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It is claimed that bioart is led by a problematic moral perogative to contest a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska 2009), what other ways are there?

This essay works on the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians such as Zylinska, Thacker and Munster, in relation to the claim that bioart is led by a problematic moral power to challenge a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). It looks into some of the dominating theories surrounding the field of this specific art movement and presents various points of view on the ethics of such an interdisciplinary entity.

Bioart, as a deliberately new art movement has always been a controversial topic. As said by Thacker, “the term bioart is often used to refer to projects that deal with biology as an artistic medium” (Thacker, 2005: 307), but in many cases the artists’ work is much more complicated. According to Zylinska, “the so called “bioart,” which stands for art utilizing biomaterial such as tissue, blood, or genes as its medium, evokes a lot of controversy, both within and without the art community” (Zylinska 2009: 149). As the author carries on claiming that “typical responses to bioart reflect a wider public anxiety regarding the current transformation of human and nonhuman life and its mediation by technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 149). As the author finds out while analyzing the work of Critical Art Ensemble: “there is an ambivalent relationship between moralist pronouncements and ethical forcework can also be identified in the work of CAE” (Zylinska, 2009: 156). She then carries on to positioning CAE “as both artists and activists, whose task is to “resist (…) authoritarian structures” of the dominant biopolitical regime and envisage a new techno-apparatus which will counter the “obsessively rational” military and corporate drives of “pancapitalism” (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). As Zylinska finds the artists’ words prophetic, they carry on to explaining the mechanics at work which surround the world of eugenics, bioart, and the financial issues involved in these processes:

If big science can ignore nuclear holocaust and species annihilation, it seems very safe to assume that concerns about eugenics or any of the other possible flesh catastrophes are not going to be very meaningful in its deliberations about flesh machinepolicy and practice. Without question, it is in the interest of pancapitalism to rationalize the flesh, and consequently it is in the financial interest of big science to see that this desire manifests itself in the world. (CAE in Zylinska, 2009: 156-157)

The above quote “highlights the deeply problematic role of the biotechnological industry in shaping the current political and social consensus about the “value” of life” (Zylinska, 2009: 157). According to these words the pancapitalist machine creates two major issues surrounding the debate on power relations within the bio-industry: firstly, attaching different values to flesh and life; and secondly, creating an extremely closed economy - a centered power layout where big science and military are the only ones to explore and benefit from the potential of the genetic code.

A more positive view on bio-economy is presented by Thacker, where she claims that bioart “(…) not only marginalizes (or niche markets) art, effectively separating it from the practices of technoscience, but the notion of a “bioart” also positions art practice as reactionary and, at best, reflective of the technosciences” (Thacker, 2005: 307). This positioning of bioart as opposing the dominant power structure within the industry via creating something new via an exploration of the uncovered and separation from the dominant schemes is followed by an even further reinforcement on the powers surrounding the discussed. According to Thacker, bioart has a unique political power of pointing “(…) real fissures in the social, cultural, and material effects of biotechnologies” (Thacker, 2005: 318) throughout the world around us.

One could say that the view of opening the biotech industry to the amateur might be an illuminating experience for both the arts and humanities, but nonetheless various complications may surely arise. One example can be found while analyzing the work of Adam Zaretsky - a self-declared “vivoartist”, who according to Zylinska “(…) is all for reinserting “fun for fun’s sake into the social” and for “things getting really weird”. He admits he would be keen to see some more “interesting mutations”: “iridescent humans, spotted and striped, with multiple limbs” (Zylinska, 2009: 160). According to the author, Zaretsky takes on a role of a Nietzschean philosopher, attacking the “established values around biotechnology and “life” with a double-edged hammer of serious play, in order to undertake their transvaluation” (Zylinska, 2009: 160).

Other authors such as Der Derian explore the topic further by contemplating future perspectives carried out by the expected release of biotech basic knowledge and cheap and accessible equipment to the public domain. He believes that “bioart project might come to be seen as the material evidence supporting practices of bioterrorism speaks not of ideological but instead of information warfare” (Der Derian, 2001; in Munster 2011: 6). Still, this clear link between bioart and bio-terror is brought down by Munster, where she purposes an example of how to deal with the arising problem while working on thoughts of Thacker:

The linking of life through the nodes of the network materializes information in such a way that it becomes the giant regulating principle of a properly organized, databased and policed info-sociality. Contestational biology must therefore also dispute this application of a generalized network as the fundamental and overriding design principle organizing social, cultural, economic and biological life. In Biomedia, Thacker has suggested that a critical approach to the materialization of information design through the theory and practice of contemporary biologies could begin to operate by deploying a rather different idea of 'metadesign' (Thacker, 2004: 191-193).

Rather than a principle of (linked) design accounting for the interactions and connections that constitute living systems, the living system might be reconceived as one that is structurally open to the variability and contingency of whatever interactions, nodes and links it sustains. (Munster, 2011: 8)

Still, this utopian solution does not seem to be convincing enough: It would create a situation influx of network over this unique biological practice will generate further surveillance issues. Furthermore, linking life-practice via a networked system will not stop nor oppress terrorism, as most likely future bio-rebels will surely find ways around it (keeping in mind the popularization and accessibility of home made eugenics labs.

A far more positive perspective can be found while looking at the words of Stelarc, a world famous new media and bioartist. According to Zylinska “Stelarc repeatedly tells us that he has no ambitions to be a philosopher or a political theorist. He refuses to be prescriptive in his work and so will not instruct us as to how we should treat our bodies or how we should coexist with technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 173). As the author believes, “listening to Stelarc will allow us to envisage a more effective politics and ethics. This will be a technopolitics of distributed agency and suspended command, informed by an ethics of infinite - and at times crazy, shocking, and excessive - hospitality toward the alterity of technology (that is always already part of us)” (Zylinska, 2009: 173).

