Jeffrey Shaw : Création et diffusion des arts numériques

	Jeffrey Shaw : Création et diffusion des arts numériques
	Séminaire du 22 janvier 1999 \| résumé en français \|
	Intervenant : Jeffrey Shaw
The site of Jeffrey Shaw	Jeffrey Shaw : Création et diffusion des arts numériques The activity of both art and science has always been the interpretation and recreation of reality. It is an exercise of the human imagination, creating concepts, forms and images that imbue our lives with meaning. Art continuously redefines itself in response to cultural transformations. Nowadays these tranformations are very closely linked to the pace of technological developments, and therefore it is appropriate that art addresses itself to technology on the most fundamental level of its aesthetic and conceptual discourses. The driving force behind the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnogie Karlsruhe, better known simply as the ZKM, is precisely that - to forge new meeting grounds between art, science and society. It aims to nurture artistic achievement in the various fields of the media arts and bring new qualities into the evolution of our technological culture. In 1984 the ZKM was originally proposed as the focus of an urban enhancement project by the City of Karlsruhe and the Land Baden Wurtenburg. After much planning the ZKM reached final definition in 1988 and was established as a public foundation in 1989. After an aborted attempt to house it in a new building specially designed by Rem Koolhaas, the ZKM opened to the public in 1997 in its current premises. The ZKM is situated centrally in Karlsruhe within the former IWKA building - a massive, monumental industrial edifice built in 1918 as an armaments factory. The ZKM was built at a cost of DM 135 million, now employs around 100 people and has an annual budget of DM 16 million provided equally by the City of Karslruhe and the Land Baden Wurtenburg. The ZKM's founding director was Heinrich Klotz who retired from this position earlier this year. The newly designated director is Peter Weibel. Anatomy of the ZKM The ZKM's aims and fields of work are fourfold:- Research and Development, Production, Presentation and Education. The ZKM is not a single entity, but a multiplex consisting of a number of synergetically interrelated departments. The Museum of Modern Art - Directed by Heinrich Klotz - is a permanent collection of major international artworks with the emphasis on contemporary media art installations and with the intention to show the historical continuity of media art in relation to traditional forms. The Media Museum - Directed by Hans Peter Schwarz - is a popular science museum with specially made exhibits that offer the general public ways to better understand the nature and future directions of our technological culture. This includes a seminal permanent collection of installations by the pioneers of computer based interactive media art. The Media Library is a large interactive library of audio visual and printed materials relating to all aspects of art and media technology, open both to the general public and to academic researchers. Theater is a general purpose space for experimenting the conjunction between media thechnology and the performing arts. The Institute for Music and Acoustics - Directed by Johannes Goebel - is a high level research and production center for electro-acoustic music where professional composers and musicians are given facilititative and intellectual support for the production of new works.
	Focus on The ZKM Institute for Visual Media As the founding director of the Institute for Visual Media I would like to give you a more detailed insight into the aims and activities of this department. Since 1991 the ZKM Institute for Visual Media has been engaged in high-level research and the development of new hardware and software tools in response to evolving artistic needs and applications. It offers artists from all over the world the opportunity to come and work at the Institute and create new artworks. They are given access to sophisticated resources which include real-time computer graphics systems, digital video postproduction studios, a "virtual set" with motion controlled camera and a multimedia laboratory. Their work is supported by a dedicated staff of researchers and technicians. The Institute for Visual Media is a research and production environment whose primary goal is to create a productive and critical environment where artists can make meaningful contributions to our evolving machine culture. Thanks to a record of sustained collaborations with other media art and research institutions the Institute has become an international forum for artists, academics and scientists. The ZKM pursues close relations with for example the Soho Guggenheim (New York), the NTT InterCommunication Center (Tokyo), the Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Arts (Tourcoing), The Ars Electronica Center (Linz), V2 in Rotterdam, and C3 in Budapest. There is a political and functional integration of the ZKM within the larger entity known as the Technology Region Karlsruhe. This includes very good relations with the University of Karlruhe which has given graduate students from the computer science and robotics departments the opportunity to pursue their diploma studies working together with artists at the ZKM. Currently the ZKM Institute for Visual Media also cooperates with major universities and scientific research centers in England and Sweden as a result of its participation in the European Esprit i3 long term research projects eRENA and eSCAPE. The Institute for Visual Media has focussed its activities in certain areas of the new media technologies where it feels there is the greatest relevance for current artistic practice and cultural concerns. These can be broadly described in the following categories: Digital Video, Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, Multimedia, Interactivity, Visualisation Technologies, Virtual Reality and Telecommunications. Furthermore, there are many possible conjunctions of these technical media with the performative art forms such as theater, opera and dance. Artists working with the new media technologies at the ZKM are making a journey of discovery in a new creative terrain. They make artworks that invite the public to enter and share the excitement of a "newfoundland" of forms and experience. I would like to show you a few examples of works produced by the guest artists of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media:
	Some observations on the relationships between Media Art, Science and Technology It is fashionable these days to talk about convergence. Convergence of computers, television and telephony in Informationa Technology. Convergence of text image and sound in Multimedia. But the possibly more revolutionary convergence now possible is that between art, science and technology. Not by subserving art to science and industry, but through a new art practice whose conceptual, functional and technical concerns are closely linked to those in science and industry. In this way new kind of synergetic relationship becomes possible between art, science and industry, challenging and benefitting from each other. Media Art's qualities are not only aesthetic - they are also scientific and technical innovations of a new kind because they are driven by aesthetic criteria. Here aesthetic is understood not merely as beauty, but more importantly something that embodies the highest level of technical, intellectual and emotional integration. While the traditional activity of art has been the representation of reality - manipulating materials to create tangible mirrors of our experience and desire - now the mechanisms of the new digital technologies allow the artwork to itself become a simulation/augmentation of reality. Here the viewer is no longer consumer in a mausoleum of images and objects, rather he and she are travelers, discoverers and creators in a dense new space of audio-visual information. Contemporary art movements have tended to remained aloof from science and technology, and address themselves to a somewhat exclusive community of connoisseurs. Media Art is a new (and popular) art form which speaks a common technical and functional language with scientists and industrialists. Media Art sees itself as a sister to science and industry and it seeks a deep going discourse with its siblings. Through such a fundamental relationship it feels itself able to inspire science and industry to achieve higher qualities with respect to human experience. It also sees itself being inspired by science and technology to address a whole new spectrum of human concerns. It is difficult for many people to fully appreciate the new significance of Media Art as being a research activity that is at the cutting edge of media technology and which can generate models for future social applications. The established artistic, scientific and industrial communities are surprised by this new situation and not yet ready (or willing) to fully recognise and accept its implications. In this respect I believe that the new media art centers such as the ZKM, V2 and ICC have a historical opportunity to demonstrate the radical potentialities of Media Art. This could be an achievement possibly even more fundamental than that of the Bauhaus, one that heralds a new harmony between aesthetic, social, scientific and technical values. The evolution of our technological culture is an economic, social and spiritual enterprise. The role of art must become fundamentally integrated into the processes of invention, experience, understanding and production in the broad and growing field of the media technologies. Without art, without an underlying cultural dimension, the evolution of these technologies lacks any profound meaning or direction. A purely industrial/economic frame of reference is unable to sustain a long-term and healthy social development of these technologies. The creation of institutions like the ZKM within a heterogeneous network of media art production and reflection, is an essential strategy whereby the evolution of new technological achievements is made synchronous with the evolution of new cultural experiences and values. To conclude my presentation today, I have been asked by the organisers to say something about my own artistic practice. My activities since the late sixties, including twenty years of fruitful work in Amsterdam, has been mainly focussed on issues of interactivity and virtuality, beginning with expanded cinema performances and now largely centered around computer based virtual environmemnts. In the short time I have left I'd like to show you two of my more recent works.
	The Golden Calf The Golden Calf is constituted by a white pedestal on which stands an LCD colour monitor connected to computing machinery by a cable running through he pedestal. The viewer of this work picks up and holds this monitor in his hands. The Golden Calf close up: The screen shows a representation of the pedestal with a computer-generated virtual image of a golden calf on top of it. Video starts : By moving the monitor around the actual pedestal the viewer can examine this golden calf from above and below and all sides. Thus the monitor functions like a window that reveals a virtual body apparently located physically in the real space. The golden calf has a shiny mirror-like surface in which the viewer sees reflections of the actual venue of the installation. These are previously digitised photographs of the room that are 'reflection-mapped' onto the calf's skin. In The Golden Calf the body is no longer a corporeal object but becomes instead the immaterial subject of a specifically physical process of disclosure. When moving the monitor screen up, down and round the pedestal, the viewer performs what looks like a ceremonial dance around a technological monument that construes an almost tangible phantasm.
