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)

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E-publishing development: Loretta Borrelli

Cover design: Eva Scaini

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

Giulia Simi Cristophe Bruno: From Dada To Google ...... 3

Loretta Borrelli Art And Everyday Life In The After Future ...... 8

Barbara Sansone The Influencers 2009: Analog Guerrillas ...... 18

Teresa De Feo Generative Modules By Guido Smider ...... 24

Francesco Bertocco Philippe Parreno: No Ghost Just A Shell ...... 29

Matteo Milani Brian Eno: Synthesist ...... 34

Lucrezia Cippitelli Dick Raaijmakers: A Monography ...... 40

Donata Marletta Jan Rohlf: Musical(mind) ...... 46

Marco Mancuso Elektra 2009: 10 Pioneering Years ...... 51

Gigi Ghezzi The Future Of Scientific News ...... 54

Marco Mancuso Expanded Art, Expanded Box ...... 59 Cristophe Bruno: From Dada To Google

Giulia Simi

was censored by Google – he will explain why in this interview – and his advertisements remained online only for 24 hours. Nonetheless, 12.000 visitors saw them. Words are cloned, emptied, monetized. Words are controlled, induced, counterfeited. Welcome to “semantic capitalism”, last step of a society which seems to vampirize all of our thoughts, dreams,

Christophe Bruno – whom I desires. previously interviewed in Digimag 25 “Dadameter” is the title of his last (http://www.digicult.it/digimag/artic great project, currently exposed in the le.asp?id=836), is one of most known virtual space of Jeu de Paume gallery net.artists worldwide. Lucid, ironic, in Paris desecrating, he has faced since a long ((http://www.jeudepaume.org/?page time issues related to language =article&sousmenu=107&idArt=788&lie commodification and control by late- u=9). It is a satyrical display of the capitalism, from “Society of the “decay of the aura of language” – as Spectacle” to “The Age of Access”. the subtitle recites, with a clear For the “Google Adwords Happening” , tribute to Walter Benjamin – online performance consisting in a elaborating a cartography of words poetry advertising campaign through stored in the Internet to measure our the renowned adwords system, he distance from Dada. It was indeed won a honorable mention at the 2003 Raymond Roussel , eccentric writer Ars Electronica. The project, whose much loved by dadaists and subtitle was “How to lose money with surrealists, who inspired Bruno. His your art” , tried to subvert the crux of theatrical works, entirely based on contemporary art, increasingly combinatory word games which market-oriented in the controversial reveal the ambiguous, evocative and “age of mechanical reproduction” playful side of language, seem to currently in its advanced stage. He precede somehow the mechanization

3 of language that would have acquired poetry remains in the pay-per-click different meanings after a century: language of our times? How much “from Dada to Google”. time do we have before being definitely swallowed up by the universal boredom that leaves no room for irony? We talked directly with Christophe Bruno about “Dadameter” and its conceptual and political aspects.

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This project stems from a six-years process and it required the elaboration of a complex software, realized by the mathematician and programmer Valeriu Lacatusu , . Bruno’s co-worker also for Logo.Hallucination. The engine scans Giulia Simi: Can you tell us how the entire database of Internet Dadameter was born? What was the language – only in English – and starting idea? analyzes it in terms of homophony, equivocation and semantic Christophe Bruno: The idea of the relatedness (this is also called Google project goes back in 2002 after I did a Similarity, because it measures how performance called the “Google many times a couple of words appear Adwords Happening” where I realized in the same webpages in Google that our ultimate atoms, words, had searches). become a commodity: any words of any language has a price fluctuating The result is a Dadamap that on the global market of “semantic visualizes and interpretes our capitalism”. It became clear to me language from a satyrical standpoint, that the economic dynamic of such trying to measure our distance from global corporate structures was to Dada. In other words: how much build cartographies of thought in energy, evocation, ambiguousness, order to be able to predict our

4 behaviour as consumers and optimize the Adwords system. .

I decided to try to see if it was Giulia Simi: As you well explain in possible for me to build such your video interview for Jeu de cartographies but that time it was too Paume gallery, the mechanisation of difficult an enterprise because it language (crucial concept in many of involved quite complex mathematical your works) has passed from a literary and computing tools. Later I met a production – in Dada – to monetary mathematician and programmer, one – in Google. What do you think Valeriu Lacatusu, thanks to whom the about the future of speech? project became feasible. Christophe Bruno: The “Dadameter” is But it’s only in 2006 that I had the idea subtitled “global index of the decay of of linking the concept to the birth of the aura of language” and indeed my Dada, through the key character of feeling is that there has been a Raymond Roussel. The mechanisation paradigm shift in late capitalism in of literary production developed by relation to the question of speech. Roussel in the fields of homophony The general picture seems to me as and equivocation, was echoing the follows: in the sixties there has been a enterprise of “taylorization of shift from the object to relations and discourse” that Google had started in flux, accordingly to the concept of the field of meaning. “transfiguration of the commonplace” as well as to the transition towards started to ask myself crazy questions the “age of access”. Language, as it is such as what is the density of dadaism stored on the web, is nothing but the in language? The size of the region of coding of all existing human relations language where homophony and and this panoptic structure has equivocation are important, would in become part of a dispositive of global a way provide a measurement of our surveillance and post-control. This distance from Dada. That was the decay of the aura of language, or starting point of the project. zombification of speech, may also be seen as a decay of the aura of the relational, and there is a paradoxical interplay between this “global text” and the performative aspect of speech. The future of speech has to be understood in this context of a global articulation between spectacle

5 and post-control, between an burst of the Internet bubble, before absolute fetichisation of the relational, the advent of Google. Google was one that counter-balance the decay of its of the most important actors in the aura. transition from web 1 to web 2 and what Google achieved is not the he paradoxical fact that I was death of the web utopia. Instead they censored in the “Google Adwords were born in the context of this utopia Happening”, not because my speech and tried to revive it ; because they was too meaningfull and outrageous, used and perverted this very utopia in but because I had nothing to say (the order to reach the ultimate stage of clickthrough rate of my Adwords commodification. Indeed the ecology poetry was too low and therefore of free speech promoted by Google is imperilled the market of language) is nothing but the core of their also worth to be noted here. economic dynamics.

Giulia Simi: This project has required a long and complex elaborating process. At the end, thanks also to the mathematician Valeriu Lacatusu, Dadameter’s engine is an interesting tool scanning the huge database of language on the net. Have you ever thought to use it for other purposes – sociological/political for instance?

. Christophe Bruno: Yes, and I’ve been contacted by companies working in Giulia Simi: Google is often directly or these fields. But the main purpose of inderectly present on your works, like the Dadameter was satirical. So I don’t in many net.artists’ projects. Maybe know what is going to happen in this we can state that nowadays Google is schizophrenic context. almost a synonym of web. But did Google kill the web utopia? What the web would be without Google?

Christophe Bruno: The web utopia was killed quite soon, a bit before the www.iterature.com/dadameter/

6 7 Art And Everyday Life In The After Future

Loretta Borrelli

The manifesto had already been released online in the days before the two events. An operation of ironic rewriting of the founding text of an avant-garde that doesn’t propose itself, naturally, like being at the base of a new avant-garde adventure, but that on the contrary tries to resolve an important artistic experience of the 1900s in a flippant way, in few words making fun of itself. This rewriting On February 19th at the Accademia di respects the rhetorical hindrance of Belle Arti of Carrara , Franco Berardi the original text trying to maintain its (Bifo) presented the “manifest of the rhythm and sound: evidently, after-futurism”. Domenico Quaranta, however, the aggressiveness and the Tommaso Tozzi, Pier Luigi Cappucci, machismo of the futurist manifesto Matteo Chini e Giacomo Verde are not there, not only through the participated to the conference. introduction of new subjects, but also For this occasion, Massimo Cittadini through a completely different idea of organized inside the Academy an the modern everyday life. exposition where installations and This new manifesto becomes a videos realized by the students of the pretext to start a debate on wider and Academy were shown. The day after, more actual themes. The importance exactly one century after the of these matters and the irony of the publication of the futurist manifesto, operation, make the idea of being the text has been presented by the after-futurists just for a few hours – same author in Rome , inside the Luigi while continuing to pondering on Pintor hall of the site in Carta. The what is the future at the times of the other chairmen of the lecture were Wave – reasonable and also amusing. Renato Piccolini, Gianluca Peciola e Pierluigi Sullo.

8 seemed to be the first self-aware avant-garde, but also an avant-garde that emphasized the relationship between artistic production and the productive, economic and social dimension. Add to this that, understandably, the celebrations of the futurism call the attention of the cultural class that today is at the power. Just look at how the council to . Alemanno (Major of Rome, ndt) and the councilor of the culture Loretta Borrelli: During the committee in Rome , Umberto Croppi, celebrations of the centennial of the predictably took this chance. futurist manifesto, the manifesto of the after-futurism proposes a critical First of all I thought it essential to analysis of this avant-garde, in spite of remember that futurism is not only the majority of the initiatives on the fascism, futurism is “also” fascism. It same theme. Nevertheless, the would be stupid to deny a continuity operation has aroused more than few between the Italian futurist suspects, especially in those who deal movement and the fascist political with art and communication. That’s result. Nevertheless futurism is more the reason for my first question: why than that, in Italy , and above all, choose to rewrite the futurist internationally. One hundred years manifesto to talk about issues so later, we must perceive something distant from that avant-garde? more of the futurist experience than its continuity with the fascism. The Bifo: In this manifesto, the point of central theme of the future is what it interest is not the futurism as an makes the futurism still actual. Let’s artistic movement. Future is the take this chance not to celebrate an theme that it is worth to emphasize. avant-garde one hundred years old, We have to exploit the fact that by but to measure the distance with chance we can call the attention of what has happened. Is the future still the press, of those interested in arts what it was? And here comes the and of those interested in question the manifesto tries to communication. I have always been answer. interested in Futurism. It not only

9 technologies and by the psycho- pharmacology. We talk about accelerated time as internal time, as biopolitic time, more simply external time. In the manifesto there is an objective verification that the world and the machine have changed in these one hundred years; we should be able to apply to this intention a political, but also poetic and linguistic . elaboration.

Loretta Borrelli: Time, in fact, seems Both the Russian and the Italian to be the main subject of this futurism, have understandably exalted manifesto. But it deals with cyber the speed to insist on the necessity to time, that is a time that belongs to the adjust the body and the human mind production processes of the semio- to the speed of the external machine. capital. In the manifesto this seems to Today we have exactly the opposite be acquired, a new objective problem. We must agree that the condition where to start with new external machine is not up to the processes. challenge of the potentialities of the biopolitics human. We must separate Bifo: We must analyze things from the the biopolitic power from the point of view of the biopolitic contemporary collective knowledge, transformation that the capitalism has from the paralysis of capitalism, from been through within this century. The the weight of the exterior machine time in the futurism is essentially that and from the slowness of uniform of the external objective mechanism, time that forces us to be in a factory of the automobile, of the production when the clock strikes 8:00 am. There line, of the lathe, of all these objects is no need anymore of uniforming that accelerate the outward times, there is no need anymore of an appearance of the human time. Today exterior machine. We need a final we live in a completely different liberation from the productive and dimension, the machine is not the sensible potentialities of the human automobile or the train or the airplane body and mind, that goes beyond the anymore. The machine is the “machine” dimension of the futurist biopolitic, nanotecnologic one. We thought. In this sense, it is no more face an internal acceleration that is about time, it is about singular made possible by the communication temporality. Delaunay said that the

10 Italian futurism was able to interpret get independent. In this, we can get the implicit technological novelties in help from the whole work of Foucault the cinema: there was some kind of concerning the creation of an bergsonanian benediction at the interdependence between the body- beginning of the Italian futurism, of mind and the institutions of the which the futurists themselves were uniform time, concretely jails, schools, very aware. mental hospitals , factories, etc. Futurism takes into consideration the If we read Bergson today, like Deleuze integration between uniform time and reread him, we realize that he is not body-mind collective. Then the 1900s talking about objective time, but have brought us off the track. essentially about the singular Nowadays, depending from a uniform temporality. Therefore we can time means to surrender to recuperate the futurist dimension impotence, to paralysis. The proof of releasing it from its “pastism”. The this all, is in the automobile. To a pastism resides in the idea of speed, superficial observation, it can appear of the automobile, of the train. All as a symbol of the industrial kinds of scrap metal to leave in the mobilization of the body, as the object 1900s. that makes possible speed itself; in nowadays reality instead, the automobile is the evident proof of slowness, paralysis, neurosis, of the industrial past. Singular temporalities must respect their own rhythm, be it fast or slow. It is not our duty to establish an average social time: the singular time doesn’t depend anymore, in fact, from a social norm.

