Do you find it ironic that we are constantly developing new technologies meant to simplify our lives yet our lives seem to be getting more complicated and busy? Apart from the personal computer, for me, the most beneficial technological tool has been the Internet. All that information literally at my fingertips. But there lies the rub: For an information junkie like myself, when is seemingly limitless information TOO much information? This is precisely the sort of question the minds behind the Ars Electronica Festival ponder, and in particular this year’s festival Symposium, ‘SIMPLICITY’. “SIMPLICITY is a complex topic that has no single, simple answer,” begins John Maeda, curator of the 2006 symposium. “We live in an increasingly complex technological world where nothing works like it is supposed to, and at the end of the day makes all of us hunger for simplicity to some degree. Yet ironically when given the choice of more or less, we are programmed at the genetic level to want more. ‘Would you like the big cookie or the smaller cookie? or ‘Would you like the computer with ten processors or just one?’ … For the Ars Electronica Symposium on SIMPLICITY we think together about what simplicity (and complexity) means in politics, life, art, and technology. Expect more than you can ever imagine, and less. “
Click here to view a panorama of the Ars Electronica Media BuldingOne of the largest and longest-running festivals for electronic art worldwide, Ars Electronica Festival, held annually in Linz, Austria, provides a forum for discussing the evolution and cultural importance of electronic and digital media, as well as a competition in computer arts.
This year’s festival attracted 35,000 visitors, 535 artists and scientists from 20 countries and, for the first time, the festival was shifted for one day to a location outside of Linz; “Going to the Country – A Day-trip to the Hinterland in Search of Simplicity” took Ars Electronica to the St. Florian Monastery of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine where lectures, concerts and sound installations were held on the monastery’s grounds.
The ScarphaArs Electronic launched in 1979 but it wasn’t until the introduction of the Prix Ars Electronic in 1987 that the Festival gained its international influence and reputation, “providing a focus for a worldwide community of artists and theorists in the area of art and new media”, as found by Armin Medosch, in a report commissoned by the ACE Interdisciplinary Arts Dept.
From the outset, the Ars Electronica Festival and Symposium have brought together experts in the sciences, philosophy, sociology, and art to debate the possibilities of computers as fundamental to the future, the future of both art and culture itself. For more than two decades, Ars Electronica has highly influential in the history and development of electronic media by linking artistic practice and critical theory in an ongoing discussion on the effects of digital media on creativity and culture.
Photographer Bernard Vogl, who shot the accompanying panoramas of this year’s Festival, says, “For me, it was perfectly clear that such a festival offers itself to be captured with this ‘new photographic technique’ - it's like something that becomes self-referring”.
Vogl recalls how he learned to appreciate the Festival and its idea through his work at Autodesk, the company which develops AutoCAD and 3D Studio. "At this time, I became electrified by seeing workings like the very first award winning submission - the legendary ‘Luxo Jr.’ by John Lasseter, who later became one of the main brains of Pixar Studios.” Other participants, such as Paul Debevec (“Fiat Lux”, honourable mention), should be familiar to readers.
Paul DeMarinis won this year's Golden Nica award in the category of Interactive Art for ‘The Messenger’, his allegorical installation about messages whose final destination is a void, a comment on today’s modern world. DeMarinis’ system has no storage or data processing capabilities, so if the signals are not observed, written down and interpreted, then the installation is the end of the line for the messages.
As described on the Ars Electronica website, “E-mails from all over the world are received by a computer and distributed to three systems of bizarre output devices that enable installation visitors to experience the messages sensorially. First, to 26 washbasins arrayed in a large oval; the number of basins is identical to the number of letters in the alphabet, and a different voice is assigned to each one. Built-in loudspeakers serially intone the individual letters of the incoming e-mail. Second, there’s a chorus line of 26 dancing skeletons; each skeleton wears a small poncho prominently displaying one of the letters of the alphabet. The individual letters of the message activate the corresponding skeleton and the chorus line’s dance reproduces the text of the e-mail. And third, there’s a series of 26 electrolytic jars with metal electrodes in the form of the letters A to Z that oscillate and bubble when electricity is passed through them and let the letters of the e-mail glow in color”.
DeMarinis' 'The Messenger'
According to DeMarinis, “The Messenger” is based on early ideas about telegraphy and especially those of Catalan physician and naturalist Francesc Salva. He designed an “output device” for his telegraph equipment that involved an array of 26 servants who, following “stimulation” in the form of an electrical shock, would each call out a particular letter of the transmitted message, which could then be understood by a listener.
For more panoramas of Ars Electronica Festival, visit the Austria-360 project website.
