Meeting 10: Art in Networks: From Telematic Art to Internet Art. Telematic art (communication art, telecommunication art)

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1 Meeting 10: Art in Networks: From Telematic Art to Internet Art Telematic art (communication art, telecommunication art) Art that uses, measures, creates communication networks (usually understood as technical: radio, television, telephony, computer networks) Most projects since the 1970s, but conceptual roots go much deeper in history. Visionary artists have been dreaming about planetary art reaching across wideopen spaces: Kasimir Malevitch, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana and Spazialismo : inspiration for the Sky Art movement (Otto Piene, et al) Visionaries, theorists and artists have presented ideas about art using telecommunications since the early 1900s: Nikola Tesla, Dziga Vertov, Velimir Khlebnikov, F.T. Marinetti, Rudolf Arnheim, Buckminster Fuller, Bertolt Brecht. Radio art: John Cage, Hank Bull, Bill Fontana...Kunstradio program of the Austrian Broadcasting corporation. Radio as an instrument, but also as a channel for artworks. Interactive television, sometimes using satellite bridges. Connections with telematic projects (for example Piazza Virtuale by Van Gogh TV at Documenta) Simultaneous concerts (Alvin Curran: Crystal Psalms, etc., Paik s idea : piano concert SF-Shanghai) Mail Art (Ray Johson, Cavallini, On Kawara...): letters, telegraphs; mapping the mail networks - these are forms communication art, but does it make sense to relate them with telematic art?

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) -visionary inventor, Edison s competitor, father of alternate current (Niagara powerstation, with Tesla s water turbines) -In 1900 presented his idea of World System of

2 Nikola Tesla ( ) -visionary inventor, Edison s competitor, father of alternate current (Niagara powerstation, with Tesla s water turbines) -In 1900 presented his idea of World System of wireless transmission of energy and communications. - When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, as all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face. (Tesla, 1900) The Great Sorcerer -Velimir Khlebnikov, Russian Futurist, presented a vision of Great Sorcerer of Radio (1921) Radio as the spiritual sun of the country, an unifying factor in the service of the Revolution. Radio could mesmerize the minds of the entire nation, healing the sick via long-distance hypnotic suggestion, and increase productivity through the seasonal transmission of prescribed notes, for it is a known fact

3 that certain notes like la and ti are able to increase muscle capacity. -Danger: the slightest interruption of broadcast mental projection would provoke a mental blackout over the entire country, a temporary loss of consciousness - Compare with Eric Siegel s plan to spread karma energy to NYC by video synthesizers. These would create invisible energy fields, operated by electronic gurus (late 1960s) More anticipations - Pino Masnata and F.T. Marinetti: futurist manifesto La Radia (1933): radio waves provide a possibility for universal cosmic art, the creation of a world without time, space, yesterday and tomorrow. The futuristic radiophonic theatre would also use creatively the characteristic defects of the medium: interference, the noises caused by weather, the geometry of silence. - Marinetti s manuscript for Cinque Sintesi del Teatro Radiofonico contained an idea of a drama of distance :...11 seconds of military march from Rome...11 seconds of danced tango from Santos...11 seconds of religious music from Tokyo...11 seconds of noise from the streets of Milan. (anticipation of global communication via satellite?) And more... - Experimental uses may appear spontaneously outside the artistic context: simultaneous concerts by virtual orchestras organized by telephone switchboard operators, s. The operator in Providence plays the banjo, the one in Worchester the accordeon and the others sing gracefully. (Boston Evening Record, 1891). - Anticipated later artworks: Paik s idea about simultaneous piano concert between San Francisco-Shanghai (at the time of the launching of Telstar, the first communication satellite, 1962). Idea later realized in Paik s intercontinental TV broadcasts Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984), Bye, Bye Kipling (1986), Wrap Around the World (1988). - Also Alvin Curran s radioworks: Piece for Peace ( a real-time radio mix of performance from Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Venezia). Crystal Psalms (1988),

4 live simultaneous concert from six countries, for the memory of Kristallnacht. Radio art - First true radio artist John Cage: radio as an instrument (Imaginary Landscape series). Also Michael Snow: Radio Solos. You can really play with a short wave radio, there is so much happening all the time...it resembles a synthesizer (Snow). - Another form: experimental radio plays (Orson Welles: War of the Worlds, 1939). Problem: feedback channel often missing or indirect. - Radio art has got little attention in the art world. Kunstradio program of the Austrian Broadcasting corporation has been an important pioneer (Heidi Grundmann). Bill Fontana - The most important radio artist. Lives in San Francisco. - Bill Fontana (SF) has realized important radio projects, utilizing its simultaneity (Music for Everyday Objects, 1989). Radio broadcasting connected with other sound sources, like location-based loudspeakers transforming physical location. The idea of sound sculpture. - Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns (1982): The sound of fog sirens at Fort Mason was transmitted to the Bay Area, also heard in radio. Non-technological communication art -Art that investigates and measures existing communication systems, or creates own independent peer networks for creative dialogue and exchange. - Intimate bureaucracies (Craig J. Saper) = makes poetic use of the trappings of large bureaucratic systems and procedures (e.g., logos, stamps) to create intimate aesthetic situations, including the pleasures of sharing a special knowledge or a new language among a small network of participants.