Within the industrial system, that . dependence was inevitable, but in the Loretta Borrelli: The futurist net world, in the world of the absolute manifesto proposed an attitude, a acceleration made possible by new way of living where the concept of technologies, this relationship is not speed had a central role. Which necessary anymore. In 1980, Alvin attitude proposes this manifesto Toffler described in “La terza ondata” instead, what is its invitation? the beginning of the process of desyncronization. With assembly Bifo: It is an invitation to get free, to lines, bodies are synchronized to the

11 rhythm machines impose, but when the production depends on automatic . machines and the human job is simply Loretta Borrelli: Talking about poetry, one of creative intervention and the manifesto reads: “There is no planning, then it is not necessary other beauty than autonomy. No work anymore to synchronize to machines, can be a masterpiece if it doesn’t and the human brain can regain the express the intelligence of the free temporality that is his own. We possible. Poetry is a bridge thrown could translate this in very pragmatic over the abyss of nothingness to political terms: we are used to create sharing among different thinking that it is necessary to depend imaginations, and to free on the cycle of social production. This singularities”. You used the definition is not true anymore; each and every that Deleuze uses when speaking of one of us must be aware of the fact friendship: what value does this that the utmost expression and definition have when applied to productivity of knowledge consists in poetry? What is the relationship with the autonomy of the singular times, the autonomy? not in the dependence from the machine. Bifo: Indeed I thought of “Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?” (1991) by Deleuze Unfortunately, there is something that and Guattari, who say that friendship still holds us back: salary, that is the is sharing a path that doesn’t exist fact that we continue to be forced to and, therefore, it is a creation of that depend on the time we submit to path. Actually this is exactly what, in working for our survival. I think that an etymological sense, we call poetry. the crisis in which we are now will Poetry is the activity able to build a destroy the salary for good. This is the bridge where friends walk hand in object of the battle that awaits us. hand. One thing belongs to friendship, and it is walking hand in hand, in other words sharing a path: and one thing belongs to poetry, and it is constructing the bridge on which friends walk. One thing belongs to creative imagination, that is to imagine in what direction we are going, and then one thing belongs to movement, that is to walk on that bridge that creative imagination has

12 built. The duty of creative imagination was above all ethical protest, search – namely poetry – in this moment is of independent zones, of temporarily enormous. We must build a bridge on autonomous zones. the abyss that the new-liberist capitalism has created. Today we don’t need temporarily autonomous zones, but instead How can singularities become definitely autonomous zones. We strengths of majority if they are not need to establish a process that is not able to innervate themselves as our will, but instead the catastrophe singularities inside the dominant of the global capitalism. This is communication? Do we have to think something that we still struggle to see that movements simply remain fully. What is happening recalls on the escape and singularization processes scene the autonomy not as an exodus in exodus? And that they don’t regain phenomenon for a minority that a strength of central determination of travels further, but as an overthrowing the processes? This is how it worked of the dominating social situation. We in the 1990s and in the first years of are called for an major assignment in 2000s, when, after all, the movement the next months.

13 of publicity, television, mass communication. Futurism inherits from Symbolism the awareness of the specificity of language, exploiting it on a communicative plan in order to create an active, aggressive and advertising language. It elaborates in political terms what symbolism had elaborated in purely poetic terms. Futurism is the beginning of publicity . and political propaganda.

Loretta Borrelli: Regarding the How do we consider today the relationship between art and everyday problem of the relationship between life, the manifesto reads: “We would everyday life, art and media? Media like to make art a changing force of are the link between art and daily life. life, we would like to abolish the This is why we reclaim the power of separation between poetry and mass independent creativeness, of the communication, we would like to shift autonomous creativeness on the the dominion on the media from the mediatic system. It is the battle that merchants to the wise and the poets”. media-activism in the 1990s has There is a reference to mass begun. communication. Is it possible that this becomes – together with poetry – the The potentially subversive mean through which we can start to characteristics of language, of change life? everyday life, have been analyzed in this movement not counterpoising Bifo: This points out that we did the ideological slogan to the overcome the 1900s avant-gardes, advertising slogan, but, rather, but still, a memory of the avant- deconstructing the advertising gardes remains, above all of Dadaism. message as tied to all shades of the The Dadaist cry of Christian Tzara: detournement. Today this practice “abolish art; abolish everyday life; probably needs to jump, perhaps we abolish the separation between art need to find the linguistic forms and everyday life”, remains like a trace suitable to the change that we live. not to forget entirely. The problem of The media-activism has accompanied the relationship between art and an essentially smaller phase of the everyday life is topical, and today movement, the phase of ethical presents itself in the perverted form demonstration: Seattle , 15 February,

14 2003. A phase where the movement registered in the code. The was essentially about ethical protest conjunction is made of imperfect and minor autonomy. I am convinced bodies exchanging ambiguous signs that today we are going through a crusted of matter, while a connection completely new phase, in which the requests bodies penetrable from movement must be able to express in flows of information purified by every a major way the potentialities of the imperfection. This involves a crisis in social. What we need to discover the transmission of the cultural and shortly, is with what language. political inheritance between generations, but also an incapability of the connective generation to have an experience of knowledge through the body. How is it possible to provide for this condition that belongs to the net world in this period of world crisis and mobilizations?

Bifo: Some of the things that I saw up to six months ago – up to the Wave, to the election of a black President and . the downfall of the catastrophe – need to be looked at in a completely Loretta Borrelli: When you write: “We different way in this moment. Some want to sing the man and the woman possibilities – which were precluded caressing each other, to get to know up to a few years ago – are reopened. each other and the world better”, Still it remains the fact that in the bodies become the tool for the sexual unconscious of humanity, in knowledge of the world, but looking the last decades, a harshness has at your past writings, a problem come forth that we will pay in the emerges. In those texts, the analysis next years: i.e. this harshness shows of the mutation of the cognitive up in form of racism, in form of system is an analysis of the passage aggressiveness. What I’m trying to talk from the subjunctive mind to the about is not a plain sociological connective mind. The conjunction is discourse. I believe in fact that we are contact among bodies that create the living a moment in which enormous rules of the relationship while they are possibilities on the social and political living it. The connection is an level are opening up, but at the same interfacing of compatible entities time we see a kind of paralysis of the whose rules of operation are subjectivity, or in other worlds, an

15 extreme difficulty for the subjectivity economy; the one that sees poor to move smoothly, not willingly. Obama trying to find a possibility but without finding it, because it is not I have the feeling that we are living possible within capitalism. Barack and we will live in the next months a Obama will keep on trying in the next revolution without a subject. The month without succeeding, but not revolution will show in things, in the because of him. This will go on until fact that the principle of private we all realize that there is no solution ownership is definitely out-of-course, if we remain enclosed in the paradigm that capitalistic accumulation has of the capitalistic growth. arrived at a stop and is in recess, that the thought of growth has collapsed and will never return, that the consumerism is not possible and that people will be forced to live in a more pleasant way. It’s like if we suffered the possibility not to work because of the salary, it is as if we suffered the constraint of not using the car anymore to stay two hours in a traffic jam. . It is however a process destined to crisis, during which something will There are these two processes: the happen in the subjective dimension. catastrophe of the capitalistic For the time being, nevertheless, in economy on one side, and on the the subjective dimension I see very other side the resurfacing of little. The Wave is an element of movements solicited by the movement inserted inside the society. awareness that the future is This has started something, but it did cancelled, little by little. The two not get into contact with the great things must meet, but in the middle crisis. It is true the slogan “We don’t there is fear of the other, which has pay your crisis” is repeated often, but been produced for thirty years of it is still just a slogan for the moment. regime medias. In the middle there is I’m waiting for the Wave to meet the the stiffening of the corporality that economic cataclysm, at that point the has been produced by the revolution will become subjective. For connections: the difficulty in this the time being we have a revolution moment is essentially in the little without subject, namely of the sympathy that the bodies feel for one

16 another. It is a stiffening of the phase of violent fascism. There will be subjective that is first of all sexual, a phase in which the bodies terrorized that is of the bodies, of the by the arrival of the crisis will single physicality, of the incapability of out the Romanians, for example, as expression of one’s desire. guilty of everything; we are already there. Is it possible to conceive the The first connective generation, in the imagination, the poetry in an next months will cross its purgatory. A etymological sense – the construction purgatory of self-education to of bridges – as something where the relationships. Of course I’m not only division sex / language is surpassed? talking about the subjective outbreaks Is it possible to think a language of the boys that go in the streets to communicating through libido? This is demonstrate, instead I’m talking the problem. In this manifesto we above all about the great social body attempt to introduce on the same that is scared to stand out . thematic ground and in the same rhythmic structure a different It is not only connectivity that has communication of the language frozen the bodies, but also fear, racial, through libido. social, economic fear. In Italy , where we have an active production of fear, it is difficult to be able to avoid passage of civil and inter-ethnic war, http://manifestodopofuturismo.notlo and it is difficult that we can avoid a ng.com/

17 The Influencers 2009: Analog Guerrillas

Barbara Sansone

quality of the assembled projects. To tread the boards of The Influencers, artists must work in unclassified areas, embrace transversal sectors (including the political and social ones), propose collective and entertaining actions, are not afraid to get into trouble, absorbing arts that come from the street and that want to go back to the street, against homologation and market mechanisms. This year from 5 th to 7 th February The Influencers festival was held at The star of the 5 th edition was the premises of the CCCB in unquestionably Blu, an Italian writer Barcelona. The minds that are behind who travels around the world and this exciting event, at its fifth edition, who attracted loads of admirers and are: Bani ( lively and curious curator curious people. Many of them, not and designer), Eva and Franco Mattes satisfied, incessantly looked for him ( 0100101110101101.org), and Marco during the days of the festival to find Deseriis (journalist, researcher at the the mysterious wall (the place was Department of Media, Culture and revealed only at the end of works. His Communication of New York gigantic shark made of 100 Euro bills, University and author of the book “Net by itself lapsed to the inclemency of Art, the art of connecting”). The large the elements, now sets off a street in audience consists of people of all the Carmel suburb. ages, many supporters who go every year to the Catalan capital just for this event not to be missed.

