Conclusion

Design of Contexts

For more than a decade Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (Mobile Image), two artists based in Los Angeles, have been searching and finding ways to get access to satellite and space technologies, among other things. In their opinion it is absolutely necessary to acquire the knowledge and learn about the structure with which this whole network of information technologies operates. Galloway and Rabinowitz even feel that it is essential for all of us to learn how the (tele)communication technologies function, like the relatively simple Internet software programs, for example, which means learning who and what is behind them, in order to be able to manage human and material resources properly. The artists’ intention is to make us aware that the reality of the new mass communication networks no longer only consists of newspapers, radio, television, telephone or fax, but includes the total structure of invisible electronic and computer networks that have penetrated our whole environment. There is no doubt that the rapidly growing infrastructure of the communication and information technologies, including satellites, computer networks, datasystems and so on, is changing the economic world game drastically. One needs only glance at the electronic money transferral business, which is actually one computer talking to another over vast distances via cables, via satellites, very rapidly, 24 hours a day. Those with access to them will have the power and the wealth. The other field based on digital electronics is the entertainment industry, with its CDs, CD-Roms currently replacing the videocasette, DATs, etc. When he was still at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology futurist Peter Schwartz, co-founder of the Global Business Network which advises the Pentagon and large corporations, prophesied that the whole financial structure would be dominated by this infrastructure, “linking things that are on the one hand a function of finance, the financial world, and on the other hand the electronic entertainment media.”[426]

Mobile Image perceives its purpose to be the development of new models that may redefine the limits of these technologies for people’s usage. So part of their research has consisted in looking at new hardware solutions, in designing a “cost-effective, kickass, multimedia, cross-cultural teleconference terminal that will allow communities of common concern to link up and evolve collectively.”[427] The idea of connecting cross-cultural communities via this type of networking to familiarize them with the possibilities of telefax, full-motion video, slowscan options, pictorial data management, or text conferencing found its first realization in a pilot project called the Electronic Café. It premiered at the 1984 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles, as part of the Olympic Arts Festival. Mobile Image: “Electronic Cafe linked MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and five ethnically diverse communities of Los Angeles through a state-of-the-art telecommunications computer database and dial-up bank designed as a cross-cultural, multilingual network of ‘creative conversation.’ From MOCA downtown, and the real cafes located in the Korean community, Hispanic community, black community, and beach communities of Los Angeles, people separated by distance could send and receive slow-scan images, draw or write together with an electronic writing tablet, print hard-copy pictures with the video printer, enter information or ideas in the computer datadase and retrieve it with Community Memory keyword search, and store or retrieve images on a videodisc recorder which held 20,000 images.”[428] The artists have set up a permanent Electronic Café in Santa Monica from where they regularly organize conferences and events. They had, for example, set up a connection with Biosphere II in Arizona, and Steina Vasulka’s Studio X in Santa Fe. By now there are several Electronic Cafés around the world, among others in Moscow. The premise of the artists to open up and create a new context for communication by introducing and making available network technologies considered beyond reach was rather advanced in the art world of 1984. In 1996 the mushrooming of the ‘cyberspace’ cafés with Internet connection makes it seem a normal communications café now, somewhat dated even. Yet the emphasis on human interaction still makes the project stand out. Galloway and Rabinowitz have a background in the visual arts, but they stress that they do not produce artifacts, that is objects, but living events. In doing so, Mobile Image calls the traditional function of the artist as object-maker into question. The real makers of the events are in fact the participants. It is the viewer’s response that completes the work that is set up by the artists, and in the event defines the parameters of the system.

Jonathan Benthall once remarked that what the new technological media, such as photography, xerox, laser and holography, video and computer, had in common was that they were communication media, which by nature made them part of the larger communication system. [429] He meant that the utilization of the technologies as media in art should include not only their aesthetic features, but also involve their whole (public) structural organization. This is basically what Mobile Image does.

