition by ‘watching’ it Aphex‘s motivations. I guess he is closely. Then I realised how important more aware than anyone of what it is to feel the music with your happens in modern music. Is it a senses, especially your eyes when you coincidence? He sent me a fax right are not blind. But you are right: the after my music was released on a hypnotic aspect is also important. I Flemish label (4), and he had his first am lucky with my 3-dimensional compositions released in Ghent (5). music. It is not pure ether that His message came in 1999 with some vanishes with the last sound. After a nice words and an offer to join the concert the machines remain and label. Some years ago, at Barbican testify that everything really Centre in the glass-house, Aphex Twin happened. Then I don’t need a V-jay played, remaining invisible, for 200 who will be more or less connected people wearing headphones, so that with the music. In my case v-jaying the exotic birds there could normally consists in placing a video camera in sleep. Nearly at the end of the 2-hours front of the orchestra for a real time

8 concert he used one of my pieces for (1) Nu Creative Methods: “Nu Jungle 20 seconds and suddenly I could Dances” is now available on understand what the music was made Chevrotine, distr. Orkestra. from: that night he played thousands of extracts from multiple sources, (2) Mecanology can be heard on “Boîte superimposing them in a subtle N°7″, ed. Cactus. arrangement. Which means that he (3) “Mecanoid” and “Pop” on Rephlex, had listened to millions of records for “Téléconcerts” on Signature. his selection. I am just one of the millions. I really admire Aphex Twin (4) “Musiques Paralloïdres” on for his music and for being such an Lowlands . open-minded and so brave person. For the same reasons I admire (5) “Selected Ambient Works” on Squarepusher who dares inviting Evan Distance. Parker and me to play at his bass solo show. And I feel quite lucky to be still amazed and inspired by recent www.pierrebastien.com productions like Aphex’s albums and www.rephlex.com/ Squarepusher’s live sets, instead of just being stuck to my first loves.

9 Atom: Floating Audiovisual Design

Bertram Niessen

Till Beckmanne e Holger . It is difficult, as for any really successful performance/installation, to explain why it is such an interesting experience. Let us try and simply describe it. We can say it is a grid of 8×8=64 helium balloons sliding silently along the vertical axis and controlled in their movement by a software designed by the artists themselves. By placing themselves at different Sometimes things happen, a bit by heights, the white balloons create chance. It is true, though, that in some three-dimensional, almost sculpture- cities by chance things happen easier like patterns which rhythmically light than somewhere else. So it may up (singularly or in groups) thanks to a happen to go for a walk to the Tesla white led matrix set in the grid on the Culture Centre in Berlin on a Friday floor and perfectly synchronized with rainy evening, maybe feeling a bit the audio component . But such a bored, just to take a look around at detached description cannot really the installations, not all of them describes why it is so extraordinarily interesting, and then to come across delightful to stand in a totally dark the rehearsal of one of the best room (who saw Tesla’s Kubus knows performances/audiovisual what black box we are talking about) installations one have seen long since. and admire atoms of light and sound The performance we are talking about playing together and with our is ATOM by Christopher Bauder perceptive memories, shifting (already known by hardware geeks for continuously from architectural, to his midiGun) and Robert Henke (a.k.a. organic and geometric suggestions. Monolake , a.k.a. one of the main The only sensible thing I can write to developers of Ableton Live software, introduce this interview is to keep an and I would say that is enough for an eye on the dates of this introduction), created with the help of performance/installation and try to see it live.

10 to his balloon project.

Bertram Niessen: How did the idea of ATOM come up?

Christopher Bauder: The “ATOM” performance is based on the installation piece “electric moOns” that was initially created as an interactive sculpture. But right from the beginning I wanted it to be . performed as an audiovisual live In the meanwhile we gained hold of performance. I saw Robert interacting the artists and talked about Atom and musically and through light their work in general: animations with another installation piece some years ago, which was Bertram Niessen: Per iniziare parlateci wonderful and impressive. I was un po’ di voi. always a big fan of his music that hits the whole body and not just the ears Christopher Bauder: I work as a media with waves of sound. I asked him to artist and designer in Berlin . I was collaborate on developing this project always interested in combining further. He agreed on casting his interactive installations, interfaces or magic spell on the installation and visuals with musical aspects. I created “ATOM” was born as a joint creation of some earlier projects in this manner Robert and me. like the “ToneLadder”, the “midiGun” or the 3D VJ software “3DJ” (for more information about the projects: http://www.whitevoid.com).

Robert Henke: I work in the field of computer generated sound and music, both as software developper and as artist. I am mainly known for my more club music oriented works as “Monolake” but in the past years also focused more on interaction and . installation works. Christopher saw a performance of mine for a matrix of Bertram Niessen: It would be 64 lightbulbs and found simmilarities interesting to know something about

11 the concept. How did you develop it? music and Christopher suggested a Did you start from technical aspects geometry for the patterns. Once we or what? had enough sketches we came up with an overall structure and defined Christopher Bauder: We started in a more narrative flow. some kind of a laboratory setup at the TESLA Berlin. I was setting up the installation and Robert started preparing bits of sound and music. He was also writing a little software application that would alllow him to send light animation patterns in sync with his music. I created new shapes and transitions for the height control of the balloons in an updated version of our control software. Then we started exchanging ideas about . shapes, animations and sounds. We Bertram Niessen: What’s the kind of developed abstract ideas for several synestesia you have developed for sets and started to improvise over a ATOM? Are there constant roles and time span of 3 days. Then the final rules in light-music relation or is it structure for the 40-50min flexible according to your needs? performance was refined and tested in a couple of rehearsals right before Robert Henke: There are basically the premiere performance on the 15. three types of relationships: a multiple September at TESLA. particle situation where the individual balloon is not important anymore but Robert Henke: The balloons matrix rather an overall experience of some was allready exisiting when flickering, living organism is achived. Christopher asked me for For this scenario the music can be collaboration. We decided to split the decoupled completely as long as it is work into two parts: He is controllling either also flickering or providing a the height of the balloon and counterpoint of long slowly moving therefore the sculptural quality of the drones. The second type of work, while I create the music and the interaction is a strict mapping of LED patterns, which need to be one discrete musical events to visual unitiy to become really impressive. I gestures and patterns. The typically started with developing the mnoving produces the most breath taking and LED patterns, then translated that into

12 massive impression. And in a third Bertram Niessen: What are the main step there is musical events that are technical aspects of your work? synced to the sequencing of the LED patterns but not directly related to Christopher Bauder: The installation them. This is the most illustrative is controlled by midi signals converted form, and it turned out that it is in fact into voltages. The height of the the least convincing one. Therefore I helium balloons is adjusted with a focused on the first two types and computer-controlled cable, whilst the derived more complex LED patterns internal illumination is accomplished by applying additional rules to the using dimmable super-bright LEDs, music to LED mappings. Those rules creating a pixel in a warped 8×8 made it possible that for example a spatial matrix. Lights and positions of single note creates a moving pattern the balloons are controlled from two in time, which corresponds well with computers and two individual the decay of this note and creates and softwares. Robert controls light additional sense of space and time. animations and outputs sound to a 4- channel audio system. I’m in control Christopher Bauder: There are certain of the balloons positions and rules for music, light and shape movements. relationships. We also have some kind of a storybook for the show. But we Robert Henke: The LEDs are driven via both have lots of room for MIDI . The music is done via synthesis improvisation and modification in Ableton Live. Each note played in according to mood and inspiration Live is also sent to a MAX patch, that while playing the live performance. controls the LEDs, This MAX patch allows to do statistical clouds, movements, and complex mappings between incoming musical events and LED patterns. The MAX patch is controled during the performance from a faderbox. This allows to really play the LED pattern. Due to the usage of Live it is also possible to play the show differently each time, to leave more or less room for specific events depending on how we feel. .

13 are needed for each show. Next confirmed performance will be taking place at the 23rd of November at the STRP festival in Eindhoven , Netherlands .

Robert Henke: I believe this performance can become quite successful, since it provides a very unique experience. The performace at

. TESLA in Berlin was just a first test. The main bottle neck for excessive Bertram Niessen: Is the set up touring is the need for suited expensive? Do you think it will be easy locations and that the balloon side of for you to make it tour around? things is expensive and fragile.

Christopher Bauder: The costs of the system are quite high since it consists of so many components, this http://monolake.de/installations/ato multiplied the costs of initially making m.html the installation. The wole installation fits easily into 5 stage cases and can www.flickr.com/photos/luxflux be shipped to any destination in the www.whitevoid.com/ world within one week at reasonable costs. Only helium and new balloons www.tesla-berlin.de/

14 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Relational Architecture

Monica Ponzini

‘It is wide the range of interests and means inspiring Lozano-Hemmer’s creativity during the years’ said Marco Mancuso, lover of Lozano-Hemmer‘s works and interested in the new frontiers of urban architecture ‘and his approach to design has always been topical. Indeed, his theories are very closet o the newest manifestations of media architecture, intervention in public spaces and design interaction. Mexico, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s More precisely, the design proposed homeland, made its debut at the 52nd by the Mexican artist is a kind of edition of the Venice Biennale with midway, pretty rare in the the artist’s work exhibition. Rafael international panorama, between the Lozano-Hemmer is well-known for his interaction modern design, already big installations used by the most consolidated thanks to digital various media and for his custom- technologies and sensors, and the made interfaces. In other words this new opportunities offered by artist loves the active interaction of interactive and audio-visual the public. Robot installations, technologies toward architecture, computers, video projections, sensors, especially in the city space.’ Mr. lights (and shadows) and sounds, Mancuso goes further reminding us these are the means used for the the Relational Architecture or works creation of works. His works are such as Vectorial Elevation and Body famous because all around the world Movies , the interventions at the they can temporarily change space CAMM (Atlantic Centre for Modern perceptions and their relations with Art), the Homographies and Pulse people living there. Or they can draw Room installations The purpose is the attention to important issues such as change of the spaces we live, the the continuous control we are creation of new human and sensorial subjected. relations inside reassessed contexts,

15 the improvement of our perception of months-, we rented a beautiful the surrounding context, the “palazzo” in Cannaregio and I brought modification of the usual and six installations, some robotics, some predictable theories governing our projections, some lighting, one new, relation with the surrounding specifically for the space, although environment. Without forgetting the most of the pieces have not really relationship with the Web and its been show in the way that I showed possible networking dynamics, them, so I felt that the show was quite highlighting the possible interrelation fresh. There was a work from 1992, it’s between real and virtual space, as in called Surface Tension , basically an the works The Trace or the already eye that follows you wherever you mentioned –and remarkable- Vectorial move, and a lot of the pieces were Elevation . using computer vision, surveillance. I’m interested especially now, in a When Mr. Lazano-Hemmer talks time of homeland security and patriot about his works, he prefers to use act and invasion of public space, to words such as ‘alien memory’ rather utilize this kind of technology in a way than ‘new media’ or ‘interactivity’. I that is more playful, in a way to make could have a chat with him during a them visually tangible, so you could meeting in New York. get a sense of the observation. In my work, the artwork observes the public, there’s a certain kind of policing the public, which sets the stage for potential performance.

