Armin Medosch on Sun, 11 Aug 1996 16:24:53 +0200 |
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Re: hardware limitations |
Andreas Broeckmann wrote: > > Here's a piece of info that shows that there are problems with the hardware > for media art in many places: > > Date: 7.26.96 > From: Hari Kunzru (hari@wired.co.uk) > Subject: Re: The weather > > I phoned SGI and it's important to stress that this isn't their *fault*. > It's not like they are refusing to support art. But they don't have the > budget to do it and apparently there simply aren't enough machines in the > UK. Last year I organized the exhibition and conference Telepolis in Luxembourg. There we also needed som SGI´s. As Luxembourg is a very small country there is not even a SGI office there. The German branch also couldn´t give us the machines, but they forwarded me to the European headquarter in Neuchatel, Switzerland. The person there is John Parry (I hope I spell the name right, I just spoke on the phone with him). When it came to solve the actual logistics I corresponded with Patrice Gumny patriceg@neu.sgi.com Not always but sometimes they lend some hardware for art projects. It is not totally cost free since they charge for transport costs and logistics which can add up to 5000 Dollars for an Onyx. The problem in our case was, that for a very long time they neither said "yes" or "no" and in the very last moment they told us that we could have an Onyx and two Indies. So this makes any planning very difficult. Also the machine came with not much software installed. You need a real professional who has software and can install it. So it may not be SGI UK´s fault that you couldn´t show that work but they could have connected you with the European headquarter as the people in Munich did. By the way, when I was in contact with them, they had questions that are relatively unusual for art projects, like "how many people will attend the show" or "what kind of audience do you expect". Be prepared for that. I just returned from Siggraph. There you had Onyxes like elsewhere pocket calculators. But besides a project of Sommerer/Mignannaeu the projects for which that machines were used I wouldn´t call art. At Siggraph anybody who does 2 D or 3D design for entertainment purposes is called artist. To my opinion most of the things shown at Siggraph are even anti-art, you know, that Hollywood kind of entertainment stuff, yours armin medosch