Ars Electronica 2001
TAKEOVER–Who's doing the art of tomorrow
September 1 - 6, 2001
Linz, Austria
http://www.aec.at/takeover

Which constellations, which factors are defining the art of tomorrow,
where will it happen, who is doing it and with whom?

The altered framework conditions that effect working as an artist and
the impact of art in a world characterized by information and
communications technologies have given rise to new forms of art.
Significant here is the shift of their presence into spheres beyond the
conventional art world and also increasingly into the emerging economies
that have been geo-culturally uncharted territory for media art.
Following the digital revolution, there has been a creativity burst
that, as a qualitative phenomenon, goes far beyond an increase in the
number of those involved in design tasks and challenges in both
professional and amateur settings.

The computer and the Internet are not only highly developed production
and distribution media; they are also the reference system in which
ideas, talents and capabilities emerge and are refined, enhanced and
perfected through the inspiring interplay of cooperation and
competition.

Ars Electronica 2001 is focusing on the protagonists of this
development-those who have cast off preconceived notions and, displaying
strong commitment in the face of considerable risk, are opening up new
territories in which their role and their scope of action have not yet
been defined. Whether on scientific fronts such as the fields of
biotechnology and genetic engineering, in highly explosive
sociopolitical settings, or in new economic alliances, their modi
operandi, motivations, strategies and aims define them as artists, and
the progressive effects of their work make what they do art.

The traditional rituals of access to the world of art are irrelevant,
and many no longer even bother to seek accreditation from the art
establishment.

The scene is defined by self-reinventors and spin-offs who have acquired
their softskills in direct dealings with the material or as byproducts
of the media design institutes, most of which are oriented on the
training of media workers. It is rife with the massed potential of pros
proceeding with self-assurance and possessing all the prerequisites and
skills to really implement their own ideas and not just to provide
content to fill the design vacuum of commercial software.

Once we stop regarding the Internet as nothing more than a technical
form of communication and instead take it seriously as a social and
cultural realm, then it becomes clear what gigantic dimensions the
Internet as a design work-in-progress has-and that doesn't mean just
screen and web design, but also design in the sense of putting something
functional in place. The noble-minded withdrawal to art-immanent
positions may appear to be an option to some, but this doesn't work as a
basis upon which to design alternatives and potentially fruitful
concepts, nor is it a suitable way to insure the role of contemporary
art in social and cultural development.

The debates now raging in the humanities and the great moral discussions
are being initiated and advanced directly by scientific-and hardly at
all by artistic-inquiry. Science is upstaging art as far as the media
spotlight is concerned, and thus also with respect to direct influence
upon public opinion formation and the sociopolitical discourse.

The avant-gardiste principle of art striving to be a driving force and
to impart momentum to the development of society as a whole has
undergone a shift: science, pop culture and subcultural niches, business
& entertainment, software engineering, etc. are the epicenters of the
exciting current developments.

The question concerning the makers of art, however, will deal not only
with those who create it, but also with those who manage it and make
money off it. Branding and franchising as strategies of market
positioning and market dominance, and the efforts to recontextualize and
canonize media art in order to negotiate its return to the formal realm
of art elicit great skepticism. The inertia of traditional art
institutions and the increasing privatization of the funding process of
art are reinforcing the trend among a young generation of artists to
establish their own platforms, collaborative undertakings, and business
models, whereby the ongoing brain drain into the media and advertising
industries threatens to soon leave the art world behind like a ghost
town.

Let's take a look at the thing formerly known as art!

What once could have been subsumed under the heading of media art has
since branched out into a multiplicity of new artistic genres, symbiotic
forms whose definitions are rather more oriented on scientific and
technical disciplines, on interface development and information
architecture or on net culture and the lifestyle of gaming communities
than on the isms of the artistic discourse. This development is being
carried forward by individuals whose identity is bounded by the
parameters artist, engineer, social worker and experience designer, and
who act out of a clear understanding of its technological as well as its
associated social and cultural aspects. Coders and hackers, open
sourcers, circuit benders, who acquire mastery over technological
components, ignore rules found in user's manuals, and who deploy devices
and systems in ways unintended by those who market them, participate,
with this analytical and critical processing, in the design of the way
our world is now.

Art as a Test-Drive of the Future

Ars Electronica 2001 sets out on the trajectory of this burst of
creativity to track the scenes, sites and protagonists of the art of
tomorrow. Experimental arrays by these protagonists are being developed
further in order to provide these models and motifs of artistic activity
with compatible forms of presentation that are capable of also
stimulating suitable situations in which to encounter them. The
scientific method of some projects plays just as integral a part in the
whole as the proximity of others to experimental entertainment. The
festival as an art institution functions as a transfer node, as a
marketplace of ideas, processes and ways of working.

Let's take a look at the thing formerly known as art: