The Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF) is an international and interdisciplinary biennial that focuses on art, technology and society. DEAF presents a wide range of program segments, including a large exhibition of interactive artworks and installations in the former Post Office at the Coolsingel, Rotterdam. There will be concerts, performances, seminars, workshops and an academic symposium. The festival is characterized by a thematic approach. Its aim is to bring current developments and themes around art in our technological culture to a diverse audience.
In our daily lives, nonliving matter plays a crucial role in nearly everything we do, often beyond our immediate control. For example, the food we eat influences our mood and behavior; the technologies we use shape our social interactions; and climate impacts on our daily rhythms. On a more global level, modern material science, recent natural disasters and the current state of the global environment also indicate that the causal power of nonliving matter can no longer be denied. Acknowledging this ‘power of things’ not only provides new insights into many phenomena, but also changes the way we relate to the world, as we step away from our contemporary, arguably hazardous, human centered worldview. With The Power of Things as its theme, this edition of the Dutch Electronic Art Festival explores a radically different worldview: one that breaks down the categorical distinction between the living and the nonliving and attributes a vital force to both.
The theory that there is a vital force within nonliving matter has appeared at various points in history, but the idea that matter has causality and agency seems to be becoming more widespread than ever at present. “Vitalist” philosophies and materialist approaches are flourishing in philosophy and science. But art is the field where material causality exerts its strongest force. As every artist knows, the outcome of an artistic process is largely determined by the materials used. While scientific experimentation predominantly aims for a better understanding of what matter is, art explores what matter does. Knowing what matter does contributes to a greater knowledge of how things – whether foodstuffs, commodities or something else – act and what their particular propensities or tendencies are. Recognizing the power of things could even reveal how seemingly passive things have crucial impacts on social issues, political affairs and environmental problems. By embodying it in tangible works, art helps us to acknowledge this power.
The clean, digital world of bits has become inextricably tied to dirty, messy old atoms … – Daniel Nye Griffiths, Forbes
Deze editie van DEAF dwingt de bezoeker stil te staan bij het feit dat ons leven is opgebouwd uit dingen. Zelfs het digitale is uiteindelijk slechts materie, (…) Daar ligt de kracht van de tentoonstelling, in het gebruik van schoonheid om mensen te verleiden beter naar dingen te kijken. – Pim Verlaek, Metropolis M
Deze intrigerende expositie onthult dat het verschil tussen levende organismen en matierie minder groot is dan we vaak denken... – Jeroen Junte, de Volkskrant
DEAF 2012 is produced in collaboration with V2_, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, REWIRE, WORM, De Gouvernestraat, Virtueel Platform, Todays Art, CBK.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deaf2012/
In a world dominated by an omnipresence of media and telecommunications we are expected to act in and with the networks these systems create. Interactivity in this context becomes an intrinsic part of our societal, political and economic ideals creating new forms of cultural and social structures. Our positions as participating citizens, creative consumers or critical activists force us into the role of being co-author or determinant element of the landscape of (media)realities we live in, in this sense interactivity is mostly promoted to fulfill social, cultural and political ideals. But direct interaction with such systems and networks often leads to unexpected and unforeseen results inspiring diversity and variation instead of fulfilling one single social and political ideal at will.
Interaction
is a characteristic of every living being. Interaction is the formation
of connections and networks, and the bringing about of organisation,
structure and memory through interplay within them. Interaction changes
bodies and objects giving rise to variation. Interaction is not a
morphing of exsisting structures but adding information to them, and
therefore the formation of thoughts and structures.
To better
understand interaction within and between networks, and the social,
cultural and artistic forms it generates, we must analyze the
principles according to which it works. In biological networks,
structures arise spontaneously through self-organization on the basis
of interactions which affect each other. Technological networks, by
contrast, are formal and stringently controlled and permit hardly any
self-organization or spontaneity. Social and cultural interaction,
however, does not fit into this binary division: it is hybrid and
continually yields surprising outcomes, even though strict control
functions are at play at the same time. Flexibility and temporariness
are therefore key terms when we talk about interaction in fields such
as art, culture, architecture and other domains.
