tvvv.plotas_01: tvvv.plotas: artist/communication

TV project / discussion / videoconference
broadcasted by LTV / February 17, 1999 / 8.55 p.m. CET

SCHEME FOR COMMUNICATION:
When East and West were engaged in a cold war games, new  communication technologies and networks slipped out from their control. Everybody knows that the Internet represents a dramatic innovation in production and communication, but generally it is thought of as only a new tool to make old things.  The Internet is a tool of communication, to be sure, but we are interested in it being the new shape of the public Sphere.  Digital simulation and cognitive work are producing the very substance of social action: economic exchange, daily life, political decision, and the social body itself. With the dynamic development of networks in the last few years , many media labs have been established. Based on hybrid approaches these new micro-organisms create specific places in both the physical/urban body of town and the virtual domain. “It is a very open system and that’s something different to compare with a gallerism” says Andreas Broeckmann an electronic media theoretician from V2, based in Rotterdam. This is the core statement which has become the basis of this investigation. But what do these islands of communication do in respect of creating new language to communicate in today’s alienated society? The structure of interviews to navigate through narratives in a search for truth opens up survival strategies that we explore during our travel & meetings in different locations – 0-0.lt [Vilnius], E-LAB [Riga], TTTP from irational.org [London], V2 [Rotterdam], meetfactory.com [Helsinki];

>Andreas Broeckmann [v2]: There are other aspects within media art, which constitute a different kind of aesthetic experience, something which I call “the aesthetics of the machine”. Where the fact, that the computer itself is creating an image or a certain communication, you put something in and the computer turns it round and creates something out of it, something of it’s own,  has kind of some autonomy in the creative process.
Where as an artist you are more an engineer of the machine, whether it’s a communication machine, a communication network or an image machine. That mashinic process in itself creates an aesthetic potential. That’s what I call an aesthetics of the machine.

If you think about painting, also about theatre or performance, a lot of it is about representation. The artwork is showing something, expressing the idea. Whereas in the Internet art, for instance, the communication, the fact that you are communicating with somebody, can constitute the aesthetic experience. It’s that sense of, you know, presence of different people at the same time, who are part of the same creative process.

… It is a very open system. And that is something what I found very refreshing in relation to the regular art scene, like what we call `gallerism`. That scene is very closed off still. Its quite elitist, its still working with the same politics of having a name – not having a name, getting invited for something, being part of the right cartel. And what I found in the media art field, is that there is much more openness for co-operation.

>Rasa Smite [E-LAB]: We started art in very idealistic way, we really tried to experiment and bring out our ideas. After two years working, and if you have made in two years 5 your own exhibitions, then you just realize something is going wrong with you or with what.
Nobody is inviting you, or what’s wrong with these connections? Why there are only 1-2-3 curators in your country and why they don’t ask you to participate in their projects? But they are taking people who are not even active enough.
But maybe it’s more easy to work with them, you can explain maybe better their ideas. Maybe we were too active, we were like curators of our own exhibitions. Then we just realized we are not fitting to this context. It should be something else we can do.

>Mindaugas Gapsevicius [o-o]: internet is cheap. You just get a computer and you work, alone with computer. Computer is like your friend. It is difficult to find friends, alive people nowadays…