Selections for the Tenth New York Digital Salon

YUKO HASEGAWA

Toshio Iwai, Japan Piano–as image media, 1995

Pipilotti Rist, Switzerland Ever Is Over All, 1997

Masaki Fujihata and Yuji Dougane, Japan Orchisoid, 2001

Mathieu Briand, France SYS*017.ReE.06/PiG-EqN\5*8, 2001

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Mexico Vectorial Elevation, 1999-2002

Hachiya Kazuhiko, Japan PostPet, 1997

Carsten Nicolai, Germany telefunken, 2000

Shirin Neshat, Iran Turbulent, 1998

Chris Cunningham, United Kingdom All Is Full of Love, 1999

Ryoji Ikeda and Dumb Type, Japan Memorandum, 1999

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Toshio Iwai, Japan Piano–as image media, 1995 Installation view at galerie deux, Tokyo, 1998

Iwai visualized an image of a piano played by light in his Piano–as image media. Audience members operate a trackball to draw lighted dots on a grid. The flashing dots move, and as soon as they come close to the piano they accelerate and strike a key. With the sound of the piano, a three-dimensional figure pops out of the keyboard. The audience-drawn shapes play the actual piano. The sound then produces colors and figures. This is not a digital sound, but the sound of an acoustic piano controlled by computer. Combinations of computer graphics, liberated from the feel and weight of a grand piano, merge and integrate the elements of our real physical body and virtual body, which makes this work truly innovative.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Pipilotti Rist, Switzerland Ever Is Over All, 1997 Left: Video installation, Kunsthalle Zürich, 1999 Photo: Alexander Troehler Above: Stills of video installation tape Courtesy Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich and Luhring Augustine, New York

Rist positively describes the negative aspects of femininity, which have been rejected by women themselves. She articulates her ideas with weightless images of love, death, everyday life, and fiction. Her unique style is a product of the pliant, sensual relationship between music and video art. Rist is also a band member and has designed the stage sets. Her video installation inspires body awareness in the audience as a totally new experience, different from large video clips shown on a huge screen. In Ever Is Over All, a young woman in a light blue dress merrily walks along the street with a huge, colorful, long-stemmed tropical flower in her hand. She smashes the flower into the windows of parked cars as she passes them. The combination of violent urban fantasy, romantic music, and destructive sound suggests the birth of a sophisticated visual language, expressing the direct, realistic senses of the MTV generation.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Masaki Fujihata and Yuji Dougane, Japan Orchisoid, 2001 Orchid, interactive brain wave visual analyzer, mobile, computer, custom-made brain-like software In cooperation with Kawashima Lab. Co., Ltd., Random Electronics Design Co., Ltd., Masaki Fujihata, and Kawashima Lab. Co., Ltd.

Masaki Fujihata is a media artist and professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Inter-Media Art Department. He started his career as a digital artist for ComputerGraphics and Animations in the early eighties. In the late eighties, he produced Computer Generated Sculpture, and in the early nineties, he entered the field of interactive arts. His networked art piece Global Interior Project received a Golden Nica prize at the Ars Electronica Festival in 1996. His interactive book, Beyond Pages, traveled around the United States and Europe, and was finally installed in the permanent collection of ZKM in 1997. He is one of the pioneers of interactive media art, distinguished with interdisciplinary approaches.

Orchisoid was made in 2001 in collaboration with Yuji Dougane, an oceanographer, horticulturist, and chairman of the “Plantron” project. Orchisoid is a compound term, made from the words “orchid” and “-oid” (as in “humanoid”). As “humanoid” expresses something human-like, Orchisoid indicates something orchid-like. The Orchisoid robot considers both the development of robotic technology and the evolution of orchids. By providing the orchid with a means of locomotion, it gives the plant a new natural function. The project’s aim is to find solutions for artifi- cial spaces of the future. Orchid genes have the longest history of all plants. Orchisoid came from the idea of “meme,” the term created by Richard Dawkins indicating “cultural genes.” Fujihata describes it as following: “If we deduce from here the idea that a ‘robot’ is one type of meme that was made by humans, this leads us to a new, tremendously interesting hypothesis. Aren’t memes using us humans to build new vehicles for them?”

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Mathieu Briand, France SYS*017.ReE.06/PiG-EqN\5*8, 2001 Video glasses, cameras, electronic network Photo by Denis Prisset

Mathieu Briand was born in 1972 in Marseille, France, where he currently lives and works. He utilizes computers, electric music instruments, and robots to create new media art and science works. He has shown work at several important international exhibitions including Let’s Entertain, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2000), Lyon Biennale, and Istanbul Biennale (2001). With the use of new technologies, he immerses the spectator deep into the artwork, playing with the spectator’s point of view and questioning the reality of their perceptions.

