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Dissemination Edited by Ursula Frohne, Mona Schieren, Jean-Francois Guiton

Schriftenreihe 02

der Hochschule fur Kunste University of the Arts Bremen

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I Dan Graham, Present Continuous Past(s), 1974, at Otis Art Institute Gallery, September 1975.

»Present Continous Past[s]« Media Art.

01

02

8

Preface

11

Introduction

13

Ursula Frohne The Artwork as Temporal Form. Giving Access to the Historicity, Context and Discursiveness of Media Art

22

Ulrike Rosenbach

36

Thirty Years of Media Art by Ulrike Rosenbach - Experience in Mediation and Reproduction 03

Sabine Flach »Withdrawal as an Artform« - Between Withdrawal and Presentation - The Body in the Media Arts

9

124

09

Hans D. Christ Stan Douglas, »Win, Place or Show«.

10

Dennis Del Favero Neil Brown I Jeffrey Shaw I Peter Weibel 132 T_Visionarium: the aesthetic transcription of televisual databases

11

Jean-Francois Guiton www.guiton.de

142

12

Rudolf Frieling Database and Context Artistic Strategies within a Dynamic Field of Action

150

13

Monika Fleischmann Wolfgang Strauss On the Development of netzspannung.org - An Online Archive and

162

46

Transfer Instrument for Communicating Digital Art and Culture 04

Elke Bippus I Dirck Mollmann

62

Montage and Image Environments: Narrative Forms in Contemporary Video Art 05

06

07

08

Mona Schieren Media storage. On Documenting and Archiving Media Art

Rens Fromme I Sandra Fauconnier Capturing Unstable Media Arts - A formal model for describing and preserving aspects of electronic Media Art

174

15

Lori Zip pay The Digital Mystique:

190

74

Lydia Haustein Global Icons

82

Dieter Daniels Before and after video art - Television as a subject and material for art around 1963, and a glance at net art since the 1990s

96

Katharina Ammann Dan Graham's Designs for Video Presentations: Art, Commentary and Solution

14

16

Video Art, Aura and Access

Bart Rutten »How to deliver what is asked«

196

Biographies

202

Selected bibliography

212

Photo credits

222

112

Preface.

10

11

P!'eface The publication presented here, ÂťPresent Continuous Past[s] Media Art. Strategies of Presentation, Mediation and DisseminationÂŤ emerged from a public symposium held in 2004 at the University o/the Arts in Bremen in col1aboration with the International University Bremen. Included are the papers presented on the occasion of this event, supplemented by contributions that were later commissioned to expand the thematic scope and deepen specific aspects that arose during the conference discussions or evolved later in entailing debates fol1owing the event.

It was the project's goal to create a forum for an exchange between artists, theorists, curators, and experts from international distribution services to stimulate a discourse on questions of preservation, documentation, access, and education, as well as on the dissemination of media art and the unique challenges it has presented in the field of art for the past four decades.

This initiative was made possible thanks to the institutional and personal support of the many people involved in the successful launching of the symposium in Bremen and its subsequent publication. We wish to express deep appreciation to the authors who graciously contributed their essays to this volume. Our sincere gratitude goes to the University o/the Arts Bremen and the International University Bremen whose substantial financial support and organizational infrastructures made the conference and this publication possible.

Special thanks are dedicated to Prof Peter Rautmann's and Markus Wortmann's enduring trust in the projects' successful emergence. Furthermore we wish to extend our gratitude to the Filmbiiro, Bremen, specifically to Klaus Becker for supporting the symposium and its publication, as well as to The MARS Exploratory Media Lab represented by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss for additional financial backup of the book. Final1y the editors wish to acknowledge the translators' engagement and the editorial assistance

by Kathryn Gentzke and Jorg Meyer, as well as th'e numerous individuals who worked behind the scenes and contributed to the exhibition and the publication with their valued professionalism and congenial spirit.

Ursula Frohne

Mona Schieren

Jean-Franqois Guiton

12

Intcoduction.

13

Int~oduction »Thece is no visual image that is not moce and moce tightly gcipped, even in its essential, cadical withdcawal, inside an audiovisual oc scciptovisual (_) image that envelops it, and it is in this context that the existence of something that still cesembles act is at stake today. (_) We have gone beyond the image, to a nameless mixtuce, a discoucse-image, if you like, oc a sound-image (,Son-Image<, Godacd calls it), whose ficst side is occupied by television and second side by the computec, in ouc all-pucpose machine society.« Raymond Bellour1

Art practices and their perception have changed significantly since the emergence of new media. For over two decades, the white cube has oscillated with its reversal as a black box.

While visitors have become used to the fact that galleries ubiquitously turn into projection spaces, enjoying the perceptual experience inside the formerly static museum displays, academia has only just begun to discover these new audio-visual horizons as fields of research and methodological discourse. Cinematic, interactive and broadcast formats, multi-media installations and internet platforms not only set new challenges in terms of preservation and adequate storage to collectors and museum professionals, but also appear as a new species within the wider field of scholarship and teaching at universities and academies.

Traditional visual art genres, such as paIntIng or photography, are retrievable via reproductions in print media. Screenshots or installation documentation photographs, however, do not provide a viewer with an adequate impression of works, which are based on moving images and/or variable projection levels. For the proper reception of video and media art, it is essential to have access to the works' >synergetic( features without the annihilation of their aesthetic complexity by insufficient documentation techniques. Therefore artists, curators, scholars and distribution experts need to develop new perspectives and discuss the necessary methods to make time-based, acoustic, and installation techniques of video and multi-media art accessible to long term scholarly discourse. Problems arising from this debate entail numerous questions: Are models of decentralized mediation conceivable outside of the established distribution systems of video and media artworks that do not play 1 Raymond Bellour, quoted by Timothy Druckrey, .Preface«, in: Martin Rieser and Andrea Zapp leds.l. New Screen Media. Cinema / Art / Narrative, London: British Film Institute, 2000, pp. XXI-XXIV, XXII.

Introduction.

14

15

off legitimate research interests against artists' justified claims for economic gratification?

for lavish media art installations has thus significantly widened, the problem of a faithful

And how could new methods of documentation and dissemination, for example on the

documentation for viewers who have not been present at the site of a work's >original<

Internet, contribute to a more liberal access to the (so-far) closed-circuit system of

presentation continues to be neglected by all parties involved in the display, preservation

established formulas for the mediation of multi-media artworks, in order to create a wider

and market presence of these artworks. Established initiatives are mostly concerned with

frame ofreference via new visualization techniques?

the operational level of media art's technical support and the importance of >authenticity< concerning its aesthetic effect. However, such efforts will not secure access to these works'

These questions were debated among other issues at an international symposium, held in the

for scholarly research dedicated to an analysis of the central aspects of their medial, material

spring of2004 at the University ofArt in Bremen. As intentionally reflected in the adapted

and narrative significance. Essential aesthetic and narrative features remain >invisible< and

title from Dan Graham's seminal video-feedback installation ÂťPresent Continuous Past(s)ÂŤ,

tend to disappear into oblivion, once media artworks have been dismantled and moved to

the conference discussions crystallized around three main aspects, namely the relation ofthe

the museum storage. For a close analysis and theoretical reflection of this large segment

artists' intention to the faithful presentation and preservation of multi-media artw0rks for

of the contemporary art production, it is crucial to create flexible methods for a coherent

possible future re-presentations, the specific reception conditions that these works require

and vital documentation along the presentational logic and aesthetic specificity in order to

as much in their gallery displays as under the conditions of post-exhibition documentation

enable media artworks' transfer from the temporal spectacle of their novelty and >immediate<

(particularly in anticipation offuture presentations), and finally - as implicitly reflected in

reception to the long-term >memory< of academic research and theoretical discourse.

all of these aspects - the philosophical dimensions of media art's historicity.

Moreover, the limited, albeit technologically increasing possibilities to view and analyze Media art's >becoming-of-age< has generally caused more concern and has led to more useful

the synergetic quality of a large body of multi-media works since the 1960s has created a

strategic initiatives within the museum context than in the academic field of art history.

void within the knowledge and recognition ofa wide field of the historical (technologically

During the past decade, museum professionals have established veritable documentation

and aesthetically shaped) predecessors of contemporary art. This growing epistemological

systems to insure faithful re-installations of complex and increasingly expensive media

gap may be the reason for a comparatively meager amount of scholarship on moving image

artworks. All of these productive attempts to acquire the necessary technological expertise

artworks from their emergence to their more complex features of the present. In turn, this

to professionalize the procedures for the installation of new media artworks among gallery

relative absence ofacademic scholarship and theoretical writing on a major characteristic of

and museum staff, have resulted in a reliable infrastructure that allows for >authentic<

20th and 21st-centuries' aesthetic developments, suggests the all-too often connoted notion

(re-)presentations of artworks defined by moving images, diverse and complex electronic

that the ephemeral quality of these works may be a symptom of the transitory role that they

components and non-stable media constellations. These efforts have created international

have supposedly played for the development of art, as some art historians claim, due to the

standards for loan and exhibition procedures inside the traditional institutional frames

losses of valuable source material that could prove otherwise. 2 Obviously, such disqualifying

and are certainly an indispensable precondition also for the scholarly reception of the

conclusions (also intended to exonerate the negligence to-date within this field of research)

pertaining works.

stand in contrast to the aesthetic and cultural significance that video and multi-media works

However, the existing institutional and pragmatic conservation guidelines prove

have acquired in the present-day reception of a growing art audience. 3 Aesthetic shifts and

insufficient for academic research and in-depth theoretical reflections on this expanding

their technological circumstances, as an example the transformation of the art practice

and increasingly important field of contemporary art production. To explore the influential

from monitor-works to projected images, still find - with rare exceptions - only incidental

effects of these works on today's aesthetic and visual culture, a wider frame of access

mentioning in periodical survey publications on 20th century art. Therefore, contemporary

to documentary audio-visual material is required, since the measures for conservation

scholarship tends to underestimate the aesthetic relevance of media art as a major step in

often serve more to preserve the respective works' rising market value instead of defining

the transformation of presentation modes. Regardless of the fact that today's art students

their artistic significance in a historical perspective. While the professional know-how

and contemporary artists often experience successful careers without much knowledge of

2 The historical dimension of at least 40 decades of video as a medium of art has only recently found consideration and systematic documentation as a basis for future scholarly reviewing of the material. A first approach to

this task of archiving and publicizing central works from video and multi-media art has been taken by the initiative medien_kunscnetz at the ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany. See www.medienkunstnetz.de.

3 It has only been since the beginning of the 21st century that the history of film, video and multi-media experiments within the field of art have found a broader reflection in exhibitions, reconstructing and reflecting on landmark presentations of media art. Among these X-Screen, filmische

Installationen und Aktionen der Sechziger- und Siebzigerjahre, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung ludwig Wien.

2004; Ulrike Groos, Barbara Hess, Ursula Wevers leds.), Ready to Shoot. Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum/videogalerie schum, exh. cat., Cologne, 2003 .

Introduction. their historical predecessors, it is nevertheless indispensable to contextualize current works

16

17

set by these works' performative aesthetic. In a close-reading ofDan Graham's installation

within the phenomenology of pictorial practices in the face of a fast changing scenario of

»Present Continuous Past(s)«, Ursula Frohne analyses the thematic and metaphorical

new visualization technologies in contemporary art and visual culture.

elements condensed in the formal setting of this early video-feedback piece that inspired

Against this backdrop, the here presented volume widens the perspective from the

always already fragmented >presence< of an artwork in relation to its historical >morphing<

the conference's conceptual orientation inasmuch as Dan Graham's work emphasizes the conference's initial thematic focus on video art to the challenges of an increasingly

over time in varying presentation contexts or cultural situations. The spatially defined and

heterogeneous aesthetic of multi-media elements and their installation paradigms. Since

performed temporality of this artwork is a central element of its meaning production that

the initiation of video as a medium of art in the mid-1960s until today a wide scope of

has ethical and social implications. The work's accessibility is a central pre-condition for

media art practices has developed. It encompasses dialogues with neighboring media such

its re-enactment by the recipients and thus for its continuous emergence over time.

as television, fi 1m, performance, and the Internet in diverse constellations with an emergent

There is a discussion onfthe historical >becoming< of media art and its specific context

aesthetic vocabulary, characterized by intermedia, interactive and hybrid presentational

of installation practices, which typically change over periods of time - due e.g. to different

forms. The book emphasizes the historical phase of media art's emergence as a starting

spatial conditions. These changes are often also influenced by technological developments

point and as an impulse to retrospectively recognize the problematic of insufficient audio-

and artists' decisions to alter installations at different venues - the need for historical

visual representation and as a catalyst to accommodate these works' ephemeral quality

reconstructions of seminal works' metamorphoses defines new tasks for art historians and

as a precondition for the development of systematic and technologically state-of-the-art

requires new skills and research methods. With an exemplary investigation ofDan Graham's

documentation. On the one hand the contributions presented in this publication take

designs for video presentations, Katharina Ammann discusses the problem of retrieving

stock of media art's status within scholarly discourse, while on the other, they direct the

visual references of earlier presentation modes. Her essay pin-points the >erosions< in art

debate to the methodological problems of coping with the diagnosed formal and thematic

history's memory as previous presentation modes of media artworks have sparsely been

desiderata occurring in new media art practices. Therefore, the selection of essays combines

documented, which complicates historical reconstructions for a systematic analysis of their

theoretical reflections on the structural complexity and the cultural-(historical) experience

genesis. Central factors, relevant for a faithful documentation ofthe exhibition history include

of media artworks with exemplary studies of their installation history. These contributions

the degree of technological sophistication, the interaction between curatorial precision and

are supplemented by artists' comments on their documentation systems and publication

artists' intentions as well as various interacting components that continue to shape a work

methods, providing insights into archival structures and publication models for unstable

with an open structure at different venues. These aspects need to be reflected when criteria

media artworks. Furthermore, the volume contains extensive information on the genesis

are developed for the historical documentation of media installations. Katharina Ammann's

and policies of distribution services for media art, and features several innovative research

pledge from an art historian's point of view is supplemented by an in-depth characterization

projects as well as their experimental efforts to create new storage facilities with open-

ofthe complex installation details required for the presentation of Stan Douglas' installation

access retrieval systems.

»Win, Place or Show« (1998). Granting insight into the hands-on experience of a curator,

A variety of case studies from different fields of expertise are framed by reflections on the

technical components of this formally as well as technologically sophisticated work. It is

formal characteristics ofephemeral art forms and their inherent- ifnot intended -problematic

discussed here as a revealing example for the scope of the visual, spatial, dramaturgical

Hans D. Christ characterizes the close correlations between the narrative structure and the

resistance to the common aesthetic economy of static representation. Exploring the body-

and technological complexity of today's media artworks and their demands to carry out

space-and-time relations of Bruce Nauman's early conceptual sculptures, videotapes and

properly all technical impl ications, to achieve the aesthetic aspirations of the artist. The

video-feedback installations, Sabine Flach situates the phenomenon of withdrawal and

role of those »things that [m) ideally aL'e not the object of observation, but

concealment as an essential characteristic of artistic practices within art and media history

L'atheL' functional elements of its effect«, is emphasized in this essay. Moreover,

since the 1960s. Her essay theorizes the epistemological and representational challenge as

the fulfillment of the specific requirements as an indispensable precondition for a faithful

18

Introduction. mediation of an artwork's content, puts into question all institutional attempts to standardize the technological apparatus and installation modes for the presentation of media art.

As implied by this discourse, the faithful reconstruction of media art is also part of the

19

of central information for the reconstruction of the production process and a useful tool for the distinction of visual units, facilitating a theorization of complex editing structures and further contributing to the interpretation of the visual text in video works.

artists' responsibility by means of providing instructions and dossiers for their technical implementation. Artists like Ulrike Rosenbach and Jean-Franl;ois Guiton have been

The principle reproducibility of video material comprises opportunities but at the same

working with video and multi-media installation for several decades. Their contributions

time produces problems concerning the status of the )original<, authorship, and conceptual

refer to the Internet both as a tool for the documentation of artists' ceuvres and as a platform

authenticity. What are the options for a fruitful interaction between the intended medial

to highlight the characteristic features of individual works. Both being protagonists of

structure of an artwork and a copy version presented by a meta-medium in order to offer

first- and second-generation media artists, Ulrike Rosenbach and Jean-Franr;ois Guiton

a comprehensive documentation? How can a documentary infrastructure for scholarly

take different approaches to the Internet as an archival information platform that allows

research render transformations - that e.g. installation artworks are inevitably subjected to

for a variety of presentations to reveal heterogeneous components of multi-media works

when partially or fully reproduced as a one-channel surrogate version - comprehensible for

within a poly-dimensional complementary commenting structure, including biographical

the viewer by revealing the historical process of changing components at various exhibition

notes, set-up instructions, screen-shots, full-length (or excerpts of) video sequences and

sites? Particularly media art is often presented in immersive projection spaces. In which way

documentation material of audio-visual installations.

does the relation between the artist's intention and the viewers' reception change when a

The history of technology seems to intersect with the history of art when historical

multiple-channel video installation is made retrievable as surrogate version on the computer?

reconstructions of video art's emergence and its multi-media successors are at stake. Dieter

Which archival systems are adequate to accommodate the heterogenous conditions of media

Daniels discusses the methodological problem of categorizing the inter-media condition of

artworks and to what extend does an archive's own dynamic define the features of its content

early video works around 1963, when TV was the referential and crystallization medium

and accessibility? Adressing these questions, Mona Schieren investigates the institutional

for many of the early experiments in art, based on recording and broadcasting technologies.

power constellations that define archival structures and undertakes a critical accentuation of

Terms like )video art< therefore only have an auxiliary function and neither a strictly

the chances and limitations that need to be equally considered. In reflection ofthe iMediathek

differentiating nor a genre-specific meaning. Artists' practices often anticipate the historical

project launched by the University of the Arts Bremen, she discusses the prerequisites for

moment of a new technology's introduction, before it is made accessible for public usage.

the establishment of a functional Internet platform featuring media artworks for teaching

This aspect continues to be relevant for net art as an art practice less concerned with the

and research purposes. The central goal of such efforts is »to network the various in-

creation of )media works<, than with a critique of the Internet and its commercialization.

itiatives, thereby creating the foundations for differentiated research«,

According to Dieter Daniels »the question of the extent to which such art can

allowing for the productive and flexible emergence of )cross-links< not only among the

be documented is not restricted to the work as such, but would actually

content of the archival material, but also among diverse institutional structures.

have to reflect on the context of the medium at this time and on its social functions. «

The idea of a picture archive also concerns Lydia Haustein's reflection on the transformations of images in the process of global migration via diverse medial exchange

The claim for considerations of the contextual conditions and commentary function

practices. Her project »Global lcons« approaches the problem of »contempoL'acy image

of media art's emergence does not, however, dispense the necessity for a thorough analysis

communication« from two directions: it references, on the one hand, historically and

of the visual text, its content and its technological applications. Elke Bippus and Dirck

methodologically, Aby Warburg's iconological studies as a fruitful trans-cultural technique

M611mann emphasize the necessity of an in-depth formal analysis of video works in a

of tracing significant features of collective memory storage and transfer; while on the

discursive reflection on montage techniques used in contemporary music clips. Relating the

other hand, her project explores contemporary visual culture as a dynamic system of

production process to the historically inspired visual effects and the usage offound footage

effects defined by information and communication technologies, subjecting iconic images

to the semantic level, both authors come to the conclusion that the support of computational

through new technologies to global circulation, (temporary) erasure, recycling, re-coding

technologies by »automated dissection of videos into samples« could be a source

and re-staging in changing contexts and with shifting meanings. Assuming that »cultural

20

Introduction. contacts are more intensive and short-lived, superficial, and fundamental

21

one of the leading resources for the distribution and preservation of media art dating back to

than ever«, the conditions of a picture economy are reflected in the development ofa new

[97 [ - discusses the historical implications and current conditions of media art distribution

kind of picture atlas, that is organized like an open network, mapping and tracking the

policies with particular emphasis on the alternative political roots of video art and raises a

dissemination and transformation of >iconic thinking< in contemporary visual culture. As

wide scope of questions including the production of video editions, interactive Web projects

also suggested in the epitaph by Raymond Bellour, the »Global Icons«-project explores the

and the potential of the medium's reproducible status, »The fluid ecology and economy

system of cultural asynchronicity and realizes the power of digital images to »re -structure

of video ai't, with its shifting fOi'ms and technologies, embi'aces contexts

)reality ( and reverse global image scenarios«, which are central charact~ristics of

ranging fi'om commercial venues to collective practices on the Internet«,is

visual culture and reality construction that could likewise legitimate more liberal conditions

Lori Zippay's diagnosis of the diversity, that distribution and conservation institutions have

for accessible research copies of ephemeral art forms.

to cope with in order to fulfill the conditions of video art's intermedia characteristics from its experimental beginnings to its sophisticated concepts of the present.

Internet-presentations are booming as public platforms for artists' works. Such decentralized

Transcendent forms and presentation paradigms require dynamic solutions ofmediation

forms of publication counteract in principle the close-circuit of a monopolizing art system.

to accommodate the ephemeral qualities and formal richness, as Rens Fromme and Sandra

In the »era of image exchange«, artists themselves are increasingly using the channels of

Fauconnier address in an expanded view on the description, (Online) presentation and

dissemination for their own means of data processing and publication. Rudolf Frieling

preservation facilities for »unstable media arts«. Their contribution is based on a case

further develops this aspect, by situating artistic strategies of data col1ecting and circulation

study being conducted at V2_ in Rotterdam since 2001. It is dedicated to the development

models within the >dynamic field< of referencing techniques and global network structures

of an innovative formal model to capture electronic media art activities in several levels

in general. The potential of the database for »aesthetic and philosophical concepts of

of detail. This effort combines the thorough documentation of the physical properties of

transposition and ascription« is reflected from a different angle in Dennis del Favero, Neil

electronic concepts with in-depth interpretations of the environments in which electronic

Brown, Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel's contribution, featuring the artistic and scientific

art functions, including the complexity of reception modes and social processes of human-

concept of T- Visionarium as an interactive televisual database. Activated through a

to-machine, human-to-human, and machine-to-machine interactions, From his experience

dialogue with the viewer who can select visual material under specific thematic categories,

as a curator at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Bart Rutten further elaborates on the

T- Visionarium's principle concept of interactive narrative formations serves in this context

challenges of administering media art's diversity in archival structures and collections to

also as a model for expanded database configurations for moving image archives that could

ensure its >visibility< for a broader public and future research, in recognition ofthe problem

be implemented on the Internet.

A concrete example of a functioning and accessible Online archive combining

that the dynamics of new media developments wil1 always »i'efashion oldei' media and

teaching and learning modules, is introduced by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang

of the media«.'

the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answei' the challenge

Strauss. Launched in 2001, netzspannung.org was initiated as a platform for the staging of »media events, art productions and intermedia i'esearch«. As a result of numerous

All ofthe considerations and questions assembled in this book could be summarized as being

col1aborations with major research institutions, netzspannung.org now offers access to a

led by the impulse that already motivated Aby Warburg to pursue his ambitious project of

wide range oflive broadcast video documentations of conferences and presentations given

a »Picture Atlas«, being »less interested in finding a smooth solution, than in

by renowned artists and academics, addressing central aspects of contemporary media and

sti'essing a new pi'oblem«.5 In this sense we are hoping that this volume will stimulate

visual culture.

Furthermore, the definition of quality parameters and filter mechanisms concerning the

a lively discussion among practitioners and theorists, museum experts and distribution

inclusion and exclusion of material in archives and databases is not only left to the users,

in order to develop joint future-perspectives,

professionals, artists and scholars to overcome the technological and ideological barriers

but also channeled by distribution services and their specific selection criteria. Lori Zippay _ director of Electronic Arts Intermix, once a pioneering initiative in New York and today , Bart Rutten quoted this phrase from J. D. Bolter and R. Grusin, Remediation. Understanding New Media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1999, see also Bart Rutten, "How to deliver what is asked«, in this volume, pp 196 - 201.

5 The here quoted phrase by Aby Warburg is a citation, taken from an extended published version of Lydia Haustein's essay "Globallcons«.

The Editors

Ursula Frohne.

The

A~two~k

22

as

Tempo~al

Giving Access to the and

Discu~siveness

FiguJ:'e 01

Fo~m

=-

Histo~icity,

of Media

23

Context ....

A~t

Dan Graham, Present, Continuous, Past(sl. 1974, installation drawing

•• The ethical work is that of Saying J:'atheJ:' than the Said. ,,1 Emmanuel Levinas

The visibility of media art - single channel works as well as multi-media installations - is usually tied to the context of a museum or a specific exhibition presentation. Comprehensive

'.

and affordable documentations of media artworks are rarely accessible outside of temporal gallery or museum displays, apart from a few distribution services offering more or less broad selections of historical and contemporary films and video material.2 This relative limitation of access to the complex dimensions of media art, for which book reproduction

In exploring these aspects, I will reveal how Dan Graham's video-feedback installation

does not constitute a representational substitution as in the case of the more traditional art

in fact functions as a theorization in practice of the continual interruption of the

genres, in effect creates a blind spot for the aesthetic and phenomenological experience of a

>completeness< of an artwork. The clearly defined structure, and at the same time, open

significant segment of art reception since the mid-20th century. In my paper, I will address

constellation of Graham's mise-en-scene, enhances the artwork's temporality in principle

the problems of media art's3 retrospective comprehension when it is bound to the >here-and-

by way of its dependence on the re-enactment of the viewer. Hence it functions according

now<-experience of its mostly temporal display. I intend to explore two central questions

to a conceptual economy that literally shows >the work at work< in a continuous state of

emerging from this practice in order to show that the implications of the common receptive

emergence, as is connoted by its equally framing as expansive title »Present Continuous

framework are not only suggesting the exclusiveness of the primordial phenomenological

Past(s)«. Instead of pleading for the exclusively >in-situ<-experience of such works, I will

experience of media art, but also effectively resist the establishment of a productive relation

argue that comprehensive reproduction techniques via video documentation would not only

to its own historicity by privileging the incidental display as the >auratic< moment of the

complement installation drawings or photographic views of the particular presentation and conservation necessities for media art, but also logically interact with the ephemeral

work's true character.

economy ofthese works that inherently take on different readings, depending on the varying In the first place I will characterize the status quo of the current situation and explore the

venues, and more radically undergo a process of >morphing< over a period oftime. Compared

logic ofthe comparably restrictive accessibility to moving image reproductions of media art.

to the traditional genres, media art and its installations, with their flow of images and (often

Why are art books with reproductions of virtually all canonized paintings and sculptures

non-linear) narrative imperatives, prompt the spectator's expectation to recognize that only

available for reasonable prices, while affordable DVDs with artist's films and videos are still

a fragment of the work can ever be extracted, due to its procedural aesthetic and its changing

exceptional in museum stores? In a second step I will theorize the ideological dimension of these distribution politics that internationally regulate the visibility of media art. I will refer in this context to Dan Graham's landmark installation »Present Continuous Past(s)« as a pure, albeit eloquent example of the way multi-media artworks - quite opposite to an economy of uniqueness and rarity - structurally and thematically pay homage to the continual interruption of the artwork's >completeness< and foster the dis-illusion of the viewers' expectations of an immediacy provided by the anticipated aesthetic experience.

1 This phrase from Emmanuel Levinas has been discussed

by Jacques Oerrida as the .ethical imperative< to make the ego and the work accessible to the Other. See Jacques

Oerrida, ..At This Very Moment In His Work Here I am«, trans. Ruben Berezdivin in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley leds.I, Re-reading Levinas, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1991, p. 11. Also cited by Miriam Bankovsky...A Thread of Knots: Jacques Derrida's Homage to Emmanuel Levinas' Ethical Reminder«, in: Invisible Culture, 2004, pp. 1- 15, p. 3i1ast viewed May 27, 20051.

2 Several essays in this volume are contributions of representatives of major distribution services for video and media art. It is not my argument's intention to criticize their excellent initiatives to offer and establish a nonprofit infrastructure for artists, museums and a broader audience. Instead, the experience of these projects should enter the discourse on the possibilities of further development and future models of reproduction techniques for multi-media art.

3 Although I am aware of the problematic term .media art< and the need to differentiate a growing variety of multi-media and trans-medial practices that are usually subsumed under this category, the here given frame is not the place to discuss and accommodate this structural heterogeneity. For a productive approach to theorize this aspect see Gregor Stemm rich, ..Zwischen Bild und dem Visuellen / Between the Image and the Visual«, in Georg Eiben, Videonale 10, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2005, pp. 37 - 59.

24

01 Ursula Frohne. The Artwork as Temporal Form.

25

quality in different spatial contexts. These structural characteristics, further emphasized by

Following the structure of a book, the reproductions in an exhibition catalogue are usually

the presentation ofaudio-visual material in loops or repetitive cycles, inscribe the Deleuzian

accompanied by explanations concerning the history, provenience, and iconography of the

form of >difference< and >repetition< into the aesthetic features of media art.

illustrated works, all relevant information for the exegesis ofits status and for the interpretation of its meaning. Embedded in a comprehensive apparatus of technical data and comments,

Media

A~t

in

the reproduced artwork is presented within its discursive field, which is thematically or

Pe~spective

While a veritable system of visualization has been available for the documentation

monographically organized and marks its context of reception and mediation. This form of

of painting, sculpture, photography and installation art through more or less brilliant

commented representation has proved as an efficient and predicative documentation practice

reproductions in books, catalogues and digital databanks, these forms of re-presentation

for the traditional genres of art. For media art, this representational frame is however only

offer insufficient approaches for a recall of the aesthetic characteristics of media art's

functional in an approximating way, provided that one has seen the work once in its staged

mostly moving images. Sequential reproductions of a series of stills have been in use to

version - within the exhibition or via (rarely available) video-documentation. One has to

overcome such representational limitations. But apart from the obvious suppression of

be informed about the visual and acoustic characteristics of a (multi) media artwork and

the phenomenological principle of movement, media art's features are obviously more

connect one's recollections of the key sequences with their static illustrations. Video, and

challenging and complex in their tendency of withdrawal from common documentation

broadly speaking, media art in general, resists a qualitative mediation through traditional

practices via still images. It is usually left to the descriptive eloquence of the catalogue

reproduction techniques, as can be seen in diverse publications from the past two decades;

authors and from thereon to the readers' imagination to achieve a transparent and revealing

extensive commentaries can hardly compensate for this phenomenological loss.

mediation ofthe visual language and acoustic effects, including editing, fading, slow-motion,

Figure 02

zoom, electronic animation, audio modulation, music, voiceover and the principal structure

Tracy Emin.

Why I Never Became a Dancer.

1995. Videostills with installation description from the catalogue fast forward. Media Art Sammlung Goetz 120041

of the interaction between image sequences and audio footage. In spite of today's wide range of available and applied reproduction techniques for moving images, the reception possibilities, visualizing the imminent medial conditions of video or multi-media art, still remain mostly restricted to time- and site-specific display constellations, namely to exhibition set-ups, collection displays and festival presentations.

Having acquired a central function of mediation, the catalogue as the prevailing reproduction medium has emerged from the exhibition event as a useful byproduct. Organized like books, catalogues have surpassed the exclusive role of the original that art historians once considered to be their primary source of research. With a paradigm shift beginning with the era of Modernism and moreover emphasized within post-modern thought, the art historian's noble task to study the >original< in museums and archives has given way to a more and

As a remarkable exception within this spectrum oflimited approaches to the documentation

more book orientated scholarship, paying increasing attention to the discursive context of

of media art, RudolfFrieling's and Dieter Daniels' two-volume publication »Medien Kunst

the artwork's emergence and its reception history, than to its material appearance. As a

Aktion« and »Medien Kunst lnteraktion« provides a useful alternative. These volumes give

result of this development, the exhibition catalogue has become the central medium of art

access via CD-ROMs to exemplary sequences of moving image works, supplementing the

reception, not only featuring the work in high-quality color illustrations, but also resuming

book's contextual comments with short audio-visual excerpts oflandmark media artworks. 4

the latest scholarly discourse as the vital context of its lifespan.

Examples like these make the limitations of traditional reproduction techniques even

4 See Dieter Daniels and Rudolf Frieling leds.1. Medien Kunst Aktion and Medien Kunst Interaktion. both Vienna INew York. 1997 and 2000. Further examples of art editions trying to develop alternative modes of reproduction are the Art IntAct Journal. 1- 5IDstfildern-Ruit: Cantz.

1994 - 1999} conceptually developed by Jeffrey Shaw and published by the ZKM I Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

between 1994 and 1999 or Dennis del Favero and Jeffrey Shaw leds.l. Dislocations. published in collaboration between the ZKM I Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and and The Centre for Interactive Cinema Research. College of Fine Arts. University of New South Wales. Sydney.

Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz. 2001.

26

01 Ursula Frohne. The Artwork as Temporal Form.

27

more visible. Although screenshots of key sequences from videotapes and multi-media

affordable. Although the justified price politics for the distribution conditions of media art

installations fulfill their indispensable reference function in the anthologies of art, the

and specifically videotapes is not to be criticized here - particularly not since these works

essential aesthetic criteria of media art, for example its specific relation to time and space,

are traditionally disadvantaged on the art market by their higher production and installation

cannot even approximately be communicated through still images in conventional book

costs - the question must be raised as to how, and specifically what kind of artistically and

or catalogue reproductions. (The increasingly common CD-ROM or DVD supplements

economically tenable options should be developed to create an expanded framework for the

to art books unfortunately have not motivated artists and curators to include sequences of

reception of media art - in retrospective and for future works as well.

moving images; instead these media often only replicate the information already given in the catalogue.)

The problem of media art's mediation is however not to be reduced to an aesthetic imperviousness. The principle lack of illustrative representational forms of media art

On the other hand, one has to acknowledge that copies of videotapes or DVDs, which might

produces a serious void in the academic discursive field with long-term consequences. It

be available via the mentioned distribution services, often lack further contextual information

creates an >Unproductive< exclusiveness whereby the demand for accurate reproduction

that the commenting texts in conventional art catalogues provide. The documentary function

fails to acknowledge the continuous emergence of a media artwork within space and time.

of such reproduction copies does not compensate for the lack of supplementary contextual

Reproduction citations, showing selected excerpts or sequences of media artworks, add to

information. Media art's sparing economy of representational techniques seem to suggest

the structural richness of a work, inasmuch as the work's structure morphs over time in

that it can do without >depictions< of its specific aesthetic appearance, while videotapes

changing venues. Without adequate audio-visual material, the analysis of moving images

and DVDs produced as copies for distribution often come without any comment about

and the development of their specific language - still a challenge to the vocabulary of art

the emergent context or the works' exhibition and reception history. Quite different from

historians - cannot be shaped and integrated into the curricular field of vision at universities

commercial movie releases on DVD, offering plenty of background information given

and academies. Although a boom of exhibitions and Biennials feature media art extensively

through interviews with the movie director, actors or special effect designers, DVD-

in catalogue publications and emphasize its central role in contemporary discourse, in-depth

productions featuring artworks rarely make use of this potential in order to include, for

research of its visual language and aesthetic characteristics remains an exception in the field

example, artist comments, installation views of present and of previous displays, or glimpses

of academic art history. This shadow existence of media art within the circles of scholarly

of other relevant works to convey a vital impression of its emergent context.

debate certainly will not deceive its historical relevance at the beginning of the 21st century in principle. However, the common, albeit mostly speculative, research relation to media

In contrast to the ever-expanding availability of DVD-versions of commercial movies

art, often not going beyond a merely iconographic reading of a work's visual features, still

shortly after their theatre release, the majority of art videos or DVDs available through

require a wide variety of moving image documentations in order to allow for comparative

distribution services is barely affordable, and therefore only allows for limited access to

readings ofthe audio-visual and spatial constellations of media art, with the aim to establish

the existing material outside of institutional collection structures. (Singular exceptions,

its art historical relevance within the broader scholarly reception.

only confirming this status quo are, for example, an edition of Eija-Liisa Ahtila's »most prominent« videos or Matthew Barney's »Cremaster Cycle« on DVD.) Due to this limited

This void also exists in the more practically orientated art academies, which have all

access policy, many videotapes, particularly the historic works, are often only known

responded to the current media developments with the integration of new study programs

even by the leading authorities in the field through iconic screenshots, since these have

during the past decade, where curricular majors in time-based media are offered. The lack

been canonized by their repetitive reprint, due to the lack of access to alternative views.

of illustrative examples serving to systematically represent the already 40-year-Iong phase

Costly copyright conditions ensure that copies of media artworks are almost exclusively

of media art's emergence in its diverse manifestations and aesthetic potentials are also

fed into the system of exhibition projects that increasingly feature media art, and have

highlighted in the context of teaching this emerging field of study. Particularly because

adequate funding at their disposal to purchase display copies. In the context of academic

today's art students naturally work with electronic media, they must be given the chance

teaching and research with much lower acquisition budgets, such copies are however, rarely

to widen their horizons contemporarily, and also historically, by studying the works of

28

01 Ursula Frohne. The Artwork as Temporal Form. current and previous generations of media artists.

With all ofthese aspects in view, the question arises as to how self-referential practices in the realm of artistic work can be taken to complete fruition in the sense of offering

29

presence to its historical state - a condensed relation between temporal levels that also lends this title its suitability as a programmatic reference point for this book and its preceding conference.

a pragmatic >re-viewing< for the analysis of media artworks, as well as the creation of

Graham's emphasis of the spectator's role in the given constellation verifies the central

periodical and thematic clusters ofthese works. Which technical re-presentation forms offer

function of witnessing, which grants the work its actualized presence. Mediated by the

the adequate preconditions, ultimately giving access to media art via conceptually defined

mirroring effect, which is echoed in the time-delayed video-feedback, the experience of

documentary surrogate versions? Which artistic approaches legitimize and sketch out ways,

historicity is thematically addressed as a principle for the reception of art. Within the act

to >re-produce< the aesthetic characteristics of media art in its changing articulations also

of continuous reconstructions between the >now< and >then< - represented in the video

within a historical perspective? What kind of>picture - positing< techniques [Bildsetzung]

footage by showing the slightly earlier documented moment - the historicity of the aesthetic

(Dieter Mersch) could assimilate the historical display and reception contexts ofthe first and

experience takes its shape. Therefore, Graham's installation can be read as initiating a

second generation of media artworks by new forms of documentation? These considerations

discourse on expanded conditions for the reception of media art, inasmuch as it translates

do not anticipate a propagation of the demands for unlimited multiplication and wild

traditional presentational forms of art, shaped by the demand for its autonomy, into a

dissemination in the service of a pedagogical mission, but the making-visible of excerpted

communicative system ofa continuous >re-framing< and >re-viewing< where hi tori city and

image sequences used as an instrument for phenomenological re-call and scholarly analysis.

actuality dialectically connect through the structure of the artwork.

Figure 03 Photo showing installation of Dan Graham's Present Continuous Past(s) at exhibition project. Kunsthalle Cologne. 1974

Without entering into a debate about the pros and cons of merely pragmatic solutions, I want to investigate the theoretical and conceptual implications that aesthetically justify a greater creativity in the application of reproduction techniques, as a rhetorical tool that ultimately enhances these works' afterlife.

The Work at Work: Present Continuous Past[s[ By combining Dan Graham's early conceptual framing of the new found potential of video technology a a medium of art in »Present Continuous Past(s)« (1974) with the demands addressed previously for extended reproduction forms and circulation conditions of media art, I will attempt to initiate a parallel reading of the discursive possibilities of artistic and documentary recording techniques. Graham's method of reflecting the effective relation

In order to clarify this complex comparison, I will briefly summarize the functional setting

of visual reproduction and re-presentation in a temporally and spatially graduated field of

of»Present Continuous Past(s)«, by quoting Grahams own illuminating description of the

reference points can be regarded as a metaphor for the expanded discursive field, which

piece: »The mirrors reflect the present time. The video camera tapes what

is generated in a similar way by Graham's setting that operates with the documentary re-

is immediately in front of it and the entire reflection on the opposite

working of artistic video elements by uniting the aesthetic characteristics and historical

mirrored wall.

conditions of its emergence in a kind of experimental synopsis.

The image seen by the camera (reflecting everything in the room) appears 8 seconds later in the video monitor (via tape delay placed between the video

As structurally contained in the terminological graduation of the temporal levels, the

recorder which is recording and a second video recorder which is playing

title of Dan Graham's early video installation, »Present Continuous Past(s)«, points to

the recording back).

the procedural suspension that occurs between actuality and historicity, within which the

If a viewer's body does not directly obscure the lens' view of the facing

positioning of art is continuously taking shape. It is telling in the title's composition that

mirror the camera is taping the reflection if the room and the reflected

the present anticipates the past, thus the beholder's attention is directed from the artwork's

image of the monitor (which shows the time recorded 8 seconds previously

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

U::,

P,Q. '

01 Ursula Frohne. The Artwork as Temporal Form.

30

31

reflected from the mirror). A person viewing the monitor sees both the

This differentiating practice of reproduction acknowledges the >alterity< already inherent in

image of himself, 8 seconds ago, and what was reflected on the mirror from

the original experience, claimed by the status of the >original<, because the historical process

the monitor, 8 seconds ago of himself which is 16 seconds in the past (as

itself transforms the context, thus transforming the aesthetic experience, and reception of

the camera view of 8 seconds prior was playing back on the monitor 8 se-

the artwork over a period of time.

conds ago and this was reflected on the mirror along with the then present reflection of the viewer). An infinite regress of time continuums within

Within this temporal condition of the artwork also lies an ethical dimension as indicated

time continuums (always separated by 8 seconds intervals) within time con-

in the epitaph at the beginning of this text. The reproduction of a work is motivated by the

tinuums is created.

ethical imperative »to seek the forgotten primordial phenomenological expe-

The mirror at right-angles to the other mirror-wall and to the monitor-wall

rience of the Other's irreducible singularity,« as Miriam Bankowsky writes

gives a present-time view of the installation as if observed from an 'ob-

in her reflections on Derrida's Homage to Emmanuel Levinas' »Ethical Reminder«.7 As a

jective' vantage exterior to the viewer's subjective experience and to the

form of >re-creation<, one could consider the copy in Bankowsky's words »as a ) trace (

mechanism which produces the piece's perceptual effect. It simply reflects

of the lost encounter. «8 In its manifestation as a reproduction, the work engenders a

(statically) present time.«5

»reconfiguration in time«, and by doing so reconfigures »the dimensions of the work« in time. 9 Inasmuch as »the ethical work is that of the Saying rather

As apparent in this short sketch of the visual reproduction levels in »Present Continuous

than the Said, «10 the opening of the Other within a work, via >repetition as alteration< or

Past(s)«, the central problem of representation is bound - as much in a literal as in a figurative

differentiating reproductions, is not to be regarded as a deformation of its original features,

sense - to the category of >reflection<. I want to emphasize this aspect in order to mirror

rather it counteracts an exclusive economy of oblivion.

the question of the legitimacy of reproductions of media art and their dissemination in my

Figure 04 Dan Graham, Present Continuous Pastls), 1974

further elaborations.

Through mimetic methods, the work is transformed into a different form of mediation, as illustrated in the experimental mise-en-scene of Graham's installation. This also holds true for the reproduction of a painting, which leaves its impression on the art recipient, and more so on the scholarly viewer, not as the actual work of art, but as its referent. 6 Analogous to this relation, adequate mimetic and medial reproduction forms of media art are legitimate, in the sense that they stand in as exemplary >as-if-versions<, making the work accessible to reception on a meta-level. In Grahams installation, the use of video technique indirectly initiates a reflection on the role of video as an appropriate medium for digital reproductions of sequential imagery. It is undisputed that a work, once created

The here cited installation by Dan Graham thematically refers to the liminal zone where

as an aesthetic formula, transforms through the methodology of its reception, as well as

art and commentary coincide through the viewer's reflective re-creation. Continual stages

by its entrance into the discourse of art. Becoming part of this expanded constellation,

ofmorphing and dislocation ensure the work's progress over time and its reaffirmation in

the artwork always coexists in a surrogate version, which remains likewise liminal and

present time as asserted in Graham's comment. The figure of the reflected participant who

problematic. However, precisely because the work transforms via reproduction into a

moves through Graham's installation mirrors moreover the role of the practicing artist and

problematic category, it contains an unrecognized potential for multiple >re-visions< of the

the historical process of the ongoing interpretation of art, which develops in a continuous

>original<. According to the Derridean notion of the trace, the doubling or excerpting of the

dialogue with art's own innovative transformations of form and content.

primordial phenomenological experience initiates a >re-reading< from a different viewpoint.

5 See Dan Graham. Video Architecture Television.

Writings on Video and Video Works 1970 - 1978. edited by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Halifax and New York: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and New York Uni·

versity Press, 1979, p. 71emphasis as in the original version).

6 The medial transformation through reproduction methods has historically been an accepted method to disseminate canonical artworks to a larger public. Before

the photographic era, engravings and lithographs of prominent paintings circulated, not in the least devaluating the )original" but rather enhancing its attraction. This effect remained relevant up until the present day, wherein museums and private collections make their works accessible on websites and in merchandise articles to stimulate

potential visitors to see the work at its physical site.

7 See Miriam Bankowsky, "A Thread of Knots ... ", las in note 11, p. 10.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.. p. 12.

10 Ibid. p. 3

01 Ursula Frohne. The Artwork as Temporal Form.

Figure 05 Dan Graham, Performer-Audience-Mirror, 1977.

Performance 1978, Video Free America, San Francisco, C.A.

32

33

a desirable dimension, precisely because it contributes to the (re-)framing ofthe discursive field, within which the category of the artwork re-articulates and re-Iegitimizes itself in a continuous process of self-reflection.12 Figure 06 Dan Graham, New Design for Showing Videos, 1995, Collection Generali Foundation, Vienna

In this sense, Dan Graham's presentational sub-architectures for the viewing of videotapes offer a physical and figurative form for the }re-framing< ofvideos produced by other artists.

His »Viewing Architectures for Videoworks«, change the context of reception, and as such,

Dan Graham is an artist who has engaged himself regularly in the concept ofthe }comment<

expand their discursive field. Such mediating architectures - similar to Graham's mirror

as he has shown explicitly in his performances, some of which he has re-staged, until

pavilions and concept for a transparent cinema architecture both creating interactive and

recently, on various occasions. 11 Influenced by structuralist and deconstructive theory,

oscillating communication fields - function like an interface, granting access, in this case

Graham claims his works emerge from an atmosphere of constant commentary and

to selections of videotapes, allowing for various re-combinations in the process of viewing

evaluation, and that they transform through this process. Therefore, they have no meaning

within an open archival structure. 13

outside of this constellation of continuous discourse. The legitimization of an art form that requires an explanatory process, and thus is also comprised by it, is one of the major

The use of video technology for the manipulation of the replay-time of the recorded footage

achievements ofthe art tendencies ofthe 1960s and 1970s, Appropriately, the meanings that

in Graham's installation is applied as a method for the }visualization< and clarification

we attribute to works of art mediate themselves, through a multiplicity ofcomments, against

of reception phenomena, which in turn, can be regarded as establishing a model for the

the background of our contemporary understanding, and continuously articulate themselves

possibility of knowledge transmission through technological reproduction methods. 14 Thus

anew, shaped by their changing interpretation and (historical) context. The inevitability of

one could say that by documentary re-presentation, the representational forms emerging in

the comment becomes a quality when the discursive context discovers new and actualized reference points, As emphasized in the order of Graham's installation, the artistic }original< continues to re-shape itself along the }originality< ofthe referencing comments. In Jacques

Derrida's vocabulary, the comment is regarded as something inherent to the work, something that virtually even anticipates its experience and reception. With this understanding, the possibi lity ofa commented and commenting practice via reproductions of media art becomes 11 Graham's interest in the constitutional role of the comment in the artwork has become part of several performances that he has staged and re-staged between the 1970s and the present. A good example. available on videotape, is »Performer/Audience/Mirror«, October 1995 at the Generali Foundation in Vienna. See Dan Graham Video/Architecture/Performance, exh. cat. with videotape, Generali Foundation, Vienna, 1995.

12 Miriam Bankowsky further reflects on the character of the work in Derrida's sense. She explains: »First we have 'work, correlating with the French word ouvrage (emphasizes by the authorl: a construct or product of work such as a book, a painting, a gift of thanks or even, a decision. One could say, that ouvrage names the final result (completed at a moment in time) of the activity of a writer, artist. or politician, for example. We have, also, 'work', as oeuvre:

both, work as creation Icreation) - in similarity to ouvrage - and work as 'activity' (travaifl. As activity, the work takes time. Finally, we have the ethical Work ICEuvre, capitalized) of which we have been speaking: the work of looping and of knotting. The ethical Work is work in both senses: as activity and product. As travail (the activity of working in time) the ethical Work seeks to 're-discover', as if one could, the always already lost primordial phenomenological experience of the face-to-face Ian encounter which is not within our time, but, strangely, 'will have been). The ethical Work as creation (created construct) takes form as a 'trace' of the lost encounter. Using Levinas's vocabulary, we would say that CEuvre is the trace of the Saying in the Said. Using Derrida's vocabulary, we would say that CEuvre is 'knotted' into the thread of the work, The emergence of the trace, then, is an emergence of diffeence in time. We can see, then, that the implications of the ethical Work (as

CEuvrel involves a morphing of the work as it progresses temporally inasmuch as it accepts within itself the trace of the Other such that it no longer remains the Same.« See Miriam Bankowsky, »A Thread of Knots ...«,Ias in note 11, p. 10.

