Syndicate: Takeover, Ars Electronica 2001

["anna balint" <epistolaris@freemail.hu>]

TAKEOVER
who's doing the art of tomorrow?

Ars Electronica 2001
Linz,  1? 6 September





Press-Information

Which constellations, what factors are determining the art of tomorrow,
where it will happen, who will be doing it and with whom? These questions
are at the focal point of Ars Electronica 2001: Let's take a look at the
thing formerly known as art!

As events on international financial markets have shown, the digital
revolution is going through its first real crisis. What are the implications
for art, and particularly media art that owes its development and the public
attention it has garnered essentially to the same dynamics that have shaped
the course of the New Economy? Can media art, understood as an overarching
term encompassing artistic encounters with the technological reality of our
world, maintain its innovative dynamism? Will it, in keeping with an
avant-gardist definition, continue to contribute to overall social
development, or will its power, its glamour and its attractiveness fade in a
world in which media are increasingly ordinary features of everyday life.

Few recognize that quality does not prove itself in the transferal of the
old into the new system, but rather in the invention and development of
forms and methods that fit the new situation. And the contours of the new
are already taking shape. The Digital Revolution has long since given rise
to totally new forms and manifestations of art that have situated themselves
for the most part beyond the realm of the art establishment and have largely
gone unnoticed by or failed to gain acceptance from that establishment. This
is a phenomenon characterized by an explosive eruption and breakout of
creativity, by the innovative, inspired and often quite unexpected use of
digital information technology.


New Sites and Scenes Beyond the Confines of the Art Establishment
These can be found in the world of science, in subcultures and pop culture,
and in a newly emerging creative economy, as well as in what are rather
exotic regions for media art such as Malaysia, China, Korea and Taiwan,
countries that have undergone a massive technological build-up recently and
now are investing with comparable enthusiasm in the creation of brain-ware
and, in doing so, are paying attention not just to engineering but to design
as well. This sets in motion a dynamism that also exerts an increasing
influence on these countries' artistic potential.

The development of computer games is-in addition to other
considerations-always a matter of creating fictions, fantasy worlds and
experiences, and these are aims that are in very close proximity to art. The
computer games industry already has the same economic dimensions as the
entire film sector, a fact that is not without cultural consequences. And
even if computer games are not necessarily artistic products, this industry,
as a result of its commercial potential, offers a new field of gainful
employment for a multiplicity of creative, artistic activities. What emerges
thereby is in numerous respects a highly fruitful and creative biotope. In
light of the fact that the vast majority of artists has never been able to
live off actual artistic work, this constitutes a considerably superior
alternative to a job as a waiter or substitute teacher.

New Reference Systems

Digital information technologies are more than just advanced means of
production and distribution. The Internet constitutes a fast, efficient and,
in its own way, new reference system in which ideas, talents and
capabilities emerge and are enhanced, refined and perfected through the
inspiring interplay of cooperation and competition. The Internet accelerates
not only production processes but also the acquisition of qualifications,
talents and abilities. These new reference systems can be set up quickly and
employed productively, and provide stiff competition to traditional artistic
training systems and rituals of access.

Expanded Areas of Impact

It is no longer the technological possibilities but rather the
socio-cultural structures of the Information Society that are decisive in
the context of an art of tomorrow. The Internet as a cultural and commercial
sphere is the basis and breeding ground of innovative, inspired modes of
doing artistic work, which have an impact over an enormously expanded area
due to the network linkage that is immanent in the medium. Flexible
community membership is a key concept that manifests itself in concrete
terms in the sudden and successful shuttling of persons or projects among
art, design, science and commerce, or in productive parallel existences in
(these) dissimilar domains. An upshot of this is a fundamentally altered
conception of self prevalent among this young generation of artists.


Ars Electronica 2001 - Conferences

The theoretical encounter with the Festival theme will be presented in a new
format this year. A symposium, conferences, panels on virtual realty and the
Prix Ars Electronica Forum make up a full calendar of events, an overarching
theory-network spanning the entire festival week.