It was the first time Mexico participated, the whole event was sadly affected by the accident a curator ( Príamo Lozada, NdR ) had seven days before the opening of the event. He went on a coma and the sad . thing is that he had organized Monica Ponzini: Do you want to talk incredible parties for the opening and about the experience at the Venice when the parties and the opening Biennale? came the doctors had already done all kinds of surgical interventions and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: It was the they actually told us there was a 70% first time Mexico participated and chance that he would be ok. We were we’ve done it in record time – four/five lying to ourselves saying he would

16 make it through, yet one week after algorithms, but the full cultural impact the opening he actually passed away. of that revolution of mathematics is really not evident in the humanities and there’s really no commentator that I think is more eloquent than Manuel for that. Reading a book by Manuel on the subject of complexity is really a different way of approaching this issue. In his books he often talks about economics and history or technological development, but this time he focuses on the art and that was cool. We also have . Barbara London, José Luis Barrios, the The exhibition has a catalogue that book is an integral part of it, it’s what I’m quite happy with, it’s got texts by remains . Victor Stoichita, an art historian that It’s doing quite well, the exhibition is talks about “new media” but not getting 500 people a day, which is –to electronic new media, rather XVII or my understanding- double what other XIX century new media, and this is pavilions outside the Giardini are interesting to me because elements getting, and also it’s gotten very good of phantasmagoria, elements of reviews, so I’m very pleased with all of prospective representation, elements that. of shadow place make it very much into my work, so to have somebody like him was important. We have Cuauhtémoc Medina, a Mexican critic, we have Manuel DeLanda, who’s a theorist of the non-linear, he’s based in New York but he’s Mexican. He was approaching the work in a way that I really liked to look at, he comes from a tradition of deleuzian materialism and my work benefits very much from his approach. I think that all the new . media artists and critics are very aware of non-linear dynamics and of Monica Ponzini: Your interventions chaotic systems and recursive focus on public spaces, but also on

17 buildings that are not exactly part of restorations, and they also form this the real “life” of a place kind of monolithic canon – Venice it’s all like that. Especially because of the Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: I work a lot in homogeneity and the globalization public spaces and that’s a great that is taking rampant stage, there is challenge because, among other so much conservatism with that things, you don’t have all the architecture, precisely because intermediaries and a normal people fear the loss of identity. But production context, people approach we must also exorcize that, we must the work with a lot of spontaneity. also transform those buildings, those The works that I do are mostly large buildings want to rest, they also want scale, there are projections, there are to be transformed. In the case of art, lights, there are sensors, and typically you can provide the context for that what I’m looking for is to generate to happen: to pull out minor histories, eccentric readings of the city. I get minor elements, minor tales, minor commissions to transform some narratives, buildings are bored to be urban location and most of the times represented always in the same way, where politicians talk about urban they want to be part of a different “renewal”, what they mean is put XIX performance, and with art you can do century lampposts and Starbucks, and that, you can recontextualize they have the big problem of global elements and make them funny or homogenization. All of these buildings perverse or make them disappear. are not representing people, but Whatever it is that you’re doing, in rather they’re representing corporate public space people will engage with and international interests – I’m not this kind of architecture in different saying it’s bad, it’s just what it is. ways. I’ve been doing that for 15 years and I’ll continue doing it. Now my My work and the work of colleagues work is going into collections of mine brings a certain eccentricity museums, galleries, and one has to be and I think that those moments of very careful to be sure that that interruption of the pattern are doesn’t take over what you’re doing. healthy, because make people I’ve seen colleagues of mine that were question what is going on with beginning to sell on the “market” and homogeneity and the relationship to they got completely sucked by it. You each other and the city. The other have to make sure that you’re also kind of intervention is more on doing stuff that is going to be for the “vampire” buildings, emblematic wider public. buildings that are forced to live with

18 technological support, but not in the sense of “new”, I’m very against the word “new media”: the more you study art history, the more you realize that a lot of what we’re all doing is just progressions or transformations or new versions of stuff that has been done for a really long time. I’m not into the originality thing, I’ve studied post-structuralism, I know that’s no . longer possible. I work with technology because it’s inevitable, it’s Monica Ponzini: You operate with in every aspect of our global economy different media and create complex and whatever it’s gonna happen to installations intended for the “real your life it’s part of a technological world”, not for galleries: how would culture. So if technology is inevitable, you define yourself as an artist? you realize that this term “new media” Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: I’m a person and the idea of grouping the artists who’s in between disciplines, a because they use technology is connective person, I think of my work ridiculous. I think that “new media” art not so much as visual art, but as is becoming “normal” art and performing art. The model that I work subsumed into different other with is a model of collaboration, I categories depending on what you’re usually work with a lot of people, doing. So, I’m a media artist, yes, but I there’s a director, which is me, then don’t necessarily want to be classified there’s a composer, an actor, a by that, because I also do other kinds programmer a photographer.. of work. whoever is necessary to work on a specific project. We follow a very clear path, a very clear obsession or nightmare –that’s mine. Often I’ve collaborated not like that, for instance I did a project with an architect and it was his concept -I was just doing the visuals, that’s good too, but it’s always important to have a backbone.

It’s typically work that has a .

19 Monica Ponzini: Talking about project is good, in my opinion that technologies, what about team work? means you’re not imposing a single The tendency now is to work more in view of things; successful projects are a team, to use the everyone’s specific those that have enough poetry that skills. Do you agree? people can read them in different ways. The capability for the artist to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Absolutely. pull him or herself out of that and And on different levels: team work on allow people to make their own a creative level, for example Although decisions is crucial and their I met a Canadian artist, David collaboration is fundamenta. Rockeby, who told me he has no assistants, he programs everything, he Monica Ponzini: So it’s not only you or sets up everything, and I admire that your team, for you the role of the very much, it’s very romantic and public is fundamental: do you expect amazing, but most of my other to have something unexpected from colleagues liaise, work in groups, them? collaborate. And there’s a good reason for that: it’s very difficult to be like Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Not give me, David, to be able to keep a really solid but give themselves or give each track and control of theory and other. For example, with the shadow technology and also be able to projects, connections are established practice your work. It’s nice because between very disparate individuals. In in a way it makes the whole process England there was this moment of production a little bit more where a group of young evangelicals humbling. On a level of presentation, was chanting and playing around with the collaboration happens too, it the shadows and they were coexisting depends on the public. You require in the same space with these punks, their collaboration and their input and that were also having a good time and they’re in fact the ones who are I thought that was cool, the capability making the artwork, and that’s for a project to connect extremely humbling again. You’re not doing this disparate realities. The platform is out just for yourself, you’re doing of control and that’s a very important something that in the end, once it’s aspect of my work. The platform out there as a platform your just one cannot be scripted, you have to set of the participants, you see people the limits for what people can or can’t taking it over and if you’re successful, do, but once you’ve set the platform, in my opinion, people will end up it’s not yours any more and you should doing something really different from just back off and relax to the what you originally anticipated. If a possibility that it may go terribly

20 wrong for instance . networked, it was more about establishing relationship, interactivity never seem to be that way, it seem to me to be one way -you do something, the computer does something else and that’s the end of it. With “relational” work what I was hoping to refer to was this emergence of ad hoc connections that were not intended by the artist himself. I’m trying to move away from the term because sadly the dominating understanding . of that term is now based on Monica Ponzini: Also, you prefer to relational aesthetics and I want to call your interventions relational think of my work as more political, rather than interactive: why such more nonsensical than what Nicolas distinction? Bourriaud was trying to propose in his essay. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Originally, when I was using the term “relational”, Monica Ponzini: Another interesting like when I called “Relational and original concept in your work is architecture” a series of interventions – the idea of alien memory. Can you this was before Nicolas Bourriaud’ s describe it? “Relational Aesthetics”, because what Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: I love alien he means it’s an extremely different memory. All of my early works were thing – I used “relational” as a word to done in the context of Ars Electronica, replace “interactivity”, because I saw V2, Transmediale, where everybody “interactivity” as a “predatorial”, “pus- was concerned with the idea of what button” aesthetics. Interactivity at the was “new”. I really thought we needed time where I started calling my things a new word that was not “new” and relational, was very much a little “alien” was it. Instead of new media, “fetish”, just like “virtuality” had been alien media. A new concept is an alien right before. I decided not to be concept: alien is something that included in the very utilitarian, “doesn’t belong”, a displacement, and predatorial use of this kind of vertical a good conceptional work in my application of technology. To me opinion is always a displacement, a “relational” meant something that was repositioning of something into some more lateral, something more other context that makes you think

21 differently about the context. Alien memory was a different notion from . deconstructive architecture or Monica Ponzini: What is your deconstructive art, from site-specific background? I know you were interventions, something that was exposed to a lot of musicians and speaking about the narratives of artists because your family ran power of that site. I want to do nightclubs; also than you moved to something else, which is this idea of Spain and then Canada . Did these temporary relationship, temporary experiences impact you and your memory, alien memory, that has work? nothing to do with the site. In fact, a lot of my work travels, it’s not site- Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Absolutely. I specific , but relationship-specific . have three passports, the Mexican is “Alien memory” comes from the green, the Canadian one is blue and desire to look not at the big Memory the Spanish is red – I have RGB. I was (the capital M memory), but these very troubled by all this and once I small comments that may come up met one of Fluxus’ pioneers, Dick from micropolitcs, people looking at Higgins, and I told him “I’m so the work, or complaining about it. It’s screwed up, I don’t know my roots a very intimate level, little meaningful and where I’m from” and he just told moments that make you change the me “Rafael, identity is for beginners”. I way that you would relate to a place. think each one should do a private Macropolitical and economical issues investigation into their identity, but are not the subject of my direct work. shouldn’t subject that to the general And I think that it is “political” to deal public In my case I think the with those “intimate” things, but I try confusion is evident in most of my to stay away from moralizing or trying work, I think I’m involved in a kind of to pretend I have any solutions for “anthropological” investigation: as you what’s going on. present the same project in different cities, people behave extremely differently, you can’t make certain generalizations, maybe these generalizations can be classified as a certain identity. In Portugal I expected that people would play with the shadows and with each others, and not so in England , but it was exactly the opposite .

22 Monica Ponzini: In your work 33 communicate better, I don’t think Questions per Minute , language also there’s any problem with is very important: virtually endless, communication in general; any time virtually correct but mostly non- there are claims about the Net or sensed questions is that cycle of MySpace or a new kind of cell phone questions a way you see that has videoconference, I think communication now? that’s a fallacy. Specifically in art, communication has no place and all Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: This project the art that I like is the one that is not so much about communication, assures us of poetry, which means as much as the impossibility of ambiguity, the fleeting fancy of words communication. I think that that flow, concepts that are unclear, a communication in art is a very slowing down of that communication. dangerous concept and for a long Anything that gives me pleasure is time I’ve had a “crusade” against the against communication, so maybe word “communication” within art. I this project is like that. don’t think art is there to

23 answers and this installation frustrates that.

The genesis of this project was in Cuba : we connected the computer to the Internet as well – the Internet is forbidden to Cubans, but not to Mexican-Canadians- so people could enter their own questions into the automatic flow and their questions

. would go to the Internet. The idea was it would be impossible to the It came originally from the frustration authorities to look at the questions of it: my father was in the hospital and know if it was asked by a person whit a cancer and had a respirator, or the computer. I thought that and I made him a little board with Cubans would start making words I’ve chosen so he could put comments about their situation, together sentences, but I got the maybe some politics would come out, wrong words, the wrong but what it came out was a lot of concepts The idea that someone erotic messages As an artist, you cant’ chooses these words for you is really and shouldn’t overdetermine how problematic. The notion of this people would see your work, it’s computer that keeps on asking these always great to see it take a life of its nonsensical questions is a little bit own. about the frustrating rhythm of them, the incapability to reflect on them. We often look at computer to find www.lozano-hemmer.com

24 Ankersmit, Side By Side

Claudia Moriniello

slowly unwinds gently “hugging” his sax, as he was dandling his baby. He starts to breathe softly awaking the saxophone and so the sound spreads filling all the place.

At this time you are already deep in the new long and intense sound flux, orchestrated by the seducing swinging of the musician and his instrument. They are now a only Just imagine a desk with an EMS creature standing between the wall Synthi A and a laptop, a sax laying on behind the artist’s back and the public the floor inside its open case, just spellbound by the sound flux. As he waiting for being awaken and a tall, wanted to have his privacy and fair-haired guy, with a very young remain alone with his music, Thomas face, and a serious and concentrated turns his back on the public and goes gaze. on playing. Everything is great, Just meet this gaze for a second, passionate and intense despite his before everything starts, to see easy and spontaneous approach. immediately in his eyes the flame Thomas Ankersmit is a skilled revealing all the arriving joyfulness. saxophonist and an electronic Suddenly an explosion of sounds, only musician from the Netherlands. He accompanied with Thomas can combine the abstract sound of his Ankersmit’s stiff movements of hands saxophone with hyper-kinetic on his EMS synthi A. This instrument, analogical synthesizers and can give original of the 70s, gives a special birth to electronic improvisations poetic tension to the live thanks to computers. He’s able to performance. Chaos and raptures realize installations where sound, skilfully orchestrated by a real genius! infrasound and “sound feature And suddenly, again: silence! Mr. modification of space XX” melt and Ankersmit stands up and gives up the turn upside down the normal space apparent movement stiffness. He perception of the hearing public and

25 even his presence in that place. So shop). In the summer of 1997 I started guys, if you have the opportunity to going to the Art Academy in see his live performance don’t miss it! Amsterdam, and from that time to New York, where I kept playing in parallel to my studies. I never integrated very much with the work I was doing in the Academy. Although I started working with sound there too, I didn’t think of that as “music”.

Claudia Moriniello: So, a spontaneous and instinctive approach. Which were your music influences?

