Ars Electronica
2006: Simplicity - The Art Of Complexity
Linz, Austria, August 31 - September 5,
2006
http://www.aec.at/en/festival/.
Reviewed by Maia Engeli
School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Simon Fraser University,
Vancouver, Canada
maia@enge.li
Like every year, there were a few changes
to the format of ARS, but this year they
seemed a little more extraordinary. ARS
is known as an electronic art festival
with exhibitions, concerts, and a three
day symposium that elaborates on a burning
and usually quite avant-garde theme like
Hybrid-Living in Paradox (2005),
Code - The Language of our Time
(2004), Unplugged-Art as the Scene
of Global Conflicts (2002), Next
Sex-Sex in the Age of its Procreative
Superfluousness (2001), or FleshFactor
- Informationsmaschine Mensch (1997).
This year the theme was Simplicity-The
Art of Complexity, a theme influenced
by John Maeda who was the curator of this
years symposium. Instead of running
over three days, it was reduced to one
day with two sessions, with designers,
artists, curators, engineers and a professional
blogger presenting. With this selection
of speakers the meaning of simplicity
and complexity in the context of art and
design was demonstrated. However, the
political provocations, cultural upheavals,
or social controversies that used to provoke
intense discourses among a larger part
of Ars Electronicas audience were
missing. A pity for a festival in Europe,
where traditionally various cultural,
social, political, and philosophical perspectives
get included in discourses about art and
design. Instead, the symposium offered
presentations by people with incredible
personal drive to take new approaches
to specific design questions. For example:
Gary Chen showed a number of simple spaces
to which he added unconventional space-transforming
cabinets that turn into complex configurable
landscapes for multiple spatial situations,
arrangements of furniture, and purposes.
Hugh Herr showed amazing developments
of prosthesis by connecting and merging
the human body with mechanically or computationally
smart devices. Jason Kotte, a professional
blogger, touched on the theme of complexity
by allowing a glimpse into his way of
working through numerous extensive information
sources with the aim of filtering and
presenting information in a "simplified"
form in his popular blog. Through this
symposium John Maeda was ablein
his own unconventional and unpretentious
style to convey a sense of the meaning
of simplicity as the art of complexity
in a design context.
An experiment at this years ARS
was "Going to the Country",
a one day excursion in search of simplicity
to the St. Florian Monastery, about an
hours drive from Linz. The baroque
splendor of the location offered an interesting
backdrop for performances, presentations
and exhibitions including space and time
for spiritual explorations. The day was
packed with parallel events like talks,
concerts, Zen bow shooting, a concert
with church bells, or the presentation
of John Maedas newest book "The
Laws of Simplicity" to name just
a few. My personal highlights of the day
included two concerts on the famous Bruckner
organ (named after the 19th
century composer), a classical concert
in the morning and a contemporary one
at the end of the day; a performance-lecture
by Erkki Huhtamo, Zach Lieberman and Golan
Levin titled "Musings on Hands"
in which Zach and Golan performed pieces
using their own software to create music
through manipulations of visuals and Erkki
did archeological intermezzos looking
at historical examples of performing hands
that included amazing film footage from
ombromanie (hand shadows), lightning sketches
and magic shows; and Toshio Iwais
2.5 hour presentation which started with
images from his childhood and the various
objects he had created since he was little
to take the audience along a fantastic
journey through his artistic development
including some live demonstrations. He
ended with the series of toys developed
for, with and by his daughter (just published
as a book), and shared the fact that he
decided to keep computers and electronic
toys away from her for the moment, thereby
raising the question about whether and
when a child should be introduced to them.
Another important part of the ARS festival
is the PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA. The prix
is given in seven categories: Computer
Animation, Digital Musics, Interactive
Art, Net Vision, Digital Communities,
and u19-Freestyle Computing. The PRIX
is celebrating its 20th anniversary this
year. The categories have changed slightly
over the years; the first categories in
1987 were Computer Animation, Computer
Music, and Computer Graphics. The newest
category, introduced in 2004, is Digital
Communities, a category that is not aimed
at art projects but was given to an art
project for the first time this year.
canal*ACCESSIBLE allows handicapped people
in Barcelona to take pictures of obstacles
and put them online. In addition to built
obstacles, obstructing situations caused
by inconsiderate citizens are also captured.