As the festival gives importance to the message on disadvantage of the medium, this year’s edition emphasized largely other components as opposed to the technological

18 . and more extreme process existing in Barcelona since 15 years: the exclusion This artist appeared with a Groucho of art from the urban areas, the Marx disguise, a mask and a wig, he tendency to drabness and to didn’t grant interviews and didn’t institutionality, at the expense of reveal his name as well as any other some forms of expression that information. As he is satisfied of his characterised this town and that lifestyle where his inner creativity is represented spaces and social the main luxury (an incontestable dimensions of great importance. richness), he prefers the media to speak of more serious hidden facts, rather than deal with him. It’s an admirable modesty, although his point view is somewhat questionable. Luckily the media don’t exclusively talk about catastrophes, wars and injustice, but also about culture and art. And luckily there are journals merely devoted to these aspects of human history. . Among Blu’s most remarkable creations, we remember the external Another event guest of the festival decorations of the COX18 in Milan, was the New York group Improve lately storm centred on account of its Everywhere, embodied by the unjust closure; the painting on the founder Charlie Todd who is famous wall that was built by the Israelite for his urban actions (or Flash mob) government to isolate the Palestinian organised with great groups of people territories; a very interesting who gather through web sites and experience of animation (“Muto”, a social networks. In their web site we Creative Common movie you can can see the results of their works: off- download from the artist’s web site) the-cuff musicals, metropolitan that was realized in Buenos Aires in railcars full of people in pants, twins less than three months with 4000 who act as human mirrors, raids at the shots and (and designs). Best Buy dressed in clerk suits, frozen travellers in stations. People’s During his presentation, Blu wanted to reactions are exhilarating: some are give a little space to some local lost, some panic, some burst out colleagues, who denounced a more laughing, some others try to

19 formulate hypotheses to explain the both sides of the street waiting for the anomaly. event, jeopardizing the surprise result. Some other time perhaps. The taller related to the festival and organized in collaboration with Other guest stars of the festival were: Enmedio, was just the preparation of Julius von Bisbarck and his a mob in Barcelona: the bola. “Fulgurator”. A student whose look is Unfortunately the event was anything but ordinary (Cleopatra style decidedly below expectations, with bob and beard till the belly) and is the aggravating circumstance that already very famous … how could he who was not on the road by chance, escape notice when he merges into but was placed there waiting for him, the crowd of journalists to flash their he had to suffer the cold gusts shots. In his curriculum there are very incessantly beating the town. The interesting projects like the meeting that should have struck Stimmungsgasometer, an emoticon passengers actually camouflaged that reveals the Berliners’ general among the usual impenetrable crowd mood on the Schönenberg gasometer in Portal del Ángel. In addition, loads through a complex software that can of people was advised and stood on read facial expressions.

20 After him the scene was set by our Wu Ming, which broke the dynamism and vividness of the meeting and broke off a great part of the audience, in spite of the themes’ exemplarity and depth. Maybe their Orpheus strategy (a way to contrast stories, information by giving other news, counterinformation) and the demonstration of how a deep analysis . of a text and one word can completely invert the message. In this Another peculiar experiment was the case they should have been presented “Top Shot Helmet”, a hat giving him in a lighter and more visual form. the aspect of an alien. From the top of a balloon a cam was shooting his That’s a shame, because after them, a promenade around the city, through a great part of the audience was tired, video-game frame technique. But the hungry and it was quite late, so they project that made him popular (and couldn’t enjoy the meeting with other virtually rich if only he sold them to important artists like Wolfgang Stähle, the advertising agencies and his who is one of the founder s of net.art, ethics was less strong) is “The who invented “The thing”, and who is Fulgurator”: a camera in reverse that well-known on the history of art doesn’t shoot, but whose light sensor books. rapidly projects pictures as the photographers shoot photos with flashes. That’s how he generated (or rather caused a generation) the photo of Obama on the platform and next to a cross, the tourists’ photos with the Google logo on the triumphal arch and the photos of Mao with a dove on his face in Tiananmen square, Magritte style. The Fulgurator now looks like a camera, but at the beginning it had the shape of a gun as . a symbol of mediatic weapon. But the Alas, a serious problem detained in US risk of being arrested was too high… Mark Pauline from Survival Research

21 Labs, a group that works on industrial of the president Havel. and war technologies extracted from the context to create robotic performances full of special effects. But Mark gave the public of the festival a short video-connection via Skype.

And moving away from the Italian, American and German context, there is a group from Czech Republic: Ztohoven, a name with two meanings (“Cento merde” e “Fuori di qui”). The . group displayed the preview after the And a woman at last! Swoon, a process they faced because of their delicate street artist full of anxiety. intervention on occasion of one of She’s well-known for her collage- their actions, Media Reality. The group pictures but also because she managed to go into a meteorologic changed a reality into a dream: to go programme on Czech TV and show through a river on a boat of artists. the images of an atomic expplosion. After a first experience with the After a long process for which they project “The Miss Rockaway Armada” risked to go I prison, they were (2006-2007), in 2008 she created acquitted and they even won the “Swimming Cities of The Switchback price NG33 at the National Gallery in Sea”, a well-articulated itinerant Prague. But although this event made installation this time made of seven them popular, they are used to the boats. risk to go into trouble. Who couldn’t participate to the event With the connection of the nucleus of and now is in despair, should simply 10 components with the dozens of look at the festival web site, where collaborators, Ztohoven managed to the conference videos will be cover with their manifestos many of published , and by now you can watch the adverts stuck up the metro the past editions. spotlights, until they organized an abusive vernissage; or they transformed the question mark into their own symbol, in which the heart is made of a red neon by Jirì David installed on Prague’s castle in honour www.theinfluencers.org

22 www.cccb.org www.enmedio.info/

23 Generative Modules By Guido Smider

Teresa De Feo

Sound, images, live influences, the search for spontaneity of synthesis of these elements, build terms of a new modality in the way to approach “music”.

his is clearly visible in the work of a young Italian artist, Guido Smider, who deals with sound in a coherent and confident way, working with sound on video, researching new The “Do-it-yourself” practice amongst chemicals of synthesis and creating young electronic artists seems to be new software for the generation and increasingly popular, as is the elaboration of these elements. Guido crossing-over of expression and the Smider, after a first approach with convergence of media used. We could analogical music, is interested in the say the result is something that synthesis of sound and sound always has an aspect which is virtually samples, as well as applications in real three dimensional, configured as a time, creating software and usable space, created by the installations based on randomised and convergence of sound, images and generative music. With his vocation live influences. for developing do-it-yourself ways of Those who are passionate about and creating software for the elaboration work with music, therefore, who of audio/video, we suggest his most adopt digital instruments, with an recent work, “Noiseplug”, and the obvious spirit of shrewd desire and exhibition installation work “Neural” is experimentation, cannot conceive just as interesting, created with sound connected directly to its visual Lorenzo Fernandez. He has recently influences, through its capacity to published an EP with Belgian label create spontaneously in a vital almost Anoise, a soloist with Beatpick and organic space, most of all in the case another with an American Net Label of those who work with music and called Noise Joy. Without further ado, applications generated in real time. let us speak directly to the artist in

24 this long interview. but the commercialisation of software and sample packages is ironing out the world of electronic music; in a way it gives everyone the possibility to make music, but on the other hand it is detrimental to any kind of originality.

I think it’s difficult to surprise someone with an attentive attitude to music today, much has already been said through musical language. In this . sense, I try to build myself applications mostly so that I can Teresa De Feo: Your profile states that create particular and noisy sounds you started with purely analogical without the use of pre-fabricated rhythms. Where does your interest in samples. electronic music, especially randomized and generative music, come from, which pushed you to create new software in order to compose your songs?

Guido Smider: After some years of studying drums as a teenager, I was forced to quit because I had acoustic problems connected to my domestic situation. So I began to get passionate about synthetic rhythms and . electronic sounds thanks to having bought an analogical synthesiser and Teresa De Feo: Would you like to tell a computer. I applied to the faculty of us about Noiseplug, the software you Music & Computer Studies in Milan created, which is already well-known and I gave way to my passion for DSP and appreciated by professionals of and synthesis of sound through the the sector? help of theory. Guido Smider: Noiseplug is a In fact I believe that the computer is a standalone application for the fantastic means to generate shapes in elaboration of sound in real time and sound waves and complex sounds, for the creation of glitch and noise

25 sounds, which are completely like yourself that comes from randomisable so that they can analogical music, in what way is the become semi-generative. It contains relationship between sound, image four samplers and some DSP plug-ins and sound environment interpreted that elaborate the signal and give the and experienced? freedom to play around with sound very easily by simply having a little Guido Smider: My work leads me to knowledge about digital audio theory. confront myself with the society in which we live in, which unfortunately t was created for real time live is a society made up of images and performances, it cannot be preset and not sound. It is therefore necessary, it behaves as if it were a musical but also interesting, to work with instrument on a computer. I thought it unconventional images. The would be more interesting to create relationship between sound, image live electronics where nothing is pre- and video, in my opinion, must be fabricated, but everything is created synchronic and perfectly timed: it is by the musician at that time. I can tell important that the sound gives the you that the next version will be maximum effect of the atmosphere remote-control activated through the and temporal evolution of the images Nintendo Wiii remote. in order to create surprise in the spectator.

Teresa De Feo: Sound is not just a temporal expression (as the first aesthetic indicated), but has its own space, a single capacity to create multidimensional and multi-sensorial territories and to establish this cross- over seems to be, in my opinion, the only principle objective of someone dealing with sound design and who . works with generative and electronic music. Do you agree? What does this Teresa De Feo: In your work your add to analogical music in terms of synchronic and influential excellence expressive possibilities open to new between sound and video image media in the music field? impressed me, in my opinion this is the area where your expression is at Guido Smider: I certainly agree and I its highest potential. For a musician can add that the sounds and many of

26 the exhibitions that we do today are are random, in part retraceable to a possible thanks to digital music. The series of events that are closely accessibility and programming of related to one another. It was objects have given a strong push to interesting to analyse the complex the creative technology of the year theory of stochastic processes 2000. If you think of Arduino for simplifying it for my own purposes example, or the development through and imagining a close correlation languages such as MAX/MSP and between temporal events that follow Processing there are infinite one another, so that I could try and possibilities of creation that new create two generative modules that software put at your disposal. can sound out in unison through a controlled fortuity.

Teresa De Feo: Staying with this subject, the relationship between generated music and living organisms, can you tell us about your most recent project created with Lorenzo Fernandez? I’m talking about Neural, a generative audio-visual installation, where you assimilate the spectral lines of sound through the activity of . nervous networks modulated electrically Teresa De Feo: This music, generated immediately, suggests a relationship Guido Smider: The most recent work I with temporisation, through its created with Lorenzo Fernandez is a spontaneity and its chaotic and generative audio-visual installation unpredictable lines, which is not just based on the current OSC protocol to dynamic but also morphological and be able to communicate on two exists in living organisms. How do you computers in a LAN network through feel about this? control messages. The generative evolution of the video is connected to Guido Smider: In generative music, forces that attract the “cells” on the the composer plants a seed that then borders of the screen whereas the develops independently (Techstuff) sound generates itself based on the and this is closely connected to the calculation of the probabilities and evolution of living things. I think that some temporal counters. chance events in time and in space

27 which interlace through connections that emulate a nervous network. In the video there are light pulsations between these connections that are created through rhythms in impulse trains. The function of the Dirac is at the base of the modulated impulses and is strictly connected to the synthesis of the sound and the electric transmission between the . cells of our nervous system.

