[artinfo] Ars Electronica 2003 - 1st Announcement (fwd)

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Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 19:01:48 +0100
From: Ars Electronica Center <announce at aec.at>
Reply-To: announcement at aec.at
Subject: Ars Electronica 2003 - 1st Announcement

Ars Electronica 2003
CODE - The Language of Our Time
September 6 - 11
Linz, Austria
www.aec.at/code
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Ars Electronica 2003 - 1st Announcement

CONTENTS
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1. General Theme Ars Electronica 2003
CODE - The Language of Our Time
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2. Prix Ars Electronica 2003 - Jury Meeting
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3. Ars Electronica 2003 - Organization & Contact
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You are reading the first issue of the Ars Electronica 2003 newsletter, focusing on a first statement by Gerfried Stocker on this year's Ars Electronica festival theme CODE - The Language of Our Time; and Prix Ars Electronica's jury meeting.

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1. General Theme Ars Electronica 2003
CODE - The Language of Our Time
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"CODE - the Language of our Time" is the theme of Ars Electronica 2003, an encounter with digital code's role within and influence upon art and society. Three thematic domains-Code=Law, Code=Art, Code=Life-provide a framework for this artistic, political and scientific confrontation with core issues.
	-	How strong is the regulative and normative power of the structures    and rules that computer programs and their standards implement and enforce? What possibilities exist to get around them?
	-	How do software and digital codes define the essence and identity of media art as "art created out of code"-that is, as a generative artform that has been derived and developed from computational processes? To what extent can this be captured and represented by means of art-immanent criteria?
	-	What paradigms relevant to our future can be derived from artistic and scientific speculations about the emerging epoch of bio-information and genetic engineering? What answer can be voiced in opposition to the rhetoric of programmable life?

Via interdisciplinary encounter and confrontation-the strategy Ars Electronica has been utilizing productively since 1979-a series of symposia as well as numerous exhibitions, performances and interventions will be presented not in an effort to establish purportedly conclusive answers but rather to bring out the enduring nature of the issues raised thereby. After all, art ultimately exists to pose questions.

Is the language of the computers becoming the lingua franca of the global Information Society?
Software is omnipresent; digital codes are the materia prima of our modern, global Information Society. And it is precisely its unlimited capacity to be programmed that turns the computing machine into the unique medium that has so successfully and so mightily pervaded all aspects of our life-one that can simultaneously function as an implement of war, economic tool and artistic instrument.

CODE=LAW
Software sets the standards and norms, and determines the rules by which we communicate in a networked world, do business, and gather and disseminate information. Upon closer examination, the global digital network consists not so much of computers and data transmission lines as of mutually compatible communication protocols.
Cyberspace as a social sphere and a new type of public domain derives its uniqueness not as a result of the data that are stored or exchanged within it but rather from the specific possibilities and impossibilities of the program codes of TCP-IP, of the browsers and chat rooms, of the encryption programs. The Internet is no longer a lawless, chaotic, disorganized no-man's-land. It has long since become the target of substantial, systematic efforts aimed at rigorous regulation and control. Not so very long ago, it was above all the interests of the market economy that could function only under controlled conditions; since September 11, 2001, though, it is first and foremost the interests of homeland security that have set the tone.

Copyright and privacy are leading slogans in the fight to achieve a knowledge-driven society. How strong is the socially regulative and normative power of the software monopoly actually? If code assumes the status of law, which court offers us a forum in which to challenge it? To whom do we go to demand our rights? Who authors the Codex of Cyberspace? What possibilities exist to evade it?

CODE=ART
For artistic work, software is a fantastic instrument. In digital simulation, there are no constraints placed upon the imagination and the creative urge. Nevertheless, it is not only the way in which artists work that has changed in the wake of computerization and the programmable model worlds to which it gives rise; far beyond these considerations, the result has been the emergence of a totally new form of art. Digital media art or cyberart-a hybrid term that has already taken root as a linguistic construction-has established itself as a distinct genre and diversified into a broad spectrum of highly varied artistic practices. Thus, digital technologies have finally instituted optimal preconditions for the implementation of the idea of art as an ongoing, dynamic process.

Fostered by the public attention that has been focused on the so-called Digital Revolution, media art has assumed a fixed place in the art world. Parallel to this triumph, though, an essential discourse dealing with the processuality of media art and the accompanying valence shift from object to dynamic system has retreated into the background.

At present, the dominant concept of data is one that registers a clear analogy to the objects of real space. Data are indeed virtual: they fluctuate in telematic networks, and they can be copied and (re)modeled at will; nevertheless, they ultimately remain entities that can be labeled and dealt with.