. Thomas Ankersmit: I guess the first things I heard that have somewhat to Claudia Moriniello: You attended the do with my involvement were free Art Academy in Amsterdam and then improvisation (not so much the free the School of Visual Art in New York. jazz), noise, minimalism and electro- Your academic background seems to acoustic music. All of that really at the be more “artistic” than musical Can same time. As regards as the sax my you tell us how did you approach “masters” were Evan Parker, Mats music and when? Gustafsson, Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter of Borbetomagus and Tamio Thomas Ankersmit: Listening to Shiraishi. All people with very far- underground rock (Sonic Youth etc.) reaching approaches to the as a teenager quickly led me to more instrument, but with different avant-garde music, although looking backgrounds. I remember listening a back it’s hard to say why I started lot to “Noise Capture” by Gert Jan- digging into that music. At that time I Prins and Kevin Drumm’s first CD in started messing around with a guitar 1997/1998. That combination of and with electronics (cassette tape rawness and tension was appealing, a players etc.) found by chance. I just sort of a meeting of the noise sound kept going on, starting with the world with a very sharp sense for saxophone a few years later and again time. With hindsight those might have pretty much by chance (I found an old played a role in influencing me. Russian army saxophone in a pawn

26 summer of 1999. I had to leave about a year later, my visa had run out, and I needed to return to Amsterdam to continue school there. In New York I realized I didn’t necessarily have to live in the country I was born in, that I could just pick an interesting place and go there and see if I could make it work, which was an important realization for me at that time. I briefly . considered staying in New York and dropping out of school and never Claudia Moriniello: The Netherlands coming home again, but I’m glad I represent a very important source for didn’t. I had some friends in Berlin, so I quality of music in the European simply thought I’d go there for a while scene, growing and producing good as an alternative to being back in artists and musicians. New York is a Amsterdam, in the summer of 2000. prominent crossroad for the It’s been really great so far. I’m experimental artistic scene. What did probably only in Berlin about half the push you to move to Berlin? time though. I’m still frequently in Thomas Ankersmit: Thomas Amsterdam too, I still have an Ankersmit: When I came to apartment there. Amsterdam I felt pretty isolated. In Claudia Moriniello: Which is your the late ’90s I felt that there was a free perception of the German, Dutch, jazz scene, a high brow contemporary Italian and American scene? music scene, maybe some sort of post-industrial scene, but I never Thomas Ankersmit: Of course, I can really felt tied to any of those circles. only speak about the very small slots The noise/industrial crowd hated of the music culture that I know. With saxophones and the notion of playing the stuff that I’m involved in, I instruments in general, I think. The probably wouldn’t talk about scenes jazz scene felt too “jazz” and most of in the case of Holland or Italy. The the musicians were my father’s age people I know there are pretty (although now I’m on tour with a 73- isolated as far as I can tell. Gert-Jan year-old, so who cares). I’d always Prins in Amsterdam for example, or want to spend time in New York. I’d Domenico Sciajno or Giuseppe Ielasi been there twice or three times on in Italy. In Berlin it really seems that short visits before moving there in the lots of people who play experimental

27 music somehow know each other and Thomas Ankersmit: Phill and I met in spend a lot of time together. There 1999, when I was living in New York . are so many musicians there, and so We met at each other’s concerts. Phill many concerts, both by the locals as is a very talkative person so he’s well as a constant stream of visitors. always going to people’s shows if he’s The improvised music circle that I in town. At the time he was still best know there feels like it’s teaching, I think, so he was probably disintegrating a little. That is probably in New York more than he is now. He okay. I haven’t spent enough time in hosts performances at his loft on the one place in the US recently to have a border of SoHo and Chinatown , so clear idea about that, but it seems like people visit his place too. We started there’s a big experimental music collaborating and doing shows network there too. It’s always been together only in 2003 though, when more of a do-it-yourself scene there. we were booked to do a tour of Japan In America nobody makes a living side-by-side. producing (or playing) experimental music concerts, in Europe some Claudia Moriniello: Can you tell us people do. The European scene has how do electronic, acoustic, analogue always been much more and digital elements live together in professionalized. Then again: people your music? in Europe initiating gigs are very often Thomas Ankersmit: They basically simply fans themselves, not coexist side-by-side. The analogue professional producers. and digital electronic parts are very much intertwined. I use the computer to record, edit, play back, control the analogue synthesizers. Most of the music is “made” with the synthesizers. In concerts the computer is mostly used as a sampler: I use it to play back pre-recorded sound fragments and those sounds are sent through the processing analogue signal. I don’t really use the computer to generate or

. process sound, it’s more a device for recording, editing and playback. As a Claudia Moriniello: You often play musical instrument, I prefer analogue with the great Phill Niblock. Tell us electronics because I like shaping and how you met him. disturbing the electrical signals

28 directly. The possibility of patching Thomas Lehn, the EMS Synthi A is a anything into anything on the modular very impressive instrument provided synth is important for me. I do a lot of with multiple operative opportunities. primitive messing around with the How do you use it? I mean which is signals too: wiggling the connectors your logic for using it? Do you use it as back and forth, short-circuiting things, it was planned or do you look for a etc. My interests always shift back and personal way trying to widen or forth between the acoustic and the change the operative techniques? electronic, but I usually end up combining the two. I’m pretty Thomas Ankersmit: I use the EMS and attached to acoustic playing also. I Serge modular synthesizers to appreciate the physicality and the generate sound and also to process site-specificness of playing an external signals (recordings from acoustic instrument, having the sound computer, microphones, guitar coming from where you’re standing pickups). There are usually a few rather than from a pair of speakers things going on at once, different located somewhere else in the room. signal chains, different things happening at different speeds. A lot of that has to do with a kind of cut-up character, pushing in the connectors (patch pins or patch cables) and quickly removing them again. Some of the sounds are made with standard synthesis techniques, oscillators modulated and processed in different ways, and some of it is messier/more experimental with modules feeding back on themselves, short-circuiting . the signals, making quasi-random connections etc. The Synthi is small Claudia Moriniello: In your live and has only about ten modules with performances you use that glamour particular functions that you connect instrument that is the EMS Synthi A, together to design a sound. The Serge an analogue modular synth built in is a lot bigger, so you can set up more 1972. Apart from the poetic charm of independent processes an old second-hand instrument simultaneously. I’ve never listened to contained into a little plastic suitcase, the musicians you list (Eno, Schultze, used by musicians as Brian Eno, Klaus Pink Floyd). I like Thomas Lehn. I’m Schultze, Pink Floyd and why not not a big fan of most synthesizer

29 music, it just happens to be what I mess around with. I guess it’s the . same with the saxophone. Claudia Moriniello: In your music, the Claudia Moriniello: What about the separated acoustic and electronic saxophone? Which is your relation elements even if managed with great with this instrument? talent, are in contrast with one another. This contrast reveals a post- Thomas Ankersmit: The fact that the modern approach but at the same saxophone is acoustic, related to the time results in a romantic effect. How energy and the location of the body is do you explain this paradox? important to me. I also appreciate the limitations of it, the fact that you’re Thomas Ankersmit: I never think of it stuck with that one thing, that one in these terms, but I suppose it makes design. Obviously, and for good sense. They’re just two things I’m reasons, the saxophone is mostly seen interested in and I just combine one in a jazz context, but I basically by- each other. I don’t try to use one passed that completely. I never tried instrument like the other, and there to play jazz myself. I’m interested in are obvious differences between the acoustic phenomena, in a kind of approaches. I suppose the electronic focussed sound-intensity, and I enjoy parts tend to be more about time, the realizing that with my hands, breath, acoustic parts more about space. My voice etc. Sometimes playing way of playing sax is often quite sustained complex tones leads to a static, more about creating a dense, kind of trance-state, where you don’t complex sound that shifts depending think about making the next musical on where you’re listening, not so “move”, but sound simply pours into much about having a sequence of the room, and especially if it’s a events. The electronic stuff tends to reverberant room, stays there for a move quicker over time, it’s more while and reflects back to you. cut-up, the sound events are more distinct from each other. I’d like to be able to create a kind of non-lyrical sound-collage on the saxophone too, but so far I haven’t appreciated the results I got. And I don’t want either to get too involved with elaborate preparations in order to squeeze different sounds out of the saxophone. So, I usually focus on a

30 few small sound-areas of the the audience in your performances? instrument and push those for a long What kind of relationship, if it exists, time. People usually consider playing do you have with the audience? i the saxophone the more expressive ascolta? part of my work, so maybe it sometimes stands in contrast with the Thomas Ankersmit: During concerts other noises. I’m not really aware of the audience, I just focus on playing music. Claudia Moriniello: Until today you Afterwards, I do find it hard to have chosen not to mass-release your improvise in the studio, in front of a production, but to public it in an microphone. So the audience absolutely private and limited edition. probably keeps the pressure there. I Why? like the risk of building something up in front of people, with the potential Thomas Ankersmit: I just haven’t risk of having it fall apart. That’s really thought about, and I probably important to me when I go to other enjoy travelling and playing live more people’s concerts too: the presence of than working on records. Maybe I’ll people right in front of you manage to make a solo CD this year, concentrating on their sound, without either saxophone or electronic music, knowing where it will go. I like or both. The fact is that the few things meeting people before and after the I made were in small quantities so I performance, but I don’t talk to the just to get rid of them quickly, they audience from the stage or anything weren’t meant as “collector’s items”. like that. What’s important to me is And I don’t think they’ve turned into that there’s people listening. that, anyway. Fortunately they’re rare, but I find badly attended shows very frustrating. It is a waste of energy and the organizer’s money if nobody shows up.

Sometimes I walk around or turn towards a wall in the performance space in order to reflect the sound, sometimes my back is turned towards the audience, as far as I’m concerned this is just for the sound and the . acoustics, not as a kind of Claudia Moriniello: What is the role of performance-communication gesture.

31 Of course some people like to see a and sway back and forth when I’m by kind of non-verbal meaning in the myself too. I’ve never looked at videos physicality of playing, which is okay, of myself playing so I don’t really but unintentional. I yell into the horn know how I look like.

32 Sustainable Non-property, The Answer By Estudio Livre

Eleonora Oreggia

developers of instruments and works based on knowledge sharing and open source. The project’s structure is a network of people sharing the same goals and methods for creative work and its development.

Their logic goes beyond rationalism, rather than being dualistic, it is diffused. Their reasoning reflects the One of the innovations brought about approximate and inexact realities we by the digital world is the experience. Though there are restructuring of the process of hacklabs and labs scattered around creation/production according to an Brasil which are a tangible open system whose functionality is manifestation of the project, it is represented by free software. Free important to remember that Estúdio software is the basis of the first free Livre is neither a real place, nor a and widespread non-property net in group of places; rather, it is an applied history. Thanks to the overcoming of philosophy, a conceptual and political the binomial producer/consumer and attitude realized through an active the transformation of the product into and revolutionary way of working. process, an open and interactive Freedom and independence from relation between developer and user property is achieved through the is created, with its potential of infinite positive re-appropriation of new opportunities of production and technologies. Thus the idea to create creation. a virtual structure that can give both concrete and technical support to Those are some of the concrete and artists and facilitate their gathering theoretical concepts of ‘Estúdio Livre‘, into communities. a Brasilian network of artists and

33 network of hacklabs, laboratories and workshops spread over the Brasilian territory. During those events both experts and newcomers to digital creation meet for approximately a week to improve their skills and produce, by experimenting, new free content, with a particular attention to recycling and the intelligent use of what is called obsolete technology . (materials and documents about those meetings are available on the Estúdio Livre offers a web site based site). on the CMS (Content Management System) TikiWiki extended with EL has been supported and financed custom Php modules to ease both by state or semipublic publishing from the web and backing organizations such as ‘ Pontos de up to local servers. The site is easy to Cultura’ and ‘Cultura Digital‘, use and offers sections and tools for according to a Brasilian policy which self-publishing: blogs and firmly supports and promotes free homepages; chat systems included in software.Today, after three years, the browser; documents and shared with the decrease of public funding, databases for example ‘acervo’ (which this group of people has decided to means quantity) where media are meet and discuss, not only to make published and shared; also manuals, up new strategies and common translations, patches, scripts and prospects, but first of all to find out various softwares . The platform similarities and differences and to supports dialogue and discussion and wonder about possible crises. In order provides available materials within the to define their identity and find a clear group. Anyone can create their own common line, in spite of the risk of account, provided they are loosing their cohesion, ‘Estúdio Livre’ responsible for the contents and network decided to meet and think, respect EL principles according to a so that the abstract assumption can clear editorial policy. Beside gathering be incisive and crucial and can define resources and dealing with and modify the real world as well as communication online, EL organizes a the common and cooperational series of events called ‘ Encontro de methods. Conhecimentos Livres ‘ involving the

34 but will no longer accept nonspecific funding as Estúdio Livre or similar names unless an effective plan for distribution and decentralization is drawn up. The access to the list is public but initially moderated; an mail introducing oneself is appreciated. The group is willing to set down plans for self-sustenance independent of possible financial helps. .

