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Bruno Beusch and Tina Cassani's TNC Network is the creative force behind hybrid events celebrating the complexities and ironies of our emerging digital culture and promoting the concept of international collaboration. Established in 1995 and employing an interdisciplinary crew, TNC has produced network-based projects for the Internet, TV, radio, and various arts festivals. Events include the humorous and imaginative 1997 Clone Party, in which, for a period of 16 hours, TNC connected events at clubs and museums in cities on three continents (Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, Linz, Lausanne, San Francisco) over the Internet via ether and satellite. The global audience included over 400,000 "partygoers" who explored the implications of cloning through ironic and humorous events like Biagio Imparato's demonstration of the effects of "nutell acloning" on music, and a stimulating roundtable with a biocomputer specialist, a social technician, and a museum curator, who discussed tomatoes and personality. Another innovative TNC collaboration was the network-based media fiction --- referred to as a "techno-thriller" by its creators --- The Great Web Crash (1996-98), coproduced with partners that included Musée National des Techniques, Paris; HotWired, San Francisco; and Inter Medium Institute, Osaka. For this event, TNC created a Planetary Information Breakdown on the Internet and on several radio stations throughout Europe. Radio TNC, one of Europe's earliest Internet radios, became an Emergency Web Station functioning as the platform for an extended collaboration. The result was the first programmed Web Crash in recorded human history. New episodes of the fiction were cohosted by partners in Europe, America, and Japan. The intercontinental tale of the "crash", with its victims "disappearing into the virtual beyond," intrigued Internet users and radio listeners and inspired numerous spin-offs. --Barbara Lee Williams, Leonardo/ISAST Awards Committee chairperson __________________________________________________ (artist questionnaire) Date of birth: 1963 and 1966 Date and location of your first major exhibition: Vienna, Austria, and Paris, France, 1992 Location where you currently work (city and country): Paris, France How do you see technology changing art for the good or ill in the next decade?: The widespread use of digital technologies in the artistic field is leading to many very exciting developments. Boundaries between disciplines are collapsing. Fresh collaborations are emerging at the dynamic interfaces of subculture, digital lifestyle, design, free software, advanced online communities, and experimental entertainment. One of the most interesting aspects is the emergence of a new frame of reference common to those who use these technologies in a creative way. It draws sustenance from a variety of sources, but especially fertile is the hot house environment where club-culture and net-culture converge. This opens up a creative playground where musicians, hackers, coders, curators, designers, producers etc. come together in full confidence to deal with the challenges, conflicts, and opportunities of this interwoven domain of activity. It will be interesting to see what brave new strategic experiments are taking shape in light of the rapid shift of social, economic and cultural spheres of action into global computer networks. What unexpected alliances are forming, what new options are presenting themselves, and what strategies are being developed to negotiate this new terrain? How will the energy released by the collision of competing activities and visions shake out in the digital culture of the 00s? It was amazing to witness, at the electrolobby (the new Ars Electronica festival sector produced and curated by TNC Network, how the invited bio-informatics specialists, interface designers, Internet label owners, or game designers, have used that common frame of reference to its maximal potential as a catalyst acting upon unconventional influences to transcend discrete disciplines and how ad hoc networking has been happening in the bustling halls and shadowy booths, setting the stage for future ventures... So, tomorrow's artistic activities will hopefully continue in this direction. And we look forward to experiencing irreverent, entertaining, and witty projects which have the capacity to function as catalysts, to define themselves in the process of exchange, and are milestones or perhaps merely hip, little hacks, aimed to activate our softskills. __________________________________________________ to learn more about Bruno Beusch and Tina Cassani's work, visit these websites: http://www.tnc.net http://electrolobby.aec.at/press.html http://kultur.aec.at/festival2000/press/presse_openx_e.html http://www.aec.at |