The International Festival of Multimedia Urban Arts
December 14th - 20th, 2000
Belfort, France
http://www.interferences.org

This multimedia and digital art festival is an ambitious and visionary
undertaking organized by the Pierre Schaeffer Center (CICV) of France
and funded by the French Ministry of Culture. Over 350 artists from 41
countries descended upon the village of Belfort, France. Here's the
tally: 6 theater pieces, 63 installations, 30 performances, 20 cd-rom
presentations, 37 internet sites, 70 videos, and 30 animations. Check
out the tip top web site to get an idea of the breadth of work
presented. The festival compares favorably with other European venues
such as Ars Electronica or the "Net_Condition" show put on by the ZKM in
Karlsruhe, Germany. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in 2
different ways. In the net.art section Mark Tribe of Rhizome
(http://www.rhizome.org) asked me to go in his stead and present
Rhizome's site and do an off the cuff remix with the artist Mouchette
(http://www.mouchette.org). I was also there with Peter Sinclair to
premiere our new collaborative piece Heartbreak Hotel
(http://artnetweb.com/gh/heartbreak.html) OK, enough horn tooting.

The festival was partially held in the Novotel in Belfort. An ultra
modern hotel/convention center that somewhat resembles the TWA Saarinen
terminal in New York. The feeling of the crowds attending the festival
reminded me of the Sci-Fi movie "Logan's Run." Next door to the Novotel
is another large loft like building housing a choreography center. I was
able to catch a wild theater piece by the US/French troupe, Faim Du
Siecle. This involved dancers in primary color body makeup moving in
various geometric containers. The effect was of archetypal
Bhaghdavaghita characters set in minimal sculpture. The space was
enormous. The dancers were being videoed and their images projected on
large screens around the walls. The music was de rigeur techno. The best
bit was a steam contraption that had video projections of demons
floating in the mist. The crowd wandered though the piece and one male
dancer in particular took it upon himself to confront the audience with
aggressive gesturing and positioning.

On the main floor of the Hotel there were a number of installations and
a net.art area. American museums might take a cue from the way in which
the net.art was presented here. The CICV's web people designed a minimal
browser interface that allowed one to link out to the web but not shut
down the browser. A back button floating on the screen always returns
the browser to the festivals front page. This solves the problem of
people using net.art installations to check their email. The organizers
also understood that free email and chat are an intrinsic part of a
networked environment and they had a different bank of computers set up
for people to check their email and chat. I didn't see all the web
pieces but I was able to catch Netochka Nezvanova's
(http://www.eusocial.com) "nato.O+55 et nebula.m81" presentation,
PAVU.COM (http://www.pavu.com) and of course Mouchette
(http://www.mouchette.org). The New York City net.art crowd were well
represented with sites by MTAA (http://www.mteww.com), Kevin & Jennifer
McCoy (http://www.radiofrankenstein.net) Yael Kanarek
(http://www.worldofawe.net) and Maciej Wisniewski's alt browser
"Netomat" (http://www.netomat.net) as well as Jon Ippolito's peripatetic
collaborative piece with Janet Cohen, Frank Keith and Joline Blais,
"Adversarial Collaboration" (http://www.three.org). I mention these
because they are the ones most familiar to me. My favorite was PAVU.COM.
Three representatives from pavu.com, Jean-Phillipe Halgand, Thomas
Clemet and Paul Dupouy plus DJ028 did a biingual rap/demo accompanied to
techno. It was a lot of fun and was only sullied by the fact that the
previous presenter NATO took twice as long for her/his presentation,
which was perhaps the least interesting web presentation I attended.

Everyone was cheered up by the PAVU.COM crowd who were wearing dayglo
fake fur vests and cheap wrap-around shades. Their site is a sort of
napster for net art and truly innovative in the best communitarian sense
of the internet. They've figured out a sort of virtual money system for
art patronage that promises to build into a real alternative system for
21c digital art. Way good. Two thumbs ups.

Part of the concept of Interferences was to extend the idea of
multimedia arts out into the social fabric of the street and disperse it
throughout the town of Belfort. This was done in a number of striking
ways. There were many projection pieces thrown on the walls of
buildings. These tended to be people talking in confessional tones about
relationships. What was interesting was the idea of externalizing
private interior conversations in a public space via an audio/video
projection. Walking past these various works one was indeed interfered
with. One of the more interesting projected confessional pieces was a
work by Anne Vauclair called "The Secret."