The unpredictable evolution of the video and the sound generates simple shapes, connected to spectral sounds, www.smidernoise.com/info.html

28 Philippe Parreno: No Ghost Just A Shell

Francesco Bertocco

within our system. But regarding images, “acquisition” is the direct action between the object-oriented world of the physical support of the image and the virtual world of the computer, or rather their elaboration and revelation as pseudo-objects, entities, that live in their own state.

We acquire a digital image, be it in movement or static, to allow it to be I would like to begin this presentation shared and developed in the way we of the work of a great French video see fit: if it should continue to live in artist and experimental filmmaker, the virtual universe, modified or not, Philippe Parreno, with two specific or if it should be developed and made terms: “acquisition” and “definition”. into a physical object such as print (for These are living a new semantic static images). splendour inside the vocabulary of new technologies, mainly connected But what do we mean by, or what is to the world of images, or the this new vocabulary: the word properties of images in function to “definition”? their relationship as objects, even if virtual objects.

I will not delve into the relationship between digital image and objectivity, a combination that I will leave to a more precise elaboration, but I will consider those terms and their function in relation to images. What is “acquisition”? In every day language, the term acquisition is referred to the absorption of particular data: we . acquire in order to obtain something

29 Aided by a conversation between and more resistant. An image with a Hans Urich Obrist and Philippe greater definition dominates the Parreno, we notice how the problem research of the common consumer. of “definition” enters into a There is not the simplest acquisition relationship with the state of new of the image, but there is a search for images: “From the 80′s onwards, Sony the image with the highest resolution. and Thompson have faced the theme of resolution. The point is not to produce images, but to produce images with a good resolution”. Resolution does not become the central problem around the image, but allows us to realise what the formal aspect is. The internal dynamic of resolution is the process of composing the image; its revelation shows the unfolding of elements that . make up the image, the pixels, that are the atomic fabric of its surface. Parreno underlines: “When teaching a But all this is not so simple. workshop in an art school, today, you realise that the resolution is the The problem before the digital era, in biggest problem for beginners. A terms of resolution, or more precisely typical question is: “your idea is good, in terms of definition, was connected but is it defined?”. There is still a materially to the composition of the tendency to resolve a problem inside film. Greater definition was intended a form”. This formal problem is not by the size of the film grain and irrelevant to the analysis of Parreno’s incisiveness of the image. In this case work. The attention to form and the image had a hierarchy that at its definition of his work, in terms of height had the total restitution of the “defined” or in terms of resolution is a “real” and at the lowest point a purely continuous part of a necessity of expressive function. The low development. In a work such as “El resolution was a reference to the large sueño de una cosa “(2001), Parreno’s consumption and distribution of the work is quite emblematic. image. e projects a film onto Robert In an era of continuous evolution of Rauschenberg’s “White Paintings”, a resolution, the attention towards vision of a North Pole landscape, so ultra-fidelity of an image is stronger

30 that after 4’33” where Rauschenberg’s can be seen in more than one work of image remains visible, his image takes the artist. In a film like “Credits” (1999), its place, like a fake that doesn’t leave inspired by Pasolini’s theory in a trace, it acquires a shape, a “Empirismo Eretico” (1972 – Heretic historicised resolution, rewriting it in a Empirics), Parreno reconstructs an modelling process of the image, on image through an investigation on the the one hand leaning toward a kind of land of Grenoble, more precisely ZUP “ready-made” aspect in art, on the (areas of primary urban development), other a kind of grade zero, where the and he does this through many points definitive state is reinvented in a given of view. Pasolini talks about the form inside a specific support, for a theory of multiplicity, of the points of continuous recreation of the moving view necessary for the observation of image, that may change infinitely. A an event: in other words to register shape disappears or rather becomes the exact image of a situation, more the support of another shape, art perspectives of such an image are inside art, but with the unique needed in order to harmonise it all in objective of substituting the formal one great “ensemble” of glances. Only plan of its belonging. There is not a in this way can the spectator see the formal problem but there’s a problem situation in its entire complexity. In of surfaces: the path of the image on Credits, this concept is applied to the a shape, its movement, its immobility reconstruction of a mental image of a and unfolding of all its signs. situation, more than its revelation. Interviewing people involved with that particular urban development, Parreno creates an image through many points of view, a materialised image in the mind of the person telling the story.

Parreno’s most ambitious project is without a doubt “No Ghost just a Shell”, carried out with the collaboration of Pierre Huyghe, a . French artist interested in the processes of construction of an image Philippe Parreno’s attention toward and a structuration of visual texts. the process of an image is well- Parreno and Huyghe acquired the known, how its content overflows, to rights to a manga cartoon character use one of his expressions, and this that isn’t too famous, Anlee, acquired

31 from a Japanese agency, “Kworks”. beyond the confines of identification The existence of this character was and recognition. given to different artists, who made it their own and filled it with their own Philippe Parreno’s most recent work signs. We are inside a very interesting that I would like to talk about, comes territory within the development of about from a collaboration with identity connected to the consumer another artist, Douglas Gourdan: the industry: Anlee keeps a fixed surface title of the film, which is famous and in every work, working as a shell (from very successful, is “Zidane”. The here the title that hints to another cinematic experience in Gordon manga production, which was very suggests a certain connection to the well-developed and certainly theoretical and artistic interests of pertinent to the basic idea of Anlee), Parreno, mostly concerning the which each time is filled with signs elaboration of an image; his Psycho and developed around different ideas. 24h manages the time of the film as a Anlee is an artificial reality that pushes sculptural implant of interconnected a character away from death and forms with infinite limits of visual forces the reinvention of its destinies surfaces.

32 and media attention, is a symbol for a football universe of French supporters and many others. The portrait by Parreno and Gordon takes place in the territory of the development of this myth, the stadium. Here, we follow the game, without detaching ourselves from the football player. Special filming technologies allow us to follow the footballer everywhere, . without interruption, with such insistence that the fruition is The choice of Zinedine Zidane, evermore direct as we progress into footballer and captain of the French the film. team that won the World Cup in 1998, for this cinematic portrait, is not by We are faced with a possible. chance. Zidane, who has great value

33 Brian Eno: Synthesist

Matteo Milani

instead of four: 02009 instead of 2009.

I comprehended the success of an artist, which navigates through various disciplines without any subscription to a particular category and without having to judge loyalty to itself. A man who has always observed the world by his installations reproducing it by his meticulous On Monday 16 February, Brian Eno orchestration of lights and sound has inaugurated the 258 th year of the layers weaved for creating a unique Venice Academy of Fine Arts on the experience, for becoming an island San Servolo , where the integrated part of a place, of a space principal courses of the school ‘New ”Mental places in which, one may technologies for the arts’ are immerse”. Pioneer in tape-looping transferred. and of the other forms of sound manipulation, Brian Eno has worked I re-discovered Brian Eno as a future with Rober Fripp in the early 1970′s , thinker, Brian Eno as composer and watching the traditional ”song” there, visual artist, Brian Eno as extending the composition to the act experimenter of art with his free- of the construction of sound itself. In standing vision, the multi- 1975 Eno releases ”Discreet Music” , disciplinarity, the meeting and making the vast pop public meet a integration between different arts. An new musical genre called ”ambient”. example of this is his work in Long He observed that the ambient music – Now Foundation , a cultural institution different to the ”narrative” with a born for promoting and diffusing the beginning, a half and an end – mentality of ”the slower/better” presents a stationary state . ‘It’s like confronting the present mentality of watching a river. Music in which one ”faster/less expensive” in the arch of can swim, float, loose him/herself. ‘ next 10.000 years. The foundation, in fact writes the years using five digits In the early 1990′s the ambient music

34 exploded in lists, then evolving into makes these choices its message is new musical hybrid forms. Eno, has ”We have to give up thinking the also been the pioneer in his research future”. It’s the beginning of the end in sampling and in the use of the of a society. This really means that the found sounds in ”My Life in the Bush use of art, its aim and its function are of Ghosts” a collaboration with David not comprehended. Naturally persons Byrne (1981), years before that the that come from art schools, not only world has been ready for all these . (I become painters or sculptors but also used the voice of an anonymous architects, graphic designers, textile person, found voices were only voices designers, industrial designers. They transported in the atmosphere of that become teachers, musicians – this moment. (My life in the Bush of happens very often in England. Ghosts) – Brian Eno) I’ve calculated that as the system of education, the art school is probably the most efficient than any other means in creation of the income for a country. Therefore, I believe that, the existence of institutions such as Venice Academy of Fine Arts can be justified in economic terms. For this reason, I think that the real motivation is naturally different and has to do with ”imagination”. That’s what keeps . that man different from other creatures of the planet, it is the Here are some extracts of significant capacities of imagining a future, tracks of the ”lectio magistralis” which doesn’t exist yet, and this is so- proclaimed by Eno called Imagination gift. We can Many years before, in the era of constantly create new realities in our Margheret Thatcher – the English minds, we can experience and live in version of Silvio Berlusconi – the these realities. When a society looses government has reduced the its respect for this gift, development financing for the art schools saying: gets interrupted, progression stops. ”The artists are not important, the The ”active” imagination is the thing, science, the technology and the which makes us human, and it makes defence, these are the important us capable of thinking a better future, subjects”. Everytime a government of thinking the world in a new,

35 different way. What’s we are asked to most people in England who studied do is to try to convince the folk, and painting, art and art history, I played in the government particularly, that all of a band (Roxy Music). It’s for this this is important. It cannot be easily reason that the English art schools said that ”ok, Venice has always been really exist: sn order to create pop a marvellous place where the arts musicians (smiling), but this is a secret were developed”. For the future of that the majority of the persons which your imagination a place like the work in art schools don’t know (!). I’ve Venice Academy of Fine Arts doesn’t never abondoned the painting only mean 258 years of tradition, but experience, which probably always also really means a hope for how it became my greatest inspiration. can be thought in future. At the end of seventies, I’ve started experimenting with the video and the light using both in a musical way, rather than simply as images. Slowly, I’ve taken the compostive process closer to the picturestique experience. Today,I’ve the possibility to say thanks to Gabrielalla Cardazzo, who gave me the possibilty to exhibit in Venice, for the first time.

.

I like all the images related with the water, like being on a boat, this shell which we construct, enables us to stay on that magnificent material, which is the water and which enables us to float and to move opposite to it.

I like all the places which are . penetrated by the water and Venice naturally is a grandioso example of ‘I’ve never made a music in which I this. ‘, Extract from ‘Imaginary was interested only in an intuitive Landscapes’ – Brian Eno point of view. It has always been related to a certain theoretical I started my life as a painter. Like the

36 position that I retained in that which is always worth paying moment. But I believe that the music attention, is not to impose rigid doesn’t have to show this and when borders when we try to make a new you listen to it you mustn’t realize this. course. In fact, ‘Communication’ is The real importance of the theoretical only a word covering all the rest. And positions is that, they make you take all the rest is what I teach now. All the decisions, which you wouldn’t take rest is what I do now. otherwise, which is the nice sense of avoiding to take. I wanted to separate the music from being an abstract collection of sounds and I wanted to keep it as a place where you have already been to, a place that you’ve known. In that period, I called these places as Imaginary Landscapes’ – Brian Eno.

My work today, is supposed to be the half-way between the music and images. I continue to make hybrid . experience in these sectors every day. From time to time, I teach in London ‘I create a completely imaginary at The Royal Collage of Art. The environment for the music. The film – department of ‘illustration’years the thing around the music – rewriting before. when the first computers the music itself. The consciousness appeared, suddenly it started to get which makes a music, a film music bigger; and then it has been renamed stimulates the imagination to think in as department of ‘communication’. a picturesque and scenic way, in order Now it is studied by hundreds of to connect the emotions of the film to students and it’s oldest and the the music. Giving up listening to the biggest department of the Royal abstract piece and images that the Collage. situation belongs to. ‘ Brian Eno.