On 6th, 7th and 8th September the first Estúdio Livre plenary meeting took place at Taina culture house, in Campinas, S,o Paulo. During the meeting the following common concepts took shape according to a division into values, principles and lines of action: the values are freedom, cooperation and difference; the principles are the free software . philosophy, the diffusion of knowledge and learning and the An interesting proposal in that compound relationship between art direction is, for example, the idea of and technology, artists and opening the code, in case the programmers. The lines of action are software is sold, after the purchaser interconnection, research, production has paid a small sum to reward the and workshops. programmer and finance the free community. Thus the awareness, and intuition, that FLOSS software is more Estúdio Livre decided to reorganize its convenient and manageable even if structure and take on a strong social considered inside commercial responsibility in the so-called “phase dynamics. 2”, deciding to become a sort of licence (also because of not being very convinced by Creative Commons). The group will keep a http://estudiolivre.org/ cohesive identity and a legal entity, www.taina.org.br

35 http://estudiolivre.org/el-gallery_ho http://estudiolivre.org/tiki-index.php me.php ?page=Oficinas+Locais&bl

36 Hackmeeting 2007: Ten Years Nerdcore

Francesca Valsecchi

special appointment: it is the only manifestation handling these topics in a critical and radical way. Hackmeeting firstly refers to the hacker approach to technology. Although the word hacker has contrasting interpretation and connected to any kind of definition, surely has a proactive attitude not subduing the technological impact, but trying to give a direction. Right this weekend it took place the 10th edition of Hackmeeting. This is a Hackmeeting, o hackit, according to very important appointment for the the participants, starts from this point, Italian digital community because of talking of “techno-indifference” in its its love for free software, of its home page. This represents the first computer nerds, of its technology critic to move to the social context freaks, regardless of hardware, showing to be a passive consumer of software or reality manipulation. technology. Hackmeeting is an independent initiative dating back to 1998. Every year a different Italian city is chosen as seat of the event, hosted by free and public spaces. For this edition the seat was the social centre ‘Rebeldia’ in Pisa, Tuscany.

First of all this event is a 3 days workshops and presentations enriching a hi-tech talk, deeply rooted in this culture of free software and . free licences. There are plenty of hi- tech meetings, as well as software Hackmeeting‘s goal has been during and IT economy summits, but this is a the years the update of this critic and

37 talk: in 1998 at the birth of hackit, the defined program of meetings tooking free software was still a confined place continuously on Fridays and phenomenon and internet was still Saturdays. But how are these summits spreading as an instrument of organized and who are the organizers communication and information of this event? spread. Nowadays millions of people use the web to write, file share, plan, build everyday, creating a unsustainable production of contents. Laws for IT privacy and censorship interventions are more and more frequent in the political news. All around the world you hear about defence and security but no one wonders what actually can be done on this subject. These issues touch . everybody. But the most of us live them with indifference, without really Actually Hackmeeting is so special understanding what is happening, because of its organizers. Everything without asking too much, just was born in a mailing list, created in accepting the developments in the 90s to be an instrument of public technology, its improvements and discussion and indifferent to local changes, and just wanting it to be nods, situations, linux user groups and useful and easy to access and be movements bound to free software. used. Hundreds of people with two common features: the intense Instead in Hackmeeting you can hear exchange of emails and their dream the voices of those who have for an event able to give shape to all questions, doubts and critics, for sure digital underground souls. Of course technical skills and high degrees of respecting the value of the passion and curiosity. Hackmeeting independent managing and ‘develops and crosses the resistance production. On the whole: a public groups widespread throughout the and concrete event open to all Italian and European territory’, say the connections to the outside and all the organizers in the page home. They are cities. The list has been for years the trying to divulgate information on organizing core of the event. Lot of topics not very much developed but people took part to it and collaborate very important for everyday life. Their to the managing of the logistic attempt is focussed on a never

38 aspects. The rest is done by you need cloths, projectors, web and participation: spaces are transformed seats. In the mailing list you find what in order to let the lan space , the you have to carry on with you, what active heart of hackit. Lan space is a someone can do and who s/he is, space with electrical and web sockets who can come before to clean the able to host the great number of rooms and create the web the web people “walking through it” during the construction is a very interesting point 3 days of the event. of Hackit: not all the places hosting hackit dispose of internet, so you have Every year this space is different: once to find it and make it accessible to the lan space is a huge room hundreds of people. It is constructed, composed by 4 hundred people sat at each time, in every single piece: the the tables and every kind of cable servers, the dns, the gateway, the crossing over their heads. Some other web configuration, the shaping band times it is made of smaller rooms in order to take advantage of the where cables go through walls. Also internal resources and not abuse of the summit spaces must be prepared: downloading.

39 general evaluations on the technological debate. You come back home thinking of the next Hackmeeting and keeping on the resistance against the daily technological conflict.

Actually the event atmosphere is something unique, a fluid moment of creative cooperation. Thousands of

. self-managing people showing a certain complexity, and by the way, The access is very simple: you get also beauty: computer with DIY wood there, come in with a free case, pc in luggage, in aquaria, subscription and you come across antenna resulted from tomato juice straight away with a pc (with the tins. And then electrical components related “hacker” at the keyboard) are recycled in order to create assigning you an address to surf on music these are just some examples the web. Potentially all lan space disks of the eccentricity inside let share contents, what makes the Hackmeeting. This year the main exchange activity frantic and topics were software licenses and amusing, an activity in progress systems for remaining anonymous, during the whole event. Hackmeeting prime numbers, phone webs security, lives for 3 days non-stop, and there but also science and nutrition. you always find someone awake and someone sleepy at the pc. You sleep hosted by the space, in sleeping bags and with basic utilities, yet it is a very amazing experience being worth of sacrifices. Everyone can take part just subscribing the list, proposing meetings or simply having a look. Sunday, the final day, is dedicated to a plenary assembly where, apart from exchanging positive comments on the good result –always occurred-, the . main subjects are the community The considerable and creative itself, the proposal of the event for the presence of computers represents the following year and moment for

40 aesthetical and folk aspect more ‘Our “hacker” soul is shown in characteristic of Hackmeeting, and everyday life also when we don’t use not because of the pc but because of computers. It’s shown when we fight the non organization in their to change things we don’t like, as false disposition and so the derived tangle and imposed information, as the use of cables and devices. Hackmeeting is of not accessible and expensive not an IT event, but rather an open technologies, as getting information appointment welcoming every radical in a passive way with no opportunity approach to any technological to interact and having to take the system. And so don’t be surprised if introduction of repressive and you see people with soldering iron, censorious technologies just lying Allen screws, electronic components, down. Honestly, we are afraid of how every sort of recycled hardware, old quickly technology is irreversible cans and wires and why not, also bound to the social control, to wars, rolling-pins and porcelain pots. The to a morbid fear of our “brothers”: our summits are ‘free and open to public, approach is diametrically the and they will deal with technology but opposite.’ also politics. We will support the talk about digital rights, about the choice In this context this year some of free software, the opposition seminars specialised in code could against the politics of patents and find place. Not only. There were also traditional copyright, the construction discussion on advanced security of self-managed servers, the research systems, electronic workshop as well and experimentation of clean energy as more general interventions on the resources, the consequences of the social aspect of technologies and also social use of technologies and the the updating on the subject of relation between technologies and privacy. Of course there were sexuality. And then issues are also the international known hosts, a critical problems referring to work in the IT seminar towards science, its freedom field, the self-defence of the own and authority. This latter meeting privacy, the study of control devices gave birth to a debate on the activism and the resistance against future. And, with pots and rolling-pin censorship’. in hands, you could take part to a bread workshop, offering with its Hacktivism, a term that you can find in ingredients and the tight relationship Hackmeeting manifesto, but also just between the ground and traditional taking part to the event, is an attitude: culture a good –and delicious- excuse changing, manipulating, using to think of copyright on seeds, technologies in answer to one’s wills. privatised waters, lost know-how and

41 re-appropriation of the production It was a perfect background for the time as hacking way of life in the celebration of this tenth appointment consumption life. that is very topical for some important social-technical issues. Control and restrictive interventions towards digital freedom are the main topic of the reflection. More precisely: the more and more sophisticated profiling made possible by the huge amount of pieces of information that we put on the web at everyone’s disposal; video and bio-metrical systems for control of people and then the bond to purchase owner software systems . and their fights against piracy; the The lan space in ‘Rebeldia’ was hosted issue of security and privacy not only in the concert hall. Projection screen regarding emails and texts but also with a collective vj: if connected to a multimedia contents and phone certain computer it was possible to services employing the digital web. project whatever you wanted on one of the 8 video terminals simultaneously transmitted by the projector. You could saw publicly lines of written codes, self-video productions, movies, vjing sessions It was a flux non-stop of images particularly appreciate on Saturday evening, ending with frantic electronic dances and every kind of screening. Hackmeeting is also an . amusing event and poetical in its techno-fetishist and libertarian soul. Technological innovation shows us Among the electronic note the sophisticated systems not allowing romantic note could not miss: at the the final user to deeply understand loudest volume hackers sang the song them. The data retention records our of capitan Harlock, hero for fictional lives gathering information by phones, pirate and freedom of transformation. credit cards, supermarket cards, bank cards, telepass systems, blockbuster

42 cards, your provider Last weekend in mind when they speak of free Germany twenty thousand people technologies and of how really protested against the politics of technology is made of. But there’s a control on behaviours in the more remote and significant telecommunication world, a politics perspective for hackit: the fight for considered a disadvantage for all public and exchangeable knowledge, citizens ( of any kind, above all if creative, http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung unusual and anti-conformist as the .de/content/view/142/1/ ). ones seen during the 3 days event. Security is knowledge, not control. It’s Against the political attitude retaining trust and not isolation. These are the freedom exchangeable with foundations of the Hackmeeting technological innovation and calling community and an invitation to go “security” the cold artificial world closer to their public ideas. where what we actually loose with technology is the human existence. Techno-control is what people have in www.hackmeeting.org

43 The Knowledge Of A Fragile Future

Gigi Ghezzi

European Commission (EURAB) in 2005 and 2006. The core of Nowotny’s notion is clear: the current age is characterized by a high level of uncertainty which has been caused by the extraordinary height reached by scientific research . This condition leads to an inevitabile paradox: more scientific knowledge means more uncertainty and in security. Moreover, where does the On 27th September Helga Nowotny ( border between the appeal of the http://www.helga-nowotny.at/ ) took new and the fear for the unknown lie part in the seminar Scienza socially and institutionally? And Tecnologia e Società (Science between innovation and preservation? Technology and Society) organized by the University of Trento . The topics According to Nowotny , one of the have been mainly those analyzed in reasons why future seems so fragile is her book Insatiable Curiosity. the excessive offer of knowledge Innovation in a Fragile Future , which which, while on the one hand gives has been recently translated into multiple solutions to present issues Italian but which was first published in (such as the dismantlement of welfare Germany in 2005 with the title state, unemployment, diseases which Unersättliche Neugier, Innovation in are not considered by pharmaceutical einer fragilen Zukunft . Nowotny iso research, etc ), on the other faces the ne of the most famous living science impossibility of their accomplishment sociologists: she is both Vice- because of conflicts created by president and founding member of commissions and expertises that fear the European Research Council (ERC) , a huge increase of riskd and threats and she was Chair of the European connected with those solutions. Research Advisory Board of the

44 which rhetorically resounds everywhere is innovation. The author states she is aware of her “obsession with innovation”: the concept is often presented as a substitute for the missing confidence in progress. We all know technical improvements do not necessarily correspond to moral progress.

.