13 On Grahams video architectures see also Katharina Ammann's essay »Dan Graham's Designs for Video Presentations« in this volume, pp. 112 - 123.

14 In his paper »Media Art Net - a paradigm for media art mediation», first presented at the here published »Present Continuous Past(s)« conference in Bremen, Gregor Stemm rich points out that the delay· sequence equates the perception time of the human brain when processing visual information. See http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/sourcetext/156/ lIast viewed June 2, 20051.

01 Ursula Frohne. The Artwork as Temporal Form. the artwork as aesthetic >effects< transform into a comprehensible reading of the perceptual

34

35

was to be totally unique or new. My video timed-delay installations and

processes. The monitor representing the monitor representing the monitor realizes not

performance designs use this ,modernist. notion of phenomenological im-

only the endless regress or the spatial mise-en-abyme, but also the temporal process of

mediacy, foregrounding an awareness of the presence of the viewer's own

reception in general, and by that indicates a historical dimension, which is structurally

perceptual process, while at the same moment they critique it by showing

engrained in the artwork's genesis itself. An infinite past is >re-Iocated< in the vanishing

the impossibility of locating a pure present tense.«18

point of the spectator's perspective. At the same time the notion of a static and immobile

Figure 07 Dan Graham. Public Space / Two Audiences-2. 1976.

Installation »Ambiente«. Venice Biennale. 1976. Collection Herbert, Gent. Belgium

>here-and-now< is withdrawn from the empirical flow of time and - in repetition via the video-feedback transformed to an alienated impression - reinserted into the perception of time. The beholder perceives this as a referential >now<, which in the words of Walter

Benjamin »is the presence, in which he himself writes history. «15 If we assume, according to Maurizio Lazzarato's media-philosophical approach, that video works, as »crystallizations (syntheses) of time«, not only give aesthetic shape and expression to the theme oftime within art, but that they also underlie, like any other artwork, a temporality, which is subsequently the theme of the re-presentation of this art form and its individual artistic contributions, a unique time-spatial dimension is established in the documentary version of a media artwork which functions as a reference point to an ongoing process ofre-interpretation. 16 In Dan Graham's installation this epistemological dimension

This evident historicity of the media condition in principle also reveals a sociological

is connected to the performative role of the beholder, who continuously re-activates the

as a changing viewpoint and by the way it transforms the perception and positioning of the

>here-and-now< in the time and space of the installation. The continual re-representation

artwork itself. In this sense, diverse and extensive approaches to media art reproduction offer

via video feedback records and equally initiates the act of reflection on the medial condition

veritable chances of re-viewing and re-covering their aesthetic characteristics. Similar to

of the aesthetic experience in spite of its anticipated immediacy.

dimension. This is revealed mainly in the way it continues to include the spectator's position

perspectival representation, excerpts and citations of audio-visual sequences can reference an imaginary dimension as a legitimate vanishing point that opens up new reflective spaces

»Present Continuous Past(s)« is thus a practical and critical allegory for a suggested

for media art.

aesthetic >timelessness< of the artwork. Graham's installation hereby not only historicizes the institutional space, but also the institution ofthe artwork itself by uncovering its pretence of representing a timeless category. His experimental setting contradicts the idea of art as a >neutral< aesthetic concept, which is of course confirmed by the institutional frame of its conservation and displayY It is exactly the procedural form of media art that always already inscribes a historical dimension into its aesthetic form, as Dan Graham comments: »A premise of 1960s ,Modernist. art was to present as immediacy - as pure phenomenological consciousness without the contamination of historical or other a priori meaning. The world could be experienced as pure presence, self-sufficient and without memory. Each privileged present-time situation 15 See Walter Benjamin. »Theses on the Philosophy of History«. in Walter Benjamin. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. 1969. p. 262. as quoted by Thierry de Duve. »Dan Graham and the Critique of Artistic Autonomy«. in: Marianne Brouwer. Dan Graham. Works 1965 - 2000.

DOsseldorf: Richter Verlag. 2001. pp. 49 - 66. p. 56,

16 See Maurizio Lazzaratos. Videophilosophie. Berlin: b_books.2002, 17 On Graham's behavioural approach in revealing the relational context of the artwork in the course of a performance see Thierry de Duve. »Dan Graham and the Critique of Artistic Autonomy«.las in note 10).

18 See Dan Graham. »Performance: End of the 60s«. in: Alexander Alberro led.). Two-Way Mirror Power. Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, Cambridge. MA.: The MIT Press. 1999. p. 144.

Ulrike Rosenbach.

Thi~ty

-

Yea~s

Expe~ience

Figure 01 Guerrilla

36

of Media

A~t

by

in Mediation and

Ul~ike

Rosenbach

Rep~oduction.

Figure 02 Camera

Figure 03 Machine

37

02 Ulrike Rosenbach. Thirty Years of Media Arts.

38

.,...

Figure 04 ..TV gallery Gerry SchumÂŤ

Figure 05 Gerry Schum-Example

39

40

02 Ulrike Rosenbach. Thirty Years of Media Arts.

,

ftft .....

•••••• • Figure 06 Ars Electronica 1986

Figure 07 Ars Electronica Archive

....

UI:'

ao

41

02 Ulrike Rosenbach. Thirty Years of Media Arts.

DEO

STORY PRO RESOURCES

CT

42

D 0 HISTORY PROJECT

._-.--

RESOURC S

"'

un. f .\"

Figure 08 Video History Project-2

Figure 09 Video History Project-Resource

I Figure 10 235 MEDIA

43

02 Ulrike Rosenbach. Thirty Years of Media Arts.

44

VIDEO HIS ORY PROnCT

..

ReSOURCES

Figure 11 videohistoryl

Figure 12 Pape -INFERMENTAL

45

46

47

Sabine Flach.

»Withd~awal

d~awal

Media

and

as an

A~tfo~m«

Between WithThe Body In the

P~esentation

A~ts

- - constitutin elements essentially inherent to the work of art. Shifting the be regarded a~ I g Iment and lack, and aesthetically locating them within the elements ofwtthdrawa ,concea . h y can no longer k f art lastinaly alters the characterizations of these phenomena. t e . . wor 0 , "wa of a media-technological or an extra-artistic analysIs; rather It be grasped solely by y.. ponents of the artistic work itself that must first be is the structural and constltutmg com specified. cc Figure 01 Bruc e Nauman. »Space under my Chair .

1968

Nauman 1

published »Withdrawal as an Artform« is the title of a short textual piece Bruce in the magazine Artfarum in 1970. 2 The piece takes meticulous stock of the qualities and attributes characterizing his works; keywords include >sensory manipulation<, >amplification<, >sensory overload (fatigue)<, )withdrawal<, and )deniak3 This attitude does not seem entirely new, particularly not in view of the development of the arts in and since the 1960's: if one were to set out on a search for the material of aesthetic practice in contemporary art, the outcome of such a quest might best be encapsulated in the felicitous phrase "The DemateL'ialization of the AL't Object«. This was the programmatic title under which Lucy Lippard subsumed, in 1973, the various artistic developments since the mid-sixties, i.e. movements whose common feature was - regardless of their different manifestations - their renunciation of the classical concept ofart. 4 On the one hand dematerialization or absence implied an artistic practice whose intention suggested that such works might elude the claims of the - presumably corrupt - art market, or else that the withdrawal from the art market might result in the re-politicization of artistic practice. 5 '-

On the other hand, characterizing art as a dematerial phenomenon clearly made reference to the technical media, which - according to this idea - were to foster the development of the arts towards a massive )ontological deniak 6 Moreover the supposed consumerist attitude towards a flood of images, cited in a tiresomely uncontemplated fashion, is countered by an artistic practice whose critical reflection of the complex relationship of image, copy, perception, and the world is viewed as a mere attitude of refusal to the image, and which is therefore ascribed a self-destructive iconoclasm.?

On the basis ofthe, initially cited, characteristics Bruce Nauman uses to describe his work, this study proposes a new approach to phenomena of withdrawal and of concealment in an artistic work.

The two procedures will be analyzed not so much in an extra-artistic context or against the backdrop of general media technology evolution informing the work of art; rather withdrawal, concealment, lack will gain autonomy in the aesthetic process, and will For more details on Bruce Nauman cf.: Sabine Flach.

Kerper-Szenarien: Zum Verhaltnis von Bild and Kerper in Videoinstallationen. Munich: Fink Verlag 2003.

2 Bruce Nauman cited from Artforum 9. no. 4.1970. p. 44.

1

3 Translator"s note: The concepts of 'withdrawalc and ,denialc from Nauman's piece »Withdrawal as an Artformcc were both rendered as 'Entzugc in the German version. on which this article is based. While including instances of

.

I . N uman's work, manifests itself primarily as the radical specification of

:~:~~::~;a~el~ali:ingas something a thing as ob~ectp~eac~:e~~~Sni:t:~~~e:~::h~:;::t~::~ it in a meanina-constitutive fashIOn: the surroun mg s . b W'/l m S Un~er My Chair« from 1968 (Figure 01). Parting from a statement Y . I e

;e >~:aa:i:g, according to which, for example, to represent a chair one should not pamt the rapidly adopted new tendencies such as Conceptual Art, denial. ,withdrawalc(as in the title of Nauman's originalI even the projected politicizing of artlsliC practice came will take the place of both ideas in this English version of true only tendentially, as Lippard noted herself at the the article. . . f end of her study. In an epilogue, which she composed 4 Some general tendencies towards the ephememallon a only three years later, she conceded that »hopes that artistic creation occurred as early as in the work of Allan ,conceptual artc would be able to avoid the general comKaprow. His tightly structured happenings opened up the mercialization, the destructively ,progresslve capproach space between installation and performance. and thereby of modernism were for the most part unfounded. [....1the created a sphere one might describe as a performatlve enmajor conceptualists are selling work for substantial ~ums vironment. Hence Kaprow already marked the place of the here and in Europe; they are represented in the world s 'Between c.whose transitory state was to become of great most prestigious galleries.cc Lippard stressed thisfact importance for the process of artistic practice in general. once more in the catalogue Reconsidering the. Object of 5 »1 think the art world is probably gOing to be able to Art 1965 -1975. Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorcmer (eds.l. c absorb conceptual art as another ,movement and not pay Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1995. '" too much attention to it. The art establishment depends 6 Cf. Ulrike Lehmann, Peter Weibelleds). Asthetlk der so greatly on objects which can be bought and sold that Absenz: 8ilder zwischen Anwesenheit and Abwesenhel!.

Idon't expect it to do much about an art that IS opposed Munich/8erlin: Klinekhardt & 8iermann, 1994. For the to the prevailing systems.cc (Lucy Lippard, SIX Years: The thesis of ontological withdrawal see p. 7.

Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 ~ 1972: New York: Praeger Publishers Inc.. 1973, pp. 7- 81lippard s hopes were not fulfilled; on the contrary, the art market

03 Sabine Flach. Withd~awl as an A~tfo~m.

48

chair itself but rather the space between its parts, Nauman does not show objects as such but turns the work of art into a reflection on remainders, on negative space, so to speak.

Concerning the question of representability this form of representation asserts a crucial artistic stance: not the objects themselves achieve and constitute meaninoe, but rather marginalities and absences do, in this concrete case in the sense of a dividino line e

between the actual object and the surrounding space. It is this line that designates that which is being withdrawn, and thereby creates the very contour which in its precision renders the withdrawal or the concealment at all visible.

49

mostly by way of marking it as missing. While the surrounding space is realized, the matter marking it through its form is itself absent. The emphasis on the bodily trace makes this loss of presence apparent; a fissure, it turns into a boundary, marks a bodily contour and thereby the indented spot as its legacy. This procedure marks the transitory state caused by this process.

Inherent to this artistic procedure is a processuality, which makes the inscribing ofthe body visible; what is shown is the execution ofa touch, visible in the loss, i.e. the absence of the body after its imprinting. a In this particular artistic practice it is not so much the object itself that is of interest, but gestures whose transmissions visualize what happens within the piece of art and which make it possible to give absence a shape. 9 How then can this form of artistic practice, in this study exemplified by Bruce Nauman, be situated more precisely in art history and media history, so that we can analyze

the phenomena of withdrawal and concealment respectively?

Figu['e

02

Bruce Nauman. "Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists«. 1966

Nauman extensively uses this materialized empty space as a withdrawal strategy for

representing the body (F igu['e 02). In castings, life castings, and body prints - such as »Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists« from 1966 - the body is represented 7 Ibid. For the thesis on iconoclasm see p. 9.

a Concerning body prints cf. Georges Didi-Huberman.

Ahnlichkeit and Beruhrung: Archaologie, Anachronismus und die Modernitat des Abdrucks. Cologne: DuMont.

1997. On the relationship between the absent body and the surrounding space cf. Sabine Flach. Kiirper-Szenarien.

2003 las in note 1). in particular the chapter "Kiirper im raumlichen Vollzug«. pp. 59 - 73.

9 This situationist gesture of the artistic work may be tied directly to the body and to the gesture taking place. and therefore corresponds immediately to the relationship of the body to the space. i.e. the kinesthetic relations of the work. These performative activities particularly 'underscore the studio situation of the artist. Lucy Lippard described this situation as "The studio is again becoming a study«. These works of art were strongly influenced by experimental and innovative works of modern dance. Not only does the reductionist vocabulary of modern dance theater communicate with that of the Minimalist object. but the emphasis on the always missing or marginalized body, which achieves its expressive force precisely

because of its absence, is a feature of the performative arts as well. Both artistic modes highlight the structure of movements as well as the position of the body within the space. In their systematic execution of possible movements these performances subject the body to a conceptional structure. These repetitive action structures informing Nauman's performances find their counterpart in experimental dance exercises by Merce Cunningham, Simone Forti, Trisha Brown, Ann Halprin. or even Meredith Monk, whose consciously reduced plots not only afforded them a new artistic means of expression with regard to classical dance but who strove to achieve a reduced bodily objecthood by using a concentrated and Minimalist gesticulatory vocabulary. Bruce Nauman described the influence experimental dance exerted on the actionist art of the 60's and on his own work situation, as follows: "Well, the first time I really talked to anybody about body awareness was in the summer of 1968. Meredith Monk was in San Francisco. She had thought about or seen some of my work and recognized it. [... J You do exercises, you have certain kinds of awarenesses that you don't have if

you read books. So the films and some of the pieces that I did after that for videotapes were specifically about doing exercises in balance. I thought of them as dance problems without being a dancer, being interested in the kinds of tension that arise when you try to balance and can't. Or do something lor a long time and get tired.« Bruce Nauman in an interview with Willoughby Sharp, "Interview with Bruce Nauman,« in Janet Kraynak led.) Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman's Words. Writings and Interviews, Cambridge, MA, 2003, pp.133-154, p.142.

The interview was first published in Avalanche 2. 1971.

The tension the body generates not only ties back into the experience of purely physical activity through movement. rather its actual execution becomes more of a quality of the space. The execution of simple. stereotypical routine activities is not in itself an artistic action, but it becomes one in conjunction with a spatial experience, which - de· pending on the activity - is always different. By physically concentrating on the Minimal structure of the happening as an artificial action, different spatial qualities may be unfolded and may thereby be experienced in a performative artistic action. This is where the similarity of the goals of videographic performances of the time, and explicitly of Nauman's work, with those of experimental dance becom· es evident. Parting from the rejection of classical ballet as an out-dated means of artistic expression the dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer described the analogies which--due to the changed artistic mission of executing the relationship between body and space- exist between dance and the fine arts: "What is perhaps unprecedented in the short history of the modern dance is the close correspondence between concurrent developments in dance and the plastic arts.« Ip. 264) For Rainer this results in new concepts of dance: "The display of technical virtuosity and the display of the dancer's specialized body no longer makes any sense. Dancers have been driven to search for an alternative context that allows for a more matter-offact, more concrete, more banal quality of physical being

in performance, a context wherein people are engaged in actions and movements making a less spectacular demand on the body and in which skill is hard to locate (p. 267) [ .. I The alternatives that were explored now are obvious; stand, walk, run, eat. carry bricks. show movies, or move or be moved by some thing rather than oneself.

Ip. 269) [.] The execution of each movement conveys a sense of unhurried control. The body is weighty without being completely relaxed. What is seen is a control that seems geared to the actua/time it takes the actual weight of the body to go through the prescribed motions [•. ] the demands made on the body's lactual) energy resources appear to be commensurate with the task - be it getting up from the floor, raising an arm, tilting the pelvis, etc. [•. ] The movements are not mimetic, so they do not remind one of such actions, but Ilike to think that in their manner of execution they have the factual quality of such actions.« Ip 2701lYvonne Rainer, "A Quasi Survey of Some ,Minimalist Tendencies< in the Quantitatively Minimal Dance Activities Midst the Plethora, or Analysis of Trio A«, in Gregory Battcock led.), Minimal Art. A Critical Anthology, London: studio Vista, 1968, pp 263 - 273 13. Emphases in the original.) The body is regarded as an artificial means, through which statements about space relationships can be made. These movements are extensions with which the expanse of the space can be fathomed, with the position of the body serving as the marker of locations.

03 Sabine Flach. Withd~awl as an A~tfo~m.

-

-

-

- -

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

- -

-

It is fundamental for understanding this work mode that these characteristics of the work

of art are established in clear distinction to those of modernism.10 The self-referential questions that define modernist art have been replaced by works implying a new materiality, and whose questions aim at the structural and symbolic positioning of a subject body.

They are derived from Minimal and Conceptual Art, since their current processuality is also emphasized by the purism, the open-endedness (non-finitio) and the intellectuality of the execution of the work l1 ln Minimal and Conceptual Art in particular one finds the reduction of the aesthetic object as well as its replacement by a host of activities, notations, and actions, which both expanded the concept of the artistic work once more after it had been radicalized in classical modernity, and, particularly starting in the mid-sixties, reshaped the traditioned canon of art aC,tion and art reception. In our current understanding art equates the artistic object and artistic practice. Tendencies ofephemerization and dematerialization as well as its redefinition as a phenomenon in space and time situate the work ofart outside the conventions of the individual genres. With the fundamental changes brought about by Conceptual Art a work ofart is no longer considered the preserved trace of a manufacturinO" I::>

process, as for example in Abstract Expressionism, nor as a process, as in an artistic happening. With conceptions of Conceptual Art the artist gives a dynamic to his work through the limitedly open relationship between concept and execution.1 2 As a consequence of Conceptual Art then the artistic >work< is understood as a series of decision-making processes. The artistic work with a performative character is actionoriented, and is therefore first of all an ephemeral and yet participatory, performative, and concept-oriented event. Any further presentation requires the transformation ofthe artist's work into a variant of its mediality.

The self-contained, autonomous work of art, embedded into a societally defined canon, which in turn ensures its comprehensibility, has made way for the emphasis on the processual; the conditions surrounding the piece must be included in the work's reception as much as the emancipation of the idea structuring the work must be considered a form 13 Hence the work ofart is no longer regarded as an object with meaning lodged within it, but rather as a cognitive process. The works are characterized by a highly conceptualized, strictly ritualized action, enabling a coming to terms with existential aspects ofcorporeality, which are observed with detachment though. Actionism not only resulted in a different idea of the work; rather the strong presence of a subject made it downright transcendent. The 10 Hence, the 1960's see a radicalization of art beyond the individual arts, i.e. the individual evolutions of genres; the dynamics it implied and as it was still characteristic of modernism, has now become just as obsolete as the auctoritas proclaimed by modernism. probed - among other things - by the seriality of Minimal Art and by the indexicality of Conceptual Art. By revising the position of authorship the role of the viewer is redefined at the same time, so that the place traditionally occupied by artistic

authorship is now taken. besides by intention, by the significance of reception.

11 It is my thesis that these both transitory and body. related video works are developed from the characteristics of Conceptual and Minimal Art. and then connected with the performativity of experimental dance theater; hence a blend of body art, of the happening and of Fluxus actions really is not preferred. For basics and details cf. Flach.

Korper路Szenarien. 2003 (as in note 1).

50

-

51

work of art evolved away from a product into a process, which will subsequently constitute the work of art itself. Implicitly the work of art comes with a certain reductionism resulting in the dematerialization of artistic practice. Thereby contingent aspects of the context are more and more clearly integrated.

This indicates that a decisive shift in artistic practice has been accomplished, for it is the body that becomes a new, henceforth ineludible category of the work of art. In consequence the artistic work becomes a phenomenological event, with attention focused on the conditions of perception. The bodily perception of an artistic piece as well as what is happening within a space are important parameters for this.

Perception is a process, composed of event fragments, of observations of movements, which may prompt the bodily identification with that change. The performativity of the artistic work becomes crucial and centers on an active subject radically distinct from traditioned subjects of artistic experience. Rosalind Krauss was aware of this change as well:

"Neithe~

the old

Ca~tesian

subject. the minimalist subject

subject

no~

biog~aphical

the teaditional

l-l is a subject

~adically

the conditions of the spatial field. a subject who visionally and moment-by-moment. in the act of

cohe~es.

contingent on but only

p~o-

pe~cept路lon.芦 14

As the conditions ofperception have become the subject of the artistic work, the context has seen a shift, since by using the body the themes of the work of art find their direct translation in their execution. This >engaging< of the body as execution of the artistic work is an experience of aesthetic totality, insofar as the quality of its presence is of importance, The body is integrated into sequential structures, which transform the conventions of art.

The phenomena of withdrawal and concealment have persistently figured as constituting elements of Nauman's artistic practice, even more so with the application of media technologies, video technology in particular. 15 12 The association of aspects of presence with corporeal路 ity dominating these works by Nauman provided some orientation within the radicalized principles derived from Minimal Art. Dan Graham has a similarly concrete grasp of Bruce Nauman's works; "Nauman turned to himself as the body of the work: himself. his lits) own literal informing subject matter.. The body information is the medium; the body information is the message for the presence of Nauman himself. There is no longer the necessity of a material (other than the artist's body) for the mediation.

This work of Naumans in the present in the presence of the spectator. ..just as Nauman has inverted his relation to the sculptural materials he works upon, he now becomes the ,object' and the 'subject' simultaneously; he is both artist and material, both perceiver (as he perceives himself in order to execute the piece) and perceived, and both exterior and interior surface." (Dan Graham quoted in Rainer Metzger, Kunst in der Postmoderne: Dan Graham. Cologne:

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig. 1996, p. B5.)

13 Cf. Hubert Klocker: "Gestus und Dbjekt. Befreiung als Aktion: Eine europaische Komponente performativer Kunst", in Paul Schimmel (ed.l: out of actions. Zwischen Performance und Dbiekt 1949 -1979. German edition ed. by Peter Noever/ MAK, Los Angeles/Dstfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1998, p. 160.

14 Rosalind Krauss, "The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum", in: Rosalind Krauss et al. leds.l. October: The Second Decade 1986-1996. Cambridge. MA: The MIT Press 1997. pp. 427 - 441,432 -433.

15 For basics with regard to the following remarks cf.: Sabine Flach, Georg Christoph Tholen (eds.l. Mimetische Differenzen: Vom Spielraum der Medien zwischen Abbildung and Nachbildung, Kassel: Kassel University Press. 2002.

03 Sabine Flach. Withd~awl as an Aetfom.

52

53

rather by processuality and dynamic; i.e. forms of execution and process that may generate in-between spatialities or parentheses. Emphasis is also placed on spatial processes, which may be designated as >situational aesthetics<. In this case too the body possesses once again a crucial meaning-constitutive function, while it is still Nauman's principle to always show that which isn't present. This impression is enhanced by the camerawork, which obviously focuses on visually representing what is lacking.

(Figure

03) In video works such

as »Wall-Floor-Positions« or »Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square« or »Playing a Note on the Violin while I Walk around the Studio« or even »Slow Angle Walk: Beckett Walk« but also in his installations, such as the »Green Light Corridor« or »Video Surveillance Piece: Public Room/Empty Room« Nauman 16 positions the fixed camera lens in such a way that part of what is happening is always unviewable, i.e. outside of the area being taped. Hence Nauman as the actor of these videos is temporarily removed from the viewer's visual field; the video shows a spatial situation accompanied by a soundtrack featuring acoustic signals, such as sounds of steps or jumping, breathing, etc. So in this case the body does not at all function as a space of physical experience but is imbued with referential meaning; as material of artistic expression it serves to map the space and the situation.

Such a perspective moves to the center of aesthetic practice both thematic reflections of the body image neglected by the fine arts heretofore, and >marginalities<, in the sense of emphasizing the difference, the seam, the trace or the fissure, which stresses the components without which the image - that of the body - wouldn't even exist 17 Highlighting these >lacunae< allows for traditional body concepts to be investigated, under the assumption of their questionability, and helps to better understand the fundamental construction and thence the artificiality of body perception.

With regard to the representation of a body image new technologies in the fine arts not so much offer an emphatic final rhetoric on the dissolution of the body within or as the The analysis of artistic works from early video technol consistently pursued and devel d ogy demonstrates that those Art. Those early video pieces ::em:rckondcebPt ofart as postulated by Conceptual and Minimal e y a concept ofspac I' of action sequences. Both are fi 'bl I ere atIng to the processuality orCI y re ated to corporeart . . with it. Spatiality howe . h' I Yor are In constant Interaction , ver, tS c aractenzed not hb . so muc y archItectonic constants but

image as they inscribe the body into the visual field. Emphasis is placed on the inherent processuality of this procedure, i.e. body images are processual in their structure.

This form of artistic production, which persistently affects questions of intention and reception, will be exemplified by the installation »Live/Taped Video Corridor« in the following.

(Figure

04)

16 Just as for Dan Graham lack is constitutive of Nauman's work as well, such as in his work Roll from 1970, in which he proceeds according to a similar principle.

17 Less and less the body is regarded as the locus of

the natural and of the authentic, which 18th century thought had made it out to be. The body is shown as a construct, as a foil for the historically changing inscriptions of the sciences and of cultural phenomena.

03 Sabine Flach. Withd~awl as an A~tfo~m.

54 Figure 04 Bruce Nauman. »live/Taped Video Corridor«. 1969

55

first glance the second screen doesn't seem to display anything. As the viewer approaches the screen, she recognizes that the form on the lower screen is the apparent image of her own body. But contrary to our everyday experience in the mirror, the image shown is not her mirror image but rather her image with her original handedness. Yet precisely this kind of projection is confusing, for the viewer sees herself from behind as she walks down the passageway. So her own person is not reflected in a direct, confronting display; rather the viewer realizes that there is a camera in the room which, mounted up higher than her body height, projects an image of her back view. Hence the surveillance equipment in the corridor taping her physical movements acts as a surveilling >gaze< behind her back. If the viewer wants to see the camera eye, she has to turn away from her own projection - the camera will still be taping her then but she can no longer control her image. Ifshe attempts to watch the recording of her body on the screen and moves closer to it, this controlling gaze is sabotaged, for the camera image becomes smaller the closer she gets to the screen, only to finally disappear completely, as she stands directly in front of the screen. Bruce

Nauman himselfdescribed the »Live/Taped Video Corridor« as a difficult experience, where withdrawal is an essential factor; »The easiest

pa~t

outside

ent~ance,

into the

the television

pictu~e

and the

co~~ido~,

The~e

was at the

distu~bed

. From the year 1969 on Bruce Nauman created a number of corridor installations 18 which InVite the viewer to r I h '. . ' 19 . ac Ive y use t em. In Its ongInal conception the »Live/Taped Video .

Corndor« conSists of several corridors of different lengths, set up next to one another in a row to form the »Vldeo Surveillance Corridor«. 20 These corridors are all very narrow so that It IS Impossible to enter th .h h . . . em, Wit t e exceptIOn of a passageway. In later exhibitions that major, walk-In se.ction of the work is often exhibited as »Live/Taped Video Corridor« wIthout the other additIOnal corridors.

The passageway of the installation is very high and narrow; on one end two video screens are set up one on top of the other. Once the viewer enters the corridor and moves toward the screens, she notices a human form being displayed on one of the screens. At 18. The work Walk with Contrapposto features an acting individual. which however the viewer can only view by way of the videotape (cf. chapter 3 of this work). which was taped inside the 1969 Performance Corridor (243.8

x51 x 609.6 cm; Panza Collection. Milan). Besides this piece Nauman developed series of corridors. such as the Green-ligh! Corridor from 1970/71 (walls 304.8 cm high each; fluorescent tubes 234.8 cm long each. Panza

you

f~om

no~mally

you~self. ~ido~

you~self

you~self

When you

~ealized

o~

the way you

that you

was like stepping off a cliff

we~e o~

f~om

mo~e.

appea~ed

sc~een,

down into a hole.

on

you. I used a The

sc~een,

the

at the

When you walked you

came~a

it was

diffe~ent f~om

expe~ienced

on the

[_I

befo~e

on the

above and behind, which was quite

saw

end.

the distance even

ten feet up, so that when you did see the back,

othe~

that was still twenty feet away

wide angle lens, which

came~a

was a television

you had to go in about ten feet

sc~een

co~~ido~ thi~ty-fou~

of the piece to get into was a

feet and twenty-five inches wide.

was f~om

the way

co~~ido~ a~ound

being in the

[_I

co~­

You knew what

had happened because you could see all the equipment and what was going on, yet you had the same

expe~ience

eve~y

time you walked in.

The~e

was no

way to avoid having it.«21 Collection. Milani, the Corridor Installation from 1970 (335,3 x 914,4 x 1219.2 cm. Panza Collection. Milan). the Kassel Corridor: Elliptical Space from 1972lexterior wall 365.8 x 1432.6 cm; interior wall 365.8 x 1417,3 cm; Panza Collection. Milan). the Corridor Installation with Mirror from 1970 Iwall243,84 cm high; mirror 137,16 cm high; installed at San Jose State College; destroyedl. Moreover some corridors or corridor-like constructions such as the Acoustic Wall from 1969/70 Ica. 243,8 x 1065.8 cm. Panza Collection. Milani or else Acoustic Wedge: Sound Wedge - Double Wedge (1969/70) refer directly to the sense of

hearing; their specific spatial constructions exert pressure on the ears and thereby on the sense of balance.

19 Live/Taped Video Corridor was the first video installa· tion with a closed-circuit system.

20 This work has great similarity to the installation Corridor Installation. which included three closed-circuit video cameras though.

21 Bruce Nauman in an interview with Willoughby Sharp. »Interview with Bruce Nauman«. in: Janet Kraynak (ed.).

Please Pay Attention Please. pp. 133 -154.las in note 91 pp. 151 -152.

56

57

03 Sabine Flach. Withdcawl as an Actfocm.

The viewer is denied a concrete image of herself; she finds herself confronted with a situation she cannot control, and which she can only escape by leaving the corridor altogether. Nauman stages an inescapable surveillance situation for the viewer, which, however, doesn't immediately present itself as such but becomes evident over the different levels, on which the withdrawal takes place. The viewer cannot do anything without being taped, whereas she herself has no control over the recordings. With the camera taping the entire room the person being taped is under the impression that not only are her current actions being surveilled but that, due to the exposed positioning of the camera, future actions can be pre-viewed at this point. The complete withdrawal of her image implies the assumption that even future actions on the part of the viewer are subject to this situation, prior to their happening. Evoking this impression in the viewer, after all, is one of the goals of this surveilling gaze. The narrowness of the corridor reinforces this sentiment of being manipulated by the installation, so that the viewer finds herself in a claustrophobic experimental setting. 22 The second screen mounted on top of the other heightens this impression; it also displays an image of the corridor, but the recording of the visitor is missing entirely, and substituted by a lacking image instead.

Hence the viewer participates in the work without being able to interfere with it through her presence or her actions. So denial and absence have prompted an element of manipulation, which not only completely controls the viewer of the installation, but which also corresponds to one of Bruce Nauman's essential aesthetic premises. The strategies

Nauman develops in this piece are founded on the idea ofhighlighting precisely that which is missing. Susan Sontag has cited this attitude as being comparable to silence, and continued to define both as power factors for the artist's own position. For Susan Sontag they both create opaqueness, and a therefore almost unassailable position of power. She states:

» [ •.. ]

much as they construct it as a subject. , I by the incessant observation of the This form of conditioning IS achieved not on y t h' ch results " but even more by rendering the space concre e, w I viewer with a vIdeo camera, . . osed to be the same for all . ' . I erience. This expenence IS supp in her Immediate physlca exp . d t 'ned by the artist.26 Bruce . n can be specified m a way pre e erml viewers, so that the receptlo ", h h the radical Minimalist mapping , h eriences m hiS viewers t roug , Nauman mduces t ese exp , . CT that conditions of perception enyinCT the productIOn of meanlllto>, so of the space an d by d to> undergo a condensation.

the

actist who cceates silence oc emptiness must pcoduce something dialectical: a full void, an enciching emptiness, a cesonating oc eloquent silence.«23

In this way Bruce Nauman foils the viewer's efforts to recognize her physical traits and thereby verify her identity; he denies her the image of herself and of the work. The visual process alone doesn't allow the visitor to perceive the work, for - in front of her own reflection - she literally stands herself >in the way<. Nauman steers the perception of his work toward a concrete perception act, a kinesthetic experience, which manifests itself mostly 22 Bruce Nauman escalates these spatially extreme situations in his tunnel objects, which are very often true dead-ends, The maquettes for subterranean tunnels such as Room With My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care from 19B4 have a similar effect. They appear sinister and provoke claustrophobia.

23 Susan Sontag: "The Aesthetics of Silence« 11967), in: id, A Susan Sontag Reader. London: Penguin, 1982, p. 191.

24 Another work likewise based on exclusion - again that

.. .. , h k he can see its projections . ' " While the viewer IS part oft e wor , s in ItS spattal speCIficatIOn. , h lusion of the observing gaze of . . th camera image IS based on t e exc only madequately, so e b t' t d the assumption that his works , '24 B e Nauman has su stan la e the person generatmg It. ruc. ' f i llows' » [ ... ) something difficult manipulate the viewer in a SItuatIOn of exclUSIOn, as o. ') fceedom but in ceality .

It a eacs to give [the Vlewec ' pp . d 'des to pacticipate, the cesult goes on ln my wock. it doesn' t alloW foe fceedom. Even lf one eCl .

25 .

Th's difficulty is intentlonal.« is nevec thlS cleac. [... ) 1 h 'thdrawal process the lack as ' , f h . ce stresses t e WI The aesthetic conceptIon 0 t e pie b f om a viewing distanced .' b' t which the viewer should not 0 serve r ' . d' t' volvement in a kinesthetic event. malllpulatlon of the su Jec , , d to expenence as Irec m stance but which she IS suppose, h' d by a means of manipulation than 'I b t a speCIfic result ac leve Therefore the work IS ess a o u . ' I t' n' the viewer experiences that her " . fi h rceptlOn of the malllpu a 10 ' about a condltlOllIng or t e pe th t II hiCThlight a lack, Neither 't bl preset parameters a a to> . ' behavior depends on vanouS, mevI a y . I b a specific person nor is it entirely . f h' erience embodIed extenor y Y is the subject 0 t IS exp . . h' h negate it as a person just as neutral; it is replaced by instrumentaltzatlOn processes w IC

of the mirror image - is an environment first erected in San Jose in 1969. with a mirror standing at the end of a v-shaped, ever more tapering room; the mirror does not reflect the viewer's mirror image, since Nauman had placed it below the eye level of the viewer. Once more Nauman attempts not to reflect a mirror image but rather to allow the viewer to map her spatial environment, precisely by withholding her image from her. The work Video Surveillance Piece: Empty Room/Public Room aims at a similar effect. The viewer enters a constructed, usually square

room with a monitor placed on the floor in one corner. The tape displayed on that monitor shows another room with . 'n'lt . So they are in two spaces, the ,actual' tWO viewers I , . room of the installation and in the second projection but not in the first one displayed on a shared mOnitOr. , 25 Bruce Nauman quoted from: Jane Livingston, MarCia Tucker (eds,), catalogue Bruce Nauman, ~erke von 1965 bis 1972, Los Angeles/New York/ Bern/Dusseldorf, Kunsthalle Bern, 1973, n,p. [Translator'S note: retranslatlOn from the German.]

26 Bruce Nauman himself refuses the idea of playful erimentation with his work on the part of hiS viewers. ~x:stated in an interview: " ...1don't like the idea of free manipulation. Like you put abunch of stuff out there and I t eople do what they want with it. I really had some ~o;e specific kinds of experiences in mind and, without having to write out a list of what they should do, I wanted to make kind of play experiences unavailable: lust by the preciseness of the area. Because an interesting thing ' A lot of people had taken a lot of trouble was happenlng. .' educating the public to participate .. If Iput thiS stuff out here, you were suppose [sicl to participate. And certain kinds of clues were taken that certain sculptures

were participatory. You walk in or you rearrange things.

Bob [Robert] Morris had a show in a large space wllh a large number of pieces of felt lying there, and a lot of angled things, but he had them all made up: some sort of C-shaped things and rectangular plates cut In strange shapes. Anyway, there was just a large number of things. .. about one hundred elements arranged all over the floor In this space. He had taken a good deal of trouble to arrange them in a particular way, Then people would come In and, start rearranging them and he got very upset, they weren t supposed to do that. But at the same time, ayear before, he had written all this crap about if you put these thln,gs out there, it doesn't matter how you arrange them, It s the same thing. So people can arrange them anyway." Bruce Nauman in an interview with Lorraine Sciarra, January, 1972. in: Janet Kraynak (ed.), Please Pay Attention, Please, (as in note 9) pp. 166 -167,

03 Sabine Flach. W·th l d~awl as an A~tfo~m.

It is obvious then that the presence of the bod d '.

- - - - - in its materiality, but rather as th d y. oes not invariably find its expression e para ox of the wIthdraw /d . aggressively flaunted body I thO b' n enzed and at the same time . n IS am lvalence of may be viewed as a form of beh . A . presence and absence the work of art aVIOr. ccordlng to this co h . more in terms ofthe physical t . I . ncept t e body IS then regarded race It eaves behind or th it evokes. as e constantly oscillating meaning

58

59

exclusion, withdrawal, as well as concealed, negated, re-performed, repeated and updated material. 3o For the time being let us posit that a transitory, media-oriented, event-like, and performative work of art eludes a conventional methodological grasp and its historic continua. However, it is precisely due to this aspect that these works of art mark a constitutive flaw of the methodological apparatus in dealing with artistic practices whose intention

.

As for the question of documentation, one must be mindf I ' approach, in order to understand th d . u of this performatlve, transitory k e ramaturglcal conception fth of their perception The p fI .

0 e wor s and the modes er ormatlve aspect of the work m '. . . aterlahzes as an Interaction; therefore it can neither be fi t d xa e nor reproduced Mea . . . nlng constitutes Itself once again - through withdrawal. .

Performativity then always means undercuttinD' . art as well as traditioned' '" clasSical concepts of the work of receptIOn patterns' it is thereb representation. Rather perfo 1" .' y a counter-concept to that of rma IVlty POints to somethin th . and, as it were, resistant in the f' g at remaIns vacant, oscillating . process 0 meaning D'enera1' 27 y; " .

Itself that draws attention to th . . '" IOn. et It IS thIS performativity . . e vacanCIes and dissolutions R fI .

Origination, withdrawal and c I '. . e erence IS performed in its oncea ment, I.e. In negation' what' . of a representation system Effl f ' IS represented IS the fragility . orts 0 all-encompassinD' . sabotaged, since the present kid . '" representatIOn are consistently . wor e u es claSSIcal conservat' . " and exhIbitionability 28 A t b lOn, and hence hlstorlclzation . . r ecomes once more a discursive . . . ' Interacts with the struct . . practice, which examines and . ures surrounding It. Phenomenol' . practice brinD'S forth ace t . ogIcal experience as aesthetic . '" r aln reserve towards traditional mea an Illusionist character of art. 29 ns of art as much as towards .

Works such as those by Bruce Nauman also im I a _ . the question for ways of prese ' . . pY medial - fleetingness, so that rVlng It presents Itself even m Th . what it means if works cann t b '. ore. e questIOn arises as to o e preserved In their entiret b The classical apparatus of d ' y, ut can only be reconstructed? ocumentatIOn must be interrogated as to its ability to handle 27 Cf. Flach. Korper-Szenarien , 2003 (as In . note 1) as well as Dorothea von Hantelmann: lllnszenierun~en des Performatlven In der zeitgenossischen Kunst«, in Errka Flscher·llchte, Christoph Wulf ( d ). P It.. e s.. aragrana. n ernatlonale Zeltschrift fur Historische Anthropologie Theorren des Performativen, Munich 2001 I 10 . no. 1.

Pp.255-270. ' ,va" 28 Flach, Korper-Szenarien 2003. las in note 1) especially pp. 316 - 325.

29 It is precisely the theatrical engagement Michael Frred dismissed which is necessary for thO . h ob ".

IS, since t e . servat,on Situation, Which evolved from Conceptual Art IS now expanded to include the observation of the entire cultural environment by way of the b d C a y. enter stage

lies in the procedure rather than in the product. Accentuating procedures nonetheless emphasizes presence; in analysis the perception of this presence is still neglected in favor of the historicity of a work. So this is still about the historical state of having-become and not about viewing. 31 Works of art, however, which evolved out of Conceptual and Minimal Art do not represent anything, but they present something; in fact they present themselves. Their formal structure does not disclose itself as immanent, but always only in relation to the surrounding space and to a body. Meaning is not inherent in them but displaced towards the outside, towards the act of perception. In the aftermath of Minimalism works of art are no longer exhibited but they take place - at an interface where they are immediately withdrawn.

The work of art is a phenomenological event conceived as an experimental, experienceable situation, in which the viewer is integrated into the actual time and space experience.

This new phenomenological conception implies therefore that the structural and symbolic positionings of the artist, of the viewer, and of the work of art are being reviewed.

The artist turns into the manufacturer of a real experience; a mise-en-scene is staged, and analytical methods refer back to personal experience. Finally, at the interface of presence and presentation, a definition of performativity comes into playas Jacques Derrida developed it.

While the performance is always singular and unique, performativity lays out a concept that cannot be reduced to this irreducible act. Derrida's conception gives center stage to an act of citation interweaving the event, repetition, and difference. Derrida does not view an event as a unique, original, unrepeatable occurrence but rather as a citation, which can only be actualized in its repetition.

in the artistic work is taken by the conceptual existence of the piece, Within which the self· critical approach is expanded to examine the conditions and consequences of the cultural and Institutional context as well as the medial c:ntext. lawrence Weiner later identified this situation of t e artistic process as llpresentational situation« 30 In hiS text llTowards a Theatrical Engagement;, lawrence Weiner defined the theatrical claim of the work as a concentration on cultural phenomena that are not necessarrly related to the realm of art. A theatrical engagement for Weiner is one that can represent human relations In the Fine Arts. llA theatrical engagement is neither the expiation of guilt nor a newspaper of our times but a representation of existing factual relationships of

human beings to human beings in relation to an objectified cultural situation.« (lawrence Weiner from llTowards a Theatrical Engagement«, cited in Alexander Alberro et aI., lawrence Weiner, london, 19981 Hence - in stark oppositi· on to Fried - Weiner takes the position that art should deal with the relations of humans with each other, especially since the establishment of Conceptual Art, whose content is consciously directed against the traditional status of a work of art as a unique object. In order to achieve this the agents as well as the cultural situation are objectified. llThe actor [agent) must be an object indeed [...]. By objectifying the actor there is no false sympathy, no false empathy. [... 1The placement of the actor on the stage eliminates

any problem of objectification. - The use of schematic characterizations negates the need for empathy, in order to make meaning obvious.« 31 [Translator's note: retranslation from the German.]

In this interpretation then the body has a fragmentary character insofar as it does not and cannot exist by itself but can only be perceived within a spatial and social environment, and even then it can only be referred to. The body oscillates in this relationship. vacillating between symptom and symbol. By inserting the body into a performative work of art inspired Conceptual Art, a new radicalism is introduced into artistic practice.

60 03 Sabine Flach.

Withd~awl

as an

A~tfo~m.

This form of repetition, however, is precisely not the recurrence of the identical, of one and the same, but it consists in the recurrence of the possibility of that which was. 32 Therefore it forcibly brings up difference. Insofar as a citation is implicit in every original, the concept of the performative in the arts has been changing since the 1960's. The power of the performative lies precisely not in the generation of an original event but in showing that which wasn't shown by itself. The relationship between presence and absence, between immediacy and reproduction is problematized in the media arts and situated in the field of

I

tension between the work and the event. The observing subject is constituted in this process, and at the same time it is perpetually destabilized.

As for reception this affords the insight that a work of art as a performative, situational perception operation does not manufacture a material product, but that it interweaves stagings of the event-like and of experience intensity with media representation, which converges theoretically and methodological with Derrida's concept.

The work of art also always produces something: namely a hypothesis in order to see what happens to it.

Translation: Ina Pfitzner

32 Cf. von Hantelmann, Inszenierungen des Performativen, 2001 (as in note 271.

61

r

62

63

Montage and Image E .

nv~~onments: Na~~ative

Fo~ms In Contempo~a~y Video A~t

Spatialization of the

P~inciples

of Montage through Video

In the following we address the principle of montage within commercial and experimental videos indebted to postmodern narrative techniques which, on the basis of the editing, awaken

Montaoe and coli . o age,are considered paradiomatic tech . ..

0 mques of the modernist avantgarde. 1 Montage is the gen . t enc erm ,or a process which ai . . .

Interpretational associations th h h . . ms at aChIevmg conceptually roug t e mtercomb t' f items. The modern meaning of th ma Ion 0 heterogeneous individual e term developed correlativ I .h . e y WIt the mdustrial production processes of the 18th century and was . film. 2 Collage pursues an analooous . . I ' . assocIated early with photography and .

0 pnnclp e wlthm the field f ' . .

0 pamtmg, musIC, sound and lIterature. In collaoe as w'th . o , I montage, the fOllowing applies:

the impression of homogeneous narration and shift our attention towards the conceptual commonalities ofmontage and video. Thus the openly presented montage, in the combination ofheterogenic fragments, reveals its own methodology in the same way as the video apparatus which, according to Fredric Jameson, represents a model of pictorial text that lets the reading form itself become the subject. The postmodern medium and the traditional procedures of montage are explicitly self-referential. Video, in its manifestation intermediate to commercial television video and experimental art video, has supplanted the cultural supremacy offilm and literature and, a fortiori the symptomatic loss of the referentiality of the symbol, has

»Dive~se content, un~elated outside of the piece, which as such a~e in p~inciple always extent coupled than dispa~ate

conve~ge. Fo~ms

assimilato~y, a~e to lesse~

senso~y

info~mation.,,3

Both procedures were applied by the avant-oarde ofthe earl . open form. In other words the' t " 0 y 20th century m principle ofan , m er,aces and ruptures in b th h .

0 t e matenals and interpretive ken should, as visible formal t . . con rasts, elIcit a process of cooniti b . ofassociation. In reoard to th .

0 on y openmg new areas o e representatIOn oftime colla .

Within photography paint' d' ' ge and montage are mterrelated. , m g an musIC, collaoe facilitat h . of vIsual or auditory events w'th' . . 0 es t e concurrent presentation .

1 m a smgle piece, whereas mont . age, lil film, deconstructs Simultaneous incidences so th t . a a narratIve or new meanino b .

0 can e denved from their subsequent chronolooy In fil t h . .

0 . m, ec mques such as parallel ed' . 0 . . dialectic montage shot/co t h Itm o , vertIcal, honzontal or , un ers ot, etc. have been develo ed o' Successions of narrative elem t V'd P to olve rhythm to temporal en s. 1 eo aSSumes the th d I . montage, but has also developed d' . me 0 0 oglcal attainments offilm me IUm-speclfic represe t t ' l keying, the insert edit vision" . n a IOna methods such as chroma, mIxer, vIdeo syntheSizer, wipe and similar.

also become the privileged »a~t foem of late capitalism. ,,4 Per Jameson the medium denotes a structures

»C~isis

of Histodcity« to which, as ofthe 1980s at the latest, the new narrative

answer. 5 The

classical techniques offilm montage are being supplemented through

imaging procedures operating spatially. Furthermore, the closed transmission system, the successive expansion ofthe technical horizon through digital video, as well as the mobilization ofthe compact camera have enabled a spatial integration and presence in video transcendent of the presentation capacities offilm. Video has become the most advanced picture medium because it can, through supplementing the so-called image flow of the seemingly lost referentiality of symbols with a self-reflexive level, and by permitting of the recognition of image realities as constructions, generate the effect of real ity.

