Discussione:Notes on the aesthetics of dysfunctionality, or: why some of us don’t want to become ‘masters’: differenze tra le versioni
| Riga 17: | Riga 17: | ||
| − | Even if they are working with so-called new media, many of the artists of my generation do not consider themselves as being "media artists". They do not use the term because "media art" for them means a certain way of using new media and new technologies which they consider being uncritical, lacking distance towards the medium/technology, and generally being affirmative towards the technologies used. These young artists identify the notion of "media art" with virtually another generation of artists from the 1980s. I am referring here to the very impressive interactive installations and objects which were displayed at various ars electronica festivals in Linz, Austria, and to the recently opened media museum at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Sometimes this is being cynically referred to as "ZKM-" or "SGI-art". In many cases, visitors to these exhibitions (the "users") are merely confronted with the latest technological achievements and 'high performances' of the ever growing computing power: "cyberspace", "smooth surfaces", "interactivity", "artificial intelligence" and "man-machine-interface" are some of the fashionable catchphrases used in the context of media art, which perfectly fit the marketing strategies of the corresponding industries. | + | Even if they are working with so-called new media, many of the artists of my generation do not consider themselves as being "'''media artists'''". They do not use the term because "media art" for them means a certain way of using new media and new technologies which they consider being uncritical, lacking distance towards the medium/technology, and generally being affirmative towards the technologies used. These young artists identify the notion of "media art" with virtually another generation of artists from the 1980s. I am referring here to the very impressive interactive installations and objects which were displayed at various ars electronica festivals in Linz, Austria, and to the recently opened media museum at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Sometimes this is being cynically referred to as "ZKM-" or "SGI-art". In many cases, visitors to these exhibitions (the "users") are merely confronted with the latest technological achievements and 'high performances' of the ever growing computing power: "cyberspace", "smooth surfaces", "interactivity", "artificial intelligence" and "man-machine-interface" are some of the fashionable catchphrases used in the context of media art, which perfectly fit the marketing strategies of the corresponding industries. |
Although the artists of my generation who reject the notion of "media art" cannot offer a better term, they instead deal with new media and new technologies in calmer and more relaxed ways. For them, new media are a 'natural' part of the world; media constitute an integral part of their world view. The world as they know it is inconceivable without media. Media technologies are not being assigned a utopian potential anymore. | Although the artists of my generation who reject the notion of "media art" cannot offer a better term, they instead deal with new media and new technologies in calmer and more relaxed ways. For them, new media are a 'natural' part of the world; media constitute an integral part of their world view. The world as they know it is inconceivable without media. Media technologies are not being assigned a utopian potential anymore. | ||
I would now like to briefly reflect on four artistic projects which I consider to be especially interesting in the context of this article. These four projects are not about using or applying new media and new technologies in the sense originally assigned to them. They are rather about appropriating, misusing and highjacking these technologies. These projects take a critical and detached stance towards the media machines, using the strategies of infiltration, irritation and interruption. They are devoted to the aesthetics of the error, to the electronic disturbance and technical breakdown, to dysfunctionality and the aesthetics of the machinic; in short: they are about rendering visible those processes which normally are at work below the smooth surfaces in the depth of the machine. Or, as a colleague of mine recently formulated, these projects approach technology „not from the perspective of smooth, supple merging of material and virtual worlds, but from the perspective of the accident, of friction and rupture which are necessary elements of any technical reality."(1) | I would now like to briefly reflect on four artistic projects which I consider to be especially interesting in the context of this article. These four projects are not about using or applying new media and new technologies in the sense originally assigned to them. They are rather about appropriating, misusing and highjacking these technologies. These projects take a critical and detached stance towards the media machines, using the strategies of infiltration, irritation and interruption. They are devoted to the aesthetics of the error, to the electronic disturbance and technical breakdown, to dysfunctionality and the aesthetics of the machinic; in short: they are about rendering visible those processes which normally are at work below the smooth surfaces in the depth of the machine. Or, as a colleague of mine recently formulated, these projects approach technology „not from the perspective of smooth, supple merging of material and virtual worlds, but from the perspective of the accident, of friction and rupture which are necessary elements of any technical reality."(1) | ||
Versione attuale delle 12:22, 1 Dic 2005
http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/Media/dysfunct.html
published in: Erkki Huhtamo (ed.), Medi-O-Rama, Diary of the Lightmouse Keeper, No. 8/1998 [English]
How do artists hi-jack new technologies?