One of the imperatives in research policies is the “desire to control the unpredictable”. Nevertheless, Nowotny believes that the confidence in controlling the direction of research in order to prevent certain developments is a model which no longer suits the present. As biotechnologies for example . demonstrates, scientific results follow their own dynamics: multinationals try That is why Nowotny describes to control their potential (for example alternative proposals to the classic through financial support control or model of the future between utopia patents), politics imposes institutional and dystopia. (see her Nineteen choices which restrict the public Eighty-Four: Science between Utopia discussion on the utility of certain and Dystopia, 1984). It is not the studies because they seem to future we can talk about; there are challenge the moral bases of society; different futures instead. They are not yet knowledge spread throughout the set chronologically, in a temporal markets and society gaining a new “illusion of geometry”; rather they are energy which is the result of the part of the present. Those futures circulation of ideas and cognitive need both knowledge and exchanges. imagination: scientific research need the arts and everyday experiences as Nowotny’s thinking then becomes much as it needs engineering. Though sharper: the sources of knowledge the spiral of innovation is inevitable, it have to be widened and the key word is necessary to have a social change in

45 the approach towards science. terms with the frailty of the future: we have to accept that our knowledge is Society should take part culturally in temporary and that a system based the processes of innovation and on innovation and thus on morally in research by making people transformation can bring aware of the uncertainty and the ambivalences to a society moving possible failures of science. towards the “future of the futures”. Institutions should support areas of communication and action of public creativity as well as those actions which can make people come to http://www.helga-nowotny.at/

46 Scali & Goode: Nan°art

Silvia Scaravaggi

world, searching what’s beyond.

There’s no doubt, all the merits are of the manager and the scientific commission that support this initiative, that testimonys the interest for new researches, the opening to artistic practices that constantly dialogue with different and stimulating ambits, such as the science and technology one. To From October 1 st to the 21 st 2007, understand the path of NAN °ART , I Palazzo Frizzoni in Bergamo present had a little chat with the Italian artists NAN°ART inside Bergamo Scienza, whose works are the nucleus of the managed by Stefano Raimondi , with exposition, born in collaboration with works of Alessandro Scali, Robin the scientists of the Turin Politecnico. Goode and Grit Ruhland .

The exposition represents the first occasion to reflect on the usage of nanotechnology inside the Italian art, and the duo Scali-Goode surely represent one of the first Italian cases, if not the only one, where nanoart finds its own and personal space to evolve and show. As Raimondi underlines, the proposition of this type of works means make a “fidelity . pact” between public and artist. Works are exposed in a little hall Silvia Scaravaggi: how did Alessandro where the space is minimal and they Scali – Robin Goode duo start? are visible only through microscopes. Scali-Goode: We met in Turin in 2002, The visitor must approach them with as we were working for the same curiosity and desire to discover a new

47 publicity agency – the Bgs D’arcy, now Silvia Scaravaggi: How did you get to Leo Burnett. As the agency didn’t let nanoart? our creativity flow, we started working at the project of an art- Scali-Goode: Pure and simple creativity-design magazine, called curiosity. We started reading and Paperkut. interesting to nanotechnology almost 4years ago. We suddenly had the Silvia Scaravaggi: How did your craziest idea ever to realize collaboration with the Turin nanometer art works, and the past Polytechnic start? years have been spent trying to give concreteness to this dream. After Scali-Goode: The collaboration with contacting and going to the Physics Politecnico has been a sort of natural Department of Trieste – and most of evolution of the Nanoart project. Turin all after the meeting with Prof. Enzo di is one of the most excellent centers Fabrizio – we understood that maybe for nanotechnology in the entire we really had the opportunity to world, so it’s been pretty logical to go realize art works using there and tell our ideas. We had the nanotechnology. fortune to know Prof. Rossi and Prof. Pirri, which turn a crazy idea into a Silvia Scaravaggi: What type of concrete reality. Nowadays our relation have you built through the Nanoart is possible thanks to the interaction between art, science and passion and enthusiasm not only of design? the Prof. Pirri, but also of a group of 7 students that using the resources of Scali-Goode: A concrete relation of the Polytechnic transform our collaboration between two worlds concepts in real works. that often, erroneously, are considered as antipodes. It is important to underline how our relation is not a warning or distant one. It is a constructing rapport that includes both the creative and realization phase.

Silvia Scaravaggi: How will the Bergamo exhibition be for you, what will it mean?

Scali-Goode: The show will surely . have a particular meaning. We could

48 say it’s our first personal (excluding a camel in a needle). the Grit Ruhland’s work), and at the same time it’s the first time we Silvia Scaravaggi: Which are your expose 6 nanoart works all together. favorite arguments? Moreover, the exhibition is the Scali-Goode: There’s many of them concrete and evident manifestation of and each one is deeply different from the collaboration between the artistic the other. Actually, more than the and scientific world. arguments, we care about how we transmit the message. We’d like to do it in a simple, intuitional manner, with no complex subtitles or critical apparatus that explain reasons and references, obviously without renouncing to deepen the concepts themselves.

Silvia Scaravaggi: How does your project interact with the exposition care? .

Silvia Scaravaggi: Which works will be Scali-Goode: Nanoart introduces exposed? some questions to the way works are exposed. Works are invisible to a Scali-Goode: We’ll expose Oltre le naked-eye, so the problem is how to colonne d’Ercole (“over the Hercules visualize them. As of now, we used columns”, a micrometric walk on a several exposal criteria. In Bergamo , siliceous area), Actual Size (an African for example, works will be exposed continent by the micrometric under microscopes lenses. At MIAAO dimensions), Libertà condizionata (“on images will be visualized on a probation”, a micro statue of liberty), computer screen. Scemo chi legge (“stupid who’s reading”, the same phrase has been written on a siliceous wafer with the laser), Fiato sprecato (“wasted breath”, an interactive works that indicates the average number of breaths a human being can make during its life), Chiave per il paradiso (“key for the paradise”,

49 . and theology. We recently also added scientific reflections about physics, Silvia Scaravaggi: Which one is the quantum mechanic and its added value of the exposition philosophical implications. confronted with a single work? (I’m thinking about “Oltre le colonne d’Ercole” that won the third price of the Premio Arti visive San Fedele of Milan in 2006)

Scali-Goode: The works exposed together can express the overall meaning of our art, of our contents and arguments and the way we do that.

. Silvia Scaravaggi: Do you think this kind of art will have a market? Are you Silvia Scaravaggi: What type of interested in it? communication would you like between your works and your public? Scali-Goode: It is possible our participation to some international Scali-Goode: We’d like a simple and trade fair to test the market reaction immediate relation, touching and to our works. Actually, selling is not involving, but even intellectual and our first goal, as we survive with our cultural. We’d like our works to be job at the communication agency interpreted from different levels, founded more than three years ago. depending on the spectator knowledge, without complex Silvia Scaravaggi: Which role do explanation or critics. literature and philosophical and anthropological speculation hold in Silvia Scaravaggi: Which is your work? nanotechnology role in your research?

Scali-Goode: An essential role. The Scali-Goode: From our point of view, fact we are a couple allowed the nanotechnology is nothing but a interaction on a background oriented medium – evidently totally innovative – to creativity, art, illustration and that allows the expression of precise design as well as on a humanistic arguments or concepts in a way we background with literature, find the most appropriate. philosophy, anthropology, semiotic

50 www.nanoarte.it

51 Creativity To The Cube

Alessio Galbiati

Europe . This networking phenomenon is getting more and more known in the audio/video/net electronic art through participation at reference festival such as Sonar, Electrowave, Neapolis of Love Muzikfestival, MUV, even at Authors’ Days during last Venice Cinema Festival . We therefore interviewed Lucia Nicolai, Editorial Manager of Qoob , that kindly answered to our “Qoob is a digital channel produced questions deepen and focusing the by MTV Italia that transmit alternative peculiar aspects of her creature, born music”. This is what Wikipedia says for as an Italian project and now spread ‘Qoob’ . But everyone that internationally. experienced its shows or its website perfectly knows that it is something more complex.

‘User-generated content’, ‘social network’ and ‘snack culture’ are some neologisms used to describe the absolute novelty build by a project that has different souls on the inside. We could say it is a TV channel like MTV, a site like Youtube, but also a little Flickr, iTunes and even Myspace. . Well, we’re now in web 2.0 linked with the “old” television and opened to the Alessio Galbiati: I’d start with a non mobile technology. original but fundamental question to immediately clarify the ideas. The Qoob is now produced by MTV Italia, intermediate nature of Qoob (TV- that is 51% Telecom Media Mobile-Web) generates a variety of Broadcasting and 49% MTV Network possible meanings: what is Qoob? On

52 Telecom Italia Media web site Qoob is several online platforms (from Vuze to defined as “the holy trinity of Veoh, from Baelgum to Youtube ), personal-media”. Even if in theology with branded and dedicated channels. the trinity concept is related to faith, To turn the project ” 360″ , as could you explain the nature of this Americans say, there will surely be complex and articulated editorial some more future developments. To project? answer the “holy trinity” question, we didn’t want to involve some sort of Lucia Nicolai: Oh my God, do you transcendental spirit; we just took suddenly destroy me with this some poetical licences. Anyway, it is question? Qoob (and from now on, possible that watching Qoob – every with this name I include its evolutional form of it – would be a faith act. steps, Yos and Flux ) was born with an experimental approach, in a media world where competition is no more between two channels, rather between a channel and a website, a website and playstation, playstation and iPod, a TV program and an sms between friends. This is most of all related to the “young” market, ephemeral in its tastes but extremely receptive towards new trends and fast in plagiarizing its spaces. .

Youths use to surf the Net, have a low Alessio Galbiati: Qoob history started attention, as Internet get you used to. on November 2005 with the creation And most of all, they use to choose of YOS channel (Your Open Source) alone what they want to see. So that’s that turned into FLUX on April 2006. the reason why they do not need On November 2006 the project took mass media rather a personal-media the name of Qoob and in April 2007 that follow them in every moment. opened the international section. A We used a “snack-culture” approach, complicated, cryptic history, hidden as Wired magazine wrote at the behind exoteric initials, imaginative beginning of the year. In this sense, acronym and most of all not so visible we created Qoob, a TV project that because always realized inside niches had in its web-site its hard-core and of the more and more articulated we turned it into TV and mobile. Thus telecommunication system. What did far, we’re distributing QOOB on these different steps mean? And what

53 does the international opening of the reaction to that, or is there something channel represent? else?

Lucia Nicolai: Actually, you made me Lucia Nicolai: QOOB has not been a think to exotericism. Maybe in reaction, rather the will to stimulate hindsight, they seem cryptic word, and involve the TV public in a different but our thoughts followed a simple way, not in the Big Brother or path. YOS has been QOOB in its interactive TV style, but giving the embryonic step, when we overlooked possibility to build the TV they were web and TV, conscious to be only an looking at itself (and here we’re experiment. Your Open Source talking about the concept, not what’s emphasized on one side the user passing through the household centrality, on the other one the appliance) After all, nowadays (already clear) will to turn that media everyone can embark in video- (then Flux, then Qoob) in a free source making, music-making or photo of inspiration, contents, stimulus. editing, as everyone has the necessary We’ve been called YOS, but we technology on its house table. actually didn’t have a name. Only a draft shape. Flux evolution, in April 2006, wanted to centre its attention on the random logic stream that we adopted for the (non-) TV programs and the ability of the Net to bring you everywhere in the same time. Qoob , in November 2006, represented the third evolutional step (it remembers in fact the cube, the third degree), with an expansion to new platforms of . distribution and UGC made official quality content of the project. The Alessio Galbiati: How is Qoob international adventure is still alive. structured from the productive point We must create a producers network of view? How many people work and in the entire planet. We’ll see . how is the logical repartition of the human resources? I mean, how is Alessio Galbiati: : Why does Qoob Qoob organized? born in Italy , the nation of the duopoly of the TV, the monopoly of Lucia Nicolai: 11 people work in the TV sat, the piffled Gasparri Law QOOB. 3 in the editorial area, 2 in the that opened the DTT? Is it a simple marketing/press, 1 in the community

54 area, 1 in the productive/realizing even if the final word is up to the area, 3 in the technical area. We editorial manager (myself), curator of wanted an editorial consultant in all the purchased, commissioned, London when the international produced and financed projects that adventure got started. Far from those constitutes QOOB. The selective divisions, we’re all involved in the criteria to individuate potential Qoob project and often cross the borders of factory products are the same used to the other sectors. select the material that goes on TV. Innovative, anti-conformist, creative, Alessio Galbiati: Qoob Foundation something that has to talk out of the Who’s in it and which are the criteria schemes or usual but from a different of this post-modern foundation that point of view. There’s no definitive identifies, encourages and finances standard to accept a product, finance the authors of the works uploaded on it and turn it supportable by Qoob the website? Factory. Sometime, it’s just about feelings. I know it is hazy, but you Lucia Nicolai: The Qoob Foundation is cannot tie creativity in chain. Every essentially Qoob Factory (we’re time is a surprise! Think about a new almost genius in name changing). The part of reality. Qoob Factory involve each one of us,

55 Qoob solve this question? And if yes, what’s the answer?

Lucia Nicolai: We’re working with some clients about spot initiatives.