Looking at the above thoughts devised by both artists and theoreticians, one could say that the best approach to consider the golden middle expressed by Zylinska while talking about Stelarc: sampling openness towards biotech from artists such as Zaretsky, but keeping in mind the politics surrounding this newly emerging art of life manipulation. This would create a situation described by Zylinska, where “it is not to say that “we are machines” or that “we are all Stelarcs now,” as the Krokers put it. If humans and machines are collapsed—as they tend to be in some current accounts of “the network society”—into a fluid epistemology in which difference is overcome for the sake of horizontal affective politics (Zylinska, 2009: 173).

Bibliography and Readings:

Critical Art Ensemble, 'Transgenic Production and Cultural Resistance: A Seven-Point Plan', in Molecular Invasion, New York: Autonomedia, 2002, pp. 58-75.

Rebecca Schneider, 'Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble', The Drama Review 44.4 (2000): 120-131.

Eugene Thacker, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', in Natalie Jeremijenko and Eugene Thacker (eds) Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Locus +, 2004, pp. 38-39.

Eugene Thacker, 'Conclusion: Tactical Media and Bioart', in The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 305-320.

Anna Munster, 'Why is Bioart Not Terrorism?: Some Critical Nodes in the Networks of Informatice Life', Culture Machine 7 (2005), http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/31/38

Joanna Zylinska, 'Green Bunnies and Speaking Ears: The Ethics of Bioart', in Bioethics in the Age of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 149-174.

Beatriz da Costa, 'Reaching the Limit: When Art Becomes Science', in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 365-385.

Michael Dieter, 'Issues, Process, AIR: Toward Reticular Politics', Australian Humanities Review 46 (2009), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2009/dieter.htm

It has been suggested that locative media is the “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’”

This essay focuses on the ideas explored by Tuters and Vernelis (originally devised partially by Broeckmann and Lovink) about the state of locative media technologies, and the true nature of their power in relation to contemporary new media art:

The reluctance of many locative-media practitioners to position their work as political has led some theorists, such as Andreas Broeckmann (director of the Transmediale Festival), to accuse locative media of being the “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’”, referring to Gilles Deleuze’s description of the contemporary regime of power. Broeckmann suggests that, since locative media is fundamentally based on the appropriation of technologies of surveillance and control, its practitioners have a duty to address that fact in their work. Geert Lovink has claimed that the movement instead has turned the media-art conference circuit into a “shopping-driven locative spectacle”. (Broeckmann and Lovink in Tuters and Vernelis, 2006: 360)

According to the above quote, this essay will focus on two presented characteristics embedded in modern mapping and visualization techniques. The firstly mentioned “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’” can be shortly described as all relations of the above to the military and surveillance procedures, and will be critically discussed according to the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians in the field. The second characteristic, as mentioned by Lovink, can be narrowed to all related commercial aspects, and will be judged upon based on a few examples found throughout the Internet.

To begin with, the most important thought about the introduced problem can be found while looking at the work of Bruno Latour. In the beginning of Visualization and Congnition the author mentions both the law enforcement and administration. As he keeps analyzing the “divide between prescientific and scientific culture”, calling it “merely a border”, he states that “It is enforced arbitrarily by police and bureaucrats, but it does not represent any natural boundary” (Latour, 1986: 2).

Other theoreticians such as Russell in his Headmap Manifesto claim even more connections of the recently evolved techniques of mapping to military practice. While discussing it in terms of conquest and control, he claims that “The military has always been actively involved in map making, the Ordinance Survey in the UK is the primary source of civilian mapping data and is the primary governmental mapping organization, until recently it was directly controlled and funded by the military” (Russel, 1999: 10). He also concludes the paragraph with an example from the gulf war: “(…) in former Yugoslavia, the commanders integrated a whole range of spatial mapping technologies, from 3d terrain models to GPS, to enhance their formidable command and control systems” (Russell, 1999:10).

Moreover, Russell while discussing the politics in software, points out two extremely important specifications of mapping: firstly, no guarantee of liberatory use via a direct link to both the military and business corporations, which is followed by the scary idea of social control through information via never-ending ethereal display of ads. As looking at the first aspect, the author claims that “new technology, before it arrives, heralds destruction or liberation depending on whose account you happen to be reading” (Russell, 1999: 15). He follows with explaining that “the internet has been (all at once) an anarchists tool, a military tool, a tool for salesmen and businesses, and in general a communications medium for everyone able to use it for whatever purpose they intend” (Russell, 1999: 15). This sad vision that we have to keep in mind while using mobile aware devices is further explored under the issue of constantly raising corporate domination via social control. His contemplation starts with idea that “LAPD will continiue to win political support for ambitious capital investment programs in new technology” and this will, according to the author, lead to “both criminal and non criminal” being “monitored by both cellular and centralized survaillances” (Russell, 1999: 15). Analogously “If this technology impacts without privacy built-in, all kinds of organisations could not only know your internet browsing habits, but where and when you go (in real time - i.e. where are you now), what you buy and who you see, and from that establish the patterns in your spatial behaviour” (Russell 1999: 16). This domination over technology-mediated experience raises questions of “how do we stop salesmen getting access to our every waking moment irrespective of place and time?” (Russell, 1999: 16).

Brian Holmes presents a very similar perspective on the potential of locative projects while analyzing “swarm cartography” by a Spanish activist group, where in Network Maps, one could state, that he stresses the claims the prime aim of mapping in general. According to the author, this technology’s one side is “(…) a map of power: on a Mercator projection turned upside-down, it shows sea-going migration routes, refugee camps, destination zones, electronic surveillance systems, military installations, internment centers, etc. But the other side traces a complex meshwork of activist groups on both sides of the Straits, showing their interrelations, their meetings, their evolution over time. The aim is not only to represent, but above all to catalyze a future range of possible interventions by autonomous agents (…)” (Holmes, 2007: 5). Even though this example, no matter how noble, the same technology is used by governmental, corporate and law enforcement agencies, filtering even bigger data bases and providing with more accurate outcomes.

