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1997-04-16
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ ~
~ * CHAOS AT THE CONTROLS * ~
~ ~
~ Brian Reffin Smith visits the Ars Electronica computer art festival ~
~ ~
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In the "Restaurant at the end of the Brucknerhaus" at this year's Ars
Electronica festival in Linz, Austria, menu selection was electronic. The
hapless visitor tried to freeze one of a series of images of meals
flashing up on a video monitor. The (invariably random) results, looking
like meals-ready-to-eat from the Thirty Years War were then hurled into
microwave ovens and cooked for various periods. Meanwhile an interactive,
conversational computer program asked if the drinks were luke-warm enough,
and vigourously recommended the Austrian Pig-gut Speciality: "Eat it and
like it!"
Each table had a video camera, monitor and microphone linked to some
other table at random. Drink and cigarette dispensers had their pictures
covered or switched. What you saw was not what you got. "Out of control"
was this year's theme, but "Eat it and like it" might have been better.
The international festival of computer and electronic art was distinctly
user-hostile.
The brochure warned you to bring "sensitivity, strong nerves, solid
shoes and black humour". In the context of ever-increasing destruction and
conflict management, the organisers said they wanted not to raise a finger
in admonition, but to lay it on the open wound.
On the first day, they catapulted cars into wet concrete, though one
missed its matrix and destroyed a high-speed camera, to some applause.
The post-punk Survival Research Laboratories - internationally feared
purveyors of hi-tech demolition and electronic finger in open wounds
specialists - were also billed to appear, but stayed at home. In their
place, a hastily faxed-together cross-cultural troupe of mean bastards
put on a show in the giant Voerst Alpine steelworks, including a million
exploding mortars, and logic-controlled flame throwers. Computer-assisted
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) were the order of the day, and often
involved fire.
One could be strapped into an electronic gyroscope whose frame
whirled counter to the direction of one's seat. Just when it couldn't get
worse, jets of flame roared from concealed propane sources and surrounded
the user in a ball of fire. The computer was involved to keep statistics
on fatalities.
During a three-hour free-access satellite TV programme, Amiga
computer graphics of pale green bar charts were superimposed on pictures
of a large dog prancing around with some sort of back-pack attached to
it. Banal, until you realised that viewers were phoning a voting hot-line
to decide whether or not the dog should explode. The result was solidly
in favour of canicide and the dog appeared to blow up, causing outrage
and jammed TV station switchboards in three German-speaking countries.
Thus in much of he work, computers were used minimally and
symbolically - as little more than switches - in attempts to justify
inhuman acts by removing responsibility from perpetrators and even from
victims. This could be seen as brilliant satire on aspects of our present
predicament, or as psychopathic manipulation that has been done better
earlier this century.
That said, there were some fine pieces where, whether as metaphor or
well-integrated sine qua non, computers enhanced Ars Electronica's
reputation as the mother of electronic arts events. But these too mostly
involved NDEs. Werner Vollert's "I Must Always Have The Last Word"
monitors parameters from the outside world, such as radioactivity, light,
temperature and air humidity, and in the event of a nearby nuclear
explosion, opens small missile silos and fires five firework rockets.
Inserting a coin runs a simulation stopping just short of launch. It
makes you shiver.
In the Prix Ars Electronica competition's interactive art section, US
artist Mark Madel entered Universal Timepiece, four printed circuit boards
supporting microprocessors and liquid crystal displays. One was programmed
to self-destruct in 25 years, the only respite being the spectator
donating some of his or her time by holding a finger on the object.
Another had to be touched at least once a week or it 'died'.
The British winner of the Golden Nike for interactive art was Paul
Sermon, who used an Amiga 2000 to produce an interactive hypertext piece
called "Think about the people now". Subtitled "Think about the media
now", the stand-alone or networkable system put you in Whitehall on
Remembrance Day 1990, when a man set fire to himself and ran towards the
Cenotaph shouting the words in the title. You could confront or try to
avoid this event in a gripping simulation which made use of contemporary
press comment, from the Sun's outrage at the insulting interruption to
the Time's concern at any distress to royalty.
American runners-up Chico MacMurtie and Rick Sayre's Tumbling Man, a
humanoid, pneumatically driven robot, was controlled by the movements of
two participants wearing whole-body motion-sensing harnesses. At a given
moment, control was distributed between, say, the lower part of one person
and the upper part of the other. In the co-operative contortions of the
two people was much art, even if it was a custom 68HCll-based
microcontroller and Markov chaining software that enabled it. At the final
showing, the robot, apparantly subject to radio frequency interference
from the local oompah station, began to beat itself to pieces. Its left
wrist flew towards the spectators; out of control indeed.
Such events seem always to end up with shop talk and plans to meet
in Tokyo or Barcelona, and nothing changes. A vast network of tunnels and
bunkers, dating back to the first world war, honeycombs a hill in the
centre of Linz. Here French artist Erik Samakh constructed a labyrinth
whose only signposts were musical tone-generators linked to proximity
sensors. As each was approached in the dark, its harmonic structure and
rhythm offered clues to your position in the serpentine structure of
dripping passages. Overcoming claustrophobia and penetrating to the very
centre of the hill, you could faintly discern, in the light of their
miners' helmets, a small group of people, not all of them Japanese,
exchanging business cards.
Computer Guardian 26/09/91 (with apologies).
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