Originally published in ArtByte , Vol. 2, N. 5, January-February2000, pp. 74-75.

Milestones: Ars Electronica

Tanya Bezreh

Ars Electronica turned 20 this year (Ars 99 Center for ContemporaryArt, Linz, Austria, September 4-9): a milestone in the recognition, documentation,and sponsorship of electronic arts. Of course, reaching 20 in tech yearsalso makes you more than ripe for a midlife crisis. So perhaps it was naturalthat this year's festival, with the theme of "LifeScience," stakedout a new direction for art and technology Sponsored by the major Europeanbiotech firm Novartis, Ars 99 focused on genetic engineering.

While Ars is meant to exhibit and address both artistic and technologicalhybrids, this year's conference placed an unusual emphasis on the technologyend. Before Ars 99 commissioned its theme showcase the number of peopleworking worldwide with biotechnologies as art pieces was probably not enoughto fill the exhibit halls. So while symposium speakers represented an engagingrange of biotech innovators and environmental agitators, the general conferencedid not acknowledge any artistic trend, but rather created one to engagea technological revolution already well underway.

Artist, writer and theorist Eduardo Kac summed up the inspiration nicelyin his program notes, saying that "the boundaries between carbon-basedlife and digital data are becoming as thin as a cell membrane". HisGenesis project demands a conceptual appreciation of a perpetually mutating"artist's gene." In his symposium presentation, Kac gave a historyof dog breeding, deftly illustrating that genetic engineering has longpursued aesthetic goals. The highlight was his plan for a phosphorescentgreen dog, using code borrowed from jellyfish. By implication, there aregood times ahead for artists, as mastery of these new media results ina more-godlike-than-ever status. And those sentimental for distinctionsbetween art and science, or art and life itself, face bad times: the primordialsoup has a big paint brush dunked in it.

While awaiting this total code-level control, "LifeScience"artists contented themselves with dominion over medium-size creatures.Zooming out from the molecular level, Yasushi Matoba and Hiroshi Matoba'sMicro Friendship provided an interface that allows the user to poke, prod,and pet enlarged images of microscopic insects, closing the gap on whatwas once a huge communication problem in terms of scale. Once such communicationimproves, the cockroach contestants of the wildlife performance event,bug race 99, might be able to sue. The piece was a four-night derby --in which people bet real money on cockroaches running on a little plastictrack -- that proved Stadtwerkstatt the winner in terms of showmanshipand humor (and the ability to involve genuine drunk Austrians). Among otherworks, Hamster, by Christoph Ebener, Frank Fietzek and Uli Winters, createda symbiotic loop whereby hamsters running through little wheels generatedpower for robots whose sole function is to feed hamsters. Such works werecharming, but nothing stirred digerati curiosity like the most visceral,least electronic feature of the festival: the lecture and standing exhibitsof Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who takes cadavers, filets them into a varietyof poses, and "plastinates" them. This year's favorite debatecentered on the doctor's aesthetic motivations; while he claims his workhas nothing to do with art, he dresses exactlly like Joseph Beuys and,among other fascinating choices, chopped one donated body into Nude Descendinga Staircase.

At best, some artists problematized existing bioengineering projects.At worst, the conference was a rudimentary political and ecological primer(occasioning the outrage of new people hearing old biotech dirt). Gaugingthe bioengineering theme�s still-emerging status was the fact that theprizewinning projects were in other areas, and the general categories forjudging remained unaffected. Golden Nicas went to Linds Torvalds in the"net" category, Lynn Hershman in "interactive art,"Chris Wedge in "computer animation", Digital Dormain in "visualeffects," Richard James (of techno group Aphex Twin) and Chris Cunningham"Come to Daddy" in "digital music," and u19 in thecategory "cybergeneration," which honors young artists. Amongthe honorary mentions, Eric Paulos' vending machine, which dispensed user-designeddeadly biological pathogens, amused and then made clear the horrowing realpossibilities of death and suffering at the hand of those technologies.

In keeping with the focus on genetic engineering, Ars 99 exhibited somemutations in the conference logistical attributes as well. An amazing outdoorsound system, dripping music out of the sky between Brucknerhaus and theDanube, surrounded the OMV Klangpark, which served as a public space soundart series. This year featured Michael Nyman with collaborators such asRobin Rimbaud, a.k.a . Scanner. The final night of September 9th (9.9.99)was marked by a musical potpourri in honor of the fateful date. With otherevents corralled mostly to the Brucknerhaus and O.K. Center and withoutfield trips to exhibits sprawled all over town (like 96's installationof Michel Redolfi's Liquid Cities in the public swimming pool or the projectionof 97's Displaced Emperors, by Rafael Lozano-Hammer and Will Bauer, ontothe façade of the Linzer Castle), this year�s festivities didn�tfeel like the media elite staging a Linzer siege. And while former festivalswere embedded in the abandoned industrial spaces or vibrant hoards of scrapmetal, all that remained was the trademark train ride through the steelmills.

Such observations and more are facilitated by a book published to commemoratethe 20 years, Ars Electronica 79-99. Looking over the faces and choicesof the festival�s 20-year evolution gives real insight into how electronicart has come of age. But more exciting is the poetry of having this festivalin Linz. Housing new electronic art in steel mills and warehouses lendsan Industrial Age grandeur and bestows legitimacy on the experiments ofthe Information Age. It's another sign of graceful aging that electronicshave stepped aside to make way for the next generation, the embryonic artisticendeavors of "LifeScience".

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