Inke Arns <inke@berlin.snafu.de> Berlin, August 1998
"Don’t become a Master!" Alexej Shulgin, 'Art, Power, and Communication', Syndicate mailing list, 7 October 1996
Even if they are working with so-called new media, many of the artists of my generation do not consider themselves as being "media artists". They do not use the term because "media art" for them means a certain way of using new media and new technologies which they consider being uncritical, lacking distance towards the medium/technology, and generally being affirmative towards the technologies used. These young artists identify the notion of "media art" with virtually another generation of artists from the 1980s. I am referring here to the very impressive interactive installations and objects which were displayed at various ars electronica festivals in Linz, Austria, and to the recently opened media museum at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Sometimes this is being cynically referred to as "ZKM-" or "SGI-art". In many cases, visitors to these exhibitions (the "users") are merely confronted with the latest technological achievements and 'high performances' of the ever growing computing power: "cyberspace", "smooth surfaces", "interactivity", "artificial intelligence" and "man-machine-interface" are some of the fashionable catchphrases used in the context of media art, which perfectly fit the marketing strategies of the corresponding industries.
Although the artists of my generation who reject the notion of "media art" cannot offer a better term, they instead deal with new media and new technologies in calmer and more relaxed ways. For them, new media are a 'natural' part of the world; media constitute an integral part of their world view. The world as they know it is inconceivable without media. Media technologies are not being assigned a utopian potential anymore.
I would now like to briefly reflect on four artistic projects which I consider to be especially interesting in the context of this article. These four projects are not about using or applying new media and new technologies in the sense originally assigned to them. They are rather about appropriating, misusing and highjacking these technologies. These projects take a critical and detached stance towards the media machines, using the strategies of infiltration, irritation and interruption. They are devoted to the aesthetics of the error, to the electronic disturbance and technical breakdown, to dysfunctionality and the aesthetics of the machinic; in short: they are about rendering visible those processes which normally are at work below the smooth surfaces in the depth of the machine. Or, as a colleague of mine recently formulated, these projects approach technology „not from the perspective of smooth, supple merging of material and virtual worlds, but from the perspective of the accident, of friction and rupture which are necessary elements of any technical reality."(1)
JODI
The Dutch/Belgian artist group JODI consists of Dirk Paesmans und Joan Heemskerk, currently living and working in Spain. JODI, respectively their web site <http://www.jodi.org> has, for its radicality, by now gained some reputation among Internet users. When contacting the site, the first reaction is "Oh my God, my computer has crashed", or, "shit, I finally caught a virus". With their website, which makes extreme use of computer generated gif/jpeg images, CGI programmes, Javascripts, ASCII characters, and pure HTML text, JODI belongs to the most advanced represen- tatives of the so-called "net.art" (which reads correctly "net-dot-art"). By scrutinizing the notion of 'interactivity' and negating communicative impulses, JODI focuses on the basic elements of the Internet, devoting itself to what normally is being referred to as technical dysfunction: they reveal the technical disturbances occurring in the communication between machines.