Gene Youngblood has claimed that ‘models’ such as those created by the Vasulkas or Mobile Image cannot be developed by traditional artists. That the ‘new’ artists will probably be both artist and technician/engineer, or artist and scientist. Indeed, if an artist wants to work creatively in the field of electronic media, whether video, computer or satellite technology, he or she will have to be knowledgeable in order to be able to convey the ideas to the engineer, but up to a certain level this expertise can still be that of an amateur. Youngblood reminded us of the “Renaissance amateur artist.” I am not sure whether Youngblood’s comparison has any real significance. Artists like Michelangelo or Leonardo were proficient in different areas, but they were exceptions. Actually most Renaissance artists were highly specialized. Professional specialization has certainly been a main feature of this century. On the other hand, in the nineties we have witnessed the rise of the amateur scientist-artist and the engineer-artist, indeed. Still, those who venture into the field of computer arts/graphics are predominantly artist-scientist-programmers who have access to the sophisticated state-of-the-art supercomputers which only the government, certain industries and a few universities can afford, such as IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Livermore, California, or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Their acceptance by the art world is not likely, considering the consistent neglect of this type of work by the ‘serious’ art world. Rare are the artists who could call themselves equally familiar with art and electronic or computer technology, although there are some institutions which actively promote collaborative projects between scientists, engineers and artists. Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio) and the New York Institute of Technology (New York) have set up interdisciplinary programs. The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at Ohio State University, headed by computer graphics pioneer Charles Scuri, has developed an experimental program for artists and animators. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been singular with its interdisciplinary programs between the arts and sciences for over two decades. Nicolas Negroponte, director of the Media Laboratory, told Steward Brand: “The artists around the Lab have ideas about what to do with the technology, and the scientists have ideas about what to do with the arts. The impact of computers on the arts will be bringing out the artist in all of us. Much of it will be like hanging the child’s painting on the icebox. It doesn’t have any meaning outside the family circle, but it’s very important to the local constituency. You’ll see a return of the Sunday painter.”[430] Some of the computer graphics that resulted from scientific computer research have become popular indeed. The Mandelbrot fractals, discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot, are widely admired for their beauty, although their discovery was accidental and for scientific purposes only. The same is true for the famous Jupiter “fly-bys,” simulations of the Voyager I passing by Jupiter, which were created by James Blinn at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Probably most media artists will remain amateur engineers or technicians, and only few will be educated in the two fields. However, this may change, as many people will no longer hold the same job all their lives. More important was the fact that in the recent development in the media arts and art in public places, many of the collaborations between artists and specialists in other disciplines were based on an exchange of ideas and knowledge. This has been a crucial element in opening up the gates of understanding of each other’s language. It made possible a necessary change in attitude and therefore constituted the beginning of another road and role which these artists have pursued. It has subsequently affected the way in which the art works are produced, the work of art being the result of a collaborative effort, and no longer of the sole investigative journey in the studio.[431] The artists I discussed have all worked with scientists and engineers or technicians at different times and on different levels, such as the development of such tools as the Digital Image Processor of the Vasulkas, or the collaboration of Nancy Holt and James Turrell with astrophysics.

The fact that the artists discussed have presented (a part of) their work purposively outside of the realm of the museum and gallery in order to create a different context for art has advanced the search for a different function as well. Consequently, aesthetic decisions are made subject to environmental, architectural, landscape, and social factors, or the structure of television networks, or databases. There is no doubt that a chosen technology largely affects the final aesthetics of a work, it being part of its function. The complexity of the environmental, social and sometimes political issues dealt with, as well as the context in which they are placed or operate, has directed the emphasis more toward the quality and level of information and communication than the purely aesthetic aspects, or at least placed both on an equal footing. Nam June Paik has emphasized this in his writing. Thus instead of a formal and aesthetic approach, the artists try to create a work of art from a largely functional and operational perspective. It means that art is no longer made from the point of view that it is something autonomous and separate from society. This aspect too contributes to a possible new road which may look at art in a different way from the modernist tradition, a tradition which after all is only a few hundred years old.