Nonetheless, some theoreticians believe that “there are many artists’ projects that map corporate and military power relationships” (A. and M. Kroker, in Diamond, 2010: 224), one should always keep in mind the power carried by mapping technologies, and watch out for hands wielding them. There are some, who try to oppose the dominant corporation, but in many cases they lack resources or get entangles within its concept. Artists’ visualizations in many cases fail to inform, phone applications such as Flook turn out to guide users to expensive shops and restaurants, hardware and software providers gathering intel about the users are all things we should be constantly aware of.

According to the above links of locative media, mapping and visualization technologies in contemporary media art can and should be critically approached as discussed by Tuters and Varnelis, where the unwillingness of most contemporary media practicioneers to strongly bias their work with correct political positioning has led to a situation where the described is driven by both the military and the corporate. This is mainly visible in the analyzed models of contemporary surveillence methods and the ways they are employed, but also by the tracking technology used by the police and military. This breaching of the private sphere may be also found while focusing on the information flow which is directly linked to location aware devices, which one has to keep in mind not to end up in a world covered with mind-molding corporate information.

Bibliography and Readings:

Bruno Latour, 'Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together', in Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar (eds) Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986, pp. 19-68.

Ben Russell, Headmap Manifesto (1999).

Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis. ‘Beyond Locative Media: Giving Shape to the Internet of Things’, Leonardo 39.4 (2006): 357-363.

Brian Holmes, 'Network Maps, Energy Diagrams: Structure and Agency in the Global System', Continental Drift (2007), http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/network-maps-energy-diagrams/

Teodor Mitew, 'Repopulating the Map: Why Subjects and Things are Never Alone', Fibreculture 13 (2008), http://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-089-repopulating-the-map-why-subjects-and-things-are-never-alone/

Lev Manovich, 'Data Visualization as New Abstraction and as Anti-Sublime', in Bryon Hawk et al (eds) Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, pp. 3-9.

Sara Diamond, 'Lenticular Galaxies: The Polyvalent Aesthetics of Data Visualization', in Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker (eds) Code Drift: Essays in Critical Digital Studies, Victoria, CA: New World Perspectives / CTheory Books, 2010, pp. 192-243.

"To study media is often if not always to study the political economy of an open secret"

This essay focuses on a broad topic of new media archives, archival technologies, the concept of database, its aesthetics, hypertext, as well as media archeology. Via analysis of some of the ideas claimed by the most influencing theoreticians in the field, it explores the idea of an ‘open secret’ (Foucault in Krapp 2006: 369) and it’s relationship to the above branches of new media inquiry.

Christiane Paul, in her piece on digital art believes that the term “database aesthetics” is often used to describe the “aesthetic principles applied in imposing the logic of the database to any type of information, filtering data collections, and visualizing data (Paul, 2007: 95). She believes that database aesthetics often becomes a conceptual potential and cultural form — a way of revealing (visual) patterns of knowledge, beliefs, and social behavior (Paul, 2007: 95). She also believes that the aesthetics of the database are a structure itself, although it certainly implies that meaning and the structure of a database is inherently connected to the results produced by the filtering of the data contained in it and the nature of its visualization. (Paul, 2007: 95).

According to the author “(…) visualization and “dynamic mapping” of real-time data streams has become a broad area of inquiry in digital art” (2007: 99). Following this notion, applying the keyword database to visual arts, gaming, music, and culture in general, produces an enormous field of inquiry for both the arts, humanities and mathematics. Finally, the author claims that “database structure in the broadest sense lies at the root of digital media, it is only natural that database aesthetics play a major role in digital art and culture” (2007: 108).

She also believes that the common theme for “database aesthetics” seems to be more focused on the operations happening on the “front end” — the concept of the algorithms, its visual manifestations, and cultural implications — rather than the “back end” of the data container and its structure (Paul, 2007: 97). This is where one can notice that the way in which the author approaches database aesthetics is strongly linked to the artist, his visual expression and the incredibly vast amounts of information carried by the manifested data visualization.

Soon after, Paul notices one of the main points of Krapp’s claim: the potential of data for being infinite or unbound – open. She claims that: “one of the inherent characteristics of digital art is the tension between the mostly linear and hierarchical structure of databases (or the Internet’s territory as a multitude of servers with hierarchical directories) and instructions, on the one hand, and, on the other, the seemingly infinite possibilities for reproducing and reconfiguring the information contained within these structures” (Paul, 2007: 97).

The author focuses further on the idea of aesthetics of a database as intrinsically relational, either on the level of its potential or the actual relationships established by the software element (2007: 98). Shortly explaining this claim, one should keep in mind that the aesthetics of databases are an even more expansive concept than the database field itself. This leads the author to her next claim about “the possibilities of tracing process individual, cultural, communicative—in its various forms” (2007: 98). Following the words of Paul, “the understanding of a database as the underlying principle and structure of any new media object delineates a broad field that includes anything from a network such as the Internet to a particular data set (2007: 98-99), providing the artist or scientist in charge of the set with constantly expanding material for practice as well as a rapidly growing diverse field of analysis.

Christiane Paul believes that database aesthetics became somewhat of a characteristic of our times of rapid information flow, reaching beyond the digital and transcending the traditional archives of the library and museum. Most importantly, she claims “the notion of relational databases as an organizational model seems increasingly to infiltrate culture” (2007: 108), presenting this phenomenon on a global scale.

Relating the concept of relational database and its aesthetics to the idea of “openness” touched by Krapp, I find most important to cite Paul’s grand statement where she claims the notions of data, collection and network as tied together within a fresh term of relational database aesthetics:

Largely brought about by digital technologies, database aesthetics itself has become an important cultural narrative of our time, constituting a shift toward a relational, networked approach to gathering and creating knowledge about cultural specifics.
(Paul, 2007: 108)

Sven Spieker, the second of the analyzed authors, in his critical analysis of the archive presents a far more grave stance towards a similar topic. While focusing on the archive’s content, the author notices that conventionally “the records stored in archives fulfilled a legal function”. Nonetheless, over time archives changed from being “legal depositories” into “institutions of historical research”. According to Spieker the archive shifted into a hybrid institution based in public administration and historical research (Spieker, 2008: xii).

Following, he presents some obstacles related to the topic, previously left behind by Paul. Spieker believes that when an archive has an objective to collect everything, because any object may become useful in the future, the archive itself will drop into chaos, a state of entropy and irrational change. As he notices, “there are cases when feedback does not produce a higher degree of stability but, on contrary, leads to chaos. In such cases the system begins to swing back and forth so violently that it finally collapses. This (…) is a state of entropy that symbolizes, more generally, the archive’s precarious position between order and chaos, between organization and disorder, between the presence of the voice and the muteness of object (Spieker, 2008: xiii). The above quote may be seen as a relation to the openness aspect analyzed by Paul, but this particular thought also carries the logics or what Krapp referred to as “open secret”. Even though entering a state of chaotic consuming of its subjects or any other kind of absorbing vast amounts of information, the previously described openness is followed by the unpredictable; the mentioned chaos of surrounding data – the overload of positions carrying a thought of secrecy.

Developing the topic further while analyzing the work of Bouvard and Pecuchet , Spieker exposes the idea of chaos – multiple archives within archives – a direct relation to the questioned oxymoron of an “open secret”:

There is, then, no position from which data collected by the two characters could be referred to tht is not that of the archive. Whenever such a position – a position outside of their endeavor, outside of the collection they have established – comes within reach, they quickly discover that it is itelf yet part of another archive, another discipline or field of knowledge that has to be studied, inventoried, and mastered. The maddening conundrum faced by Bouvard and Pecuchet is that everything that can be known is already archival. (Bouvard and Pecuchet in Spieker, 2008: 33)

This grand conclusion is followed by a final definition of an archive as a storehouse for knowledge. So called by the author “the modern archive” (as a mirror image to the previously described relational databases) denotes a place outside of itself. “But this beyond-the-archive is not a transcendent outside or an empty space waiting to be filled; it is yet in fact another archive” (Spieker, 2008: 33).

To sum up the thoughts of the most influencing theoreticians covering the fields of archives, technologies, databases, its aesthetics, hypertext, and media archeology; the discussed oxymoron of an “open secret” can be explained either as a single concept or as two distinct characteristics of aesthetics or functioning of hypertext within modern archives or databases. The idea of openness can be seen in the collective gathering of knowledge, tendency for a universal language, and constantly expanding growth and interconnectivity. This is interrelated with the notion of secrecy, a chaotic trap of archives within archives, and a misleading entropy of data flows. The above ideas tied together create a notion where new media studies and media art aesthetics based on the concept of archive in general, are caught in a dangerous trap of constant growth of information and production of meaning.

Bibliography and Readings:

Lev Manovich, ‘The Database as Symbolic Form’, in The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 218-243.

Christiane Paul, ‘The Database as System and Cultural Form: Anatomies of Cultural Narratives’, in Victoria Vesna (ed.) Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp. 95-109.

Peter Krapp, ‘Hypertext Avant La Lettre’, in Wendy Chun and Thomas Keenan (eds) New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 359-373.

Sven Spieker, The Big Archive: Art From Bureaucracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp. ix-34.

Geert Lovink, 'Archival Rumblings: Interview with German Media Archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst', Nettime (2003), http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0302/msg00132.html

Siegfried Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward a Media Archaeology of Seeing and Hearing by Technical Means, trans. Gloria Custance, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, pp. 1-38.

Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka, 'Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method', Leonardo [forthcoming]

Interacticipation: Ten Artworks Reflecting the Status of Contemporary Participation in New Media Art

Interactive art is a genre of art in which the viewers participate in a way by providing an input in order to determine the outcome (Wikipedia, 2011a). In other words, it allows a dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. Although the history of interactive art goes back to the fifth century B.C. according to the new media artist and theorist Maurice Benayoun, in the advent of computer based interactivity in the 1990’s interactive art became a large phenomenon. Esspecially human-machine interactivity was subject of experiments. Ever since, It is impossible to imagine an contemporary art scape without interactive art.

However, interactivity is a somewhat confusing term. It is often described as a problematic concept or category for art. As Erkki Huhtamo argues in his article Trouble at the Interface, or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art about classical interactive art like Myron Krueger’s Videoplace: “Of course, the reception of art itself can always be claimed to be ‘active’ (an argument frequently used by traditional art critics in their invectives against interactive art). However, interactive art added to the mental activity a haptic dimension: the visitor was not only allowed, but required to touch the work. The touch – often physical, but sometimes “virtualized”, mediated by a videocamera or a microphone, was essential” (Huhtamo, 2004: 1-2).

Because interactivity as a concept raises questions, we focus in this exhibition on artworks that play with the idea of interactivity and participation and critically reflect on it.

1. Painstation (2001) – Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff

Painstation is a game created in 2001 by Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff. It consists a console for two players. The players each hold a joystick with their right hand and place their left hand on a metallic plate that is called the Pain Execution Unit (PEU). As both players have done this, the electronic circuit is closed and then the game can start. The game itself is a ordinary Pong tennis game. The players play it against each other. When one of the two players misses a ball, pain is inflicted on the player’s hand by the PEU. There are three types of pain: electroshocks, heat and the lash of a metallic whip. When someone takes his hand of the PEU the electric circuit is broken and the game ends. The player that endures the pain the longest wins the game (Waelder Laso, 2007: 239).

The game was a great success at several game conferences. Both males and females were displaying their wounds with pride. According to Pau Waelder Laso in his article Games of Pain: Pain as Haptic Stimulation in Computer-Game–Based Media Art “what many players find in these games of pain is what many people in Western society are looking for in more or less sublimated forms: an engaging experience that involves both body and mind, a way to release aggressiveness in a harmless manner, a social intercourse, a chance to demonstrate one’s self-efficacy before others, a different form of competition” (Waelder Laso, 2007: 242).

2. Augmented fish reality (2004) – Ken Rinaldo

Augmented fish reality is an installation of five rolling robotic fish-bowl sculptures. Each of the five is a consisting a Siamese Fighting fish. The sculptures allow the fish to move their bowls, using intelligent hardware and software. It uses four infrared sensors around the bowl that allow the fish to move forward and backward en turn the bowl. Erkki Huhtamo thinks Augmented fish reality is a problematic case of interactive art:

“There are problematic cases, like Ken Rinaldo’s Augmented Fish Reality that received the jury’s distinction. Two Siamese fighting fishes inhabiting separate fish bowls placed on motorized platforms with wheels. By interrupting laser beams crossing the bowls the fishes can “drive” their bowl-worlds around the room. Amazing, but is it interactive art? One might reason that the fishes are surrogates for human interactors, which would qualify the work at least as a “metainteractive” piece” (Huhtamo, 2004: 6).

The art is of course interactive for the fish, but not for humans. They will keep being just the spectators of the artwork. However, the creators claim the sculptures are “designed to explore interspecies and transpecies communication”. If that is enough to call it interactive art, that will always remain questionable.

3. n-cha(n)t (2001) – David Rokeby

n-Cha(n)t is an art installation, created by David Rokeby. In this artwork, computers are communicating with each other. The installation consists seven computers, that run software for voice recognition, free association and language generation. Attached to the computers, tightly focussed microphones listen to the words that people speak in the immediate vicinity. The computers stimulate each other, because they are linked by a network, and the computers speak their stream of associations through the speakers. On the monitors of the computers we see ears. These ears indicate each computer’s state of receptivity. In the absence of outside stimulus, the community of computers finds its way to equilibrium. As Erkki Huhtamo says:

Although these works accept input from human participants, the processes happening internally between the various network ‘nodes’ within these works (in Rinaldo’s case, a flock of robotic creatures able to sense each other’s presence and reactions, as well as to receive stimuli from the outside) are at least as interesting and challenging. (Huhtamo, 2004: 5-6)

Although this installation allows human input, the main interactivity occurs between the computers, in the network.

4. Wooden Mirror (1999) – Daniel Rozin

In the years to come I had an opportunity to experience a whole line-up of ‘interactive’ works (…) As different as these works were, they had things in common: they were publicly exhibited as installations, used computer technology, images and sounds, and were supposed to be ‘activated’ by the user – they required a physical effort from the part of the visitor to function and to reveal their meanings. (Huhtamo, 2004:1)

Similarly as described by Huhtamo, this piece explores the line between digital and physical, using a warm and natural material such as wood to portray the abstract notion of digital pixels. Interactive artist Daniel Rozin works in a very particular artistic field, making mirrors from unreflective organic surfaces. One of his major creations, ‘the wooden mirror’ is a testament to his skill in this area. It consists of 830 square pieces of wood which are hooked up to an equal number of small motors which move the wooden blocks according to a built in camera. The camera picks up movement in light and somehow transfers the signal to the wood, and the result is an eerie representation of reality depicted in tiny wooden pixels.

Applying this project to the words of Erkki Huhtamo while looking at the aspect of user/viwer interaction with the piece, one could notice that there is an obvious link between it and the concept of different kinds of interacting:

(…) “old school” interactive art has had its day and is in the process of being replaced by something else, the outlines of which we don’t yet quite perceive. If this is so, wouldn’t it be best to give up the label of interactive art altogether – or save it to the “old school” work emphasizing direct active interaction between the user and the piece – and replace it with something else? (Huhtamo, 2004:4)

As the author call to reflect on the definition of interaction, he finally claims the ‘depth’ of the process as central to the discussion:

If the word interactive is to retain anything about its former distinctiveness, it should, perhaps, be after all reserved to cases where active and repeated user-intervention plays a significant role in the functioning of the system (Huhtamo, 2004:6)

Still, the piece created by Rozin could not be more interactive, as the idea of mirroring itself has the potential of reflecting all images from its sorounding, and similarly as described by Huhtamo, it plays a significant role where even the passive viewer is engaged in the artistic process generated by the piece.

(…) it might be suggested that “interactive art” as a category would be reserved for works where the issue of user interaction plays a significant role. Perhaps (…) “Database aesthetics” might be a viable candidate, as it would by-pass the difficulties associated with concepts like user interaction, passive interaction and system interaction (…). (Huhtamo, 2004:7)

5. ACCESS (2003) – Marie Sester

ACCESS lets you track anonymous individuals in public places, by pursuing them with a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system. It presents control tools generated by surveillance technology combined with the advertising and Hollywood industries, and the internet. It refers to political propoganda and media manipluation.

Beware. Some individuals may not like being monitored.
Beware. Some individuals may love the attention. (Sester, 2003)

It is often described as: scary-fun / obsession-fascination / control-resistance; it is impossible to determine who is actually in control.

Applying this example to the words of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer one could notice an obvious similarity between his relational architecture and the surveillance piece designed by Marie Sester. According to the words of Lozano-Hemmer:

(…) an important aspect of my work in Relational Architecture is to produce a performative context where default buildings may take on temporary specificity and where vampire buildings may decline their role in their established, prevailing identification. The pieces are usually ephemeral interventions designed to establish architectural and social relationships where unpredicted behaviours may emerge. (…) Using projections, robotics, sound, net connections and local sensors, the input and feedback from participants becomes an integral part of the work and the outcome is dictated by their actions. (Lozano-Hemmer, 2002)

As the author gives examples of other of his works, he moves to describing the term “relational”:

I named the series of interventions “relational” in large part because I wanted to avoid using the term “interactive”. This word has become too vague, like “postmodern”, “virtual”, “deconstruction” or other terms that mean too many things and is exhausted. (…) “Relational” has a more horizontal quality, it’s more collective: events happen in fields of activity that may have resonances in several places in the network. (Lozano-Hemmer, 2002)

Given the definition, Lozano-Hemmer carries on to his view on the two inseparable approaches to interaction:

The Italian approach is all about the window onto the world. You have this frame and you step back from the subject, from reality, as though looking through this neutral glass. This formula is what informs humanism and virtuality. (…) The Italian metaphor implies that you can look at a subject objectively, while the Dutch emphasis is on foldings or reflections that are already taking place in our own corporeal space, where perception is an apparatus. The two cannot be clearly separated as I suggest, but the Dutch approach illustrates more clearly my preferred understanding of perception (…). (Lozano-Hemmer, 2002)

As one may easily notice, this specific piece is probably the best example confirming the truth of Lozano-Hemmer’s words. ACCESS is an installation where both the active and passive viewer roles may easily shift, so one becomes the other. Due to the fact that random users of the Internet trigger this artwork, no one can ever know if he will become the target of the tracking device. It can be also related to the words of Josephine Bosma:

Instead of just reacting or responding to a changing perception of art, artists have started to interfere in the perception process itself by anticipating the audience’s movement. The artist now uses or guides the audience’s movements and is steering its perception and interpretation of the work. (Bosma, 2006: 31-32)

…but in this case the mentioned “anticipation of movement” will be done more directly.

6. Optical Camouflage (2010) – Takayuki Fukatasu

Active camouflage or adaptive camouflage, is a group of camouflage technologies which allow an object to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of altering their appearance, color, luminance and reflective properties. Active camouflage has the capacity to provide perfect concealment from visual detection (Wikipedia, 2011b). Optical Camouflage is a project similar to Invisible Cloak done by the University of Tokyo, but it uses more contemporary Nintendo Kinect body capture technology. This YouTube video is not only as a Kinect hack-performance. It can be seen also as a response to the previously discussed ACCESS installation.

Prototype: M. Inami, D. Sekiguchi, S. Tachi, Le manteau transparent! (Transparent Cloak!), Brochure of Demonstration at Laval Virtual 2003, Laval Virtual 2003, France, May 13-18, 2003, (French Version), (English Version)

7. Interactive Puppeteer (2010) – Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson

This puppeteering piece uses skeleton tracking on an arm to control the movement and posture of the puppet. The authors of this projecthacked the Kinect together in a day’s time using open-source Kinect drivers (which is really awsome!).

This specific piece can be related to the words of Josephine Bosma, where she exposes a similar mechanism of the true power of Internet art, given by bringing the audience and performer closer together:

Internet art is totally dependent on engagement and can only show itself to its full advantage by virtue if the active participant. This type of media artifact has been called ‘pull media’, the opposite of ‘push media’ such as television – a term which illustrates the efforts of the audience in new media environments. Without an audience which adds content, navigates, reacts or accepts an invitation of participation or an invitation to make use of specific work nothing happens, and more importantly, without this there is practically no art experience. By default, through contact with the Internet’s architectures, the audience for art on the Net is brought into a closer relationship to the person and works of the artist, and a step away from the aloofness of the traditional museum (Bosma, 2006: 31).

Even though this presentation of an interactive projected puppet can be seen as a simple play with the device, it opens up a whole new field for interactive play.

8. Pulse Park (2008) – Rafael Lozano-Hammer

Pulse Park is comprised of a matrix of light beams that graze the central oval field of Madison Square Park in New York. Their intensity is entirely modulated by a sensor that measures the heart rate of participants and the resulting effect is the visualization of vital signs, arguably our most symbolic biometric, in an urban scale. The author is very famous for his ‘interactive’ installations in large urban spaces (he prefers to call it ‘relational art’), where he encourages (haptic dimmension is key in his art works) viewers or passer-by’s to finish uncompleted piece of art. The grounding of his work is participation of the public.

The pieces are usually ephemeral interventions designed to establish architectural and social relationships where unpredicted behaviours may emerge [...] For me it is a priority to create social experiences rather than to generate collectible objects. The making of a piece itself is closer to developing a performance or a play than a visual artwork (Lozano-Hammer, 2002).

‘To accomplish this we use large-scale technologies of amplification that are usually reserved for publicity stunts and corporate events. These technologies are typically used to perform a pre-programmed commercial monologue, and it is always exciting to exploit them in ways they were not intended. Using projections, robotics, sound, net connections and local sensors, the input and feedback from participants becomes an integral part of the work and the outcome is dictated by their actions’ (Ibid).

In Pulse Park, evening visitors to Madison Square Park have their systolic and diastolic activity measured by a sensor sculpture installed at the North end of the Oval Lawn. These biometric rhythms are translated and projected as pulses of narrow-beam light that will move sequentially down rows of spotlights placed along the perimeter of the lawn as each consecutive participant makes contact with the sensor. The result is a poetic expression of our vital signs, transforming the public space into a fleeting architecture of light and movement.

9. iRiS (Immediate Remote Interaction System) – Alexander Wiethoff

Alexander Wiethoff of the Department for Informatics at LMU Munich has developed with the Univeristy of Saarbrücken a mobile device application that enables a radically new form of interaction with buildings. The design allows people in front of the building to literally paint with light on the façade by using their mobile phones. After loading the mobile phone application, users can select colors and draw over the image of the building shown on their phone’s camera which instantly triggers the lights on the faced to change color.

iRiS - http://project-iris.org/ from awiethoff on Vimeo.

By combining a recently developed mobile software application with the multimedia facade of the ARS Electronica building [...] we developed two prototypes: in the first application, users can paint interactively on the building using touch input on the mobile device. In a second application, users are able to solve a jigsaw puzzle displayed on the facade

As Lozano-Hammer said:

There are two main strategies for collective interactivity. The first one I call “taking turns”. You have one or two sensors and people take turns to use them, and the rest are spectators…. (Lozano-Hammer, 2002).

This is exactly what happens in this work. One takes turns and takes part in artwork production, while the rest are viewers, who also reflect on the work.

10. Hit Counter (2009) – Zach Gage

Hit Counter is at once sophisticated and remarkably simple work. It basic principle is that it shows measurement of the number of times someone has stood in front of the work. Face recognition software is used to keep track of the actual viewers and the number is displayed on an old-fashioned mechanical counter.

