REPAIR - ready to pull the lifeline

Ars Electronica 2010
Festival for Art, Technology and Society
Ars Electronica Center, Ars Electronica Straße, Linz, Austria
and Tabakfabrik, Gruberstr. 1, Linz, Austria

2nd September – 11th September 2010

There’s no time left for warnings. We’re in it up to our necks right now—in the climate crisis, Surveillance Society, the bankruptcy of the financial sector … We’ve passed the points of no return. The dramatic consequences are looming on the horizon today. And there’s no excuse for our lethargy since we already possess ideas, tools and techniques to initiate a change of course. We just have to take action! Roll up our sleeves and get to work on a job that can no longer be avoided. We have to mend our ways and get things moving in the right direction.

In search of ways out of this mess we’ve gotten into, the 2010 Festival for Art, Technology and Society turns to the pioneers of our age. Not the adventurers who’ve sailed forth because they wanted to find out what awaits them on the other side, but rather the visionaries who are bringing expertise as well as a great deal of creativity and idealism to bear in their work on an alternative future. repair is the title of a festival designed to pursue the paths opened up by these trailblazers and to show why it’s imperative for us to follow their lead …
“Where there is danger, the rescue grows as well” / Friedrich Hölderlin, Patmos (1804)

“It is too late to be a pessimist” / Yann Arthus Bertrand, Home (2009)

REPAIR – ready to pull the lifeline

It’s said that all human beings on Earth put together weigh about as much as all the world’s ants, which is estimated to be no more than half a percent of this planet’s biomass. There are already 6,815,500.000 of us, and the world’s population is adding an additional 2œ persons each second.

During the approximately 200,000 years since Homo Sapiens first appeared, we have been recklessly and thoughtlessly altering the Earth. This really got going in earnest about 10,000 years ago when we settled down and began pursuing agriculture, but it hasn’t been until recently that we’ve passed critical points of no return in many areas. So it no longer does any good to warn of dangers looming on the horizon. We’re already in it up to our necks. And that applies just as much to climate change and environmental destruction as it does to the naïve trust with which we’ve invited digital Surveillance & Control Society to come on in and make itself at home in our lives.

Sometimes the only way to repair is to restart

We can’t go back to the beginning. We have to proceed from where things stand right now. But under different premises. With the courage to do things totally differently, to rebel against entrenched systems and modes of behavior and to radically change them.

We have to change ourselves!

The knowledge, techniques and tools to accomplish this are already at hand (after all, that’s something humankind has always been good at), but the social and political consensus is far from finally starting to take the steps that we already realize are unavoidable. Let’s face it: in the wake of the failure of our politicians and public administrators as demonstrated so impressively at the outset of the year in Copenhagen, about all that’s left is our hope in the rationality of individuals and the wisdom of the masses. Our only choice is to finally roll up our sleeves and get started on the job of repair.

Repair – Rethink – Reinvent

Repair is the process of getting a damaged object back into a shape in which it can again carry out the function it was meant to perform. The Latin word reparare from which it was derived means not only to restore and rectify but also to renew. Inherent in a repair is a high degree of innovative power since, in contradistinction to recycling, this isn’t a matter of returning things to their original state but of also being able to develop them further. It’s a sustainable concept, inherent in which is displaying respect and appreciation for the things around us. This is a source of powerful creative and economic forces. And of no small importance is the fact that repair is a skill that makes those who acquire it a bit more independent.

Do it yourself – Repair it yourself!

Nevertheless, for us to be able to continue motoring on down this road, we must not only repair our vehicle this time; we also have to change our driving style and revise our destination.
“Repair”—the readiness and the capacity to repair things—is an alternative model to the still prevalent concept of primarily growth-based progress and the accompanying belief that this can assure prosperity for all. But now we see that the continuity of career and pension that we had come to take for granted was apparently just a brief historical episode (as well as one that was played out in only a very small portion of the world).
In order to extricate ourselves from the profound crises of our age, we need models of the future that also encompass the readiness and the ability to make repairs, and not just when it’s already too late. This calls for courage, ingenuity and the willingness to think and act differently. This is a willingness that hasn’t yet arrived on the decision-making levels of politics and business but that has more and more backing among the people on the street.

Repair = Regeneration

Repair also means making amends and healing, taking matters into our own hands and believing in our capacity to develop in a positive direction. Those who repair have a future.
Before the backdrop of this thematic orientation, the unique opportunity to stage this year’s Ars Electronica on the grounds of the Tabakfabrik, a former tobacco processing plant that is now a historic landmark, will make the site itself a determinative programmatic element of the 2010 Festival. This manufacturing facility, which was constructed long ago to create jobs and ultimately became a victim of globalization or, rather, the fallacious conclusions drawn from it, is now a very valuable piece of centrally located real estate that has been declared the nucleus from which the new future of this city will emerge. Right now, though, it would be hard to imagine a better and more exciting setting for artistic encounters with the state of our society than this site.
Ars Electronica will thus once again serve as a proving ground, as a workshop for testing novel ideas and new possibilities to take action, and for assessing the viability and sustainability of visions and utopias. This is a process in which art and science, design and engineering can encounter each other on an equal footing.


