Re:live MEDIA ART HISTORY 09 Third International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology Conference Proceedings Re:live Media Art Histories 2009 Refereed Conference Proceedings Edited by Sean Cubitt and Paul Thomas 2009 ISBN: [978-0-9807186-3-8] Re:live Media Art Histories 2009 conference proceedings 1 Edited by Sean Cubitt and Paul Thomas for Re:live 2009 Published by The University of Melbourne & Victorian College of the Arts and Music 2009 ISBN: [978-0-9807186-3-8] All papers copyright the authors This collection licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia License. Supported by Reviews Panel Su Ballard Thomas Mical Andres Burbano Lissa Mitchell Dimitris Charitos Lizzie Muller martin constable Anna Munster Sara Diamond Daniel Palmer Gabriel Menotti Gonring Ana Peraica Monika Gorska-Olesinska Mike Phillips Mark Guglielmetti melinda rackham Cat Hope stefano raimondi Slavko Kacunko Margit Rosen Denisa Kera Christopher Salter Ji-hoon Kim Morten Søndergaard Mike Leggett Robert Sweeny Frederik Lesage Natasha Vita-More Maggie Macnab danielle wilde Leon Marvell Suzette Worden Re:live Media Art Histories 2009 conference proceedings 2 CONTENTS Susan Ballard_____________________________________________________________________6 Erewhon: framing media utopia in the antipodes Andres Burbano__________________________________________________________________12 Between punched film and the first computers, the work of Konrad Zuse Anders Carlsson__________________________________________________________________16 The Forgotten Pioneers of Creative Hacking and Social Networking – Introducing the Jon Cates________________________________________________________________________21 RE:COPYing-IT-RIGHT AGAIN Martin Constable and Adele Tan______________________________________________________26 Visual Digitality: Towards Another Understanding Allison de Fren __________________________________________________________________31 Disarticulating the Artificial Female Darko Fritz_____________________________________________________________________36 Histories of live meetings - case study: five conferences on computer-generated art and related Mathias Fuchs___________________________________________________________________42 Postvinyl Dr. Andrea Gleiniger______________________________________________________________46 «Architekturen des Augenblicks» a phenomenological outline of the medialization of urban space in the 20th century Mark Guglielmetti________________________________________________________________51 A-Life: the creation and development of new modes of realism Nigel Helyer____________________________________________________________________58 The Sonic Commons Larissa Hjorth___________________________________________________________________65 Cartographies of the mobile: the personal as political Cat Hope_______________________________________________________________________73 Earth Pulse: vibrational data as artistic inspiration. Stephen Jones___________________________________________________________________78 Bush Video Slavko Kacunko_________________________________________________________________83 Immediacy of Image - Image of Immediacy: Live Media Art and Japan’s Role: A historical and contemporary sideview Katja Kwastek___________________________________________________________________89 “Your number is 96 – please be patient” - Modes of Liveness and Presence investigated through the lens of interactive artworks Mike Leggett____________________________________________________________________95 Early Video Art as Private Performance Re:live Media Art Histories 2009 conference proceedings 3 Leon Marvell and Rudy Rucker_____________________________________________________100 Lifebox Immortality & How We Got There Gabriel Menotti Gonring___________________________________________________________109 Executable Cinema: Demos, Screensavers and Videogames as Audiovisual Formats Lizzie Muller and Caitlin Jones______________________________________________________114 An indeterminate archive for David Rokeby’s “The Giver of Names” Daniela Alina Plewe______________________________________________________________119 Transactional Art as a Form of Interactive Art Stefano Raimondi________________________________________________________________126 Nanoart: First Steps Beyond the Columns of Hercules Hector Rodriguez_________________________________________________________________129 The Black Box Chris Salter_____________________________________________________________________135 The Stage as Organism: Liveness, Dynamics and Expression in Early Twentieth Century Audrey Samson__________________________________________________________________140 Haunted profiles; social networking sites and the crisis of death Paul Sermon_____________________________________________________________________148 Telematic Practice and Research Discourses Mike Stubbs_____________________________________________________________________154 Abandon Normal Devices - they don’t seem to work Darren Tofts_____________________________________________________________________161 Writing media art into (and out of) history Robrecht Vanderbeeken____________________________________________________________167 Relive the Virtual: An Analysis of Unplugged Performance-installations Joanna Walewska________________________________________________________________172 Relationship of art and technology: Edward Ihnatowicz’s philosophical investigation on the problem of perception. Nina Wenhart___________________________________________________________________178 ARS ELECTRONICA re:shaping a city’s cultural identity Danielle Wilde___________________________________________________________________184 A New Performativity : Wearables and Body-Devices Jeffrey Shaw and Sarah Kenderdine__________________________________________________191 The Relocation of Theatre: Making UNMAKEABLELOVE Suzette Worden __________________________________________________________________197 Art-Science connections for the visualisation of minerals: historical precedents for media arts Eva Kekou, Martin Rieser and Olga Venetsianou The City as a Projection Space______________________________________________________203 Re:live Media Art Histories 2009 conference proceedings 4 Refereed Papers Re:live Media Art Histories 2009 conference proceedings 5 Erewhon: framing media utopia in the antipodes Dr. Susan Ballard, School of Art, Dunedin, NZ. ABSTRACT Erewhon is a geographical location, a novel, and a fragment of our technological imaginary. Described by Samuel Butler as somewhere between nowhere and elsewhere, Erewhon provides a framework for understanding antipodean media art histories. Its fictional representation remains uniquely New Zealand: a utopian society set within a clean green country apparently isolated from networked global systems. In Erewhon Butler recognised an ecological intensity that heralded a terrifying shift in societal and technical relations. This paper examines how media artists engage this nowhere place, as both a historical formation and present day high country sheep farm. Artists including Aaron and Hannah Beehre, Jane and Louise Wilson, David Haines and Joyce Hinterding have revisited the multiple mediated layers of Erewhon. Focused on machinic connectivities as well as the morals, social constructions and economic models described in its fictional incarnation, their works suggest an ongoing commitment to a potential future elsewhere and to the construction of media histories that are embedded in concrete locations. In placing the long term concerns of ecology alongside the hopelessness of utopia, this paper suggests that Erewhon continues to offer a critical map for the histories of media aesthetics, machines and humans. KEYWORDS utopia, media ecologies, New Zealand, Erewhon, nature All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in. (Morrison, 1998) Now that the cloud was there, I began to doubt my memory, and to be uncertain whether it had been more than a blue line of distant vapour that had filled up the opening. (Butler, 1872: 56) European settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand during the early nineteenth century was predicated on the notion of creating a new society that escaped the class constraints of Britain. It was a country built on hard work, direct engagement with ‘the land’ and the opportunity to control and master an untouched wilderness. Blinkered to the complex artistic, economic, cultural and social connections to place held by Maori, the subsequent history of New Zealand maintained this element of colonial utopianism. Here was a country where a world dreamt and imagined had the potential to become real. In 1858 the British author and satirist Samuel Butler arrived in New Zealand and began work as a run-holder in an area of mid-Canterbury that he named Mesopotamia – the mountainous area surrounding it he called Erewhon. The farm became the setting for a dystopic tale of machinic and societal control. Published in 1872 Erewhon turned the South Island landscape into a fictional world that held a mirror up to the hypocrisies ofVictorian society. As a young traveller journeys over the mountains, he finds a new society of green pastures where all technology is feared and banned and where illness is criminalised. In Erewhon Butler recognised an ecological intensity that heralded a terrifying shift in the relations of nature to technology; he found dystopic virtuality within utopic