This is before whoever decided to do In one of my lives, I’m a discographic something which is not considered in producer. This means being next to the category of painting, sculpture, art some of the best living musicians, history, industrial design and others persons that also use the traditional ended up in this department. It instruments like guitar, battery, bass, continues to grow. One of the things, and so. Furthermore, in the recording

37 studies I work with some of the most without playing the guitar. This is sophisticated computers on the what usually happens with the market. I am very conscious of the technology, the persons try to learn possibilities of both: the musicians what’s available instead of learning who cannot substitute computers, what can be done with it. Options likewise; the computers, which mean the number of available cannot substitute the musicians. They choices. It’s very difficult to relate have different tasks. oneself with an unlimited number of potentialities. It would be like having a One of the interesting things, which friend who behaves like a different I’ve learnt in 35 years of recording- person every time you meet him/her. studio work, is the expanding the With limited instruments, it’s possible possibility with the available to develop the relation with them, technology. Let’s imagine a guitar investing more time in the exploration with numberless switches we would of emotional possibilities. This is also pass most of our time exploring the valid for all traditional instruments of billions of options on the instrument visual art.

38 mustn’t call the ‘music’ by this name any more, we must re-baptize it, we must accept the fact that now different skills are necessary, different ways of listening. In the ‘digital’ world, now it’s like being in a tropical place made by ideas. In tropic places new forms of life come into the light: some of which survive and reproduce itself, others exist for a limited period and . then they transform themselves into a different thing. In the same way, in ‘If you put something in a CD player the art there are always new the people will probably think that it’s proposals, some of which are destined music If you put something in frame to an important future, others to small and hang it in a gallery, the people will niches. The good intuitions never get think that it’s a painting. And they will lost. dedicate a particular attention to it, with respect to that they dedicate for the screens of their computer and for their shoes.’ – Brian Eno

In music, we’ve made an enormous www.accademiavenezia.it step forward in the 20 th century with the intervention of the ‘recording www.longnow.org studio’ comparable to the invention of www.enoshop.co.uk the orchestra in 17 th century. A new form of art was born. Maybe we www.artspace.it

39 Dick Raaijmakers: A Monography

Lucrezia Cippitelli

through the story of of performances and visual art works realized Raaijmakers from 1965 up to now – a network of relationships and contacts which can explain, as a background, the artistic Dutch tendencies of the last 25 years, in particular in the area of digital cultures.

Maybe the book is not the first monograph published in the Rotterdam’s V2, together with Nai Netherlands about the pioneer of Publishers, recently published a electronic and vanguard music, born monograph which presents an in Maastricht and active from the important in-depth examination on Sixties’ in Hague, but it is surely the the Dutch composer, conceptual artist first important volume which collects and theatre director Dick Raijmakers all the documents and reconstructs to the international public. the chronological path of his career, in particular concerning projects in the The work is called “Dick Raijmakers, a field of visual arts and theatre, as monograph”, and it is edited by Arjen Mulder and Brouwer themselves Mulder (editor and author of plenty of underline in the introduction. books published by V2, such as “Understanding media theory”, one of the most precise books about media studies, published in 2004) together with Joke Brouwer. The monograph is a translation into English of a Dutch book already published by V2 in 2007. It is really a great opportunity for those who are interested in the trespassing of art into sound and technology, to enter the Dutch environment and piece together – .

40 Born in 1930, Dick Raaijmakers is which are now history and urban generally acknowledged as the father legends. He and the Electrosoniks of electronic music in the Fifties’ but duet, founded as a game together also as an ante litteram multimedia with Tom Dissevelt, produced in 1957 artist, specifically for his multimedia with the name of Kid Baltan the first installations, which used music, dance electro-pop hit in the history of music, and moving images, but also for his “Song of the Second Moon” compositions and his theatre plays (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= which were halfway between MSoAzONw- performances and scenic arts. From a4&eurl=http://video.google.it/videos the second half of the Fifties’ up to earch?q=Song+of+the+Second+Moon 1960 Raaijmakers worked as a &oe=utf- researcher in Royal Philips Electronics 8&rls=org.mozilla:it:official&cl) , that in Eindhoven, historic laboratory that, was later defined by David Bowie as a working for the famous electronics “song that oriented my life as a company which was not yet a listener”. It’s also David Bowie who multinational, accomplished and some months ago asked V2 for a copy supported in the Fifties and in the of the book, glad to have in his hands Sixties’ all the cross field experiments a monograph which collects the opera by technology freaks, artists and omnia of the artist. musicians, and became the reference point for pioneering projects on the border between visual, musical and environmental installation.

Among them is worth remembering, a bit asynchronously if we consider the celebrations for the fiftieth birthday in 2008, the “Poème Electronique” by Edgar Varese, realized for Bruxelles International Expo in 1958 for Philips Pavillon. Since 1963, Raaijmakers has . opened his research study on The funniest story, anyway, is electronic music, and then he probably one which dates back to the became, till 1995, Electronic and Sixties and to the making of a Contemporary Music Professor in science-fiction movie. According to Hague Conservatory. the chronicles, one night in the His name is also linked to other events composer’s house -who preferred a

41 sheltered existence, away from the jet used as primary models for his works’ set and all the possible bothers development. Pages and pages of coming from the external world, so as geometric signs similar to scores, to have a life completely dedicated to where the musical language is his machines and his ideas – the substituted by successions of signs telephone rang. Raaijmakers answers and sequences of symbols which and there he heard his producer’s make the artist incredibly close to voice, who offered him to take part as other contemporary artists who in the a composer in the production of a Fifties’ worked on signs in the field of movie for which they were going to Informality. start the set. A science fiction movie of a then still young director. That evening the director’s name didn’t suggest anything to Raaijmakers, who answered to this unexpected break-in of the external world into the quiet space of his laboratory, and definitely declined the invitation because he did not have enough time and because he was tired of making soundtracks. The director’s name was Stanley Kubrick . and the movie was “2001: a space Odissey”. This is why, after 40 years, After a short introduction in which we can remember him as the man Mulder and Brouwer explain why they who said “no, thanks” to “2001: a made such a huge research, in space Odissey”, and who at the same particular relating to the present time, time contributed to the creation of the book – rich in graphics, the science fiction imagery through manuscripts and photos- offers in his own music. chronological order a set of files on Raaijmakers’ main works in the area of The book’s editors worked for years what can be called “extended for the Institute of Instable Media in performances”: a stage, dancers and Rotterdam in Raaijmakers archive, in actors, machines producing music, Hague, collecting old volumes and animations somewhere between descriptions of works, photos, traditional and abstract cinema. Body, correspondence, draft works, sound, movement, light and images documenting the steps of the are the constitutive elements of the projects’ development and above all “real artistic work of our times, which drawings and scores, that the artist

42 enters the empty space of the world as for cultural politics, and this is and becomes transparent, in the mainly because starting from the sense of “not closed” and “open””, as Sixties’ and up to nowadays Raaijmakers himself writes in one of Raaijmakers has been researching, his theoretical texts, that is to say “The experimenting, producind and writing Great Plane“, published in 1992. “An in his studio in Hague. Evers in person interested observer can enter this is the one who states this, during a open work without leaving his long chat about Raaijmakers I had viewpoint. He shouldn’t move around with him when I was working for this the work, because the work itself book’s review. moves in front of the observer’s eyes. Real art unblocks space, it creates space.”

An almost didactic volume, actually offering as its most important and central part the work’s descripition, sometimes with the help of English translations of critics texts written by Raaijmakers himself. The second part of the book, together with a wide, discussed bibliography and an artist’s . biography, ends the volume’s path In 1990 Evers established and with a set of critics texts by musicians managed with Raaijmakers The Hague and historians, which are the only Image and Sound Interfaculty, a really theoretical contribution to a department which would have been full-bodied and important volume. active till 2007, and which was born Among them there is Frans Evers’ from the collaboration of Royal text. Frans Evers is a psychologist, Conservatory and of Royal Art vanguard educator and scholar of the Academy of the Dutch capital, as an synchronic relationships between innovative educational project sound and image. intended to train artists who would The Netherlands, in the last two have worked in the area where visual decades, have been developing a and musical research melt together. A fertile and prolific research in the field study centre where music education of art, technologies, music and media, is joined with visual art education, widely supported by local institutions supported by theoretical studies from an economic point of view and which focus on the synesthetic

43 interaction between sound and the construction of environments in image, its environmental, spatial, which the intermediate state of the almost architectonic characteristic, creative process generates a physical which is able to involve the observer’s and psychological involvement in the senses. observer. It’s enough to say some names to connect the context to For almost twenty years the projects and people, in order to know Department, which is now known as why the Netherlands are the hard Artscience and is directed by the artist core of experimentation in the field of and curator Joost Rekveld, has been art and technologies, in a traditional training generations of artists, cultural context where industries like composers and producers in Hague, Philips and artists like Raaijmakers who work in the field of media, in the have actually directed our attention to experimental and creative use of these themes, the first one by technologies and in the synestethic supporting creativity and the last one union between sound and image, in by training

44 Director), Joost Rekveld, Edwin Va der Heide (who is also a Department’s Professor), the founder and curator of Transmediale Club Schuurbiers, Boris Debackere and others : an entire generation of artists, curators, promoters from Benelux’s area who are now active in the main contexts concerning new media in Europe have been to the Interfaculty founded by . Raaijmakers and have learnt to think audio-video, to work in collective and Telcosystems, Gideon Kiers, Lucas Van laboratory contexts, to imagine Der Velden (also Sonic Acts Festival through senses.

45 Jan Rohlf: Musical(mind)

Donata Marletta

directors of numerous festivals dedicated to digital culture, which aims to create sustainable structures in order to offer a platform for the exchange of ideas and projects, critical reflections, co-productions, and to promote collaboration.

I have met Jan during the latest edition of ClubTransmediale, and before starting the interview he Jan Rohlf is a young artist originally showed me his installation “INDEX I & from Tübingen, who from 1994 lives II” at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien and works in Berlin . Jan in mainly a (KKB), one of the venues of the visual artist, but he is also engaged in festival. The installation consists of various collaborations and cultural two illustrations, which represent two projects. Together with Oliver Berliner music collectors. Jan Baurhenn and Remco Schuurbiers, meticulously portrays the two he’s co-founder and artistic director of subjects through the graphic ClubTransmediale – International representation of the respective Festival for Adventurous Music and music collections, one is entirely Related Visual Arts (CTM). digital with a laptop and an iPod, the other relatively analog and more In 2005 has also founded DISK – Sound variegated, with vinyls, cds, and & Image Initiative e.V., an organisation books, in this way Jan re-constructs devoted to the promotion of the personal histories of the two experimental art and music. Another subjects and offering meantime a project of international resonance view of the city of Berlin . that involves Jan is the creation of the Furthermore, next to both illustrations global network I.C.A.S. – International there are two booklets that catalogue Cities of Advanced Sound, an each collection, offering extra organisation that gathers the artistic information about the subjects.

46 question for listening spaces became quite important. In this moment we were thinking of how to transform what we had experienced in the club into something available to a different public.