Homepage: http://www.aec.at/festival_about_en.php

Image: credit: Ars Electronica Futurelab

TRUST.
An exhibition at the Dortmunder U

31st July - 5th September 2010

Dortmunder U – Centre for Art and Creativity
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
44137 Dortmund
Germany

Opening hours: Di–So, auch Mo 23 August 2010, 10:00–20:00h

With works by Seiko Mikami (jp), Carsten Nicolai (de), knowbotic research (ch/at/de), Milica Tomi   (rs), Ariel Guzik (mx), Joan Leandre (es), Joyce Hinterding (au), Julien Maire (de/fr), Naeem Mohaiemen (bd), HC Gilje (no), Sophie Bélair Clément (qc/ca), Konrad Becker (at), Verena Friedrich (de), Antoine Schmitt (fr).

Trust is a major factor in all human relations and it is the basis of communication. We trust the validity of rules, codes and conventions, and we have confidence in others. The same goes for media and technical systems as we entrust them with our wishes and longings. One may hold a nagging doubt and suspicion about them, yet we feel an urge to keep faith with the apparatuses and their simulacra when we consign them to tell us a good story, to convey the truth, and to make our lives better, healthy, and wholesome.
The group exhibition TRUST explores the aesthetics of this confidence by questioning its status, attempting to challenge the audience’s convictions and by encouraging a reflected dialogue with machines and media. The works in the show point to the desires as well as the ethical and emotional dilemmas that arise from this attitude of trust.

Curated by Andreas Broeckmann and Stefan Riekeles.

ISEA2010 RUHR, 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, is a project of RUHR.2010 European Capital
of Culture, and is hosted by medienwerk.nrw. ISEA2010 RUHR is organised by Hartware MedienKunstVerein.

http://www.isea2010ruhr.org/trust

Image: HC Gilje, Blink, 2009, audiovisual installation

Paul DeMarinis: RainDance

Sound installation in the public space of the Julius-Mosen-Platz, Oldenburg

To see: 25th July - 26th September 2010
Opening: 25th July, 11.30 a.m.

A fourteen-meter long runway on the Julius-Mosen-Platz in the inner city of Oldenburg. People with umbrellas walking around, trying to cover from the drizzle that sprays out of six high mounted nozzless. The charmed people pause under their brollies. From the distance they form a kind of absurd but at the same poetic image. Being curious you come closer, take an umbrella and walk through the rain, to be as fascinated
as the others.

RainDance is an interactive sound installation by the American artist Paul DeMarinis. Drizzle from six nozzles transports sound vibrations. While standing outside of the dizzle the different melodies are inaudible. Only by
breaking the water jet with an umbrella the sound is decoded.

Every umbrella becomes a loud speaker, a private audio space for the person underneath it. But all individual, sound inspired *RainDances* can join to a common choreography.
The summer rain of RainDance changes the Julius-Mosen-Platz into an oasis of sound.

Homepage: http://www.edith-russ-haus.de/index.php/Programm/RainDance

Image: ©Otto Saxinger

Lynn Hershman Leeson receives the 2010 d.velop digital art award [ddaa]

Berlin, Germany - American artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been awarded the 2010 d.velop digital art award [ddaa]. Given biannually by the Digital Art Museum [DAM], Berlin, Germany, this international prize honours an artist’s lifetime achievement in the field of new media. In addition to receiving a monetary award (20,000 Euro), Hershman Leeson will have a retrospective exhibition accompanied by a catalogue at the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany. The [ddaa] is the most prestigious lifetime award to be given to artists in digital arts.

Lynn Hershman Leeson is the fourth artist to win the [ddaa]. This year’s jury included Prof. Dr. Wulf Herzogenrath (Director of Kunsthalle Bremen), Dr. Norbert Nobis (Deputy Director of the Sprengel Museum in Hanover), Kelli Dipple (Curator Intermedia Art, Tate Modern, London), Stephen Kovats (Artistic Director of Transmediale, Berlin) and Wolf Lieser (Director of the Digital Art Museum [DAM], Berlin). Past winners are Vera Molnar (Hungary/France, 2005), Manfred Mohr (Germany/USA, 2006) and Norman White (Canada, 2008).

Lynn Hershman Leeson (* 1941) has been at the forefront of new media art since the 70s, investigating issues now recognized as key to contemporary society: protection of privacy, gender role, and the changing concept of identity in the age of virtuality. Very often, she acts as a non-linear storyteller, showing the loneliness of people in a world of mass communication systems. Her work makes use of alter egos, puppets and agents, and artificial intelligence. As a pioneer of interactive work, her oeuvre includes performance, film, photography, site-specific installations and digital media. One of Hershman Leeson’s most notorious projects includes Roberta Breitmore, a fictional persona, created and enacted by the artist from 1973 – 79, and which anticipated virtual avatars. Hershman Leeson has been responsible for a number of technological innovations, including the first interactive computer-based artwork with Lorna (1983-84) and the artificial intelligent web agent DiNa (2006).