For the author viewer’s presence is very important and plays enormous role in finishing the artwork.

Seen in a certain light, the core of technological mediation has always been presence, absence, and distance. Writing established the possibility of presence during absence, arrows and gunpowder created force at a distance, the telephone created presence at distance, and network computing fundamentally altered the nature of being “absent” or “present” to an almost unrecognizable degree (Noble, 2011).

And this present is viewer’s ‘task’, which finishes the artwork. This artwork would of course exist without people participating in it, however would it be finished work?

Depending on public participation is a humbling affair because the work will not exist without the main protagonist, which is the public as actor (Lozano-Hammer, 2002).

References

Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods, Paris: Les presses du réel, 2002, pp. 11-24, 86-105.

Félix Guattari, ‘Machinic Hetereogenesis’, in Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992, pp. 33-57.

Erkki Huhtamo, ‘Trouble at the Interface, or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art’, Framework: The Finnish Art Review 2 (2004): pp. 38-41.

Josephine Bosma, ‘Meet the Active Audience’, in Tom Corby (ed.) Network Art:Practices and Positions, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 24-39.

Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 1-15, 223-249.

Joshua Noble, ‘Interview with Zach Gage, in Rhizome, 16.02.2011 available at http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/feb/16/interview-zach-gage/

Chris Salter, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010, pp. xx-xxxix.

Waelder Laso, Pau. ‘Games of Pain: Pain as Haptic Stimulation in Computer-Game-Based Media Art’. Leonardo. Vol. 40, Nr. 3, The MIT Press June 2007, pp. 238-242.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, ‘Alien Relationships with Public Space’, in Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (eds) TransUrbanism, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002, pp. 139-159.

Brian Massumi, ‘The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens: A Semblance of a Conversation’, Inflexions 1.1 “How is Research-Creation?” (May 2008), www.inflexions.org

Wikipedia (2011a). “Interactive art” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_art (accessed february 23, 2011)

How does 'destructive creativity' in media art respond to informationalism and the postindustrial ideology of creative destruction?

This essay focuses on the concept of error as a suggested aesthetic for contemporary computer arts. It works mainly on the thoughts of Liu and other influencing theoreticians, and presents their stance towards the future of contemporary society of information. It also works on the idea of “destructive creativity” as viral, in relation to the early concept of creative destruction.

In The Laws of Cool, Alan Liu analyzes the concept of “knowledge work” within a contemporary society. His critical analysis is based on the future possibilities for both arts and humanities, and inquires into the notion of “destructive creation” as a new governing aesthetic of the information age. He starts his argument with describing some of the characteristics of this specific net art movement:

Aesthetics in the age of knowledge work is now being defined by several contenders for a dominant ideology that have not yet fully articulated themselves or negotiated their intramural relationships. (…) I mean by this the aesthetics of mutation and remixing that recreate through new technologies something like the art of quintessential hybridity and chance (…). (Liu, 2004: 324)

After placing the idea within a specific environment, Liu focuses on the very definition of destructive creation. According to the author “destructive creation” [is] the critical inverse of the mainstream ideology of creative destruction”. He also adds “the most austere and terrifying implementation of such an aesthetics is what I alluded to in my introduction under the name viral aesthetics” (Liu, 2004: 325). As the author narrows down the definition, he then calls forth the idea of a viral destruction of informationalism as the first link between “coolness” and “destructive creation”:

The most avant-garde arts of the age of knowledge work break out of the confines of the arts to perform “destructivity” in corporate and other dominant social sectors directly. (…) the idea of “auto-destruction” is transmitted into domains of society external to the arts as “viral” – that is, as a destructivity that attacks knowledge work through technologies and techniques internal to such work. The genius of contemporary aesthetics is to introject destructivity within informationalism. This, we may say, is very cool. (Liu, 2004: 331)

After positioning the main idea within the context of informationalism, he moves to applying it to the postindustrial concept of creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1975: 82-85):

(…) Destructive creativity is only the most sublime of the contenders for a new governing aesthetic responsive to the postindustrial ideology of “creative destruction”. (…) Destructive creativity is the most “virulent” of the new aesthetics designed to propose an alternate vocabulary of creation/destruction (disturbance, chaos, play, transformation) intended to reconfigure “creative destruction” into a vision not just of global corporate culture but of a flourishing multiplicity of cultures. (Liu, 2004: 370)

Following, he moves back to the concept of knowledge work as a field for auto-applying of the new technology-based culture of cool. He believes that “all these struggling aesthetics are attempts to install within the life of knowledge work an “ethos of the unknown” able to mold “cool” – the popular form of such ethos – into more experimental, expansive, diverse, active, and aware forms” (Liu, 2004: 370-371). This is followed by a summary, in which Liu proposes a solution for the humanities – applying the techno-artistic ethos within information technology, therefore redefining cool, and finally moving to a new age in humanities:

The adequacy of such future aesthetics of the information age, clearly, will henceforth merit reflection, not just in respect to the ordinary generations of cool that the neo-avant-garde will mirror, amplify, and help educate. (Liu, 2004: 371)

Closing his argument, Liu points out the critical point of his conclusion by saying that destructive creativity may therefore reinforce the relations between arts and humanities, and their audiences:

Perhaps of special interest to humanities scholars, such artists are “relevant” in a way that does not necessarily surrender critical perspective. However contrarian or “shocking” the arts may be, they often have far greater appeal to audiences and donors than the professional humanities. (Liu, 2004: 322)

As Liu focuses on the future possibilities of the information driven society, Kelly presents an approach that might be seen as more ‘down to earth’. In his analysis of cracked media, working on theories of Serres, Adorno and Attali, he comes to an argument where the idea of destruction can be seen as giving a beginning for the creation of new meanings and sounds. According to Caleb Kelly:

“Noise … does not exist in itself, but only in relation to the system in which it is inscribed … long before it was given theoretical expression, noise had always been experienced as destruction, disorder, dirt, pollution, an aggression against the code-structuring messages.” For Attali, noise creates meaning through the interruption of the message, and through the freed imagination of the listener within pure noise, “The absence of meaning is in this case the presence of all meanings.” For new meanings to be created a crisis or catastrophe must occur, or perhaps an accident, that will focus the elements of chaos into a singular focused emergent meaning. (Attali in Kelly, 2009: 81)

While working on mainly digitally generated music and its cracked media devices, Kelly’s theoretical stance can be seen as a description of nowadays circuit benders, with all the noise following the artistic practice as well as the serious stance towards the power structure of the music industry. His approach can be perceived as a link to what is argued by Liu – a situation in which a new for of expression and ideology arises from the ruins of the actual:

Noise need not be seen as disturbance ; it need to be excess or transgression. Noise is the backdrop to all communication, but in those instance when the backdrop is brought to the fore it is simply not disturbing or blotting out any information; it is not a break in communication, but instead becomes the content of communication itself. (Kelly, 2009: 82)

Approaching the topic of error within different industries than music, it is important to recall www.jodi.org, a pioneer net art collective specializing in software, video and game art. According to Cramer, jodi works can be described as follows:

Even where www.jodi.org doesn’t randomize its own transmission by unstable addressing schemes, it reads and behaves as if it contained intact data disturbed only by faulty net transmissions or computer crashes; but in reality, the line noise is mocked up within the data itself. (…) jodi’s disturbance is not done in hardware with only partly predictable results, but is a clever simulation of unpredictability done in software. (…) They inspire and liberate the viewers’ imagination all the while locking it into deception, mazes and dead-ends. The naïve Cagean ontology of chance is replaced with a tricky rhetoric of simultaneous anarchy and entrapment, a neo-baroque conceit and Discordia concors of surface chaos with inscribed discipline, and vice versa. (Cramer, 2002)

Looking back at Liu’s description of a “flourishing multiplicity of cultures” within a society of information and the above description of jodi given by Cramer, one could say that this art collective is a living example of his idea. Still, Liu’s idea of a new aesthetic governing the society via reflection, amplification and education is brought down by Dirk Paesmans. According to the collective:

(…) net art is a victim of its b-status. It is treated as group phenomenon, as a technically defined new art form. That is something that we have to leave behind as soon as possible, because that is the standard way to do these things: A group creates a hype. They call it mail art or video art, and it’s doomed to die after five years. (Paesmans in Interview with Jodi, 1997)

Even though Liu’s idea of change within the society of information is in a way overthrown by Paesmans, other influencing theoreticians reinforce the criticism of the questioned idea to an even further extent. According to White:

There are certainly situations in which repetition and the related performative moments can be a research and political strategy. Nevertheless, the ongoing viability of such instances remains unclear. According to Christine Ross, the recent trend among media artists to focus on “insufficiency” and “fallible corporeality” indicates the limits of the performative as a political tactic. (White, 2006: 113)

After questioning the power of contemporary media/net artists, White claims there is another problem hidden within the aesthetics of failure:

Despite critical and theoretical arguments about the political effects of failure, this strategy also presents some problems. Spectator’s increasing recognition of net art and the growing interest of many traditional art institutions indicate that the aesthetic of failure will continue to become more stylistic. (White, 2006: 113)

In response to Liu’s concept, White claims that the possible changes (as in the analyzed example of avant-garde reforming the cool) will not happen that drastically, and they will keep forming within the world of technology based Internet art. Finally, even though the general contradiction of visions, White comes to an agreement about the culture of remix/deconstruction/chaos as a governing aesthetic:

The challenge for net artists, software producers, technology critics, and other spectators may be finding new critical strategies rather than relying on repetition to highlight the ways that technologies have been constructed. Perhaps with such effects and aesthetics, spectators can continue to read carefully as well as differently. (White, 2006: 113)

To sum up the above revision of theories in relation to the questioned idea of Liu, it is most important to recall the following notions. Liu presents the concept of knowledge work and its direct relation to the rise of information technology within a contemporary society. Within those environments he sees another rise - a mixture of cultures and styles, living and constantly shifting chaos. He perceives the socio-political features of hi-tech “cool”, and applies a concept of destructive creativity – a reverse concept to Schumpeter’s creative destruction, out of which he formulates suggestions of improvement for both humanities and arts. Some of the analyzed theoreticians would agree with Liu – Caleb Kelly believes that new can only arise from the devastated. Others would not agree: jodi.org a famous art collective described by most of the authors, as well as Michele White, would present a much more critical stance. Paesmans believes in short lifespan of net art projects and claims death of each and every one of them within five years of its presentation. White on the other hand perceives problems avoided by Liu, and suggests finding new critical strategies.

Bibliography and Readings:

Michel Serres, Genesis, trans. Geneviève James and James Nielson,

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 2-26.

Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin, ‘Glitch’, in Matthew Fuller

(ed.) Software Studies: A Lexicon, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008,

pp. 110-119.

Michele White, ‘The Aesthetics of Failure: Confusing Spectatorswith

Net Art Gone Wrong’, in The Body and the Screen: Theories of

Internet Spectatorship, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, pp. 85-

113.

Rosa Menkman, The Glitch Studies Manifesto (2009/2010).

Florian Cramer, ‘Discordia Concors: www.jodi.org’, Nettime (2002),

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-

9708/msg00112.html

Tilman Baumgärtel, ‘Interview with Jodi.org’, Nettime (1997),

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-

9708/msg00112.html

Caleb Kelly, ‘Recording and Noise: Approaches to Cracked Media’,

in Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 2009, pp. 1-82.

Alan Lui, ‘Destructive Creativity: The Arts in the Information Age’,

in The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information,

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 317-371.

Joseph Schumpeter, ‘Creative Destruction’, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1975) [orig. pub. 1942], pp. 82-85:, retrieved from http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english25/materials/schumpeter.html , 16th Feb 2011;