Organised by London Electronic Arts, Pandaemonium was billed as the
"London Festival of Moving Images," and was located in several venues in
the hip and happening Hoxton area. In a darkened room at "The Digital
Salon," hosted by the Standpoint Gallery, computers awaited, loaded with
CD-ROM and website works by numerous artists. There were also several
video pieces. Unhappily beset by the usual technical problems, several
computers were not functioning. Sitting down at the operative computers,
the works in general presented scenarios for interminable clicking
around.

Given his work as a film maker, the Chris Marker CD-ROM Immemory
(France, 1997) was a particularly disappointing transition to new media,
merely presenting scanned photographs after a lengthy negotiation of an
ugly interface. One site that did amuse however, was the Digital Arts
And Crafts website and wallpaper project (accessible at www.daac.org).
Pointedly paying attention to the craft of the matter, DAAC have
compiled a selection of animations and interactive pieces, with topics
ranging from absurd obeisance to a car, to a domain of tuneful Klee-like
creatures, each capable of contributing noises when activated.

Of the three video pieces, the DVD work, The Last Cowboy (Germany,
1998), by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker, offered the promise of
interaction. The medium of DVD was supposed to engender interaction with
the piece. Operated by pressing on a button on a clunky box (which
contained a remote control), the user was purportedly able to change
video channels, and so effect the narrative flow of the work. In
practice, this device just presented notification of channel change on
the screen, but no other alteration–so in fact, the work felt like a
spoof of interactivity, as I diligently pressed the button and was
rewarded with a banal superimposed screen title, but no actual change of
video content. Moreover, The Last Cowboy was composed of beautiful
footage of elderly Berliners and urban America. But this beauty rendered
the subject matter as poetic–and as such, ripe for commodification as
material for advertisements, or in this case, art works. Any critique
regarding the subject matter seemed avoided: the social situation was
dismissed for the sake of a seductive visual genre.

Round the proverbial corner, at the London Electronic Arts Gallery,
there were several more video installations. For the manufacture of
Within (London, 1998), Dryden Goodwin utilised some of the wizardry
offered by Avid editing and special effects software. Black and white
footage of solitary people, isolated in a landscape or an urban
environment, was projected onto four panels suspended from the ceiling.
The effects produced were whimsical: the camera journeyed back and
forth, focussing curiously upon its subject, seemingly separating the
subject from its environment in both space and time. But again, as with
The Last Cowboy, this piece seemed to suffer from its high production
values. Yes, it was beautiful to behold, and furthermore, intriguingly
made, but beyond that, what? There seemed no critique of the medium, or
of the representation of the people captured. The visual texture of this
piece is close to the eye-catching visuals of advertisements and music
videos. And just as art is no longer confined to its own area of
expertise, it is highly apparent that the aesthetics of art have been
rampantly used (some would say plagiarised) by advertising and commerce.
In Within, Goodwin recuperates techniques from commercial video work,
but without due critical consideration. To utilise post-production
without recognition of the context, and covert purpose, of seductive
video texture is to remain naive in a wilfully romantic fashion.

Down the road at the LIFT Gallery, there was another collection of
videos, entitled "Black Box," presented via operation of a touch-screen
kiosk. The most enjoyable work in this collection was Rory Hamilton's
piece, which cannily anticipated the technical difficulties encountered
by The Digital Salon. Contrarily not a video work, Hamilton's work
corrupted the user interface: upon touching the screen, there was a
momentary delay, before the graphics collapsed into disarray and
confusion–probably much like the crash experienced by control panels
during aviation disasters. The other videos presented feats of endurance
for the spectator, the most apocalyptic being Jane and Louise Wilson's
footage of uninhabited and annihilated interiors.

In an adjacent room, Thomson and Craighead's piece Speaking in Tongues
(1998) awaited active intervention. Unlike the works presented
digitally, Speaking in Tongues could be experienced visually upon
entering the space, and then immediately experienced on a different
sensorial level upon interaction with the work. At first, the dark room
offered a spotlit wall, a metal trolley on which stethoscopes were
piled, and an opposing wall onto which a field of "arrow" mouse icons
were projected. During the time spent in this room, this projection
cycled from a single moving pointer, into a swarm of arrows, seemingly
seeking their quarry in an ominous fashion, before diminishing back to a
single icon. A low soundtrack of scrambled voices was audible. Using a
stethoscope, the spotlit wall revealed a cacophony of conversations: by
moving the sensitive disc over the wall's surface, different dialogues
were apparent. This web of voices suggested the incomprehensibility of
material garnered by surveillance: most of the spoken words were
prosaic, and of little interest, but occasionally, a phone number or
other "hard" item of information could be discerned. Moreover, by
eavesdropping in this fashion using a medical instrument, the situation
was pathologised–the wall and its secrets were suspisciously cast as
having a dubious condition which must be determined. So whilst the
pointers on the opposite wall replicated themselves, insinuating by
their increasing density an exponential level of investigation, the
audience's listening activity mimicked the covert activity of
surveillance, the stethoscopes lending a sinister and clinical air to
the proceedings.

Thus although the work presented in Pandaemonium did not in the main
contend with issues of interactivity, and the nature of audience
participation, Speaking in Tongues presented an interesting aside on
both matters. Interactivity and participation were considered by this
piece in a slightly different light, compared to the sedentary and slow
interaction proffered by the CD-ROM and website works in the show. The
environment of The Digital Salon did little to enhance the works on
offer. A salon traditionally was a place of conviviality and erudite
exchange, but the physical environment of this exhibition was not
conducive to either. When works demand so much time, there should be
provision of comfort facilities or different distribution! This show
would have been better staged in an Internet Cafe, or sent out on
CD-ROM, or accessible via the web. New media demands new environments,
and an institution-like room with one chair per computer does not
encourage new modes of viewing.