The aim of the theoretical reflections undertaken in conjunction with
TAKEOVER is to sound the depths of the constellations and framework
conditions of the art of tomorrow and to initiate and further an open
discourse. Ars Electronica 2001 will focus on the protagonists and projects
of this new creative burst of artistic activity that is increasingly being
played out beyond the confines of the conventional art establishment.
Prototypical advocates having their say in this debate, aside from
theoreticians and scholars, will be, above all, artists and creative
individuals themselves.


TAKEOVER Symposium
September 2, 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM
September 3, 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Brucknerhaus

Three symposium sessions address the paradigm shift of TAKEOVER, new role
definitions and working models, new technologies, tools and concepts in the
area of content development and skin design for the broadband future, as
well as the methods and technologies of genetic engineering as artistic
implements.
Sunday is devoted to "Digital Culture & Lifestyle in Action." In a relaxed
setting, prominent young next-generation creatives and electrolobby
residents provide insight into how they go about their work, their
references, and the textures of their lives. This symposium will also
elaborate on and analyze new currents in the areas of interface design,
screen design and film/video (with emphasis on Internetfilm and Web-TV).


Creators of Life - How far can you go?
An essential challenge that art already faces today and one that will assume
even greater proportions over the coming years is how to deal with
developments in modern molecular biology and genetic engineering. The
positions, experiences and outlooks of artists who are taking up this
challenge will highlight the second day.


Who's got it right, what will remain, who will survive?
TAKEOVER is a confrontation with the "makers of the art of tomorrow." That
includes not only the people who generate and create artistic processes and
products, but also those who manage, administer and make money off them. Ars
Electronica 2001 dedicates three conferences to this emerging area of
tension and interplay.

Engineers of Experience - Who's got it right?
September 4, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Brucknerhaus
The discussion will focus on new strategies to integrate interactive media
into exhibitions and museums, as well as new concepts for their design,
staging and architecture in light of the ongoing boom in edutainment and
infotainment.

>From Document to Event - What will remain?
September 5, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Brucknerhaus
>From Document to Event deals with questions having to do with "preserving"
digital art.

The Undertakings of Art - Who will survive?
September 6, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Brucknerhaus
In The Undertaking of Arts, representatives of a variety of institutions
confront the question of how they have prepared for the future, for the
globalization of the art market, for the new digital forms of distribution,
and, above all, for the demands of artists.


Pixelspaces
September 3-5, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Ars Electronica Center and FutureLab
Is a takeover underway in the virtual reality scene too? Under the headings
CAVE versus Game Engines, Behind the Scenes and CAVE goes PC, Pixelspaces
discusses and presents new ideas and potential application to save
conventional VR systems from the fate of the dinosaurs. How does the future
of VR look as far as its use in exhibitions and museums is concerned? How
and in what form are the game industry's VR systems becoming available for
application development?


Prix Ars Electronica Forum
September 4-6, 2:30 PM to 7:30 PM
ORF Regional Studio Upper Austria
The Prix Ars Electronica Forum offers a unique chance to get a glimpse
behind the scenes of digital art today. This artists' round-table provides
direct access to and highly concentrated information about this year's
prizewinners, their ideas and projects, and how they go about their work.




Art & Events - Art as a Test-Drive of the Future

>From its very inception, Ars Electronica has defined art as an interface, a
motivating force and a catalyst of social transformation, and dedicated
itself to the goal of enabling art in its full intensity and dynamism to
have an impact. In doing so, Ars Electronica continuously looks to the
future-there where innovation is taking shape. What this necessitates in the
context of TAKEOVER is expanding the festival to include forms of presenting
working processes as well as production situations in which teamwork and
concept-oriented communication projects occupy the spotlight.


Projects
September 1-6, 10:30 AM to 7:00 PM
Brucknerhaus
TAKEOVER presents projects and modes of working by artists who are facing
considerable risk in opening up new territories in which their scope of
action has not yet been defined, and in which the existential framework
conditions (art subsidies or the art market) have not yet been
established-whether in scientific, artistic and/or commercial contexts.
Fish & Chips has "semi-living artists" as its aim: a research project that
is simultaneously a work of art and science, and that brings together
designers, biologists, artists, and computer specialists into what is not
your everyday team-the SybioticA Research Group (AUS/Israel).
TGarden?, a prototypical example of ways in which artists work today and the
problems they now face, acts as a transducer between a multiplicity of
social worlds: institutionally-based knowledge creation, techno-scientific
research, art and performance.
The Green project by Reinhard Nestelbacher/A takes an everyday scientific
phenomenon and exports it beyond the confines of the lab: green-glowing
mice, fish, bacteria, and a new species of artificial organisms.


T.O.C. Takeover Campus
September 1-6, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Kunstuniversit?t Linz
The T.O.C. Campus, an attractive new venue for Ars Electronica 2001 set up
in cooperation with the Linz University of Art, is the site of a dynamic
scene grouped in ad hoc fashion and representing highly diverse approaches
to TAKEOVER. Groups like Stadtwerkstadt with meat.space Linz, the listener
festival takeover systems, connect systems by Radio FRO and radioqualia, and
the Female Takeover discussion series by KunstRaum Goethestrasse promise
unexpected and, above all, target-group-oriented, open modes of dealing with
the festival theme. Under the label lab-ac.at, students of visual media
design at the University of Applied Art in Vienna transfer parts of the
university's research lab to Linz: a hybrid mix of programming workshop, Web
agency, sound studio, hang-out/lounge, laboratory for 3-D animation & media
critique, game development center and party space. Participants will be
working on process-oriented projects as well as generating and discussing
new ideas about the future needs of education specifically tailored to media
art.
T.O.C. Takeover Campus will also present Masaki Fujihata's Field Work, a
project that gives rise to a hyperreal information sphere. Video images of
real environments are combined with exact GPS data to produce a linkage of
topography and the subjective perceptive of space. Pixels + Space, a project
at the interface of architecture, industrial design and media design will be
launched as a collaborative effort of Ars Electronica FutureLab and Linz
University of Art.



Concerts, Events & Performances
A full program of concerts, events and performances makes for TAKEOVER
nights full of variety. Among the highlights is Golan Levin's Dialtones: A
Telesymphony, the first concert to by played out exclusively via the ringing
of the audience's cell phones (September 2, Brucknerhaus, 9:00 PM). Ryoji
Ikeda's concert performance, with its expressive power of minimalistically
penetrating tonal strata and precise visual elements, produces a sensitive,
intensely stimulating ambience. (September 4, Brucknerhaus, 9:00 PM). Ridin'
A Train is an annual festival feature those in the know always look forward
to. This year, the train serves as a shuttle and the VA Steel plant grounds
as a performance space in which, among other artists, Senor Coconut Y Su
Conjunto, in an eccentric fusion of Kraftwerk and Latin American music, will
offer a dance course as free-form variation on the theme "El Baile Aleman."
(September 5, VA Steel Works, 9:00 PM). This year, Finnish electronic
musician Vladislav Delay transforms the Donaupark into the impressive
acoustic environment of Klangpark 2001. The musical finale promises to be
another highlight: the world premier of the laptop supergroup fLeetwood
Macintosh, featuring all-live sets by tigerbeat6's bLectum from bLechdom,
Lesser and kid606 (September 6, Posthof, 9:00 PM).



Ars Electronica Center - Museum of the Future

In the five years of its existence, the AEC has proved to be a successful
realization of the idea of introducing artistic works as catalysts in
processes of social development and transformation. This interplay and
overlapping of artistic and technological work also characterizes the new
exhibits.
One substantive feature is Get in Touch, which showcases a representative
sample of works by Prof. Hiroshi Ishii's Tangible Media Group (MIT Media
Lab) for the first time in Europe. In a lecture presentation in conjunction
with the opening of the Ars Electronica Center exhibition, Hiroshi Ishii
will elaborate on the scientific and artistic aspects of these works.
(September 1, 2:30 PM).


Get in Touch
September 1-6, 10.00 - 19.00
Ars Electronica Center
Get in Touch is an exhibition at the interface of man and machine.
Communication with and by means of digital technology as a design task. The
centerpiece is Tangible Bits by Hiroshi Ishii. Here, information is endowed
with physical forms, and it becomes possible to directly manipulate and
perceive bits of it. The aim is to blur the boundaries between the physical
and the digital, and to create a seamless interface between human beings,
bits and atoms.


FutureOffice Project
September 1-6, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Ars Electronica Center
A multi-phase research project at the Ars Electronica Center's FutureLab is
developing prototype components for telematic everyday life in the office of
the future. The primary objective here is to integrate existing functional
technologies into ergonomic and stylishly designed scenarios. Custom-made
objects and furniture make possible the evaluation of conventional concepts
and visions, and offer exhibition visitors a demonstration of current
possibilities.


electrolobby 2001
Interface for Digital Art, Cyberculture and Internet-inspired Lifestyle

Ars Electronica commissioned the Paris new media label TNC Network to
develop the electrolobby concept in order to live up to the expectations and
satisfy the needs of the digital generation, and also as a means of testing
new festival formats and suitable presentation strategies. The aim of
electrolobby is to identify surges of Internet-related creativity and
innovation at an early stage of their development, and to present them in an
exciting and entertaining festival setting

In a stimulating environment that's a blend of dayclubbing, informal media
conference and networked showroom, electrolobby stages the electrifying
subdigital climate in which today's most exciting smart hacks, milestones,
and next-level experiments are being spawned and spun off. electrolobby
residents are professional gamers, next-generation creatives, game
developers, guerilla designers, renegade programmers and open-law attorneys.
What they have in common is a set of influences, values and conceptions-a
new field of reference for which the term "net-inspired digital culture &
lifestyle" has been coined.

This year, electrolobby will especially focus on games-for one thing because
of their increasing cultural, social and economic relevance, but also
because all aspects of a creative, innovative way of dealing with the
Internet converge in the production process of online games. And because
games are just plain fun to play!


Game Jam/F/FI/UK/D/A/DK/USA
Feat: Team Chman, Sulake Labs, Kerb, Moccu, Lippe, Kaliber 10000,
and others; a coproduction of: Vectorlounge and TNC Network

Everything2/USA
Feat: Nathan Oostendorp & the Everything noders

Habbo Hotel/FI/UK
Feat: Sampo Karjalainen, Aapo Kyr?l? & the Habbos

>From Bedroom Programmers to Media Gods/USA
Feat: Simon Carless

E-Sport: Gaming Goes Pro/D/KR
Feat: Kambiz Hashemian, Ana Vranes, Dominik Kofert.
In collaboration with Progaming.de

Keitai Zone/J
Feat: Andrea Hoffmann

micromusic.net/CH
Feat: Gino Esposto aka carl, Mike Burkhardt aka superB,
Paco Manzanares aka wanga

Kerb/UK
Feat: Jim McNiven, Pete Barr-Watson and others

Open Law Project/USA
Feat: Wendy Seltzer

Team cHmAn/F
Feat: seb, jr, dja9, stef, dany, cocotte, gael, yan, dany, got

Asia Replay/F
Moccu/D
Feat: Jens Schmidt, Bj?rn Zaske

Kaliber 10000/DK/USA/UK
Feat: Toke Nygaard, Michael Schmidt and Per J?rgensen

404Zone/A
Feat: Simon Scheiber

Lens Flare 98-01/UK


Prix Ars Electronica 2001

The Prix Ars Electronica was conceived in 1987 as an open platform for a
broad spectrum of disciplines in the area of digital media design at the
interface of art, technology, science and society, and has been continually
updated over the years in accordance with this concept in order to remain on
the cutting edge of rapid developments in the field of information
technology. For the 15th edition of the Prix Ars Electronica, the Internet
category has been redefined and considerably expanded. This year for the
first time, six cash prizes will be awarded in the Internet category-two
Golden Nicas and four Honorable Mentions in the Net Vision and Net
Excellence subcategories.
A total of 2,200 entries submitted from 65 countries will be competing for a
share of the ?100,000 ($89,700) prize money donated by jet2web Internet. And
the u19-freestyle computing competition for young people sponsored by the
Postsparkasse (P.S.K.) has scored another smash hit, attracting 900
submissions from the cybergeneration in Austria.