DEAF07 is about sloppy, messy interaction: interaction whose outcome is malleable and not definitive. Yet such forms last a surprisingly long time; they are robust because they are able to continually reorganize and adapt. Rigid blueprints, that mostly understand interaction within a cause and effect process, offer no solutions to today’s big social and ecological problems, such as global warming, immigration, multiculturalism, cultural dynamics and the effects of globalization. In these processes, interaction is unfolding messily, and in much more elusive ways than we ever suspected. DEAF07 thus will address the questions of how organization and structure arise through this kind of interaction, and how they become effective. These questions are being considered from artistic, architectural, social, political and cognitive perspectives.
DEAF07 will show us the results of this for art, culture and science, in theory and in practice. Projects vary from the tactical use of media and networks by artists and activists to sub-themes such as cultural dynamics. Topics include the design of networks and interaction in and between them; the relationship between power, control and self-organization in technological systems and in social networks; and the demand for diversity and variation in a globalization process whose hallmark is standardization.
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Under this title, the theme of DEAF04 focuses on the functioning of open and closed systems and what structures are emerging from them. One of the important sub themes in this event is the role of feelings as being the essence of actions that affect and influence these systems.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Cold War was no longer the defining element in our view of the world, euphoria about an open Europe and an open society was widespread. However, increasing globalization has demonstrated that the world as an open system entails more than being an open market. After 9/11, openness has become associated primarily with feelings of insecurity and is regarded as a threat to our own surrounding and identity.
During DEAF04, a number of
provocative art projects will address current social, technological, political and cultural
issues revolving around both open and closed systems. Within this thematic framework, DEAF04 presents interactive
art as an open system continuously creating new relationships as a basic concept of interactive arts.
DEAF04 aims at an exchange between various disciplines such as art and science, and poses the questions as to how systems function, how they are designed, and how they are employed in art and culture, social settings, the economy and computer science.
DEAF04 will show projects
concerning an interactive art that functions as an open affective
system, as a means of calling forth feelings and making them visible,
from the individual to the global level. During the festival, this
interactive artistic approach will be expanded to other disciplines,
towards a better understanding of the basic principles of
interacting-on-feeling.
Feeling is the engine of our actions. It has recently been demonstrated
that we never do anything purely rationally. This is true of almost
every human action - we cannot make a decision without relying on
feeling or intuition. Interactive art - art the viewer must do
something to in order to make something out of it or have an experience
- is an art of feeling. Every interactive work tries to entice its user
to perform certain actions, in the hope that the work will thereby
reorganize itself into an unforeseen coherence. Interactive art is by
definition non-autonomous and organizes itself as an open system, which
functions via the exchange of matter, energy and/or information with
the environment (i.e. the visitor).
Media are increasingly becoming means of constructing realities rather than representing reality. Media do not depict the existing world; they replace it with a different reality – a "media reality," or rather "media realities." How different media shape reality is a recurrent theme in the programs of V2_.
The DEAF03 program will focus on the artistic, political, cultural, social and software-related implications of techniques for data clustering (from Wunderkammer to Meta-Data). The program will emphasize the role of interactivity as a method to manipulate, transform and individually shape media realities. DEAF takes a fundamental interest in the present: a present which is condensing into an archive before our very eyes.
In various contemporary views the archive has proved to be a strong metaphor. The human body has become a genetic archive, now that it has been digitally opened up by the Human Genome Project. Culture, as found in museums and other art institutions and in magazines and cultural supplements as well, has been described as an archive that new art must both react against in order to be new and penetrate in order to be recognized as art. Our language is an archive of meanings that can be unlocked by philological methods. It teaches us who we are and where we come from. The unconscious is an archive of all the traumatic experiences that define our identity. History is a database from which facts can be arbitrarily retrieved, and now lacks one big unifying story.
It could be argued that the latter postmodernist view of the "fragmentation" and "deconstruction" of everything in the archive of history is related to the way in which data were stored and retrieved in the early days of the information age: via non-hierarchical, non-linear search engines. Digitally speaking, all data then were equal, whether they were text, image, sound, protocol, program code or anything else. Since the 1990's a new form of structuring digital archives has emerged. Now it is not just individual data that are stored in databases. The relationships and correlations between the various data are also being stored, by using "Meta-Data." Meta-Data (also known as "tags") are data that describe and categorize other data. Meta-Data as means of ordering, hierarchizing, streamlining and evaluating have become increasingly important social, political and economical instruments in an informational sphere long considered value-free.
Information isn't power, but knowledge is. Knowledge is tagged, or intelligently grouped and combined, information. Knowledge is the result of the (open or concealed, private or public, controllable or associative) knowledge management of data and data clusters.
Archives no longer just contain our past for inspection by historians, tax collectors and other researchers. We are permanently living in archives: All the sites we visit on the Internet are logged by our search engines. All our shopping is registered by our supermarkets. Each time we perform an electronic act we add information to the running archive of our activities as both individuals and members of target groups. On the basis of such archives the policies for the future are being planned, from marketing strategies to decisions about where to build shops. Behind almost every activity in the hard, material world nowadays hides an immaterial archive (for instance the storage of data from video surveillance and other security equipment). We are living in the world’s online archive, or more to the point, we are living in the world-as-archive, as a constellation of databases.
Because they are continuously available and accessible, archives have become an essential factor in acting in the present. One could even say that archives have become crucial in how the present is created and reflected upon. Archives are becoming just as process-like in character as the present already is. The individual's experience of the present can be increasingly described as the moment when an "unforeseen" link is forged between tagged information clusters that reach him or her through the media. Why does an archive allow one connection to be established and not another? Through which media and by what software can which connections be made within and between archives? And which connections are excluded by those media and software? What role does the individual play in this?
Knowledge can be imposed upon the users of archives, or it can be developed by them by using strategic tools and agents. A growing number of artists, artists' groups and architects are developing software-based systems in which data organize themselves into complex knowledge systems of which the users are but one of several organizing factors. Databases, software and archives are increasingly the objective of artistic interventions. DEAF03 will explore the artistic potential of databases and archives in very diverse forms.
(from the online Festival introduction)
]]>DEAF00 investigated how our perception of time is influenced by the widespread deployment of media technology (photography, film, television, internet, interactive media and virtual reality) in our daily lives.
DEAF00 (2000) from V2_ on Vimeo.
The Dutch Electronic Art Festival, DEAF00, was presented in November 2000 in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). This international and interdisciplinary festival presented an exhibition of interactive art, selected WWW-sites, live performances, lectures and artist presentations, workshops and an academic symposium. DEAF00 had its own special website and was accompanied by a book publication dealing with the festival theme, Machine Times. DEAF was organised by V2_Organisation Rotterdam and addressed a varied audience of specialists as well as students and the general public.
]]>On the contrary, they indicate the active production of the "accidental potential" in any product. The invention of the ship implies its wreckage, the steam engine and the locomotive discover the derailment (Virilio). The accident is the ultimate functioning of a product.
DEAF98 explores what an "ars accidentalis" might be. The festival presents and discusses accidents and their preferred environments in such areas as art, sound, architecture, urban planning, economy, and electronic networks. It investigates interactive machines, virtual environments, acoustic spaces and hardware and software projects for their "accidental" potential. DEAF98 is not looking for conclusive answers. It investigates the project in the face of failure.
DEAF98 explores the productive potentials of rupture, friction, instability and unpredictability. The "ars accidentalis" embraces malfunction and accidents as inherent to technology and integrates them into the creative process. DEAF98 presents and discusses accidents and their preferred environments in areas like art, sound, architecture, urban planning, economy, and electronic networks.
Treinongelukken zouden niet bestaan zonder treinen, vliegrampen bestaan bij de gratie van het vliegtuig en harde schijven in computers crashen sinds er computers bestaan. Machines zijn feilbaar.
De oorzaak doet er niet zoveel toe, interessanter is om het falen van machines als onontgonnen gebied te zien en er binnen de kunst iets mee te doen. Een bekend voorbeeld is de fotografie; de eerste wazige foto's waren niets meer en minder dan mislukte opnames, maar daaruit ontstond een geheel nieuwe kijk op de fotografie. Het Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF98) betrekt in The Art of the Accident diverse disciplines als geluidskunst, elektronische kunst, fotografie en architectuur. Kunstenaars als Perry Hoberman en Debra Solomon maakten speciaal voor de tentoonstelling elektronische installaties waarin verschillende aspecten van 'het ongluk' aan bod komen. Naast de exposities zijn er een symposium, workshops en diverse performances.
