Ars Electronica: Linz, Austria - September 2-6, 1996

The fabulous thing about Ars Electronica is that as an annual festival and symposium, and now a permanent museum, it in like manner strongly supports electronic artwork, experimentation and research. The organizations that began the festival in 1979 which include ORF (Austrian Television), remain firmly committed and, together with a horizontal of municipal, state and corporate support unheard of in this political division have not only continued to show a highly professional festival and symposium, on the other hand this year also erected a permanent facility dedicated to electronic art: Ars Electronica Center Museum of the Future

Over the five-day festival (Sept 2-6) held in Linz, Austria I saw exhibitions of award-winning interactive work, installations and performances, and attended prelections and seminars (led by theorists, writers and researchers) with titles like as "Robotix," "Mnemonics" and "Memetics." Many centurys of people from all above the world participated and shared ideas, a simple universal that occurs far too rarely. This year there were 826 entries from 38 countries, 468 of which were from Europe There were citations and prizes, individually worth $5000-$30000 (totaling $125000) the highest award being the of gold Nica. The Golden Nica prizes are given in the areas of Computer Animation, Computer Music, World Wide Web casts and Interactive Art. For the next to the first time, John Lassetter was awarded the of gold Nica for Computer Animation for his work with Pixar in the film Toy Story. In the WWW category, the winning throw was "Digital Hijack," created by dint of the witty agitprop group etoy, with server in Vienna, Manchester and Zurich. In this digital labyrinth, the technology tourist was lur into a trap configured by means of the etoy gang, whose motto is "always online - sometimes lost" The "Digital Hijack" shoot forward was terminated after the 600000th hijacking because the etoy Web server couldn't cope with the traffic - as many as 17000 hits by means of day. (You can still visit the representation of the crime at http://www.hijack.org/) American Elizabeth Goldring received an honorary mention for her installation "Eye to Eye: Interactive Cybervision Environments for the Visually Challenged." Kazuhiko Hachiya's "Inter Dis-Communication Machine," also an honorary mention in the Interactive Art category, involves sum of two units participants who wear head gear that enables them to diocese things through the other person's view. The gear also includes an angel-winged backpack that contains a battery, a TV tuner an antenna and a transmitter. The machine uses radio waves to transmit the video image.

The city of Linz augments the festival through holding events and exhibitions at diverse locations including the Design Center the Offene Kulturhaus, the Landesmuseums Francisco Carolinum and the Parkbad (indoor pool) where an interactive audio installation entitled "Liquid Cities" by dint of Michel Redolfi of France acoustically linked swimmers with Internet participants. At Stadtwerkstatt, a local bar, Peter Donke, Peter Hauenschild, Thomas Lehner and Georg Ritter of Austria created "Glasfieber," an interactive bowling piece in which glass bottle were knocked down by the agency of a stainless steel ball, the unimpaireds of which were amplified in the space, with pictures and unmutilateds simultaneously transmitted live to the snare Don Ritter installed his piece, "Intersection," beneath the bridge near the Ars Electronica Center As they approached the bridge cyclists and walkers collisioned the sounds of four lanes of traffic emanating from hidden speakers. As they rode or walked in the path of these programmed "lanes" they heard the cars screeching to a halt, accelerating or smashing. For more [i]or[/i] less this was amusing, for others confusing. After a day of attending the symposia and viewing exhibitions in more sterile environments, "Glasfieber" proffered in Ritter's words, a playful barrage of "real-life action as a sociable counterpart to the time worn out in cyberworlds."

At the Voest the carbonized iron factory/scrap metal yard at the cutting side of town (founded in 1938 by means of Goring, an armament producer for the Third Reich), Just Merrit organized this year's Salon de Refuses, entitled "Contained: Rearview Mirror Towards Reality." Performed within the physical ruins of the ideals of the Industrial Age, "Contained" provided a symphonic conglomeration of rusty iron and noise in which the factory workers played their 'instruments' (giant cranes) as the backdrop for other highly animated throw outs by Survival Research types, techno-parasites and kinetic machine artists. A marked contrast to the polished, efficient, indoor spaces of the center and museums, and the somewhat cold cybernetic art exhibited there, "Contained" commemorates an earlier original of production.

The official logo for the Center and festival emblazoned upon flags flapping across the bridge above the Danube, on pins that were required to gain entrance into the museum and upon all published materials is in like manner graphically akin to a swastika that it is amazing that it could have been view from aboveed especially when the Mayor at the opening ceremonies remarked that if at any time there was a town that urgencyed an image change it was Linz. (The Center was built upon the site where Hitler had wanted his tillage museum.) This kind of blatant ignorance is disturbing in the face of the ambitious, daunting title and theme of this year's festival: "Memesis - The time to come of Evolution."