Prix Ars Electronica Gala 2001

September 3, 2001, 9:00 PM
ORF Regional Studio Upper Austria
During the course of this gala evening, the secret will finally be revealed:
Which of the nominees will receive the Golden Nica in each of the
competition's categories?

Nominations

Computer Animation/Visual Effects
Ralph Eggleston; Pixar Animation Studios/USA
Laetitia Gabrielli, Pierre Marteel, Mathieu Renoux, Max Tourret;
Supinfocom/F
Xavier de l'Hermuziere, Philippe Grammaticopoulos; Supinfocom/F
Digital Musics
Markus Popp; oval/D
Ryoji Ikeda; David Metcalfe Associates/GB
Blectum from Blechdom; Haus de Snaus and Tigerbeat 6/USA
Interactive Art
association.creation/A
Carsten Nicolai, Marco Peljhan; Canon Artlab/D/SLO/J
Haruki Nishijima; IAMAS/J
Net Vision
Sebastien Kochman; team cHmAn/F
Yuki Naja; Sonic Team/USA
Neeraj Jhanji; ImaHima Inc./J
Net Excellence
Chris McGrail; Kleber/GB
Joshua Davis; maruto/USA
Brian McGrath; The Skyscraper Museum/USA
cybergeneration - u19 freestyle computing
Martin Leonhartsberger/A
Johannes Schiehsl, Conrad Tambour, Peter Strobl/A
Markus Triska/A


Cyberarts 2001
September 1-6, 10:00 AM to Midnight
O.K Center for Contemporary Art
The presentation of prize-winning works from all categories of Prix Ars
Electronica 2001 provides a condensed view of the current state of the
digital arts. A separate exhibition space is devoted to cybergeneration -
u19 freestyle computing.


Ars Electronica 2001
Organizers: Ars Electronica Center Linz and ORF Upper Austria Regional
Studio
Co-organizers: Brucknerhaus Linz, O.K Center for Contemporary Art,
Universit?t f?r k?nstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung Linz



Ars Electronica Center & Ars Electronica Festival are supported by:
The City of Linz
The Province of Upper Austria
The Office of the Chancellor/Art Section

Compaq ?sterreich GesmbH
Gericom
42 virtual
Hewlett Packard
Microsoft ?sterreich
?sterreichische Brauunion
Oracle GmbH
Quelle AG
SGI
jet2web Telekom Austria
jet2web Mobilkom Austria
Festo AG & Co

Prix Ars Electronica is supported by:
jet2web Internet
VOEST-ALPINE STAHL
jet2web Datakom
?sterreichische Postsparkasse P.S.K.
The City of Linz
The Province of Upper Austria

Prix Ars Electronica Additional Support:
Austrian Airlines
Lufthansa
Casinos Austria
Courtyard by Marriott
Porsche Austria
Sony DADC
?sterreichischer Kulturservice
P?stlingberg Schl?ss'l

Additional support for Ars Electronica and Prix Ars Electronica has been
provided by Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa

Press Information

Ars Electronica 2001
Hauptstra?e 2
4040 Linz
Austria

Ars Electronica Center
Hauptstra?e 2
4040 Linz
Austria


Gabriele Hofer
T: +43.732.7272-780
F: +43.732.7272-77
gabriele@aec.at

Ursula K?rmayr
T: +43.732.7272-16
F: +43.732.7272-2
ursula@aec.at




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