De opening van DEAF98 is de anderhalf uur durende hightech theater/media performance Jet Lag van het Amerikaanse The Builders Association en Diller+Scofidio. Ene Dearborn doet daarin mee aan een zeilrace om de wereld met camara-apparatuur van de BBC aan boord. Ongelukkigerwijs verliest hij de moed en hij besluit de hele reis in scène te zetten. Met nep-radioverslagen en nep-filmopnamen overtuigt hij de wereld dat hij aan de winnende hand is.
Het tweede deel van de voorstelling vertelt het ongelooflijke, maar waargebeurde verhaal van een oma en haar kleinzoon die samen een half jaar lang continu heen en weer vlogen tussen Amsterdam en New York om aan de vader van de jongen te ontkomen. Uiteindelijk werd een jetlag de oma fataal.
DEAF98 (1998) from V2_ on Vimeo.
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The making of Architecture is a major coalescing activity in society, bringing together many flows into a single complex stream. In classical terms, architecture is a socially significant synthesis of the old anti-theses: public/private, art/science and capital/labor. As long as society is dominated by institutions of authority that require a basis external to themselves for their existence (divine right of kings, social contract), monumental architecture is required to embody objective knowledge. (...) However when society can no longer define itself in classical deterministic, objective terms, but only in terms of continuously shifting, fluid dynamical fields of activity, then architecture must forsake the monumental because there is no human experience to codify.
(Lebbeus Woods in War and Architecture. Pamphlet Architecture #15 1993)
DEAF96 is about the relationship and interaction between the city and computer networks as social, cultural, economical and political spaces: the city with its often hierarchically structured architecture, infrastructure and geographically local communities (neighborhoods, boroughs) and the networks with their virtual communities and their heterogeneous, non-hierarchical structure.
Computer networks present us with a 'space' that can no longer be described in terms of Euclidean mathematics: everything and everyone is omnipresent, things that are far away seem close and things that are close seem far away. 'Locality' only manifests itself at the outer end of the network where we log in, but it meaning and structure changes by being logged in. These networks have caused an ever increasing (con)fusion of public and private domains. Radio, television and Internet as forms of public spaces have penetrated our living rooms and have become windows, not only on the world, but on ourselves as well. The 'subject' can be seen as the representation of the individual in the public space which, through the media, is constructed more and more by the forces of economics and politics.
The interaction between computer networks and the city takes place on many levels. It is a complex field of (social) links, that continually show new formations and condensations in both spaces. Architecture and 'unstable' art therefore have in common that both are subjects of a 'metadiscussion' mixing social, economic, scientific and philosophical issues.
As a result of the industrial revolution large industrial cities have emerged in the past 150 years. Technological innovation applied to the realization of ideals is one of the characteristics of this industrial revolution, with self-realization and self-determination of the individual as key concepts. These ideals are realized in some ways by gaining control over the environment. Applying technology is increasingly important in this, as it renders the world 'makeable' and controllable, but at the same time making the structure of fragmentation more complex.
Simultaneously with the rise of large industrial cities we see a strong fragmentation of the city and the urban community. The fragmentation of a world view in a general sense had begun long before with the onset of modern science. This can be seen on a physical level in the modern city by the revolution in transport, amongst others. It starts at the end of the last century with the arrival of the train, followed by the automobile and the airplane and seems to have reached its ultimate destination in digital communication media. This revolution in transport has greatly influenced the 'densifying' of the city as it pulls more and more towards it and at the same time expands ever outwards. The city: 'polis' of knowledge and power.
Modern science attempts to describe the laws of reality by methodical observation. At the same time, a search is undertaken for the very nature of the 'autonomous' individual in which self-realization and self-determination can best be accomplished. The analysis of the individual takes place from the conviction that the rational, objective world, the world of constant values, is a model by which to understand the social, political and cultural processes in which the individual is functioning. Mostly, such theories and models are applied in an all-encompassing fashion, trying to make the world fit within these models. Centralization, hierarchy and linear progress are the operative words here. This type of organization of the world is strongly defined by social and political forces like the state, the church and, increasingly so, commercial institutes. A lot of the urbanization and architectural projects from the end of the last and beginning of this century can be understood if we look at the models described above: the city can be 'read' as a linear succession of gradually compiled developments. This view of the city however is no longer sufficient, because the city no longer is experienced exclusively through the physical presence of its inhabitants in time and space, but increasingly through the interaction with forces that affect it via computer networks. Television, telephone, radio and especially digital computer networks have fragmented the experience of the individual and/or the community which traditionally took place in a 'continuum' of time and space, into a multitude of influences and meanings. Because of the discontinuity of the virtual worlds within computer networks 'time and place' can no longer be understood in the traditional, physical sense. Place now means everywhere.