Alessio Galbiati: Future projects? Which development and which mutations?

Lucia Nicolai: For our future we’d like . to give more and more space and Alessio Galbiati: Copyrights are a relevance to the “low” contents that fundamental require for works are those created by the users, trying uploaded on the web site from the to give a shock to the TV productive users, essential aspect that difference standard logics. We already started a Qoob from Youtube. This represent a couple of projects that go that way. change in the prospective of the One is Qoob Payout , which through “copy and paste” generation. After Paypal pays people that upload (almost) a year of work, which are contents selected for the TV. The your impressions about the surfers other one is Commissioning that that produce contents? monthly ask our users to create thematic contents. We started from Lucia Nicolai: The impression I have “My crazy summer”, a way to tell about the Qoob contents producers is about last summer, in a free way. We’ll that they always prefer something soon launch other themes. And again, original, rather than the “copy and best videos will be selected for the TV paste”. And whenever they use programming and paid with money something not original, they do it through Paypal accounts. Both cases contextualizing the matter inside a invite our users to collaboration with history, not for free. They elaborate it, others, giving birth to some sort of giving it a new sense. “virtual production homes”, with director, sound designer, graphic Alessio Galbiati: At Qoob presentation designer etc We want to give space in November 2006, Antonio Campo to unsigned and emerging bands Dall’Orto, general manager of the inscribed to our community, because Telecom TV division, said that the music quality is high. At the same alternative publicity forms nearer to time, we’ll continue projects with Qoob spirit were being studied. Did affirmed professionals, both in the

56 cinematographic are (“Spider” by Nash working at the launch of the Edgerton and “I love Sarah Jane” by restructured site with new functions. Spencer Susser will be soon revealed) and in the animation area (coming soon, two different series from www.qoob.tv England and Japan ). Eventually, we’re

57 Todaysart 2007, The Hague International Art

Marco Mancuso

different mood and who lives in Milan can understand what I mean. There are just few tourists round the streets of this city which is getting ready for the beginning of the impressive kermis. Digicult is present as media partner and for this occasion a quick thought accompanies my arrival: how can I follow all the events proposed by Todaysart in a span of 2 days? How

The Hague , The Netherlands, is a little will I find the connection, the main city with no more than 1million idea staying behind all that and where inhabitants and 1hour and half from the time and way to enjoy all the Amsterdam . A grey sky as scheduled, offers? I won’t tell you how, but I did avant-garde buildings, cycle facilities it. I walked for more than 12 hours a and the hundred-year-old Royal Art day among the 25 locations (!!!) Academy . This Academy pays settled in a fortunately restricted area attention to anything artistic or around the Grote Marktstraat. The modern. The weekend of 21 st – 22 nd purpose of these locations was September was dedicated to the evidently the creation of a continuous Todaysart Festival. I’m coming from a stream of people (according to figures couple of days in Amsterdam and the the visitors during the 2 days were impact with the political capital of The above 20000), lights, visual, sounds, Netherlands is completely different. music, installations, performances, shows, workshop and chatters a lot of Here you can find the politicians’ chatters! chairs and the noble room of the royal family, one of the richest in the world, It’s not simple to describe the as it is said. And this is due to its trade Todaysart Festival Perhaps the best and a politics of marriages with the thing to do is, as well as the art most important and wealthy director Olof Van Winden did at the European royal families. Here the guys opening, starting with the code of the walking on the streets show a airport accompanying this 3 rd

58 edition. THX – The Hague International of the most powerful and effective , this is the code for a so desired city installations we have ever seen. airport which has been subject of Imagine to drift around enjoying the heated debates for ages: The Hague lights of a airstrip, fixed on the bases hasn’t got an airport. This is a real fact. set on your right and left along the But at the same time it hosts one of cycle facility, each at a distance of 5 m the most interesting and flourishing . Imagine to be slowly but unavoidably modern art festivals. And every year overwhelmed by a deep, low, this festival allures over 200 artists powerful sound flux, spread through from all around the world for more of over 100 speakers at over 80 db 350 exhibited works on the whole. coming exactly from the light bases. Moreover it makes the city a hub for All this reminds you a plane motor. intercultural and professional But you grasp it immediately: it’s not a connections. And this represents suggestion, it is the noise of a plane another reality the organizers wanted and more precisely, the sound of a people to think about. Boing 747 taxiing in the airstrip! You walk along the cycle facility clearly changed in an airstrip of an unreal airport, still not built. The sound grows, surrounds you, lights are periodically turning on, something is going to happen: the plane is about to take off. And when it departs, impact and feelings are just indescribable.

I started with the work THX, The Hague Int’l realized by LUST with Mike . Rijnierse and Detlef Villerius‘s soundscape because I wanted to Photo by: Marie-II underline the remarkable city impact Which way was better than using art that most of the Todaysart Festival as a communication mean to make installations had on roads, buildings both the city and the present public and square in The Hague. Near the consider the topic? No other. And so festival core, the City Hall and its the main street of the city, that above Atrium, it prominently stood the mentioned Grote Marktstraat, an Tryptich installation by the English about 500 m mall and cycle facilities , collective United Visual Artists, well- represents the perfect setting for one known for having created visual productions for bands such as U2 and

59 Massive Attack on tour. The the installations and performances are installation consisted of 3 columns of several. First of all Daan interactive led. Their intensity and Roosegaarde’s marvellous work Flow sound depended on people 5.0, an interactive installation very movements and their distance from concrete and very little digital for its the light array. As they stood in the aesthetic: a track through 2 barriers middle of the square Spuiplein, a full of fans set side-by-side. It is able simple degree of interactivity and to turn on when people pass and intervention in the city landscape was when they perceive every lowest reached, being at the same time fit to sound produced thanks to sensors set draw the normal relations among at the work basis. The final result is a people and the city environment. And visual and sensorial effect of certain always at the Spuiplein, during the 2 effectiveness. And yet: how could I days, other interventions on the not mention the surprising live of building surrounding the square took Claudia Marzendorfer and Nick place. They were bound both to Hummer with their Frozen Records? graphic designers shown at the Art Cool sounds and noises conveyed Gallery “Maxalot” in Barcelona and to through a physical work: they come Inocuo Design and Build‘s live directly from a sort of ice disks lasting performances. These latter were maximum10 minutes, sampled directly casted on the external walls through a range of electronic of the City Hall, a project of Richard instruments and spread with ethereal Meyer. charm in the wide space of the Atrium. Louder, more playful and amusing were the guys of the Kabk in The Hague , more precisely those attending the Interfaculty Image and Sound/ Art Science of the The Hague Royal Academy. This academy celebrates this year its 325th foundation anniversary with the students’ projects referring to movement.

. Yet, in the Atrium there were also other interesting live performances. Photo by: Marie-II They were exhibited by The Hague Inside the huge Atrium of the City Hall Tag Gallery and were part of the Information Aesthetics project. The

60 first one deserving our mention is for instance the reproduction of real surely Man in E.Space , a project of and concrete fluxes and phenomena, multimedia interactive dance shown using generative art and graphics. The by the Belgian Lab (au) in hosts of the panel were: Casey Reas, collaboration with the French group Marius Watz, Aaron Koblin, Karsten of dancers Res Publica. It dealed with Schmidt and others, taking over in a very refined and well dramatized their role of presenters of the performance representing the relation respective works. They explained the among body movements, neon lights work methodology and applications and videos projected on cloths hung of code in shapes and ways which in the middle of the stage. The 2nd have taken inspiration by graphic and one was then an outstanding live of project design. From this point of Kangding Ray. The architect and view, the festival offered very musician’s performance created a interesting works such as Alex very interesting sound pattern Dragulescu’s Spam Architecture composed of digital, electrical and printing, the installation of Reas at the analogue sounds. Tag headquarter, Aarn Koblin’s Flight Patterns visualised on the walls of the buildings surrounding the Grote Marktstraat.

Other installations were all around the city, especially inside the 3 main churches in The Hague , something just unimaginable fro Italians like me. The Lutherse Kerk was assigned to Robert Henke aka Monolake who presented 2 projects: Layering . Buddha (based on the sound produced by the notorious Buddha Photo by Marius Watz Machines) and Linear Grid (based on But Information Aesthetics didn’t end the possible ways of voicing the here. On the contrary, its most relations among people in the web appealing side and very close to the with the purpose to overrun any project title was the long conference physical space-time barriers); the organized in the FilmHuis halls. It was Nieuwe Kerk hosted a playful I focused on the visualization of nteractive Playground cured by the complex structures of digital data, as Dutch Villa Nuts foundation and at the end the Grote Kerk witnessed Daan

61 Roosegaarde’s 2nd scheduled work Europe . And it was even permitted to (called Dune 4.1 , it is a luminescent- smoke inside the church, can you stemmed flower-bed able to interact imagine that? (In Italy , as well as in with sound and traffic in order to France , Spain and other countries draw a fascinating track mid-way there’s the prohibition of smoking in between nature and technology) and public places) also the marvellous interactive work of the young Daan Brinkmann, 16 Other prominent performances were pillars , a design project composed of the audiovisual work Rhythm Exp by 16 sound and light linear structures Frank Bretschneider, played on moving at people passing by near minimal rhythmic glitch aesthetics. them). This feature, also present in all his previous works, made his label Raster-Noton (in partnership with Bender and Nicolai) famous . The Berliners Mikomikona and their performances are worth as well. They exhibited the proven audiovisual performance Fourier Tranzformation I + II. There sound and images are obtained by a fascinating game of electromagnetic fields induced by 2 overhead projectors and a sequence . of patterns drawn on transparencies mirrored by the same projectors. Photo by: Marie-II And at the end the club side couldn’t Indeed at the old church, the Grote miss in a respectful electronic art Kerk, each evening saw the most festival! Actually it was impossible to intense part of the festival: the very follow the whole program comprising beautiful live performances by Pierre several locations and clubs: the new Bastien and his fascinating Automatic church (!!!), the clubs Asta and Paard Orchestra, not to mention those of Van Troje, Korzo and the King Kong William Basinski and of Phil Niblock. Galerie. Techno, ragga and dubstep Appeal, research, original work on are the main music types. They sound: there are the projects of some occupy whole halls and programs as pioneers very different from each we would like at our latitudes. Noze, other, but perfectly at ease in the Boxcutter, Legowelt, Modeselektor, strict spaces of a church in Northern Ascii.disko, Spindokter Ries, Tommy

62 Sunshine these are some of the the organizers skills in keeping a prominent names in the program. common underlying theme and not to exceed in making the festival spectacular at any costs. Installations, urban interventions, workshop, round tables and live clubs were integrated in a weekend characterised by art and innovation. If I didn’t manage to see and tell you everything I apologise, better luck the next time .

.

Photo by: Marie-II www.todaysart.nl

During these 2 days I tried to see the http://flickr.com/search/?q=todaysar most I could remaining fascinated by t&l=cc&d=taken-20070920-

63 Ars Electronica 2007: Goodby Privacy?

Tiziana Gemin

actions. At the same time we awarely give up our privacy every time we surrender to Web 2.0 facilities, which, thanks to the development of special platforms, make us turn our private life into public.

The subject of this year’s Ars Electronica was a suggestion to think about the kind of culture which derives from such a phenomenon and As every September, the 2007 edition its consequences for social life. Its of Ars Electronica took punctually title, Goodbye privacy, was an place in Linz. Since 1979 the Austrian invitation to redefine the meaning of festival dedicated to digital art and private and public life and thus to new media has tried to draw the lines draw a new line which can clearly that link art, technology and society separate them from one another. together. The event has surely always been an appointment that cannot be The festival’s timetable has offered a missed as well as a firm reference wide choice of symposiums, point in international digital culture exhibitions, performances and scene. conferences. The change of location of some events, due to the sudden This year’s subject has given emphasis bad weather as well as to the to an aspect of contemporary life restructuring of some buildings which which directly involves any of us: the in the past editions had been used for loss of privacy. In everyday life we Ars Electronica’s performances, unawarely are deprived of our privacy, caused some moments of confusion. as security systems and mobile Linz is rearranging because in 2009 technology devices can watch and will be the European capital of record many of our actual and virtual culture.

