LOOKING AHEAD - NEW TOOLS/NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ARTISTS IN COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY

Source: Arts Wire CURRENT, a project of Arts Wire, a program of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) -- http://www.nyfa.org

In the mid-eighties, the widespread introduction of personal computers into homes and offices allowed many artists -- not just those with access to university or corporate facilities -- the opportunity to make work on computers.

In the mid-nineties an Internationally available World Wide Web platform made global distribution economically and technically feasible for many artists.

Looking forward to greater access to diverse, independently created content for home viewers, we now enter an era where wireless and/or broadband delivery in combination with conveniently sized, seamlessly interfaced, low-priced platforms can potentially make artist- originated film, video, music, art, and literature more widely available in myriad forms -- encompassing both deeply interactive works and works designed for one way delivery.

For instance, last winter the SUNDANCE ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL showcased a selection of new work designed specifically for the web. Twenty-one projects were presented in the categories of animation, live-action, documentary, interactive, new form, and selected shorts; Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) envisions digital video documentation of dance performances as a part of its DTW Digital project; and evolving webzines, such as WIGGED.NET, host artist-created short videos, animations and interactive works.

While individual artists, musicians and writers are creating diverse, art forms hosted on the World Wide Web, at the same time -- as composer/inventor/researcher Rich Gold, The Goldographic Research Labs observes -- artists will continue to engender unique distribution approaches.

"While much of the world is thinking about 'convergence', where there will be just a single medium on which all content will be displayed, I believe in a kind of 'anti-convergence.' I think that in the future artists will be able to 'author the medium' as well as the content and that the meaning will be carried by both," predicts Gold, who worked on ubiquitous computing devices as a researcher at Xerox PARC and spearheaded the artist in residence program at PARC.

"The interesting digital revolution going on right now is digital factories that can produce very small quantities of devices, including media, where each one is different," he observes. "What this means is that in the future a murder mystery might be displayed on an interactive knife, while a travel movie might be made for a digital shoe. The meaning leaks between the medium and the content to such a degree that there is no separation."

"WHAT APPEALS TO ME, AND AN AREA THAT I HAVE BEEN EXPLORING IN MY WORK, IS THE INVENTION OF SONIC ENVIRONMENTS THAT FEEL NATURAL TO THE LISTENER EVEN THOUGH THEY COMBINE ELEMENTS THAT ARE NOT FOUND IN LIFE." -- Douglas Cohen

What do artists who work with computer technology envision they will be working on in the coming years? How do futurists and scholars see the field developing?

Electronic media artist Nancy Paterson predicts that Global Positioning Systems (GPS, a worldwide radio navigation system) have enormous potential as a creative tool. "Since it was declassified by the Clinton administration usage of this technology has really blossomed," she notes. "In addition, first audio, then video, will disappear. The phrase *listening to the radio* refers to RF spectrum which is increasingly no longer used for analog transmissions. People will do the same things in the future such as listen to music and look at videos, but they will think of and describe these activities differently. Passive media is a subset of active media and so interactivity and the media that embraces it, will dominate."

Indeed, this January, Steve Wozniak, the technical visionary and co-founder of Apple Computer, announced the launch of Wheels of Zeus (wOz), a new company focused on designing new consumer electronics wireless products to help everyday people track everyday things. "Recent advances in global positioning software (GPS) systems and antenna technology coupled with the declining cost of processing power and two-way networking make the possibilities for new devices and services really exciting," Wozniak said when the company launched.

Nancy Paterson's work has included HAIR SALON TV (1990) which, incorporating video into hair salon equipment, juxtaposed technological icons of the 1950's with video imagery on issues shaped and distorted by electronic communications technologies; as well as STOCK MARKET SKIRT (1998) in which stock market prices were juxtaposed with skirt length.

In a recent work -- COPPELIA, a short video for the BRAVO channel -- she integrated dance, robotics, and virtual set technology. "I am currently researching automatons and robots along with techniques which I might use to develop an interactive installation utilizing dance and virtual set technology," she told Arts Wire CURRENT. "My interests have moved a little in the direction of dance, AI and robotics."

She is also working on THE LIBRARY, a project which transforms an existing interactive 3D environment from a self-contained experience into a meta-data creative reference tool utilizing dynamic 3D objects. "Metastreaming, sharing interaction with 3D objects over the Internet or through broadband access, will be possible through the combined implementation of an application server and a multi-user server for this project," she explains.

Musician/composer Douglas Cohen observes that in recent years galleries and performance spaces have been opening where sound art can be presented with more than the two channels of sound associated with stereo reproduction, for example, Engine 27 and the Diapason Gallery in New York City. "As a result of this trend, along with the proliferation of surround sound home theater systems and the capabilities of the latest digital audio workstations, it is finally becoming practical for composers to work with the precise location of sound in space."