In this view, the city is a matrix of varying structures and relations. These express themselves in the city's infrastructure, architecture and design that among them constitute the territory of the urban environment. It has become a field of force with constantly changing centers of gravity and a scarcely defined core, much more a hypertext in which temporary connections exist between many points and many developments. A world of variables with complexity and chance as its underlying structure.
People are connected in time and space. Their relationships are shaped by the organization and experience of time and space. Radio and television have changed this dramatically, placing the individual in a totally different context, in a world that is forever coming towards us without the need for us to move ourselves. 'Place and time' that form the context of the sounds and images that come to us through the electronic media are not the same 'time and place' that the viewer/listener is experiencing. Computer networks accelerate this process, resulting in the timeless, spaceless virtual environments of digital networks. The context of words, images and sounds seems to have been completely lost here.
The impact of digital networks is felt in the dissociation of individual experience of place and time. This leaves the individual in a fragmented world with a complex structure and redefines the way in which individual experience comes about. The individual has become both receiver and transmitter, constantly switching among many frequencies, in a continually changing matrix of connections between fragments. The individual's articulation of experience and perception in time and space are discontinuous here. Science and the arts, as expressed in (image)language and digital media amongst others, are the tools with which to reconstruct this fragmented reality time and again.
Almost daily we read about companies that invest in the infrastructure of communication media, in computer networks like the Internet. Cable networks are being acquired by companies that see a golden future ahead. Potentially, the market is enormous. The Internet brings millions of consumers within reach who can buy individually tailored services without leaving their homes. At the moment, companies are emphasizing infrastructure and direct economical functionality in order to open up this market and by and large ignore the social and cultural implications of the medium.
These past few years have seen the emergence of lots of interfaces that, either through the Internet or otherwise, are designed to offer accessibility and functionality to virtual worlds. The emphasis here is on the comfort of interfaces and on the removal of obstacles that are inherent in technology. Aspects that are characteristic of electronic technology, like the amount of instability it causes in the environments where it is applied, are not regarded as possibly positive qualities. They are not included in the design of interfaces and virtual worlds. Every eventuality and any disfunctionality we know from reality is avoided in order to create environments from which experience and danger are all but banned.
On the 'drawing boards' the designers produce 'pretty pictures' and interfaces and works of art that strive for complete control over the system and its users. It seems no attempt is being made to make a connection between the experiences of individuals in a world full of physical resistance and the mental discontinuity of the world of virtual environments.
Are these the virtual worlds we really want? Worlds that have been completely hollowed out for the sake of functionality and comfort? Technology should not be regarded as an autonomous, fully controllable system, but should be seen within the context in which it is functioning: the whole of social, political and cultural ties within which users are operating and in which coincidence and instability are important elements.
Inextricably linked to the design, accessibility and functionality of virtual worlds is the question of which metaphors to use. The city and the house are both metaphors one encounters a lot on websites. Undoubtedly they have strategic meaning with regard to the structure of the Internet. But in more general terms they refer to an organizational structure which is historically defined by a modernist view of the city and the place of the house therein, resulting in a makeable and controllable environment, whose organizational structure is primarily derived from geographical organization and the restriction of the individual.
The network consists of the communication structure and the different forms of communicative interaction between people and between people and organizations. It has no geographic orientation and cannot be mapped out in a geometrical sense. In computer networks a variety of metaphors is being used for the virtual worlds that are under construction, but the computer networks themselves can be seen as metaphors as well. The network metaphor shows us a changed insight in the way our world is organized and in the way in which we function as individuals in this world. The use of this metaphor indicates that insights are changing in fields such as brain research, robotics, economy, urban planning and other scientific and cultural projects being developed today. This metaphor contains concepts like heterogeneous, non-hierarchical, coincidence and instability.