	conFIGURING the CAVE conFIGURING the CAVE was made in 1997 together with Bernd Linterman. Agnes Hegedüs and Leslie Stuck as a permanent installation for the InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. conFIGURING theCAVE is one of the first art works to be made for the CAVE, a unique form of virtual reality environment developed at the University of Illinois. High resolution real time computer generated images are projected onto the three walls and floor of the CAVE space creating a totally immersive 3D virtual reality experience for the viewers that is further heightened by an interactive eight channel spatialised audio environment. conFIGURING the CAVE diagram : conFIGURING the CAVE is an aesthetic and conceptual discourse on the theme of the conjunction of body and space. The work takes as its starting point the historical perception of the harmony between macrocosm and microcosm and reconstitutes this equival ence in a technologically conditioned form which reflects the dialectics of our contemporary perception of our location in the world. Algorithmic and representative imagery, supported by an evocative electronic musical score, create an open narrative structure that can be interactively configured and individually interpreted by each viewer. At the center of the physical CAVE is a wooden puppet which is used to control transformations in the audio visual space. Visitors are invited to play with this puppet - freely moving body limbs and head in whichever way they wish, and in so doing they can explore each of the seven virtual words. The visitor can move from one world to the next by moving the puppets hands so that they first cover and then oncover the puppet's 'eyes'. In each world, the interactive functionality of the puppets slightly differs and the visitor is asked to discover the different ways the images and the music react to his playing with the puppet.
`	Video starts http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Collection/Icc/CAVE/ world 1 MATERIAL A constellation of geometric forms move about in a complex yet organic symmetry. Starting in the distance the action of the puppet causes them to come closer and enter the CAVE space. Some of these shapes carry fisheye photographs on their surfaces - pictures of a tearoom, an ICC office, and the homes of the homeless in Shinjuku station. At the center of this organic constellation a long wooden rod moves dramatically in and out of the CAVE space, sometimes saturating it with its interior colours. world 2 LANGUAGE Layered walls of changing texts, alphabetic characters and heiroglyphicsconstitute the impression of a universal matrix of languages and information. On the CAVE floor there is a representation of an ancient Chinese rubbing stone carved with text. This all is set against the background of an ancient Hebrew astrological map. All movements of the puppet's body and change and shift these text walls about in the CAVE space. Tilting the puppet upside down suddenly creates a vortex of alphabetic signs around its head. world 3 MACROCOSM Representations of the five Platonic geometric solids continuously move from the distance into the CAVE space. Movement of the puppet's limbs interactively deforms their symmetry. These geometric shapes are set in a visual space of three rotating concentric spheres -the first is the eminent Surrealist map of the world, the second is a satellite picture of Earth where the continents have been transformed into clouds, and thirdly in the far distance there is a traditional astrological map of the heavenly bodies. world 4 ASSOCIATION Four spirals of line drawn hands morph through a variety of gestures. A panoramic photographic background shows a group of convivial people (many of wh om are media art personalities) sitting around a table in a bar. Moving the puppet's hands and arms affect the movements of these animated hands. Folding the puppet's arms or legs inwards causes the hands and panoramic images to converge into the CAVE space . Putting the puppet's hands together causes a virtual hand shadow play to be performed on the CAVE's rear wall. world 5 UNION This space is constituted by two undulatingimage planes - one is a satellite relief photograph of the Hiroshima geographic area, the other is a Daguerreotype of two naked women. Tilting the pupppet from vertical to horizontal causes the image of the two women to move downwards and upwards. Evoking some ancient creation myth they merge in one extreme with the earth's topography, and in the other they become the firmament. When above ground level this image of the women can be sensually deformed by movements of each of the puppet's limbs. world 6 PERSON In a fiery space evocative of an alchemical inferno, a mirror image of the wooden puppet stands in the CAVE, casting shadows on the walls and floor. Movements of the real puppet are echoed by the reflected and shadow puppets. Seven objects dance in the fire without ever being consumed - a candlebra, a compass, a camera, a gyroscope, a child's wagon, a blue sponge and a cube on whose sides there are six symbolic representations of the human figure. When the puppet's limbs are folded all these objects (except the sponge) converge with the mirrored puppet's body. world 7 EMERGENCE Somewhat reminiscent of early abstract animated films, spiralling algorithmically generated monochromatic shapes surround the CAVE space. Folding the puppet's limbs inwards brings them together inside the CAVE space. Three groups of blue paint brush strokes flock about randomly. When the puppet's body is tilted into a horizontal position, all these visual elements accumulate and overlay each in a dense agglomeration - an emergent structure that has the character of a kinetic three dimensional abstract painting. To conclude: Looking at the historical development of the media technologies, I believe one can distinguish two major tendencies: One is photography, cinema and television which establishes the power of media to reassemble space and time as a contemplative experience. Following in the tradition of painting, images are located behind a static frame and are offered as a concentrated spectacle for passive viewing. The other tendency is the development from panorama painting to Virtual Reality which establishes the power of media to reproduce space and time as a surrogate experience. Here the goal is the disappearance of the pictureframe, enabling the active viewer to become immersed in the image. It is this ambition that I feel characterises my own artistic practice. It is also something that I believe is a distinguishing feature of much of the most interesting work being done today in the field of media art, ranging from immersive interactive installations to the essentially frameless new space of the Internet.