Jean-Luc Godard is seen as a filmmaker who, as of the early 1970s, has, with video technology, continually both criticized the montage and conventional muster offilm narration and reflected upon his own production of images. The image flow in the video montages of

Godard is utilized to create intermediate images whose montage enables the disclosure of the meaning of the individual motif and its modus as image through the combination with a further number of text, audio or image fragments,6 Godard contrasts the montage as the spatial factor to the temporal organizational form of moving images, the camera angle, and

1 For terminology determination. see Hanno Mobius Montage und Collagec Literatur, bildende Kunste Fil~ Fotografie, Musik,Theater bis 1933, Munich: Fink Verl~g.

2000, p. 28 f. MObiUS supplies the most current. comprehenSive and systematic historical analysis of montage terminology. starting from its early literary forms and their Impact on the visual arts from a socio-cultural historical viewpOint. : Mobius derives the etymologic linguistic roots of the rench term Collage from the Greek kolla. The rhetoric has long been familiar with the agglutination of earlier word segments IntO new terms, the varied historical roots of ~hlCh remain hidden. The encyclopedia by Diderot and dAlembert (1765) Supplies a technological- mechanical

definition .indicative of the industrial modern usage Its transmission onto artistic processes was propagated by John Heartfield and George Grosz. who began to refer to themselves as Monteure as of around 1916 E,'se t' . t d d . ns eln Inro uce the term 'Montage, in the field of film cf M"b' 2000, op. cit.. p. 15 f. ' . 0 IUS 3 The definition of the principle of collage by W SPI . . erner es can, In ItS general formulation. be directly transferred to montage.. Werner Spies, »Collage - Verwendung des generellen Begrlffs«. published inc Gatz Adriani led ) M E~t~ I . U ... agen - nventar und Widerspruch. Kunsthalle TUbmgen, Colognec DuMont, 1988. pp. 11- 27, p. 16.

4. FredriC Jameson, »Surrealism Without the UnconsCIOUS«, published ;n: Postmodernism. or, The Cultural Logic

the mise-en-scene. With that he alludes to the dominance the concept of time - which has experienced an almost paradigmatic reevaluation through Deleuze - has to the structure of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.. 1991, pp. 67 - 96 5 Margaret Warwick. »New Narrative«. published in Gabor and Veruschka Body leds.l. Video in Kunst und AIItag, Cologne. 1986. pp. 81- 86. Warwick emphasizes the meaning of the omissions in the new narratives of video art which differentiate them from tele-visual standardization. For more about the relationship between History and New Historicism. ct. Moritz Bafller (ed.). New Historicism.

Literaturgeschichte als Poetik der Kultur, Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Verlag 1995. Bafller reveals the influence of post-

structuralist theories from a new historicist understanding which continually shows the historicity of text as the textuality of history.

6 Elisabeth BOttner has analyzed the reflexive function of the images between film and video in the work of Godard, particularly from the basis of the example film lei et ailleurs, 1970-1974. Elisabeth Buttner, "Projektion.

Montage. Politik. Die Praxis der Ideen von Jean-Luc Godard (>lei et ailieurs<J und Gilles Deleuze, ,Cinema 2: L'image-temps<", Vienna: Synema 1999.

{

i

04 Bippus / Mollmann. Montage and Image Environments.

- - - - - - - - - - -

-

- - -

64

-----------------

of the image space.? With video, however, a culture of image agglomeration as well as of networking through data threads and transportation routes in real-time _ characterized by spatial concerns - is beginning to be propagated. Yvonne Spielmann met this development with an expansion of the Deleuzian polarization of the perception of time/movement in regard to the concept ofspace and introduces tbe notion ofthe »electronic montage«. The digital possibilities ofstratifying or under-laying (inferring) images spatialize the temporal principle of montage in video, shifting the image organization from the successive to the simultaneous realization of numerous images on a single screen.

»The character of the analysis of formal questions, perception struc-

65

- - - - ..

It t anscends a . f film theatre literature or advertiSing. r '... ' d' when it unfolds a »conceptional depiction technIques taken rom .. sition« of diSSimilar me la . . simple »multlmedla Juxtapo . . l' . throuoh »(aesthetic) refractIOn . . . 0 . turn to innovative Imp lcattons '" . , . .

I flizes narrative techniques anastotnoslS« dlrectln"" In 12 r its roduct the music video m partlcu ar u I . . . and refutatlOn«. Fo p, . . d d ith commercial advertlsmg. d fashion and an artistic eman w to effectivity coalesce soun , d' l't predefined representational . h iques to reflect the me la I y, Few clips use their chosen tec n . f th edium' their comportment .

I iewpoint perspectives 0 em, archetypes, enVlronmenta or v d to the principle of montage and/or . seldom self-referential, and thus does not correspon IS . If collage as adopted by the artistic avant-garde ltse .

tures and pictorial traditions in film [has] shifted to the spacetime axis; indeed, supported by the Possibilities of electronic

.

Monta e in

St~atification

and

Supe~imposition

.

in it experiencing a widened proliferation in exhibition spaces. If it is true that Gance aimed

Smoczek Pohczek 9 . d (1998) for the German band Die . l' »Weil wir einverstanden sm « In tbeir video musIc c Ip P l' k (Ulli Lindemann and Deborah duction duo Smoczek 0 Icze Goldenen Zitronen the pro . . film Their cartoon film, a . b k t the techniques of antmatlOn .. . d fio s with lines of type or letters, Schamoni) barkened ac 0 d' oes combmm o anImate ",ure pbotocollage of foun Ima", "'...

Wandering image elements . . nand inoenlOus dilettantism. is a concoction of agitprop, Iro y '" f h' h leftwards aoainst the normal . f' d' 'd al episodes most 0 w IC go '" catenate the successIOn 0 m IVI u , h' t in which the locomotive . . . . ume through contemporary IS ory reading directIOn, mto a JO y . t 120 shots charge across the .. . . leitmotif. For a good three mmu es, tram recurrently appears as 'bl I'ancy of the title _ m Engltsh. . unk rhythm. The ostensl e comp I . monitor to a beatmg, post-p h' esultant of the predicatIOn of . . mediately broken by t e Irony r »Because We Agree« - IS 1m

his visual rhythmicity at the soul of the spectator so as to confer »the psyche with a

the text/image/tone combinations.

montage, from the temporal factor (the principle of succession and linear montage] to the spatial factor (the construction of filmic simultaneous environments through stratifYing, inferring].«B Since the mid-1980s, furthermore, the utilization of projectors bas enabled the construction of video installations as spatially tangible displays, expanding the normal Screen image into a three dimensional, occasionally unmanageable, environmental image. The concept of simultaneous multiple-projection offilm images is not novel, having already been realized in 1927 by Abel Gance in bis silent movie »Napoleon«, 9 but video technology has resulted

perception of an entirety in a sensation of boundlessness and immeasurable_ ness«,10 then a tendency can be witnessed in contemporary video installations towards the audiovisual envelopment ofthe spectator in the sense ofa bodily experienceable immersion within a pictorial environment. 11

The following reflections, as exemplified by three examples, open the topicality of the term montage to debate. To begin with, we show how montage/collage as an artistically and commercially appealing statement is bound to the flexible and casual characteristics of video. Subsequently, we return to the commencement of the so-called »electronic montage« within the context of art and, in conclusion, probe the immersive effects of a narrative video installation. Video is deemed as a medium deploying genre-spanning

Figure 01 to

. d«. 1998 • Director and Production: 04 Musikclip: Die Goldenen Zitronen. "Weil wir einverstanden Sin

Smoczek Policzek 7 "The >concern about the connection of images,. the primary interest of Godard. means that lone destroys the concept of environment in favor of the concept of time,,'. Jean·Luc Godard. quoted by Yvonne Spielmann.

"Digitalisierung: Zeitbild und Raumbild«. in: Oliver Fahle and Lorenz Engell (eds.l. Der Film bei Deleuze/Le cinema

selon Deleuze. Weimar: Verlag der Bauhaus Universitat, 1995. pp. 496 - 515. p.500.

B Spielmann 1995. p. 505 (as in note 7).

9 Gance experimented with triple projection. double expOsures and poly-vision to intensify the sublime effects of the images' simUltaneity. See Gilles Deleuze: Das

Bewegungs- B'ld I . K'lno 1. 1st ed. , 1989. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1997, p. 73., (eng!.: Cinema 1: MovementImage. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 19861 10 Deleuze (as in note 9), 1997, p. 73.

11 See Ursula Frohne, »That's the Only Now I Get: Immersion und Partizipation in Video Installationen", In: Gregor

Stemm rich (ed.), Kunst/Kino, Jahresring 48, Jahrbuch fUr moderne Kunst, Cologne: Oktagon, 2001. pp. 217-238.

12 JUrgen E. MUlier, »lntermedialiUit und Medlenwlssenschaft Thesen zum State of the Art". publ,shedm.montage a/v: Zeitschrift fUr Theorie & Geschichte audlovlsueller Kommunikation, 3/2.1994 pp. 119 -138, p. 128.

66 04 Bippus / M611mann. Montage and Image

67

Envi~onments.

modern art The video collage created by Smoczek

- - - - - - - - The expression of skepticism vis-a.-vis the work object already present in the material, form and mediality of the modern collage was politicized and popularized by the Berliner Dadaists, through the expansion to photomontage, for deployment as a radical critique of social conditions in society. The utilization of this technique in a commercial music clip is atypical and bestows the anachronistic modus operandi a new timeliness. Smoczek Policzek spent the summer of 1998 on the production of their animated film. They constructed a )shooting-box( with five separately lit levels, the lowest of which was a television monitor.

The individual frames of the background image material seen onscreen - consisting of television sequences taken from fashion, religion, politics, military, pornography and tourism - was steered by computer. The collage elements were laid out on the remaining

reflection, the touchstones of autonomouS d' I't . f the photo and television images is . . f that the me la I y 0 policzek is self-reflectIve mso ar .' h . lip crenre (the extremely fast . . n aesthetic intnnsIc to t e musIC c <> staged, and that VIdeo, via a .' h di m ofthese images. In terms . ) I itself be dlscerntble as t erne u . edit to a mUSical rhythm, ets . h d' . To be the transmItter of I . al function of t e me \Urn. of content, the video fulfills the c asslC .

14 Smoczek policzek have given back the signals for intentional and communIcative acts. technique of the collage »which. in face of its

omnip~esence in adve~tising

nobody would still g~ant any

and music

v~d~oS'

c~itical potential [_]. its capab1l1ty

as an a~tistic language.«"

transparent intermediate levels and, where required, then shot in single frames with the 16mm camera. In this regard the procedure is based thoroughly on a figure-to-background relationship. It is used initially to display the subculture milieu of the music group as personified by friends, fans and supporters and then to situate the band members themselves posing derisively amidst sociopolitical events. The music video updates the conventional practices of animated film in that it maintains, via the photographic collage elements, a traditional stipulation for the reproduction of reality while nonetheless playfully amending its pictorial status as a document of antecedental reality via the technique of the animated film. The enormous cadence ofthe frame rate is aimed against a coherent narration and thus precludes, among other things, the regression into simple agitprop methodology. Smoczek

Policzek generate a nostalgic atmosphere in the video which restitutes the seemingly lost referential connections of the medium content by »exhibiting [the tu~e

g~oup' s

subcul-

scene as a) social connection« and, at the same time, »evidencing a medium

contingent vicissitude and t.ransience. «13 The topical connections to current history (e.g., the train crash at Eschede, the death of Lady Diana, world economic summit, etc.) experience a supplementary accentuation through their dissection into the image language of the principle of collage.

The categorically identifiable strength of the music video is based on the impression of the authenticity of the message: Text, music and image of »Weil wir einverstanden sind« assimilate one ofthe central ideas ofpunk, the laying claim to cultural dissidence through the awareness ofan individual, personal style or dress code. Ironic agreement signalizes being in the know. With premeditation, gestures of artistic autonomy (authorship, distribution, target audience) are supplemented with gestures of subcultural work (cooperation, own distribution system, alternative scene) without relinquishment of material and media 13 Isabelle Graw. llDas steht in einem Verhaltnis. Uber die Musikvideos von Smoczek und Policzek« published in: Texte zur Kunst. 37/10,2000. pp. 156 -171, p. 163 and p.170.

14 In this case we are following the definition supplied by JOrgen E. MOiler: »Consequently. a 'medium' would be embedded in intentional narrative continuity. It is dialogic and semiotic in conception 1... 1«, MOiler las in note 12). 1994, p. 127.

. h - Iso evidence of a .' ortedl obsolete technIques, t ere IS a . £' d h'ch in :film in the translIn addition to this allusion to purp y . .' lectronic montage to be ,oun WI, creative pnnclple mherent to e .. . I h characterized as a transferal of tion from analogue to digital image edltmg, Sple mann as temporal to environmental factors. .

nvi~onments in

compart~entalizati:n:::::~: :~c:::~:a~IY

t~ans-

»The staged overlap which the presentat10n levels pp t [ ] The stratification . tion of the mon age. fo~ms the image organ1Za .' ·t of a shot [can] be .' lities w1th1n one un1 of two divergent f1lm1c rea . . f the montage shifts from . d' ch a way that the 1nfe~r1ng 0 perce1ve 1n su . .

16 a linear to concu~rent image organ1zat1on.« . d 's an illuminative, .' ta e »Weil wir einverstanden sm « I As an exemplification of mon g f . t d film conJ'oins the manipulations 'd by means 0 anIma e , exceptional case because t h.e VI eo, . . ' ge of film of photomontage with the kmetlc Ima .

15 Graw (as in note 13\. 2000, p. 164.

16 Spielmann las in note 7l. 1995, p. 509 f.

~4_B~p~u~ ~ ~6:1mann. ~o~t:g:

and Image

Envi~onments.

The 16mm film t k - - . s oc was transferred onto Beta Cam vide . .

AVid editing table The film t' I 0 and slIghtly modIfied on an . rna ena was predominantly al d . cannot speak of a montage in the cla . I iiI . rea y cut In the camera, thus one .

SSlca mlC sense. Howeve th . . r, e pnnclple of montaae as a combInation of dispa t . ra e sensory Information doe h '" in the rapid flood of images bl . . s nonet eless come into deployment em ematlc of a vIdeo clip Th ' . . the simultaneous spatial supe ' .. . e Image organIzatIOn, through . . nmpOSItlOn and layerino- with' d' ffi " In I erentlal and divergent tmage levels and perspecti . ves, generates a heterogeneous i 0. lInear narration. Per advent h" ma"e envIronment devoid of ure, t IS IS one of the wherefores b h' d . , as a music video within the laro-e d' t'b" e In ItS reticent reception " r IS n utlOns CIrcles versus 't . contexts.17 I s receptIOn within cultural

68

69

generated images are actually less assembled than combined. They generate in the pictorial data stream a liquefaction and permeability of the montage's points of fracture and thus follow the principle of >de-montage<. At today's highest technical level the transitions of the assembled elements are hardly noticeable, wherewith the disclosure of the points of fracture ceases to be a principle of montage.

Figure 06 Dara Birnbaum. llDamnation of Faust Charming Landscape,« 1987. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). New York

The American media artist Dara Birnbaum belongs to the first generation of those who reflected and productively utilized the image reality of the mass media within their work.

In »Charming Landscape« (1987), the last part of her trilogy »The Damnation of Faust«, Birnbaum superposed representational forms of both individual and collective memories via a simple and apparently untouched image mixture. She is concerned, in her utilization of the technique, with a consciousness about the handling of images. The title of the film confers the allegorical awakening of the Goethean »Faust« in the »charming landscape«19 onto the urban redevelopment measures of the present day and the construction rubble of Smoczek Policzek (Deborah Schamoni and UII' L' dI In emann). at the 'collage·table, for '<Weil w' , . "elnverstanden sind". 1998

Da~a Bi~nbaum

-

Pa~allel Envi~onments

and

Spaces ,In-Between,

As an edItIng technique for video montage I ' was a ready 'bl' analogue, semi -professional U f 1 POSSI e In 197 I with the -rna IC system. 8 Nonetheless an . . at a professional level with th 'I b I ' ,expenmental Interaction . e avaI a e technical means 's fi t fi .

Image processing Occurring in stud' . ..

1 rs ound In the 1980s in the . . lOS, UTIIVersltIes multimed' tud' .' la s lOS and other similar InstItutions. By way of the rna' I bT nIpU a 1 Ity of the mdividual pixels, at further consideration, 17 Typically enough, "Weil wir einverstanden sind« was not shown on MTV but rather at experimental film festivals or, later, In cultural programs on public television.

und theoretische Zugange«, Vienna: Promedia 1992 p. 671. ' ,

18 Gerda Lampalzer, JJVideokunst. Historischer Oberblick

19 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, llFaust. Der Trag6die zwelter Tell«, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986,

a playground in Manhattan which, for the two narrators Pam and Georgeann, represents memories of their youth. Their off-screen narration refers to the forlorn location. In the course of the video, television recordings from the 1960s to the 1980s (showing scenes of the US civil rights movement, of an anti-Vietnam War demonstration and of Peking Square at the time of student demonstrations) are blended into the conversational sequences of the two young women. Repeatedly, the gestural underscoring of the narrative with the hands of the young women creates a formal connection to the images of protest. 80th narrative levels are visible as a result ofthe image mixture. To evoke her topic of memory, Birnbaum utilizes imaging procedures which are nowadays standard to any digital processing or

70 cuttino program' Slow mot" f' '" .

Ion 0 Image and audio, spatial effects through depth of focus and/or out of focus shots, the inferring of image layers, zooming in to images, the mergin o of Image Into Image. Through the combining of image levels, which is amalgamated wit: flowing borders and wipes or separated by short blue insert shots B' b . . . , zrn aum generates a plctonal environment that permits a correspondence between nonconcurrent events and creates a visual presence of transitions which she in Interview 1995 all t . . " oca es an essential status 10 the >reallife< between the images: »The 'in-between, is ~eally the ~eall·ty

we need to live in.«20

The obvious conclusion Birnbaum conveys is that social as well as personal utopias and deSires can not only be db conveye ut can also be manipulated through image media in that . . she presents the >authentic< documentary imaoe as an a t' I fi " . '" r IC e or covenng other Images.

For her, the utilIzatIOn of electronic montage is not a technical oimmick Rathe 't . '" . r I alms t k' a rna 109 a statement about the relationship of reality to images, which she refe;s to via the f1eet1Og, Interjected images layered like memories 21 She opens h b . . . sp eres etween the Images whIch are interwove d t th . . .

0 " n an , a e same time, divorced of each other. In video, such Ima",e combInatIOns construct narrative modes which resemble the . . I f . . pr10clp es 0 montage and collaoe Th ",. e process, however, IS neIther acquiescent to a postmodern image fI completely abdicative of narration. In a self-reflexive manner 't' h ow nor . . . ' I IS muc more a narratIon as memory that IS 10 Itself being told.

Sam

Taylo~-Wood

- Image

Envi~onments

/

Envi~onment

71

Images

In video installations, numerous artists have taken advantage of the technical development of the beamer to expand the image space ofthe screen into a three dimensional environmental image. Sam Taylor-Wood's video »Atlantic«, made in 1997, shows the events occurring in the restaurant of the same name from three different angles. On the left wall, in close-up, the face of a young girl is to be seen who is obviously angered, emotionally injured and close to tears. To the right, male hands play nervously with a pack of cigarettes and a wine glass. Between the two a full shot oftbe restaurant is to be seen. Despite the close-ups, their conversation is not to be heard; the noises ofthe centrally displayed interior alone are audible.

The three shots run parallel to each other and, at any time, the observers can enter or exit tbe events of the (infinite) loop. Through the tripartite presentation form Taylor-Wood, on the one hand, abrogates from the axial alignment of the cinema screen while, on the other band, she follows the style of a narrative technique of silent film - tbe so-called parallel montage - to manufacture a narrative coherence. D. W Griffith initially developed this process for »Intolerance« (1916) in which he alternately presented two concurrent narratives; they instigated a heightened sense of drama through their rapid editing. The viewers were induced to think along with the sequence being viewed and figure out themselves what had occurred in the missing episode. This works when an extremely high narrative continuity is maintained through, for example, a common goal in the mutual storylines or the presence of an omniscient narrating entity.

Figu['e 07 Sam Taylor-Wood. "AIlantic". 1997, Three laser discs for three projection, duration: 10 minutes 25 seconds. © the artist. Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube.

London

Taylor- Wood takes up the montage technique of parallel narration but creates,

embedded in a uniform aural environment, a visual segmentation which the observers, standing between close-up and full shot, must themselves put together. Unlike with her panoramic 360 0 photographs which display unrelated parallel narratives side-by-side, in the video installation the common environment ofthe varied shots only becomes apparent at second glance. On the audio level, Taylor- Wood evokes the impression that the viewer is in the restaurant itself; that is to say, the environmental continuity and the integration of the observer is initially ensured by the resonance of the background noises. To involve the observer in the story Taylor- Wood steers the concentration to the gestures and facial play of the two actors. The close-up of a face, a classic image of emotion, lends the entire film an emotionalized reading. Even when the close-ups of hands and faces have different meanings and effects, as Deleuze notes the close-up itself has the ability of »disengaging the image in the

20 Hans-Ulrich Obrist, »Conversation with Oara Birnbaum", at: http://www.mip.al/de/dokumente.

21 Joachim Paech. »Oas Bild zwischen den Bildern" publishedm: Joachim Paech (ed.I, Film. Fernsehen, Video und die Kunste. Strategien der Intermedialitat. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994. pp. 163 - 178. In this paper, Paech presents

a collection of possible intermediate images. He describes the »L'Entre-images" as »a paradox/cal location where everything is simultaneous." Paech. 19941as in ;his notel. p. 164, and rubncates editing techniques such as the cross-fade. the omission by jump-cut, the unmoving/still Image or. finally, the electronic image which, knowing no

f~om

its spatial

coo~dinates

exp~ession.«22

invisible image strokes between either the cadres or film. is. as matrix or mask. 'pure surface' instead. Paech 1994 las in this notel. pp. 168 f.. p. 175.

22 Oeleuze 1997 (as in note 91. p. 135.

so as to display the

pu~e

emotion

04 Bippus I Mollmann. Montage and Image Envi~onments.

- - - - - - - The room of suggestion - the cinema - and its narrative techniques are analyzed, differentiated and charged by the video installation so as to supplement the cinematographic,

72

The structure of the videotext is characterized by an unrelenting, apparently coincidental interplay of cultural symbols. For such a ".relationship between symbols [... ] we

aesthetic and reflexive perception with the possibilities of participation and immersion. [n

[have] but highly app.roximate

the installation of three walls of video images Taylor-Wood interplays an analysis offilm

fact, it

technique and a strategy of audiovisual subjugation. The filmic narrative pattern is shown by means of a decontextualization of key scenes; nothing is said about the content of the fictive drama. The axis of the gaze and relationship of the protagonists is maintained.

73

conce~ns

fa~ious mate~ials

be

unde~stood

the

theo~etical

asce~tainment

of which

of a continuous flow

eve~y simila~

as a specific type of

models at hand. As a

as well as

o~

of

flood of multi-

abb~eviated

na~~ation o~ fo~

matte~

a specific

signal can na~~ative

p~ocess. «26

The image continuity typical of films in regard to the transition or alternation between close-ups and full shots or shot/countershot is manufactured by the observer. Changes

Jameson attempts to avoid a textual semantic analysis in that he converts the production

of viewpoint and position are required to be able to grasp the setting in its entirety. [n

process into the object of interpretation. Therewith he is reacting to the complex

Taylor- Wood's installation, a cinematically trained perception of the observer is drafted

amalgamation of market, distribution, advertising and production. Since the 1990s,

as an interface between the images. With his »Montage der Attraktionen« [Montage of

however, videos in particular have shown an intensified interest in the more or less

Attractions], Eisenstein constructed polarities for utilization in the popular cinema which

classical narrative structures. At the same time, some of them allow the relevance of the

were supposed to lead to a tensing of muscles as an automatic reflex. Later, he refined

environmental structuralization become conspicuous. This contains potentials for self-

the functional mechanisms of his montage with psychologically founded shots utilizing 23 The emotionally accentuated video installation of today isolates the

own historicity as well as the immersion and participation of the observer.

countermovement.

reflection, for bringing up for discussion the concept of the narrative in consideration of its

viewer and permits him or her to enter the image environment. [n »Atlantic«, the narrative technique offilm becomes explicit in video: The postmodern medium video communicates narratives in a non-linear process which first achieves articulation through the physical and imaginative participation of the observer with the images.

The iMediathek as an Image Atlas [n our view, the spatial process is also notable as an interpretive process which promises to transcend the interpretative self-limitations suggested by Fredric Jameson without necessarily disemboguing into the dilemma of the parenthetic gestures of the commentary.

Inte~p~etational Envi~onments

The digital preparation of video in the iMediathek permits the detailed analysis of

The videos introduced here, not only as multi-channel installations but also as single tapes, escape easy interpretive accessibility. Fredric Jameson suggests a modified concept ofvideo derived from the postmodern term >videotext< which, through sequentialism, superimposition and intertextualism, strategically excludes the modern concept of autonomous work. 24

editing. This possibility could facilitate the automated dissection of videos into samples comparable to those in electronic music. What effects this will have for future productions or interpretations remains to be seen. Regarding to analysis, the dissection of video material into its cuts would make exact information on the production processes possible.

The successive structure of video - if it is dissected into individual images/image series

Conceivable is "an inte.rp.retation which puts the p.roduction p.rocess in the fo.reg.round mo.re so than the message, meaning and content.«25

- abdicates in favor of a spatial coexistence. Relationships which appear as subordinate temporal coexistences could be made visible this way. This pictorial analytic process does not have to remain confined to one video; rather, further (comparable) images could be imposed

His intention here is to supply the mediality of video, representative of a concept of text

at other levels. [mage constellations would become effective in parallel environments, in

which makes the invisible visible through an image technology, with answers to the question

stratification and superimposition which, as pictorial hypertextual structures, surpass the

of the value of interpretation. The reading form itself becomes the subject matter. These

possibilities supplied by commentary and documentary and/or historical material archives.

two aspects constitute the historically interesting moment of this type of text conception.

The interpretation narrates its story as well and thus opens new connection possibilities.

23 Confer to the open montage in the silent films of Sergej Eisenstein, cf. Mobius 1995 (as in note 11. p. 361 f.

24 Jameson 1994 (as in note 4), p. 190.

Translation: Bryin Abraham

25 Jameson 1994 (as in note 41, p. 211.

26 Jameson 1994 (as in note 4). p. 200.

Mona Schieren.

-

-

-

-

-

-

- -

-

- -

-

- - -

-

- -

-

74

- - -

Media sto~age. On Documenting and A~chiving Media A~t

When questioning how media art can be documented and archived, allowing installations that are often temporary and site-specific to remain accessible at a later date, especially for study and research purposes, the first question that arises is, >what is it that constitutes a work of art<. In addition to video material - be it analogue or digital _ the manner of presentation plays a decisive role in how even one-channel works are perceived. The use of different media, as well as the place and manner in which the work is displayed, can have a dramatic effect on the context of the work, therefore the perception of the work of art can be subject to change. Thus, the task of documenting media art is a task of translation. In Walter Benjamin s understanding ofthe term, the aim is to develop a form ofdocumentation

75

.. n er a matter of discrete objects (files, books, art »The archlve lS no 10 9 . 'f' places (libraries, museums, ) t ed and retrieved In specl lC works, etc. s or . t of data without geograh' is also a contlnuous s ream , etc, J. Now the arc lve . t . tted and therefore without temporal phy or container, contlnuously ransml 5 . . available in the here and now).« restrlctlon (always. . a> roductive provisional arrangement<; Id like to discuss the Idea of the archIve as p .

I wou .. as an accumulation process, that IS open in other words to interpret the process of archIvmg II'd An archive that becomes a place d r expanded on a SI es. to the future and can be accesse 0 'thout elasticity or a tolerance for change, i.e. indexing, for storing and recordmg thmgs, WI .. 6 A It when developing an Internet in terms of Its usabIltty. s a resu , . . d l' fi has a. ltmite I 'th espan . one h as t0 d ea I with the issue of power structures, d mentary matenal, archive today the WI stratIficatIOn ocu . process 0 f data material when creating and designing it. and consider

»which produces in it the echo of the original.« What Benjamin describes as the »essential core of that which is so determined and which itself cannot be translated «1 should be communicated as a trace. As such, the trace gives presence to the non-present. The reference only becomes a trace when it is read as a trace. The reading of the trace manifests in a manner, which in hindsight, becomes the cause of the trace. 2 Such traces are collected in the archive.

According to its etymological roots the term >archive< is derived from the Greek archeion, meaning government building, public authority, or office. The archontes were members of the municipal authorities who occupied these buildings. These citizens were granted the right to enforce or represent the law. Given their publicly recognized authority, one deposited official documents with them at home (the citizens ofthe municipality would bring personal official documents to their homes.). ln this respect the archontes were the keepers and guaranteed the physical safety of the documents and their owners. As Derrida pointed out, they also had the power to interpret the archives. 3 Here too, the archives themselves can be thought of as an institution of power. ln this context, WOlfgang Ernst states that archives»are characterized by the arbitrariness of the way they are selected and the discreet addressability of their elements«.4 The power structures that determine the content of archives are changing in the face of developments in technology and ways of archiving. 1n particular there has been a shift in the localization and thus the accessibility of archives. Geoffrey Batchen made a trenchant remark on the subject: 1 Walter Benjamin: »The Task of the Translator«, in: ibid.

Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, Glasgow: Jonathan Cape, 1979, p. 76.

2 See Sybille Kramer: »Das Medium ZWischen Zeichen und Spur«, in: Gisela Fehrmann, Erika Linz, Cornelia Epping-Jager leds.), Spuren LektOren. Praktiken des Symbolischen,

. h' . a documentary materials that f In the following, I shall outline vanous ways °h arc ;vm~ a role in the development of . I l' P rticular factors WhICh ave p aye B WhI'ch has initiated a study are accessib e on me. a .

U' 't >} the Arts remen, the iMediathek project at the nzversl yo I t I tform for teaching and research to determine the prerequisites for a media art nterne p a purposes, are considered. ..

'1 b the fact that media art works b of the public with an The situation at present is charactenzed pnman y y . . . ntists and researchers, nor to mem ers are neither acceSSIble to SCIe . d .. g additional information . .

The same holds true m regar S to acqumn interest m the subject. . k . distributed throughout the world deon the work and the artist. InformatIOn on the wor s IS or via various distribution . b th artist himself, through a museum, centrally - either y e . d' t 'b tors do indeed offer Internet eums and VIdeo art IS n u channels. Though some mus d ences of the works. This is latforms these often show only stills or lO-secon sequ p , . ntation is especiaIly important for three reasons. inadequate. ExtenSIve docume . d d'a art in particular, researchers and curators . . ractice in other fields First of all, in the field of video an. me I d t be able to see works in their entire length. ThIS IS common p . . d . . where students can refer to literature m a lIbrary, an see nee 0 such as pamtmg, for example, d t' of the entire work. Although f . t' oa but a repro uc IOn not only a smaIl fragment 0 a pam m , h II t first this can be deepened if the . f h duction may seem s a ow a , 0 t e repro the.,impreSSIOn . I . d in a museum or ot her Clorm 0 f exhibition. In regard to media art, an ongmalls ater Viewe . d time _ the most important . f l'ttl help Sound motion, an illustration in a catalogue IS 0 I e . , .

Th s artistic works which utilize leatures C 0 ffil.m and video - are withheld from the VIewer. u

Munich: Fink Verlag, 2005, pp. 153 - 166.

3 Jacques Derrida: Oem Archiv Verschrieben. Eine Freudsche Impression. Berlin: Brinkmann + Bose 1997, p. 11.

4 Wolfgang Ernst: »Archive im Obergang«, in: Beatrice von Bismarck et al. (eds.), interarchive. Archivarische Praktiken und Handlungsraume im zeitgenossischen Kunstfeld

/ Archival Practices and Sites in the Contemporary Field, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2002, pp. 137 -146, here p. 140. ...

5 Geoffrey Batchen: »The Art of Archlvlng<~, In: Deep .

Storage, Collecting, Storing, and ArchiVing In Art, Munich / New York: Prestel: 1998, pp. 46 - 49, p. 47.

6 Anika Heusermann, Gesine Markel, Karin Pratorius: »Ablegen unter ,endgOltig vorlaufig«<, In: Interarchlve 2002(as in note 41. pp. 227 - 229, p. 228.

05 Mona Schiecen. Media stocage.

-

- -

-

- - - - -

- - - - -

-

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

--

these media fail to be given in-depth analysis due to the lack of material- despite their increasing significance in exhibitions and general discussion.

Secondly, extensive documentation would considerably facilitate both the curatorial work in preparation for exhibitions, as well as the research of media specialists and art historians.

Finally, since the »institution that is ad,'? - as termed by Peter Burger _ is

76

77

- - - available to those looking for a work, particularly those that of non-lInear paths should be . fi" fi m After all the aim of such , . th ork 10 a de mtlve or . resist the attempt to want to regIster e w h and serve as a temporary material a database is to present the documents, to collect t em. . depot for su b sequen t readinas <> of media art in various dImenSIOns.

becoming increasingly global in nature, I consider it particularly important to create a structure which makes media works accessible to an international public as well. The presentation of media works in exhibitions, at festivals, in the press and academicjournals is, as a rule, still characterized by a western Eurocentric view. It is important to open and qualify this perspective, by making the material and its supplementary information more widely accessible. Without a doubt, the economic interests of galleries and art video distributors also playa decisive role here. Central examples of media art in Eastern Europe are, for example, known only to a few specialists in the west. For historical and political reasons in the history of media art, which is essentially recorded from a western perspective, such >eastern artists< are still under-represented. When eastern and western perspectives are combined, an expanded picture of European media art since the 1960s can be created, which may possibly lead to a re-writing of the history of media art from both eastern and western points of view.

What should be taken into account when

c~eating

an

a~chive?

To begin with, one needs to ask who the target audience for the archive is. Should the information be for specialists, or should it be geared towards students and an interested lay public? If copyright material is available, access should be controlled and ifnecessary restricted. In this context it is possible to set up limited access by means of login processes.

It may also make sense to allow for different access levels on one platform.

. f the work that plays a considerable role here, but also It is not only the documentatIOn o . . th espective context in which the - and even more so in the case of mstallatlOns e r documentation appears: . . I here' Video installations are set up in different FI'rst of all the spatial context IS crucla . a

deP::~nng a~:i:~::: inst~ll

. room sets anum ber of parameters as . hibition The respectIve roomds not their works themselves they generally make known boun ary.. b .dered when the work'IS b' emg s et up . In some cases the curator which polOtS must e consl h k'n their respective presentation . h d B t whatever the case, t e wor s I is also gIven a free an. u . ffi t Even the way a single channel video very dIfferent e ec. d· I h contexts will accor 109 y ave a .. h monitor or projected with . d d nt on whether It IS S own on a work comes across IS epen e l l S to those engaaed in scientific b r A s th is is of areat interest to curators as we a <> d a eame. <> tion would not only be welcome, but is also long over ue. research, careful documenta f t t'on intended by the artist as . d t the style 0 presen a I It is essentIal here to ocumen. . h' h the work has unfolded over the course .ffi t I of presentatIOn In w IC well as the dl erent s yes . t d Only a few organizations, I the first step IS execu e . of time. Frequently, however, on y .. ar means of archiving such as art video distributors and univerSItIes, puhrsue thlte n~::::rc~ on the other hand, . fd t t'on and researc resu s . , and administratIOn 0 ocumen a I . 'fi methodological consideration and k to the next wIthout specI c progresses from one the worIssue 0 f w he ther this type of data conservation allows the reuse of without consldenng the works or even their further distribution. 8

It is important to emphasize the point that we are only dealing with a documentation of media art and not the art work itself. If a video work created in U-Matic is digitalized, for example, in MPEG 4 format, the work has a completely different feel to it. As such,

h ~ of the a~chivist . b'l T e question powe . . as to how arc h I'ving power structures functIOn, 01 s The posed at the begmnmg

All documentation media have their specific qualities: photos, description, drawings!

estion of who possesses the authority to add content. . down to the qu . . hich necessarily involves evaluatmg The archivist selects material and categonzes It, w . t f definition. . .. nd cate orization also inherently mvolves an ac 0 It. As such, archlvmg a g ..

I d present in an archive as what . I th t is not archIved IS always a rea y However, even matena a h' . t d I with this powerful decision-making . .

I ded How can the arc IVIS ea is mlssmg, or exc u . h 't rl'a on which s!he bases the t by makina<> known t e cn e osition in a productive way.? F'Irs, •

blueprints, sound recordings, 3D models, and film documentations. For this reason, a variety

:election. Second, by incorporating participatory models for producmg content.

documentation is always a form of interpretation because it selects, repeats, translates and copies the original work. In my opinion, a successful documentation should follow a structure which allows as many different approaches to the work as possible. However it is pertinent then to ask; what form can this take?

7 See Peter BOrger. Theory of the avant-garde.

Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 1984.

8 See Alain Depocas, "Digital Preservation: Recording the Recording", in: Gerfried Stocker, Christine Schopf leds.l, Takeover. who's doing the art of tomorrow, Ars

Electronica. Vienna / New York: Springer Verlag 2001. pp.

334 - 339. p. 335.

05 Mona Schieren. Media storage.

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-

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-

78

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79

. . the same time, archive editors can appear in web blogs a wide vanety of perspecttves. At mentary on existin material k' g th subject known Moreover, com ba and forums as hosts, rna mh e desired the information submitted would only Id h I expand the arc Ive, as . h cou e p . . . d rd't In-depth research toget er have to b e c hecked by editors for its plausibility an va I I y.

Ini~iallY

with specialists could then follow as a second step. ..

0 ush forward the process - which has come in The iMediathek research project mtends t p d' 9 I this context, it has established a the form ofa range of initiatives for archlvmg me la art' n el video works in their entirety model for discussion, which, as afirst step, shows one-c hann

as well as providing a variety of additional informatIOn.

-- ..--O'iE

lATHE

Figure 01 iMediathek - List of Work

.....

The history ofvideo art is comparatively young, and there are many who criticize archivists

_.

for lacking historical distance from their subject matter. Interpretations develop through art critique, but rarely with historical analysis. This frequently results paradoxically in a total lack of archiving being undertaken at all. Although, if, one waits until the historical distance is >great enough< the tapes are sticky and important witnesses are no longer available. The first step in remedying this is to collect material and Sources from as wide a base as possible, and make them as accessible as possible. The artists selected should, in my opinion, be choosen by archivists or an appointed jury, who should make their selection criteria known. This way, a shared editorial system can be used which offers archivists, users

Figure 02 iMediathek - Artistpage

and possible witnesses the chance to contribute to the archive content. This would qualify the decision-making power of the archivists. In contrast to the classic top-down models, in which selection is hierarchical, a bottom-up model could introduce an interesting mode of documentation. In line with the idea of an open archive outlined at the beginning, the documentation should grow and change. However, it would cost a lot of time and resources to thoroughly inspect this material. One could imagine different modes of documentation: on the one hand >assured< data and on the other, a kind ofpin-board platform, which allows

h'

How can an

a~c ~ve

b

st~uctu~ed?

e h as search 'structures and indexing, determine the way the OrgantzatlOn systems, suc . th works to be cateaorized m a . 't f s involved also require e b material is read. The mstl u Ion . nt when decidin how to ba . d this factor should be taken Into accou comprehensible manner, an ... d to create an archive. Furthermore, . . clear! define the procedures and selectIOn cntena use . IS . Imp y ortant that the database features an optional and integrative structure.

It 9 See for example. http://www.mediaartnet.org/. hltp: 2 nil. hltp://www.variablemedla.net.. MedlenII arc h路Ive.v.

I kunstarc h路IV. 235 Media Kiiln . http://www.exqulse.org .

hltp://www.eai.org/. http://catalogue.montevideo.nl!and various other art video distributors.

80

81

05 Mona Schieren. Media storage.

The importance of featuring an optional manner in which to structure the archived contents lies in providing sufficient opportunity for the addition of supplemental elements, which in turn would enable the possibility offurther links. The importance of establishing an integrative approach to structuring the information, is that this approach would enable the archive's contents to be integrated into meta-structures. On the technical level it is imperative to choose compatible formats for the storage of documents. Additionally, it is important to select a data structure beforehand which can be integrated into other

. D . 14 The aim behind this is to network h redicted by Alam epocas. move closer toget er, as P . d' for differentiated research. The . ..' h b creatlllg the foun atlons the various InItiatIVes, t ere y ..' phases and perspectival .' . dia art archIves with vanous em collective vlewlllg of vanous me . h' h orks can be read in different a t picture to emerge, III W IC W d' interests enables a lver",en .' . I Id be a rhizome-like hyper-archive, 'ffi f t d thlllklllg The Idea wou ways, allowing for dl eren 18 e . . . k be viewed and further crossd' 'ndlvldual wor scan from which the various ways 0 f rea Illg 1 links developed.

structures.

Translation: Jeremy Gaines

Metadata Metadata describes what information is to be interpreted, and in what manner this information is to be interpreted. The digital >drawers< should be labeled. For processing the metadata there exist sound concepts such as Dublin Core, the Open Archive Initiative or the

Thesaurus for Media Art, which was developed by v_ 2, Institute for unstable media. 1o

SeaL'ch L'outines The elementary interfaces for a database are its search mechanisms and catalogue. >Browsing< in a real space archive can be imitated by listing the documents available in the archive. Furthermore, a full text search enables a broad-based search. To date, the logo-centric indexing in the style oflibrary systems (OPAC) is still prevalent among search possibilities. Digital archives, which also house and/incorporate audio visual material, offer the option of an image-based image or acoustic-based sound search. 11 At present

iMediathek, in cooperation with the Center for Computing Technologies (TZI) of the University of Bremen, are evaluating these search methods. The aim is to find images in this mass of data by inputting self-drafted drawings or image samples. In the case of the acoustic-based sound search the sounds which have been imputed are compared to and selected from the respective video files. Broad-scale implementation is in part still a future scenario; nevertheless, one could imagine completely new methods of research for a larger variety of users, especially for found footage. 12 There remains, however, one limitation;.

»Dnly that which can be computed can enter this beautiful new world of the Inter[net) aL'chive, eveL'ything else has to remain outside this Cybernetic door.«13 Given the short life-span of the works' storage media and the new information technology, institutions such as >museum<, >library<, >archive< and >documentation center< will inevitably 10 See http://dublincore.org/. http://www.v2.nl. http: //www.openarchives.org/.

11 See Wolfgang Ernst. las in note 41. p. 141.

12 Claus Pias proposes as an attempt to analyze and compare images using automatic image recognition pro-

cesses. See Claus Pias: »Maschinen/lesbar. Darstellung und Deutung mit Computern«, in: Matthias Bruhn led.1.

Darstellung und .Deutung. Abbilder der Kunstgeschichte, Weimar: VDG-Verlag, 2000, pp. 125 -144.

13 Wolfgang Ernst. las in note 41. p. 141.

14 Alain Depocas, las in note 81. p. 335.

Lydia Haustein.

82

83

Global Icons The »Global Icons« research project is based on our studies of images, undertaken in the

»The distinction between

ast p ,present and future is only an l'll

. h 100 .

USlon«. w ose . th annIversary we are celebrating these days, in cOnjunction with

last 10 years, on a global scale, on many trips all over the continents of the world. If you

Albert Einste' the In, 50th annIversary of his theory of relativity, challenged us at the beginnincr of the ?Oth

travel Asia, Latin America, or Africa, you realize the growing number of images, no matter

ceondtuelrSYatodabandon Euclidean causal concepts also in cultural studies. Howe:er vari~ble m n concepts as i · ' hI' ' n quantum physIcs, cannot be transferred easily. Yet they e p us questIOn our own wa f th' k' , may of i ' . ys 0 In lng, once we explore potentially non-linear processes mage generatIOn, which are characterized by overlapping structures. 1

framework of contemporary image communication. In some cultures they remain alien

Figuce 01 and 02 Abu Ghraib Torture Photo, 2004, Fernando Boter~, Abu Ghraib, 2005

where you go. These are, mostly, the visual experience of the other, introduced within the implants, or they change the forms of traditional views. The vital impact of images follows the traveler at every turn. He/she is surprised to witness, how even the poorest handle in the most self-confident way the insignia offashion, advertising, and pop culture, Young people, in particular, choose their personal style from international icons, or wear Western brands, like the masks or >tribal insignia< of the past. They no longer perform their >masked dance< at sunny clearings or in remote niches of the jungle, but in more or less improvised dance halls or cyber cafes in Berlin, Bejing, Lima, Accra, Laos, Lagos, Yaunde, Cusco, or Addis Abeba. The >virtual< world of the subway system in Tokyo is an entire, incredible cosmos of images. It is an >underworld<, where the >tribes< of pop, of the manga world, HipHop, or media images translate into fashion meet.

Abu Ghl.'aib

They all influence the highly codified iconic languages of modern Japanese photography

:~::::::;~~::::::;:~::;;~,:::::i::t:;::~,:::::j:::::'::::t::i~:;;:.Y:::'2~~~"

and media art, like we know them in the West from the works produced by Kyupi/Kyupi,

ar urg anticipated many Innovative ways to examine the imacre and he k . would have to take a farewell of th j' '" , new that we · e Inear concept of progress. He was amon h fi to discuss culture as overpowered by the d' h . g t erst · me la t rough the magIc of the imag h h studied the pictorial language of Italian Re . e, w en e nalssance art, and later, when he be an t g 0 open up new fields of exploration. In the COurse of his studies he focused o ' t I n Image SOurces e g

Moriko Mori, Araki, Yasumasa Morimura, or Hitoshi Nomura. In the lounges of international airports, when traveling the country, on political posters, on TV, in museums, magazines, or movie theaters: wherever you look, you recognize usable materials of a swelling stream of images, which affects also the real encounter of human beings. Sometimes, the sphere of the iconic informs the biased opinions about the other, or conceals the major differences between urban and rural areas in Latin America, Asia, or Africa. The current tribalization of European societies, as the French ethnographer Marc Auge says, has progressed

:::nas~~::~:'o~rao:::;:~s:;::~sh~::~a:::~:e;::~;ng, i,e, objects, which had not nor~a;l;

sufficiently, so that science should turn the ethnological glance of the past, and look at

Like Warburg in his time

itself. The public mise-en-scene selects, along with traditional motifs, kitsch and colorful

'. we are witnesSing today an era characterized by fault line : ~nhd conflicts. Different economic, political, and cultural tensions lead to wars of ima cr w IC , more than language esc . ",es, the Internet first of ~Il, a::::~:r~:~~:al or epistemological premise, We have looked at . e enormous speed In the generation and exchan cr of popular Images, which refer to the patterns of art history a d ' . ",e re-reflection in the arts. ' n vice versa, I.e. their ·

3

'

'

>stereotypes of exoticism< in a careless way, which flood in particular African and Latin American tourism markets. The fictional >traditional< Latin America in official institutions and air-conditioned shopping malls in Sao Paolo, Rio, Salvador do Bahia, Caracas, and Lima contradicts, thus, the culturally diffuse worlds in between, produced by syncretistic and Afro-Brazilian civilizations.

I should l'k t l' ' leo Imlt myself to the presentation ofa few highll'ghts ofo h' h' h d ur researc project y : SIC ' ue to cdontemporar identity issues, image, media, and globalization theories canno; U mmanze In one thesis only. ,

Our thesis was informed by the immediate experience ofan almost anarchical use of images,

1 David Bodanis, Bis Einstein kam. Die abenteuerliche Suche nach dem Geheimnis der Welt. Stuttgart, 2001. See p 125 t., see also in this respect Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitne;.

3 Ulrich Raulff, Wilde Energien. Vier Versuche zu Aby Warburg. GOllingen: Wall stein Verlag, 2003.

Ein LebenHir die Physik, Frankfurt a. M.: Insel Verlag, 2001.

2 Yoshrhrko Markumas, Der Begritt der Kultur bei Warburg, Nietzsche und Burckhardt, Stuttgart, 1984.

less by theory, and holds that the images, which circulate globally at great speed carry increasingly transnational discourses. Ifideas and images are transported around the globe

84

06 Lydia Haustein. Global Icons.

85

Figure 05 Freddy Alborta, Corpse of Ernesto Che Guevara, 1967

like goods, they change and shape the iconic memory of an ever younger audience/public.

We must see, however, that the producers of images are but a few major media trusts, which ultimately control the images of mass cultures. 4 Like Bill Gates and his Corbis agency

Figure 06 Andrea Mantegna, The Lamentation over Dead Chflst,

they secure on a global and large scale copyrights of pictures, in order to subsequently

1490

play the keys of the media in perfection, and according to their interests. Video artist

Candice Breitz in her works »Babel Series« and »Karaoke« reminds us that the >We are the world< universalism puts more at stake than global consumption, which dilutes social

Figure 07 Zbigniew Libera, Che,

values with perfect advertising. Artists, who focus on the relationship of perception and

Next Exposure (Positive Series),

2003

visibility, enlighten - in margin between the beginning of a new era of technology in the 1960s, symbolized by the icon of the landing on the moon, and the icon of the destruction of the Twin Towers on September II - the social morphologies of the realities perceived in the 21 st century.

Figure 04 Candice Breit!, Babel Series, 1999

These images we call icons, and their core cannot be grasped semanticallY· ~e have . h to understand their mtnnslc mentioned the global diffusion of icons. But IS t ere a way . ?

Special images among the multitude of the ones which incessantly enter our awareness are being highlighted in the globalization discourses. They seem to concentrate in a kind of contemporary media cult freely flowing opinions, texts, and ideologies of a potentially inexhaustible media universe. They communicate their message not only in contents, but via an >aura<. They are catalysts of global iconic streams, and, thus, penetrate different worlds, which are normally separated by the walls of mutual ignorance and lack of understanding (icons of9/11). They appeal to the subconscious, not only in terms of what they show, but also in they way they show it. These images of memories, in particular, bring back the old iconic magic, which returns so to speak through the backdoor. It is, however, difficult to say, how they originate, what or who renders them significant in the fabric of local and global horizons. They often seem magical because ofthe practices that constitute the image, and, in particular, through the interaction with other images (Che Guevara, Jesus Christ).

Their magic cannot be grasped in an ontological approach. More than what they carry generates their magical status. Unlike the cult icon this is not about the production of the presence of a figure, an object, or a thing in the image, but about the production of ongoing remembrance via the image.

4 See Johnathan Crary, »Modernizing Vision", in: Hal Foster led.), Vision and Visuality. Seattle: Ray Press, 1989.

double aspect of symbolization and representation at different sites. . th ost important means to prove historical accuracy, are bemg 'nd Place and space, once e m , replaced by a media aura, which establishes virtual sites of memory, Its Images seize a whelm us co<>nitively and emotionally. Thus, the question needs to be asked the other over d' Wha"'t do these ima<>es do to us? Theoretician Edward Soja in his draft of way roun '" It . stmodern <>eo<>raphies says that today it is easier to understand time than space: » lS

~:theD

the"'sp:ce than the time, which Demains hidden i~ its cons~quences, DatheD the making of geogDaphy, than the making of h1StODY, Wh1Ch makes ee the pDactical and theoDetical wODld. TheDe. we expeDience the s~tes us s t b lie expDess10n as icons (GDound ZeDo). not as DepDesentation, bu as sym 0 ' which establishes a distance fDom the usual and centDalized appDo~ch, ~he in oDdeD to summaDize the phenomena, 1S be1ng sociological patteDn we use, , 1 deteDmined by the divide of physical space and the teDDitoDY of SOC1a .

We rna well use the concept of a myth heDe, and say that the expeD1ence, y f limitlessness. ational myths of limits aDe being Deplaced by the myth 0 n . s as a centDal facet The iconic and emotional peDspective of these 1mages map, 5 ,' nd the fundament of the stDuctuDe of soc1ety,« the De 119lous a 5 Ian Hacking: Was heiBt >soziale Konstruktion?' Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. 1999. especially chapter 4.

06 Lydia Haustein. Global Icons.

86 87 insist on the experience of a dynamic media change, which fundamentally irritates coexistence. In spite ofthe fact that the digital global network facilitates and diversifies cultural exchange, our world has not been characterized by better mutual understanding. The analysis ofthe technology-driven transformation ofculture and the issue of the historicity of present times, which is significant in every civilization, has become an important theme in the arts, in particular in Arab states and in Africa. The fact that masked dancers and video artists can live in the same place, and show their works, provokes in a special way the old question of the »synchronicity of the asynchronous«. Video and media art, in particular, follow a technologically modified world, and shape it at the same time. They visualize in a very clear way the great dichotomy of the >real< world and all kinds ofrepresentations.

Figure 08 Kalam Patua. "Nine· Eleven for Breakfast". 2001 Figure 10 Movieposter from Ghana

Figure 09 Anonymous Islamist Handy logo

The more difficult it is to reach the images the mo th '. . ' re ey encourage Identity-building an combm~ dreams and wishes of women and men. Even more so there, where they ar~ d

read as special signs of belonging. They shift meaning from material to imaginary objects and, thus, set ~p a dense network of images in the collective memory. In conjunction

wit~

the media environment they produce a global mnemonic system. A necessary implication are new forms of memory culture, brought about by the shift of attention of the cultural memory from concrete to »digital sites of memory«.

Ghana The influence of cinemas in Africa, for example, and the booming of a domestic video film

d' Contemporary arts are in this situation unique seismooraphs ofthe . '" noma IC aspects of nowledge production and the transformation processes Ab m b . . ' y"ar urgonce called >memlc waves<. :helr faces, forms and functions ofexpression in the cultures are multi-layered, and k

the multI-perspectIve approach is the only way to understand and explain them.

industry in Ghana, Cameroon, and Nigeria, which, incidentally, we have come to be aware of only recently, go hand in hand with this media experience. Non-western media-makers use what they deem typical western themes, and use them in their own stories, like the Nigerian version of the »Titanic« movie, which recycles scenes taken from the American production in a locally adjusted remake. The mythical character of the narration and spectacular special

I .

The artists help us understand that the visual concept ofglobal"t' I Y IS no onger determlDed b .' . y POI.ltlcal symbols and rItuals, which aim at the establishment ofidentity, but by a concrete d II b ' '. selectIOn of Images from ever d h . 0 ' . y ay an a ut mnocent ICOntC narratives. The question, w c: Ima",es, ~s media without alternatives, shape the mutual concepts of cultures in media

adequate regional actors.

des, or natlO.ns work on the mise-en-scene of their self-images, includes the question g ::en:ernm their Impact. Artists,. therefore, present experimental set-ups, which show that

perpetuated by a conscious process of building tradition. Instead, we observe special

.

norm.o.us ~Iurahsm of potenttal perceptions ofthe world can neither be determined b a

slDgle clvlhzatlOn, nor be considered from a one-dimensional perspective. They, therefo~e,

effects of the Hollywood movie remain unchanged, and just have to be complemented by

Since we witness these processes, we realize that cultural tradition is not continuously activities in the interstices of cultures, which Aby Warburg was the first to mention. The steady transition and blend he labeled >i mpure discontinuities< inspi red the enormous image atlas he produced in 1924. It is an atlas of the collective memory of images, which covers

-

-

-

88

-

the West and the E t d" - - - - - - as ,an It IS Warburg's attem t to re '. symbolic structures of passionat . p present the IConIC formulas and ' . e excitement and their cultural . '. tOPiCS and migrations It is f th ' geographic, and historIcal . . ,ur ermore, the qualitative . .

Images, namely the developme t f . processIng of hIs memory of n 0 a topologIcal and th . set up along the two major axes f " ematlc structure, which is being o >orIentatIOn< and >expre' H about 80 large-format panels w'th b '.

SSIOn<. e uses, for this purpose, I a out 1,000 plctonaI d levels of quality, which are beina sh' ft d . ocuments from 2,500 years, at all '" I e around In a never endin . . g process. HIs work bears the somewhat wordy title of M » nemosyne. A Picture Serie E " Preconditioned Antiquity-Relat d E ' s xamInIng the Function of expressIve Values for th P . in the Art ofthe European Re' 6' . e reSentation of Eventful Life nalssance«. HIs Idea or objectiv or an encyclopedia or reservoir of' b e was, by no means, quantity, Images, ut rather the contrar I h' . to find the structure of imaaes th t Id' y. n IS Image atlas he tried . '" a wou tngger the best qual't d which were to visualize the c f .

I yan utmost associations .' on lilUIng existence ofAntiquity and the c b urn ersome genesis

89

of Renaissance culture. Correspondingly, and with reference to the associative character be wanted to achieve, he grouped motifs from many different cultural spheres around an imaginary or iconographic center. According to his own words, the atlas was to show the struggle of our own and alien images. He aimed at the visualization of an anthropological fundamental mood; a mood, Erwin Panofsky or Pierre Bourdieu would call the habitus of an epoch. The atlas is much more than a documentation, interpretation, or knowledge.

In the collection of presentations, affects, and emotions, the atlas becomes the treasury or chamber of miracles of the cultural memory.

When we asked in the course of the study project, what are the circumstances in which contemporary transcultural migrations of images take place, we discovered Aby Warburg's metapher ofthe >image vehicles<. They were, according to him, the results ofthe technological innovations of his time. The railway, or electricity, were, he thought, determining factors in the acceleration of cultural processes. Given the increased »dynamics of the global traffic of images and signs«, Warburg became interested in the most modern media of his time,

Figu['e 11 Aby Warburg. »Mnemosyne Atlas«. 1929

e.g. the air mail stamp, He considered it to be the >technical vehicle<, capable offacilitating the transatlantic migration routes of the images. For Warburg, the >image vehicle< was a powerful carrier of cultural information, which contributed in a decisive way to the visual translation of global image flows. The acceleration of the vehicles in modernity produced images, which like the images in the transition from Antiquity to the Renaissance lead the beholder beyond his own experience or recollection of images of his overall culture.

Warburg saw the emergence of a socialization of the imaginary in what we would rather label media socialization today.

In his attempt to conceive the Mnemosyne Atlas as a »laboratory of the history of images« and »virtual machine of the memory«, Warburg acknowledged the importance of a close alliance of word and image. The great number of notes he made, when designing the atlas, reveal, however, the unease he felt with respect to his own, always ambivalent drafts of a relationship of word and image. Works of art were efficient images for Warburg.

To recognize them meant to look through them and discover more profound layers, the very shaping of the values they meant to express, which made their transformation to different images a transparent process. Works of art wanted to convey a message, which had to be released in the first place. Warburg distinguished this process from the solution of picture puzzles. We can only decipher the images by following them along the paths of their historical effects. Then, they tell us their message almost by themselves. Warburg, thus, thinks that it is grotesque to neglect the imaginary structure of the image memory for the benefit of the formal aspects of the art, without asking about the human contents, 6 See the introduction of Martin Warnke, Claudia Srink (eds.), Der Sllderatias Mnemosyne, Serlin: Akad .

Verlag, 2000. emle

90

91

06 Lydia Haustein. Global Icons.

Figure 13 Pipilotti Rist. Ever is Overall. Video I Performance. 1997

as expressed in the forms: »Futhermore, I truly felt disgusted by the aesthetization of art history. The formal approach concerning the image without

Figure 12 Erika Sell·Schopp.

German Golfer. 1929

an understanding of the necessity to see it as a product between religion and art seemed futile to me.« The »expansion of the boundaries« of art history in cultural studies results in the loss of privileges of autonomous art. Warburg argues in favor of a radical opening of the corpus of sources (like New Historicism and cultural studies today). In the library diary we see, how the atlas becomes the mirror to reflect the very movements of the images, and the order they establish and re-establish by following the tension of their energy, their charge and discharge. The whole undertaking seems to remind us of an act of protest against the superficial approach in understanding cultures, against the weakening power of traditions, and the images, which have shaped it. The energetic vocabulary Warburg introduced in the theory of symbols was the extraordinary invocation of the power of the images, a radical rejection of anything made to just please and insinuate consciousness. Warburg enjoyed the triumph, when he was able to prove, by means of a female figure in flowing robes on a stamp, which disclosed the traces ofa Maenade, that even the most banal images encompass the traces of age-old determination (Pipilotti Rist). His nymphs are a >dynamogram<, however, not according to a fixed semantic formula, which may be quoted, but in terms of an energetic scheme of action, which includes a major spectrum of iconic variations and semantic potential, ranging from the Maenades, Judith, and Salome to the female gol f player of modernity. In these »series of images« the atlas demonstrates, how the mnemosyne, which seizes the whole body, works on its migration through the almost underground regions of the works that shape the value expressions of the soul. Totally convinced that each work of art is not only an expression of the form and narrative intended by the author, but a carrier of the ambivalent, individual, and all-cultural subconscious, he re-establishes the context of the images. He reflects on the transformation of»primitive cultural stereotypes«, and turns to his new God, the collective imaginary. The tools Warburg uses to analyze the »dynamism

~e

.

.

roO ect on Warburg and the visual mise-en-

I:~:::::;:::o:

In the question raise I: t:aditional global perception of the cultural scene of cultural Identity, we n '" . t cific images in a tion of communication, which transpor s spe II II thl's an oscillation between tradition heritage, but to the percep . h' t I way We may we ca vertical, mstead ofa onzon a · d k' d f I'nner cultural core of identity, . . b' t tured aroun a m 0 and the future, which IS emg s r u c .

1" of the imaae. I should rather '" . . r from maaic and theoretical construc Ions '" 'd ., tabilize them for a certain penod and gets Its powe . h which construct I entities, s discuss cultural Images ere, ..' d ths If the cultural . . ersa com letely dissolve traditIOnal Images an my . . of time, or, vice v , P . d' and information technologies, ry switches from classical sites of memory to me la ~m O .~ d I' a s are not lost but remiorce .

m:~i::~:::~~:v::c~:~:~erlt::~Orld, together'with the generation of images of the new~

of the transmission of images« in a differentiated way, which we have roughly sketched

the

here, have to be further developed, because each translation of differing visualities bears

. .' moria i e the erasing of images, which is bemg accompanle the exceSSive damnatlO me , . ..

I Idwide fiaht aaainst temporary . f!"1" allmaaes Cu tures wor '" '" by the excessive recyclmg 0 po I IC "'. 'b' f' mposed cultural memories amnesia, markers determined by others, and the attn utlOn 0 I

the risk of leveling the differences in the global cultural space. Warburg's >dialectic< or >ambiguous< >Prage-Bilder< [shaping images] are in the global multimedia communication, in economic globalization, and political supra-nationalization, in the multimedia of our times parts and segments ofthe same dynamics of the global media space, which once and for many years penetrated the historical narrations of images.

based on vested interests.

-

-

92

- -

In view ofthis stage ofdynamic information and communication techn .

- - Castells coined the term of the th' d' d " ologles, Manuel Ir In ustnal revolutIOn which h h d unprecedented way He d 'b ' as c ange culture in an . escn es ever new ae h' h loops constantly new visual innovations wh' °h :res, w IC produce in so-called feedback of living. In the everyday ima h" IC ecome an essentIal element ofglobal ways ge arc Ives of the feedback 10 . images they generate a medium of the civil societ I . ops or osmotic movements of are central, they are not being understood in all CUl~' n sPlthe of the fact that these images dD ld D uck even on the walls of H" b II h ' ures In t e same way. You fi nona IZZ 0 a schools In complete h recruit martyrs. This motif's d ' armony next to posters to I a goo example to show that th a ' '. has gone a long way in people's minds al d , e oenuInely Amencan Icon rea y, a new melanae comes int b .

0 0 eIng, and a new equalization: Donald Duck = Childhood.

93

web. The atlas is, thus, much more than a digital data bank, based on an encyclopedic tradition of thought. There, where Warburg wanted to make visible the contexts of the >Schlagbilder< [striking imagesF between two or more interlinked >topics<, he structured his atlas as an >overall framework< of an extended description in cultural studies, thanks to which he could trace the »suJ:viving shaping poweJ: of the expJ:essive values of Antiquity in EUJ:opean cultuJ:e«. He aimed at flexibility, which was the major challenge he had to meet. Instinctively, Warburg understood that he had to avoid any reference to rigid frames, because they would reduce the great flexibility of his >topic maps<. The structure he chose characterizes his >work in progress< as an important »testimony of the AvantgaJ:de«, as George Didi-Huberman would call it'? Once you rediscover Warburg's >conceptuallandscapes< [Begriffslandschaften] in digital >topic maps<, you may use them, in a figurative sense, to navigate and structure greater volumes of information. This is,

Figu['e 14 Shadi Ghadirian, "Domestic life«, 2002

declaredly, the intention of the project I have presented to you so far. You will understand why we - like Warburg - tend to apply the mapping procedure, and neglect the dimension

Figu['e 15 Anonymous Internet Montage, Tailban Barbie

of >time in history<. Warburg, furthermore, invites us to read culture as a field of force of psycho-energetic vectors, which oscillate within frequencies that go beyond history and form transitory clusters of heterogeneous cultural elements.

It is true: icons, like images, establish symbolic registers and set up a formal structure of the latter. Roland Barthes, in his studies on photography, distinguishes studium and punctum; studium is the conventionally readable sense, the text; punctum is the truly convincing aspect, the magic of the image, Warburg spoke of. 8 Since each perception of an image is, first of all, an individual event, activating your brain and nervous system, brain research and its contribution to the understanding of its fundamental conditions is of major importance in image studies.

The next aspect I should like to tackle is the formatio .... machines are virulent in particular there wh . n ofpolItIcal IdentIty. Image . . . , ere economIC supenor't h 11 I" .

I Y c a enges Identity ISsues in societies dominated b I . y re IglOn In an unprecedented movement the newl emer ' . way. n a kind of COuntergIng Arab media have discovered the local d" . y d a' . .

ImenSlon as the main Source of a new national identity Simultaneously we find inno t"' an olve specIal emphasIs to the religious perspective.

The »GlobaIIco' . va lve pOsItIOns of female artists from Islamic societies. d" I ns« prOject wants to set field it is meant to be a kind of "up a 19lta atlas, and in view of this comprehensive compass tor other scientists b m k' a . materials available in order to all "b . . ' y a Ino a global collectIOn of , ow tor etter onentatlOn on a I Its open structure furthermore enables each h . comp ex cultural territory. researc er to mclude hIS data into the existing 7 See Michael Diers, Schlagbilder. Zur politischen Ikonographie der Gegenwart: Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996.

According to a fundamental thesis, the brain, which memorizes and structures images, does not proceed in series, but in a parallel approach. A whole range of perceptive elements is being perceived and located simultaneously, which is different from technical systems, e.g. computers, which process data only by means of a special software. Correspondingly, we tried to conceive the atlas by thinking different types of data in terms of serial data molecules. Since our way of structuring the image is based on the model of brain and nervous systems, where each perception of the image consists of the simultaneous intake of many different elements of perception, we want to admit synchronicity and stress the possibility of contradictory observations. The image atlas does not contain data and images, which are stored in individual memories and can be retrieved ifneeded, but a network-like structure of 8 See George Didi·Huberman, Vor einem Bild, Munich / Vienna: Hanser 2000, p. 200.

94 06 Lydia Haustein. Global Icons. added contents, links, texts, and thousands oflinked images, which become at least visible, when you touch the entries. Contemporary, highly complex >topic maps< are, thus, visible, but they can also be read, as in Warburg's first drafts, as atlasses in terms of plates.

The net-shaped rhizomatic structure of the atlas allows for an orientation in different directions, and is, therefore, different from a working field with accurate limits. Individual and complex networks and layerings in the entries may be projected in different ways, as in the limbic system of the brain: extremely emotional experiences of the language of the images become virulent. The issue of classification and categorization in iconic thinking, the possibility to psychologically cope with visual and acoustic phenomena, which trigger deep emotions, Warburg focused and insisted on, and we will certainly have to deal with them for a long time to come.

The open structure ofthe ÂťGlobal IconsÂŤ database is meant to produce hubs of information flows, where scholars working on similar problems, inspired by similar epistemological interests, may well >dock on<. The individual selects the >links<, and the track of >traditional< research will remain a viable option. Warburg, too, admitted that he was faced with thematic maelstroms, junctions, and unstable connections, when he tried to solve the riddle of the images.

Translation: Lilian-Astrid Geese

9 Lecture by Dieter Mersch. held at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. Published in an extended version in: Gernot Biihme. Dieter Mersch {eds.l. Wort. Bild. Ton. ModaliUiten des Darstellens. Munich. 2002.

95

r

Dieter Daniels.

96

Befo~e and afte~ video a~t- Television as a subject and mate~ial fo~ a~t a~ound 1963, and a glance at net a~t since the 1990s .1

97

Waltham/MA) and the magazine Art in America called its special issue »TV - The next Medium« for this reason. Gerry Schum's »Fernsehgalerie« (Television Gallery) had its first broadcast in 1969 as well, and in the USA the program created by artists »The Medium is the Medium« was broadcast on WHGB-TV. So in the late 60s as well things happened surprisingly at the same time, as was also the case for the period around 1963, which is to be investigated below.

Thhere is a kind of professional malaise in art history: it is always trying to find the absolute t every begInnIna e a th fi . , "» '0' erst a bstract pIcture the first absolute fil . d 'd ' m , or In eed the first a~t VI eo.:ut art does not develop like that: abstraction emerged simultaneously in several urope ~::::: a around 1910. A decade later, Walter Ruttmann, Viking Eggeling, Marcel

Before I start looking at the individual artists and works in the early 1960s I would like to

. p nd Hans Richter were working on so-called absolute films, usually without beIng aware of each other.

time as the artistic positions presented here. Marshall McLuhan prophesied that the audio-

refer briefly to the intellectual context of contemporary media theory. Here too the social influence of television is a key theme, and media theory came into being at almost the same visual media would bring about the end of the Gutenberg age in »Understanding Media« in

Th e same applies to the history of technology, incidentally. Photoaraphy and the ele t .

0 c flC te learaph we d i d o . re eve ope by several inventors at the same time around 1840 A d G h h' n ra am Bell regIstered his patent for the telephone on 14 February 1876 onI competitor Elisha Gray. y two ours before hIs

1964. This thesis made him a media star in his own right, and he was able to illustrate and give evidence for it in his frequent radio and television appearances. He made some bold parallels with art: according to McLuhan, the mosaic image of the TV screen demands that viewers take an active role when viewing - just as modern art does. »TV is the Bauhaus pL'ogram of design and living, or the Montessori educational strategy, given

In the case of video art t h' , . 'd . ,ar Istory s savIOur seems to be the history of technoloay' an art VI eo could not eXIst without a video recorder - so here at least it must be pos:b;e to fix a defimte start In relation to the production medium But th '. (pre-)histor of what w . . . e opposIte IS the case: the work y . e now call vIdeo art begIns, as can be read in almost all the standard s, around 1963, In other words two years before the first Sony VCRs were available

~am June Pmk and Wolf Vostell are mentioned as competitors here in almost all texts whe~ ISCUSSIng the questIOn »who was the first?«2

total technological extension and commeL'cial sponsorship. The aggressive lunge of artistic stL'ategy foL' the remaking of Western media has, via TV, become a vulgar sprawl and an overwhelming splurge in AmeL'ican life.«3 In 1963, Umberto Eco devoted the conclusion of his book about the »open work of art« to television experiences with live broadcasts, where he sees a structural relationship with the non-predetermined >open< art forms of his day. An artistic >alienation< of live TV seems like a »surprising break in passive attention, as a challenge to judgement

This essay presents the results of my research about this period of b a' .

1963 results that . eoInnIngs around , surpflsed me as well. Artists start workina wI'th tele " . .

0 VISIOn Imaaes wIth . b 0 remar ka b Ie sImultaneity around 1962 _ 64 section Hence the . . ' as can e seen from the examples in the next term video art IS not appropriate here either, it is about the electronic t I ....

a:t~:li:on Image and ItS power as a mass medium.

This also applies to the early years of

. work wIth vIdeo, whIle throughout the 1960s television was usually the reference POInt. ThIS IS borne out by the titles of the first major exhibitions in 1969' »TV . . as a creatIve medlUm« (Howard W' G lse allery New York) and »Vision and Television« (Rose Art Museum, 1 Thisessay is based on the previously published essay TelevIsion - art or anti-art? Conftict and co-operation between the avant-garde and the mass media in the 1960s/70s; it should not be read as identical with the ear/I.er piece, but as a Meta Text. sharpened in terms of its theSIS, relating to the period of the 1960s/1970s, which was comprehensively researched there. (See: Rudolf

-

OL'

at least as an incentive towards liberation from the seductive power

of television.

,,4

Here he is precisely formulating the aims that artists were soon to be

trying out practically with their TV experiments.

Like the commercial American and the public European media systems, these two theories cast art in different roles: for McLuhan, media-technical progress essentially defines the development of art, in that it makes new presentation forms feasible that had hitherto been available only to artists' imaginations. But for Eco, art offers a model for a self-determined alternative to possession by the power ofthe media. This difference is typical ofthe different views of television in the USA and Europe, which also characterize artistic approaches.

Frieling, D.ieter Daniels, Medien Kunst Netz 1: Medienkunstlm Uberblick/Media Art Net 1: Survey of Media Art Vienna/New York: Springer Verlag, 2004 and online: http'. //www medienkunstnetz de/themen/medrenkunst rm . ueberbllck/massenmedlen/) 2. There were some artistic attempts to work with teleVIsion even in the 1950s, cf. for Lucio Fontana (1952) and

George Brecht (19591: Dieter Daniels (as in note 1) p. 22 and p. 43, note. 28, engl: p. 31 and p. 66, note 28.

3 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. The Extension of Man, London/New York: Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd., 2001 (first 1964), p. 351.

4 Umberto Eco, Das offene Kunstwerk, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1977, p. 211 (Umberto Eco, »The Open Work". trans: Anna Cacogni. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 19891.

07

Diete~

Daniels.

Befo~e

and

afte~

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I: Examples of aetistic television woeks 1962 - 1964

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The most eminent example is Paik 's first major exhibition »Exposition of Music - Electronic Television«. It took place from II to 20 March 1963 in the Wuppertal architect Jiihrling's

Paik's Participation TV

private Ga/erie Parnass. The title alone shows the transition from Paik the musician to Paik the pictorial artist. The exhibition was distributed all over the building and even spilled over into the private rooms. Visitors at the time often took scant notice of the room containing

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12 modified TV sets. Paik had worked on these second-hand televisions of different makes and ages for over a year in his studio so that the public could manipulate the TV image while it was running _ thus demonstrating his Utopia of »participation TV« for the first time. He kept these experiments under wraps until the exhibition, well aware that an idea

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Tee Gunther Schmitz v',Zenzen Figure 01 Nam June Paik, Invitation forthe »Exposition of Music, Electronic Television«, 1963

Figure 02 Paik and Karl Otto Gatz with the Kuba TV at the »Exposition of Music, Electronic Television« 1963 (Photo: Manfred Level

The complex project also included: four prepared pianos, several disc and tape installations, mechanical sound objects and a freshly slaughtered o,,'s head above the entrance. The exhibition was open for 10 days only, for two hours in the evening from half past seven to

07 Diete~ Daniels. 8efo~e and afte~ video a~t.

-

halfpast nine.

-

-

- - - -

"P~actically

- -

100 101

-

f~iends came to the othe~ evenings", Tomas Schmit reported;

no one but the padicipants'

opening. and almost no one at all on the

he had been involved in the show's installation. 5 Even so, this exhibition's twenty hour lifespan made 1963 into zero hour for the history of video art - and that is true even though no video equipment was used here. Paik once confided in me that the evening opening times

by the public

f~om

the

pictu~e

- 6 Chicken

1ncubato~s

chicken should hatch on the day of the exhibition -

/ on canvas / the

eve~yone ~eceives

an

ampou1e of liquid he can use to smudge magazines. ,,7 The said ampoule of solvents was handed out to visitors at the opening, and photographs show that this offer of »Do it yourself De-collage« of magazines hanging on the wall was enthusiastically received.

were intended to fit in with the times at which the then only German television channel was broadcast, as that was the only time an image, albeit modified, could be seen on the 6

TV sets. This shows how important these experiments, scarcely acknowledged by visitors and the press, were for Paik himself.

Much has been written about the question of priority for Paik or Vostell. 8 Ultimately Vostell has his own somewhat exaggerated assertions to thank for the fact that he usually comes off badly in the eyes of progressive critics. He once said: ,,1 am the

fi~st a~tist

in

the wo~ld who has been using television sets fo!' images since 1958. ,,9 And

Vostell's TV Decollage

yet he did some important things, and some unique things as well: the Happening» ein - 9 Decollagen«, for example, which was organized as a bus trip, also in 1963, but now in

Wuppertal. Participants were taken into a cinema where a film showing a TV-Decollage was running, accompanied by howling sirens, while people lay motionless on the floor of the cinema. This film, »Sun in your head«, can count as the first artistic work using recorded moving television images.

Research usually concentrates on juxtaposing Paik and Vostell, but this contrast can be placed in a different context by other examples. Some of the following works have been familiar for some time, others are trouvailles from my own research.

Tom Wesselmann Figure 05 Tom Wesselmann, "Stillile#28", 1963

Figure 03 Wall Vostell, "Television Decol/age". 1963

Figure 04 WoIIVostel/, "TV Burial", 1963 (photo: Peter Moore)

Vostell's first public show of TV works took place from 22 May to 8 June 1963 in New York, only two months after Paik's Wuppertal project - and undoubtedly more strategically located in the world-renowned art metropolis. The exhibition, similarly to Paik 's, consisted of several sections, which Vostelliists as follows: ,,6 television sets with vadous

p~og~ams / the pictu~e is decollaged. 6 fusions / pots with plastic ae~o­ planes that melt in the heat - 6

g~illed

5 Tomas Schmit, "Exposition 01 Music". in: Nam June Paik, Werke 1946 - 76. Cologne: Kiilnischer Kunstverein 1976. p. 67

chickens on a canvas / to be eaten

6 Conversation.between the author and Paik, New York 1999.

7 Otto F. Walter/Helmut Heissenbuttel (ed.), Vostell, Happe. ning & Leben, Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1970, p. 293.

8 Edith Decker has undertaken a great deal 01 research on the question 01 Paik - Vostell priority, and it reads like an artistic thriller. CI. Edith Decker, Paik. Video, Cologne:

DuMont, 198B. 9 Interview with Vostell in 1977 in: William Furlong, Audio Arts. Leipzig 1992. p. 64.

102 103 07 Dieter Daniels. Before and after video art.

Tom Wesselmann built working TV sets into some of his Pop Art paintings in 1962/63.

Cesar

The best known is the 1963 »Still Life # 28«. The picture is crammed with American

Figure 07 Cesar ICesar 8aldaccinil. »Television", 1962

symbolism, and the portrait of President Lincoln on the wall relates to the topical events on the screen. Wesselmann shows television as part of American everyday life, as something that people do not watch with close attention, but that is on in the background and is just as much part of the interior as the furniture and the pictures on the wall. Even then there were several programs being broadcast all day in the USA, so that Wessel mann's image almost always )worksc This is the only example of a TV program being integrated into a work of art unaltered, as a ready made, and Wesselmann does so without any Utopian or critical counter-designs.

Gunther Uecker Figure 06 Gunther Uecker, »Nailed TV", 1963,

In the same year, 1963, Giinther Uecker processed a TV set, »TV 1963«, by covering it with nails - over-nailing - as well as painting it white. The object is part of an exhibition called »Sintflut der Nagel« (Great Flood of Nails) in which Uecker over-nailed all the furniture in a living-room. A TV broadcast by the Hessischer Rundfunk accompanying the exhibition showed Uecker buying the brand-new television set, and then subjecting this valuable object to artistic treatment. 10 Thus television as a consumer fetish becomes an object reminiscent of primitive rituals, of the kind found in African nail fetishes, for example.

10 Exhibition in Rochus Kowallek's »d" gallery, Frankfurt 1963, Uecker says that he produced three processed televisions at this time, and also a piano. Using the principle of

nailing over them, and in some cases painting them white as well.lUecker in a telephone conversation with the author on 20.8.1996),

'sar also uses a television set sculpturally in his piece »TeIevision« in 1962. He strips a Ce h" d With television of its casing and places it on a scrap sculpture. The whole t mg IS covere with holes for the aerial, loudspeaker and operating knobs. The Idea ofthe aperspex hood , , . h . 't f ready-made is transferred to the wonders of modern civilization, entirely m t e spm 0 Pierre Restany's »Nouveau Realisme manifesto«.

104 105 07 Dieter Daniels. Before and after video art.

Isidore Isou

Karl Gerstner

Figuce 09 Karl Gerstner nAuto-Vision«.

1964.

Figuce 10 Karl Gerstner nAuto-Vision«, 1964. detail: Wavy Lens.

Concentric Prisms.

Figuce 11 Karl Gerstner: stills from the film demonstrating Autovision.1964

Figuce 08 Isidore Isou. nLa television dechiquetee ou I'anti-cretinisation«. (nJagged Television or Anti-Cretinization«), 1962. reconstruction 1989

A TV object by Isidore Isou, the founder of lettrism, dates from the same year, 1962; it is called: »La television dechiquetee ou l'anti-cretinisation«. (The jagged television or anti-cretinization). Lettrism is a movement that has been somewhat unjustly forgotten.

In the early 1950s, it anticipated many developments that did not occur until the 1960s in conceptual and inter-media art. Isou proclaimed the destruction ofthe film in 1951, actually implementing this with a montage film and thus causing the scandal that brought the young

Guy Debord to lettrism. 11 The movement was best known for lettrist hypergraphics, a set of meaningless signs that anticipated the development of comics and advertising in many ways. In his TV object, Isou puts a template of such hypergraphic elements over the screen.

This simple gesture makes the TV screen into a reservoir of constantly new signs, created by overlapping the hypergraphic matrix and the moving image. A key fact is that both Cesar and Isou exhibited their TV objects in Paris in March 1962. 12 11 For the lettrist films and their pioneering role see Greil Marcus. Lipstick Traces. Von Dada bis Punk, Reinbek: Rowohlt. 1996. p. 312 If.; Roberto Ohrt. Phantom Avantgarde.

Hamburg: Edition Nautilus 1990. p. 27 ft.

12 Isou's TV object nwas shown in the Paris Museum of Modern Art and then destroyed.« Jean-Paul Curtay (ed.l.

Lettrism and Hypergraphics - The Unknown Avant-Garde.

1949 - 1985. New York: Franklin Furnace. 1985 Cesars

TV-Objekt was also shown in Paris in March 1962 in the nAntagonismes II-I'objet« exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Decker 1988 (as in note 81. p. 48, p.57 shows that Vostell visited this show and saw Cesar's TV object there.

The Swiss artist, graphic designer and advertising expert Karl Gerstner changed the TV . . a much more complex visual way. He developed various models of his »AutoImage 1D . . d' ff from television: ·' from 1962/63' "The name identlfles the l erence VISlon« . . tl F the aim is not to broadcast programs, but to create programs dlrec y. ~r

this we use daily television programs that are abstracted through ~ ,palr d alienated to the point of being non-representatlonal,of spec t ac les ( , an . I ) . , t n the process 13 These >spectacles( in moulded perspex (Plexlg as , IS Gerstner s commen 0 . related to Op Art, can be swapped around, and each pair creates a different effect.

13 Quoted in: Johannes Gfeller. nFruhes Video in der Schweiz«. in: Georges-Bloch. Jahrbuch des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der Universitiit Zurich. 1997.

p. 224 f. Gfeller provides a comprehensively researched account of Gerstner's TV works.

106 107 07 Dieter Daniels. Before and after video art.

The object, put together with designer perfection, would have fitted in well at the time with progressive home design

a la

Object: Edward Kienholz Figure 13 Edward Kienholz. "Instant On«. 1964.

Verner Panton. But Gerstner is not just interested in

superficial effects. He explains in an elaborate film including a demonstration of the work that he sees his »direct program creation method« as a substitute for manipulating images digitally, which the computer could not do at that time. Two working examples of »AutoVision« have survived, unlike Paik 's and VosteU's early TV works, which have disappeared, but tbey have been largely ignored in the history of video art.

TV

~ep~esentations

in painting,

photog~aphy,

object

a~t

and action

a~t

As well as the pieces that integrate or manipulate the television as a functioning object, there are of course numerous examples of television appearing in painting and also providing a subject for photography, object art, and action art.

Painting: Paul Thek Figure 12 Paul Thek. excerpt from the series "Television/Analyzation«.

1963. (Photo: D. James Deel

his 1964 sculpture »Instant on«, based on a portable television, Kienholz provides a critlic~1 In . . . h . us year The tit e IS . fTV' of John F. Kennedy's assassmatlOn m t e prevlo .

Images . analysIs 0 ambi uous: it describes the new TV technology which manages without the old warmmg up I'red by valves _ and also stands for direct participatIOn via TV m current world . gd peno requ . h h k . the on/off switch on the object to switch on a hg. t t at rna es events So viewers can use d . . h' Thus spectators are rna e . f the "atal shot at Kennedy appear m the crosS airs. an Image 0 L, . ' d' 14 into co-culprits symbolically, sharing the marksman's perspectIve via a mass me \Urn.

I will single out just Paul Thek as a representative for representing television in painting or collages. He painted perhaps the most lucid and radical picture of this kind in 1963 in his »Television Analyzations« series, in which the box completely fills the canvas with a detail of a face.

photography: Lee Friedlander, Dennis Hopper L TV is also a subject for photography. Also in 1963, the American photographer ee Friedlander examined the relationship between the television screen.and the domest:: .' . .

15 A d in the same year the actor and artist DenniS Hopp intenor m a senes of pictures. n TV photographed the »Kennedy Suite« series, which focuses even more sharply on the screen as a principal theme.

14 See Lars Blunck. Between Object & Event. Partzipationskunst zwischen Mythos und Teilhabe. Weimar: VDG-Verlag. 2003. p. 189.

15 See Lee Friedlander. The little screens. San Francisco:

Fraenkel Gallery. 2001.

07 Dieter Daniels. Before and after vI'deo

- - - -

art.

108 109

Action Art material both really (realistically) and symbolically (and in the case of television this is in fact happening surprisingly late). The range extends from the modified TV set via film, photography, object and painting and on to action, even before video becomes available as a medium from 1965.

Rather than a source of Utopian hope, most 1960s artists saw television as unduly powerful and as an objective for attacks whose widespread media effect made the pictorial world of art seem insignificant. And yet there were an astonishing number of attempts to redefine television, and there are various approaches to demonstrate this, going back well before the beginning of video art. Here distinctions can be made between: - Firstly the critical and aggressive positions (Vostell, Isou, Uecker) aimed at destroying the media apparatus. The domestic television set is used as a representative-vicitim for an attack on the entire system of television as a broadcasting institution.

- Secondly the neutral and contemplative approach (Wesselmann, Cesar, Friedlander,

Richter/Lueg), which accepts the running program as an unchangeable fact and places it in the context of its own image-finding process.

- Thirdly the constructive-productive method, represented above all by Gerstner and Paik.

F'

19uce 14 Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg. »Livin with P

department store, DUsseldorf.

. g o p . A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism« , 1963'ma

Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg staged »Leben mit P o ' .

Kapitalistischen Realismus« (L" .h p. EIne DemonstratIOn fUr den IVIng WIt Pop A D ' a Diisseldorffurniture store in 1963 Th .' emonstratIOn for Capitalist Realism) in . e artIsts themselves s't t' I 1 mo IOn ess on the available furniture »like sculpture s on pedestals their t 1 . creased to give a sense f b . ' na ura dIstances apart ina elng on show« 16 The t I " . the news punctually at 8 p math . .' e eVlslon IS also on, Showing , ., s e actIon begIns. In the 1963 happening »Push and Pull«, Allan Kaprow also invi " . arrangement with a tele " h . tes VISItors Into a furniture VISIon s OWIng a program in it but h '. themselves to create new constellations. ' ere It IS up to the visitors

They design models for work with the electronic image as artistic material, which already point forward to later video and computer art. Paik in the first and only artist to intervene in the electronics at this stage, so that an image can be formed at source. His vision is: »As collage technique replaced oil-paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas. «17 And Paik is the only artist named here who then worked consistently with video from 1965.

The synchronicity with which artists started to work with television as a medium in 1962/63 remains surprising. One key fact is that the artists started to work with TV on the basis of different genres:

- Paik comes from music, Vostell and Wesse/mann from painting, Cesar, Uecker and Kienho/z see the TV above all as a sculptural object, Gerstner uses it as a source of optical signals,

III Theses The central thesis arising from these examples is: The hi " y d' f . . .stor of medIa art IS not prescribed by the technological history ofth erne Ia. I the tIme IS npe D b' . until the media industry prov'd th . h ' or a su ~ect, artIsts do not wait 1 es e ng t eqUIpment for th 0 up methods and resources in order to"" I em. n the contrary, they take ,ormu ate their st t a ements - by processing the media 16 Concept of the action. in: Gerhard Richter. Text Frankfurt a. M.: Insel Verlag. 1994. p. 15. .

lsou's starting points are film and literature. The new medium is at a point of intersection between the traditional disciplines. So the artistic >re-conquest< of television is nothing less than the start of video art fixated on one medium - it is at the point of intersection of the new interdisciplinary direction taken in the 1960s, working towards removing the boundaries between genres and the cultural institutions linked with that.

17 Nam June Paik. »Electronic Videorecorder«, flyer from 1965, reprinted in: Rudolf Frieling/Daniels, Media Art Action. The 19605 and 1970s in Germany, Vienna/New York: Springer Verlag, 1997, pp. 130 -131.

-07 _Dieter _ _ Daniels. Before and after video art.

110 111

IV Pa~allels with net a~t Finally I would like to leap forward to the 1990s a d . . .. n examIne parallels wIth the history of net art Th . . e same mistaken Judgement is being made about net art as was made about vide

:~t~:::::II: a:i~: not come into being until the introduction of the Internet and above al~

d.

Web. Thus for the time beIng It becomes the latest <>enre defined by me mm, the first one being video art in its day. '" a This is relatively easy to dis rove thr <> . ..

P ou",h the almost thirty-year history of te IecommunIcatlOn art h· h . '. W IC was USIng electronic networks as early as the 1970s. And the early 1990s saw projects like »The Thing« or »Handshake« whO h h a . I fi . .. ' IC saw t emselves as :oCIa art orm, stIll functIOnIng independently of the Internet technically, put already an IClpatIng the Idea of a networked community.

Internet. (E.g. >>http://www.antworten.de<< by Holger Friese and Max Kossatz 1997 and »Oump your Trash« by Blank&Jeron and Heath Bunting's»_readme (Own, Be Owned or Remain Invisible)«, both dating from 1998.) Like the TV interventions of the early 1960s, they do not so much create media works, but model media modifications, responding to the overall situation of the realation between medium and society. The question of the extent to which such art can be documented is thus not restricted to the work as such, but would actually have to reflect on the context of the medium at this time and on its social functions.

Rather than mentioning the site-specificity that is usual in art history, here we can speak of time-specificity for these works, which change their meaning and their mode offunctioning crucially through the rapid development of their media surroundings. This also applies incidentally to the above-mentioned television works, which relate to a particular situation

The great difference is that the Net is seen as something in its Own right as an a t medmm for self-creation _ h·1 1 .. ' u onomous .. w Ie te eVlSlOn confronts artists around 1963 as the total Oth so:ethIng allen, that they have no influence on at first. In fact, as a result ofthe boom in t:~ ml ndInetles, the Internet was to develop into a mass medium of this kind in which art I.S fiorce on to the peri h Th· .. ' fiP ery.

IS monopolIzatIOn became the subject of artistic net criticism from 1995 At . . rans ormatIOn of this kind fro U · m topla to DystopIa took place in the reverse direction in the 1960s h . d ., . : w en VI eo technology seemed to make the idea of autonomou sly created artIsts teleVIsIOn viable from 1965.

in the medium: a linear perception which took place at the time without program zapping, a simple pictorial language, without electronic experiments, but with slow editing sequences.

In addition, the technical manipulations that Paik carried out would no longer work for today's TV sets. But all the works named would show a completely different sequence of images with today's television programs.

Finally I would like to ask that terms like video art or net art should always be used as tools, and not as genre concepts. Unfortunately it is often forgotten that these terms are auxiliary constructions, trying to describe an artistic approach by means of a technical category. The

This brings me finally to the extent to which such art can be documented As I h h earl TV . . ave SOwn Y. art IS comprehensible only in the context of the specific state of develo ment ' P of televIsIOn. ThIs IS demonstrated by the fact that Paik' W I . . . fi s upperta exhibitIOn was only 0 en or two hours a day because of the thi G b.

P wit . n erman roadcastIng program - and in contrast bl h thIS, Wesselmann's American TV still II· fie . was a e to run all day A I h . . difference between Europe and the USA· I .. . s ave said, thIS

by U. b E IS a so mIrrored In contemporary media theories m erto co and McLuhan.

The greatest common feature with net art in the early 1990s lies in this dependence fr cofnthtext, and It IS comprehensible only against the background ofthe ultra-rapid developm:: O e associated medIa A . t I·k .

If d fi . . proJec I e »The ThIng« emer<>ed in 1991 .. '" as a se - e nIn<> co mmullicatlOn communit b d '" y eyon all control. Then from the mid 1990 Artworks are t b d s, many Net o e un erstood only as criticism of control and commercialization of the

following paradox shows how stubborn such coined terms are: today from a technical point of view, video as a medium has long been subsumed in a digital-multimedia context. In artistic terms, almost nobody would like to be called a >video artist< anymore, because you are either a media artist or a fine artist who occasionally works with video. But it is only now that (still so-called) video art is celebrating success on the art market - and it is only now becoming acceptable in art history as a subject for academic seminars and writings.

But ifone considers artists' dealings with the electronic image as a leitmotif from 1962 to the present day, then perhaps >video art< never existed.

Translation: Michael Robinson

112 113

Katharina Ammann.

Dan

G~aham's

Designs

ro~

Video

P~esentations:

the same time. My analysis will be preceded by some preliminary remarks on the special circumstances of presenting video within the context of exhibition operations in an art

A.rt, Commenta.ry and Solution

institution.

Since the mid-sixties two essential questions regarding presentation - in the sense of

Presenting Video in the Museum

exhibiting and visualizing - have imposed themselves in the study of video art. They

One reason for attaching importance to the presentation of video lies in the length of the

concern, on the one hand, the ideal presentation of the work in a museum, and, on the other

video inherent in the work and the respective minimum viewing time required for the

hand, the appropriate form of publication. The issues of presentation and documentation

viewer. In the 1990s, when video art was copiously represented at large exhibitions such

are actually quite related. While the difficulty of representing such a time-based medium

as the Biennale and Documenta, journalists and publicists opened up a public calculation

in a conventional exhibition catalogue had soon been recognized, the obvious alternative of

as to how many hours and days of their lifetimes the audience would need to employ only

documenting video art by means ofvideotapes failed to catch on. 1 Even organizations aiming

for viewing videos at these exhibitions. Inevitably visitors to such events must choose

at disseminating video art reach considerably fewer people than a conventional catalogue.

from among the great number of video works, and therefore the presentation may well

Indeed, before the ubiquity of the internet, the print media were clearly the most influential

be decisive in the selection process. For besides the content shown, which is not always

vehicle of information. And yet printed screenshots insufficiently represent not only the

accessible at first glance, other factors such as the ambiance, acoustics, comfortableness,

actual videotape but also its spatial setup. While photographs depicting the surrounding

and available information influence whether and how long a viewer will engage in the piece.

space have been customary for video installations and video objects, documentations of

aturally, one first and fundamental decision precedes such questions of staging: that on

single-channel works in exhibitions were long neglected. The rare early pictures provide

the presentation technology. The necessary screening equipment (video player, monitor,

some insight into the reasons for the lacking awareness of how the arrangement of the

projector or computer), essential for running the video in the first place, is another reason

installation plays into the reception. Due to the rudimentary, yet costly presentation

for the presentation to be significant for video as a medium. This minimum pre entation

technology creative options were limited. Consequently most video exhibitions do not offer

equipment not only affects additional staging options for the piece and thus its perception,

much ofa variety and hence are oflimited appeal to the public. Apart from the evolution of

but it is really part of the video itself. The fact that the carrier of content invariably depends

content, it is quite telling that video art did not conquer the institutions until advanced and

on the projection machine, a characteristic of all electronic media, adds even more weight

affordable technology allowed for more sophisticated ways of presentation. However, the scarcity of documentation available on the history of video presentations is indicative of the

to the question of presentation.

Who actually decides on the presentation of a video in a museum? Whereas, in the case

fundamental difficulty of documenting time-, sound-, or space-based media. When neither

of a video installation, it is clearly the artist who is responsible, this is not so clear-cut for

the conditions of installation nor the content and sequence are adequately represented, the

single-channel videos. Especially when it comes to group or themed exhibitions, it is not

video work will be unintelligible for someone who was not present at the time.

so much the artist but rather the curator who designs the presentation and decides on the exhibition architecture and the setting. The undetermined forms of presentation relate to the

In what follows the issue of presenting video will be examined from different angles,

very openness of the medium of video, which, as we know, is also well established outside

starting from Dan Graham's »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing

the realm of art exhibitions. Video allows for manifold cross-references, such as to cinema

Videos« (1986). On the one hand investigating this example will illustrate the problem

and television, home and confessional videos, surveillance technology and videogames, to

of documentation by way of an exemplary attempt at reconstruction; on the other hand

mention only a few. Apparently many artists are interested in exhibiting video because the

Graham's work compels the viewer to reflect on the particular conditions of presentation

medium affords a myriad of approaches to socio-cultural, philosophical, and perception-

in general, as well as on exhibiting video from a curator's and from an artist's perspective.

theoretical reflections.

For, this piece is artistic commentary and a practical solution for presenting video both at 1 As early as in 1974. for example. the Projekt 74. Aspekte

internationaler Kunst am Anfang der 70er Jahre [Project 74. Aspects of International Art in the early 1970's) in Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. Kunsthalle Cologne.

K61nischer Kunstverein. Kunst- and Museumsbibliothekl produced a video catalogue in U-matic format. which not everyone had available at home. In addition a catalogue was published for the exhibition as well.

Figure 01 Dan Graham. »Three linked Cubes I Interior Design for Space Showing Videos«. 1986 - 1987. Kunsthalle Hamburg

114 115

08 Katharina Ammann. Dan Graham's Designs For Video Presentations.

Reconstruction and Identification of Graham's »Video Pavilions«

Dan Graham (born in 1942, lives in New York) is one of the first artists to address the viewing of videotapes both in artistic and practical terms, by creating a pavilion for screening videos. Commonly known under the title »Three Linked CubeslInterior Design for Space Showing Videos« Graham realized an early form ofa video lounge where visitors can view different video programs on six screens. The machines, headsets, and cushions are placed in rectangular bays made of framed glass or mirror glass panels. The double title refers to the fact that the work can be used as both an indoor or outdoor pavilion. The »Office of Ability and Desire«2 in Brussels, according to its then director Chris Dercon, produced the prototype ofthe piece. Initially this original version, on display at the Hamburger Kunsthalle today,3 consisted only of»Interior Design for Space Showing Videotapes« and was shown

•

as such at various exhibitions. 4 On the occasion of his exhibition in Paris 5 in the 1987 Dan

Graham augmented the existing structure by adding an additional side panel and two glass roofs. Hence the prototype existing of eight original glass elements was expanded by three additional elements. In this form, without video equipment, the pavilion is designed for outdoor installation. This expansion, designated by the add-on title »Three Linked Cubes«, Figuce 02 Ground plan of »Three Linked Cubes /Interior Design for Space Showing Videos«, 1986/1987, Kunsthalle Hamburg

was likewise produced by the »Office for Ability and Desire«, and has been part of the work ever since. Accordingly the work exhibited at the Hamburger Kunsthalle is titled »Three

Figuce 03 Ground plan of "Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos«, 1986, Whitney Museum

Linked CubeslInterior Design for Space Showing Videos« and is dated as 1986 to 1987 for accuracy, to account for the later augmentation. Interestingly the videos at the Hamburger

The second >for< of the title ».. , for Space for Showing Videos« got lost along the way, just

Kunsthalle are shown in what is actually the outdoor version, i.e. with the roofing. In 1992

as the original >videotapes< became simply >videos<. These title modifications reflect the

the eight-part prototype, i.e. the indoor pavilion, was reconstructed in the original size for

constant evolution ofthe work's idea as well as the multitude ofversions, whose identification

the touring exhibition Walker Evans and Dan Graham 6 and then purchased by the Whitney

Museum. Comparing the ground plans of the Whitney version and the original version in

has not yet been finalized despite intensive research.

In 1990 the Galeria Mario Pieroni in Rome replicated the indoor pavilion with a

Hamburg, the difference between the covered outdoor pavilion and the open indoor pavilion

simplified ground plan under the title »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space

is evident (Figuce 02 and 03). While the work at the Whitney was executed as an indoor

Showing Videos«, using the original dates 1986/87. This work was exhibited at the Onnasch

sculpture only, it is displayed under the complete title and dated 1986 for the year of creation.

Collection in Berlin for a long time and is now owned by the Friedrich Christian Flick

Graham seems to regard the two parts principally as belonging together, as is implied in his

Collection. The version consists of six wall elements only, being of similar height as those

oft-cited description of the piece: "Three Linked Cubes [1986 J, a series of rectan-

of the Hamburg version (237 x 157 cm) at 230.5 cm but only lOS cm wide (Figuce 04 and

gular bays with one side open and with side panels of alternating two-way

05). This design provides less space for video screens and is therefore easier for viewers to

mirror or transparent glass, has a dual identity. Placed outside it is an

grasp. A pointer to another version, which was briefly exhibited at Nicole Klagsbrun art

open pavilion illuminated by the sun; placed indoors. it is transformed

gallery in 1989, is stil1 being investigated. A ground plan published by Brouwer could not

into Interior Design for Space for Showing Videos [1986J.«7

yet be matched with an existing version either. Finally, in 1995, Graham realized »New

8

Design for Showing Videos« (Figuce 06 and 07) at the Generali Foundation in Vienna.

2 The »Office for Ability and Desire«, founded in 1985 and headed by Chris Dercon, acted as producer for realizing works of art. Chris Dercon provided most of the data on the genesis of »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos«.

3 The Hamburger Kunsthalle acquired the piece from the Isy 8rachot Gallery in 8russels in 1995, which had owned it since 1989.

4 First exhibited at the Stichting Kijkhuis, The Hague, sub· sequently at La Criee Halle d'art contemporain, Rennes, at Videowoche Wenkenpark, Basle, at Beursschouwburg.

BrUsse!. at Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst. Gent, at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1987/1987.

5 ARC MusM d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1987.

6 Walker Evans & Dan Graham, Witte de With, centrum voor hedendaagse kunst and Museum Boymans·van·

Beuningen, Rotterdam; Musee Cantini, Marseille; Westfa· lisches Landesmuseum. MUnster; The Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 1992 -1994.

7 In: Two·Way Mirror Power. Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art. Ed. by Alexander Alberro. Cambridge, MA.. London, England: The MIT Press, 1999. First publish·

...

ed in: Dan Graham, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid, 1987, p. 27, and in: Dan Graham: Pavilions. Kunstverein MUnchen, 1988, p. 46.

8 Draft from: Dan Graham. Werke 1965 - 2000. Ed. by Marianne Brouwer. DUsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2002. p.

221.

i

~8_K:t~a:i~a_A~m:n~._o:n_G:a~a~': ~e:i~n: ~o= ~i~e~ ~~:s:n:a:i~n:._

116 117

While this pavilion is still based on the same fundamental idea, it clearly differs from its

instruction manual for setting up the installation. Such imprecision as to the title and the

predecessors m Its ground plan and in the punched metal sheets used instead of the two glass

version is even more common with regard to the earlier piece »Three Linked Cubes/Interior

panes.. The bays are no longer rectangular cubes, but rather have the shape ofparallelograms

Design for Space Showing Videos«. Most publications do not specify the existenoe ofsev-

and tnangles. A slmtlar work entitled »New Space for Showing Videos« (1995) is owned by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. 9

eral versions of the work, not to mention how they differ from one another or where they

I----------~~

are located. The catalogue Transjorm 13 from Basle is an exception here, displaying both the matching ground plan and elevation for the piece depicted therein and exhibited at the show. Even monographic publications on Graham have been surprisingly uninformative in

2.

this respect. Marianne Brouwer's overview publication contains a ground plan of uncertain

'90 J

I

.. , .

'i

• l '

~

Of

'

.

100

.. ...

provenance, which cannot be matched with any of the figures, but at least for once it does point to the existence of several variants. The author seems to assume that the work at the

,

Onnasch Collection (today Flick) is the original and served as model for the reconstruction

at the Whitney Museum. However, given the work's genesis as detailed above and the

, ... l.s.~ ,. '"

~t't

~

similarities in ground plans, it seems much more plausible that the work at the Hamburger

.

,

1.00

I

100

Kunsthalle served as the model for the reconstruction. Brouwer does not even mention the

Hamburg piece, although just a simple google search wi II turn up the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Google's first listing is medienkunstnetz.de, a platform providing an excellent introduction

and art historical background to Graham's work. While medienkunstnetz.de also fails to conclusively solve the question of the different versions, the documentation is constantly updated. Ultimately only this kind of open platform with regular updates can do justice to

Figure 04 "Three Linked Cubes / Interior Design for Space Showing Videos«. 1986. Friedrich Christian Flick Collection

Figure 05 Ground plan of "Three Linked Cubes / Intenor Design for Space Showing Videos«. 1986. Friedrich Chnslian Flick Collection

an ever-evolving state of knowledge as in the case at hand. This is not to speak of the hardly viable personal and financial investment. Of course the print media are also fully capable of depicting more complex video installations with the help of pictures of room settings

Review of the Status of Documentation This attempt at identifying versions or variants of Graham's »Spaces for Showing Videos« demonstrates that mformation obtained from generally accessible sources, such as relevant ltterature and the Internet 10 . s ft . . ' t 0 en erroneous. StIll the existence of two different works »Three Lmked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos« from 1986 and »New DeSign for Showing Videos« from 1995 became obvious fairly quickly. The latter in partIcular has been quite well documented by the Generali Foundation and is easily found on the Internet. The cover of the booklet accompanying the video Dan Graham. »Video/ Archlteoture/Performance«l1 even features Graham's sketch of the ground 1 Ib . d h .1 P an, a elt un er t ~ tt:: »New Space for Showing Videos« (Figure 07). According to the Generali FoundatIon

thIs sketch corresponds to the piece in their collection and has served as

9 New Space for Showing Videos has the same ground plan as New Design for Showing Videos but is less tall (213 em instead of 220cm) and has no aluminum panels The Whitney Museum purchased the work from the Ma'rian Goodman Gallery in 2002.

10 A Google search for "Dan Graham Three Linked Cubes Interior Design for Space Showing Videos« turned up the following pages in this order: www.medienkunstnetz.de. foundation.generali.al, www.raeumen.org/graham. www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de. www.diachelsea.org.

and room layouts. In the case in point countless pictures of the installation were easy to come by, but rarely a ground plan, let alone one actually matching the version pictured.

Ground plans are particularly helpful in understanding the structure, for while Graham's oft-cited summary14 does convey a general idea of his work, it does not evoke a precise spatial image of it. However, the location of the installation photograph or the institution currently holding the work are scarcely documented. Overall the Onnasch Collection is referred to the most frequently.

For these reasons numerous inquiries with galleries and museums as well as archival research and conversations with the artist were necessary to accomplish the present identification of the work variants, without having succeeded to compile a conclusive list.

This is why, among other things, the varying measurements of the pieces could not be verified. Of course the study of »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing 11 Cover page for Dan GrahamVideo/Architecturel Performance. Booklet accompanying the videotape. Ed. by Sabine Breitwieser. Generali Foundation. Vienna. 1995.

12 Conversation with Dr. Doris Leutgeb. Generali Foundation. Collection. Director of Study Room.

13 Transform. BildObjektSkulptur im 20. Jahrhundert. ex cat. Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle Basle. ed. by Theodora Vischer. Basle. 1992.

14 Cf. note 7.

08 Katharina Ammann. Dan Graham's Designs For Video Presentations.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Videos« poses a particular challenge: with the artist occasionally rethinking and refining this work, it is even more difficult to match and identify the different objects. Committed to what Dercon calls a »democratic principle of enabling genecal visibility and ac ce s sibili t y", 15 Graham usually produces three editions ofa work,16 thereby rendering moot the question ofthe original. And yet the search for the prototype as much as the attempt at documenting the different versions have been worthwhile exercises, because it turns out that the continual honing of one basic idea is Graham's preferred artistic approach. All in all the missing documentation of Graham's work listed here illustrates tbe general problem of presenting video installations outside of the exhibition context. The, often deplorable, status of documentation of media art could improve dramatically if certain standards of information for technical data as well as detailed lists of figures were implemented.

118 119 commented on his usage of glass and two-way mirrors, also known as spyglass. What interests him is the interface between the private and the public, manifest in the one-way view from mirrored high-rises, from the living room window or onto the television screen.

The pavilion, a pervious outdoor architecture, as it were, epitomizes this simultaneity of inside and outside. Thus the glass bays of his )video pavilions< establish spatial intimacy, aU the while denying visual intimacy. So watching television, a private act, is transposed into the public sphere of video art. This, for Graham, is not only about watcbing videos but also about simultaneously being watched watching videos. His )video pavilions< are designed in such a way that tbe viewer sitting or standing in front of a monitor will also see parts of otber videos and even more so him or herself and others through the glass panes or in their reflections in the spyglass. With the incidence of light changing with the video images their effects change as well: » Two-way mirror glass is simultaneously reflective and transparent. The properties of this material cause one side to be either mace reflective oc more transparent than the othec side at any given moment. Spectators inside and outside see supecimposed views of theic bodies and gazes as well as the surrounding landscape. The two-way micror is cinematic and hallucinatory.«17 In this fashion a tension builds that well relates to ideas of surveillance, isolation, and group pressure. Besides such reflections on self-perception, identification, and public

/.

Figul'e 06 »New Design for Showing Videos«. 1995.

Generali Foundation

.I

\\

Figure 07 Ground plan of »New Design for Showing Videos«. 1995. Generali Foundation

\\

behavior Graham's )video pavilions< also function as exemplary experimental setups for

physiological perception, for seeing. After all, it is through the reflection of self in the mirror that the viewer becomes aware of the act of seeing and that his or her gaze becomes the object of Graham's art.

In his work»New Design for Showing Videos« from 1995 Graham further elaborates the idea of alternate transparency and reflection. Conceptually as much as formally »New Design for Showing Videos« makes reference to the work »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos« from about ten years earlier. The later work was the first

Conceptual Comments on Graham's »Video Pavilions« Since the mid-sixties Dan Graham has frequently used video installations to address issues of temporal and spatial perception as well as identity and subjectivity. From the late 1970's on the pavilion has become a central theme for Graham, due to its hybrid multifunctionality and its parallels with metropolitan and garden architectures. In his 1986 »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space ShowingVideos« Graham merged videos and pavilions and played out this idea in numerous variants of his )video pavilions<. Graham has often 15 Conversation with Chris Dercon.

16 Conversation with Dan Graham.

17 Graham. Dan. Dan Graham. Two·way Mirror Pavilions/

Einwegspiegel·PavilJons. 1989-1996. Ed. by Martin Kotte. ring and Roland NachtigaJler. Stadtische Galerie Nordhorn 1997. p. 99. . .

instance of Graham using punched aluminum for the side panels, besides transparent and mirrored glass: » This

> New

Design for Showing Videos ( uses punched aluminum

(two aluminum sheets with small holes). The small holes relate to the small pixels on the video image. They are semi-tcansparent when seen neacby and completely tcansparent when the viewer presses his eyes to look

di~ectly

thcough a hole. This is in relation to the transparency and shifting semiceflectiveness/transpacency on the two-way by changes in the pcojected video images.,,18 18 Comment by Dan Graham in: Dan Graham.Video/ Architecture/Performance. Booklet accompanying the videotape. Ed. by Sabine Breitwieser. Generali Foundation.

Vienna. 1995. p. 11.

mi~coc

panels. a shift caused

120 121 So one the one hand Graham discusses pixeling, i.e. the no longer perceptible resolution of the digital image, and on the other hand the constantly shifting transparency of his pavilion. By using the punched aluminum Graham reinforces the optical and conceptual complexity of his work.

activities. Interestingly enough the television set - which is what a video screen inevitably evokes - is part of and contributes to this coziness. In his texts »Soft Furniture Design and Video Feedback«, »Soft Furniture and TV«, and »Art as Design/Design as Art«22 Graham explains the connection between the comfortable sofa and watching television, often a

]nitially the artist himself programmed the videos for his )video pavilions<; the altogether six screens showed three different programs 19 featuring artist videos, music videos, activist videos or motion pictures on video, thus commenting on the diverse cultural origins of video art. After the first few exhibitions with practically the same sequences, the programming was modified as needed with Graham's consent. ]n the meantime the )video pavilions< have been used for multiple video screenings. Hence the definition of this work of art has shifted from video installation to exhibition architecture. Graham described this ambiguity of his piece as early as 1986, when it was first created: "The WOL'k is both a functional exhibition design and an optical aL'twoL'k displaying the video images as well as the spectatoL's' L'eaction to the video viewing pL'ocess in the social space to the video exhibition.«20 ]t is precisely this vacillating position between work ofart and exhibition architecture between content and form, that makes this piece an interesting case study for qUestion: concerning the presentation of video art in the museum.

familial activity, as opposed to individual seats in a cinema theater. Soft furniture that molds to the body and reacts to every movement, for Graham, is a tactile parallel to the visual self-perception ofclosed-circuit-procedures or in the reflections of his pavilions. John

Chamberlain also combined video and soft furniture, in his oversized foam rubber couch at the Westkunst exhibition in Cologne (l981), where visitors could sprawl to watch bad takes of TV commercials on two television screens. Chamberlain's polyurethane couches inspired Graham to experiment with manufacturing soft and transparent furniture for »Three Linked Cubes/Interior Design for Space Showing Videos«, albeit without a final result. In any event cushions had to be placed in the )video pavilions< for coziness: "The installation should be veL'y comfortable so you can lie down. Too much aL't is seen instantaneously, and theL'e's too much video aL't that consists of giant, oveL'whelming images. This should be small, home-like, an aL'ea that I think should be a L'omantic, comfoL'table kind of place.«23

Graham's )video pavilions< confer more autonomy to their visitors than a Black Box with an

Exhibition AL'chitecture as Art

- in Graham's words - overwhelmingly giant projection screen. In Graham's piece visitors As it were »Three Linked Cubes/lnterior Design for Space Showing Videos« is at once art, commentary, and solution. The piece works as sculptural object, as conceptual and sensual setup for viewing video art, and as viable exhibition layout for videos in a museum. Graham accommodates the requirements for exhibiting video in a museum, as discussed above, with an inviting, video lounge-like setting. Visitors can retreat into the bays by themselves or in a group, move the cushions around, sit back, put on the headphones, watch different videos and thereby, seemingly, withdraw from the public sphere of the cultural institution.

Graham entertains the idea of relaxation, of informal encounter in the museum: "I think museums aL'e great places. I L'ealized that a museum could be a social space and I fell in love with the empty lobbies, the gift shop, coffee shop, aL'eas wheL'e people could L'elax. So I did WOL'k like ,ThL'ee Linked Cubes/InteL'ior Design foL' Space Showing Videos"

1986, wheL'e teenageL's could lie on the

flooL'. I think what I did was to discoveL' the tL'adition of the museum instead of pUL'suing the stupid idea of Institutional CL'itique. «21 Hence he views the museum as a space for social interaction and creates niches allowing for a variety of 19 For arrangement cf. ground plan of the Whitney version.

20 Cf. note 7.

21 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "Four Conversations: December 1999 - May 2000.« in: Dan Graham, Works 1965

- 2000, ed. by Marianne Brouwer. Dusseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2001, p. 78.

22 All from: Dan Graham. Ausgewahlte Schriften. ed. by Ulrich Wilmes. Stuttgart: Oktagon, 1994.

do not get lost in the image but remain present as individuals, also because they can see themselves watching video, more or less consciously, in their own reflections. Autonomy is also in demand when visitors have to make their selections from very different video compilations on up to six video screens. Graham anticipates the concept of the video library here, which - due the sheer amount of videos in the 1990's - not only became ever more frequently shown at exhibitions but was made into the very subject of artistic inquiry. Hence video libraries and video lounges were showcased by Fabrice Gygi, Costa Vece, andJohan

Grimonprez at exhibitions such as Art Basel, Biennale Venezia, and Documenta. Particularly at such large exhibitions video lounges, apart from being a productive option for presenting videos, meet the need for more intimate spaces. At the 1997 Documenta X Graham's »New Design for Showing Videos« enjoyed great popularity among visitors, who not only wished to watch videos but also to sit and chat or simply relax. The pavilion gave the impression of being an island in the central room of the Fridericianum.

But even many artists who do not or do not only work with video have been interested in TV experience and TV behavior for some time, always implied when presenting videos 23 Dan Graham in a conversation with Mark Francis. in: 8irgit Pelzer et al. Dan Graham, London / New York: Phaidon Press. 2001. p. 32.

122 123

08 Katharina Ammann. Dan Graham's Designs For Video Presentations. on a screen. The >TV< inside the museum means that a habitually private environment is transposed into the public context. This transplanting of the private sphere into the public realm was characteristic of the lounge culture of the 1990s, an era that, significantly,

this is mostly due to the fact that there are several versions of the piece, an instance that, surprisingly, finds little mention. An ideal information platform - whose implementation might be utopian - would provide a collection of relevant data, with clickable crosslinks to

produced extreme forms such as »Big Brother«, reality shows, and live webcams. The socio·

all the versions including their technical specifications as well as information ranging from

cultural interest in visitor behavior and in constructing a trendily designed communication

Graham's texts and video interviews to the videotapes the artist had originally programmed

platform goes hand in hand with an ostentatiously art-market-oriented service mentality, such as in Angela Bulloch's »Bean Bag Set I1«. The artist furnishes the exhibiting institution with colorful, comfortable bean bags and fleecy pedestals with screens on top, where random video programs can be displayed. Needless to say that such >solutions< are of interest to curators because they receive both a ready-to-use environment for screening their videos and an artistic commentary on the conditions of the medium's presentation and reception.

for the work.

By analyzing Graham's >video pavilions< we explored the difficulties of documentation as well as the lack of accessibility, but also the problem of presenting video art in the museum. Graham may be considered the predecessor of a number of 1990s artists, whose works dealt with exhibiting this medium. He took the video screen down from the high pedestal of the museum to create an alternative, familial environment within the exhibition

Graham's >video pavilions< also imply both the conceptual deconstruction of the viewer's

and the art institution, thereby anticipating the lounge culture of the 1990s. The fact that

identity and subjectivity formation as well as the purely functional aspect. Dan Graham, who

many artists of recent years have dealt with exhibition design, ambient art or video lounges

wrote about »Art as Design - Design as Art«, describes his >video pavilions< as exhibition designs, as is obvious from the titles >Interior Design< or >New Design<. Consequently museums and art collectors covet these exhibition setups; but their desire for both service and sophisticated art, for both a relaxed environment and an intellectual challenge has also met with criticism. Wade Guyton, for example, replicated the structure of»New Design for Showing Videos« but omitted the videos and the mirror glass. In his minimal »New Desicrn«

"

(2003), void of purpose, this artist of a generation born in the late sixties and early seventies questions both the questionable role of the museum as leisure lounge and the problem ofthe

is evidence for a tendency toward dissolving traditional boundaries between the curator, the artist, and the viewer as well as a pronounced interest in questions of identity between privacy and publicity in this age of media pervasion. The new media lend themselves for this kind of enquiry, most of all video, which has been around for some 40 years now. Owing to its degree of technological sophistication video may be used and presented in a multitude of ways, and with this vague status may touch on various realms of society. The openness ofthis medium, and its simultaneous dependence on its equipment, make the presentation of video _ i.e. exhibiting and documenting it - not only a difficult curatorial and scholarly

just about inflationary usage of Graham's >video pavilions< in institutions.

task but also an artistic challenge.

Dealing With Uncertainty

Translation: Ina Pfitzner

The exemplary study of the status of documentation for Dan Graham's >video pavilions( served to examine the multifaceted issue of presenting video. It became obvious how difficult it is, still in the internet age, to present accurately and in its entirety a well-known and oftcited video installation. The lack of binding and detailed standards of information clearly came to light. While information was readily available, it often proved to be deficient; only intensive research completed the picture of Graham's piece, although this is actually fairly well documented. Accessing Graham's own texts about the work was easy, whereas getting a hold of video documentations, which are only available in some few media libraries, proved to be more difficult.24 Ground plans and original drafts were mostly requested from the owners of the works, as well as precise measurements, since secondary sources frequently cite the wrong measurements for the works shown in the figures. The reason for

24 The 45·minute interview Chris Dercon conducted with Dan Graham about Interior Design for Space Showing Videotapes and Design as Art. Art as Design. 1996. recor-

ded at the Witte de With. Rotterdam. may be viewed in the Study Room of the Generali Foundation in Vienna.

Hans D. Christ.

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Stan Douglas, »Win , Place

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Museum Kilppersmilhle Sammlung Grothe, Duisburg, in 2001. The exhibition presented works that focused on the film structures of space-related narrative, that have ranked among the sovereign practices deployed as a matter of course by artists since the beginning of the 1990s, The art works featured at the exhibition (re)told contexts offilm history, literature and urban planning from the viewpoint of the present day, with their back facing the future and looking back at the past. The medium used was video installation organised in and/or structuring space,

Stan Douglas, Win, Place

o~

Show

Refe~ence

model [genecal]

Stan Douglas' »Win, Place or Show« video installation oscillates between reconstruction and invention, between condensation of action and infinite expansion, between media translation and historical facts, Stan Douglas takes the >fiction< of an urban master plan as his starting point that follows the ideas of the functional city of the 1950s and 1960s, The functional city, that was based on a division of the city into strictly separate functional zones - home, work, leisure and transport - was also the basis for the revised plan for Strathcona, a suburb of Vancouver, that was devised in the 1950s. After demolishing the old buildings, the aim there was to build a worker's housing estate in the style of modernist >off-the-peg functional architecture<. In the end, however, only two of the building complexes were actually bui It, as the project was stopped by the opposition of the >old

Figure 01 Installation view, Montage, Museum KOppersmOhle, Sammlung Grothe, Duisburg, photo: Sascha Dressler

The aim of this text is to describe an art work from the edges of its reception. From the vantage POInt of the curator, who invites a contemporary artist to present a work at an exhIbItIOn In order to transport a certain content with the aid of this work and h b d' of th . . . . w 0, Y Int IS InVItatIOn, additionally undertakes to >emplace< the art work in the setting in an adequate manner for the purpose of its presentation, This second, often neglected task of the curator IS what I am referring to here when I describe the purpose of this text as bein to dISCUSS the, edges of reception, The aim is to describe the things that, as in the case

a

0;

Stan Douglas above-mentioned work, ideally are not the object of observation, but rather functIOnal elements of its effect. Stan Douglas' work would seem to lend itself particularly well as the fundamentally manipulative character of spatial enactment is seen here in the sense of an Intellectual reflection on the content of the wor. k

to this story, tells us a story that could not have happened like that because it already lacks the option of reporting about a real, existing space, Nevertheless, the basis of the art work reproduces an >authentic< project, that serves as a model for a style of building that was gaining a very firm foothold all over the world at the time, Stan Douglas, then, negotiates neither local history nor a specific occurrence, but rather investigates the ultimately fictional, actual plans based on their representativeness of modernism.

Refe~ence

model [concept]

In developing the art work, Douglas focuses on a concrete building: the BI single worker's apartment from the aforementioned project. He reproduces it in the form of a true-to-scale film set, furnishing this set with furniture prototypical of this period: radio, picture of a

Klee imitation by a local architect and painter, seats, lamps, etc. The circumstances of the

Context [exhibition] »dialogues & stories. Neue Formen des Erzahlens in der Medienkunst«2 was the title of the exhIbItIOn In the context ofwhich the »Win Place or Sh k ' ow« wor was showcased at the 1 Stan Douglas, "Win, Place or Show«, 1998, two-channelvideo projection, four-channel soundtrack, 204,023 variatIOns with an average duration of six minutes each, dimenSions variable, Edition of two.

locals<. So with his »Win, Place or Show« installation, Stan Douglas, who refers explicitly

2 Other artists: Teresa Hubbard und Alexander Birchler Runa Islam, Franciska lambrechts. '

action taking place on this set also follow this structure of a reproduction for the purpose of representation.

09 Hans D. Christ. Stan Douglas, »Win, Place or show«.

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126 127

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Donny and Bob, the two protagonists in the scene, temporarily sharing the single apartment, correspond to the stereotypes of a TV series produced in Vancouver in 1968.

They represent typical actors of working class roles of the time, albeit of the media-based fictional representation of this group of society. In contrast to the historical TV production: however, the actors themselves are theatre actors. That is to say, their acting patterns are guided not so much by the camera lens that scans the room (full shot, detail, etc.), but rather by the concrete, spatial situation of the film set. By means of this link-up of fiction and reconstruction, between mediality and physical relation to the real film set, Doug/as reconstructs the paradox/parody that has always been inherent in the concept of utopist, urban planning master plans and their synthetic manifestations.

horse races, leading finally to the two protagonists fighting, are shot from twenty different camera angles. The cameras are aligned in such a way as to cross the room on two parallel offset axes. Information about the system employed by Stan DougLas here can be gleaned aman '"a other thinas '" from the captions provided with the footage for printing the invitation card or catalogue [1- East WS l.tif= wide shot] [1- North CU Don l.tif= close-up, Don] [2 - West MS Don l.tif= medium size]. The positioning of the camera is therefore organised by the dictates of condensing the action by folding up the room and not by making the room dynamic by using such camera techniques as panning or travel.

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[Post] production / presentation [technique] Figure 02 "Type Bl". in Leonard C. Marsh. Rebuilding a Neighbourhood. University of British Columbia.

Vancouver. 1950

We can only speculate on the post-production based on the final technical products as seen.

Figure 03 Still from "Win. Place or Show". 1998 (detai/J

But, in the end, this is legitimate as post-production is ultimately developed for the specific presentation, and this presentation is known. The final product comprises four digital video

Production [Work with the film set] DougLas consistently develops translation ofthe above-mentioned contexts onto the level of the actual relation of space, time and action in the scene to be shot based on the underlying parameters - restrictive architecture, media representation and stage. The film set opens up completely on two sides along the longitudinal axis and side axes. That is to say, the scene, acted out several times, is shot as a stage space in front of two space axes in each case. The scenes, that go from discussions about conspiracy theories and winning odds in

disks (the master format is Digital Beta, video), on which the changing camera positions are located along the selected axes for camera positioning, being repeated in a six-minute loop. In post-production, the various sound sequences are separated into four channels (language, rain, radio station).

The presentation technique is linked directly to production of the video data. The four DVD players are connected by two technical units. These are a synchronous starter and a >vertical interval switcher<. While the synchronous starter guarantees that both images are frame-synched in the two projections, the switcher acts as a video mixer between the four

128 129 09 Hans D. Christ. Stan Douglas, »Win, Place or show«. image sources. For the viewer, this means that, while the scene is always repeated at the same interval (one loop of six minutes), the combination of the various sequences varies from loop to loop. In combination with the camera angles, that were transferred onto four >freely< combinable DVDs, the result is an infinite expansion of the time axis of the same scene to approx. 20,000 hours until a combination of images is optionally (because this cannot be experienced) repeated.

P~esentation

[spatial]

The room is accessed on the side to the back of the room through an open double-door blackout that is adequately soundproofed and long to ensure that no light or sound gets in from adjacent rooms. The position of the entrance to the side of the projection screen is important in that, in order to be standing at the centre the projection, the viewer must enter the room completely and not stay, for example, in a central entrance area. The blackout entrance and the interior are painted with a grey hue that preserves the volume of the room but does not reflect the light from the projection. On the side walls and back wall there are echo breakers that enable the viewer to perceive the sound as coming from the projection and, at the same time, ensure that all the different sound sources can be adjusted without any uncontrollable in-room echoes. The projection screens (2.81 m x 3.75 m each) installed on the face end are positioned in front of a matte black wall. The stark contrast to the reflection light of the projection created by this background always ultimately results in the seemingly immaterial, floating character of Stan Douglas' video images that we observed, for example, in Nu:tka. To achieve this effect, it is also important to suspend the projection screens at a sufficient distance to the wall (centre 20 cm). The two projection screens (MDF board with the edges bevelled off 45° to the back to avoid the viewer seeing the edge of the material and to remove all volume from the screen), tilted 7° to the side and separated by a 2 cm gap also achieve the optical effect that the viewer appears to have an equal view of both video pictures at the same time. However, this panorama view is constantly being undermined: by the breaks in the details, sections and overlaps ofthe space and, as a result of this, by the bodies and faces of the actors that appear now on the edge of the picture, now disappearing in the gap between the projections, now mirrored on both sides of the projection.

The seemingly panoptic image refuses to accommodate the viewer by constantly nesting and folding space and as a result of action taking place through it. As a result, the >totalitarian< space concept underlying »Win, Place or Show« is transferred not into the structure of a historical presentation, but rather into a claustrophobic, fragmented, fatally inevitable constant within which the plots obey the conditions of space.

figure 05

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Sh" at KOppersmOhle Museum. Grothe Collection. Collin Griffiths. 2001 Alignment plan for "WIn. Place or ow

_09 _Hans _ _ D. Cheist. Stan 0ouglas, »Win, Place oe show«.

Figu£'e .06 Alignment plan for "Win, Place or Show, al Kuppersmuhle Museum, Grothe Collection Collin Griffiths 2001 "

130 131 ~esence

[laye~ed

sound]

The >foreground< of the action is the conversation between Bob and Don, their debate drives the plot and is thus the most audible sound source. The pictures are dubbed with the constant sound - accompanying all the scenes - of endless rainfall and a radio that can be heard in the background. The sound of rain only comes to the fore in relation to the only film shot of a view out of the apartment window that appears regularly but not at equal intervals, a panorama of a night-time city in pouring rain, whose buildings correspond to the abovedescribed model of modernist urban planning. Here, in this picture of the inhospitable outdoors and in relation to the monotonous sound of falling rain, the fatal situation is

P~esence [the epidiascope]

intensified that takes place in the hermetic interior ofthe apartment. The faintly audible noise of the radio in the background seems to emanate from a radio sitting on a chest of drawers.

If the overall spatial arrangement follows the theme of the art work' . I . . i h' ' .

In VIO atIng certalD mages, t IS IS, however, also In relation to the physical presence ofthe . d' . . . prOJecte Imaue ttself ~ agaIn In the form of a dual structure. Firstly, in terms of quality, it should measu;e up to e toverp;:enng structure of cinema, only to lose this >potency< due to the aforementioned nes Ing30 t e Image. For this reason, when he is not working with such film material as 16 mm or 5 mm Stan Do I I '. ug as on y uses three-tube projectors in exhibitions. These actually th d' ra er. 1m machInes are still the only technology available to project a video imaue in approxImately CInema quality. With the aid of th h d b , . ese cat 0 e- tube based projectors it is possible to display the subtlest colour transitions and unlike LCD 0 DLP . ' bl k d h' . ' r projectors real ac an w Ite. The lIne-based and unlike d . ' of t ' '. ' mo ern projectors, non-additive composition he Image In pIxels allows genuine depth of field Th" . .

D .

IS IS partIcularly Important when . ouglas demands that the projectors have a line doubler - a kind of lossless image r InterpolatIOn. Ine

The irritating thing, however, is that the viewer occasionally hears German speakers or familiar jingles: the sound of the radio is a feed from local radio stations at the exhibition venue. Here, at this other level, Stan Douglas intermeshes the fictional scene of the film with the overarching, representative and transferable theme of»Win, Place or Show«. The spatial layering of sound that is ofelementary importance for the overall structure is created on the one hand by the aforementioned echo breakers, the positioning of the loudspeakers (above and to the side of the projection screen), and the sound sources connected to various control devices (multiple amplifiers and mixer).

[P~ovisional]

end

The complex links hinted at here between the production and presentation of an art work hopefully demonstrate how crucial the proper performance of works of media art is for transporting their content. This is an aspect that is also intended to illustrate that any attempt at standardisation, as is currently becoming established in the institutions, runs counter to the serious transportation of the specific characteristics of media art.

At the end of such a text, that takes an ultimately reduced view of a pure description of the work in question, there remains the unfulfilled task of intermeshing the evolution of the work and the conditions of its presentation even more intimately with its content.

However, this was not my intention and, in the case of »Win, Place or Show«, has already been done most excellently by William Wood (»Secret Work«, Stan Douglas, Exhibition Vancouver Art Gallery, 1999, p. 107 - 120). The knowledge summarised here is owed to the precision of the artist's dossiers and probably the best >fulfiller< ofthe requirements in the exhibition setting, Colin Griffiths, who was chiefly responsible for planning and technical implementation of the presentation of Stan Douglas' works on site until 2002.

Translation: Richard Watts Figu£'e 07 View of installation, montage: KOppersmOhle Museum . . .

The dlstnbutlOn of light does not correspond to the d' t'b' . ' Grothe Collection, DUisburg, photo: Sascha Dressler.

IS n utlon of light at the exhibition

Dennis Del Favero / Neil Brown / Jeffrey Shaw / Peter Weibel.

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T_Visiona~ium: the aesthetic t~ansc~iption

narrative is central to conventional cinema, the theoretical and experimental emphasis upon simulation has led to two separate consequences within digital cinema and new media.

of televisual databases

Firstly, it has led to the narrative potential within these art forms being overlooked. Secondly, it has seen the aesthetic potential of televisual database interactions being ignored.!

Concepts

The paper addresses the concern that it is limitations in the understanding of narrative, This paper takes the form of a series of thematic reflections on digital aesthetics. These reflections are focused around an experimental artwork, entitled »T_Visionarium«, we are currently developing at the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Centre, University oJ

New South Wales and ZKM, Karlsruhe. The essential thrust of the paper is to suggest that databases can be productively approached using aesthetic and philosophical concepts of transposition and ascription rather than the conventional archaeological concepts of access and retrieval.

as opposed to technical understanding, which have restricted the aesthetic development of new media and digital cinema in terms of interactive narrative. Through its focus on viewer-generated recomposition of televisual data, »T_Visionarium« seeks evidence of how interactive narrative, exists across simultaneous layers of time, and in other words how it is multi-temporal. »T_Visionarium« frames televisual databases not in terms of a spatial archaeology, which can then be accessed and retrieved, but in terms of multi-layered temporal compositions, which can unfold through their dialogue with the viewer. In this way the viewer and the database form a digital ecology able to generate unprecedented

1 T~ansc~iptive na~~ative

aesthetic and social meanings. 2 The »T_Visionarium« methodology provides a model for

The paper is founded on the concept ofaesthetic transcription as a model for the production of interactive narrative within digital cinema and new media. Transcription refers to the way the aesthetic allows viewers to transpose from one form of sense experience to another. to transact across experiential contexts. In the case of our experimental work, it refers to the capture, transposition and recomposition of multi-layered forms of sensory information within digital environments. By means of the experimental extended virtual environment »T_Visionarium«, whose first prototype was presented at Lille Cultural Capital, Europe, from December 2003 to March 2004, viewers are enabled to capture, transpose and recompose global televisual data. The significance ofT_Visionarium is set against the fact that while

Figure 01 Installation view of the Dome at lKM 1998.

transcriptive strategies across a range of databases. For example, it can be applied to other database formations such as the Internet, libraries, image archives along with the abstract modeling of viewer attitudes applicable in a range of fields. By sifting through seemingly chaotic and unrelated data, transcriptive narrative creates a new logic of inter-relationship between data. This >media ecology< recycles apparently waste data into new sensory fields of experience and communication. At an individual level, applying transcriptive narrative to materials already bound together in emergent narrative formations - such as family photo and video archives - reveals the profoundly expressive potential oftranscriptive narrative, .

. .

especially revealing to those who are Its partIcIpants.

3

Transcriptive narrative achieves this media ecology by integrating the multi-temporal qualities of narrative with the multiplicity of modes built into digital information. As an experimental integration of these temporal qualities »T_Visionarium« aims to test the simple proposition that interactive narrative occurs by means of the transportation of the multiple modalities of digital information across virtual time. In testing the transportation of information within virtual time, however, we anticipate evidence of the previously undescribed multi-temporal qualities of narrative. In this multi-temporal form of narrative viewers not only re-compose complex information into distinct temporal episodes but also simultaneously experience the unanticipated temporal consequences of these virtual episodes as real events. This dynamic form ofengagement with time, involving the emerging and looping intersection between virtual time and real time, produces a mode of narrative that contrasts dramatically with the temporal sterility of the closed narrative menus typically

1 Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, london: Verso, 1993; Jean-Fran~ois lyotard, »Idee d'un film souverain", in: Misere de la philosophie, Paris: Galilee, 2000; Martin Rieser, Andrea lapp, New Screen Media:

found in computer games and database formations.

Cinema/Art/Narrative, london: BFI Publishing, 2002.

2 Dennis Del Favero, Ross Gibson, Ian Howard and Jeffrey Shaw, »The reformulation of narrative within digital cinema as an integration of three forms of interactivity",

ARC Discovery Project, 2002.

3 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972 - 1990, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995; John Searle, The

Construction of Social Reality, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1995; Michel Serres, The Birth of Physics, Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2000.

134 135 10 Del Favero

Brown

Shaw / Weibel. T_Visionarium.

The re-enactment of televisual information as proposed by »T_Visionarium« has the potential for allowing a multiplicity of significant unfolding to occur within the original data. Currently the great mass of broadcast or recorded televisual information is received indirectly by the viewer and sorted retrospectively in memory. This information is encountered through techniques such as channel hopping, muting, multi-screens, assembly in different contexts, or fragmented through time-delay and by report. Thus although television broadcasts may begin as purposeful forms of cultural communication, their meaning goes beyond their original producer's intentions as this meaning is digitally composed into irreversible narrations. 4

. rdware/software. We will refer to this systems' combination projector and computatIOnal ha t 01 enables the viewer to thematically select b' t matnx The remote con r afs the recoon:stl:; :~ionariu~'s« televisual database by selecting a specific recombinatory rom am e> category. . ' b . They include such categories as d' a fr m 48 alobal For Lille the recombinatory categones are qUite aSlc. . b The database itself is constituted by the recor me> 0 e> >greetmg s <, >em racee . . ultaneous sixty-minute period. These 48 hours satellite-television channels dunng one Slm f are matrix in ways that hyperlink the fglobal televisual data are post-processed by a so tw fi the televisual database. o . different data sets in virtual time so as to orm

On the other hand a transcriptive approach to this data would enable a reformulation of the broadcast data, allowing it to remerge in new narrative encounters. In relation to the purposes oftranscriptive narrative, the French philosopher Michel Serres argues: »We are dealing less with the story of how something came about than with the dramatization of pre-existing forms.

,,5

Transcriptive narrative dramatizes the world instead of

freezing it into schematic representations. It transforms the cinema into a kind of Platonic cave wall onto which viewers project, then respond, to the episodic shadows of their journey through cultural information. It is only insofar as digital technology accomplishes the awesome task of transporting multi-modal data into virtual time that the aesthetic potential of interactive narrative can be tested. The concept of multi-modal refers to a number of distinct properties of digital media. These include the complex set of modes in which this data exists, ranging from its original transmission mode, as in televisual broadcasts, through to its symmetrically recorded mode, say as in DVD, and onto its asymmetrical modes when it is recombined within non-genre specific contexts such as databases.

To test our concept of transcriptive narrative we are in the process of developing the extended virtual environment »T_Visionarium«, in prototype and demonstrator form. »T_Visionarium« is an extended virtual environment set within a dome, 12 meters in diameter, 9 meters in height, made of inflatable fabric.

2 T_Visionadum In the Lille prototype the viewer, on entering the dome, places a position-tracking device on their head, connected to cableless stereo headphones. The viewer then steps onto a control platform located at the center of the dome that is equipped with a remote control, 4 lIya Prigogine. The End of Certainty: Time. Chaos and the New Laws of Nature. New York: The Free Press. 1996. p. 27.

5 Serres. The Birth of Physics. las in note 31. pp. 84 - 88.

Figure 02 to 07 T_Visionarium: different interior scenes

.

-10- Del - _ Favero _ _ _ _/ _Brown _ _ _/ _Shaw _ _ / Weibel . T- V"lSlonarlum.

136 137

The projection system is fixed on a motorized pan-tilt apparatus mount . which projects televisual data onto the interior skin of the dome T . ed on a tnpod artIculated to the trackina de" h . he projectIOn system IS

matrix sorts the data according to classifications such as language, movement, color, speech,

the

composition, lighting and pattern recognition. As already noted these classifications are

.lar~e projected view~ng :~:~:;Ut: t:a::~~::::~~:~::r::;hs:viewer's head causes

w~fa~e.. ThIs trackIng t~e on~ntation of the projector so that it beams its image directl~ to ~:e l;p:~r:::;~rtohIS devIce Identifies the exact orientation of the viewer's point of view

VIewer s eyes are fixed The d' . e entire surface of the d~me S:Uth:-;~sual data streams are virtually distributed over the . ' e movement of the projection windows en bl VIewer to navigate between these data streams The d I' f a es the . . . e Ivery so tware creat h' dlstnbution ofall the televisual data by its real-tim t t . es a sp encal

~:::::~:~:::::~:~:'~:_~;::,: :,h~::l;l:,~,p~,~:::::,O:::::~::; ',::~:~,7:::: .

' oca e a specIfic WIndow grid on the dome' surface. ~hls enables the viewer to navigate between each data set by merel shifrin S POInt of VIew. ThiS mapping strategy applies to both image and sound seamYless t g their . . rans!tlOns between d' IScrete Image and sound events are handled b th d . delivery system The m" f h' Y e eSIgn of the audio-visual .

IXIng 0 t e audIO, synchronized with the move . projection system, allows a spatialized soundscape inside the dome to b ment :fth~ pan-tIlt the visual experience. e sync rOOlzed WIth By means of interaction with the remote interface and th . I '. . e Simu taneous movement of the head and larger

viewin:r:~:~;~o:f:~n:o;~t~h::~::~rgenerates unique performances on behalf ofa

Based on deep content authoring, which allows high levels ofclassification, the recombinatory

then regrouped in the on-screen menu available to the viewer through a range of thematic categories, such as >greetings<.6 After selecting a category to frame their search, the viewer explores the results of their recombinatory searches using these categories by moving the projection window across the dome screen as they move their head. In the as yet to be completed final demonstrator of»T_Visionarium« the remote control is to be replaced with a keypad, allowing for database access via viewer determined keywords. In this final demonstrator, for example, the viewer may type in the keyword >home<. This would then usher forth intersecting dramatizations of >home< episodes as extracted from current affairs, sports, features, life style, historical, scientific and mini-series broadcasts from 48 channels, all within the simultaneous pre-recorded sixty-minute time frame. In their totality these channels embody a multiplicity of languages, numerous time zones, and heterogeneity of cultures. [n this way the recombinatory matrix unravels convergences of multi-modal televisual data at levels of temporal density that only be revealed as they come together in the extensive virtual time projected across the dome. The viewer can extend these events as they unfold.

For example they can fine-tune the search within the keyword of >home< by adding the keyword >violence<. Thus, by changes in point of view the viewer activates a powerful navigational framework that produces a directional flow of information in which the expressive meaning of the data is boundlessly translated.

The profoundly multi-temporal logic at work here echoes the structure implicit in digitized

Figure 08 T_Visionarium: robotic projection system

audio-visual data.? This logic is imperceptible in conventional televisual transmission and viewing, as the latter establishes symmetrical patterns of temporal resemblance among broadcast items. The reason for this is that they are based on syntactical properties inherent in the data where classification is based on conventions of genre, for example, sport, and structures of transmission, for example, CNN·8 Transcriptive narrative, as embodied here, moves beyond this logic of resemblance to develop a logic of transposition. It is able to unfold new content within a virtual information sphere of digitized images and sounds whose patterning is freed from the constraints imposed by the representational re-delivery of information, the standard database paradigm.

6 Howard Wactlar. Michael Christel. Y. Gong. Alexander G. Hauptmann. "Lessons Learned from Building a Terabyte Digital Library«. 1999. http://www·2.cs.cmu.edu/-hdw/ IEEEComputer_Feb99.pdf f.

7 Elizabeth Grosz. Becomings: Explorations in Time.

Memory and Futures. New York: Cornell. 1999. p. 27.

8 Juan Casares. "Silver: An InIelligenI Video Editor«. 2001. http://www·2.cs.cmu.edu/-silver/ CasaresShortPaperpdf.

10 Del Favero / Brown / Shaw / Weibel. T_Visionarium.

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13B 139

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Sifting through digitized televisual data, the viewer unravels invisible links. By cutting the multi-modal structure of pre-recorded information at a number of aesthetically significant points, the recombinatory matrix brings together new audio-visual streams into episodes that can be re-assigned a new narrative function. Reassignment is made at the discretion oftbe viewer within the possibilities provided by the virtual time of the digital environment.

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the two key variables in the formulation of cinematic narrative are duration and movement. 14 Thus, even in conventional cinema the viewer's direct awareness of unfolding events is necessary in bringing the narrative to closure. When the opportunity to direct the duration and movement of information is also seized by the viewers, then they gain, in principle, possession of the tools necessary for the production of narrative. The viewer is able to effect the lines of narrative not only indirectly, by re-

As a consequence, narrative becomes a complex event which interweaves a number of intersecting temporal and physical navigations. In terms of time, the matrix allows for the intensive navigation of symmetrical audio-visual data and their reconfiguration into hyperlinked asymmetrical virtual streams. For example, as I have already noted, after selecting a specific parameter, say >home<, the viewer can refine these streams by zooming Into a specIfic current, say >violence<, within the streams. Once these new virtual time currents are projected across the dome, the viewer can process them in real time b

h .

Y

P YSlcally navigating the projection window across the dome's surface. This interweaving

of matrix and viewer navigation with virtual-time processing precipitates the emergence of unprecedented narrative events. In this respect »T_Visionarium« opens interactive cinema and new media to a multi-modal aesthetic.

assigning the symmetrical network of episodic links between the information, but also directly through asymmetrical reflection on the unprecedented nature of these episodic networks as they unfold.15 However, the narrative reassignment of complex multi-modal information is only practical within the dialogic context of virtual environments. Only within the technical possibilities afforded by digital technology can the viewer assert autonomy over the temporal structure of the narrative. The recombinatory power of the digital software proposed in »T_Visionarium« allows televisual kinds of information to be analyzed and broken down into complex temporal layers. It also enables viewers to reassign the connections among these layers by overlapping them until they cascade into new episodes of autonomously unfolding events. »T_Visionarium's« recombinatory matrix furnishes the viewer with multiple entry and exit points to and from the information, as well as with the facility to rehearse this information as narrative content on the fly.16 Its software

3 Refo~mulation of inte~active na~~ative The interactive architecture of digital technology provides a fresh opportunity for reformulating the role of narrative within digital cinema and new media.9 Current experimentation in interactive narrative is handicapped by under-theorization of the role 10 of time and temporal events. We know, for instance, that digital architecture is multimodaJ.ll We also know that multi-modal artifacts are shaped by software rather than 12 linguistic codes. Software compresses information into thick units of virtual meaning. »T_Visionarium's« manipulation of culturally prefabricated information rehearses the longstanding artistic tradition oftranscription. 13 In this tradition the artist is presented with a body of meaningful informational data which they reassemble in the process of creation transposing the sensory form and hence meaning of data as it is reassembled.

is engineered to capture existing teIevisual information in ways sufficiently sensitive to the qualities of the viewer's reflections.1? »T_Visionarium's« multi-temporal narrative structure, by allowing viewers to reflectively and independently recompose existing televisual broadcast data according to their particular concerns, can serve as a prototype for autonomously focused database and artistic interaction.

In the second respect, the reasoning which guides the design of the transcriptive software is based on an associative logic. This associative logic has been studied by the philosopher

John Searle. 18 He argues that meanings are ascribed to cultural artifacts according to the associative functions their stakeholders agree upon them to perform. He cites money and

'

calendrical time as instances of significant social artifacts existing only by virtue of the associative functions attributed to them. Insofar as functional properties can be ascribed,

However, the multi-modal information employed in digital forms of production asserts an independent agenda as this information rehearses the inbuilt eventfulness of the software.

Cinematic narrative, unlike literary narrative, is distinctively eventful. According to the 9 Sake Dinkla. »The Art of Narrative - Towards the Floating Work of Art«. in; Rieser. lapp (eds.). (as in note 1,) p. 34; John Dovey. »Notes Toward a Hypertextual Theory of Narrative«. in ibid.. p. 144.

10 Ralph Melcher. Stations; Bill Viola. Dstfildern; Hatje Cantz. 2000; Tony Dove. »The space between; telepresence. re-animation and the re-casting of the invisible«. in;

Rieser/lapp (eds.). (as in note 1).

11 Peter Weibel. »Narrated Theory; Multiple Projection and Multiple Narration«. in: Rieser. lapp leds.J.las in note 1). p. 51.

12 lev Manovich. »Post-Media Aesthetics«. in; dislOCATiONS. Dennis Del Favero. Jeffrey Shaw (eds.). lKM Center for Art and Media. Karlsruhe. Ostfildern; Hatje Cantz. 2001.

13 Peter Weibel. »Post-Gutenberg Narrations«. in Del

it follows that properties such as international currency-exchange rates are always open to re-ascription through the interaction of players. However, openness to re-ascription does not necessarily mean that meaning is relativistic. 19 Neither does the process of ascription suggest Favero / Shaw leds.)'las in note 121. p. 28.

14 Gilles Deleuze. Negotiations 1972 -1990. New York; Columbia University Press. 1995. p. 59.

15 Arthur C. Danto. Analytical Philosophy of Action.

Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. 1973, p. 117.

16 Manovich. »Post-Media Aesthetics«.las in note 121. p. 16.

1? Ibid.. p. 17.

18 John Searle. The Construction of Social Reality.

Harmondsworth; Penguin Books. 1995.

19 Searle. las in note 18). p. 15; Weibel. »Post-Gutenberg Narrations«.las in note 13). p. 35; Neil Brown. »The imputation of authenticity in the assessment of student performances in art«. in; Educational Philosophy and Theory. vol. 33. no. 3/4. p. 313.

10 Del Favero

Brown

Shaw I Weibel. T_Visionarium.

a world where human meaning is pre-determined. Ascription rather refers to the patterns of associative logic at work in all human arrangements. 20 It is a critical role of the new media, through its use ofassociative and transpositional logic, to act as an instrument in the aesthetic reformulation of cultural meaning and to serve as a site of cultural contestation.

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interactively defined by their temporal relations with each other. Serres illustrates this ., Th I 25 relation by reference to the invention of geometry by the Greek mathematlctan a es.

For Thales, the measurement of the length of the shadow of a pyramid at a particular time of day involves the interrelationship between three things: an object in motion - in this case the sun; an object at rest - in this case the pyramid; a subject who transcribes the interrelationship - in this case the mathematician. In formulating measurement as the

4 Multi-temporality »T_Visionarium« formulates a multi-temporal approach to interactive narrative. It takes a novel approach to the theorization of content within digital media, which is currently informed by uni-temporal and simulatory rather than cinematic understandings of aesthetic production. 21 The reason why we have chosen a multi-temporal approach is twofold.

temporal relation between the pyramid, the sun and mathematician, Thales conceives geometry as a narrative of time. Here Serres is proposing that subjective activities, such as narrative transcription, are intertwined with objective processes, such as motion, whereby narrating becomes navigating and navigating becomes narrating. In this way subjectivity and objectivity form a bond, or >liens<, of interactive encounters generated by their ever26

Firstly, we are careful in »T_Visionarium« not to equate the unfolding of narrative with the simulation of movement. While movement is a defining feature of cinema, movement and its simulation alone provides an insufficient basis for the theorization of cinematic narrative.

Animation of spatial movement produced by the donning of video headsets, for example, beg the question of narrative. We also set aside the hyper-representationalism of Jean Baudrillard, for whom digital narrative invokes a field of infinitely reversible simulacra.22 Such a symmetrical world oflinguistic simulacra can never actualize new narrative content or unfold narrative events as it flattens time into a never-ending mirror of itself.

Secondly, in »T_Visionarium« we turn away from psycholinguistic assumptions that understand narrative as the recovery of representational structures from past memory.23 Following Deleuze we approach narrative as the recomposition of events within the emergent memories of the viewer. For Deleuze the process of thought is described as episodic reflection on the contingencies of a self-conscious passage through temporal reality.24 For »T_Visionarium«, the dynamic potentiality of utilizing complex relationships between different layers of time, for example the speed and position of the viewer's head linked to graphics software parameters, enables the bonding of navigation and narration.

,Liens, Finally by way of summation, let us return briefly to the philosopher Michel Serres. Serres explains the narrative relation between the subject and the object as the interrelationship between two mutually dependent temporal systems. For Serres, subjects and objects are 20 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 163 - 7.

21 Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, London: Sage, 1993, p. 70.

22 Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, (as in note 11.

23 Paul Willemen, .. Reflections on Digital Imagery: Of Mice and Men«, in: Rieser, Zapp (eds), (as in note 1I. p. 20.

24 Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, (as in note 11. p. 149.

25 Michel Serres, Hermes: Literature, Science and Philosophy, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982, p. 90.

26 Michel Serres, Bruno Latour (eds.1. Conversations on Science, Culiure and Time, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 177.

evolving multi-temporal relationships with each other.

Similarly »T_Visionarium« brings together subjective and objective processes within the digital field. Viewers, through their movement and navigation across the multi-temporal streams of the recombinatory matrix, are able to reformulate their experience of global television, transposing their encounters with the data flows into unprecedented narratives of interaction between viewer and televisual data.

Jean-Francois-Guiton.

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www.guiton.de The idea behind creating this website was to provide a platform for both information about and input to my artistic activity. It makes available biographical data about the artist, brief work descriptions, screenshots, longer texts about the tapes, designs, and documentations for the installations. Another feature making this website a useful tool is the additional benefit of downloading higher resolution photos as well as some designs and set-up instructions for the installations. Working on iMediathek. internet platform for a video art archive, it became more and more natural to present full-length videotapes on the webpage, perhaps also as a sort of appetizer.

The pictures show the pages on the tapes, and in conclusion the respective first pages ofthe website's other chapters: Installations, Photography, Biography, Links.

Translation: Ina Pfitzner

Figure 02 Page »Tapes«

fa COt

Fig ure 01 Homepage

Figure 03 and 04 Pages»Tape Description« I»FuBnote«and »Coup de vent«1

144 145

11 Jean-Francois-Guiton. wwww.guiton.de.

Figure 05 Page "Tape Description« "La tache«

I ..

Figure 07 Page "Tape« preview with link to distributor

Figure 06 Page "Tape Description« and Page "Text«

146 147

11 Jean-Francois-Guiton. wwww.guiton.de.

Figure 10 Page "Stills Overview«

Figure 08 Page "Tape Description«. "Tramage«

Figure 09 Pop Up "Timeline«

Figure 11 Page "Still« with link to download

148 149

11 Jean-Francois-Guiton. wwww.guiton.de.

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Figure 12 Page "Tape preview« with link to distributor

Figure 15 Page "Iink«

Figure 16 Page "Photography«

Rudolf Frieling.

150 151

Database and Context A~tistic St~ategies

within a Dynamic Field of Action

computer: the totality of knowledge (»his whole experience«) and the speed of the data connections ("L'eady-made« and "on call«).'

1

But were these not already realized, in analog form, as encyclopedias and libraries?

A >datum< is that which is given, as opposed to a >factum<, that which is made, or produced.

Walter Benjamin had already demonstrated in his unfinished book »Passagen Werk« (»The

>Database< suggests a collection of data as a given structure upon which one may build

Arcades Project«) that under contemporary conditions the traditional concept of knowledge

further, or - when referred to in German as a >databank< - a bank, from which one may

with its inherent taxonomies was on its own insufficient, so knowledge must involve an

retrieve data, depending on one's interest. In this case, however, the etymology is deceptive.

understanding of social processes and the character of apparitions as commodities, and

The database is, in any event, already a produced >factum<, delineated as much by economical

of the latent meaning of images, with reference to Freud's dream analyses. His notion

as by social vectors. Furthermore, data is never simply a set >given<; rather, it transforms

fundamentally touches the concepts ofvisual constellations (herein related to Aby Warburg's

itself, undermines itself, dissipates itself. The loss of data is a constant and inherent process

»Mnemosyne Atlas«) and of materialistic experience. 5

in the archive. Today the archive sees itselfconfronted by processes offictionalization as well as dissipation, as much as does the technology within which it operates 2. The dissipation of

Deconst.ructing and A.rchiving

electronic media is, on the one side, a technical issue, in that the pressure to innovate does

.Selection by alphabet is L'andom enough, for what other system could put

not allow for criteria such as longevity, and on the other, it is based on the performativity

Heaven, Hell, Hitler, Houdini and Hampstead in one categoL'y?«6 The concept

of the archive itself. Thus the incomprehensibly and exponentially growing amount of

of the constellation connects Benjamin and Warburg with a medially created art through

knowledge and information creates a desire for tools that qualitatively and quantitatively

indefinite, generative or randomly chosen orders, as the synopsis for Peter Greenaway's

collect, sort, and evaluate data material to be presented via interfaces. This text, however

1980 film »The Falls« illustrates. » The oL'der of things« (Foucault) as a category - and

is not about new technologies and database systems, but about fantasies and exemplar; strategies as to how artists work with databases.

index-oriented problem has, from an artistic point of view, been dealt with on numerous occasions in analog form: the serial nature of date displays by On Kawara; the collection of ephemera and images of mass culture by Hans-Peter Feldmann and Peter Piller; the variety of contingent happenings in Andy Warhol's »Time Boxes«. With respect to dynamic

Database Desi.re

electronic databases, however, two further analog examples are more productive for index

Even ito google< is now an everyday term. Search engines such as Google seem to have

typology: with his text work and photographic installation »lndex from >The Naturalist

fulfilled the wish about the computer as a universal machine expressed by Vannevar Bush's

Gatherers<<< (1992 - 1997)7, Douglas Slau presents a complex scientific index as a fictitious

mid-twentieth-century essay »As We May Think«. Comprehensive knowledge on demand

catalogue that text can emerge out of as a permutation, and Dan Graham's »Poem Scheme«

finally joins machinic vision: "Wholly new fOL'ms of encyclopedias will appeaL',

(1966)8 is a set oflinguistic instructions which operate as a simple text generator. After Slau,

L'eady-made with a mesh of associative tL'ails L'unning thL'ough them, L'eady

one no longer >reads< a text through its main body, but more through its edges and specific

to be dL'opped into the memex and theL'e amplified. The lawyeL' has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole expeL'ience, and of the experience of fL'iends and authoL'ities. The patent attoL'ney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiaL' tL'ails to eveL'y point of his client's inteL'est... «3 Bush does not reflect here on the context and history of the production of knowledge, with all its social and historical conditions; rather, he combines the central key figures of encyclopedic desire with the vision of a yet-to-be-developed 1 First published in »aRt&D: Research and Development in Art«. Rotterdam: V2_NAi Publishers, 2005. This text is based on materials and thoughts related to the theme of »Mapping und Text« for the online portal Media Art Net

(http://www.mediaartnet.orgl. which was to be published in comprehensiv.e form and linked to audiovisual material towards the end of 2004. It is a project carried out in collaboration with Dieter Daniels, commissioned by the

Goethe Institute and the ZKM Karlsruhe, and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Z See the archivist projects of the Atlas Group by Walid Ra'ad, and see also, among others. the catalogue of Documental1_Plattform5: Ausstellung, Dstfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002, pp. 180-183, and Bruce Sterling's collection of obsolete formats at http://www.deadmedia.org.

3 Vannevar Bush, »As We May Think«. The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945, pp. 101-108, reprinted in Timothy Oruckrey (ed.1. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation, New York: Aperture, 1996. pp. 29 - 46.

4 In a 1989 article for Kunstforum International, Roy Ascott imagined that which he referred to as a Gesamtdatenwerk or 'complete data-work<: »Whereas Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk was performed in an opera house,

however, the site of the Gesamtdatenwerk must be the planet as a whole, its data space, its electronic noosphere.« Roy Ascott, Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2003, p. 226.

5 The idiosyncracy of any form of taxonomy is used by Michel Foucault with reference to Jorge Luis Borges in his book The Order of Things (German version Die Drdnung der Dinge, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1971, p. 17).

6 http://vue,org.uk/falls.html.

7 See Ingrid Schaffner and Matthias Winzen (eds,1. Deep Storage. Arsenale der Erinnerung. Munich / New York: Prestel Verlag, 1997, p. 72f. and 166f.

8 Online at http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/ poem.html.

12 Rudolf Frieling. Database and Context.

152 153

texture, as a form of comment structure, of selection of images, of quotes and notations,

this perspective, the data-based archive presents itselfno longer as a passive storage space,

of colophon, of cover, and so on; and with Dan Graham, a text always updates itselfintoa

but rather as a place of action. To speak of a >store< of knowledge is misleading, since it is,

form based on a semiotic system of rules, words, and so on - thus texts as well as collections of data always operate with an apparatus based on subtext and context.

instead, a >generator< of knowledge, Data is no longer simply placed in the archive as a >file< but becomes an >actor< and begins to be mobile, leaving the archive again.

Early on, the Russian Constructivists recognized the potential of new means of information

5 2

distribution, up to a new conception of the book as a store of images: »The traditional

$..3

book was torn into separate pages, enlarged a hundred-fold, colored for

ed by type by typo

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greater intensity, and brought into the street as a poster,

1 1

[_1

If today a

number of posters were to be reproduced in the size of a manageable book,

no

CG

o

or p

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then arranged according to theme and bound, the result would be the most original book, The cinema and the illustrated weekly magazine have triumphed,

325 25

We rejoice at the new media which technology has placed at our disposal,«9

1

The accelerating dynamics of distribution processes were as close to the Constructivists'

33

hearts as was American capitalism, with the exception, as El Lissitzky noted, that the former

29

were placed in public specifically to catch the fleeting glance of the automobile driver. While

4

writers such as Jorge Luis Borges still saw the world as a book, or a library, it had now become an image store that became mobile, to be experienced while in motion.

Since with radio, film, advertising and later television, data and images began to circulate, they needed to become >locally< accessible again. Around 1965, Stan VanDerBeek built his »MovieDrome«, which he conceived as a space for communication with a universally accessible image gallery to be used by a communitylO Following Vannevar Bush and seconded by Marshall MeLuhan, the »Expanded Cinema« of the 1960s helped create a view of the world as an enormous audiovisual warehouse, which today has effectively been realized in the form of a distributed global network of servers that one can scan with the Figuce 01 Dan Graham, "Poem Scheme«, © Graham

help of search engines, In turn, the search engines operate with gigantic storage capacities and the parameters of intelligent database structures,

The index, removed from its point of reference, becomes the >main body< of the text. The

The database as a cultural form of the twenty-first century, according to Lev Manovieh l l ,

potential of the text moves into the foreground, The artists >free< the images (Piller) as

employs ever more technicians, archivists, scientists and artists, While it delivers the ability

much as the words (Blau) from their original referential and indexical format to that of an

to structure material (principally using general standards such as the Dublin Core), it also

original order, such that the new sense of order opens a new mode ofreading, The generative

offers the variable preferences of the order itself, which equals something ofa fundamental

nature of the text apparatus and the logic of the library (as storage space of all referential

paradigmatic shift. While in traditional theory the level of syntax created an explicit

structures) transform the archive into a producer and an archive of potential texts, From

narrative and the level of paradigmatic choice (of narrative forms) existed only implicitly,

9 EI Lissitzky, "Our book«, Gutenberg Yearbook 1926/27, quoted in: Transform the World! Poetry Must Be Made by All!, Moderna Museet (ed.!. Stockholm 1969.

10 Stan VanDerBeek, "Culture Intercom: A Proposal and

Manifesto«, Film Culture 40,1966, pp, 15 -18, reprinted in Gregory Battcock, The New American Cinema: A Critical Anthology, New York: EP Dutton and co., 1967, pp. 173

-179.

11 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, p. 218; see in particular Chapter 5, "The Forms«, previously published on the Interrnet in 1998 as "Database as a Symbolic Form«; see http://www.manovich.nel.

154 155

12 Rudolf Frieling. Database and Context. this relationship in the computer era does an about face: the options are explicit, and the

from the computer on site. Over time, a relational structure between the objects and stories

resultant narrative now only exists implicitly.

emerged from these data collections, which, although fragmentary and anecdotal, were clearly structured. 14 The archive >wrote< itself and produced significant semantic clusters,

Manovich references a range of artists, from Dziga Vertov to Peter Greenaway, to support

but also completely unexpected results. I never personally participated in this installation

his thesis l2 A look at the home computer, however, is enough to confirm it. The computer

as such (even though I had always intended to do so at the ZKM), but nevertheless I found,

displays the library as one tool among others on the monitor (the >desktop<). Since in the

after browsing through the material, my own name among the images. The oral storytelling

meantime the users also create massive amounts of image data, software packages come

>behind< the images, the meta level, explained this image's entry into the database by way

with pre-installed libraries and image databases. Working one's way into the computer

of a colleague who playfully used my identity to tell his own story.

therefore begins not with the creation of data but with the study of the possibilities for

Figure 02 Agnes Hegedus. "Things Spoken". Screenshot: Volker Kuchelmeister

referential structures and storage systems within the computer as a universal machine. How

© Hegedus

can prefabricated referential systems be altered, then, in order to allow new and intelligent relationships within a database? And how can an artistic use of databases be conceived?

The keywords for future networked databases already exist: significant content production, dynamic networking to differing and heterogynous systems, and the possibility of random sccess, i.e., associative, image-rich access.

The Database as an

A~tistic

Fo~m

Agnes Hegedus' interactive CD-ROM piece »Things Spoken« (1999) challenges the user

to research personal memorabilia in a database and to activate objects. Two stories may be called up: the artist's story of each object, and a second person's, a close friend or family member's, whose point of view is an interpretation of the object with respect to its owner.

Thus one's own history will also be extrapolated by others, rewritten and placed in other

»The viewer can sort these objects by various criteria such as size, weight,

contexts. Nor do I have any means of controll ing my name, images attributed to my name,

color, function, or such as in the case of gifts, the gender of the per-

or least of all the use of my texts in digital space. Even though data mining is not my topic

sons who gave it to me. In this way that feverish method by which digital

here, it remains a fact of great importance that not only can the trail left behind by the user be

archives can be reorganized according to any criteria is here applied in

tracked by the corresponding software program (see RSG 's projects on this using Carnivore

a manner that is as gratuitously personal as the objects themselves.«13

software 15), but it remains in the domain of the user to track down his or her own desire.

With this, two categorical levels are established: that of formal keywording as a process of of two constantly differing perspectives. The reorganization of the material according to

Era of Image Exchange The media archive (and not simply the database) is the >backbone< of globalized culture and

purely subjective criteria here is obvious, even when the artist's collection still seems to

a concrete expression of the fact that people now live in the »era of image exchange«

stand for some sense of coherence.

(Gene Youngblood). The »iconic turn« as diagnosed by William 1. Mitchell and Gottfried

subjective as well as arbitrary meta-information, and that of the spoken contextualization

Boehm16 in the mid-1990s during the media boom, the omnipresence of technical imagery

In a further developed form of this work, a participatory installation, each visitor to the

in the natural sciences as well as the expanded use of digital cameras, webcams, MMS

museum could scan an object of his or her choice and tell a story about it, which in turn was

and other image generators, is obvious, and fills the ever-growing storage capacity of the

videotaped and stored. One could then retrieve the oral histories in this growing archive

computer. >Visual capital< is accumulated and then waits to be connected to the endless

12 See also Manovich's randomly generated database cinema. Soft Cinema 120021. in collaboration with Andreas Kratky. Future Cinema EXhibition. ZKM Karlsruhe. 2002.

13 Agnes Hegedus in Update 2.0: Current Media Art from

Germany. ed. by Rudolf Frieling for the Goethe-Institute and ZKM Karlsruhe: ZKM. 2000. p. 60.

14 George LEigrady has also worked in a comprehensive manner on this kind of multimedia. open form of archive.

15 http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore.

16 William J. Mitchell. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1995: Gottfried Boehm. various publications. most

recently. "Zwischen Auge und Hand". in Bettina Heintz.

Jorg Huber {eds.1. Mit dem Auge denken. Vienna / New York: Springer Verlag. 2001. pp. 43 - 54.

12 Rudolf Frieling. Database and Context.

156 157

circulation ofcharacters on the Internet (see calc's »Communimage« project1?). The images

In essence, the parameters of the visual search are known: pattern recognition through the

not only possess a use value but also an exchange value. The >iconic turn< increasingly becomes a >performative turne

comparison of forms, structures and textures, and moreover, color analysis and distribution

Figure 03 and 04 calc. »Communimage«. Screens hot: Rudolf Frieling. © calc

by percentage of parameters within the image segment. The interesting aspect ofthe Geneva

Informatics Group's work relates to the necessity ofbuilding user feedback into the process, insofar as the user must judge the relevance of the presented search results_ Based on the user's evaluations, in turn, new hits will be generated and newly evaluated, and so on.

Figure 05 Viper, »GIFTCollection Guiding«, Screenshot: Stephane Marchand-Maillet. © Viper. UniversiUil Genf

Though some of the uses of these methods are already well established (i.e., the search for brand names, commercially protected logos, etc.), questions pertaining to the semantic ordering of less clearly identifiable images remain a much more open field of analysis. Can algorithms then also achieve a complex semantic ordering of data? Is there hope for an automatic archivist, or must the automatic indexed and key worded data still be examined by the eye of an expert? All these questions, of course, also touch upon the discussion ofthe navigation and cartography (or >mapping<) of virtual space, but also images as texts, which I will go into at another point. 19 The answers until now have all nonetheless been negative.

What is even more serious, at least here in the relevant field of media art, is that there is hardly any uniform and comparative language with which to effectively describe timeand process-based work. 2o As such, then, it is not surprising that the Geneva Viper Group once again focuses on the user in order to allow for an individualized handling of images.

Data has then - and this is an important moment - relevance only in one specific context.

Despite all performance, texts will continue to be systematically arranged, key worded and

One logical consequence is that a completely automated recording of complex audiovisual

searched according to categories. But how do we order and systematize images? Do we have

correlations will only produce varying degrees of possibilities, which then almost always

tools that can >read< images? The work of the Viper Project's Geneva Informatics Group is

fail programmatically, given the complex contextuality and semantics of art.

noted here as but one example of a whole series of image analysis and search algorithms l 8.

17 http://www.communimage.net.

18 Compare Stephane Marchand·Mailiet. »Image-Search or Collection Guiding?« on http://www.mediaartnet.org (20051. as well as http://viper.unige.ch.

19 See Rudolf Frieling's follow-up. »The Archive, the Media. the Map and the Text«, on http:// www.mediaartnet.org (2005).

20 In any case, within the V2_Archive as well as in other fora, the first examples of glossary design may now be found.

12 Rudolf Frieling. Database and Context.

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But is a blurry, ambivalent bit of information (response), taken in the context of art, notthe only possible one? In the following project, the question as to the quality of the retrieved response is posed in a specifically artistic manner. In Christophe Bruno's online projecl »non-weddings« (2002)21, which can be found on the www.unbehagen.com server, the visitor is requested to .enter a dual set of terms into a search engine. The program returns the images collected on the Web that correspond to the terms entered. What the actual correspondence is in concrete terms remains open, however. We suspect that the search here involves the pieces of text associated with the images. But this doesn't immanently make much >sense<. Bruno seems to imply that today's discontent, following Freud, lies not in the general notion of >civilization< but rather in the prerequisites with which knowledge is generated electronically. The connection between data such as image and text becomes obvious in its arbitrariness and fictionality, as it is experienced through Bruno, though it is also as a source of Lacan-inspired >jouissance<. It is the tension in the relationships between concept and image that subjugates the linguistic dualities within an ambivalent field of random image connections. In Vannevar Bush's sense this work is >ready-made< and comprehensive, since the user, in principle, always gets a significant hit, whose significance only comes to light through associative interpretation of the user's results. In this sense

Bruno makes an intelligent offer: the useful and surprising weaving together of the data ~ a subjective activity beyond the index or category.

Collective Data Space The preceding examples assume a use of a given media offering by an individual. If the database were made accessible for a larger audience, then multimedia objects could be made accessible to a collective practice ofsorting, evaluating and intervening which moves beyond the generally variable design of interfaces, as in John Simon's earlier »Archive Mapper« project. In the following, third artistic project, we are confronted with aspects of algorithmic text and image analysis, with the processes of data generation and narration which are a result of this collective process. Chilean lsmael Celis and other media art students at the

MECAD university in Barcelona have completed a graduation project, known as» ewlexia«, which aims to create a >new< filmic narration from data generated by the user.22 Each user is called upon to add an image with a text-based description to the database. The algorithmic process then analyzes the structure of the image as well as the terms in the description, compares it with images already existing in the database, and sorts a series of ten images with decreasing >similarity< into a linear one-minute film. The effect is completely filmic, as the connections between the images are themselves simple cinematic editing techniques such as fading. In the end, the >producer< doesn't see a typical >narrative-based film<, but rather an >image-based film<. As with each visualization of data, it's obvious that the more data exists, the higher the narrative resolution. Taking the words of Edward Tufte, the dean of data visualization in the USA, instead of the modernist credo »Less is mo£'e« (Mies

van der RohelRoberto Venturi), data visualization dogma cries, »Less is a bo£'e«.23 One could imagine that, were the same image inserted at different times, not only would a different narrative structure result, but the implicit semantics of the image would continue

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to form into a logical storyline with increasing success. Speaking of semantics also means beginning with an interpretive context. In principle, weaving together (networking) as a structure of dynamic production offers an increased potency with regard to ense - which, understandably, implies the reverse: that sense itself can degenerate into overcomplicated as well as simplistic nonsense (see also the spectrum of text permutation in Daniela Alina

Plewe's 2003 »General Arts« net project for Media Art Net). 24

Traps of Dynamics Imagining the archive as an open, collective and dynamic system means, in other words, exchanging the intransitive term for the transitive and process-oriented term >archiving<, and >storage< for >generatof<. So far, so good. In fact, we experience in every nook and cranny of the Web precisely how this networking process and collective expansion of data became reality long ago (one needs only to think of Wikipedias, among other things). A Figure 06 Christophe Bruno•• Non-weddings«, Screenshot: Rudolf Frieling. © Bruno 21 http://www.unbehagen.com/non-weddings.

22 http://www.master.esdi.es/newlexia.ia.

23 Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantative

Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press. 1983 (new edition 1995J. p. 191.

24 http://mkn.zkm.de/GeneraIArts/.

160 161

12 Rudolf Frieling. Database and Context. load of data lies at the disposal of every single user at home on a Pc. What's the problem,

into parameters of opposition, ambivalence, noise, and other artistic strategies supports the

then? I would like to wrap up this discussion by formulating a question rather than a

exhibition and presentation of data in itself - independent of the actual amount of concrete

fundamental objection.

content on offer. Coherence therefore does not (supposedly) primarily come through lists, Figure 07 Ismael Celis a.o .. »Newlexia«. Screenshot: Ismael Celis. © Celis

inventories, indices, etc.: coherence declares itself(or not) first through the particularities of the individual reception.

To what extent reception and participation are productive depends not only on the open formal structures, but rather more on the significance of the available content on offer. One of the earliest artistic database projects programmed with php and mysql, »The Equator« and »Some 0therlands« by Philip Pocock, Udo Noll, Florian Wenz and Felix Stefan Huber (1997) 26, presents the collecting and uploading of audiovisual data as a principally open field of action, on the one hand illustrating how temporary and process-oriented relationships

To begin with, it is not unimportant to point out the fact that every database usually deals

in a database are built, while on the other hand the important and central aspects move

with processes of inclusion and exclusion: in other words, politics. Data is not simply given,

into the foreground. Here we are dealing with a group of content producers and not an

it is created, as the statement at the beginning of this text points out. It appears important to

>authorial< narrator, documentarist or curator. The problem of quality control in science

me that the computer as a universal machine with its powerful search engines produces the

as well as in art and media history doesn't present itself in artistic production in the same

Google effect: that everything which is not online has the tendency to be forgotten, and that

way: quality does not measure itself through the data but rather through the accessibility

which is found appears to transport authenticity. Yet whether the answer to a precise search

and productivity of the presented content for the users, who have no special interest beyond

request is an equally precise response is a fundamentally open question in light of the fact

a curiosity about new experiences, and for particular experiences that do not predefine that

that >anyone< can publish online. The obvious advantage is that since >everyone< publishes,

which is generally known. In the best-case scenario, the users can choose their own filter

I get a full potential set of answers and never have to go away >empty-handed<.

mechanisms, but without the art of radical, provocative and surprising selections - to stress the point emphatically - there is no image, no text, no narrative.

Beyond this, other questions remain: how does coherence evolve from a constantly variable amount of data? Quantitative constraints are one option. Primarily when dealing with a predetermined finite amount of content, I can not only publish a concrete text but also construct a concrete story, as Graham Harwood and Mongrel eloquently demonstrated with »N ine(9)«. 25 The collective construction of the identity of a particular neighborhood in Amsterdam allows itself to be much better narrated with "new images, new texts« than with completely open structures. Additionally, the online visitor is guaranteed to experience a form of audiovisual biography in this case. The great advantage of an artistic database is the possibility, even with small amounts of data, ofdynamically and temporarily generating interesting constellations. While a large amount of data is central to data visualization and mapping, art makes do with smaller albeit significant amounts of data.

While the configuration of software is an optimizing solution, the Benjaminian concept points the constellation towards a variable but positive order. The structuring of materials 25 http://9.waag.org.

26 http://aporee.org/equator/.

Translation: Stephan Kovats

Monika Fleischmann / Wolfgang St~auss.

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On the development of netzspannung.o~g An Online A~chive and T~ansfe~ Inst~ument fo~ Communicating Digital A~t and Cultu~e P~elimina~y

Rema~ks

The Internet platform netzspannungorg is a comprehensive archive ofthe current discourse on the theory of media, of artistic work and new strategies for communicating digital culture. Unlike other online platforms established in Germany in recent years, such as

Medien Kunst Netz or Datenbank der virtuellen Kunst, which, using varying approaches, offer a more historical perspective on media art, netzspannungorg addresses current trends in digital art and culture. One fundamental characteristic of the platform is its interdisciplinary take on media art, media design, media theory and information technology

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and the way it communicates this information in the form of online teaching and learning modules. Through these, the site has succeeded in establishing an information pool with an interdisciplinary focus that appeals equally to users from the fields of the humanities and computer sciences, artists and designers, agencies and IT companies.

Whereas cultural institutions, educational establishments and libraries are experiencing budget cuts and sponsors for art and culture are increasingly hard to find, by contrast, the

Figure 01 The netzspannung.org homepage as an overview structure

fast-moving, complex and highly diverse world of digital media demands the provision of additional information, not least as an economic factor. The kind of information SOurces

On the genesis of

that communicate currently relevant, up-to-date and attractive material are vital to the transfer to society of learning, design utopias and new technologies.

Media art needs laboratories in which to conduct its experiments. We see the platform as

netzspannung.o~g

. t allocation an >Internet-based media lab<. As a next step, it is planned to allow It a vIr u , . . ffi d' t . as a rea I >local media lab< and an accessible archive. ThiS Will 0. er me la ar to functIOn

But it is not only with regard to content that netzspannungorg is a model educational tool

in the German-speaking environment in particular the opportunity to publtsh and present

and transfer instrument. Another fundamental aspect is the technical infrastructure on

itself within the context of the international community.

which the platform is built. Its special knowledge discovery tools allow for multidisciplinary contextualization and intuitive access to information. The platform is thus a model for structuring topical knowledge in order to render it accessible.

1 http://netzspannung.org/about/history.

2 The authors have headed Media Arts Research Studies (MARSI. a research department initiated by them at the Fraunhofer Institute of Media Communications, since 1987.

At the time, the Institute of Media Communication IIMK) still belonged to the GMD Research Center for Information Technology. The GMD merged with the Fraunhofer Company in 2000.

3 The CAT feasibility study became the basis on which the Internet platform netzspannung.org was developed.

It represented the start of the Internet media lab that we have been setting up digitally at the MARS Exploratory Media lab since October 1999. http://netzspannung.org/ version 1/ jou rna l/issueO/cat-history/

At the start of the undertaking, we reviewed art using digital technologies and its social, . relevance. 1 In sum mer 1998 we conducted 2 an electrOnIc . survey Political and economic

of the communication of art and tec h no i ogy (CAT) ,3 aimed at media culture on t he su b'ect ~ . .

The CAT study looked at the way art, culture and mformatlOn . th hout the world artists r o u g . . d h technology influence one another and forecast trends and mutual interactIOn. It forme t e that has created some 25 jobs for an mterdlsclplmary . 0 f t he fi ve-ye ar CAT R&D proiect baSIS J team for the duration of the period.

164 165

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Figure 02 Most wanted statistics tool indicates Users' origins and their interests

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1.0 has the technical capabilities of a dynamic knowledge portal for digital art, design and media communication. We launched an incentive program featuring cooperation agreements with artists (artists in residence) 4 and workshops. Our »digital sparks«5 competition has the object of highlighting what is currently being taught in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with best-practice examples from the worlds of art, design and IT as well as of awarding production bursaries to the prizewinners. Some of these are implemented at the MARS Lab, others with partners.

netzspannung.org allows for an architecture of data spaces that can be individually configured and sees itself as a public information interface with the >netzkollektof< as a free channel interface and state-of-the-art production and distribution format for the community. With the knowledge discovery tools methods of offering access to, networking and illustrating the flow of information and data storehouses are structured using semantic classification. These form the basis of new interfaces with an extended The mentioned survey was directed at 100

d· me la experts from th fi ld f science and industry. This means that the CAT study benefits fr e e s 0 art, culture, ::::mmendations of international artists, curators, and of

sCientists.O~:h::;:oe;;e:sce:a:a~

>di:~:~c:~;:r:al~:ga:::dPathigeneSI'eIcntternet-basedresearch and interviews on the subject

. romc arts comm ·t· h lab< function as an online competence center for art, cu~:~:~n::e:n an

>I~ternet media

It be structured? What functions should it fulfill? How can the platfi mbedla. How should of reflecti n d· orm e used as a means g on me la developments oriented around both peoples' ne d d e s an content?

The community offered the idea 0 . f a networked >center of centers< that could be . b··· ,come a virtual home fo further Platfor~:.r~:::or~il::~vr:hu.alartists, for artistic/scientific research projects and for we chose for the latfi 0 Ives was named as one Important objective. The name One "oal of t p orm was a play on words and as such open to different interpretations. .0 ne zspannungorg was to initiate networks between ur ..

P and mteraction between the different activities The platform t lveyors of digItal art of2001, with the aim .. . . wen on IDe at the beginning of engenderIng vIsible suspense on the World Wide Web throu h h . . g t e medIUm of Interesting and topical content on digital culture.

scope of knowledge.

On the development of

4 http://netzspannung.org/about/mars/projects/.

5 digital sparks is a competition for students and graduates fromall specialist areas working in the fields of media art, media design. media IT. media staging and media

communication. What we are looking for is interactive, experimental and theoretical work that demonstrates an Innovative approach to digital cultural technologies. The objective of the competition is to encourage the Upcoming

knowledge

st~uctu~es

What formats could be found for communicating non-linear and networked forms of artistic expression in order to illustrate process-controlled works in aesthetic terms? How can transgenre information structures be portrayed as networked knowledge beyond the bounds of rigid systematics? How are trans-disciplinary knowledge structures created?

In his 1945 article »As we may think« Vannevar Bush called for a new relationship between thinking people and the sum of our knowledge. The American scholar complained that »the~e

is a gcowing mountain of

cesea~ch.

But

the~e

is incceased evidence

that we ace being bogged down today as specialization extends. ,,6 In Bush's analysis, the real problem in choosing information is the artificiality of its indexing systems which sort data in archives alphabetically or numerically so that the information can only be found, if at all, by going through the indexes one by one. He went on to say: "The human mind does not

At this point in time the netzs a for storin" adm· . t . p nnungorg platform comprises a series of basic services fi d .0' InIS erIng, accessIng and regulating user rights plus a total of I I modules or ata Input and data output. netzspannungorg has now become an Internet stagIng media events, art productions and intermedia research Acco d. 1 platform .for . r Ing y, even verSIOn

netwo~ked

What is the significance of the permanent growth in information in terms of its reception?

wo~k

this way. It opecates by association. With one item in

its gcasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accocdance with some intcicate web of

t~ails

caccied

by the cells of the bcain. (on) Selection by association,

cathe~

than by

indexing, may yet be mechanized.,,7 generation working in media culture and, at the same time, to offer insights into the research currently being conducted and into what is being taught at universities in the German-speaking world. http://netzspannung.org/ digital-sparks/.

6 Vannevar Bush - As We May Think - The Atlantic

Monthly, July 1945. HTML version by Denys Duchier, 1994 http://www.csi.uottawa.ca/-dd uchier/misc/vbush/ awmt.html.

7 See also: Vannevar Bush, »As We May Think". In: Form Diskurs magazine, no. 2,1/1997, pp. 136-147, http: //wwwcs.upb.de/-winkler/bush_d.html.

166 167 13 Fleischmann /

St~auss.

0n the development of netzspann ung.o~g.

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such as >cultural heritage< and >explore information< in the >media art research< section.

Presented in relation to one another in this way, connections between works that would not otherwise be recognizable thus become visible, offering users many different perspectives on media art-related topics.

Just as large telescopes allow astronomers to see the heavens we need new cultural technologies and new tools to sift through, survey and evaluate the quantities of data.

Astrophysicist Roger Malina compares our knowledge discovery tools to a »telescope facility fo~ looking at and evaluating the data cosmos«.

Figure 03

Kno we I dge d·Iscovery tools:timeline. semantic interface map and interface

The idea of associative networks of concepts also forms the basis of the w knowledge discovery tools are designed and proorammed Th' . . . ay the of media art works both visualIy and in tech .0 I . elr aIm IS to dIsplay the content . mca , computer-related terms with .

~::~:Z;::h,:d t~"hi""Y HI,,""Iog "m,",I, I",,,,,''';o",hl,, ;0 the;, d;gl":':~~:o:

s e semantic map filter relevant content from the fI . . establish interrelated conceptual networks from it Th hOOd of informatIOn and enti re current content. . e user t us gets an Idea ofthe archive's

On our curatorial strategy Our strategy for building up a colIection of media art and material relating to digital culture is not based on data hunting in general, but on the acquisition of interconnected information.

Ifmedia art is to be seen as a point of interface between art, technology, science and society, it must be displayed with its processes and interdependencies. This cannot be restricted to individual, isolated descriptions of the ceuvre of welI-known artists often mentioned but seldom analyzed and interpreted in the context of other contemporary works, descriptions that do not take account of the latter's individual production conditions. By contrast, with

netzspannung.org we aim to record current and emerging cultural trends and tendencies netzspannung.org's archive serves not only to reconstruct a a .. present. Here, what is calIed for is not a rioidly fixed a pst, but also to Imagme a constantly changing formation of a grOwinooarchive that :::n::me:tof data bodies but the the semantic rna . ° rea In ever new ways. With .

P - a dynamIcally generated navigation map - invisible links . of Information are calculated and displayed Conte t I d . . between Items . . n on re ate tOPICS IS oro dt h In clusters with a spatial distance'In d'IcatIng . a substantIve . one The m ° I upe oget er ore c osely >related< two documents are, the closer together they are positioned

T~ on automated text analysis and the evaluation of the latter b~ m:a:::; are produced based ~~""d of"log 11","."d hl'''''hl,,1 "m"",", lofo'm"loo I, dl';I::::o::~o:~::~

semantIc The semantic . of the archiverelatIOnshIps. d' . . rnap to pographlcalIy groups the entire contents . accor Ing to content sImIlar in a cybernetic sense under a certain k such as >Interactive<, >instalIation< or >video< depending h eywords been defined as keywords for the works' . on w at terms (meta-data) have .

In questIOn. Here the docum nt In a neuronal network folIowing the principle of closest roximit . e s are arranged Conversely, >timeline< sorts the works in time and . p h Y In geographIC terms. assigns t em to specIfic topic groups 8 Armand Schulthess "wrote out thousands of little tablets. most of them made of sheet metal. covering them With amassed knowledge from the entire cultural history all fields of learning and all walks of life. He established' an encyclopedia in the forest, little written tablet hanging on trees and bushes and mounted on walls, together with

path systems and seats, laid out in wine terraces and on the slopes of a chestnut fores!. Working painstakingly and With great attention to detail, he created a library that he wrote.and Illustrated himself.« Armand Schulthess (1901 -19721 Der verwunschene Garten des Wissens Markus Britschgi led.I, S. Corinna Bille (text). Theo Fre'y

in present-day attitudes. We want to direct what we offer not only towards the academic community but also to the artists themselves and a wider public interested in current questions relating to media art. How are digital media researched? How do they become productive? What do artists do with the new media and what individual characteristics do they put in place?

In this context, increasing significance is attached to the term artist/scientist. After all, it should not be forgotten that media art is based on a technology originating in scientific, industrial or military research laboratories that has suddenly turned up in social contexts.

Our objective is thus not to present a comprehensive compendium of selected media art in the form of an educational canon, but to devise an open structure capable of further development, perhaps comparable with architect Le Corbusier's endless museum or the encyclopedia of8 scraps on Monte Verita in Switzerland, the brainchild of Swiss artist Armand Schulthess.

Following the fundamental principle of interactive art, the aim is to program a non-linear construction and colIection structure on the Internet and thus an >imaginary museum<9 such

Iphotographs) http://www.diopter.ch/Publikationen/ kunst_sch ulthe ss.htm.

9 ,Because an imaginary museum, such as has never existed has opened its gates: it will take to the limits the

intellectualization that began with an incomplete confrontation with works of art in the real museums.« Andre Malraux The imaginary museum.

168 169 13 Fleischmann / Strauss. On the development of netzspannung.org.

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as Andre Malraux wished for, one that would basically allow every visitor a different and personal viewpoint - an individually configurable exhibition for analyzing and interpreting.

This structure appears as a mixture of display storehouse on the one hand and guided tours through networks of content on the other. In this environment, the individual work appears in comparison with other works. It grows beyond the statement it makes on its own behalf and in this constellation throws light on the manifestations of cultural digital technology.

A statement of the kind that the work alone would not have engendered comes into beina,,, one that is often not the intention of the work, but now to interpreted in a new context. In this modular and configurable field of vision a multi-facetted range of media art emerges,

On the content The question »Why is it so appealing to live in mixed realities« is the programmatic subject of our CASTOI conference: »Living in Mixed Realities« at Schloss Birlinghoven in 2001. It describes our initial strategy when we started developing our database, to fill the planned archive's empty virtual >room< with content. A >call for papers< prompted 450 answers to the above-mentioned questions. The international jury of artists and scientists selected more than 80 works, texts and projects using a peer review procedure. For the conference, these were divided into seven panels. The invited speakers raised some of the main questions of our media society on the following issues:

one that not only - as is often the case in museums -leads to an illustration of the works on show. This notion ofcollection, and it is also reflected in the trans-disciplinary configuration

I Understanding Mixed Reality? / Spaces for Emergent Communication

of art rooted in technology, is one of the principle focuses of netzspannungorg and could

2 The Information Society Landscape / New Formats of Expression

also be expressed by the term of networked knowledge. The idea of networking information

3 Networked Living / Connected Citizens

and rendering it visible forms the basis of the knowledge discovery tools.

4 Digital Archives and Mobile Units 5 Tools and Strategies for Intermedia Production 6 Performative Perception / The Body as Instrument 7 Media Art Education / Teaching New Media The theme of the conference serves to define the main features of the contents of the data pool on media art and digital culture. Entries submitted for the conference form the basis of the online archive. Four years down the road this collection of articles and works, which is compiled in the CASTOI conference volume, remains one of the most frequently downloaded documents on netzspannung.org. Now, in June 2005, netzspannungorg has over 1,000 entries covering art, design, art theory, media theory, and computer science.

There are articles and theoretical writings, multi-media presentations - images and films, as well as applications - of both artistic and academic projects, as well as over 130 hours of video documentation of scientific lectures and symposia.

The netzspannungorg section covering »Media Art Research« pave the way for questions on the topic of the interaction between Man-Machine-Man. Themes such as »Take Part« or »Perform & Play« bring together characteristic examples, prompting fundamental questioning of media art, illustrating the interaction between artistic, design, technical and academic aspects. Whereas the entries in the database provide in-depth information

Figure 04 Semantic map in various different degrees of semantic 100m

on individual works and projects by artists and academics, the general fields place these works in a theoretical and historical context that lends itself to the media. »Positions« has a

170 171

13 Fleischmann I Strauss. On the development of netzspannung.org. wide range of video documentation oflectures by renowned artists and academics produced in collaboration with well-known partners from the fields of culture and science such as

Burda Academy in Munich, Edith RujJ House for Media Art in Oldenburg, House oj World Cultures in Berlin, ZKM - Center for Art and Technology in Karlsruhe and many other cultural or academic institutions. Selected lecture series on »Iconic Turn«, »Migrating Images«, »Frames of Viewing«, »Mapping«, »Generative Tools« and »Cordless« were recorded with the help of the netzspannung.org mobile streaming lab and broadcast live to the lecture theaters of the associated universities. Networking lecture theaters widens the possibilities of teaching on home territory and is the first model for the >classroom of the future<. It is a podium for lectures by hitherto less well-known academics and artists as well as internationally renowned speakers. They cover a wide range of topics: The film director Wim Wenders, for example, speaks about »Every Picture Tells a Story - of Places as Authors«, robotics researcher Rolf Pfeifer about »The Visualization of Intelligence«, art historian Barbara Stafford about »Images of Knowledge« and art expert Boris Grays about »Exiting the Image«. A player developed specifically for the films provides additional information about the context of the lectures.

Figure 05 The mobile unit as data storage. recording and distribution tool By publishing lectures immediately as video documentation and making them accessible to everyone in the long term the platform encourages the acquisition of fresh knowledge, 10 http://www.rettet-das-internet.de/index.htm.

11 See Attac-AG ..Wissensallmende und Freier Informationsfluss« fOr die Kulturflatrate. http://www.attac.de/ wissensallmende/.

12 Encyclopedist refers to the founders. members of staff and publishers of the Encyclopedie ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers which appeared between 1751 and 1772 under the guidance of Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert. http://wwwphilosoph enlexikon.de/diderot.htm.

13 .. So that the work of the past centuries was not without benefit for the coming centuries; so that our grandchildren are not only better educated, but at the same time more virtuous and happier, and so that we do not pass away without having been of use to humanity,« Denis Dideror.

14 Since May 2001 a total of 240,638 articles have been written for the German-language version of Wikipedia. As at June 5, 2005, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite.

15 Wikipedia uses Wiki technology, a digital tool with

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I make the platform a now e I::> 1::>. h d of accessino the contents, InVO ve . . hich enable different met 0 s I::> • various archive Interfaces, w . k n knowledoe in archives. Here I atino previously un now I::> in part totally new approaches to oc . I::> • h interdisciplinary R&D is conducted at all media art topographies are recorded, In whlc levels _ content, technology, design and transfer. cultu~al technology Knowledge st~uctu~es as the legitimate interests of authors I vailable In the Internet age Knowledge should be free ya '. fth's maxim. Nonetheless, ways must . . . hts stand In the way 0 I I e commercial interests. d owners of explOItatIOn ng an he Internet does not mere Y serv be found whereby knowledge on t I bein o planned and furthermore to o rioht laws current y I::> • This applies to the changes to c py I::> b Il wed to become preventive . . .

C ri ht law must not e a 0 , civil rights in a digital society. opy g I' t the Internet. 10 For this reason It th se features pecu lar 0 . law. It must take into account o . t culture without forfeiting fair . h h mplOns a free Interne is necessary to create a nght t at c a d by the Encyclopedists,12 who, between • 0 'th the Idea pursue remuneration. 11 In keeplnl::> WI . h t as then known,13 since 2001 the . 78 I mes everything taW 1751 and \772 published In - vo U . 'k' d' 14 has been orowing, with the aim of clopedla WI Ipe 13 I::> freely accessible Internet ency 15 W'th the same spirit netzspannung.org '1 bl on a large scale.

I k' the >netzkollektor<. In this context making knowledge aval a e . k available their wor In invites artists and curators to rna e .' blic place hiohlights the need for 16 a media art installatIOn In a pu , I::> our >Energy-Passages<, . " n a olobal society. . . the free flow of informatIOn I I::> d' 'b tion of all types of informatIOn I doe and the mass Istn u The mechanization of know e I::> • h d humanization of knowledgeI 0 hand in hand Wit a eon the Internet nonethe ess 1::>0 I omethino that was initially . .. k' nd is forfeiting to techno ogy S I::> processing activIties. Man I t th growth in human knowledge . . 'fi y »Wheceas to da e e . . art of its indivIdual lie energ , .' d ys technology that 1S 1nP h 1 1t 1S nowa a promoted the bicth of tec no ogy, . pcocessing, distcibution, . th coduct1on, stocag e , creasingly influenc1ng e p 'b 'ng evec moce dominated by . d e Knowledge 1S ecom1 . ' and cecycl1ng of knowle g . .

1 mecely a pce-Cequ1s1 te foe ec technology, and as such knowledge 1S no ong W'kis are Web sites

hich authors can collaborate. I . . ;at enable any Internet user to contribute Wlthou~ PflO~ . . n one can write new articles or lOa e ,m registration. A y. .

The Wikimedia Foundation, ents to eXlsllng ones. . ' ~r~~:~table organization, is engaged in pioneerl~g ~o~~ern the collaborative compilation of contents. T~e c a;l : nw foundation, which was set up by Jimmy Wa es an has aworldwide network, uses the money It receives from donations primarily for expanding the servers and technical infrastructure.

.E Passages - media . . I http'//www energleart Installation in a pubhc pace. .

16 Fleischmann & Strauss. nerg¥-

passagen.de/.

172 173

13 Fleischmann / Strauss. On the development of netzspannung.org.

netzspannung.org as an artwork itself we make a discerning observation and illustration of changes in societal knowledge structures and we support experiments in educatIOn of crosscdisciplinary thinking

Translation: Jeremy Gaines

Figure 06 Energy-Passages. An interactive installation in a public space. Munich 2004

technology, but just as much its ultimate goal." This is how Holger Nohr, a business IT specialist, describes the change in the relationship between knowledge and technology17 Extending to all disciplines, research in science, art, politics, technology and economics must develop new approaches to stimulate new education processes, focusing on a different attitude to knowledge and lack of knowledge. Researchers into the future say that we need to strengthen not an >either, or< but an >as well as( mindset, not to mention >thinking in relationships<.18 Search engines, first and foremost Google, have long since represented a form of power over knowledge. In 2002 a Telepolis article addressed the influence of search engines on our knowledge: ÂťWhich knowledge memories a society has, and the extent to which those thirsty for knowledge can access them is not in itself decisive, ultimately the way millions of people typically use them is what forms public opinion. ,,19 Nowadays search engines 20 function as our Âťuniversal interface to the digital world. ,,21 The growing Wikipedia Community defines the term as follows: .A search engine is a program for enquiring about documents that are stored on a computer or a computer network, such as the World Wide Web." With 17 Holger Nohr. in: Technisierung von Wissen - eine Herausforderung fOr die Technikfolgenforschung 7. http:// www.iuk.hdm-stuttgart.de/nohr/p ubI/Tech nik. pd f.

18 See. Bernhard von Mutius. Die andere Intelligenz. Wie

wir morgen denken werden. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. 2004.

19 Goedart Palm. The world is almost everything that Google is. 28.03.2002. http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/ artikel/12/121B7/1.html.

20 The word .Suchmaschine< (search engine) appeared for the first time in the German reference book GroBer Duden in 1999: an Internet program that with the help of extensive databases consisting of Internet addresses enables a

targeted search for information in the Internet.

21 Stefan Krempl. The Beautiful New World of the Google Society. 20.05.2005 http://www.heise.de/newsticker/ meldung/59709.

Rens Fromme / Sandra Fauconnier.

174 175

Captu~ing Unstable Media A~ts - A fo~mal

leading to a generic structure of typical concepts for the description of electronic media

model fo~ desc~ibing and

art activities in general. Finally, a formal model to describe electronic media art activities,

p~ese~ving

aspects

of elect~onic media a~t

in several levels of detail, is proposed, offering a series of sharable, basic concepts of interest to a wide variety of institutions and actors in the field of media art. This article is concluded with a few recommendations on the description, preservation and presentation of unstable media arts.

AIle Kunstformen werden durch die Digital' . . '. lSlerung zu exakten wissenschaftllchen D1Szlplinen und k. . onnen von der Wlssenschaft nicht mehr unterschleden werden.

Preservation of contemporary art Traditionally, concepts of artworks and their documentation have been oriented on the material presence of artifacts, corresponding to static models of documentation 5 . In

Vi/em Flusser, 199/1

Introduction

contemporary art, however, both the use of materials and the production techniques are extremely diverse. Artists may use any material, varying from stone and metal to plastics and

~::;:nand technolog~ play an increasingly important role in contemporary society and h art. CommUnIcatIOns, productions, trade and medicine are all being chanoed b tec nologlcal developments, which are also transformin o the arts Art that k b Y el t ' . b . ma es use of ec ronlc, espeCIally digital or >unstable< media, explores the meanin o h '.

and the boundaries of these media. So far, few attempts have been made :~ ~:c:peCJflcltY

highly transitory biological matter. Still, in a museum-related context the notion of>original state< is prevalent, focusing on preservation and/or reconstruction of an original: Reconstruction of modern art should - according to existing codes - be carried out as far as possible only in a reversible way, that is: without impairing or destroying the original

preserve thIS field of unstable media art (or electronic media art), partly due to the : : t ~end

material, nor the traces of its construction. 6

0;::

The conventional paradigm of preserving the artifact will not be effective for media art.

~:terogeneousnature of these artistic activities, partly because the field is still in its inf:nc;' b -- - a centre for art, culture and technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands _ has I concerned wIth this issue, building an archive with documentation of twenty

.

ye:~

C' dctronIc media art and media art events. In 2003, together with the Daniel Langlol's Faun atLOn (CDN) V') d d f bl . ' -- con ucte research on the preservation and (on-line) presentation U o unsta e medIa arts, which resulted in a fresh approach called C t ' Mediae 2 ' > ap urIng nstable

Unstable media art practices are ephemeral and variable, in the sense that the meaning of these practices may not be specifically tied to anyone element or artifact, or it may lie in its inherent transformation or degradation. In this respect unstable media arts are more close to forms of performance art or other forms of time-based art. A common preservation practice for these has been to save a canonical form of the work (score for a musical piece)7, together with audiovisual documentation of all stages and manifestations of the workB.

As part of this research, several theoretical approaches for capturing and

.

unshtabl; media arts were analyzed, together with a number ofmedia art projects ::::e~lD~ arc Ive . In thiS artIcle whisper" I' . . _s b Theel S h' ' , a rea -time, partIcipatory video-installation/performance y a C lphorst (CDN) and Susan Kozel (CDN/GB) '11 b '11 .

WI e presented as a case study I ustratIng all necessary information on t h e ' . ' and d'ff, '" prOject as well as ItS subordinate aspects 1 erent manIfestatIOns In time. Followino the h fi . d' b researc, rst essentIal aspects and i o:umentatIOns for capturing the whisper project are identified. Next, on the basis of the n- epth InvestigatIOn, clear concepts and terminologies for its components are defined, 1 Vi/em F/usser. Digitaler Schein. in: Claus Pias. Joseph Vogi. Lorenz Engell. Oliver Fahle. Britta Neitzelleds.). »Kursbuch Medienkultur«, Stuttgart: OVA. 1999. p. 214.

2 V2_Archlve. V2_Archive Portal. http://archive.v2.nl Aug. 8. 2003. .

3 Sandra Fauconnier, Rens Fromme, »Capturing Unstable Medla«. http://archive.v2.nI/Projects/capturing Febr 01 2004.. ' '.

4 V2.Archive. »whisper«. http://framework.v2.nl/archive/ archlve/nod e/work/default.xSIl/nodenr.135466. Aug. 01. 2003.

Unfortunately, canonical forms for electronic media art have not yet been researched and developed. Although, for example, the Variable Media Initiative has designed a framework for the description of variable appearances of a work, together with the registration of 5 Christiane Berndes, »New registration models suited to modern and contemporary art«, in: Ysbrand Hummelen.

Dionne Sille led.!. »Modern Art: Who Cares? An Interdisciplinary Research Project and an International Symposium on the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art«.

Amsterdam: The Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1999.

6 Ernst van de Wetering. »Conservation-restoration ethics and the problem of modern art«. in: Ysbrand Hummelen. Dionne Sille leds.): »Modern Art: Who Cares? las in note 51. pp. 247 - 249.

7 Howard Besser, »Longevity of Electronic Art«. http://www.gseis. ucl a.edu/- howa rd/Pa pe rs/e lec tartlongevity.html. Febr. 01. 200l.

B Carol Stringari, »Installations and the problems of preservation«, In: Ysbrand Hummelen, Dionne Sille leds.l: "Modern Art: Who Cares? (as in note 51. pp. 272 - 281.

:4_R~n: _Fr_om_me_/ - Sandra Fauconnier. Capturing _ _ _ _ _ _ Unstable Media Arts. acceptable variables within aspects of a work t kind offormalized canonical form 9 If ' hese were not yet transposed into some , . we recogllIze that thIS w 't b a . ed t:e :::::::: in the near future either, ancillary materials that explain and Important to preserve lO . Here we can Ie me more art already have encountered~l arn from the problems conservators of installation

contextua~:e

176 177 media art. According to Jon Ippolito

14,

when preserving and re-presenting media-based

works of art, we should give up the notion of a single, authentic object and rather view these works as processes or sets of instructions, functioning in a specific environment.

So, instead of focusing on precious originals created by a single artist's genius, we need to explore new paths of preservation, taking into account complex issues like distributed

First of all the environm t ' h' h ' en s m w IC electronic art functions need to be well d ocumented.

Compared with other forms of modern art, electronic media art 0 dIrect relation to the appearance and beha' f h . ften has an even more vlor 0 t e work Itself: .

Context and relation is crucial for understandi a collections which are comprised f l ' I . no. conceptual and mtermedia arts .

0 mu tIp e objects m one performance or c . documentatIon with artifacts t h'b' ombme o ex I It process over product. 12

authorship, the interaction of users and keeping the essential aspects of electronic media art activities accessible.

Addressing the preservation and long-term access issues for digital resources is one of the key challenges for capturing unstable media. Digital works cannot be allowed to wait for even a few years while solutions are found, due to the extremely compressed obsolescence rate and fragile nature of digital media formats 15 , Already, the fields of information science and digital archiving have developed several techniques to preserve

Secondly, sketches, drawings and the original proposal written b . . m understanding the artist's intention. In ord y an artIst, are Important to develop more dynamic models of doc er to preserve >process over product<, we need of media art activities. umentatIOn, focusmg on vanous forms of evidence

digital information objects. The three main techniques are static preservation, migration, and emulation l6 . However, the art community cannot rely entirely on these techniques alone to solve the problem of preserving digital information, as unstable media art implies specific problems distinct from many other types of digital information like preserving the context and physical components in which the information functions and describing its hard- and

Unstable Media

A~ts

Unstable media art .

software dependencies and interactions.

I d

.

.

:~:::::~:::::::c~::::;~ike

Unstable media art follows on the modern art genres like installation art, with its physical

projections, perfor;::::s :n: m edia art installations, videothe framework offestivals exh'b't' d nICS or software, presented within , I I Ions an other proa Md' place in dynamic networked . orams. e Ia art practices often take (human-to-mach~ h envIronments, which include all kinds of social interactions me, uman-to-human and machine .

-to-mach me). These environments mostly do not come into b e i '

a hybrid position between the physical art object and the artistic event. Apart from maybe

the context of (media arts) butfare rather prod.uced within artw k f .

Ion 0 envIronments m which the or unctIOns, depends largely on the culture and history of the places wh h ere t eyare produced or the context in which it is presented.

simple and static objects (like sculptures) for which standard description models already

in:~t~~i:n:~~~~h:r;~:~;p:::::t,

properties and video art/performance art, with its time-based character. Its practices lie in snapshots and source codes, the only traces of electronic media art are their documentation, produced with means external to themselves 1 ? Capturing such projects, research practices, or components of them, calls for a different methodology than the preservation of more exist. Questions arise around defining which elements should be documented, described or preserved (in short: captured).

V2_ has no interest in collecting media art works the documentation of its activities or events

developed for physical artifacts cannot

0

.

r pIeces of works, but focuses on

cov~rS~rl:::sta~~lllg Pfreservation techniques pro em

9 John G. Hanhardt, »The Challenge of Variable Media« Alam Depocas, John Ippolito, Caitlin Jones (ed.): »Pe·r. manence through Change: The Variable Media Approach« New York / Montreal: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum . and Damel Langlois Foundation, 2002, pp. 7_ 9.

10 Howard Besser, »Longevity of Electronic Art«. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/-howard/Papers/elect_ artlongevlty.html, Febr. 01.2001.

10:

11 Carol Stringari, »Installations and the problems of

0

preservmg electronic

preservation«. In: Ysbrand Hummelen, Dionne Sille (eds.l: »Modern Art: Who Cares? An Interdisciplinary Research Project and an International Symposium on the Conserva. tlOn of Modern and Contemporary Art«. Amsterdam: The FoundatIOn for the Conservation of MOdern art and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1999, p. 272 12 Berkeley A(t Museum & Pacific Film Archive, »Archi. vmg the Avant Garde«, http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ about_bampfa/avanCgarde.html. 2003.

13 Michael Naimark, »Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Money: Technology-Based Art and the Dynamics of Sustainability«. http://www.artslab.net. May 01, 2003.

14 Rens Fromme, »Interview at V2_ with Jon Ippolito«, Variable Media Network, Aug. 10, 2003.

15 Richard Rinehart, »The Straw that Broke the Museum's Back? Collecting and Preserving Digital Media Art Works for the Next Century«, http://switch.sjsu.edu/nextswilch/ switch_engine/front/front:php 7artc=233.

16 Jeff Rothenberg, »Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents«, in: Scientific American, Vol. 272 nr. 1, January 1995, pp. 42 - 47.

17 Alain Depocas, »Digital Preservation: Recording the Recoding«, http://www.aec.at/festivaI2001/texte/ depocas_e.html, Ars Electronica Festival, 2001.

14 Rens F~omme / Sand~a Fauconnie~. Captu~ing Unstable Media A~ts.

Case Study:

whispe~

178 179 a number of intertwined research and test activities, some ofwhich took place at the V2_ Lab,

When defining appropriate strategies for capturing unstable media art (or electronic

producing data and resulting in several manifestations, like prototypes, presentations and

media art), we need to understand the associated practices. In the projects of V2_'s art,

performances. The whole initial concept of whisper was written down in a project proposal 21

>research and development< (aRt&D) department, the artists bring in knowledge from less

During the first artist-in-residence period at the V2_Lab (June-July 2002), the research

technically oriented areas; existing technical applications are re-used or combined in other

focused mainly on hardware and system development and design issues. The project was

constellations or for other purposes. Projects often consist of longer research processes!8;

also presented at >Anarchives, Connection-machines<

outcomes are the result of a collaborative team effort between artists, scientists, engineers and designers.

The second residency (January-February 2003) emphasized the practical implementation of

22

a conference organized by V2...;

the participatory public installation and on wireless communication between the different Related to their interdisciplinary nature, the projects are often very hybrid in themselves - for example, a CD-ROM presented in the context of an installation with

modules of the whisper system. Next, whisper was performed in a public installation at the DEAF03 exhibition and at the E-Culture Fair.

specific computer hardware, or a video-performance involving audience participation, audio and wearable technology. Often, we can identify different phases or >states< of a project;

Electronic media art projects, like whisper, consist ofseveral research phases, manifestations

for example, a project is implemented several times in a physical (installation), digital

(occurences 23 ) and components, each of which is documented by different types and genres

(application) or mixed environment or a piece of hardware is tested in successive research and development periods.

of documentation. On a more detailed level, these occurred activities and products can

In order to distinguish essential aspects of electronic media art activities, and to define

and hardware components in a specific configuration or moving images. For Capturing

aspects that need special attention for capturing, various projects from V2_ s archive have been investigated

l9

.

One of the case studies was whisper, a new media piece based on small

be subdivided into smaller functional components, such as installation objects, software Unstable Media, the whole range of data and documentation of whisper has been analyzed in depth.

wearable devices and intelligent garments that are linked to a network. These computing

The whisper team members focused on different components during their first

devices gather physical data and signals generated by the body, and respond to these.

residency. Some designed the aesthetics of the input and output sensors, documented by

During the DEAF03 festival, organized by V2_20 , whisper took place as a performance in

photographs and sketches, while others focused on the technical design of these devices and

an installation space. Participants entered the space, wearing data suits and could interact

their wireless Bluetooth communication, as outlined in a wiring diagram 24 . A mathematician

with each other and with the devices, networked to a central database server. The server

developed special application software, the so-called particle system, which generated the

translates these behaviors in an aesthetic, shared audio-visual experience. whisper consists of

visual output projected on the floor of the space where the performances took place 25 .

For the actual implementation of the installation and for the public performance during DEAF03, the physical properties of the installation space were mapped in a plan and in

sketches. The required wireless network was set up, together with the sensors, documented by installation instructions. Finally, lighting, visuals and audio were implemented, also documented in installation instructions. Photographs and a digital video report served as

Figuce 01 Whisper"s visual output of participants' behavior projected on the floor

18 Oliver Grau. »Database of Virtual Art«. Humboldt UniversiUit Berlin. http://virtualart.hu-berlin.de. 2003. !9 For an overview of all projects, see V2_, »Capturing Unstable Media: Deliverable 1.4 - Content Research«. http://archive.v2.nl/v2_archive/projects/capturing/ 1_Ccontent.pdf. Febr. 28, 2004.

20 V2_, »DEAF03. http://deaf.v2.nl/03, Mar. 01. 2003«.

21 All pieces of documentation discussed here are listed and referred from V2_, »Capturing Unstable Media. Deliverable 1.4 - Content Research, Appendix 1'. http://archive.v2.nl/v2_archive/projects/capturing/ 1_4_content.pdf. Dec. 28, 2004.

22 V2_Archive, »Anarchives; Connection-machines«, http://framework.v2. nl/a rchi vela rchive/nod e/eve ntl default.xslt/nodenr-135524. Jul. 5,2002.

23 Dccurences can be activities or products with a distinct. short time span and an autonomous character (see Figure 04, belowl.

24 V2_Lab. «Whisper Bluetooth Wiring Diagram«. http: I/a rchive.v2.n I/v2Jab/projects/whi sper12002_wh isper_bluetooth_wiring.jpg, Febr. 24, 2004.

25 whisper. »whisper development site«. http: /Iwww.wagwag.org. 2002 - 2003.

180 181 documentation for the resulting public performance during DEAF03 and th . . . e correspondlQ. mteractlOn between participants26 0

the content of works, projects, activities and documents. Finally, it is often necessary to describe how a well-defined group of components work together, to better understand how a new media piece functions in its environment. As one of the research deliverables, V2_

For capturing on a more detailed level, it is important to be able to describe ho 'fi .f l ' . w a speci C mam estatlOn ofa project (in the case ofwhisper: its public installation) has functioned How did the dIfferent components work together? As demonstrated in Figure 02 below the b' th and pulse (. . , rea com sensors mput devIces) for the participatory installation are integrated with other ponents, lIke the garments participants wear (installation objects) and are part of the

weara~le configuratIOn. Thisconfiguration (called >wearable system< in the diagram below compnses a central processmg unit CPU (lavaSt . ) . ' , amp mIcroprocessor), an input/output ) device (Bluetooth module), and an output device (LED's sewed on th e garments.

proposes a thesaurus for electronic art, types and genres of documentation and metadata for the description of problematic aspects of unstable media arts 27 .

Captu~ing

Unstable Media Conceptual Model

During the last few years, V2_ has developed a proposal for a thesaurus for electronic media art 2a , which has been further elaborated during the course of >Capturing Unstable Mediae Apart from gathering documentation about a researched object and its associated terminology, describing the object and its documentation in an appropriate formal model is an important step in the process ofcapturing. So, an abstract reference model was created for

During the analysis of the case studies, a series of problematic aspects for the capturin of a unstable media art projects were encountered. User interaction is an important characteri:tic of many projects, but is difficult to describe and capture in a aeneric and b' . b 0 JectIve manner F h . . urt ermore, there IS stIll a lack of established a g r e e d ' . , -upon termmology for describing

outlining the different levels of concepts through which activities in the field of electronic media art can be captured; Such activities may be as varied as long-term international research projects and specific, short-lived artworks, pieces of hardware and user interfaces.

The model was designed as a source of inspiration to describe electronic art activities in a generic way, by using a structure of typical concepts: >the Capturing Unstable Media Conceptual Model< (CMCM).

The CMCM offers a series of basic concepts of interest to activities in the field of electronic media art 29 , along with suggestions on how these concepts could interrelate with each other. An interactive overview of all concepts can be consulted in an HTML export of the CMCM ontology3°.

Apart from this, the model focuses on several problematic aspects in the area of capturing unstable media and suggests metadata solutions: terminology for describing electronic art (through a special thesaurus 31 ), genres and types of documentation 32 , describing distributed authorshi p33, hardware and software dependencies 34 and user interaction 35 . In the above description of whisper, the configuration and design of different modules of its system were outlined (see Figure 02). Both Systems Design and Configuration are entities in the

Figure 02 Deployment diagram with a schematic overview f . its dependencies 0 the different modules of the whisper systems design and

26 V2_lab: "whisper performance video registration«. http://archlve.v2.nl/v2_lab/projects/whisper/200302 whlsper_performance_mov, Mar. 01, 2003.

-

27 Sandra Fauconnier, Aens Fromme: Capturing Unstable Media, Deliverable 1.3 - Metadata http://archive.v2.nl/ Projects/capturing/download.html. Mar. 01, 2003.

28 V2_Archive. "Thesaurus«, http://framework.v2.nl/ archive/notionmap/start.xslt, 2003.

29 Sandra Fauconnier, Aens Fromme, "Capturing Unstable Media.Glossary«. http://www.v2.nI/Projects/capturing/ glossarY.html, Febr. 28, 2004.

30 Sandra Fauconnier, Aens Fromme, "Capturing Unstable Media, CMCM - HTMl export«. http://archive.v2.nl/ v2_archive/projects/capturing/cmcm/html, Febr. 28. 2004.

31 Sandra Fauconnier. Aens Fromme. "Capturing Unstable Media: Deliverable 1.3 - Metadata. Chapter

2«, http://archive v2. nl/v2 _a rch ive/p rojects/ca ptur ing/ 1_3_metadata.pdf. Febr. 28, 2004.

32 Sandra Fauconnier, Aens Fromme, "Capturing Unstable Media (as in note 301. A semi-hierarchical list of genres can be found in: "Capturing Unstable Media: Deliverable 1.3 - Metadata, Appendix 4«. http://archive.v2.nl/ v2_archive/projects/capturing/l_3_metadata.pdt. Febr.

28, .2004.

33 Sandra Fauconnier, Aens Fromme. "Capturing Unstable Media (as in note 311.

34 Ibid. (as in note 331. Chapter 5, Appendix 5.

35 Ibid. las in note 331. Chapter 6.

36 Installation = the whole of a system of machines,

182 183 14 Capturing Unstable Media Arts. _ _Rens _ _ _Fromme _ _ _/ _Sandra _ _ _ _Fauconnier. _ _ _

---------------------------------

Focusing on a more detailed level, whisper's public installation, for example, includes an installation environment, documented by an installation

PROJECT

plan~9. In the

environment

several installation objects are positioned, including the garments participants wear'° Also several hardware components are integrated in the installation, like the audio system and lighting (both electrical appliances). The breath and pulse sensors (input devices) for the participatory installation are integrated with other components, like installation objects (garments participants wear) and is part of the wearable configuration

41

Below a selection

for tbe CMCM-hierarchy, relevant for whisper:

· Project: whisper _Occurrences: o •

Occurred Product publiclnstallation, Application, Performance

o

OccurredActivity

•

Meeting, Presentation, Performance, R&DPeriod- Components

-.

-.-

Figure 03 Schematic overview of the main concept levels used in the CMCM

CMCM, both should be used for expressing meaningful clusters of technical components of an occurrence.

In the case of whisper, the process of developing and realizing the whole . bd" . >proJect< IS. su IVlded mto several occurrences ' each of which'IS associate . d and mterrelated . with .

different components, several actors and documentation. Occurences of whisper are amongst others, two artist-in-residence periods, the Public Installation'36 of the r' ' the Performances'37 at DEAF03 an d E-Culture Fair and the Presentation 38 at Anarchives P oJect, .

ConnectIOn Machines. apparatus, and accessories, when set up and arranged for practical working or aesthetic experiences in a specific environment (interior or exterior of a building or public plaza). All definitions in: Sandra Fauconnier, Rens Fromme, "Capturlng Unstable Media,Glossary" (as in note 29137 Performance = an event in which generally one group of people (the performer or performersl behave in a par-

' ticular way for the benefit of another group of people (the viewer or Viewers, or audience). Sometimes the dividing line between performer and audience is blurred.

38 Presentation ~ The act of making something publicly available/presenting something at a specific point in time.

39 V2_Archlve, "Space Plan, Installation Environment" http://archive.v2.nl/v2_lab/prOjects/whisper/2003_whls-

o

ComponentDigital

• •o

Software: particle system

•

Design: interaction design, wearables design

o

ComponentContent

•

DataCollection Audio: wave sound output

Network: bleutooth network setup ComponentConceptual

• • •o • •a • iii iii

Movinglmage: pool visuals Stil1lmage ComponentTechnical Configuration: wearable configuration SystemsDesign: system design ComponentPhysical Installation Installation Environment: installation environment InstallationObject: garments

peupaceplan.jpg, Oct. 01,2003.

40 V2_Archive, "Intelligent Garments", http: //archive.v2.nl/ v2Jab/projects/whisper/2002.whisper.garment.jpg, 2002.

41 Configuration = a specific grouping of components _ mainly hardware and software set up for a specific goal.

Aconfiguration usually includes a specific systems design,

operating system, network setup and has a client and/or server function, and is designed to accommodate an application (occurrence).

42 Antwerp City Archives, "Standards for fileformats",

14 Rens Fromme I Sandra Fauconnier. Capturing Unstable Media Arts.

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ElectricalAppliance: audio system, lightning ComputerHardware

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184 185 Official standards (e.g. ASCII, TIFF, HTML, ODA, lPEG, MPEG) De facto standards

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ComputingDevice CPU: javastamp microprocessor

Specifications (e.g. XML, SVG, PNG) Open standards (e.g. PDF, RTF, SXW, MIDI, GIF) Closed standards (e.g..au, .avi, Word, Excel, .bmp, .wav) Application-specific formats: only as a last resort.

StorageDevice: datacontroller/microcontoller InputOutputDevice: Bleutooth MOdule

Next, it is important to define which inclusive entities of the object of research need to be

InputDevice: Breath and pulse sensor

captured. Here, again, the level ofdetail will depend, among others, on the commitment and

OutputDevice: Sound domes, LEDs, video projectors

involvement of the capturing institution. Electronic art practices often include a number of

Depending on level of interest, a component or occurrence can be documented by different pieces of documentation. The breath and pulse sensors of whisper, for example, can be considered aesthetic devices, requiring visual documentation (photographs ofthe sensors), or as technical devices, requiring documentation on the sensor architecture by a circuit diagram and by a description of the sensor hardware architecture and communication. The same goes for the visual pools projected on the installation floor, which can be documented by a video-registration of the rendered visuals or by the source code ofthe algorithm, which renders the moving image. Institutions need to make a selection in the documentation

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depending on the relative importance of the object or activity and to the level of detail

which it will be described; a video-art institution will be less interested in hardware or software dependencies than the informatics department of a Technical University.

objects, activities, actors, tools and components. Each of these is associated with different phases ofa project (research, development, implementation, dissemination). At this moment, it is important to identify the phases and states of a project and discriminate any aspect or activity that >happened< or >was created< within the scope of each state/phase. The concepts defined in the >Capturing Unstable Media Conceptual Model< (CMCM) can be very helpful here.

An important aspect ofcapturing an electronic media art project is outlining the way in which a project has evolved and functioned, both in general and specific ways. More specifically, on a detailed level, it should, where possible, also be made clear how an occurrence has functioned. How did the different components of an occurrence (e.g. a Performance or a Public Installation) work together? In general, a description of the different phases and )states< of a single project should be outlined clearly. Has the project been shown in different

Captu~ing Recommendations

ways at different locations? Which important research and development trajectories have Based on the findings from the case-studies, a series of recommendations can be formulated for the description, preservation and presentation of electronic media art projects. An important aspect of >Capturing Unstable Media< is the act of collecting documentation that is most appropriate to the entities of the object of research that needs to be captured.

Institutions need to make a selection in the documentation, depending on the relative importance of the object or activity, and to the level of detail in which it will be described' furthermore, documentation can be selected on the basis of its quality, variety

an~

standardized readability. Typically, in unstable media art practice, a lot of heterogeneous, experimental material is created, in many cases digitally born. As a general rule of thumb it is recommended to give preferences to file formats in the following order4 2: http://www.antwerpen.be/david/website/teksten/ guideline4.PDF. 2003.

43 Howard Besser is one author who describes the inter.

fed the project?

Finally, the specific, subjective characteristics and qual ity of a user's interaction with an electronic art piece cannot be captured through formal modeling; specific documentation of a user's experience is needed here. Often, such documentation will need to be actively created by the person or institution involved with capturing. Available documentation may be textual or visual use case scenarios; but for a good understanding of user interaction, it is often necessary to create audiovisual reports or registrations of someone interacting with a piece (e.g. a screen movie of the use of a user interface, or a piece of video about a user

'

involved in an interactive installation). Interviews with users may also prove very useful; in general, recordings and registrations of user testing activities are rare, but interesting documentation materials.

14 Rens Fromme / Sandra Fauconnier. C apturing Unstable Media Arts. _ _ _ _

186 187

Conclusion >Capturing Unstable Media< presents a com limenta and object-focused, rather static approac: in the ry approach to the widespread material· preservation of contempo unstable media art it is difficult t d fi h . rary art. For . ' 0 e ne t e notIOn of the >original state< of .

DocumentIng the context of el t ' . . . an art object. ec ronIC art actIvItIes is important II . process over product Unstabl d' . " ,as we as a perspectIve of . erne Ia art activItIes often take pIa . d . environments and are the result of " ce In ynamlc, networked

aRt&D processes can have very dive:s: :~:~~:::Sr:arch and development process. Such installations, to presentations and" ' ngIng from tools, moving images and perlormances Each of thos d b context in which they are produced a d ' f ' e nee s to e valued in the , n , I necessary, needs to be captured.

Unstable media art projects, like whisper, often consist of several research manIfestatIOns (occurrences) each f h' h . phases and of documentation. On a mor: detai: IC IS documented by different types and genres

:1

be subdivided into smaller funct" ~ evel, these occurred activities and products can studies V2 IOna components. On the basis of the findings from case , - developed an abstract reference model for the d " unstable media arts' the >C t .

U escnptlOn and capturing of . ' ap unng nstable Media Conceptual Mod I Th descnbes electronic media art act' ' t ' " e <. e CMCM IVI Ies In a generIc wa b . concepts. The CMCM' . . y, Y USIng a structure of typical . contaInS a multI-hierarchical and b' interrelated concepts or classes The CMCM.' 0 Ject-onented structure of .

IS not Intended as the f d f structure, it can exist independently from th . d un ament 0 a database e vane metadata and d a t b are used at various electronic media art institutions around the WOrld a ase systems that

or occurrences of a project is often institutionally or geographically dispersed 43 . In most cases, in order to get a complete overview of an art project or a research trajectory, it would be necessary to consult the information systems of various institutions. >The Capturing Unstable Media Conceptual Model< was developed not only as a formalized stand-alone model- needed for capturing the activities in electronic art - but also as a tool for enabling this archival interoperability. Continued efforts in collaboration between institutions and their collections, archives and data sets will prove extremely important for safeguarding the rich history and variety of electronic media art activities.

BibliogL'aphy Archiving the Avant Garde. December 2003. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.

31 December 2003 <http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/avant_garde.html>.

Berndes, Christiane. »New registration models suited to modern and contemporary art.« Modern Art: Who Cares? An Interdisciplinary Research Project and an International Symposium on the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art.Ed. Ysbrand Hummelen and Dionne Sille. Amsterdam: Stichting Behoud Moderne Kunst / Instituut Collectie Nederland, 1999.

Besser, Howard. Longevity of Electronic Art. February 2001. 31 December 2003 <http: //www.gseis.ucla.edu/-howard/Papers/elect-art-longevity.html>.

Besser, Howard. »The Next Stage: Moving from Isolated Digital Collections to Interoperable

>Capturino- Unstable M d' k' '" e la< ta es Into account that the field f l ' . .

0 e ectronIC med' t' I a arge, InternatIOnal and distributed do . .h' Ia ar IS maIn WIt many Ind"d I d' . players, each with ad' ffi j' IVI ua an Institutional h I erent po ICy and approach towards re presentation, archiving and preservation It e . . searc and development, trans-institutional and process-b d . mphaslzes the Interdisciplinary, international, ase nature of the actiVIties in the field of electronic med' ar t , as a necessary add' t" h . la and museum field.

I IOn to t e object-focused approach that is still prevalent in the art

Digital Libraries.« First Monday 7.6 (June 2002). First Monday. 30 December 2003 <http: //firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_ 6/besser/>.

Daniel Langlois Foundation - Centre for Research and Documentation, December 2003.

Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, 31 December 2003, <http: //www.fondation-langlois.org/e/CRD/>.

Depocas, Alain. Digital Preservation: Recording the Recoding, 2001, Ars Electronica Festival, 31 December 2003, <http://www.aec.at/festivaI2001ltexte/depocas_e.html>.

Fauconnier, Sandra, Rens Fromme. Capturing Unstable Media. 2004, V2_0rganisation,

The consequence of this approach is that data, information and k . activities in the field of elect' . nowledge about the speCIfic rOnIC art IS also not centralized at . '. .

Internationally throughout th . fi . one POInt, but dlstnbuted e In ormatIOn systems and collections of . studies in our research proved th t ' . many parties. The case a necessary InfOrmatIOn related to various manifestations

01.03.2004, http://www.v2.nl/Projects/capturing/index.html.

Flusser, Vilem. Digitaler Schein. In: Claus Pias, Joseph Vogl, Lorenz Engell, Oliver Fahle, Britta Neitzel (eds.) Kursbuch Medienkultur, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999.

Grau, Oliver. Database of Virtual Art, January 2003, Kunsthistorisches Seminar Humboldt Universitat Berlin, 31 January 2003, <http://virtualart.hu-berlin.de/>.

relation between preservation and interoperability. See: Howard Besser. »The Next Stage: Moving from Isolated Digital Collections to Interoperable Digital Libraries«. in:

First Monday 7.6 (June 20021. http://firstmonday.org/ issues/issue7_6/besser. Jun 01.2002.

1BB 1B9 14 Rens FEomme I SandEa Fauconnier. CaptuEing Unstable Media AEtS. Hanhardt, John. »The Challenge of Variable Media.« Permanence through Change: The Variable Media Approach. Ed. Alain Depocas, John Ippolito and Caitlin Jones. New York and Montreal: Guggenheim Museum Publications and The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, 2002, 31 December 2003, <http://www.variablemedia.neU pdf/Hanhardt.pdf>.

Naimark, Michael. Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Money: Technology-Based Art and the Dynamics of Sustainability, May 2003, 31 December 2003 <http://www.artslab.net/>.

Nigten, Anne. Human factors in artistic research and development in multi- and interdisciplinary collaborations, 2002, V2_Lab., 31 December 2003 <http://lab.v2.nV homel_ docs/nigten_2002_ humanfactors.pdf>.

Rinehart, Richard. The Straw that Broke the Museum's Back? Collecting and Preserving Digital Media Art Works for the Next Century, 14 June 2000, switch 14.31 December 2003, <http://switch. sj su .ed ul-switch/nextswitch/s wi tch_engi ne/front/front. php?artc=233>.

Rothenberg, Jeff. »Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents.« Scientific American, Vol. 272 no. I, January 1995, pp. 42 - 47.

Standards for fiIeformats. December 2003, Antwerp City Archives, 31 December 2003, <http://www.antwerpen.be/dav id/websi te/teksten/guidel ine4. POF>.

Stringari, Carol. »Installations and the problems ofpreservation.« Modern Art: Who Cares?

An Interdisciplinary Research Project and an International Symposium on the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art. Ed. Ysbrand Hummelen and Dionne Sille, Amsterdam: Stichting Behoud Moderne Kunst I Instituut Collectie Nederland, 1999.

V2_Archive - V2_Archive portal. 2003. V2_0rganisation, 31 December 2003, <http: Ilarchive.v2.nll>.

V2_Archive - Thesaurus. December 2003, V2_0rganisation, 31 December 2003, <http: Ilframework.v2.nllarchive/notionmap/start.py>.

V2_Archive -

Whisper. 2003. V2_0rganisation, 31

December 2003, <http://

framework .v2. nlla rc hive/arch ive/node/workl defau It. py Inoden r-13546>.

V2_Archive - Anarchives; Connection-machines. 01.07.2002, V2_0rganisation, 31 December 2003, http://frarnework.v2.nl/archive/archive/node/event/default.py/nodenr135524.

V2_Lab: whisper Bluetooth Wiring Diagram. 24.02.2004, V2_0rganisation, 01 December 2004, <http://archive.v2.nl/v2_lab/projects/whisper/2002_whisper_bluetooth_wiring.jpg>.

V2_Lab: whisper performance video registration. 01.03.2003, V2_0rganisation, 13 December 2004, <http://archive.v2.nllv2_lab/projects/whisper/200302_whisper_ performance_ mov>.

V2_Archive: Space Plan, Installation Environment 10.01.2003, V2_0rganisation, II December 2004, <http://archive.v2.nllv2_lab/projects/whisper/2003_whisper_spaceplan.jpg>.

.

G t ?002 V2 Organisation, 11 December 2004, V2 Archive: IntellIgent armen s. , . <h~p:/larchive.v2.n IIv2_lab/projects/whisper/2002- whisp.er_garment.jpg>. f modern .

Ernst van de. »Conservation-restoration ethiCS and the problem 0 . ng weteMn , Art. Who Cares? An Interdisciplinary Research Project and an InternatIOnal art« 0 dern .

Y b dH me1en . . m on the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art. Eds. s ran urn .

SympoSIU S . h.

Behoud Moderne Kunst / Instituut Collectle and Dionne Sille, Amsterdam: tiC tlOg

N d r1and 1999 pp. 247 - 249. e e '.' . 2002-2003 01.12.2004, < http://wwwwagwag.org>.

Whisper. Whisper development Site, ,

Lori Zippay.

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The Digital Mystique: Video A~t, Au~a and Access Int!'oduction Since its emergence as an art medium and practice in the 1960s, video _ and the electronic technologies that constitute its various new forms - has presented a un ique set of challenges.

190 191

. .. d Is A a and Access UL' . d ·th two seemino-Iy irreconcIlable hlstones, mo e , Video art distribution today IS face WI . b .

I"fcal and cultural . h d we see video's roots In an alternative po I I and economies. On one an 'd. m's reproducible status an anti-art object, outside of the system that celebrated the me IU t. fartists is workino- with the Internet II s stem Indeed a new genera IOn 0 b . commerCial ga ery y . , d. ally subvert the expectations of the od interactive media on projects that even more ra IC a . . . art market and conditions of the art InstitutIOn.

The very conditions that proved so theoretically and conceptually stimulating to artists working in the emergent video movement, particularly its reproducibility and democratic potential, have proved problematic in issues of distribution, the art market, and access.

Although video has held a significant position in contemporary art for over four decades, for many years video art functioned as a kind of enfant terrible, an outsider on the fringes

d the commercial art market insists that video be invested with the »aura« .as. t or art commodity, WIt h me d.la installations. By creating hmlted

00 the other . han ,b·

of. the umque 0 Jec h . . I of the multiple , the commercial gallery system has d·· artbsedontepnnclpe Video e ItlOns, a .t .deo and electronic art to enter successfully discovered an economic model that permI s VI the art market and satisfy the needs of private collectors.

of the art world, supported within an alternative network of production, distribution and exhibition. Ofcourse, since the 1990s video art - and related digital or interactive art forms - has become fully absorbed into the mainstream visual art world. Video is a seemingly ubiquitous presence in commercial gallery exhibitions and international art festivals.

Museums are increasingly establishing important media art collections and organizing historical retrospectives of artists' video. Even private collectors have »discovered« video.

. and must, co-exist, however uneasily. We recognize The reality IS that these two models do, h ks and the development of an d for educational and cultural access to t ese wor , h t e nee . t ' ks . f ramewor k , as well as a viable market for the artls s wor . academiC

hg~ta:t world , it is essebntial that the public continue to have access to and

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Particularly VISU contemporaryIn.

f what one mio-ht term the >renaissance< of video within the

a context for historical and new media art works.

Electronic media art is often shrouded in a kind of technological or digital mystique, caught between utopian notions of access and the aura of the unique art object.

In this presentation, I'd like to address challenges relating to the distribution of media art from a theoretical and historical framework, but also from the perspective of Electronic

Arts Intermix (EAI). Founded in 1971, EAI is a nonprofit resource organization that holds one of the world's major collections of new and historical video art, featuring over 3.000 works from the 1960s to the present. For over thirty years, EAI has provided an alternative model for the distribution and preservation of video and interactive media works by artists.

In this presentation, I'd like to identify and perhaps demystify some ofthe issues relating to

A N np!'ofit Model fo!' Access d EAI: 0 . . ne of the leading nonprofit resources for video art an Electronic Arts Intermix (EAr) IS 0 f d. tEAl's core proo-ram is the . d· A ioneer and advocate 0 me la ar , b interactIve me la. sap . . f nd historical media art works . f aJor collection 0 new a distribution and preservatIOn 0 aim d.

EAI also provices an artistic and cultural .

I t and cultura au lences. to educatlOna , ar s, .

I" e resources educational initiatives, k fi thO collection through extensIVe on I n , . framewor or IS . " T. EAl's Online Catalogue prOVIdes . bl" roo-rams and eqUIpment LaCI ltIes. . d 3 000 works in the EAI collection and viewmg access, pu IC p b ' . resource on the 175 artists an , a compre h enslve expanded research materials.

contemporary media art distribution, from questions ofvideo editions to new interactive Web projects. The presentation will include a brief selection of online visual materials from the

EAI Online Catalogue and the project »A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online«.

.. ortino the creative visions and alternative voices of media artists EAlls dedicated to supp b . h . k EAI offers the following programs, and providing wide audiences With access to t elr wor . projects and services:

15 Lori Zippay. The Digital Mystique.

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The Artists' Media Distribution Service is a leading international distributor of experimental video art and interactive media works by artists. EAJ facilitates exhibitions acquisitions and touring programs for cultural, arts and educational audiences around th~ world.

cartridge, for distribution through EAl. Three different versions, three different distribution contexts.

• EA/'s Online Catalogue (www.eai.org) is a comprehensive online resource on the artists and tapes in the collection and includes QuickTime streaming of excerpts of artists' works.

This digital database includes extensive contextual material on contemporary art and the

In 2004, video art distribution is not a monolithic enterprise. We're working with an enormously diverse range of artists, technologies, audiences, and contexts. Distribution means renting tapes on VHS for a public library, coordinating the sale of works on DVD for a major museum retrospective, selling works in the bookstore of a museum, licensing works for broadcast on television, or organizing the restoration and sale of historical works on digital formats for a private collection. Likewise, prices for artists' works may range from $200 for a VHS tape to over $ 2,500 for a work on digital Beta. And each of these contexts has corresponding rights and terms - from basic public performance rights to inhouse duplication rights for high-end digital purchases.

media arts field. This section allows us to present dynamic interactive media works that use digital technologies as artistic practice and cultural discourse.

EArs Preservation Program is a leading initiative for the conservation and cataloging of early videotapes by artists, to ensure that the media arts will be accessible for future generations. These restoration and cataloging efforts reflect both our philosophical approach as well as our responsibility to the collection, the artists, and our audIences. Particularly in areas such as preservation, the nonprofit distributors have become the caretakers of this artistic and cultural legacy.

• EAI's collection of over 3,000 new and historical media works by 175 artists spans tbe 1960s to the present, from video pioneers and major visual artists to young emerging media artists. EAJ works closely with these artists to distribute, preserve, catalogue, present, exhibit and represent their works. The EAJ collection also includes artists' interactive media works including Web projects, CD-ROMs, audio and sound art works, and DVDs.

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• All of EArs activities are seen in the context of our role as a resource for education and access. The EAl Viewing Room provides free, on-site viewing access to the EAI media art collection and archives. EAJ staff provides programming and curatorial guidance. EAI resents free public video exhibitions and special events at our West Chelsea space. EArs p . h· educational initiatives include the »New Media Collaborative«, a program III partners Ip of several nonprofit organizations, including Dia, Eyebeam, and the Kitchen.

The fluid ecology and economy of video art, with its shifting forms and technologies, embraces contexts ranging from commercial venues to collective practice on the Internet.

This mobility has implications for both established and emerging artists. For example, the iImited-edition video works of many major artists are handled by their galleries, While EAI represents the same artists' early videos of the 1960s and 1970s, which were not created nor intended as editions and thus have little )value< in the traditional art market. Preserved

by EAI, these seminal works, which are in fact invaluable to video art history, are now widely accessible.

Histo~ical F~amewo~k

It is instructive to note that these dichotomies were present from video art's beginnings.

EAI has been distributing video art for thirty-three years. As one of the first organizations in the United States dedicated to the emergent video movement of the early 1970s, EAI was founded to provide an alternative system of support, production, exhibition and distribution for this nascent art form.

In fact, EAI emerged from a commercial gallery context. From 1960 to 1970, the Howard

Cory Arcangel, a young artist who works with early computers and video game systems, Illustrates the fluid negotiation of the new distribution landscape. His piece »Super Mario Clouds« originated as an open source project for the Web; Arcangel posted instructions for hacking a Mario Brothers game cartridge online, accessible to anyone for free. He then created an installation version of the project, featuring the hacked game, which was shown in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and sold as an edition. Finally, he made a third iteration of the piece, »The Making of Super Mario Clouds«, which documents the hacking of the

Wise Gallery on 57th Street in New York was a locus for Kinetic Art and multimedia works that explored the nexus of art and technology. The gallery featured several groundbreaking exhibitions, including the landmark 1969 »TV as a Creative Medium«, which was the first exhibition dedicated to video in the United States. Featuring installations, video sculptures, performances and single-channel tapes, the exhibition included twelve artists, such as Nam

June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, and Aldo Tambellini.