Cohen has created new music/theater pieces, works for the concert hall, and scores to experimental films. He describes his compositions as exploring "aspects of time and proportion through music that is often simultaneously dramatic and static, and at times of an extended duration."

"What appeals to me, and an area that I have been exploring in my work, is the invention of sonic environments that feel natural to the listener even though they combine elements that are not found in life. Spatial location of sound can also be used to add depth and clarity to a dense and/or complex musical texture," he notes.

Sonic artist David Gamper, comments that The Expanded Instrument System (a continually developing electronic sound processing environment designed to provide improvising musicians control over various interesting parameters of sound transformation) "has been physically shrinking as it expands in its capabilities. But to get small, we had to give up some analog technology and its sound. The keys to getting them back in the next iteration of the performance system will be faster laptops and post-MIDI hi-rez solutions to controlling our live sound transformations."

Gamper collaborates with photographer Gisela Gamper in See Hear Now, a visible music sound and video projection duo.

He added that "I'm also hoping that this will also apply to the video mixing and manipulations that Gisela is using for our collaboration See Hear Now, although that looks to be further off. And if we could just get to wireless speakers or surround sound in every venue..."

"BUSINESS TOOLS ARE RIPE FOR LITERARY SUBVERSION" - Cathy Marshall

Writer and hypertext researcher Cathy Marshall, who in addition to writing electronic literature, has worked extensively in developing hypertext and e-book applications, is exploring creating multimedia work with tools originally intended for business applications.

"Business tools are ripe for literary subversion," she observes. "I have appropriated PowerPoint as the vehicle for a multi-level work that uses found graphics and photographs. The slide show itself is true to genre with pictures and bullets. But PowerPoint allows a separate story to develop below the surface of the presentation: the so-called Notes view is a writing space for a parallel portion of the work, as is the recorded narration or soundtrack. Comments offer minimalist hypertext functionality and an additional venue for multiple voices. Non-linear readings are anticipated by the different views (e.g. the slide sorter) that act as a map for jumping around in the work."

She adds that "While I think it would be fun to use PowerPoint to write a cheap romance, this piece is, in fact, a surreal portrait of working in what Stuart Moulthrop has referred to as the "'Military Infotainment Complex.'"

Marshall also observes another benefit of subverting business software: "Instead of worrying about developing and maintaining more esoteric software for writing and presenting electronic literature, we can ride on the bellies of corporate sharks as remora, taking advantage of institutional pressures for backward compatibility, archival formats, and broad access. "

"IF WE CAN FIND WAYS THAT TECHNOLOGY RESONATES WITH PEOPLE WE WILL CERTAINLY HAVE THE 'KILLER APP'" - Red Burns

Looking to the future, artists also seek inclusive and/or approachable avenues in an increasingly technology-driven environment.

"We've become so accustomed to computer-generated art -- from fractals to shiny, ray-raced cartoons -- that the next push in computers and art will be to produce the primitive rather than the high-tech," commented artist/writer/inventor Cliff Pickover whose 21 books have included VISIONS OF THE FUTURE: ART, TECHNOLOGY, AND COMPUTING IN THE NEXT CENTURY (St. Martin's Press, 1994) and DREAMING THE FUTURE THE FANTASTIC STORY OF PREDICTION. (Prometheus Books, 2001) "Let me give an example. In my book CHAOS IN WONDERLAND, a mathematician King asks a self-aware supercomputer a single question 'What would a supercomputer consider as beautiful?' After one month of computation, the supercomputer produced a single picture. It looks like a combination of graffiti-like elements with figures echoing the art of children and primitive societies. In short, it looked like a black-and-white lithograph done by Joan Miro. The King upon seeing the result opens his piezoelectric mouth wide and screams for a whole minute, as his subjects sit silently in rapt attention. They could not ascertain if the King's scream was one of happiness or fury."

"My point," Pickover notes, "is that a return to the primitive may be the wave of the future. Computer-generated and realistic syntheses of cave paintings, such as those in the cave at Lascaux with all their textures, are examples."

Indeed, artist Benjamin Britton , who recently developed a virtual reality work based on the moon landing, has also created a virtual reality environment in which users experience the LASCAUX caves.

Cristine Wang, who this year curated the online exhibition BORDERS as part of MANIFESTA 4, in Frankfurt, Germany -- including, among many other works, Knowbotic Research's CONNECTIVE FORCE ATTACK; Tina LaPorta's BORDER-CAM and Jenny Marketou's TRANSLOCAL: CAMP IN MY TENT -- looks to the Internet as a place of intimate media and social action/interaction.