64 its subject from a “physical” point of view, suggesting the mix between public and private in architectonic structures too; to do that urban spaces and festival spaces were blended together along the whole street of Marienstraße in the centre of Linz.

.

The Brucknerhaus, which in the past editions had played a pivotal role for the festival, no longer was the main meeting point and the location for symposiums bacause of its rearrangement; only the Gala and the concert evening took place there.

. This edition’s curators of the conferences, namely Armin Medosh e Marienstraße is a narrow street for da Ina Zwerger , were forced to be pedestrians only, bordered by shops happy with a Kunstuniversität ‘s hall, which are mostly empty; the street is whose capacity was limited and seldom busy and that is why it evokes whose structure prevented those who a “virtual city” atmosphere. For the were sitting behind the first rows to whole duration of Ars Electronica that see the big screens. Though not neglected street became the point of comfortable, the symposiums were reference for the festival’s audience. It interesting. Many orators were invited was called Second City , turning into to talk about privacy: jurists talked one of the many streets which belong about the fundamental rights in the to the virtual map of Second Life , world of communication while with the project by the German Aram activists considered how the Internet Bartholl . According to Bartholl’s could have been exploited by scenographic project, some objects multinationals as a control means to taken from Second Life metaverse support their interests. were reproduced and put into the real street. There were the classic wooden Moreover, Ars Electronica approached cubes, which are the basic solids for

65 the construction of 3D objects; challenging. The event could have pseudo-trees made of bidimensional been followed online on Second Life, polygons with a photographic texture o at Ars Electronica on a big screen, stuck on them; shopping windows with the artists in the flesh controlling covered with panels similar to those their avatars from their computers. hanging from virtual shops to describe the products on sale. The whole operation was interesting and dangerously played on the border between criticism and celebration of the famous virtual world by Linden Lab.

As far as Marienstraße’s empty shops were concerned, they had been turned into exhibition areas for installations and videos, as well as for . round tables and performances, or Also in Marienstraße Silver and Hanne workshop spaces planned by Bartholl Rivrud presented their project and dealing with the creation of Intrigue_E , which is a sort of objects coming from Second Life’s performance/game focusing on social metaverse in the actual world. interaction. According to the project Among the programmed “human avatars”, that is to say people performances at Second City, that by whose actions are controlled by Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a someone else, are placed in a public 0100101110101101.ORG), entitled context. Using the keys of a Synthetic Performances was much customized mobile the user gives followed .In an exhibition area within commands to the avatar who, unseen Second Life the two artists in the crowd, gets the commands reinterpreted three famous through earphones and acts performances, namely Shoot by Chris accordingly. The users can thus enjoy Burden, Seedbed by Vito Acconci, and themselves by making the avatar Tapp und Tastkino by Valie Export interact with unaware people, through their avatars. The exhibition sometimes making it behave oddly in was ironic and paradoxical and that context in order to see the recreated three extremely physical reactions – which could be amused or performances in the virtual; that could annoyed – of those dealing with the have seemed simple but was actually human avatar. Intrigue_E is an

66 interesting project because it is able “replies” by switching on or off the to cause unpredictable behaviours. lamps inside the rooms.

Not far from the surreal atmosphere of Second City, at the OK Kulturhaus, one of the usual locations for the festival, the works involved in the Prix Ars Electronica contest were exhibited. The prize is divided into six different categories for any of which Golden Nica, two Awards of Distinction and various Honorary Mentions are given. .

Among the exhibitions, Park View SymbioticA is the project which won Hotel by the Indian Ashok Sukumaran the Hybrid Art category , and it is an , won the Golden Nica in the artistic lab dealing with biological Interactive Art section . It is an research within the Western Australia installation which, using University Biological Science programmable technologies for Department. At the OK Centrum some objects and military devices, starts a of the works of the resident artists sort of dialogue between two who use laboratory tools for their buildings thus making the audience research were shown. think about the relationship between public and private space. Originally One of the projects which were the project conerned the interaction shown was The Slow Death of a between those who pass by César Semi-Living Worry Doll G , by Oron Chavez Plaza in San Jose (California) Catts e Ionat Zurr . The installation, or and the adjacent hotel; in Linz, for Ars maybe it would be better to say the Electronica, the installation was performance, is a semi-living little doll adapted to the location. Inside the OK made of synthetic fabrics and Centrum a telescope points towards polymers placed inside a bioreactor. the opposite building where there are As time passes, the living cells which the offices of an agency. Looking constitute the toy grow and through a sight the user can choose a deteriorate and Doll G approaches a window to aim and to send a laser ray slow but inevitable death. The work of by pushing a button. The signal is art is a reinterpretation of a past work received by the chosen office which shown at Ars Electronica in 2000,

67 when 7 sculptures were created using . synthetic fabrics. The artists were inspired by the Guatemalan little dolls During these years Delvoye has kept legend according to which we can tell on developing his project to improve our worries to them before going to it, trying to make its output more and sleep, hoping the worries will more similar to real feces the. So far disappear. Seven years later the two seven different versions of this artists have “revived” Doll G and then ‘generative artwork’ have been sacrificed her to express their regret created, reminding Piero Manzoni’s about the most difficult moment in work. exhibiting a piece of semi-living art, At the OK Centrum you could also that is to say its death. listen to some musical performances Among the various projects there is which were part of the Reverse- Personal cloaca by Wim Delvoye , the Simulation Music project by Masahiro last of a series of installations which Miwa , who won the Golden Nica in the artist created during ten years. All Digital Music category. The work is a these works are entitled ‘Cloaca’ and system able to create compositions they are pieces of hybrid art through algorithms generated by a consisting of devices able to computer and then played by human reproduce human digestive system musicians. In that way the usual with the only aim of generating fecal relationship between machine and waste. The version shown in Linz this performer is reversed: with his work year is a washing machine containing Miwa makes it happen naturally, a biochemical combination together events based on condition systems with the bacterial flora necessary to and processes generated within the reproduce the various stages of virtual world of the computer. digestion. Using that method Miwa had the compositions created by his system played by orchestras, single performers, choruses and traditional Japanese instrument players. Miwa performed at the Brucknerhaus with the orchestra during the evening that Ars Electronica dedicated to concerts with the title Perfect Strangers.

68 projects both from the United States and from Europe were there and they somehow had something in common. One of the most interesting sections of the exhibition was called Sacral Design, where the artists – coming from the University of the Arts in Berlin – reinterpreted some sacral objects according to the modern style. For example the Ticker Cross by . Markus Kison , a crucifix where the cartouche with the acronym INRI has During Perfect Strangers evening been replaced by a led screen on what really struck me was the ending which the prices of Vatican shares event called Void , by the Austrian scroll. group Fuckhead . The four performers’ exhibition was polymorphic; it evoked both orgiastic and mystic atmospheres characterized by strobe lights and dazzling digital images and musical choices ranging from hardcore sounds to sacred music. It was a total, disquieting, but sometimes ironic performance; a ritual on the border between the dionysiac and the apollinarian world. The Fuckhead say their performances . work on the subconscious; maybe, with their “technological tribalism” I would like to add that it was with they really do that. pleasure that I saw an Italian name among Ars Electronica Honorary Mentions, within the category of Among the side events, the usual Digital Communities: the project is Campus exhibition took place at the called AHA (Activism-Hackin- Kunstuniversität. While in the past -Artivism), di Tatiana Bazzichelli. Since editions the exhibitions had usually 2001 AHA has linked Italian and shown the artistic projects of a foreign projects together mostly particular school or university in the dealing with arts and activism through world, this year many research new independent media. Their work

69 offers a platform to create and Ars Electronica edition, especially promote events through the from the networking point of view. exchange of projects and ideas.

Tatiana’s Honorary Mention surely was the icing on the cake of an interesting www.aec.at/de/index.asp

70 Dias E Riedweg: Politics And Poetics

Isabella Depanis

and can be perceived by a bigger public.

For example their first work: Devotionalia (1994). It is a project realized inside the Rio de Janeiro favelas, where Brazilians social non- governor organizations and associations have been drawn in. For almost three years their mobile atelier traveled around the streets, collecting Dias and Riedweg‘s works (Brazilian the ex vote of children and teens who and Switzerland artists) are an lived there. The result is all the “experience”. They absorb spectators modeling of hands and foots of more inside lives of people they’ve worked than 600 guys, accompanied by the with. It’s a political and sensorial work. video where everyone made their They make people feel emotions. vote. When the installation has been They make people participate. exposed, the public was half from the favelas and it was their first time ever And this is their strong point. This with video-art and art in general. way, their works put together different social realities, of those who lives unsafe situations at the margins of the society, and of those who are perfectly integrated with the capitalistic system. They want to make this two worlds communicate, so that one enter the other to create a brake-through in the system. That’s the reason why Dias and Riedweg doesn’t direct only to the artistic public, rather try to penetrate society . with their message as much as they can, so that it can have a huge echo In 2003 the artists took back that

71 work, searching for all the guys they temporarily put in a centre in Adliswil , interviewed. Lots of them where Switzerland . They had histories of the dead, so they collected the witnesses entire families told, their first of why, how and what happened. impressions about Switzerland , what They realized an editing alternating they felt, their sensations. Next, all those witnesses with the articles those recorded voices have been written on journals about the same transmitted in some public places of histories. Those who lived the facts on the city. The installations made the their own skin amplified the coldness voices coming out from tubes used of medias. Communication got more for heating. The tubes were the and more intense and penetrating. installation, the work, but also the media that transmitted the message. The artists wanted to act a sort of They connected two distant worlds, “intensive communication” even in the inhabitants of the city and the “Inside and outside the tube” (1998). refugees, homeless and without They collected the stories of some rights. refugees waiting for political asylum,

72 participants passed the cameras from hand to hand while dancing. It was like a rite of the 21 st century where the anthropophagus are the inhabitants of the favelas and technology is cannibalized, becoming an instrument of diffusion of their singing.

.

In their last work “Funk Staden”, presented this year at Documenta, they’ve been inspired by Hans Staden’s illustrations, born in Kassel in the 16 th century. Staden, during a trip in Brazil has been captured and was going to be eaten, but was then liberated as he wasn’t enough . courageous to be “incorporated”. They didn’t want to ingest his diversity. A Dias and Riedweg works, conjugating perfect metaphor for the artists’ work. the political and emotional aspects, try to destroy the barrier between the Dias and Riedweg reinterpreted opposite societies, that hardly Staden tables, environing the action communicate in a sincere manner to inside the Rio ‘s favelas. On three each other. They knock down screens there were projected the stereotypes and commonplaces, to images recorded by three cameras show vibrating and sensitive matter installed on wood poles (a citation of we’re all composed of. the instrument used by cannibals to kill the designed victim). On a rooftop where people were having a party, the www.gfilomenasoares.com/

73 Death 24x, Death And Feticism Of Image

Motor

Obviously it’s not enough to state some basic declarations, but we rather go beyond the boundaries. How? The same questions are typical of some expression areas similar to the new media (often overplaced), such as the post-dramatic theatre or the cinema. Here the changed conception of the world and the hybridization with technology altered shapes, contents and fruition. The The link of all the thoughts I would intentions of those few lines are to like to give to you is related to the fact enlarge the already shown reflections that the deconstruction of new media, of the same areas of digital art and the non-linearity of digital arts simply expressions. are coherent with a perception/concept of our contemporary reality. So, if we want The book Death 24x a Second by to make an artistic research, if we Laura Mulvey faces the theme of the want to make some experimentation, mutated relation between spectator we must go further, we must think at and cinema thanks to the new them as fixed point, even if not technologies. Simplifying the whole sufficient. We must think at them as (even if I suggest searching the generative art concepts, as art as sources), Mulvey observes that DVD deconstruction, art as remix of the allows to stop the visual flux of the post-modern. A work that is cinematographic narration and she interactive to a presence or that observes how life in movies is answers to the criteria of post composed by still frames. This has modernity is not enough to achieve an always been the paradox of cinema, artistic value. but nowadays the spectator can easily watch the single photogram.

74 away from a preoccupation with the erotic, as the propelling force of narrative, towards death.