Some people opened up factory/loft like spaces that displayed art installations, and where people would

. be doing live music, sound-scapes; these were small events where Donata Marletta: What is your approximately twenty people were background? How did you get attending. Myself, I started something involved in the scene? similar in my studio, which was quite large, located in an old factory. I made Jan Rohlf: I’m a visual artist in the first a listening room where I invited place, and in the early 90s I started electronic musicians, and I was working in nightclubs, as many others creating scenarios at the interplay of did. For me it was more than earning sound and image. Music became money, I really liked the social quality committed with media, and it was and the artistic stuff I was something new for us. Then there was experiencing in these surroundings. I this moment, at the end of the 90s, have been interested in music since I when the VideoFestBerlin changed its was a teenager, I was also visiting the name to Transmediale, and the Transmediale festival, which at that organisers publicly said that they time was still named VideoFestBerlin, wanted to cover the whole range of and I found it quite inspiring. Some digital media and electronic culture, friends of mine were working there. and I thought it was a good idea to During the mid 90s some things came integrate also electronic music. After together, in the 70s and 80s we had that I went to see and talk to the industrial music and other music organisers through people I knew, and styles that were primarily focussing on I proposed that I could do something sound, like Kraut Rock, Ambient etc., similar to what I did in my studio, the and since the late 80s we had techno listening lounge for experimental music – then in the mid 90s techno music crossed with kinetic and video and post-industrial/ambient music art. This way I could step out from the merged into what it is called “Sound traditional stuff and propose Culture”, as a consequence the something more informal. They said it

47 was a good idea and offered a space, take a look at what’s going on. We the problem was that I didn’t want to want to create a social space that may do it in that space and they had no allow music producers to have an money to provide a new space for us, alternative access, and at the same so I asked some of my friends for help, time to offer this access to the public. and actually Marc Weiser of Another aim of the festival is to give Rechenzentrum, who was doing the shape to a certain kind of music booking for Maria am communication, for me a good Ostbahnhof (MAO) at that time, was festival should provide space and really supportive, and thus we started freedom to transgress the traditional to do something there. This is how I cultural models, and should not make got involved, and this is also the restrictions, giving to the public the starting of CTM as a parallel festival, chance of liberating themselves, but at the same time independent escaping from the everyday routine. from Transmediale. An example is what happened in this year’s edition during the performance Unicorn Man by the artistic group from Detroit Princess Dragonmom, at some point it appeared a cardboard unicorn, and the public was very curious and started to interact with the object, jumping on it, playing with it. It is important to give toys to the public, also giving the opportunity to interact with the space. For this year’s . edition, under the theme ‘Strucutres’, we have created cardboard stools Donata Marletta: Which are the main that people move through the rooms, objectives of CTM? creating dynamism within the venues’ Jan Rohlf: At CTM we try to do spaces. The selection of space in something more than just producing a which the festival takes place reflects quality event, this philosophy was this philosophy, the space for me clear since the beginning. The aim of must give the opportunity to be the festival is to create a space that enjoyed, and it should be a bit messy, it’s in the middle, in an indefinite grey without strict rules to follow, and in area, where everything is possible, this sense Maria am Ostbahnhof and and that allows people to sneak in and the Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien reflect this idea.

48 Musique Concréte. This thread with the past aims to offer to the new generations something more than the traditional club night.

Finally we launch a call for entries, which offers a view on the young artists, giving them the chance to present their projects. Then we arrive to the final line-up through a complex

. process of negotiation; in general we try to avoid what many festival do, Donata Marletta: What is the main especially the outdoor summer difficulty that you encounter during events, that is, putting together a the process of setting up the festival’s certain number of successful artists, programme? without any proposal, without any conceptual idea. Jan Rohlf: For the selection of artists we try to create a balance between the quality of performances, and giving the chance to the public to have fun and dance, in particular during the week-end. When we select the artists obviously each of us curators want give his contribute, according to personal artistic taste; also we want to present recent productions in order to reflect what is going on at the moment in the . musical and artistic scene. I particularly like to create a thread Donata Marletta: Every year CTM with the past, with the avant-gardes; proposes a theme, I was wondering if this is why we often present the the series of these themes creates, works of those who are considered year after year, a kind of narrative the pioneers of electronic music. For Jan Rohlf: To be honest the themes instance during the edition of 2008, are not strictly connected one to the under the theme ‘Unpredictable’, we other, and thus there is no clear invited Pierre Henry, one of the most narration, for example, during the renowned exponent and founder of edition in 2006 the theme was ‘Being

49 Bold’, theme to which I particularly produces music, thus maybe it is a care, and was about the individualistic form of narration through the editions positions of many artists, being bold that tells the history of ten years of means also being brave, so “do CTM . whatever you want no matter which consequences it entails”. In 2007 we had the theme ‘Building Space’ that was concerned with the idea of space that allows experimentations, and www.janrohlf.net offers new ways to communicate. The theme ‘Unpredictable’ in 2008 was www.clubtransmediale.de about loosing control, about the unexpected , which alter the www.icas.us dynamics of creative processes and www.kunstraumkreuzberg.de conduct to the discover of new aesthetic forms. The themes reflect www.clubmaria.de the different perspectives of who

50 Elektra 2009: 10 Pioneering Years

Marco Mancuso

confront with other artists, critics and curators – it is also true that this formula seems to have entered a crisis a few years ago, excessively contaminating itself with mainstream-event and popular exposition ambitions, and often inserting the artists in a perverse circuit made of tours and presentations of new projects, too dangerously similar after all to that of We are almost there. Next May it will pop and club music. be held in Montreal, French Canada, the tenth edition of the Elektra While not sharing, in the meantime, festival, not only one among the the connotation that the longest-lasting but also most appointments of contemporary art interesting and impervious to time give to the “use” of the audiovisual within the audiovisual art and live experimentation, mainly for its media festivals. spectacular and performative component, almost like an opening or Those who follow and are interested like a “happening”, some festivals in to the festivals scene, especially those the world are the exception because crossing various disciplines – they have been pursuing for years an experimental cinema, video, music, accurate journey of research, never live media and digital audiovisual art, trivial, crossing between storicization know well what I mean: although of an artistic movement of research festivals remain in fact the most about sound and visual, and analysis “comfortable” platforms where to of the ultra-contemporary. They are attend concerts, experimentations not many, but they exist: from Sonic and installations which investigate the Acts to the Av Festival, to Futuresonic artistic relationship between sounds to Netmage in Italy to Elektra in fact. and images – as well as to meet and

51 over 30 artists that will be announced briefly. In such a complex and articulated context, I will write in the name of me Digicult a critical revision of the event, through video recordings, interviews on the spot to organizers, artists and invited critics, as well as to illustrate the research and study activities of some productive realities of the city of . Montreal as SAT (Societè for the Art Technologique) Hexagram, Oboro and I have always been bound to this others. festival – if we can still call it so, from their invitation in 2006 to the first International Digital Art Market (other extremely interesting and innovative initiative where critics and curators coming from the whole world, would meet for a few days in Montreal making contact with the centers of research in the city and comparing the respective projects and paths, thus creating possible collaborations), passing through last year’s . partnership up to this important 10th edition of the festival. It will be finally interesting to activate a direct channel with Gregory 10 intense days therefore, from May 1 Chatonosky, critic and Canadian artist, to 10, for an articulated event through on the critical texts collected in the the 2 historical locations of the festival essay Angles_Arts numériques, which (the beautiful ex-factory UsineC, historically represents the first center of one of the most beautiful publication of Elektra on the thematic and well equipped black boxes that I of digital art and of the audiovisual. have ever seen in my life, and the Cinémathèque québécoise) and 5 new Multimediality therefore, but not only, galleries (articule, La Centrale , Skol, electronic music, sound art, graphic Pierre-François Ouellette and Lilian design and video, audiovisual, Rodriguez) and with the presence of installations and immersivity: all

52 themes that have characterized research on the new media and the Elektra since the beginning, and that expressive forms of audiovisual and from May 1 to 10 will be concretized as multimedia works. always through an out of the ordinary and brave program, that is inserted in a cultural and artistic tradition that makes of the Canadian city a neuralgic centre worldwide for the www.elektramontreal.ca/

53 The Future Of Scientific News

Gigi Ghezzi

The starting point for the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington was the existing crisis situation of science journalism, that is a journalism dealing with scientific topics. As expected, the congress halved into pessimists, excellently represented by some broadcasting stars, and optimist web content writers, as for example the executive director of J-Lab “Science Journalism’s Hope and (http://www.j-lab.org) Jan Schaffer, Despair” is the fruit of a year and a half successor of Pew Center for Civic monitoring of the media and came to Journalism. existence in a particularly important period for science journalism. In fact, it appeared during the conferences that were organised

(www.cjr.org/the_observatory/scienc e_journalisms_hope_and_d.php) at short distance in February.

The first conference was organised by Woodrow Wilson Center about the theme of niche issues that are . increasing online and seem to undermine the traditional newsrooms; On the one hand was the nostalgic the second one was organised by the declining set of mainstream media American Museum of Natural History (newspapers, magazines, and and was about the standard broadcasts) and on the other hand journalism rules for the climate was the thriving and multiform change. proliferation of science issue niche, mainly on the net. It is frequent in

54 large debates that the most profitable Dykstra himself suggested an stimuli came from the liminal interpretation of the change of professionals who lived both science journalism. First of all the experiences and specially went mainstream media would suffer from through the transition from factionalism, or that sort of specialised broadcasting journalism to sensationalism that pushes the online journalism. Let’s talk about greatest newspapers to deal with as Peter Dykstra, Formerly Executive complex themes as global warming or Producer of CNN’s Science: after his evolutionism in stereotyped and staff was fired in December, he polarized terms. According to Dykstra, announced his resignation and he is another component is that the new now Current Contributor to Mother media provide a better measured and Nature Network ( detailed newsworthiness than media http://www.mnn.com/) a magazine coverage on scientific themes using dealing with environmental news that inaccurate and expensive survey increases day by day the number of its audience tools, although they readers. extremely personify contents.

55 into the new one, but an information gap must be overcompensated, new forms of dialogue through random acts of journalism, such as photos, videos and civic network evidence.

Another successful experience (even from the economic point of view) is the one lived by John Fialka, editor of ClimateWire

. (http://www.eenews.net/cw), that is one of E&E (Environment & Energy However a never solved controversy Publishing) most recent journals. dealing with the media customizing is Fialka is an experienced journalist of the one related to the attractiveness the old news world – he worked for of web sites or niche online The Wall Street Journal – and thanks to newspapers. That is: what how much the web he’s making the most of heterogeneity must the online success with 40.000 subscribers. A information produce to attract an considerable success for a niche online audience not particularly magazine. During a congress at the interested in it? This dynamics mustn’t Woodrow Wilson Centre, Fialka be undervalued or unclassified as encouraged the debate, emphasizing merely economical, as we’re dealing some criticism on his journal, which with scientific topics that involve a manages to entertain an audience huge amount of people in the world, with a high educational background who don’t often realize they are and interested in science issues, directly concerned. Perhaps we will although with a discrete success and always risk a futile comparison hardly reaching a larger audience between old and new media, if we familiar with traditional news don’t analyse the newly successful broadcasting. online newspapers. J-Lab is an example of this category; this headline represents a fresh form of open-source science journalism, where the new digital communication technologies are used to review science issues. According to Jan Schaffer, not only the out-of-date information mode must be moved

56 . local ones.