Her three feature films with Tilda Swinton – Conceiving Ada (1997), the first movie to use virtual sets; Teknolust (2002); and Strange Culture (2007) – were shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and Berlin International Film Festival, and won numerous awards. Hershman Leeson has just completed !Women Art Revolution, a feature-length documentary to be released next year.

Hershman Leeson’s work is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the William Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, the ZKM (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe), The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, The Tate, London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Canada, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The Hess Collection, California, among others.

Most recently, Hershman Leeson received the 2009 SIGGRAPH Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is also the recipient of grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital Foundation, the Siemens Media Art Prize, ZKM, the Flintridge Foundation Award, the Prix Ars Electronica and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2004, Stanford University acquired the artists working archive.
Lynn Hershman Leeson is Chair of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute and Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Davis. She lives and works in San Francisco.

Lynn Hershman Leeson was nominated by Laura Sillars of FACT, Liverpool. Further nominees were Roy Ascott (nominated by Rudolf Frieling, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), Hiroshi Kawano (nominated by Yoshiyuki Abe, pioneer of computer art from Japan), Lillian F. Schwartz (nominated by Barbara London (Museum of Modern Art in New York) and Roman Verostko (nominated by Douglas Dodds, Victoria & Albert Museum in London).

Initiated in 2005 by Wolf Lieser of the Digital Art Museum [DAM], the d.velop digital art award [ddaa] is assigned in close partnership with Kunsthalle Bremen, and is possible through the sponsoring of d.velop AG in Gescher, the Hauptpharma AG in Berlin as well as by the agency kommunikation lohnzich in Munster, Germany.

The award ceremony will take place in Berlin on Sat., 9th October 2010, at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, Germany.

For more information visit: http://www.ddaa-online.de/en.php

Image: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Breitmore Series, Roberta Construction Chart #1, 1975, dye transfer print, Courtesy of bitforms gallery and Gallery Paule Anglim

Thomson + Craighead
 
20th June - 25th July 2010
 
HICA (the Highland Institute for Contemporary Art)
Dalcrombie, Loch Ruthven
Inverness-shire IV2 6UA
Scotland, UK

The exhibition includes new time-related pieces of the artists: a major new film work The Time Machine in Alphabetical Order, is a complete rendition of hte 1960's film version of HG Wells novella Time Machine, re-edited by the artists in its entirety into alphabetical order. This re-working imposes a formalistic time travel on the original movie and presents it back as a more esoteric and rythmic narrative assemblage.

Flipped clock is a modified digital clock display, where each individual digit is rotated by 180 degrees. The result is a fully funcitioning and accurate clock but one which defamiliarises the viewer from "clock time", reminding us that thes ever present measurement is itself simply human artifice. Flipped Clock gives us the opportunity to glimpse "clock time" form the outside again.

The End is an intervention into HICA's picture window, where the words "The End" are fixed onto the inside of the glass in a style and scale one would associate with the end credits of a movie. By the simplest means possible, the artists gently ficitionalise the surrounding landscape by suggesting a sense of cinematic time overlaying the real-time view out of the window.

Open Sunday 2 – 5pm during exhibitions or by appointment

http://www.h-i-c-a.org/ThomsonCraighead.htm

Digital Art @Google: Data Poetics

Exhibition location:
Google, Inc.!
75 Ninth Avenue, 2nd floor
New York, NY.
Guests must RSVP: rsvp@chelseaartmuseum.org

Exhibition: 11th June – 13th August 2010
Opening Reception: 11th June 11, 6 – 9pm
 
Google and The Project Room for New Media at Chelsea Art Museum (CAM) in New York are launching an
exhibition program, “Digital Art @Google NYC”, which will engage Googlers with the art world and promote creativity with digital technology. The exhibitions and artist talks, which will take place at Google, Inc, will be open to guests at times indicated on the Chelsea Art Museum’s website.
Data Poetics is featuring international digital artists, Scott Draves, R. Luke DuBois, Aaron Koblin, Mark Napier, W. Bradford Paley, Lincoln Schatz, John F. Simon, Jr., Thomson and Craighead, Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas.
Digital Art @Google NYC is curated by Nina Colosi, Curator of The Project Room for New Media at CAM and founder of its public art program, Streaming Museum, which presents exhibitions in cyberspace and public spaces on 7 continents.! The programs were inspired by pioneer video artist Nam June Paik who in the 1970s envisioned the Internet, predicting an “information superhighway” as an open and free medium for imagination and exchange of cultures.

Homepage of the exhibition: http://www.chelseaartmuseum.org/digitalartatgoogle/

Image: FERNANDA VIÉGAS & MARTIN WATTENBERG, FLICKR FLOW, 2009