On the other hand, a dynamic system as engendered by an interactive process reacts autonomously to the participants and their environment, whereby it is not merely made public but made publicly accessible. It is used and formed by all participants in their own individual temporal and experiential windows. Such an open dynamic structure can no longer be created in the sense of a work of art; instead, it can only be encoded as a framework.

The enormous speed with which media art has developed and spread over the last 10 years makes it a matter of utmost urgency to take up again and expand this fundamental discourse aimed at producing a media art theory that is in keeping with these times.
What, then, are the characteristics that define the essence of digital media art? Is it digital data's formability that carries on an updated version of the criteria of traditional arts, or is it instead the dynamics and openness of interactive, cybernetic processes and generative algorithms that suggest an extensive break with conventional attitudes and expectations with respect to the production and reception of art?

How can we go about defining a contemporary digital media art that concentrates on these new practices but does not set aside its conceptual forerunners?
Is art programmable? Can software itself be art, and according to which aesthetic criteria are we to assess this issue?

CODE=LIFE
In the parlance of the Computer Age, code stands for control and programmability. Bioinformatics and digital biology are the names of the "hot new fields" that, in the wake of Artificial Intelligence and neurobionics, are the expected sources of the key technologies of the 21st century.

With this vocabulary, mankind is going about the task of working out the genetic foundations of life and propagating a mode of understanding that would have us believe that life is controllable and programmable like the digital code of the computer.
Will we use this genetic alphabet to rewrite the Book of Life or to summon forth a biological Babylon?

A media art that is coherently and consistently conceived will never be limited to the artistic use of technical media. Beyond this, it is always aesthetic research, critical analysis and social critique of our scientifically, technically conditioned view of the world. Media art is inseparable from the technological developments of the age, and that makes it into a laboratory for the future. As a festival for art, technology and society, Ars Electronica sees its mission as providing a platform for an encounter with the art of our time.
Gerfried Stocker


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2. Prix Ars Electronica 2003 - Jury Meeting
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International juries of experts meet from April 11 - 13, 2003 at ORF Linz.
Over 3 days, 5 juries of experts will select the best works in a total of 6 categories (Digital Musics, Computer Animation / Visual Effects, Interactive Art, u19 freestyle computing and, as a double category, Net Vision / Net Excellence) at the ORF Upper Austrian Studio.

In each category, all entries are judged by an international jury. Chairman of the jury as a whole (without a vote): Dr. Hannes Leopoldseder, whose original idea led to the initiation of the Prix Ars Electronica in 1987.

The jury members:
Computeranimation / Visual Effects //
Rita Street (USA); Bob Sabiston (USA); Olivier Cauwet (F); Hiroshi Chida (J); N.N.

Digital Musics //
Alain Mongeau (CDN); Markus Schmickler (D); Antye Greie Fuchs (D); Naut Humon (USA); David Toop (GB)

Interactive Art //
Christinane Paul (USA); Tomoe Moriyama (J); Joe Paradiso (USA); Stahl Stenslie (N/D); Scott Fisher (USA)

Net Vision / Net Excellence //
Steve Rogers (GB); Ed Burton (GB); Joshua Davies (USA); Yukiko Shikata (J); N.N.; N.N.

Cybergeneration - u19 freestyle computing //
Sirikit Amann (A); Horst Hörtner (A), Tina Auer (A); Martin Pieber (A); Manfred Nürnberger (A)

http://prixars.aec.at


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The next announcement update will appear at the end of May. The focus will be the results of Prix Ars Electronica's jury meeting 2003.
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Ars Electronica 2003
Organization: Ars Electronica Center Linz and ORF - Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, Upper Austrian Regional Studio
Co-organizers: Brucknerhaus Linz, O.K - Center for Contemporary Art

Concept & Artistic Direction: Gerfried Stocker, Christine Schöpf Curatorial Team: Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, ...

Contact:
Ars Electronica Center
Hauptstrasse 2
A-4040 Linz
Austria
info at aec.at
www.aec.at/code


Sponsors of Ars Electronica 2003:
SAP AG, Gericom, Telekom Austria
Bank Austria Creditanstalt, Quelle AG, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Oesterreichische Brauunion,
Sony DADC, Siemens AG
Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Spring, Opel Guenther

Sponsors of Prix Ars Electronica 2003:
The Prix Ars Electronica 2003 is sponsored by Telekom Austria and
supported by BAWAG/P.S.K. Group, voestalpine, SONY DADC, Gericom, the City of Linz and the Province of Upper Austria.

Additional support by Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Casinos Austria, Poestlingberg Schloessl, Oesterreichischer Kulturservice

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