In "Towards A Social Space On The Digital Network", (presented this February at STRATEGIES FOR ACCESS + MEDIA AUTONOMY IN THE DIGITAL AGE, a panel discussion at Name.Space Lab in New York City) she states:

"The time is now, to break out of the choke hold of the corporate hegemony, and 'reclaim the net', and re-affirm its 'sovereign nature'...The time is now...To assert a micro-politics of resistence against the broadcast hegemony, and make a movement towards 'intimate media', a place where spontaneity, chaos + anonymity rule...A movement towards an unstructured infosphere, where human presence in the networks takes to the fore, where media space becomes the connective tissue of communities; for the world wide web, one of the most popular of internet protocols, can be seen as a two way medium, a network topology of connectivity and social interaction."

Pointing out that the Digital Divide narrows online expression to that of a dominant culture, Jaishree Odin, an Associate Professor in the Liberal Studies Program of the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has written on extensively on technology mediated forms, seeks a diverse future.

"With so many new writers publishing in the electronic medium, works by writers from diverse cultural traditions, if any, easily tend to get lost in the large volume of such experimental writing. Various electronic cataloguing as well as web publishers need to make a visible space for minority literatures," she writes in "Promoting E-Literature by Ethnic Writers". (an article in this issue of Arts Wire CURRENT)

Red Burns, Chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, notes the hazards of predicting the future, but she also points out the importance of de-emphasizing a market-driven approach.

"I do believe that much of the research is what kinds of products people will want to buy, and I find that approach deadly," she said. "In the early days of interactive TV the question was what was killer app - in the early days of the Internet it about commercial uses and we saw the quick demise of the dot.coms - have we learned a lesson?"

"At ITP," she emphasizes, "we are interested in what ways technology can enhance the human spirit - that takes an approach that is experimental and exploratory - if we can find ways that technology resonates with people we will certainly have the 'killer app'".

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Note that the voices in this article are just a few of many who work in this field, and this article is only one starting point in exploring the future of the intersection of art and technology.

Sources/resources:

RICH GOLD -- http://www.richgold.org

SUNDANCE ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL -- http://www.sundanceonlinefilmfestival.org

DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP -- http://www.dtw.org

WIGGED.NET -- http://www.wigged.net

NANCY PATERSON -- http://nancy.thecentre.centennialcollege.ca/
COPPELIA -- http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Coppelia/coppelia.html
THE LIBRARY -- http://www.thelibrary2.com

THE WHEELS OF ZEUS -- http://www.woz.com

DOUGLAS COHEN -- http://www.sternklangdogs.net/

ENGINE 27 -- http://www.engine27.org/

DIAPASON GALLERY -- http://www.diapasongallery.com

DAVID GAMPER -- http://www.seehearnow.org/dgamper

EXPANDED INSTRUMENT SYSTEM -- http://www.pofinc.org/EIShome.html

SEE HEAR NOW -- http://www.seehearnow.org/index.html

CATHY MARSHALL -- http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/

CLIFF PICKOVER -- http://www.pickover.com

BENJAMIN BRITTON (Virtual Reality environment LASCAUX) -- http://www.uc.edu/profiles/benb1.htm

CRISTINE WANG -- http://cristine.org
BORDERS -- Manifesta 4, in Frankfurt, Germany (as part of "Free Manifesta" by Sal Randolph -- http://cristine.org/borders/

PLACEWARE -- http://www.placeware.com
develops interactive online conferencing software incorporating virtual environments

JAISHREE ODIN -- http://www.eliterature.org/state/bio-OdinJaishree.shtml

RED BURNS -- http://www.itp.nyu.edu/nuweb/faculty.html

INTERACTIVE TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM (ITP) at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts -- http://www.itp.nyu.edu/nuweb/index.html

HOSTING DIVERSE WORKS AND APPROACHES - PART II
_In the Contemporary Web Environment, Arts Organizations Play Vital Role in Hosting the Works of Artists
_Rhizome.org Initiates Art Commissioning Program
_"...the most fascinating new medium for writers to appear since the printing press" - Helen Whitehead, TrAce Online Writing Centre
_Farrar, Straus & Giroux Web Site Promotes New Authors With Individual Pages
_MAPPINGS - Programming New Music on Antenna Internet Radio
_"..it's simply important to be a catalyst for the production of contemporary art" -- Steve Dietz, The Walker Art Center
_Dia's Long Running Site Brings Artists who have not Previously Explored the Medium to the World Wide Web
_Copenhagen-based Fotografisk Center Showcases Photographers in THE DIGITAL ROOM
_World Printmakers Provides Online Services for Printmakers
_"I've always been interested in making work that exists outside the traditional art delivery system. The Internet has been such a place...at least for awhile" - Diane Bertolo
Arts Wire CURRENT -- http://www.artswire.org/current/2002/cur012202.html
January 22, 2002

"Hosting Diverse Works and Approaches, the World Wide Web Comes of Age as an Artists' Medium and Showcase"
Arts Wire CURRENT -- http://www.artswire.org/current/2001/cur111301.html
November 13, 2001

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