The New York conference at the This is neither the time nor the place American Museum of Natural History to discuss possible solutions to the was based on as a simple as deep present journalism problems – and idea: “If we leave out for a moment let’s think now about science topics the political and energy implications, coverage … Up against such what did we learn about science enthusiasm towards what Schaffer journalism coverage? How did this called scientific labors of love, we journalism contribute to find a must consider that the problem of solution to climate problems? On this professionalism fund always lies in occasion the American Museum of ambush. CJR dossier cites the closure Natural History registered its first of one of the most prestigious official blog scientific section of Grand Unified (http://www.amnhblogs.org/) as a Weekly di Slate V ( means of communication by the side http://www.slatev.com ) dealing with of a current exhibition about climate technology and using very innovative change contents and language. It was born as (www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climatec an experiment on November 2008 but hange/) which will last until August 16 it didn’t win the right funds to afford th . Matthew Nisbet’s speech was the more and more expensive particularly interesting. The American contents, though it obtained a huge University Professor and creator of success among the audience. Dean Framing Science, an academic blog Baquet, Washington board director ( for the New York (?), isn’t very http://scienceblogs.com/framing-scie confident towards the newspapers’ nce/) affirmed that, apart from a closure trend and he is seriously logical confrontation between worried about democracy, because newmakers, journalists, bloggers and the death of independent headlines “It the academic world can elaborate concentrates knowledge in the hands new narration styles and personal of those who want to influence votes. frames for climate science. This It means the lobbyist knows more problem according to Nisbet must be about Senator [Richard] Shelby than a moral obligation to diffuse among the people of Alabama”. Perhaps we all the education levels and in all the may support the same idea by using geographic areas, even the micro- Italian subjects.

57 expanding the discussion – but it as also a mental and aptitude change: from the models of accuracy, independence, objectivity and specific journalism, we get to the direct evidence of Media Makers and amateurs. Moreover, as the transformation is evident through the new media and is pushed by collective consciousness towards . scientific themes, the result is that science and technology have become We will generalise too much if we an extraordinary change political lever involve democracy, but we can’t deny that cannot leave public opinion the science information changes we without a reaction. are living. It’s a space change – we are

58 Expanded Art, Expanded Box

Marco Mancuso

Ippolito & Joline Blais, Roberta Bosco, Geert Lovink, Inke Arns, Régine Debatty, Zhang Ga , Joasia Krysa. A rich ensemble of critical voices coming from both the world of the contemporary art and the youngest new media art, testifying a growingly fleeting border between these two worlds.

Exactly of these subjects, and of the From February 11 to 16, 2009, took general philosophy that has driven the place in Madrid the 28th edition of project of Expanded Box we spoke Arco, one of the most important with Domenico Quaranta: Arc Projects international fairs dedicated to of Sofia with THOMSON & contemporary art, if not perhaps the CRAIGHEAD, Ernst Hilger of Vienna most important, that also this year has with John GERRARD; Fabio Paris Art seen the presence of the section Gallery of Brescia with Expanded Box, an island devoted to UBERMORGEN.COM, Fortlaan 17 of art expressed through new Gent with LAWRENCE MALSTAF, MS technologies. Galeria of Madrid with ESTHER MANAS & ARASH MOORI, One and J Curators of Expanded Box 2009 were Gallery of Seoul with Kim JONGKU, the Italian Domenico Quaranta – Project Gentili of Prato with JOAN whom Digimag’s readers know well LEANDRE and Vadehra Art Gallery of (for the stads section) and Carolina New Delhi with PORS AND RAO, are Grau (for the cinema section). Surely the galleries and the artists presented. fascinating, especially the section cared for from Quaranta, both for the With the duo of artists heterogeneity of the artists and the Ubermorgen.com, represented in proposed works, as well as for the their own stand at the Madrid fair level of the forum organized on Arco, the Brescia gallery Fabio Paris February 15 with the presence of has been awarded the Arco Madrid / critics and curators such as Jon Beep Art Award. The gallery was at

59 the fair with the monographic project Matallana) – to sustain the most The Ekmrz – Trilogy (introduced for (technologically) advanced and the first time in a single installation experimental art, is accompanied by projected for the fair, the “trilogy of an inevitable marginalization due to the e-commerce”) that explores the the concept itself of the Expanded artistic use of the new technologies Box and of its predecessors: creating, and their impact on arts. inside the complex organism that is a contemporary art fair, a “dedicated” section. This decennial work gave some remarkable products, first of all the constitution of an exceptional collection (the Beep, tied up to the Arco Beep Award); an increasing awareness of the public; and, consequently, an increasing presence of “new media” works in the whole fair, not only in the Expanded Box.

. At this stage of the process, nevertheless, and exactly because of Marco Mancuso: Let’s start from a what has been done till now, some wide perspective: how was the aspects of this project would deserve experience of Expanded Box, in terms to be revised. This year, I have worked of understanding by the organizers of a lot in order to have the galleries Arco, the public, of the research of the perceive the Expanded Box not only works and the galleries, of the arts as a place of cultural in-depth market in general? What are the examination, but also as a market positive and negative feedbacks of place. A place where to arrive not only this experience? with a strong project, but also with a Domenico Quaranta: In general, very project that can be sold. Some well. But let’s start from the negative understood this, and this has brought aspects, so I get them off my chest . its results. We still have to work on the The present Expanded Box is the architecture of the Expanded Box, arriving point of a process that lasted that traditionally is a more intimate ten years, where the extraordinary will and enclosed section if compared to – of the fair, of a sponsor (Beep others: all stands are open on a single Datalogic) and of an exceptional side, on a narrow corridor. mediator (LaAgencia of Vicente But these are in fact details, if

60 compared to everything else. Arco has Marco Mancuso: The choice of the shown an exceptional sensibility and works and the artists, although limited helpfulness to face the specific to 8 galleries and 8 artists, represents problems created by the single in my opinion a good cross-section of projects; the galleries have responded the contemporary production in with enthusiasm, even if the various disciplines, from the sound art economic crisis has forced some of to the interaction design, from the 3d them to decline my invitation; the graphic design to the video, from the public came numerous, and in the software art to the new media critics. days reserved to VIPs and Did this judgment influence your professionals the projects of the choice of the works or, also for Expanded Box have called the practical reasons, you’ve had to focus attention of numerous curators, more on the galleries able to critics, institutions and collectors. If understand an economic investment you sum to this the opportunity to in a growing market context? I’m operate in one of the most important wondering, because based on my fairs worldwide, plus the presence – at experience, the galleries in the world the fair and in the city – of many other who believe in this type of investment interesting initiatives, i.e. Oscar Abril are not many… Ascaso’s project for the region of Murcia presented at the fair, or the Domenico Quaranta: Before talking Vida prize, or the activities of the about the single projects, it is Medialab Madrid; the result has been necessary that we analyse a little the an extraordinary chance of selection process. Same as for all the networking, and a much better mood projects of Arco, one can access the than the past editions of the great Expanded Box through an application festivals. or through direct invitation from the curator. Despite the numerous applications, I have tried to keep some liberty so that I could insert projects that corresponded more to my vision, or that completed the perspective proposed by the other works. Overall, as you say, I have tried to offer a cross-section of the present research, not so much in the media used for the works, but rather in the attitude shown towards the media. . There are works that use the most

61 advanced technologies, others that agreed on research. On my side I had use obsolete technologies, even of course the appeal of Arco, one of others in which technology as a the most important fairs in Europe medium disappears, only to be and the more visited in the world. proposed as content, theme, cultural Despite this, the process of selection reference; in some cases, has been tiring, but I wouldn’t technologies are exhibited, in others attribute these difficulties to some they disappear in the backstage; for kind of slow response by the galleries. some they are the main element of The crisis we are going through is the project, for others they just indeed serious, and especially in the another medium to produce an United States and in the UK it struck experience. extremely hard. Investing thousands Euro on a monographic project, where Talking about the galleries, I started an economic gain is not guaranteed, it from a vast range of opportunities, is not very easy today. The galleries that comprised of both galleries that have taken part to the Expanded specialized in digital media, and many box, but also those that have been others that opened to the forced to retire, they all have my experimental research but also kept gratitude and respect . on working on a more traditional and

62 after all I’ve deserved it, at least because of Holy Fire. Actually, I would gladly avoid to speak of market, but it seems that for many people it is not such an assumed subject. Personally I feel I am a curator of contemporary art who discovered in the digital cultures a renewing force, and who’s trying to support in any way and in every context the things in which he . believes. In the panel I have organized for Arco, Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito Marco Mancuso: During the last two wondered if it is worth to take things years, you carved out a space for from a ghetto to bring them in yourself a specific role at European another one, just bigger, when by now level, especially through Holy Fire at a context exists (the net) where the iMAL and Expanded Box, as a curator most radical researches can live and / critic able to help the transition of reach a public unreachable for a the universe of the digital art inside museum. In my opinion, it is worth to the mechanisms and the borders of try the three ways together. The net contemporary art, even through all guarantees the direct contact with difficulties and risks. So, a circle of the public, the community of the New artists, whose multimedia works is Media Art allows an even comparison exhibited and represented by a circle and a first, very specialized context of galleries looking for space and analysis. But market and the world of market through the fairs or the events the contemporary art have an around these: how do you consider irreplaceable role of selecting, giving your personal journey? And how does access to a wider and varied it fit in with the growing process, communication system, and of without wanting to judge or criticize? accessing the “history”, the dimension Domenico Quaranta: This definition of of the duration that it’s opposing the “Charon of the digital art towards the ephemeral nature of the event (the heavens of contemporary art” makes festival, the exposition) and the me smile, and it is also a little absence of memory of the media. excessive (there was a series of I think this approach shows very well curators, from Christiane Paul to in my personal curator path. After Claudia Giannetti, for the previous “Holy Fire”, a show hosted by a small editions of the Expanded Box); but “new media centre”, but included in

63 the program of a big fair, I have taken Khan be art, if given to specific care of the 2008 edition of the discourse and to specific conception, Pixxelpoint (a small but brave and if conveyed by means of to provincial festival); then “RE:akt! | specific context. The aura of to work Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re- of art, which may be lost and found reporting”, an exposition that is time and again, is now attributed by bringing the works of a small means of to precise process of Slovenian institution (Aksioma) in consecration, which takes place on various museums and institutions the market and in the museums.” You (from the MNAC of Bucharest to the know very well that this statement is ŠKUC gallery, Ljubljana to the MMSU of rather strong and opens potential Fiume); the “Expanded Box” in Arco discussions. The obligated question is: 2009 and, in a couple of months, a don’t you think that someone could small section inside the “Biennial of answer that even if art would need Prague”, a classical event of some consecration, that should arrive contemporary art. from either the public or the critics, but certainly not from the market or from museum collecting? In other words, don’t you think the aura of a work, as you say, can be found when it is free from these bonds and gets lost instead when the strings begin to tighten ?