Let’s enlarge our first reflection to the new media point of view (no matter if CD, web-sites, installations, etc ). There’s no conceptual difference between a DVD and a CD. Both of them are multimedia disposals, even

. if with different complexity degrees. They have menus and navigation The individual frame, the projected commands. They substantially allows film’s best-kept secret, can now be a non-linear access to the contents, revealed, by anyone, at the simple images (no matter if moving or static) touch of a button. Easy access to and sounds (who’d like to deepen the repetition, slow motion and the argument could study the complexity freeze-frame may well shift the of applications such as DVD studio spectator’s pleasure to a fetishistic PRO, developing environments that rather than a voyeuristic investment in use flux diagrams, events and code for the cinematic object. the DVD authoring).

This observation reveals a tension of the cinema towards death (and that’s why the title): Yet, there is another, narrative aspect to the stillness/movement tension that is not specific to the cinema but has been reworked and reinvented within the constraints of mass entertainment story-telling. Mulvey detects, at the present moment, an attraction to endings, and with the threat of . ‘ending’ hanging over the cinema itself, there is an extra awareness of With the DVD we can stop the images the deathlike properties of narrative flux and stare at the single frame with closure. Inevitably, such a conjunction a fetishist look. We can backward and shifts the attention of the see every single scene again and psychoanalytically influenced critic again. The look is therefore erotic and

75 no more dramatic. (At the same time, image is balanced by the overcome please don’t forget the paradox inside stasis, by the return to the order. If we the digital technology itself: the DVD though take away from time its doesn’t show the original photogram inevitable evolving value, so its of the original film, but its beginning and its end are no more CAMPIONAMENTO as compressed unavoidable points, even if key frame or its interpolation toward symbolically, we deny the death itself. the last key frame ). Movie is seen as a videoclip and can be seen as we like (and often used in a The cinematographic narration (the vj-set). dramatic narration) starts from a static situation, creates a narrative accident Denying the (dramatic?) that will be solved going back to temporal/linear evolution is common stasis, often represented by the in many installations, place where the explicit death of one of the public enter and somehow interact protagonist, or at last going back to a with contents and processes. Cinema situation coherent to the entropic itself, inside installations, turn into a principal (the TERMICA death). In space to explore, as in “24 hours some way, the erotic level of the psycho” by Douglas Gordon.

76 a linear concept of the history).

In a shoot’em-up videogame we can stop our match, so we’ll have different developing (players usually save the game before a particularly difficult passage, but this means narration can proceed differently). In this type of game, it is symptomatic the concept that the player dies and resurges a

. potentially infinite number of times.

The multi-channel multimedia DVD is So through the contemporary perfect for the pornographic vision technologies the spectator-player that builds on repetitions and often denies one of the basic variation of the theme its narrative authority of the movie director, that is scheme. Infinite repetition is a magic making something happen. The against the concept of inevitable end mediatic material is therefore a plastic (at least for the occidentals, that have material, on which we can intervene.

77 We Are The…strange Media For Strange People

Monica Ponzini

obviously on the Internet that, on the contrary, the extremely original work became widely known, thanks to the word passed by all the “strange people” who admired its completely different visual approach.

The work has been created by a very young artist with no technical or theoretic background, no art or Stop motion, 3D, videogames, animes, cinema education, no support of a 8-bit culture. With the Internet as real production, as one can expect by distribution platform. The final a 90 minute film. We Are The Strange product is We Are The Strange , an is rather the result of present times, elusive and indefinite 90 minute film, created from a spontaneous and where the author, M dot Strange , intuitive mix&paste of a son of the gathered everything that appeals to Internet and videogames who was him visually, all his universe of images born and raised with softwares and and styles. codes hidden in a drawer, daily nurtured by a visual aesthetics made What characterizes this new way of of different messages and languages. narrating through images – that the A revolutionary work, from several author himself called ” Str8nime “, are points of view, though almost ignored the characters created with different by mass media and traditional culture: media, short dialogues and a plot that a work really in the middle between can be hardly recounted. Shot with a media and aesthetics, created by a very low budget and a basic non-artist in the traditional sense of equipment, M dot Strange’s film was the term, who nevertheless was able presented at Sundance Festival , to create a shortcircuit among the where “classic” filmmakers did not ganglion cells of contemporary art show particular enthusiasm. It was and communication.

78 Quay and Jan Svankmajer, I got into Japanese animation. I spent a lot of time in Japan , it’s a very interesting culture for me. I liked all these different things and I wanted to put them all together. Pretty much We Are The Strange is a very simple story, but behind it all it’s about being an outcast and not having your ideas and your goals really jelling with the world . around you. Even in the way I made them, the characters are different Without a real linear plot, a structure type of media from the environment so appreciated by much experimental and within each other. I liked all these cinema as well as by present different media types and I thought electronic cinema, structured as that they could work together, so it videogame levels, according to the was a challenge to have them all often theorized and failed mixed together and not have your machinima’s schemes, We Are The brain explode while you’re watching Strange is that and much more than them. And I thought the best way to that, as M dot Strange himself tells us. do that was to make it on my own Monica Ponzini: What inspired you? Monica Ponzini: The fact that you’ve Where do these characters and their done your movie all by yourself it’s world come from? In this movie you remarkable. You don’t have a formal can find lots of references . training as a video-maker, and that’s M dot Strange: The title We Are The already unique. Also, when you think Strange comes from a song that I about a video production, you think made 4 or 5 years ago. My all life I felt about a team. Why did you make this like I was an outcast, like I wanted to choice? do things that were different, and I M dot Strange: I’ve never taken a film always felt like I was a “strange” class, never taken an art class, I got person. Then I thought “how cool my degree in Kinesiology, I just used would it be if a I made a song that the Internet and read books. If you reached out to all the strange people have a desire, if you have the passion, in the world”. And I’ve always been a today you can make it happen. fan of old video games – I got stuck in Everything you want to learn about, 1986- and then I got into the Brothers you can find it on the Internet, and a

79 lot of the people I’m in contact with on YouTube are people who want to . do the same thing – they’re 14-15-year Monica Ponzini: Where did you get old kids who wan to be animators and the funding for your movie? are utilizing what I’m telling them, like Wikipedia-. In films schools turn out M dot Strange: I funded it myself. My these filmmakers and these people, whole film –over three years- cost just they’re patterns, because they’re around 20,000 dollars. I worked as a taught. I didn’t even go to school designer and as an animator, I lived either, I dropped out and taught cheap, I worked cheap. Since I do myself. I want to see stuff that doesn’t everything, there was no one to pay fit the mold, I want to see new things so all there really was, was buying that surprise me and the only way to computers and the equipment. do it is that people go and cleave their own space. When I look back I’m glad Monica Ponzini: And I read that even I did what I did, because now I when your computer broke, you created this extremely unique thing found a way to utilize it and that’s the only way it could have been done. I started out with a couple M dot Strange: Yeah, my laptop got of people, but anybody who wants to smashed, but I didn’t let it stop me. At be a director is a control freak I first I was desperate, because I was decided to do it myself. Also, when it using it for the animations, but then I comes to work, I’m really a masochist, started looking at the smashed liquid I like the struggle. By doing the work I crystal display and it looked like a sky, do all by myself, I’m totally consumed so I took photos of it and scanned it in by it, I have the ” thousand-yard and it became the sky at the end of stare”, and I like being able to say I the movie. made a 90-minute movie all by Monica Ponzini: You’re going to put myself. I guess it’s my competitive online your movie at the end of nature. October. You will distribute your movie (if we can still use this term) in a very unusual way. Why did you decide to do so?

M dot Strange: I got offers for theatrical distribution from big film companies, but I think you have to put the whole movie online for free. I’m

80 more an artist than a business person, influence on the people around them. and my main thing was getting My online viewers are like my people to see it, even if they can’t publicists, they got me television afford it. And also now I have the film interviews, they’ve done all this stuff subtitled in 17 languages: my audience for me, I’d be happy to make films for on YouTube did it. If a distributor this group or people forever, they’re bought it, he would have put it out in really sincere and they’re really North America in English, but I don’t unique, and they feel out of place in want to do that, I want to make it their environment, we have this kind available – there’s strange people all of bond. Even if it seems very strange over the world, I want to be able to – this guy in his bedroom with his find them. computers making this film- I can guarantee you that because of what I did, there’s a lot of people all over the world, probably in their bedrooms, that are cooking up films and different things right now that we’ll see in the next couple of years. And that’s the reason why I did it, and I’m inspired by those kind of stories.

Monica Ponzini: Your movie goes against a lot of traditional models, not . only for the distribution, but also for the plot. More than a plot, it seemed Monica Ponzini: What do you think like a video game, going through about your audience? How would you levels. Is that the way you conceived define them? it? M dot Strange: I think they’re a very a M dot Strange: Yes, originally, I was loud minority: they make themselves even gonna have the stage name on known, they like to do things off. But I the screen, to show you the different think there’s a lot more people out level. I was experimenting, and this there that are tired of seeing the same was the start of it. My next film is not things, but they haven’t made the gonna be a film. I don’t really like the jump to say “I like this strange thing.” restrictions that are put on it. I’m I’m putting it out there and the ones taking narrative elements from films, that are with me now are the loud from Kabuki and from opera and I’m minority, but they have a strong putting them into a new thing. We Are

81 The Strange was the first, that’s as have these “realistic” films and then close as I could have gotten to a you have David Lynch’s films –that’s traditional film, as far as the way the more like real life- but most people, story is told. After Sundance I was just because they’re used to the genre thinking “OK, I’m gonna make myself convention, they don’t get it. There’s a more normal, conformed “, but after million different possibilities, but reading a bunch of stuff and talking to they’ll never be explored if everyone people, I decided to go even farther keeps doing the same thing, and out. So, yes We Are The Strange is working within the same boundaries. very much influenced by videogames For me is more exciting to make storytelling, I actually wrote and essay something that’s intangible: visually I on how think videogames do a better se scenes and colors, and I hear the job with the traditional narratives music, than I have a base now, than Hollywood movies do. understanding of the characters and Everyone communicates in a different the story, and I believe that you way: I probably play more games and should just be free to do that. There’s watch more animation than normal always something beneath it and I films. But we shouldn’t be afraid to think that if you do it right, it will still create new things. come to the audience.

Monica Ponzini: For your next project, are you thinking about moving out of the screen, out of the Internet and work with installations as well?

M dot Strange: It’ll still be on video, but my next I’m doing it in stereoscopic 3D, but just as far as the story is told and what you see, it’ll be something totally different. I’m open

. to do a lot of things, there’s only so much time. And that’s why I do want Monica Ponzini: Do you think that, to do this new path: the old path aesthetically, we’re moving toward takes so much time. If tomorrow I new kind of narratives? company wants to give me 20 million dollars to make a Ninja movie – which M dot Strange: There’s a million is not too far from the truth- it would different ways: how do our minds take me a lot of time. Being creative work, how does the world work? You it’s about that spark and going, not

82 having that spark and sitting around, Monica Ponzini: Are you interested in having everyone look at it and interactivity? approve it and then going. M dot Strange: There are separate works that I have done in the past that aren’t online any more – spin-offs of my characters-. But that’s what you can do now: you can just directly connect your creative mind to the Internet and send all these things out in all these kind of media type.

. http://www.wearethestrange.com/

http://www.wearethestrange.com/

83 Link index

The Truth-cinema Of Pierre Bastien http://www.pierrebastien.com http://www.rephlex.com/

Atom: Floating Audiovisual Design http://www.whitevoid.com http://monolake.de/installations/atom.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxflux http://www.whitevoid.com/ http://www.tesla-berlin.de/

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Relational Architecture http://www.lozano-hemmer.com

Ankersmit, Side By Side Sustainable Non-property, The Answer By Estudio Livre http://estudiolivre.org/ http://www.taina.org.br http://estudiolivre.org/el-gallery_home.php http://estudiolivre.org/tiki-index.php?page=Oficinas+Locais&bl

Hackmeeting 2007: Ten Years Nerdcore http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/142/1/ http://www.hackmeeting.org

The Knowledge Of A Fragile Future http://www.helga-nowotny.at/

84 http://www.helga-nowotny.at/

Scali & Goode: Nan°art http://www.nanoarte.it/

Creativity To The Cube http://www.qoob.tv

Todaysart 2007, The Hague International Art http://www.todaysart.nl http://flickr.com/search/?q=todaysart&l=cc&d=taken-20070920-

Ars Electronica 2007: Goodby Privacy? http://www.aec.at/de/index.asp%20

Dias E Riedweg: Politics And Poetics http://www.gfilomenasoares.com/%20

Death 24x, Death And Feticism Of Image We Are The…strange Media For Strange People http://www.wearethestrange.com/ http://www.wearethestrange.com/

85