Heath Bunting
A real "alarming" infiltration strategy was implemented by the British artist Heath Bunting during the exhibition "discord. sabotage of realities" which I co-organized at the Kunstverein in Hamburg in 1996-97. After an extensive research in the commercial areas of downtown Hamburg, Bunting prepared postcards with magnetic security stickers which usually are removed or deactivated before leaving the shop. These postcards he then mailed to shops that operate magnetic theft protection systems. Upon delivery, it was the postman who triggered the alarm; a strange reversal of the intended purpose of such systems. The text on the postcard read:
>are you alarmed? yes [ ] no [ ] >sometimes protective media systems >can be adapted into >vulnerable presence devices
-Innen
Founded in 1993 by Corinna Knoll, Ellen Nonnenmacher, Janine Sack and Cornelia Sollfrank, the group -Innen dedicated itself to analysing the power structures surrounding the use of new technologies ("old role models - new media"). Joined by Susanne Ackers, the -Innenplus team took part in the CeBIT '96 in Hannover, the world's largest computer fair. Dressed in look-alike uniforms, the aim was to parody the "art of media commerce through actionist simulationism."(2) -Innenplus says that "in contrast to the supposedly future-oriented technology (which is being promoted at the fair), it is astonishing how traditional role models are fiercly being clung to. Technology is a male domain. This is how the unproportional male presence at computer fairs can be explained. Professional help is needed to compensate the natural lack of women. The services of hostesses and prostitutes are a welcome remedy."(3) During their action "Women and Men at the CeBIT '96", the (female) staff of -Innenplus visited the booths and established contact with (male) sales managers, distributing a mousepad for free. The mousepad displayed a photo of the group as well as questions and a multiple choice system of answers about sex, technology and gender roles. A video tape documents the flabbergasted managers.
TV Poetry
On the occasion of the Medienbiennale Leipzig 94 which I organized together with Dieter Daniels, the Austrian artist Gebhard Sengmüller installed a system which actually functioned similar to JODI’s work. For his project "TV Poetry", Sengmüller set up satellite TV receivers in Vienna,Rotterdam and Lüneburg, which switched the TV channel every ten seconds. On the computers connected to the satellite receiver, a text-recognition programme was running, filtering out the text elements; e.g. subtitles or news headers. The software then converted the graphical text into ASCII characters. Depending on the size and the clarity of the 'original' texts in the TV images, the result was more or less correct. Every ten minutes the computers connected via a modem to the central computer in Leipzig, where the results - easily readable texts alternating with machinic gibberish and vice versa - were displayed as an infinite text stream on a monitor. TV Poetry was a silent meditation on the aesthetics of the machinic and the uncertainties of communication.
The four projects which I briefly introduced, have in common that they do not use new media and new technologies in the sense originally assigned to them: They rather digress, appropriate and annex these technologies. To be able to focus on the immaterial aspects of media art, generally the material conditions of such an art work have to be rendered invisible (4). Here, it is the exact opposite: these projects do emphasize the material conditions and the generally unquestioned technical, social and ideological assumptions underlying these new technologies. They focus on those realities which through their invisibility guarantee the frictionless functioning of the media machines, and as such they question the utopian promises of the smooth system surfaces.
Inke Arns
Berlin, August 1998
References: (1) Andreas Broeckmann, from the concept of the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF) 98 - The Unreliability of Accidents, Rotterdam, 17 - 29 November 1998 <http://www.v2.nl/DEAF> (2) Verena Kuni, '"Cyberfeminismus ist kein grünes Häkeldeckchen". Zur kritischen Netzpraxis von Künstlerinnen', in: kritische berichte, 1/1998, S. 65ff. (3) Press release by -Innenplus, Xerox, 1996 (4) Cf. Hans-Dieter Huber, 'Materialität und Immaterialität der Netzkunst', in: kritische berichte, 1/1998, S. 39ff
(Some) more reading:
Saul Albert, '"Interactivity", Image, Text, and Context within jodi.org', nettime mailing list, 4 Apr 1998 <http://www.factory.org/nettime/archive/1585.html>
Joachim Blank, '/temp/netart' (unpublished manuscript)
Andreas Broeckmann, 'Art in the Electronic Networks', 17 Oct 1996, in: ZKP 3.2.1 <http://www.vuk.org//zkp321/art/25.htm>
Andreas Broeckmann, 'Net.Art, Machines, and Parasites', nettime mailing list, 8 Mar 1997 <http://www.factory.org/nettime/archive/0226.html>
Andreas Broeckmann, 'Towards an Aesthetics of Heterogenesis', in: Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Special Issue on 'Machinic Theory', University of Luton Press, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1997, pp. 48-58
