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Reviewer biography
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Ars Electronica 2003: CODE
' The Language of our Time Reviewed by Maia Engeli Ars Electronica is a 24-year-old yearly festival with exhibitions, conferences, award ceremonies, events, parties, and concerts spread over different places in the city of Linz, Austria. This was the fifth time that I went to Ars Electronica and I am still improving my skills to be at the most interesting place at each point in time. The decision to travel to Linz on Friday evening September 5th was a good one. In this way, I had enough time to see the different exhibitions on Saturday before the start of the conferences on Sunday. The main symposium in the Brucknerhaus was devoted to the festival theme 'CODE ' The Language of our time'. In five sessions 'The Meaning of Code', 'The Art of Code', 'Social Code', 'Collective Creativity', 'Tangible Code', 'Software & Art I', and 'Software & Art II' theoreticians and artists contributed their views and knowledge. Among the 39 invited symposium speakers there were only seven women, such a ratio is upsettingly bad! I skipped some of the men's talks in the symposium to go downstairs (which feels like underground) and participate in the alternative platform 'the electrolobby kitchen' with its spontaneous, dynamically changing program. The first session on 'The Meaning of Code' unveiled different understandings of the notion of code. Friedrich Kittler highlighted the historical background of the word 'code' explaining that - from the Roman Empire until the time of Napoleon - it meant books of law. Later the words 'to cipher' and 'to decipher' were replaced with technical notion of coding and decoding, which, thanks to Alan Turing, became the operational basis of computers. Cindy Cohn's talk 'Seven Ways in Which Code Equals Law' further expanded what code could stand for. Erkki Huhtamo added the view from art and Peter J. Bentley the view from computing. The first session made clear that CODE is a big theme and 'the language of computers' might not be the main issue. In 'The Art of Code' session the artists Richard Kriesche, Roman Verostko, and Casey Reas showed how code, genetic or generative, becomes an integral part of the artistic process as well as the product. Kriesche uses the 'Datawerk: Mensch' (Datawork: Men) and overlays different humans codes to generate works that include sociopolitical aspects, whereas Verostko's and Reas' work focus on producing the generation of aesthetic qualities. The 'Social Code' session included aspects like collective action, constructed languages, writerly computing, and design noir. As expected the Babylonian language confusion about and around the notion of code grew further. A divide between literate and illiterate computer coders seamed to open up after Florian Cramer's praise of the 'writerly' command-line centric user interface versus the 'readerly' GUI. Fiona Raby's refreshing presentation was characterized by designs that provoke critical thinking about established codes, inventions and research discoveries including life, love and sex. The 'Collective Creativity' session seamed to have too much of a commercial touch for my taste, so I stayed in the electrolobby to listen to the young guys from the demo scene (http://www.scene.org). It was a good choice in favour of a vibrant global community enthusiastically programming amazing computer animations ' collective creativity at its best. Back in the 'Collective Creativity' session upstairs Marc Canter was enthusiastically speaking about blogging; it seams that there is another divide ' bloggers and non-bloggers. 'Tangible Code' evidently had to start with a presentation by Hiroshi Ishii. Speaking with the pace of a machine gun he went through the different aspects of code, coding and tangible code, which he presented as the fourth issue in the sequence of code=program (formal), code = interface (input/output), code = interaction (causality loop), code=ideation (abstract and tangible). He showed numerous projects from the tangible media group as examples for haptic coding and tangible coding. Oliver Fritz showed examples of digitally produced building elements. Joachim Sauter emphasized generativity. He presented the technically as well as visually amazing generative stage and costumes developed for the opera 'Der Jude von Malta' for the Munich Biennale 2002. Another example was a Libeskind architecture generator based on elements from Libeskind's architectonic vocabulary and the 12 tone music with its very tight generative rules which apparently was used by Libeskind to generate the design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Further speakers in this session were Scott deLahunta adding the aspect of dance, dance notations and dance algorithms, and Jonathan Norton discussing coding versus composing music and how programming and composing have merged. After 3.5 days of Ars Electronica I had to leave for the next conference, therefore I missed the two sessions on 'Software & Art'. I recommend checking out the thread on nettime.org initiated by Lev Manovich's critique 'Don't call it Art' (http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0309/msg00102.html) to read some critical thoughts regarding AE in general and the software art aspect in particular. Manovich questions 'software art' or 'digital art' as art or contemporary art and provokes a variety of reactions. Armin Medosch has contributed his review of the festival, which is certainly worth reading. Andreas Broeckmann published the manuscript of the talk he gave at AE, providing a well-reflected view about the necessary qualities of software art. In general the reactions underlined the opinion that AE is not necessarily the place where the most interesting things happen and that the exhibition of the Prix Ars is not a curated exhibition, lacking a critical discourse about the exhibited projects. Not even the symposium nor the electrolobby discussions ' the one's I have attended ' really raised many critical questions. Armin Medosch compared AE with a 'very large ship that keeps going into the same direction even though the captain has thrown around the steering wheel'. At the Ars Electronica festival many things happen in parallel, which makes it an individual, personal experience for every participant. I mostly followed the mainstream program, but there were many smaller interesting looking conferences and discussions happening, like the 'Pixelspaces - DAMPF (Dance and Media Performance Fusion)' conference or the Radio-FRO-conference 'Towards a Society of Control'. Ars Electronica is a wonderful festival to attend and experience a synthesis of newly established media art and listen to different lectures on an interesting theme like CODE thereby learning a lot without getting too disturbed in one's established beliefs. Previous years' themes like 'unplugged', 'next sex' or 'life science' were more exciting. But after all, AE is a festival (Fest=party) and the various generations of media artists, researchers, designers, writers, curators, critiques, and theoreticians that travel to AE seem to get their share of insights, networking, and fun out of it. Two bilingual (German/English) publications are available from Hatje Cantz publishers: 'Ars Electronica 2003, Code - The Language of Our Time' with the texts of the symposium speakers, curators and artists from the different exhibitions. 'CyberArts 2003, International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica' with all the winners and honorary mentions of the Prix Ars Electronica, including a DVD and CD. These books are valuable documentations of the Symposium and the Prix. And there is the promise on the festival website that 'All presentations and discussions of the Ars Electronica 2003 CODE Symposium will be available on this website by the beginning of October.'
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