Bill Seaman: the Exquisite Mechanism of Shivers

the complete Vol.1–5 1994–1999 artintact komplett Text Archive artintact1 CD-ROMagazin interaktiver Kunst ZKM/Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe Artists’ interactive CD-ROMagazine ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe Hatje Cantz [1994/2002] Contents Bill Seaman: The Exquisite Mechanism of Shivers 7 9 19 Editorial Ars ex machina Bill Seaman:Ex.Mech Dieter Daniels Dieter Daniels artintact 1 Jean-Louis Boissier: Eric Lanz: Flora petrinsularis Manuskript 31 43 53 Two Ways of L/Lanz Biographical Notes: Bookmaking Anne-Marie Duguet Artists Jean-Louis Boissier 60 Biographical Notes: Authors 62 Colophon artintact 1 Editorial 7 Established in 1989 as a public foundation, for mass distribution has attracted many the zkm/Center for Art and Media Karls- artists to create special versions of their ruhe is a major institutional initiative to original installations in this more compact promote the production and presentation of medium. And the discipline of tailoring to audio and visual media art. Within the zkm, the cd-rom format has resulted in works the Institute for Visual Media focusses on that are effectively new creations in their research and development in the fields of own right. The success of these initial computer graphics, multimedia, telecom- efforts we believe will inspire more artists munications, interactivity, simulation and to embrace cd-rom as an appropriate con- virtual reality. Professional media artists text for artistic expression. are invited from all over the world to take Without denying the powerful hyper- advantage of the intellectual and technical textual possibilities also offered by cd-rom, resources being offered there. we have decided to hybridise artintact with Many of the artists working at the zkm the traditional book format where scholarly are creating interactive installations. These writings and illustrations on paper accom- installations reach a relatively small public pany and extend the interactive art works via exhibitions at museums, festivals and presented on the disc.Thus the disc becomes conferences. The advent of cd-rom tech- the ‘gallery’ and the book the ‘catalogue’. nology for the first time offers a potentially cd-rom is one of the first of many new mass medium for the publication of inter- forms of ‘information highway’ that will active art works. The zkm has established a radically extend the modalities of presen- multimedia laboratory with extensive cd- tation, publication and consumption of rom production facilities, and working in media art in the close future. This media- close cooperation with the publisher Cantz extensive and ultimately telematic distribu- the cd-rom magazine artintact has been tion of art creates a ‘virtual museum’ of launched as a platform for guest artists universal access and participation in the working at the zkm to create and publish ongoing cultural discourses. their interactive art works. While the cd-rom environment is con- Jeffrey Shaw strainted by its table-top screen and stan- Director of the ZKM Institute dardized mouse interface, the opportunity for Visual Media artintact 1 Ars ex machina 9 By Dieter Daniels ‘Can a cd-rom be a work of art?’ This might be a foolish question but it seems hard to avoid at the beginning of a project such as artintact. If we seek refuge in the history of art as the responsible discipline, we discover that there is a plurality of methods and perspectives through which the history of art can be recounted. One such possibility is the development of techniques and media. Together with iconography and period history, this aspect of media history has come more and more to the fore, particularly with regard to how technologies and media influence or even determine the content of art. This interrelation was apparent long before the emergence of electronic media. For example, the development of printing techniques (from wood cut, engraving and etching to screen printing and offset) is linked closely to the social and political role of the arts. Since the beginning of the 20th century, an essential characteristic of the avant-garde is that artists have reacted to the demands of media in art and, moreover, have purposefully altered and extended them. From the collages and montages of Cubism, Futurism and Dadaism to the new art forms of the sixties (environments, installations, multiples, performance, expanded cinema, video art) a line of development is apparent that constantly questions the role of art in a society determined by mass media. The history of the avant-garde can be regarded as a permanent self- artintact 1 10 analysis of art in relation to the scientific, technical and media innovations of the 20th century. This self-analysis results in the following realizations: the medium used determines the cultural context in which the work is per- ceived, and each new medium asks for a new definition of the social role and aesthetic function of art. Even back in the 1930’s, Walter Benjamin concisely expressed this when he wrote that ‘much futile thought was wasted on the question of whether photography is a form of art, without raising the primary question whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art …’.1 The question that inevitably arises ‘can a cd-rom be a work of art?’ can not be answered with technical specifications, nor by reference to the names of prominent artists. It stretches the limits of our terminology which this new medium forces us to reconsider. What do we call someone who uses a cd-rom: onlooker, reader, user? And what about someone who produces a cd-rom: artist, author, director, designer, producer? By trying to apply our usual cultural paradigms from the genres of literature, film and art in some form or other to the new medium, we do not do it justice. This is not just a conflict about words. It demonstrates that the genres and categories so strongly influence aesthetic perception that it is difficult to achieve an interdisciplinary aesthetic, as is required by multimedia art forms. The construction of aesthetic categories is thus well behind artistic practice, as many fundamental impulses from the avant- 1. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’ – Illumina- tions, New York, 1969. Reprinted in: Videoculture, Visual Studies Workshops Press, New York, 1987, p. 35. artintact 1 garde of this century have resulted from an interference of genres. So the 11 encountering of impulses from literature and art created a new relation- ship between images and words in the works of Mallarmé, in the word collages of the Cubists, the caligrams of Apollinaire, the parole in libertà of the Futurists and the new typography of Dadaism, to name just a few examples. As all contributions to this zkm edition are the result of interactive installations which exist as physical situations in the field of fine arts, we can thus discuss them in this context. The consumer who acquires the data structure as an edition on a silver disc, and keeps it at home on his book- shelf, probably associates it with books or computer games more than with the museum where it was previously shown as an installation. And, if in the future the cd-rom proves to be only transitional, and we can ac- quire similar data structures on-line via electronic networks (which would eliminate nice accompanying printed publications such as this one) – to which context shall it be assigned? The success of electronic media is based on the ubiquity of its contents. Thus arises the tendency to do away with any culturally determined con- texts. Artists working with electronic media use this tendency to destroy the context in order to be able to escape what is felt to be the narrow or in- effective, institutionalised framework of the fine arts. At the same time however, media art suffers from the ubiquity of the media and tries to cling to sculptural and physical presentations as encompassed in the problematic concept of ‘video sculpture’, so as not to lose its fragile back- ground for discourse in the small and elite field of contemporary art. Long before electronic media, this conflict characterized all attempts to find new forms of multiplication and methods of distribution of art. It has artintact 1 12 always been concerned with the problem of refusing the fetish of the original, without dropping out of the system of art. In the 1960’s there were many attempts at this, like the MAT Edition, founded by Daniel Spoerri or the ‘Fluxus Boxes’, edited by Georg Maciunas. The kinetic object of the MAT edition and the playful Fluxus editions, obtainable for just a few dol- lars by mail order, incorporated the beginnings of an interactive work of art which first disclosed itself to the individual user, and is therefore more suitable for home use than for a museum. By means of Jean Tinguely’s Constante indeterminée (mat Edition 1960), small everyday objects are transformed by a fast rotation in a virtual volumina. Or, by combining the two toy clocks in a Fluxus musicbox by Joe Jones an unlimited number of new compositions can be played. Here the idea of the work of art as an interactive piece of experience was realized before the emergence of electronic media. All in all, these attempts were not very successful as they did not pene- trate through to everyday culture and ended up, in fact, as museum pieces. The prototype for all these attempts and also for their failure is without doubt Duchamp’s rotoreliefs, a set of printed pieces of paper which, ro- tated on the home turntable, produce certain optical effects. In the 1930’s Duchamp actually hoped to be able to market these pieces of paper as a cheap mass product.

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