During the dotcom era, it was hard not to feel cynical about arts events devoted to "intervening" on the net. They were usually the product of a marriage of convenience between technology companies looking for cultural legitimacy and artists hoping to appear in touch (and get some funding). The art showcased had only a superficial understanding of the technologies it aimed to critique and worked mainly as offbeat corporate PR. Things are different now. Few net companies have spare money for the arts. And Zeitgeist-busting artists seem to have their sights trained on the biotech business.
The passing of this hype is no bad thing for those who are serious about bringing together digital technology and art. And plenty of people are. Author Christiane Paul traces the field's intellectual lineage back to Marcel Duchamp and John Cage in her book Digital Art (Thames and Hudson). She points out that artists first began using computers in the 60s. Evolution 2003, a three-day festival of digital/media art starting today in Leeds benefits from a similar sense of history.
Will Rose, co-curator of the event with Dennis Hopkins, says it aims to explore "the crossover between media arts and net art and to set it in the context of the history of artists engaging with technology". Hence the festival finds space for US artist/ musician Cory Arcangel, who hacks Nintendo games cartridges, veteran German artist/activist Gustav Metzger, who, since the 60s, has created a series of self-destructing art works, and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, whose last book Liquid Love focuses on the effects email, mobiles and texting have on the way we relate to ourselves, others and the city.
Things seem likely to start with a bang today, courtesy of Bill Brown, of the Surveillance Camera Players. The SCP are best known for staging performances of plays such as Waiting for Godot in front of CCTV cameras in the street, ostensibly to give bored police officers something to look at. Brown explains that the group changed direction after "September 11 and the Patriot act. Now people need good solid information more than they need entertainment". So Brown stages walks through New York, pointing out all surveillance cameras. Today, after showing a video of SCP performances, Brown will lead a similar walk through Leeds. There have been rumblings of discontent from Leeds City Council over what he might say.
Another highlight should be tomorrow's presentation by sound artist Ben Rubin, winner with Mark Hansen of this year's Webby for net art for The Listening Post. It is the product of a three-year collaboration between Rubin and Hansen, a statistician at Bell Labs/Lucent.
The piece samples real-time conversations from chat rooms, turning them into randomly generated music. Snatches of chat are uttered by an electronic voice and appear on hundreds of small screens. American critics said the work sounded like Hal, from the film 2001 A Space Odyssey, giving an avant-garde poetry reading, and suggested that it offered glimpses of the world's current obsessions.
Rubin is working on a version of the piece that he can take on tour. If the piece makes it to the UK, you can imagine the tabloids getting a little exercised. Rubin points out that the work samples snatches of conversation out of context. "You might see a message that says: 'Want to meet up later?' but you'll never know who sent it or to whom it was addressed. If you are so inclined, you could imagine it might be part of some predatory seduction, or it could be a message between colleagues planning lunch. So we don't filter the conversations and we haven't had problems as a result, even though the language can run a little blue at times."
Links
Evolution 2003
Cory Arcangel
Surveillance Camera Players
Ben Rubin