A peculiarly French phenomena is the nomadic studio. This is where
artists encapsulate their art in a way that it can be transported via
caravan.

Folded into this concept is a socialist idea of community art workshops
and outreach programs. This was presented by L'Espace Gantier of
(Bourogne) among other groups. One manifestation by Atelier Nomades was
a totally chopped apart car that had a scaffold structure with video
projection screens and loud speakers presenting art works. This mobile
art truck drove around town during the evenings and was a real upbeat
traffic stopper. A more abstract work was a series of 3d computer
generated forms that playfully greeted people entering the exhibition or
passing between the main Atria to the parking garages where many of the
installation an video pieces were housed.

Installation works using a variety of software and hardware were perhaps
the most interesting part of the whole exhibition. Gebhard Sengmuller
did his "Vinyl Video" display set-up. This is part spoof on trade show
installations and a bizarre retro application where he creates vinyl lp
records to show video. Two robotic entries were also quite interesting.

One from the L.O.E.I.L workshop at the Ecole D'Art D'Aix-en-Provence's
chief Christian Soucaret was an inflatable bubble encompassing a mobile
robotic projection device. This beautiful object glided across the floor
enticing the audiences with its ever changing interior video
projections. The audience was able to control the robots movements by
dialing a phone number from their mobile phone and directing the robot
with keypad movements (co-creators Aurelian Oliva, Larent Costa, Marco
Joriot, Jean-Pierre Mandon, Antoine Ballasina). The other from ZKM
(Matthias Gomel, Gunther Haffelder, Haitz Martina, Jan Zappe/
convergence homMACH), a pair of industrial robotic arms that moved
according to emotion sensors placed on a persons head and jugular vein.
Most of the time the robots moved in a fluid ballet except when one
subject received a cell phone call during the demonstration. The ensuing
heated argument caused the robot arms to convulse and flail about wildly
in a comic caricature of mechanical histrionics. Modesty prevents me
from talking about my collaborative piece "Heartbreak Hotel" but you may
access documentation and a description on line at
http://artnetweb.com/gh/heartbreak.html.

The grand prize winner for installation art was a piece called "Atari
Noise" by Mexican artist Archangel Constantini. The piece is a 9 square
grid of TV monitors displaying what looks like animated stripe paintings
with attendant electronic monotones generated by disassembled Atari
control panels. Viewers could step up to a podium with a series of
buttons and change the rhythm, patterns and tones generated. Constantini
assembled this piece by salvaging discarded Ataris. The piece has a
sort of William Gibson sci-fi sense of the tinkerer artist.

Perhaps the best performance was that of Russian artist Alexei Shulgin.
He also captured first prize in the performance art category for his
performance "386DX" (http://www.easylife.org/386dx). Alexei came onstage
with a computer keyboard hanging from a guitar strap slung around his
shoulder. He looked like Joey Ramones of the Ramones punk rock band. A
synth voice announced that the human onstage was merely decoration.
After starting up the first song Alexei pantomimed various guitar
playing gestures using the keyboard as his ersatz axe. A screen behind
him pulsed with a cheap geometric light show animation synchronized to
the music. This is one of those applications one can download from the
internet for free. A sort of kiddie light show. Indeed, the midi sound
tracks for each song played are freely available on the web from pop
music midi sites. The first song was a droll rendition of "California
Dreamin'" originally done by the Mamas and the Papas. The male synth
voice sang along in the stilted comic manner of synthetic voice. The
high point of the concert was the synth voice singing the Doors song
"Light My Fire." Indeed, the whole concert was a string of mostly
American rock hits. The European audience cheered and applauded in
recognition as each subsequent song began. What this points out is a
very sharp analysis of the pervasiveness of American media products
throughout the world. At one point the 386dx band launched into the Sex
Pistols song, "Anarchy in the UK." This moved a couple of the audience's
young fellows to start doing faux moshing and slam dancing and yes I
know The Sex Pistols are British. What I found most intriguing was the
subtext of commonality of experience created by rock music. This appears
to be an epoch just passing and is currently being replaced by the
shared experience of a global internet. Structurally speaking, Alexei a
Russian artists refers to American media but filters it through both web
accessibility and a European point of view.