24 - digitalarti #11

INTERVIEW DIGITAL ART

You were one of the co-founders of ArsElectronica in 1979. What were yourthoughts as you were conceiving this firstfestival dedicated to electronic arts?We weren’t thinking 30 years ahead, butwe thought the scene of art, technologyand society the subtitle of Ars Electronica- would consist of the future. This wasfrom the very beginning. The name didn'tchange, and the subtitle didn't change.[…] My boss, Hannes Leopoldseder,whom I think is the real founder of Ars Electronica, came up with the idea,because just a few years before, the firstApple product came on the market as thefirst personal computer. He and we wereconvinced that this personal technologywould influence the arts, that artistswould use it, could use it now, and itwould influence our society. Before it was meant to be just a smallsymposium on electronic music,because an electronic musician camewith the idea to do a symposium andthen he contacted HannesLeopoldseder. For Hannes it was quiteclear that this could be more than asmall symposium, that this could be afestival, and that it could lead into thefuture. […] We had the idea, but wedidn't know that it would be that fastand that strong, that this technologywould become part of everybody’s lives.We didn't know, nobody knew, that itwould happen within a few years.

These days, digital and online technologiesare ubiquitous. Is it the social aspect ofyour event that keeps it relevant?The word “society” was present fromthe very beginning, and we also includ-ed sciences. So it was never meant to bean elite art festival. It was meant to bemore of a cultural festival, dealing withcultural questions, and it was clear thatthis technology would influence oursociety a lot. And what we see nowa-days is that even the current crisiswould not have happened without digi-tal technology, without networks, theglobalization of IT.It was our precise idea to create a festi-val that included science. The first timeit had rather been a technology-orientedand art-oriented symposium […] In the beginning, the topics were notmeant for the general public of Linz.They would never go to BrucknerHouse. This happens everywhere. The people from the city where it hap-pens don't come, but you get peoplefrom around the world.

The politicians of the time wouldn’t have continued to finance an event that excluded the locals!Hannes Leopoldseder’s idea was that weneeded to have an event outside. This was Sound Cloud: Linz Klang-wolke in the big open air, outside. […]So this first Sound Cloud was the

8th symphony of Anton Bruckner. We had an 8-track tape, which was splitinto four, with loudspeakers on bothsides of the Danube, inviting the orches-tra, a big balloon in the center, a laser(which was a new technology at thetime), and we expected about ten thou-sand people. In fact, a hundred thou-sand people came. We had done a lot ofpromotion work and we also invitedpeople to participate: If you can't cometo Klangwolke, take your radio, put iton your window, put it in your garden,and create your own Sound Cloud. The symphony was transmitted andbroadcasted on the radio at the same time.So, a hundred thousand people cameand this convinced politicians. The latter first said, “ok, let's keepKlangwolke, but forget Ars Electronica,that's for a small audience, it doesn'timpress us”. Finally, HannesLeopoldseder convinced them to keep it.His proposal was, “let's do a biennale. So you give the budget every year, weput it together, and every two years wedo it”. This was just a practical thing.With that, Ars Electronica got more andmore attention. So finally, the politiciansunderstood this was something. […]

The evolution of the Prix Ars Electronicais fascinating. In the past, for example,the Golden Nica for Computer Animationwas the most anticipated, whereas now,

CHRISTINE SCHOPFCO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THEARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL

Christine Schopf

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digitalarti #11 - 25

it’s the Hybrid Art category that is inthe spotlight…When we started Ars Electronica withthose categories, we made clear from thevery beginning that this was a growingproject. Because technology grows, and ithas to be open in the future for new cate-gories, it has to be open so that we canwithdraw some categories. So the PrixArs Electronica grew to seven categoriesover the years with more or less techno-logical changes and art changes. We increasingly find that the bordersbetween the arts are disappearing. For instance, if you go to the CyberArtsexhibition, you see the Nica final animation.Is it an installation? Is it an animation?You see in music, the German piece withvisualization and acoustics. Is it music?Is it sound art? So this is really movingaround. As I mentioned in the verybeginning, I don't understand Ars Elec-tronica as a pure arts festival, like Docu-menta. We understand it more or less asa big research lab.

Digital technology continues to shape oursociety…There have been years when we focusedmore on art. There have been yearswhen we focused more on technology.For instance, in 1990: virtual reality andartificial life. All this related to the ques-tion: “what does this mean?” We didnot merely present virtual reality as a

technological new thing, but asked:“how could this influence our society?What will this mean?” So we had a bril-liant round of people here, from verydifferent positions. There was BruceSterling, who is definitely not a techno-logical person, William Gibson, peoplecoming from a quite different position,talking about what it means. Other top-ics were more society-related or evenpolitically influenced. It changes. Some years, it's a more philosophicaltopic, then it's more technological.

Institutional museums are still reticentabout the idea of collecting unstable art-works. Could we say that Ars Electronica,through its openness to emerging artisticpractices, has become a sort of lounge forthe rejected, for those banished from thecontemporary art market?I recently talked with Julius von Bismar-ck. I asked him about the situation ofmedia art. Is it on the traditional art mar-ket of museums, galleries? There is always the financial question.What is the original work when you talkabout art? Is it sustainable? Technologychanges. Soon, maybe in 10 years, youwill no longer be able to display it. This is a problem we have. For the artmarket, and I think for museums and gal-leries, there's also a little risk in installinginteractive pieces, genetic art, because it'snot that sustainable, it needs a lot of main-

tenance. Most museums have nobody whocould do the maintenance […].

Is the low visibility of the digital art market essentially linked to the questionof original artwork, which makes it a rarecommodity?What we show here is more or less com-ing from laboratories, individual studios[…]. I talked to Steven Sacks of Bit-forms Gallery in New York. He sellsmedia art. We talked about ARCO inMadrid, where he had a booth. As a cer-tificate of originality, he gives the sourcecode, but it's a joke. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who does many large-scaleinteractive works, produces printsinstead. So an artwork always has to tryto find a way to be sustainable.Our history is over 30 years old, and look-ing back, it always took a while. I remem-ber the first images of Herbert Franke, oneof the pioneers of computer graphics andalso very related to Ars Electronica. Galleries and contemporary art museumsdid not show the work he had done. It was prints, easy to make, easy to exhibit.It came really over the years; with a delayof I don't know how many years, the artmarket opened. It began with video art,which started at the same time in the '60sin the U.S. and Europe. Video art becamematter for collectors 20 years later!

INTERVIEW BY DOMINIQUE MOULONAUGUST 31ST 2012, IN LINZ, EN AUSTRIA

Ars Electronica Center.

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