5 - Mail Art (Ray Johson, Cavallini, On Kawara...): letters, telegraphs; mapping the mail networks. - art processes investigating money and its circulation, Works that represent money (J.S.G. Boggs money paintings) or destroy it via the network (Legal Tender by Ken Goldberg, Judith Donath, etc.). - Chain poetry (in the tradition of Corps exquise, the Japanese Renga, linked verse ) - poems and artworks sent my mail. - Mail Art (Ray Johson, Cavallini, On Kawara...): letters, telegraphs; mapping the mail networks. - art processes investigating money and its circulation, Works that represent money (J.S.G. Boggs money paintings) or destroy it via the network (Legal Tender by Ken Goldberg, Judith Donath, etc.). - Chain poetry (in the tradition of Corps exquise, the Japanese Renga, linked verse ) - poems and artworks sent my mail. Since the late 1950s artist s begin to pay attention to television both as an object and as a cultural presence The TV set first appear as subject matter in painting and collage:, then as a prepared ready-made, a sculptural and environmental object (Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell) Capturing the stream of TV images: first with film camera in the style of cinescope (Vostell: Sun in your Head, 1963), then with video (Paik, from c ) Manipulation of TV images with analog synthesizers began in the late 1960s, advanced editing only in the 1970s (Ant Farm, Dara Birnbaum, Klaus von Bruch...). Shift from analog to digital in the 1970s. Television first appeared as an object in paintings and collages in the 1950s.

6 Richard Hamilton: What makes today s homes so different, so appealing. Collage, 1956 How to Gain Access to the TV Studio? Most media artists have always remained outside broadcasting institutions A few rare insiders working in the industry have had chances to experiment, but only within the limits of the institution and the medium (Ernie Kovacs, USA; Jean-Christophe Averty, France) After the mid 1960s PBS stations (USA) established experimental workshops (New York, Boston, L.A.): chances for artists to do broadcast quality work Little impact on mainstream prime time programming; happens in niches. Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, TV artist : late night programs on WNET, Channel 13; satellite experiments as one of a kind events: Paik s Good Morning Mr. Orwell, 1984, Bye Bye Kipling 1986, Wrap around the World, Other paths...or dead-ends The dream of alternative, parallel media channels: Guerrilla Television movement, USA, 1960s-70s: media groups with light semi-professional equipment; narrowcasting from trucks or buses ( media nomads ) or cable television; in rare cases works made it to the networks: TVTV, T.R.Uthco & Ant Farm: The Eternal Frame, Media Burn... Conceptual and political reflections on the role of TV: Television Delivers People (1974) by Richard Serra and Charlotte Schoolman; shown in the art world The use of advanced editing to manipulate appropriated television programs. Paik and Vostell did this in the 60s, but still considered novelty in the late 70s. Pioneer: Dara Birnbaum: Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1979). Problem: distribution channel. MTV seemed a solution, for a while ( Video Music - John Sanborn, et al.)

7 Liza Bear, Willoughby Sharp, etc.: Send/Receive, Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis: telematic performances, 1977 Documenta 6 The Last Five Minutes Davis: Double Entendre, 1981) Robert Adrian X et al.: Wiencouver, The World in 24 Hours (1982): collective peer events Roy Ascott: La plissure du texte (1983), Aspects of Gaia (1989) Kit Galloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz (Mobile Image): Satellite Arts Project (1977), Hole in Space (1980), Virtual Sex Workshop (1982), Electronic Cafe (1984), ECI - Paul Sermon s Trilogy: Telematic Dreaming (1992), Telematic Séance (1993), Telematic Vision... Van Gogh TV: Piazza Virtuale (Documenta 1992) Art and telerobotics Telematic art about distance communication between humans via communication technology Closely related with telerobotic art: remote operations via a network; the human controls a telerobot operating in a physical space, but only accessible via the medium; raises questions about the relationship between physical and the virtual, the nature of mediated presence, telepresence (do we as users inhabit the space of the telerobot?) Is telerobot just the user s avatar, or something else?

8 Telerobotic works: Ken Goldberg: Telegarden, Legal Tender, Eduardo Kac: Ornitorrinco -project, Ken Feingold: where I can see my house from here so we are, Lynn Hershman: Tillie, the Telerobotic Doll, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Vectorial Elevation

These are just random notes; they don t represent the entire lecture!

Desma 101 Media Arts - an Introduction Meeting 7 Telematic art * These are just random notes; they don t represent the entire lecture! * Telematic art (communication art, telecommunication art) Art that