The development of the artists we have discussed is characterized by a gradual change from a display of simple processes and systems towards works displaying a multi-layered complexity. Hans Haacke’s early experiments with grass and wheat growing under artificial conditions, with climatic phenomena or hatching chickens were in fact simple displays of biological and natural systems. When his research came to revolve around complicated social and political issues that were analyzed systematically on a number of levels, the number of questions to be answered multiplied and Haacke’s work became more and more layered. James Turrell’s Roden Crater project is a prime example too. Alan Sonfist’s relatively small experiments with natural systems have become large ecological landscape projects. And the Harrisons’ research on the survival conditions of a crab, grew from indoor experiments to large outdoor interdisciplinary research projects and proposals for sustainable eco-systems. Their research has systematically taken into account multiple variables of a climatic, biological and human, social and economic nature. This development parallels the increasing complexity of the environmental situation itself and the accompanying technological advancement.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, scientific research still dealt with the handling of two-variable problems, such as the relationship between pressure and volume (gases), force to distance (objects), current versus voltage (electricity). The models in the social sciences show a parallel mode, analyzing such interdependencies as, capital and labor, supply and demand, balance of power versus trade. In the first half of this century scientific discoveries came to involve problems with a larger number of variables. Meanwhile the mathematization of science led to problem-solving in terms of numbers and tables. Problems of disorganized complexity as they were called by Daniel Bell, could now solved since the theories of probability and chance, i.e. statistics, advanced considerably. The most important characteristic of problem solving research after about 1940 is that new (computer) sciences are based on handling large numbers of variables, such as systems theory, cybernetics, information theory, game theory, etc. On a social and economic level, similar changes took place. Increasing complexity in the management of large-scale organizations, or systems have led to techniques that are able to handle multi-variable interacting aspects.[432]

Although there is no direct correlation between these developments in science and art, there is no doubt a similarity in the movement away from an art which perceives itself as part of a linear and objective progress toward a non-linear and subjective one. I have indicated the association with and continuation of the ideas of systems analysis and cybernetics. Although I did not want to label the road which these artists have followed since the early seventies, I feel attracted to the term suggested by artist and writer Roy Ascott: “field theory.” Ascott writes. “Its terminology frequently employs ideas of transaction, interplay, net, web, reversibility, association, psychism, mulitple meaning and connectivity. ... It demands awareness of time, a reaching out to other disciplines and other operational modes of consciousness.”[433]

The shift towards the replacement of the object by a non-objective situation that includes the surrounding space, has brought about another role for the spectator. Art has at different times in history been concerned with the role of the beholder, and has tried to include him or her in ways other than merely looking. Dada events, and the Happenings and performances of the fifties, sought to push the observer with physical violence. In subsequent environmental pieces the visitor was often required to crawl into installations. The perceptual experience became a part of the meaning. Although I have not dealt with this aspect extensively, it seems likely that the scientific interest and research in the nature of perception at the time stimulated many artists. The participatory element has remained an important part of the environmental works. The new art in public places has continued in this direction, including the community in the preparatory stages of the process, even.

An important motivation for artists who began to experiment with video, believing that one could influence and change existing power structures of television, was the idea that it must be possible to create a possibility for the viewer to participate. However, the electronic and computer technologies have given the greatest impetus for a truly active participation, in that the viewer/participant can select a personal sequence of images and sound, albeit from an existing or pre-recorded database. If the production of a work of art in an interdisciplinary context affected the traditional hierarchy between artist and engineer/technician, the interactive computer network system has toppled the hierarchy between artist and viewer. Visionary Nam June Paik already flouted the hierarchical position of the artist, and so-called ‘high art,’ since the beginning of his career. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (Mobile Image) also purposively put themselves in the background as authors of an art work.