These concepts are not new, but they are being radicalized in the interaction between the analogue and the digital worlds and they influence the way in which we think about and organize computer networks.
As these concepts currently have a theoretical foundation, they should eventually be implemented in practical applications and models. What the possible consequences are for the organization of our environment and for the functioning of the individual in this environment, is a question that will put to the artists and scientists who are present at DEAF96. No doubt this question will be tackled extensively in discussing the many concrete projects and presentations.
The question is not whether art has a place in the telematicised world, but whether art might be the vehicle to take us to new conceptions of individual identity, ... and notions of community.
(Roy Ascott, catalogue Prix Ars Electronica 1995)
DEAF96 introduction text by Alex Adriaansens, 1996
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DEAF95 is presented under the main theme of: Interfacing Realities. Interface literally means "cutting edge". In man-machine relations it refers to the hard- and software that is used to facilitate and optimize the coupling of man and machine. During DEAF95 the interface in machine and computer art take center stage. The development of the interface is approached from different disciplines, including art, robotics, medical industry and virtual reality.
DEAF95 (Dutch Electronic Art Festival) is a continuation of the Manifestation for Unstable Media that has been organised by the V2_Organisation since 1987. During this art- and mediatechnology event, interfaces with other disciplines, like science, will be investigated. In the course of the years DEAF95 has matured into an interdisciplinary exchange and meeting place for a varied audience. Scientists and artists meet during symposia, and for the less knowledgeable there are special seminars. The exhibition, on the other hand, is designed to help the general public to find their way easily. The subtitle of this year's festival is 'Interfacing Realities'. It intends to re-evaluate current notions of reality in the light of the electronic media which increasingly influence our experience of reality. DEAF95 also wants to contribute to the improvement of a (new) media critique, which is why an outstanding group of artists, scientists and critics has been invited for a symposium which is supported by the Royal Dutch Academy of Science.
Interfaces have been designed to simplify the use of mechanical and digital devices. In the broadest sense, the interface is a coded matrix which enables communication between different systems, mechanic or otherwise. The interface between man and machine is determined by the physiological, psychological and cultural conditions of man and the technical, mechanical and electronic structure of machines. Both are subject to historical, social and cultural conditioning, which leads to a vast spectrum of functions and ways of interacting. Information engineers who are confronted with the difficulty of designing a system of interfacial metaphors to connect man and machine increasingly collaborate with artists and graphic designers to find viable and creative solutions. Beside the symposium dedicated to this discussion, DEAF95 features special presentations by research centers for artists like the Tokyo-based Art Lab, the Canon Culture Program where engineers co-operate with artists, and Telepresence Research from Palo Alto, Ca., where artists develop interfaces in the areas of telepresence and virtual reality.
The DEAF95 international exhibition is more extensive than in other years. Fourteen works will be presented in the V2 building, the Lantaren/Venster theater, Marine Safety's harbour simulator and the Erasmus University, and will try to give an overview over the ways in which artists currently approach the question of the interface. Bar codes, specially designed keyboards for chickens, body movements and even Pinocchio-style fancy dress are employed to connect the different preconditioned worlds between man and machine. We are convinced that DEAF95 will result in a fertile exchange between the realities of the artist, the scientist and the audience. The challenge is great since, more than ever, electronic media are at the center of attention, and more than ever they determine the organisation of our living and working environments and our views of the world and of ourselves. It is high time, therefore, for critical and creative reflection.
With the rise of electronic media in our living and working environments, different lifestyles and ways of thinking are juxtaposed without forcing their integration in a global social and political system. There is a slow shift from the 'top-down, few to all' system of television, radio and papers to the grass-roots 'bottom-up, many to many' system in which the questions of interactivity and identity are high on the agenda. The concept of the mass as a homogenous, shapeless group can now, in the light of the new media, be seen as a domain of dynamic and complex interaction between small groups and individuals, each with their own identity. The individualisation of the media goes hand in hand with the rise of an increasingly intuitive, and more individual, interface design which aims more and more at the cultural differences in the interpretation of what we percieve. Also, studies and scientific research into the modes and condition of perception are on the rise. DEAF95 examines the different aspects of interfaces or, in other words, with the means that are employed for using the (electronic) machine intuitively.
During DEAF95, the relation between art and technology, is explored with regard to machine art: art made with (electronic) machines, and art in which the machines play a dominant part in experiencing the work. The machine is no longer a tool but an integral part of the artwork. The interface that is used is of utmost importance. The pieces in the DEAF95 exhibition display a great variety in interfaces, both in hard- and software. Interactivity and virtuality are key concepts in this context, since they point to important changes regarding fine art practice and theory. Machine art is here closely linked to a changed view of reality which can best be described as complex, dynamic and interactive systems. A reality where the connectivity of the individual, as shaped by electronic networks and virtual environments, takes center stage and where reality is nothing more than a crossroads in a collection of virtualities (possible realities), be they machine generated or not. The rise of rational sciences during the Renaissance meant the start of a quest for a new Holy Grail: the one mathematical formula expressing the essence of all physical processes. The French philosopher and mathematician Descartes, the founder of a rational, methodical and dualistic paradigm, still influences the way in which we experience our world. Descartes claimed that sensory perception is an insufficient and fallacious way to come to an 'objective' interpretation of reality. Science needed instruments and devices. In this Cartesian view, the domain of numbers is more reliable than sensorial perception when a description of reality is needed.
Currently, we seem to live in a hyper-cartesian world since more and more virtual - i.e. algorithmically constructed, computed - worlds are being presented as increasingly real. On the other hand, we tend to perceive the world less and less from a dualistic point of view where good and evil, ugly and fair, or virtual and real are juxtaposed. For there is a grey area between those extremes, an area that concerns us much more than any of the extremes. An area where the interaction between those extremes takes shape in the form of all kinds of unexpected social, political and cultural models.
DEAF95 suggests that reality can force itself upon us in many different ways and that it is the crossroads of the possible scenarios (the virtualities) where, at this moment, interesting cross-pollination takes place. The quest for the smallest particle in physics eventually led to an important conclusion: not the particle is essential but the interaction between the particle and the observer. At the start of this century, the physicist Max Planck already said that the observer determines the research results at quantum level. Objective observation therefore becomes observer-objectivity. The same physical process will result in different outcomes with different observers. Observer and observed are part of the same system and are interdependent; they interact constantly. This was an important point of departure for thinking about interactivity.
The late Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser, who frequently dealt with media, art and technology, considers the social, political and cultural shifts of today to be indicative of a reality that is less and less singular. The question as to what is real is asked more emphatically at some points in history than at others. Constantly we come up with new answers, depending on the changing insights we gain in ourselves and the world we live in. In an interview with the German magazine ARCH+, Flusser expresses quite clearly how our notion and experience of reality have shifted. For him, virtuality follows from reality. He purposely refers to 'virtuality' and not to 'virtual reality' since he considers the latter to be terminologically wrong. Virtual reality implies a difference between physical and simulated realities. This is, however, a difference stemming from 15th century dualistic thinking. Flusser prefers to see the individual as immersed in an information-ocean of concentric waves that all move in the direction of the individual located at its center. The intensity of the experience of reality is dependent on the waves of information that come closest to it. This information becomes more real than other waves that stay at a greater distance. But, according to Flusser, an event will never become totally real due to new waves (virtualities) that turn up and destabilize the current reality. Random factors become very important at this point, for the random coincidence of waves can give birth to new unexpected realities. Flusser's model is also applicable, for example, to evolution theory. Evolution then reveals man as 'a fantastic accident', as American evolution theorist Stephen J. Gould expressed it. As one of the many possibilities in the evolutionary process. Here, reality is a cross-section of virtualities of, for example, a scientifically oriented description of reality and one based on sensorial perception.
From this vantage point, holography, multimedia, internet and other non-linear technologies find truly new applications which shape this view of the experience of reality. DEAF95's subtitle, 'Interfacing Realities', should be read with this in mind. The interface as an instrument to connect different descriptions of reality. The rise of the machine in art, from film and photography to video and computers, has enabled the construction of an artwork which behaves as a system and in which the machine determines production and perception. The computer as electronic machine has transformed the artwork into a dynamic and interactive system in which spectator and artwork merge. This link between man and machine is enabled by the interface that rises from the interaction between cognitive sciences and intuitive arts. The shift of the artwork from object to system is closely connected to today's shifting view of the world. As such, contemporary machine art is a representation of the rapidly changing view of ourselves and the world around us, a world which we increasingly view as a complex, dynamic and interactive structure. Relations and interactions have become pivotal. It is a shift from a world of constants to a world of variables, as Peter Weibel expressed it. A shift from a closed system to an open one, from an objective to an observer-objective world. Or, as the V2_Organisation expressed it in her 1987 Manifesto for the Unstable Media: 'Instability as a creative force in the artwork.'
The festival program includes an international exposition of electronic art projects and installations at the V2_Building and at Lantaren/Venster theater. In the Digital Dive café visitors will be able to browse the World Wide Web and view recent CD-ROM productions on computer terminals arranged in specially designed booths. A Forum initiates a critical debate about the future development of CD-ROM as an artistic medium.
The Music and Interfaces program offers lectures, concerts and special demonstrations. The Crossings project deals with the representation of computer spaces by computer-animated virtual environment and is presented in the Rotterdam Harbor Simulator. In the Symposium an international group of researchers and artists discusses social, cultural, philosophical and technological questions related to human-machine interfaces, and gives demonstrations of the latest developments in this field. The World Wide Web is the theme of the Wiretap 1.11 program which is presented as part of DEAF95. An Adventures Night at the music venue Nighttown sees a six hour program during which different (art) disciplines are brought together in one event. Two Seminars are held prior to DEAF95 as introductions for the general audience to the technological, artistic and theoretical themes of the festival.
DEAF94 will center around subjects like "life" and "nature" since, in our technological culture, no other topics are under such pressure. Definitions of life, often closely connected to religious beliefs, and experiencing nature have always been linked to intangible primeval forces that focus our attention on the supernatural and/or the religious. That which seemed holy and should not be meddled with has become manageable. Body-piercing, sex operations, genetically manipulated cows and, before long, square tomatoes show that even the biological is construed and constructed. We ourselves will take the next step in evolution.
Longer text
This is the first time DEAF will take place in Rotterdam and it is a combination of the annual festival "Manifestation for the Unstable Media" of the V2_Organisation and festival initiatives by ISEA and WDS. This combination has resulted in this festival. Each year, the festival has a current theme centered around the influence of technology on art and society. In 1993, the festival's main focus was the body culture which is closely connected to the media culture idea in which more and more actions and contacts are realized through digital media. This year, the festival will center around subjects like "life" and "nature" since, in our technological culture, no other topics are under such pressure. Definitions of life, often closely connected to religious beliefs, and experiencing nature have always been linked to intangible primeval forces that focus our attention on the supernatural and/or the religious. That which seemed holy and should not be meddled with has become manageable. Body-piercing, sex operations, genetically manipulated cows and, before long, square tomatoes show that even the biological is construed and constructed. We ourselves will take the next step in evolution.
De thematiek van DEAF94 befrof de "Digitale Natuur". Door technologische innovatie en een veranderende kijk op onszelf zien we dat de technologische creatie van dat wat wij "leven" noemen, in de vorm van de versmelting van biologisch leven met de machine, steeds dichterbij komt. Computerwetenschappers, microbiologen, natuurkundigen en kunstenaars houden zich tegenwoordig druk bezig met het creëeren van wezens die eruit zien en zich gedragen als levende organismen. Ze eten, groeien, evolueren, vermeerdern zich en sterven. Alles spontaan en zonder tussenkomst van de mens. Veel van dit alles speelt zich af in de computer en wordt aangeduid als Artificial Life. De discussie over wat nu biologisch leven is en hoe het gedefinieerd kan worden is nauw verbonden met zelfkennis, zelfonderzoek en de bestudering van de natuur. De veranderende kijk, omgang en definitie over de natuur stond centraal in dit programma.
Deze thematiek werd als uitgangspunt genomen voor een aantal programma's van DEAF. De programma onderdelen spraken verschillende doelgroepen aan, van gespecialiseerd tot nieuwkomers. Op deze wijze werd geprobeerd een zo breed mogelijk festival op te zetten met een grote diepgang.
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