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------------------------------------In ' " - - -, addition to defining a n emergIng artIstIc movement w' h' Influential exhibition revealed th d" , I t In a gallery context, this e nee ,or new paradlam t ' video, In 1970 Wise closed the a l i e S 0 support artIsts working in ca ery to lay the groundwork fI EAJ ' following year to foster creative pursuits in the , o r , whIch he founded the , , nascent video undergro d EAJ' . mISSIOn was to develop and support the emergent video medi un. s foundmg b ' , . d h urn y prov.ldIng artIsts with access to funding technolog , y, an ot er resources. At its ince tion umbrella for projects that included Th K' .h P , EAJ served as the e llc en, the Annual Av t G d . first Women's Video Festival the 0 C' , an ar e Festivals, the , pen [rcUlts conference at MaMA h Festivals, and the patentin a and d' t 'b . ' t e Computer Arts , c IS n utlOn of Eric Sieael's Vid S . eclectIc projects reflect the It ' " 0 eo yntheslzers, These a ernatlve artistIc and I" I' , . video subculture. po Itlca Impulses dnvIng the early

published. This »Iiving archive« will continue to expand, linking the history of the media arts to its future.

EAl's archives chart the innovative movements, technologies and discourses that have marked the development of this cultural and artistic legacy. This project not only creates a permanent record of an important part of our artistic and cultural heritage for future generations, but also provides widespread access to this material through the Internet and digital technologies.

This project expands our goals of access, education and preservation. By making rare contextual information and materials on the artists, their works, and the history of the medium widely available, the project contributes to the public's understanding and

Within this spi n't 0 f a Iternatlve ' practIce , , EAJ's d'IS t n'b' , was fI utlOn service d d an alternative structure for th e d'ISSemInatlOn ' " of vIdeo art w k F oun e ' to provide primary audiences were arts cultural d d ' ,or s, rom the begInning, the , , an e ucatlOnal InStit f E ' , , was the acknowledgement th t 'd u IOns, xplIclt In this fact , a VI eo was somehow different - th h radIcal, even transgressive about video' b'I' at t ere was something s a I Ity to defy traditio I d ' " and presentation. Video a d ' na mo es of exhIbItIon " ' n now »new medla« or interactive or W b . problematIC historically related t ' e art - embodies a o conceptual art or sIte a t V'd for the dematerialized art ob' t r, I eo could be the poster child ~ec .

A Kinetic

Histo~y:

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A~chives

Online

One can point to several new models or projects for rovidin a ' "P c access to medIa art works and media arts history to a wide bl' . , pu IC, USIng dIgItal technoloai F ' c es, or example, A KInetic History: The EAJ Archives 0 l' , d" n Ine IS a Igltal resource th t k from EAJ's archives publicly a 'bl a rna es rare historical material ccessl e, Documents eph . decades of print and media t' I ' emera, and Video from three rna ena are partnered with essa h I ys t at frame the material within an art historical and cult ' h ura context The of video as an artistic moveme t d ' , project c arts the history and evolution n , an traces a nch and I f ' and ideas _ from Kinetic A t t , e c ec IC trajectory of art, artists r 0 contemporary VIdeo This d' , artistic and cultural legacy, , I g l t a l resource documents an

knowledge of the media arts, »The EAI Archives Online: A Kinetic History links the history and the future of media art«.

Online

Resou~ce

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Exhibiting and Collecting Media

A~t

In 2005, EAI will produce an online resource guide for the exhibition and collection of media art. To be published in both electronic and print versions, this guide will identify key issues relating to exhibiting and collecting media art, and provide specialized information in the form of »best practices« and established protocols, Areas to be covered range from explaining media formats and defining technical terms to issues of video conservation, acquisition rights and contracts, and digital presentation, This resource guide will contribute to the application of professional standards and practices in the fields of media art exhibition, collection and preservation, and provide user-friendly access to this information,

Conclusion

More than three decades after video first emerged as an art form, we are still discussing its recalcitrance and problematics, Implicit in these discussions is the suggestion that electronic media art still embodies an inherent radicality and transgression, a protean ability to move from the museum to television to the Internet, from the aura of the limited edition or installation to the access of the unlimited edition or open-source Internet project, Indeed, this persistent radicality, this ability to transcend forms, to move in and around and between contexts is precisely what makes video so powerful and provocative as a mode of making

Through three decades as a key organization in the media ar an extensive archive of docume t i t s field, EAJ has amassed n s, cata ogues ephemera a d th h' ' f' '" ' n 0 er Istoncal materials, beginning in the late 1960 M s. ost 0 thiS matenal IS extremely rare and has never been

art. This is media art's strength, not its weakness, and it's our responsibility and challenge to respond with equally dynamic solutions.

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Since 1978 the Netherlands Media Art Institute, previously known as MonteVideo, has

196 197 - - - ..- - This - - new audience has created a new d em and for means that will allow them and cntlcs. to consult video art easily.

promoted the dissemination of, and reflection on media art and video art. As well as organizing eXhibitions and administering and circulating a large collection of video art, there is Artlab, where artists are invited to develop projects for or with Internet. Among these are also the latest developments in the field of making video art accessible through Internet.

Before going into this in more detail, I would first like to sketch an historical framework which, hopefully, will help explain the choices which are being made. The historical developments I will outline are closely related to one another and their causes and effects are interconnected. But I would first want to devote a short analysis to four themes which can define a further vantage point. In doing so, I apologize in advance for the absence of hard figures, but I am assuming that most of my listeners or readers will recognize themselves in this sketch of developments. After all, being involved with art institutions you also plot your course through the analysis of these tendencies, without having the time and means to perform academic investigations in the field. I would, however, want to share with you a quote from the book »Remediation: Understanding New Media«, by D. Boller and R. Crusin. 1999, which to my mind says a lot about the problem we are now facing, of the differing interests of the audience and provider: »What is new about new media comes

Bette~ p~esentations

I h s the artist profited from being able to .. f t hnoloay not on y a With the democratlzmg 0 ec '" , d ms have profited as well. After . . I means but art centers an museu . work with video by sImp e r , . der to improve the presentatIOn ire professional apparatus m or all they are now able to acqu . . f II-fledged museal art form. The ' de with video arew mto a u of video art. In the 1990s art rna " ' . . . often cited but that certainly 'ected image and the pamtmg IS , . . similanty between the proJ h d There are many artists who I .anificance of what has appene . does not cover the who e Sl", . f'd by specifyina the position of the '" . the presentatIOn 0 VI eo further spatially problematlze . b' t to the space. The presentation . a h lor ofthe space, or addmg 0 ~ec s . . video screen, changm", t e co . of watchina the video signal IS . .

Ilation so that the expenence '" . is comparable with an m s t a , d d the further context of the presentatIOn. . db the apparatus selecte an very deeply mfluence y . . which the visitor is affected by the 't II enriched expenence, m This strongly involves a VI a y . s the aura of the artwork but, . ae and sound. This not only Improve . synergy between Ima", . f the television expenence. To im ortant, distinguishes the museal presentatIOn rom . more. P 'VId eo ar t in this way is to undergo a unique expenence. expenence

from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of the media.« Video

The 9~owing audience The most striking development is the shift that has taken place in the appreciation of video work, which has seen it move from being a marginal art form in the wider field of the visual arts in the 1960s and 1970s to one of the most used and a the same time most discussed art forms in the last decade. Its audience has grown along with the rising interest and increasing number of works available; the growth in audience has been both quantitative, in terms of visitor numbers, and qualitative, in the sense of their being better informed. For the rest, it appears that as the problem of the scarcity of video art has been resolved, viewing habits have changed drastically. Where in the 1970s a video-lover would watch a video art work in its entirety, now only a fraction of the audience will watch a work from beginning to end, although many may perhaps think back on the work and would like to find it again, or perhaps even see it again.

In addition there has been an enormous increase in the number of training Courses which give extensive attention to video art, from art academies to new programs in cultural communication and majors in )visual culture<, for both video makers and art historians

a~t

and the

ma~ket db

. .. d festivals in the late 1970s and s ecialized mstltutlOns an After video art was annexe y p fth museum circuit, increasing numbers e 90 ti II ina the success 0 early 1980s, in the 19 s, 0 ow '" ti The developments sketched . . this (for them) often new art orm. ofaallenes began to focus on I . definina their artistic status, also "'. nd art criticism played a ro e m " , . above, in whIch museums a tt this had its effects at multIple fthe art works. For that rna er, .

I affected the economIc va ue 0 . h' h h d to be paid for the artworks, but . . .

I affected the pnce w IC a levels, that IS to say It not on y . h f t in his or her presentatIOn. In ..

I were able to mvolve tear IS . . a ter relief aaainst the UnIform also the way m which peop e . . 0 f the maker came to stand out m ",rea. . '"I ) h· ay the mtentlOn . . Fro m tape to dlaltal signa < . t IS w . . . d' d (see below m) '" . possibilIties of the me la use .. h II circuit primarily as a sIgnboard d t functIOn m t e ga ery At first, video art appeare 0 .. bl nd enhance the image of the . f the other artIsts m the sta e a to polish up the Image 0 .

L t as demand from collectors and d' t the value of >Its< art. a er, gallery as being able to Icta e . d the trade intensified, the gallery . h video beaan to mcrease an museums for art made WIt '" f" th' s not only was in the interest of . d b scarcity. As a matter 0 lact, I cirCUIt was best serve y . . t' of the presentation. The totally ntributed to the differentia IOn financial value, but also co . .

I th' s only a few galleries made any .. d to dnve up pnces. n I, artificial limited edItIOn was u s e .

Id or the purpose for which the tape was distinction between the cirCUIts to which they so ,

16 BaEt Rutten. H

_o~

t

_0

deliveE what is asked.

to be used (the presentation circuit versus educational use . . .- - - - -accessibility of video works. or arChIving). ThIs reducedlhe

19B 199 collections. Metaphorically, the computer with the inventory stands right next to the cabinet with the video tapes. Many larger collections which are accessible to the public

FEorn tape to digital signal In the 1960s and early 1970s the most used vehicles for the. . b . vIdeo signal were quarter inch open reel tapes. The differe nces etween the vanous individual I . p ayers and brands oftapes were so great that exchanoe of" n o In ormatIOn on tapes was extre I d· number of tapes was so small th t d 1· . me y Ifficult. In addition, the a up IcatIOn was a prerooative f .. . and businesses and an Occa· 1..

0 0 specIalIzed Institutions SIOna artISt. ThIs changed . h h . vehicle became the standard n . d . .

WIt t e arnval of Umatic; this or VI eo art. (It IS Importa t t . used the same technolooy as the t I .. n 0 note at this point that artists o e eVISIOn world which ° . equipment.) With the standardization fth h. ' . ouaranteed the avaIlability of the o eve Icle Illegal d r · problem. For the rest it appears that t . l " . ' up IcatIOn became a potential , un I lar Into the 1980s 0 I h .h . n ya andful of artists were aware of the possible probl ems WIt unauthonzed use of co· h . around. For instance, in our arch· th . pIes t at mIght be floating Ive ere are still many ta f we apparently have no rioht t pes rom early exhibitions that o 0 possess. Furthermore duri ° h . >What the Netherlands Media A t I . . .' no t e conservatIOn project (see . . r nstltute IS focuslno on< b I ). instItutions had difficulty d· f . h..

0, e ow It appeared that many IS IngUls Ing In their video collecti f had come in as previews what h db I f ons rom before 1985 what , a een e t on loan that the . h about, and what they had full rioht t artIst ad eventually forgotten o 0 as a museum. When cons . b b ervatIOn ecame a necessity and research into the orioin of th t o e apes egan many bl f· It illustrates how the ways of d I· . .' pro ems 0 this sort came to light. . ea Ing wIth video became inc . ° .

Increasingly limited and h f reaSlnoly formalIzed, use was , per aps rom the outset had bee n a matter not of possession but rather of right. . An advantage of Umatic, and later of Betacam as com . vehIcles is that they are of " . pared wIth the newer digital prolessIOnal format alonoside h· as VHS can exist. This enabled b .'

0 w Ich a consumer format such anum er of artIsts to make and II V . for the consumer market _ for wh· h th se HS COPieS especially IC ere was demand after all h· . . . .'

- w Ich did not In any way Interfere with professional e h ·b· . x I ItIOns. In a certain sense th . ' e nature ofthe vehicle connoted the use. With the dioitization ofth . d . '=' e VI eo sional and fl· a vehicle, the old difference b t ,=" par ICU arly wIth the use of DVD as e ween profeSSIOnal format - Umatic _ - VHS - was eliminated. The attenda t d· d . and consumer format n Isa vantaoe IS that DVD ( . easy to copy without loss of quality E . II . '=' s are and wIll remain) very . . specla y In the Consum k . er mar et no one IS making an Issue about tradin o content W·th I . '=' • I nternet this can be ad· . d. ' n IS, Circulated further outside the circle ofone's Own frie d . n s an acquaintances. For the . . h . present vIdeo remains outside the CIrcuit of up and do~n-loadino . '=', as as happened wIth music and regular fil Today there are Inventories and catalogues in dat b ms. a ase programs for most video

are transferring their collections to computer servers. Because digital storage capacity has increased enormously, it is more sustainable to fit out a public space with computers which can log into a terraserver than to maintain video viewing sets. Logically, the two -the database program and the server with video files - will be integrated. If the computer formerly stood next to the cabinet, now the cabinet is disappearing and only the computer will be left. The collection is totally accessible, and only security keeps it out of the hands of the public on the Internet.

Event-based alongside databased Asplit has occurred in the way video art is consumed. On the one hand the presentation has become more intense, meaning that the audience experiences the video work in a special situation; on the other hand, an audience has arisen which wants, whether for personal or professional reasons, to be able to study or consult the work in its totality. Alongside event-based video art there is a growing need to be able to consult a database for video art at a distance. This is not just in the Western world, but certainly also in former East Bloc countries and in Asia, where there is an enormous appetite for video art and its history.

The audience for this is willing to accept less technological quality, in the same way that the VHS video tape functioned, and in a certain sense, like the illustrations in a museum exhibition and stills in books and on the Internet.

Because ofthe apparently great similarities between DVD quality and videostreams as they are generally found on the Internet (high compression rate), many artists are hesitant about releasing. Often they proceed from the thought that doing so would stand in the way the potential income from sales or exhibitions. What can be investigated is the question of whether having the video available in Internet indeed results in decreased income. Perhaps, on the other hand, the chance to become acquainted with the work will prove beneficial, and there will be more demand for having it set up as an installation or seen in a cinema or theatre. The Internet site where the work can be called up will play an important role in this. Here the prestige of the site will help to determine its status, in the same way that the museum circuit functions, and this would give the traditional platforms a chance to profile themselves, and their prestige, online too.

Opinions on the possible changes in significance and quality as a result of making work available online vary enormously. For one it is a welcome new platform to use alongside the regular, technically polished exhibitions. Internet is not suitable for use as a platform for others, because for them the work and medium are one entity, and therefore cannot be seen apart from each other. The context - for instance, the desk on which the

200 201

16 How to deliver what is asked. _ _Bart _ _ _Rutten, _ computer stands - and the mediocre quality of the visuals and sound - -Important objections Thus in th are named as the most . ., ese cases, Internet exhibition' , IS consIdered as competing with presentations in reoular theatr to es or museums. ' , Arguing in terms of the medium, it appears the idea .. of makIng thIngs available via Internet will be a historical ne 't H cessI y. owever, With ItS technol . I .. . . . art never lets itself be defined b f ' oglca POSSIbIlIties, VIdeo y uture scenanos. Artists them I f spoken opinion on the intentions that lie beh' d th ' se ves 0 ten have an out· In elr artwork and I t .. . , n mos cases they retain copyright on the artwork The · . . . se OpInIOnS and nghts must be r SIde Institutions and museums t k ,. espected, but on the other can a e part In the dIscussion of th . can be provided to artworks 0 b e questIOn of how access · . nce we ecome accustomed to the Int ernet as a platform for VIdeo, we come to see the diffi b , , erences etween Internet and a t ' slmtlarities, which we are . r presentatIOn better than the now concentratIng on too much.

The present situation would seem to b , . e an'IntermedIate h 0 .

Instance, by the huge increase in OVO publ' t' b' P ase. ne IS struck, for Ica IOns yartists mao' d >virtual museums( alike Th . ' toazInes an newly founded · . ey appear to be makIno oratef I f h ' .

VIdeo art and the fact that fio th to to U use 0 t e lack of avaIlabtlity of repast years OVOs hav b ' in bulk editions. But it remains t b ' e een avaIlable very inexpensively o e seen Just how far thes d" .. financially; because the cons urn k' e e ItIOns go In beIng profitable er mar et IS small much alread d libraries and archives. , y epends on purchases by

------------------------------------acceptable transmission quality. Moreover, MPEG 2 fits with industrial standards and the system appears to be guaranteed. Accessibility criteria such as capacity and speed also played a role in this. For distribution purposes the MPEG signal is transferred to DVOs. In the future we will perhaps also be investigating new exchange possibilities via Internet with professional customers.

Computers that offer access to a selection of works on the terraserver are also placed in the project space during exhibitions. This is done not only as a trial run for the future mediatheque where one can log in directly to the server, but also to link the exhibition with the collection.

The custom-made Watson database system has been used in order to integrate the collection into the Institute. The videostreams are coupled with the entries in the database system, A catalogue system is adapted for the website. In addition to fragments and stills, if desired whole works can be added to this system, for instance in MPEG 4. We contact artists personally to ask in what manner the artist wants to have his or her work available to the public. They are offered the following choices: no fragment; a 15 second fragment; or the whole work in either small format, or full screen. Responses are presently still coming in to this inquiry.

In the future we will also be trying out various manners of digital distribution, For instance, a pilot ofa Pay on Demand system is being organized, in which Internet users pay for viewing the work in MPEG 2 format, But we also want to work further with making workS available temporarily on educational and streaming channel Internet sites. The

What the Nethe~lands Media . .

A~t

Institut e 1S . f ocus1ng . on

In 1995, In collaboratIOn with Toxus software, the Netherland' . a database program that was s ' I I ' s Medw Art Institute developed · pecla y tatlored for recordin o vid C I Video variant through which I to eo. yc ope was the derived Th .. peop e could consult the coil f artist and title and also oe b' ec IOn. e VISitor can select from , to me, su ~ect and key word A fift added for a large number of works. . een second video fragment was

largest obstacle in this sort of cooperation to date has been that many organizations do have a budged for the technical realization of an Internet project but won't give a moment's thought to compensation for the content.

Artists remain responsible for the decision of whether their work can be placed on the Internet. The Netherlands Media Art Institute will always respect that. We will however

Artlab has developed anum ber of ptlot . projects which e ' . ., xpenment WIth the Internet as a platform for video exhibitions W'th th . I epermlsslon of the arti t ' d . temporarily on Internet full screen (MPEG 4)' d ' s S, VI eo art IS also offered In e ucatIOnal projects. , After our dnve to eliminate a backlooto In . conservatIOn . between 1995 d , collectIOn was transferred to O'Igl'b eta (see the p bl" . an 2004, the .

Art, by the Stichting Behoud Mod K u IcatIOn »The SustaInability of Video erne unst« 2003) In 2003 h Institute began the transfer fro O"b ' , t e Netherlands Media Art m Igl eta to MPEG 2 on a terrase Th' .

I h . rver.

IS hard dIsk serves as the memory for the MPEG' .. sIgna t at, In contrast to Oi'b use by the public. Thus in terms ofth h' , g l etas, IS Intended precisely for eve Icles there IS a great d' f ' 1S InctIOn between storage or conservation and exhibitio W h n. e c ose MPEG 2 as the fi ti meets the specifications that are e I d . ormat or storage because this mp oye In OVD productions, and because of its relatively

continue to make efforts to give video its rightful place on the Internet in a way which satisfies both the artist and the public. Perhaps the solution will be found in encouraging artists to offer their work with inferior image and sound quality in a context which makes it clear that this is documentation which functions as a reference, and which is not intended to replace the work in the art and film circuit. Accomplishing this no longer requires any technological advances, but rather a change in cultural attitudes by which the Internet will be seen as complementing regular presentations, and for which possible new payment strategies can be developed. In order to bring about this cultural change we should be aiming for as many presentation sites as possible. We are on our way to that goal; who will follow?

202 203

Biogf'aphies.

------

Biog.caphies Katha~ina

- - -

-

- - - - - - -

-

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Neil B~own Neil Brown is a leading researcher in the fields of cognitive art theory, creativity and art education. He is a Co-Director of the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research

Ammann

Katharina A rt H·Istory and English Literature at the universities of Geneva and OxfordAmmann D. studied h . unng t e course of her studies she c I at the Museum of Modern Art in Ne ~ k omp eted several museum internships, . w or among others. From 2001 to 200 Curatonal Assistant at the Sol o th urn A .In Switzerl d h 4 she was a rt Museum various exhibitions on contemporary art th I . an , were she organized , east one beInO a them ( . entitled »schwarz auf weiss« [»in black

--

d

h.

0 a IC survey exhibition an w Ite«] on tra d· I . to art. [n addition she coordinated h. . . ' nsme la, graphiC approaches guest ex IbltlOns on rob ( d art for the same museum She h bl. h . ..

0 ICS an computer-generated . as pu IS ed exhibitIOn catalo d· on contemporary art She h I gues an articles, mostly . as a so served on the boa d f h (200[-2005) and on a d. I . . r o t e Solothurn Kunstverein , Ip oma commiSSIOn at Hochschule der K" . the beginning of 2005 Katharina A . unste Bern (2004). SInce mmann has been fOCUSIno 0 h d . exhibiting video art directed b P fi s o n er octoral theSIS on , y ro essor chneemann Chai f C Bern University. Her thesis centers on th .'. r 0 ontemporary Art at e presentatIOn of Video a d·t . ·fi the conceptual evolution of the d. n I s slgnI cance for me !Urn. Her current ..

Center for Art and Media Ka I h h b one-year research VISit at the ZKM, , r sm e as een made ·bl b National Science Foundation. The topic of h d.

POSSI e Ya scholarship of the Swiss er IssertatlOn has be th b· . articles and conference papers t I en e su of diverse , mos recent y at the s . f .

2005 on »Presenting Video as Art«. ympos!Um 0 the Vldeonale in Bonn

~ect

(UNSW), Associate Dean of Research at the College of Fine Arts (UNSW) and a member of the Centre for Cognitive Issues in the Arts (CClT) at the University of Bristol. He was the inaugural head of the School ofArt Education at the College of Fine Arts UNSW from 1992 to 1996. His current research is centred on four projectS. The first aims at establishing theoretical grounds for a philosophically neutral ontology of the artefact. The second, seeks empirical evidence for the way in which a vernacular theory of art conditions the understanding of works and informs practice. The third investigates the interaction between human and machine agents in mixed reality environments which is analysed with the intention of providing information on how these encounters are perceived and understood

by the participants and what effects on their understanding of >self<, and individual agency these experiences engender. The fourth seeks to establish a concept of co-evolutionary experimental aesthetics in relation to machine-human interaction.

www.icinema.unsw.edu.au Hans D. Chdst Hans D. Christ studied art and literature science in Dortmund, Germany. Together with Iris

Dressler he founded the Hartware Medien Kunst Verein in Dortmund as an independent platform for the presentation of contemporary art in 1996. He organized and curated many exhibitions in Germany and internationally together with Iris Dressler. These include

Elke Bippus Elke Bippus is an art historian and Cu I I . been Visiting Professor and Guest p fitura theonst. After studying art history she has ro essor at the U· . if 2002 to 2005 She I h b . mverslty 0 the Arts Bremen from . a so as een teachIng art histor and .

Visual Arts Braunschweio and H b Y art theory at the UmversitYof o am urg. After studyIng art hi t and literature in Stuttoart and Ha b h. s ory and German language o m urg s e received her PhD with h· . procedures in the art of .the . a t eSls on senal C . sixties (»Serielle Verfah renswelsen.

Pop Art, Minima[ A onceptual Art, PostmlnImalism«, Berlin 2003). From 2001 to? ? . rt, of the conceptual artist H Db. _00_ she was assistant anne ar oven. SInce 1998 she has b Frauen.Kultur.Labor Bremen C I .. een member of the thealit , . urrent y she IS project lead f Techniques of Knowledoe-Bul·ld· dS .. er 0 »Art and Research. o Ing an tructunng In A ( ( S· . //wwwCI·tYOf·d/·rlslc-clentlficpractice«(http. .

- -science . e pro~e ktA nSlc . h t.Jsp?projektld=2101&la . . .

0-) . .

Interest include contemporary art th f. . no-en. MaIn tOPiCS of , eory 0 Image media e .. limitations of art-historic ar( t. d . ' r presentatIOn, Interfaces and , IS IC an curatonal activitie· ( . and procedures. relationship bet d. s, ar IStiC methods of production , ween art an sCience.

& stories« at the Kiippersmiihle Museum in Duisburg, »new ideas - old tricks« ues at the Hartware Medien Kunst Verein, Dortmund in 2001. They curated »no one ever dies

»dialog

there, no one has a head« in Dortmund as well as »Say hello to Peace and Tranquility« (together with Jan Schuijren) at the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Amsterdam and at the Nikolaj Centre ofContemporary Art, Kopenhagen in 2002. Further exhibitions such as »Muntadas. On Translation: Das Museum« in cooperation with MACBA (Barcelona), at the Museum am Osterwall and »games. Computer games for artists« (concept by Tilman

Baumgiirtel) in Dortmund followed in 2003. After concluding the research project »404.

Object Not Found, What remains of media art?« with an international conference in Dortmund in 2003, hartware medien kunst verein organized the Nam June Paik Award 2004 in Dortmund and co-curated the 3rd Seoul International Media Art Biennale 2004. Hans

D. Christ and Iris Dressler are currently directors of the Wiirttembergische Kunstverein Stuttgart.

http://www.wkv-stuttgaf.t.de

204 205 Biographies.

DieteL' Daniels

Dieter Daniels co-founded the Videonale Bonn in 1984, as well as numerous projects, exhibitions and symposia in the field of media art. Between 1991 and 1993, he headed the Mediatheque at the ZKM, Karlsruhe. Since then, Daniels has worked as Professor of Art History and Media Theory at the Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) in Leipzig. His publications focus on art of the twentieth-century, particularly on the work of

Marcel Duchamp, Fluxus, and Mediart. He is co-editor of Media Art Action and Media An Interaction (with Rudolf Frieling), and his most recent book publications include »Kunst als Sendung« (2002) and »Vom Ready-Made wm Cyberspace« (2003). Since 2001, Daniels has also served as the co-editor of »Media Art Net« (www.mediaartnet.org). He lives in Leipzig and Berlin.

www.hgb-leipzig.de/daniels www.medienkunstnetz.de Dennis Del FaveL'o

Dennis Del Favero is currently a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow, Executive Chairman of the iCinema Centrefor Interactive Cinema Research, University ofNew South Wales (UNSW), Artist-in-Resident, ZKM and co-editor of the forthcoming »Oigital Arts Edition« series published by iCinema/ZKM/University ofPittsburg/International University Bremen. His theoretical research focuses on the conceptualization of co-evolutionary narrative forms involving virtual characters whose interaction co-evolve autonomously with human participants. His experimental research has been exhibited at numerous international venues including »Future Cinema«, ZKM (2003); »Fantasmi«, Sprengel Museum Hannover, (2004); »Cinemas du futur«, European Cultural Capital, Lille (2004). His experimental research focuses on the demonstration of the participant's ability to influence events by variations in patterns of spatial navigation and the development of an experimental narrative which provides for mutual interaction between autonomous machine agents and human participants. This is demonstrated in »Pentimento« (2002) and »Scenario I + 11« (2005 to 09) (with Shaw and Brown). The former demonstrates the ability for the participant to reconstruct a database by means oftheir spatial movements. The latter delivers a stereoscopic cinematic environment in which machine agents are able to interpret and respond to their interactions with human participants in ways that allow them to act autonomously from human desires and beliefs.

www.icinema.unsw.edu.au

. ' 1994 and a MA in art history at Ghent · d BA in architecture m .

Sandra Fauconnier obtame a . .

W b-specific art: the World Wide . . 997 with a dissertatIOn on» e .

University, Belgium, m 1 , bl' h d nd lectured frequently on the subject of .' d' (She has pu IS e a .

Web as an artistiC me lum(. d eb desianer webmlstress, . m 1997 to 2000 she worke as a W e ' . .7'. .'

Department, Ghent University, internet art and media art. Fro . h I aist at the Teacher 1 razmng . educator and educatIOnal tec no Oe . d' chivist at V2 Organisation m 00 he started workmg as me la ar Belgium. 1n February 20 s d' t She is currently in the process · ., d a thesaurus on me la ar .

Rotterdam, where she mltlate . k' a with a team of developers on . tern for V2 's archive, wor me . of developmg a metadata sys -. h ,iects related to copynght and the J d's also involved in vanous researc pro .

V2 's website, an I pr~ervation of electronic art.

Sandca FauconnieL'

www. v2.nl Sabine Flach dh 'ties in Marburg, Germany, Perugia, . . literature an umam Sabine Flach studied art history, d 'c collaborator at the Center .

2000 she has been aca eml Italy and Kassel, Germany. Smce J h H manities in Berlin, conducting the I S udies at the Centers OJ t e u or Literary and Cultura t i d of Arts. Her research work fi .. f Knowledge and Know e ge . project »WissensKunste« Art 0 d' ts Aisthesis and media, the arts f he body in the arts, me la ar , focuses on discourses 0 t ..'

(Bildwissenschaft), art and the f t the plctonal sCience and sciences, knowledge 0 ar s ' . ry art. Sabine Flach's current d ?Oth centunes, contempora . aesthetic theory of the 19th an . . t' t Confiaurations of arts, sCiences . . . d ' »The artist as SClen IS . e .. research project IS dedicate to. bl' tions include »WissensKunste«. d 1900«( Her recent pu Ica . and media-technology aroun) .' . . h S'a 'd Weigel, (2005 forthcommg); .'

K nst _ Medlen«, edited Wit len »Bd.I«. »LlfeSclences - u d' dited with Inae Miinz-Koenen & .

1 d Ktinste und Me len«, e o .. »Der Bilderatlas 1m Wechse er ..

S ien Zum Verhaltnis von Korper .

005 forthcoming); »Korper- zenar . .

Marianne Strelsand, (2 . . h O' fferenzen. Zum Splelraum der · .

(2003)' »Mlmetlsc e I und Bild in VideomstallatlO nen « ,. d' d 'th Georg Christoph Tholen . d a und Nachblldung«, e Ite WI .

Medien zwischen Abbll un e . , . . h Medienkultur«, edited with lSC .

As ekte zeltgenoss er (2002); »FernsehperspektlVen. p

Michael Grisko, (2000).

Biographies.

206 207 Monika Fleischmann Monika Fleischmann is a research artist and head of th d and Research Studies at the F h ,£ . e epartment MARS - Media Arts raun oJer Instztute for M d· C ...

Augustin, Germany She b e l a ommumcatlOn In Sankt . was a mem er of the foundin<> tea f . the Hochschulefiir GestaltungundK . z.. . '" m 0 the new medIa program at unstIn unch H J·d··· and drama, computer <>raphics f: h. d . . er mu tl ISClplInary. background-art '" , as Ion eSlgn - has made her a . computer science and media t h i . . n expert In the world ofart, . ec no ogy. Her artistIc work ha b In exhibitions and festivals th h Seen presented extensively roug out the world e.g. at ZKM K Museum, SIGGRAPH ICC Ti. k ' . arlsruhe, Nagoya Science . , 0 yo, ImagIna Monte Carlo, ISEA She NLca at Ars Electronica 1992 ( H f . . was awarded the Golden » ome 0 the BraIn«) and th F .. award 2005 (»Energy-Pass <> ) , e L - commumcatlOn design a",es« amongst others. In 1999 . she initiated netzspannung org- th I ' together with Wolfgang Strauss . e nternet platform 0 d· <>. I in 2005, she initiated the eCult . C' •. n I",lta art and media culture, and ute ractory prOject In Bremen

http://www.imk.fraunhofer.de/mars http://netzspannung.org http://eculturefactorY.de

.

Ursula Anna FL'ohne Ursula Anna Frohne is an art historian and cultural theorist who received her PhD in art history at the Freie Universitat Berlin. She was curator at the ZKM, Center for Art

and Media, Karlsruhe and lectured at the State Academy of Design Karlsruhe between 1995 to 2002. As Visiting Professor she taught at the Department of Modern Culture

and Media, Brown University in 200112002; since 2002 she has been Professor for Art History at the International University Bremen. And since 2003, she has also been Professor at the Graduate Research Program »Body - Image - Medium« at the State

Academy of Design Karlsruhe. Her research has been funded with grants from the 1. Paul Getty Centerfor the History ojArt and the Humanities, Santa Monica (1990/91), the

American Councilfor the Learned Societies, New York (1994/95) and the Pembroke Center, Brown University, Providence, R.1. (2001102). She has curated numerous exhibition on contemporary art and architecture and has co-organized the symposium »Present Continous Past[s]« (2004). Among numerous contributions to journals, catalogues and books, her publications include »CTRL [SPACE] Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother«, co-edited with Thomas Y. Lenin and Peter Weibel (2002), »Malerund Millionare«

Rudolf FL'ieling

(2002) and »video cult/ures« (edited 1999). The focus of her work is contemporary art, photography, film, video and installation, as well as the economy of art, the theory of image

RudolfFrieling studied humanities at the Free u.. . mversztyofBe r ·1988 the International VideoFest B r. . r In, to 1994 Curator of er ln, SInce 1990 he has lectured a d · . extensively on art and d·.. n publIshed Internationally me la, SInce 1994 curator and researcher at t Art and Media, Karlsruhe until 2001 h d f . he ZKM, Center for , ea 0 the VIdeo coIl t" h Hochschulejiir Gestaltungund KunstZ .. . h u ec Ion; as lectured a. o. at the unc , nochschule d K·· B .

Professor at the media facult u.. . er unste erlIn, and was Guest y, mverszty ofApplied Science M· of the Internet project »Med·a A t N s, aInz; 2001 to 2005 head I r et« at ZKM· most re t .

Sao Paulo 2002 (Net Art sect" ) d S ' cen projects as Curator: Biennale IOn an » ound-lma<>e« M . C and co-edited with Dieter D .,,, S . "', eXlco Ity 2003; he has published ame,s ,or pnnger Vienna/M Yi . the history and current context f d. . ew ork a senes of volumes on o me la art: «Media Art A .

Interaction« (2000) and> M d· A ctlOn« (1997), »Media Art > e la rt Net 112« (2004/2005) . »Bandbreite. Medien zwis h K as well as co-edited the volume c en unst und Politik« (with A d Berlin, 2004; lives in Karlsruhe. n reas Broeckmann), Kadmos:

Rens Fromme is currently working on a three-year research-project (»Exchange«, 2005 to

www.medienkunstnetz.de

2008) on the exchange of information in digital media archives.

media and electronic media.

URL: http://www.iu-bremen.de/directory/02759/ Rens FL'omme Rens Fromme is media archivist and educational programmer at V2_, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. After studying linguistics and media science at Utrecht University and

Humboldt University Berlin, he was granted a scholarship by the German government for a master in Media Science at the Technical University of Berlin. In 2002, he started working for V2_Archive, and, since March 2003, he has been involved in the research project »Capturing Unstable Media«, supported by the Dutch Mondriaan Foundation and the Daniel

Langlois Foundation, on the documentation aspects of the preservation of electronic art.

www.v2.nl

Biog.caphies.

208 209 Jean-Francois Suiton

~e~dn~Fran90is Guiton was trained as a model maker and fair builder and worked in this

Vancouver, Canada. Since 1989 she has been Professor of new media at the Hochschule der

A e . r~~ 1972 to 1980. He then studied photography, film and video at the Academy oj rt In usseldorf, Germany, under Fritz Schwegler and Ursula Wevers. In 1985 h a scholarship student under Schwe I G' '. e was . . g er. Ullon worked with vIdeo starting 1982 and . vIdeo Installations since 1984. Between 1987 to 1994 h h d . . wuh B' . e a a teach Ing ass IO"nment at th erglsche Umversitat-Gesamthochschule in Wuppertal, Germany. 1994 to ~998 h e Professor of m d' d' , e was . e la an vIsual communication at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Strasbour g, France. Since 1998 he is Professor of media art at the University of the Arts . B Germany, Atelierfiir Zeitmedien. m remen,

where he began by doing research on the collections inherited from the former Time Based

www.guiton.de

Arts, Lijnbaancentrum (Rotterdam) and De Appel (early video art). This research resulted

www.zeitmedien.de

in, amongst other things, a reference room and tape library at the institute, which was set

Bildenden Kilnste, Saarbrucken, Germany.

WI~I~. ul.cike - .cose nbach

. de

Bart Rutten

Bart Rutten is a leading Dutch expert in the field of video art. He studied art and cultural history at the University of Utrecht and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA).

Since 1997 he has been working for the Netherlands Media Art Institute, MonteVideo/TBA,

up by Rutten. In 2002, he became a member of the administration and is now responsible Lydia Haustein

for the presentation section (exhibitions, distribution and collections) at the institute. As

Lydia Haustein is Professor at the Kunsthochschule Bert w.' . . . . m- elssensee and dl rector of th internatIOnal res.earch project »Globallcons«. Since January of2005, she is the head ofthe Department OfLlterature and Humanities and Vice-D' t f h e .

Irec oro t eHouseofWoridCultures Berlin. She has taught at various colleges and universities, among others in Gottin ' Berlin, ~arlsruhe, and has lectured and researched extensively in Asia South A gen, and AfrIka L d' f{, . , menca . ~ la austem has authored »Videokunst« (2003) a d d ' d der Bilder« (1998) . n co-e lte »Das Erbe . Her main fields of interest are art and the history of art' th of globalization and media theory.

In e context

www.global-icons.de www.hkw.de

lecturer he has worked for the University of Utrecht (history of video art) and the Royal

Art Academy in The Hague and The Sandberg Institute. Rutten also publishes frequently in Dutch periodicals on film and contemporary art. »The Magnetic Era, video art in the Netherlands 1970 to 1985« (Nai publishers), an anthology about early Dutch video art, was published in 2003. Rutten edited this book together with Jeroen Boomgaard and also contributed to it as a writer.

www.montevideo.nl Mona Schieren

Mona Schieren was awarded her first degree at the University of Economy and Politics, Hamburg, from where she graduated in Business Administration. Afterwards she studied

Dirck Mollmann

Art History at the University ofHamburg and the Ecole Nationale Superieure d 'Art de Nice.

Dirck Mo/lmann lives in Ha b d . . . m urg, an studied history of art, philosophy and th . of lIterature at the University 01" Ii b ' ' e SCIence '.J am urg. He IS the co-founder of the ViDEO Club 99 the Hamburger Kunstha/le and works as free-lance Curator and organizer. at

She held a stipend by the University Hamburg for her MA-research in Paris. She has worked and participated in various galleries and projects, among them the Suermondt-Ludwig-

Ulrike Rosenbach

the art libraries in Italy meridional. She has an Adjunct Teaching Position at the Department

Museum, Aachen, and the Musee Picasso in Antibes. For the company Tecnobyblos. Servizi e Tecnologie per I Berni Culturali in Rome she developed the conception ofthe digitalization of

Ulrike Rosenbach persued studies in sculpturing under Joseph Beuys at the Academ

0

Art In Dusseldorf, Germany, 1964 to 1970. It was 1971/72 that she created her fist ~ if tapes, had her first solo exhibitions and >actions<. In 1976 sh h ld I '.

VI eo fi " e e ectures m video art and eminIst art at the California Institute ofArt USA In th h . C" " • , . e same year s e founded the School fio r Creatlve remlmsm In ColoO" G ",ne, ermany and was a co-founder of the first cult ". ural center for women in Cologne. 1984 she b ecame an Artist m Residence with »Western Front«,

of Cultural History. University of Hamburg and currently holds a position as a research associate at the University ofthe Arts Bremen, where she is also the project-manager of the

iMediathek initiative. In May 2004 she co-organized the international symposium »Present Continuous Pastes). Videoart. Strategies of Presentation and Mediation«. Her publications and French translations include works about Annette Messager, Otto Mueller, Mediatheory, Mediation Issues and the conceptual development for the Financing of Art-Projects.

www.iMediathek.o.cg

Biographies.

210 211 Jeff~ey

Shaw PeteL' Weibel

Jeffrey Shaw is currently an ARC Federation Fellow and Director of the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research at UNSW His research has set benchmarks for the use of digital media technologies, particularly in developing the multi-modal agency of interactive narrative in the fields of: Navigable Cinematic Systems; Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality; Immersive Visualisation Environments; Interactive and Intelligent Interface Desian' 0,

and Algorithmic and Reactive Software. His experimental research to date has focused on the demonstration of the participant's ability to influence events in a cinematic narrative by variations in patterns of spatial navigation. This has been undertaken in demonstrations such as »Reconfiguring the Cave« (2001) and »Eavesdrop« (2004). The former exhibits animation of real-time agent formations, articulated by their interaction with participants, by means ofalgorithmically defined behavioural matrices which locate the agents within the stereographical environment. The latter shows the navigation of complex video narratives by the participant's engagement with the interactive environment. Shaw's research results also include: a history of software and hardware design, such as the interactive orientation device »The Panoramic Navigator« (1997); the curation of international research projects utilising interactive narrative forms such as the European Union's 1ST projects »eRENA«

Peter Weibel is Chairman and CEO of the ZKM, Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.

After undertaking research into modal logic, philosophy and cinema at the University of

Vienna during the 1960's, Weibel pioneered early experimentation in filmic and videographic language and its relationship to the newly emerging systems theory. Until 1999, he was the Austrian Commissioner for the Biennale di Venezia and the Director and Chief Curator of the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria. His research to date focuses on the real time cross-mapping of agent and participant behaviours, utilizing the design of laser scanning; >Doise< filtering for tracking systems; video playback; wireless full-body tracking; real time 3D object reconstruction; multiple calibrated video tracking in defined spaces; automatic control of silhouette extraction, texturing, and occlusions for 3D objects, including actors on stage, in real time. His highly distinguished career has included: Founder and Director of the Ars Electronica, Linz; Directorship of the Institut

fur Neue Medien at the Stadelschule, Frankfurt a. M.; Professor and Head of Visual Media Art Faculty at the University ofApplied Arts, Vienna; Professor of Video and Digital Arts at the Centre for Media Study, State University of New York at Buffalo.

www.zkm.de

(1998) and »eSCAPE« (1999), and »Future Cinema: the Cinematic Imaginary After Film« (ZKM, 2003). '

www.icinema.unsw.edu.au

Lod Zippay

Lori Zippay is the Executive Director of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). She has curated,

Wolfgang

St~auss

lectured, written, and taught extensively in the field of media arts, and has been active in video art exhibition, distribution and preservation for over twenty years. She has organized

Wolfgang Strauss is an architect and media artist who studied Architecture and Visual Communication. He is a researcher, lecturer and teacher in Interactive Media Art and Design, and has been a Visiting Professor of Media Art in Saarbriicken and Kassel Germa , ny.

While working on interfaces connecting the human body and digital media space, he is co-directing the MARS Lab at Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication. His artistic work has been presented in exhibitions and festivals throughout the world e.g. at ZKM

Karlsruhe, Nagoya Science Museum, SIGGRAPH, ICC Tokyo, Imagina Monte Carlo, ISEA. He was awarded the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica 1992 (»Home of the Brain«) and the iF

- communication design award2005 (»Energy-Passages«) amongst others. In 1999, together with Monika Fleischmann, he initiated netzspannung.org - the Internet platform on digital art and media culture, and in 2005 he initiated the eCulture Factory project in Bremen.

http://www.imk.fraunhofer.de/mars http://netzspannung.org http://eculturefactory.de

numerous exhibitions of artists' video and media art at international venues, and was cocurator of First Decade: Video from the EAI Archives at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2002. She is the editor and co-author of Artists' Video: »An International Guide«, »Electronic Arts Intermix: Video«, and the »EAl Online Catalogue« (2005), a comprehensive digital resource, as well as »A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online and the forthcoming Online Resource Guide to Exhibiting and Collecting Media Art«. She has lectured extensively at museums and universities internationally, served on advisory panels and international festival juries, and served as a consultant on numerous media arts projects. Her articles and essays on media and art have appeared in such publications as

Art/orum and College Art Association Journal, and she has written many catalogue essays.

She currently serves on the Board ofIndependent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP).

http://www.eai.org/eai/index.

Bibliography.

212 213

Selected

Bibliog~aphy

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Brouwer, Mariann e. Dan Graham. Works 1965 - 2000, Dusseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2001.

Arrhenius,

Sara, Magdalena MaIm and Cristina Ricupero (eds.). Black Box

Illuminated, Stockholm: IASPIS International Artists' Studio Program in Sweden et al 2003.

•

Bruhn, Matthias (ed.). Darstellung und Deutung. Abbilder der Kunstgeschichte, Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank flir Geisteswissenschaften, 2000.

Arns, Inke. Netzkulturen, Hamburg: Europiiische Verlagsanstalt, 2002.

Cook, Sarah, Beryl Graham and Sarah Martin (eds.). Curating New Media, Gateshead: Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, 2002.

Baumgartel, Tilman. [Net.art]: Materialien zur Netzkunst, Nurnberg: Verlag flir Modeme Kunst, 1999.

Cosic, Vuk (ed.). Net.art per me, Ljubliana: MGLC, URL:<http://absoluteone.ljudmila.org/>.

Beil, Ralf: Black Box: Der Schwarzraum in der Kunst, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2001.

Daniels, Dieter. Vom Ready-Made zum Cyberspace, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002.

Bennett, Jill (ed.). Dennis del Favero, Fantasmi, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2004.

-- Kunst als Sendung, Von der Telegrafie zum Internet, Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2002.

Besser, Howard. »Longevity of Electronic Art«, 200 I, URL: <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/ Longevity/>.

Del Favero, Dennis Jeffrey Shaw (eds.), DisLocations, Digital Arts Edition (DVDROM), published by ZKM I Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and The Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, College ofFine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney,

Bippus, Elke and Andrea Sick (eds.). Technologisierung < > Industrialisierung von Kunst und Wissenschaft, Bielefeld: transcript, 2005.

Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2001.

Depocas, Alain, Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones (eds.). Permanence Through

Birringer, Johannes. Media and Performance: Along the Border, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Change: The Variable Media Approach, 2003, URL: <http://www.variablemedia.net/e/ preserving/html/var_pub_ index.html>.

Bismarck, Beatrice von et a1. (eds.). interarchive. Archivarische Praktiken und Handlungsriiume im zeitgenossischen Kunstfeld / Archival Practices and Sites in the

Dietz, Steve. »Interfacing the Digital«, Museums and the Web 2003, URL: <http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/dietz/dietz.html>.

Contemporary Field, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2002.

-- »Curating (on) the web«, Museums and the Web. Papers, Archives & Museum Bolter, Jay D. and Richard Grusin. Understanding New Media, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999.

Informatics,

1998,

curatingtheweb.html>.

URL:

<http://www.archimuse.com/mw98/papers/dietz/dietz_

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214 215 Dinkla, Sake

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Cantz Verlag, 1997. ute, Ostfildern-Rult: Hatje

Frohne, Ursula. »Diskursraume und Handlungsfelder, Medien I Kunst und Offentlichkeit«, DIG/TALE TRANSFORMATION EN, Medienkunst als Schnittstelle von Kunst,

Druckrey Timothy t I ( d ' e a e s.). Ars Electronica' Facin h F Decades (Electronic Culture _ History Th p'. g t e uture: A Survey ofTwo 1999. ' eory, ractlce), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,

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Druckrey, Timothy (ed.). Electronic Culture New '

~o

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Fleischmann, Monika and Ulrike Reinhard (eds.). DIGITALE T Medienkunst als Schnittstelle von Ku t W. RANSFORMATIONEN, Heidelberg: Whois Verlag, 2004. ns , Issenschaft, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft,

Frieling, Rudolf and Dieter Daniels (eds.). Medien Kun . . lahre in Deutschland / Media A t A . st AktlOn. DIe 60er und 70er . . r ctlOn. The 1960s and 1970s in Ger York: Spnnger-Verlag, 1997. many, VIenna, New

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-- (eds.). Medien Kunst Interaktion. Die 80er und 90er lahre i .

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