The piece, entitled SYS*017.ReE.06/PiG-EqN\5*8, is a device that allows one person to exchange his or her perception with others. Equipped with a head-mounted display, one sees his or her situated environment through the eyes of a video camera mounted on top of a helmet. He or she is also able to see the perspective of the other spectators wearing the same device. Among six participants, each one is able to change their viewing perspective by pushing a button to swap views with the other participants. The experience calls into question the participants’ self-perception and self-consciousness. Through his work, Briand investigates new relations between body and perception.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Mexico Vectorial Elevation, Relational Architecture 4, 1999–2002 Robotic xenon searchlights controlled over the Internet 10-mile radius

Vectorial Elevation was a large-scale interactive installation that transformed Mexico City’s historic center using robotic searchlights controlled over the Internet. Visitors to the project Web site could design ephemeral light sculptures over the National Palace, City Hall, the Cathedral, and the Templo Mayor Aztec ruins. The sculptures, made by 18 xenon searchlights located around the Zócalo Square, could be seen from a 10-mile radius and were sequentially rendered as they arrived over the Net. The Web site featured a 3D-Java interface that allowed participants to make a vectorial design over the city and virtually see it from any point of view. When the project server in Mexico received a submission, it was numbered and entered into a queue. Every six seconds the searchlights would automatically orient themselves and three Webcams would take pictures to document a participant’s design. An archive page was made for each participant with comments, information, and watermarked photos of their design. A notification e-mail message was then sent once the archive Web page was done. Vectorial Elevation received participants from over 89 countries and all the regions of Mexico. To facilitate access, free terminals were also set up in public libraries and museums across the country. The Zócalo’s monumental size makes the human scale seem insignificant–an observation that has been noted by some Mexican scholars as an emblem of a rigid, monolithic, and homogenizing environment. Searchlights themselves have been associated with authoritarian regimes, in part due to the military precedent of anti-aircraft surveillance. Indeed, the Internet itself is the legacy of a military desire for distributed operations control. By ensur- ing that participants were an integral part of the artwork, Vectorial Elevation attempted to establish new creative relationships between control technologies, ominous urban landscapes, and a local and remote public. It was intended to interface the post- geographical space of the Internet with the specific urban reality of the world’s most populous city. NOTE: The searchlights were taken down at 6:30am, January 7, 2000. However, most of the site’s features are still operative, including the 3D interface. The Web site might go live again for future installations in different cities.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Hachiya Kazuhiko, Japan PostPet, 1997 E-mail software Direction by Hachiya Kazuhiko, design by Manabe Namie, program by Kouki Takashi

PostPet was developed with Sony in 1997. Kazuhiko’s extremely popular program transmits e-mail in the form of a dancing pink bear named Momo (who is nothing more than binary data). Momo was the first pet Kazuhiko created; now there are eight different PostPets, including Mini-Rabbit Mippi and Penguin Ushe. Each “animal” lives in its own room (or electronic space). The pet goes out to deliver a message and doesn’t return until the recipient picks it up. Sometimes a PostPet sends an e-mail to his owner or a frequent correspondent, either intentionally or accidentally. He may get into arguments with someone else’s PostPet, who arrives bearing e-mail for his owner, and these arguments can turn into brawls. In an age when the prime attraction of e- mail is its efficiency and speed, the software that features these troublemakers has sold a million copies since its release in 1998. Why is it so popular? The pleasure derived from genuine communication harbors the risk of miscommunication, and information-transmission tools that are increasingly convenient, transparent, and expeditious reduce that pleasure. Additionally, the transformation of the electronic environment into images of animals that live in the electronic space that surrounds us makes us more resistant to the stress brought on by computer problems. The concept is influenced by Japan’s animistic cultural background, evident also in Pokémon and the 1985 film Warriors of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Carsten Nicolai, Germany telefunken, 2000 Audio signals for television, audio CD, CD player, Sony HiBlack Trinitron television Photo by Paolo Curti Gallery, Milano, Carsten Nicolai VG Bildkunst Bonn Courtesy of Galerie EIGEN+ART

Born in Karl-Marx Stadt (presently Chemnitz) in 1965, Carsten Nicolai lives in Chemnitz and Berlin. He worked as a gardener from 1985 to 1990, and studied landscape design in Dresden. In 1992 he co-founded “voxxx.kultur und kommunikationszentrum” in Chemnitz, and then “noton archiv fuer ton und nichtton” in 1994. Nicolai is active worldwide in areas ranging from contemporary art to sound art to media art. A motif of organic forms appears in his paintings, objets d’art, and sound installations, which sensitively recognize and present both visible and invisible information environments and are directed to the introduction of computer complex system research. Nicolai realizes an interdisciplinary artwork with a sensual effect of sound and visual output through an elaborate computer process.

Nicolai’s work telefunken (2000), surely the crowning achievement of his syn-aesthetic, multiplies these insights to the nth degree. Technological and conceptual considerations aside, telefunken is astonishing in its elegance, simplicity, and beauty. The raspy drones, pulses, and loops on tracks 1-20 (collectively titled “impulse to line”) generate a spellbinding array of white horizontal bars that rise and fall, merge and part, expand and contract on the television’s black background. Tracks 21-30’s “testtones” spark blocks of light that pulse, throb, bend, waver, and hold for a moment before extinguishing, as though from an unbearable strain. On the whole, telefunken presents a kind of abstract drama in two acts and thirty short scenes. Its characters are points, lines, blocks, thicknesses, intensities, and speeds–and their stage is the black space of the television screen.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Born in 1957 in Iran, Shirin Neshat attended high school in the United States. She studied art at the University of California, Berkley, and now lives in New York City. Since 1993, Neshat has published photo-works that represent Muslim women constrained from the freedom of expression for religious reasons. Neshat represents Muslim women’s strong intentions to communicate depsite their restrictions by showing close-ups of women hiding their faces behind chador, with Arabic scriptures written over their hands and feet. Through the tranquility created by the strong contrast of black and white, the innate intensity or strength seems to explode.

In 1998, Neshat created Turbulent, a two-channelled video installation in which two screens facing each other are synchronized, playing two different images. The screens demonstrate contrasts between two different sides: the one who owns literature and one who does not; men and women of Islam; white robe and black robe; and the words of love and growls without coherent meanings. By creating a strong abstract image of difference, the film is restrained from mere criticism of Islamic culture, allowing Neshat’s images to attain a higher and more universal meaning.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402320774367 by guest on 30 September 2021 Chris Cunningham, United Kingdom All Is Full of Love, 1999 Music video Created and directed by Chris Cunningham for Björk

Chris Cunningham was born in Reading, England, in 1970. He now lives and works in London. Cunningham began as a teenage special effects expert, working on Alien III and Stanley Kubrick’s aborted AI project. With the help of digital technology, Cunningham reveals his extraordinary talents in the synchronization of sound and visual works that he mastered through MTV productions. His anatomical, inner analysis of human bodies and the expressions of their movement, combined with sound effects, provides visceral stimulation to viewers.

Cunningham’s obsession with anatomy is very specific. He began his career as an expert sculptor and model-maker for special effects; the theme of robots, or the genesis of new creatures, has been a consistent interest throughout his work.

All Is Full of Love is a music video created and directed by Cunningham in 1999 for Björk. This video is memorable for its stunning special effects and visual sophistication. A pure white robot is born on an assembly line. It opens Björk’s eyes and begins to sing All Is Full of Love. This video features Björk as a stunningly beautiful robot making love to a robot replica of herself. The image of the pair embracing on the assembly line represents not only the eroticism of lesbian love, but also the sensual relationship of love. After this video, Cunningham resigned from the music and commer- cial world and began working for the first time as a video artist.

Ryoji Ikeda and Dumb Type, Japan Memorandum, 1999 Multimedia performance Photo by Emmanuel Valette

Dumb Type is a multimedia performance group formed in 1982 in Kyoto, Japan. The members of the group, who also work independently, consist mainly of graduates from the Kyoto City College of Arts. Each member specializes in a different field: sound, film, writing, architecture, and body performances. They use a very unique collaborative model, working with the absence of language as a method to critically express and maintain the subject. This is significant in the midst of an information society filled with signs and signifiers spilled out without verification.

Collaborative technologies have been used to convert “dumbness” into interpretable language. Everything, including their concepts, is decided through discussions without hierarchy among member artists. The process of recognizing, connecting, and multiplying one another’s values is support- ed with sensitivity toward others.

Memorandum was commissioned in 1999 by Le Manege-Maubeuge in France. This piece aimed to investigate our memory. Combining elements of multimedia, dance, and fragmented narrative, Memorandum explores the hazy dimensions of remembrance that ground and quietly erode our experience minute by minute. Our conscious memory is a logically organized system located in our brain. But before this system is created we have raw fragments of physical memories in our subcon- scious, which are the materials for the construction of this organized memory. Memorandum is an effort to reconstruct these fragments into consciousness.

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