When Walter Benjamin proclaimed the loss of the art work’s aura in the age of mechanical reproduction, reproduction was the possibility to make many copies as similar as possible, from a unique original. In dataspace there may be a first version, but there is not even an original, no definite version, because each interruption in the stored information will create another status. An interactive computer work or a telecommunication work is in fact an open system and the result depends on the interactions of the participants. Some time ago already Bill Viola wrote: “On the video disc itself you’re laying out programmed information. That means you can jump anywhere.... This is why the video disc is a newly emerging art form. It’s the art of interactivity. One of the areas where we really need new skills is in deciding what our scheme for interactivity is. ... Soon images will be formed out of a system of logic, almost like a form of philosophy - a way of describing an object based on mathematical codes and principles rather than freezing its light waves in time.”[434] In the meantime artists began to experiment with the interactive possibilities of the interactive videodisc and CD-Rom. Among the early works was Grahame Weinbred’s The Earlking. These works have a pre-set structure in which a number of paths are delineated which the ‘visitor’ can follow. The ‘player’ creates his or her own work, but cannot add or alter its content. New interactive CD-Roms, such as The Residents’ Bad Day on the Midway (1996), have become more complicated and leave ample room for the ‘player’s’ own investigation and imagination.

The same year that Viola made this ‘prophesy’ to Raymond Bellour, WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) was set up in the San Francisco Bay Area “as as computer conferencing system that enables people around the world to carry on public conversations and exchange private electronic mail.”[435] WELL’s roots are the same as those of the counterculture magazine Whole Earth Catalog, brainchild of Steward Brand two decades ago. After the immense success of the catalog - its successor Whole Earth Review is still in print - the initiators introduced The Whole Earth Software Review. Soon WELL was born, and Steward Brand became its first director. The history of the subsequent development of ‘internetworking’ from ARPANET, developed as a decentralized military, scientific and goverment communications system, to Internet - also the Net - is excellently described by Howard Rheingold. The important characteristic of a communication system like Internet is that it is not organized, and seems to function like chaos theory. It gives the ‘surfer’ direct on-line access to any information he or she wants and each day the amount of information avialable grows exponentially. Just as important a characteristic is its possibility to actively contribute and interfere.

It is obvious that by their very nature the digital technologies oppose the modernist concept of the art object, as well as the notions of authenticity and authorship. The moment when the spectator can actively interfere with the pre-set structure and include his own imagery and ideas, the discussion of authorship takes a seriously different turn: even if the original idea remains the product of the author/artist. Quite a few artists (over 5,000 according to Timothy Drucker in his anthology Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology) have launched projects on Internet’s World Wide Web, but it is still hard to tell which way it will go. One of the first works of art created for the World Wide Web was Antonio Muntadas’s The File Room (http://fileroom.aaup. uic.edu/FILEROOM.html), which started as an installation at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1994. It is set up as a database archive for case histories of cultural censorship since the ancient Greeks. Writer Robert Atkins noted that the project started with some 450 entries and has grown tremendously as the public has added hundreds to the compilation.[436] The File Room work is a clear example of a work of art which has come into being through an (inter)active participation of the public, or even more it would not have existed without this intervention. Concepts of authorship or authenticity have no function here. Yet, in terms of the prevailing definition of art, the status of these interactive video/computer works is not at all clear. Artists working with interactive computer networks and Internet might completely have to review the concept of art.

Essentially, Art in Public Places and the communication Media Arts deal with problems of public space and the human body. The network technologies are shedding a new light on the perception and function of the public and private spheres. It is at this crossroad where both ‘movements’ come together, having witnessed the disappearance of the single art object. Also, both have developed toward an active participation of the public, albeit on different levels. However, in the end these works of art will remain faint reminiscences of the conceptual art expressions of the seventies, if they do not question the existing concept of art from the start. Maybe we will then see a change in the modernist concept of art itself happening at the end of this century; a true change in paradigm.