The platform thereby provides the handicapped
with an empowering forum to make some
of their frustrations apparent. On a more
general level it seems that Electronic
Art, from the perspective of Ars
Electronica, has entered a contemplative
phase by revisiting known principles,
exploring issues more in depth, making
small steps, or including historical references
or, as Hans Leopoldseder puts it by using
a quote from Marcel Proust, "not
seeking new landscapes, but seeing them
with new eyes".
The titles of the jury statements like
"are we bored" (Digital Music),
"Interaction Art Today: Between Tradition
and Innovation" (Interactive Art),
or "The Sole Requirement: Make a
Compelling Piece" (Computer Animation)
further illustrate this observation. This
year the exhibition of the prize-winning
projects seemed to have been reduced to
the ones that were attractive to a larger
audience, i.e. the population of the City
of Linz. Therefore, all of the interactive
art projects including the honorary mentions
got exhibited, while projects from net
vision and digital communities were only
shown as very minimal posters at the conference
venue. For the audience of ARS this was
a pity; access to these projects should
be provided during the festival to promote
their discussion.
There were a number of other exhibitions.
CAMPUS, an exhibition by a media art or
design school has become part of ARS since
2001. This year the Media Lab of University
of Art and Design Helsinki presented projects
in the 4 areas: Digital cultural heritage,
e-learning, advanced interactive audiovisual
narrative system, and empowering human
beings in the use of digital tools, which
had an outstanding professional look to
them. "Tangible, Audible, Playable,
Wearable" was another exhibition
of student work of the local Interface
Culture masters program run by Christa
Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. This
exhibition showed a rich variety of explorations
into the possibilities of physical interactions.
Projects included the use of radio waves
produced by the human body when one touched
an electric fence to drive an installation:
clapping coconuts to play movie scenes,
using a scanner to create an image which
then is locked in a can for a more or
less infinite amount of time: and applying
wearable electronic gadgetry with magnets
to complete the partial circuitry of a
jacket. These are just a few indications
that give a sense of the range of technologies,
themes and new meanings the students are
researching and discovering in this program.
On the Hauptplatz, the main square of
Linz, two bolder pieces were
exposed: Sledgehammer keyboard, which
required a hammer to hammer in
a message on a large keyboard, and Maschine
Mensch, (human machine), a setup in which
humans are integral parts of a machine
which is controlling the muscle of the
humans upper arms as part of a mechanism
to sort colored blocks. Both pieces were
excellent choices that allowed the ARS-specific
audience and the people of Linz to merge.
There was much more to ARS ELECTRONICA
2006, but this review cannot comment on
it all. There were other conferences like
When Cybernetics meets Aesthetics
or Pixelspaces 2006 Goblin
City. There were many more concerts
and performancesthere are traditionally
lots of music events at ARStitled
Some Sounds and Some Fury,
Music with Roots in the Aether,
or Visualizing Stravinsky.
As a novelty this year there were three
6-day workshops on either Python, Arduino,
or OpenFrameWorks offered in the electrolobby
kitchen. Ars Electronica produces two
publications each year. One is the catalogue,
this year titled "Simplicity
The Art of Complexity", covering
the theme of the main conference and some
of the other conferences, as well as texts
by artists and curators at the different
venues. The other publication is called
"Cyberarts" and covers the PRIX
ARS ELECTRONICA, including jury statements,
prize-winning projects, and honorary mentions
of all categories. The conferences are
also available as podcasts at http://www.aec.at/en/festival2006/podcasts/index.asp.
Ars Electronica is a great electronic
arts festival with a substantial tradition
of over 25 years of addressing a broad
audience that ranges from theoreticians,
artists, and designers to the general
public of Linz. This review cannot do
justice to the multitude of possible experiences
of this festival. Please read it as the
point of view of a passionate visitor
to ARS who always expects to find there
a mirror of the current state of art and
ongoing discourse in electronic arts.