Domenico Quaranta: In fact, my text maintains that the most radical research opens small possibilities . which allow to overcome the so- called “contextual definition” of art, Marco Mancuso: There is a very according to which “it is the context interesting point of your curatorial that makes the work” and on which statement in which you state: the artistic production of the last 50 “According to this model, art no years was founded. I don’t agree with longer consists in the masterful the position that I’m describing, implementation of to technique though I understand it. But let’s be (painting, sculpture, music or writing) careful: to question the contextual to world (the know-called “real” world, definition doesn’t mean to question the unconscious world of the the role of collecting and of museums Surrealists, etc.) present. Anything in favour of the populist position

64 according to which the public shifting of this polemic is: before, the decides. If we are here speaking right debate was between the world of now, it is because a couple of wealthy digital art and that of contemporary collectors has financially supported art, with all the problems of Duchamp for fifty years, and because identification and mutual acceptance the director of a museum has bought that followed, but now it seems that Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol the pivotal conflict sits between the without considering too much world of the digital art and what is Greenberg’s opinion. Public is now considered and recognized as the consecrating the impressionists – but world of the technological if they had been able to decide at the experimentation, of the artistic time, Bouguereau would still be the hacking, of the digital avant-garde. very best of art. What I criticize is Furthermore the weakening of the rather the intellectual clumsiness of polemic around the digital art – those who accept only a work of art contemporary art debate, seems to because it is there, in the white hall of suggest a sort of satisfaction in spite a museum, without questioning if it of the avant-garde originating from correspond to their own idea of art. autonomous and self-managed spaces: that is “we have arrived here, whatever road is still ahead, we don’t care about all the others”.

Domenico Quaranta: What are you saing? That Rifondazione Comunista split? That minuscule party that didn’t reach the 3% has divided in two parts? Heck, I will have to choose what side to be, and in both cases I won’t matter a damn thing… Sorry for this vulgar . and pseudo-politic detour, but these polemics always seemed futile to me, Marco Mancuso: In this sense you are and usually harmful for the weakest well aware of the controversies that part. What I know is that digital art, if rose around the new media art – ever has existed, doesn’t exist contemporary art debate. Although it anymore. Holy Fire was already clear is already less and less debated in the enough on this: what Casey Reas and festivals, it still is a pivotal theme. Ubermorgen.com have in common, Lately I was pondering, also publicly from a results point of view, is zero. on the AHA list, on how curious the They continue to have in common a

65 reference community, I agree, and always liked the theory of the this is something too precious to be communicating vessels, like abandoned. A place where one can hybridizations and migrations. I think nurture his own researches with total that I’m tired of walls, and of hearing freedom, and where these can be that an artist sold himself to the submitted to a public of equals. But market just because he’s earning his this doesn’t prevent these researches living with his job. I think that, if I like to remain stuck in there, even if they something, if I really believe in a work, would be ready to face a wider public. I can’t just speak about it on Digimag That’s exactly what happened to Reas and present it in a small provincial and Ubermorgen.com, and it will festival, but instead I must write happen again. about it on Artforum and bring it to Arco, to the Biennale in Venice , to the MoMA and to any other available platform. And I believe that if I don’t do this, and to the best of my possibilities, I am not doing my job of critic and curator well enough. After all, I’m absolutely confident that if the so-called “New Media Art”, despite its huge potentialities, has never succeeded in earning the place it deserves in today’s artistic scene, . that’s mainly our fault – that is, of a Marco Mancuso: A similar argument team of critics and curators who don’t can perhaps be applied in the artistic do their job: to aim at the mainstream sphere: there are some channels instead of continuing to “contemporary” artists who begin to survive in the “alternative” channels, turn their attention towards the digital to introduce “their” artists to the tools and aesthetics, while others that galleries, to bring them in the have begun with the digital avant- museums, etc. And to abandon the gardes seem to be interested above critical horizon that divides all to enter in the arts market – which “contemporary artists” and “digital is always a market and can influence artists”…. choices and artistic initiatives. What Marco Mancuso: However, I wasn’t do you think about it? talking about selling oneself to the Domenico Quaranta: I think that I’ve market. I was asking what you do think more contemporary artists who

66 begin to explore technologies new to the new media art, or whatever we them, and of artists born with the want to call it, doesn’t have to appeal digital who on the other hand return to its mediatic specificity, but instead to use hybrid tools and means, with on its cultural specificity: it is exactly different languages, and analogical, this awareness of the political, social mechanical and material and cultural role of the new media technologies, integrated into the that makes it strong, competitive and digital ones. I think that it’s a very absolutely contemporary. This, interesting mixture, that doesn’t obviously makes the same term I just exclude any choice, this is what I used obsolete, too characteristic in a meant. Your words speak of a mediatic sense. What we once called dangerously radical thought: basically the new media art or digital art, can I don’t like to take a side and I love to very well use non-new and non-digital confront myself with very different media, because its strength is cultural spheres (starting from elsewhere: precisely in the cultural galleries to festivals to social spaces), discourse it brings on. The victory of but I think that the choice of many UBERMORGEN.COM of the ARCO “activist” curators and critics has to be BEEP prize is an example of this. In respected, for their ideological credo, the meantime, a “contemporary” artist for their interest for experimentation, not interested to new technologies, for refusal of the market, for the can anyway adopt them as tools, and search of expression channels develop an interesting discourse: the alternative and external to the main job of the koreano Kim Jongku productive circuits. I don’t think this presented at the Expanded Box makes them worse professionals nor exactly represented this point of view. that, for their expertise to be recognized, it’s necessary for them to As for the second point, the matter is be mainstream and institutional. more complex. I have a total respect towards the work of the artists and Domenico Quaranta: As for the first curators opposing the art system and point, I really believe that the trying to operate out of it, pursuing distinction that you mentioned – and developing alternative channels. among “digital” artists and In the meantime, nevertheless, I “contemporary” artists – doesn’t have refuse to stick to the double equation sense anymore, even if historically it art system = market and world of the had one. From this point of view, the new media art = alternative scene that process you describe is interesting, seems implicit in your objection. In but also entirely natural. With Inke reality, independent platforms are Arns, I’m absolutely convinced that distributed in both worlds, and both

67 worlds run the same risk of stiffening and paralysis. I have already . presented the beautiful project Marco Mancuso: Referring back to an introduced by Oscar Abril Ascaso at interesting part of your text, that the fair, in the Murcia region pavilion. follows a quotation of William Gibson: It was indeed an experimental, radical, “The historic function of Expanded outside-of- the-market-logics project, Box, the last embodiment of an picking up urban performances that enduring attention Arco devoted to used technologies to stimulate social new media and languages, is precisely dynamics. Nevertheless, it was that of cultivating and redistributing presented to a fair. This way, he gave the future, and supporting an the chance to the artists involved to “expanded” definition of art.” Do you show up on an open, variegated and want to tell us in which ways and powerful platform, more than it would dynamics, can the fairs of be offered by a festival of new contemporary / digital art help a real technologies. Ascaso works for Sonar, redistribution of the future? I have but he didn’t refuse to face the new always thought that that quotation of stage offered by a fair. When I accuse Gibson carried with it polemics about the critics and curators of new media redistribution of technologies, wealth, art, I don’t accuse them for what they investments, infrastructures and do, but for what they don’t do: for therefore art, culture, production … their incapability to move on different platforms, to compare themselves Domenico Quaranta: Certainly. It’s with other contexts, other demands, called appropriation. I took that other discursive systems, and “to sentence and used it to say that the hedge their bets”: an incapability that signs of the arts future are still little favoured the “marginalization” considered in some works, but that process. And for what I know, artists thanks to specific systems of don’t like the ghetto, except obviously distribution, they will have an those who could only get visible in the increasing impact, and they will ghetto . change, sooner or later, the future of the art. The market is one of these systems of distribution, of course not the only one, but one of them, and historically one of the most important. Do you know why painters have stopped making bad abstract works? Because a gentleman named Leo

68 Castelli believed in two strangers change. Something actually is already called Jasper Johns and Robert changing: I think, for instance, of the Rauschemberg, and he was able to growing reputation of Rhizome at the convince some people that he was New Museum in New York ; I think right. about Raphael Lozano-Hemmer, that works with the Tate and with a I repeat: market is not the only famous gallery like Haunch of medium to give mutant geniuses and Venison. In my own small way, I would changes their visibility. Not even the really like to contribute to this change. biennial exhibitions, the big expositions, the museums, the magazines, the books are enough. You just have to take the catalogue of an old biennial exhibition or a number of Artforum from the 1970s, to understand that 90% of what was then considered “successful”, has disappeared today. The stores of the museums are full of works of art defeated by history. But thanks to an incomprehensible combination of . these elements, something came Marco Mancuso: I imagine you have through, and today characters like discussed about this during the Jeff Koons or Cindy Sherman are conference organized at Expanded considered part of the history of art. Box: how was the debate in this Now, let’s take their more famous sense? In a way I already told you this contemporaries from the “new media” at the lecture at iMAL, don’t you think and let’s look for them in one of the that it could be interesting and many books of arts history that have stimulating for the debate, to hear in greeted the change of millennium: these spheres also more polemic needless to say that we won’t find voices – or at least some not agreeing them. This means many things, but I’ll in the judgment and in the opinions? try to point out at least two of them: that the model of the festivals has not Domenico Quaranta: I assure you, my worked, and that the scene of the chairmen did anything but agree. Blais “new media” did not succeed in and Ippolito have given a beautiful creating a single critic able to speech lingering on a series of communicate his vision on an wider projects whose strength comes and open platform. It’s time to

69 exactly from the fact that they the reasons that make the new media happened out of any artistic frame. art so tremendously actual: all three Roberta Bosco has talked about the interventions, with very different entrance of the net art in the physical approaches, worked on the “specific space, claiming that the public is by form of contemporary” of the new now ready to face technologically media art. Joasia Krysa, lastly, complex hypothesis and picking on concentrated on a particular platform those who, in this process, seems to of artistic production – the RMB City bend too much towards the market. founded by Cao Fei in the virtual Geert Lovink, following what he wrote world of Second Life, and tried to in Zero Comments, has made a clear understand its success and peculiar and harsh diagnosis of the actual state economic model . of the New Media Art, theorizing some ways out: he calls entering the world of the contemporary art

“strategy of disappearance”. Inke Arns has illustrated her own curatorial work www.ifema.es/web/ferias/arco/in.ht at the Hartware MedienKunst Verein ml of Dortmund, that places the media art in a wider context, and at the same www.domenicoquaranta.net/ARCO2 time forces it to compare itself with 009.html the expositional space, not necessarily adopting “technology based” layouts; www.imal.org/HolyFire/ Régine Debatty has shown the www.reakt.org/ absurdity of a critical perspective that insists on the difference between www.pixxelpoint.org/forgodssake-e.h contemporary art and new media art, tml while Zhang Ga has tried to explore

70 Link index

Cristophe Bruno: From Dada To Google http://www.iterature.com/dadameter/

Art And Everyday Life In The After Future http://manifestodopofuturismo.notlong.com/

The Influencers 2009: Analog Guerrillas http://www.theinfluencers.org http://www.cccb.org http://www.enmedio.info/

Generative Modules By Guido Smider http://www.smidernoise.com/info.html

Philippe Parreno: No Ghost Just A Shell Brian Eno: Synthesist http://www.accademiavenezia.it http://www.longnow.org http://www.enoshop.co.uk http://www.artspace.it

Dick Raaijmakers: A Monography Jan Rohlf: Musical(mind) http://www.janrohlf.net/ http://www.clubtransmediale.de/ http://www.icas.us/ http://www.kunstraumkreuzberg.de/

71 http://www.clubmaria.de/

Elektra 2009: 10 Pioneering Years http://www.elektramontreal.ca/

The Future Of Scientific News http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/science_journalisms_hope_and_d.php http://www.j-lab.org/ http://www.mnn.com/ http://www.mnn.com/ http://www.eenews.net/cw http://www.amnhblogs.org/ http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climatechange/ http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/

Expanded Art, Expanded Box http://www.ifema.es/web/ferias/arco/in.html http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ARCO2009.html http://www.imal.org/HolyFire/ http://www.reakt.org/ http://www.pixxelpoint.org/forgodssake-e.html%20

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