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PROCEEDINGS UPDATE_4 COLLOQUIUM

15-17/11/2012

Introduction

The colloquium in the context of the New Technological Art Award (Update IV) held from November 15th till 17th, 2012 bears ‘Immortal’ as title. It questions the (im)perfection of the technology, the eternal value of art, is consistent with the public debate on sustainability, and opens the debate between science and ethics. With experts from the world of art, science, philosophy, restoration and conservation, the subject is treated in an interdisci-plinary way, and the papers presented provide an impetus for reflection, discussion and debate.

Scientific euphoric thinkers predict that by the next generation not only the intelligence of computers will become superhuman, but also that the medical knowledge will be so ad-vanced, that the human body remains forever young. In this sense, terms such as levels or upgradings and updates from the world of computer games therefore constitute variations of the transhumanist Lazarus Myth and of the belief in reincarnation.

The evolution of technology has an undeniable impact on our thinking about ‘being’ and ‘time’. The question is what repercussions this speculative conceptual framework has on the artistic practice? When Sir Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001) published, in 1950, ‘The Story of Art’, this bestseller was translated within a year into Dutch under the title ‘Eternal beauty. Intro-duction to the art’. Nevertheless, Gombrich posits no absolute or eternal beauty, rather he approaches the art as an incessant change of ideas and needs.

Should art pursue eternity, and how does this affect the status of documentation, archiving, conservation, repair, data migration, conversion or implementation modalities? It is a fact that the question of authenticity, original and copy, still appears to be the most immortal. On the other hand, the culture of (physical) storage is a Western concept and – in comparison with time-bound media such as music or theater – characteristic of the visual arts.

Several speakers were invited to speak about these themes, to provide us with background information, to stimulate our spirit towards reflection or even resistance, in order to air our critical questions or other ideas. The pole position was thereby taken by Frederik Leen. As head of the Modern Art department of the Royal Museums in Brussels, he finds himself in the position of those who do not create art, but instead study, display and store it. He is con-vinced that someone who produces art that pleases everyone, is equivalent to decoration. It makes no sense to reaffirm artistic clichés. He can count several experimental artists among his personal friends, but that does not mean that he (in his museum function) would buy works of them for the museum would. Collecting from a casual, personal interest with time (or expiration) horizon that would not extend beyond his own career, would have no rele-vance for him.

Maarten Baes, astronomer, was invited to give us another look at the concept of time. What characterizes the research of astronomers, are the huge scales of distance and time. What

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immortality or (in)finiteness means in astrological terms, exceeds our everyday experience of the world, and stretches our comprehension. Nothing appears to be eternal, not even the universe.

Frederika Huys was invited as a pioneer in Flanders in the field of conservation of contem-porary art. Sometimes perishable materials are used, and the gradual disappearance or destruction of the artwork forms the essence of it. In some cases one can even speak of ‘work in progress’ because the artist continues to apply changes to his work and never achieves a final, fixed state, somewhat similar to Michelangelo’s idea of ‘non-finito’. Frederika Huys focuses on two specific cases: Joseph Beuys and Suchan Kinoshita. Provided the correct paths can be explored, contemporary art can, in her opinion, be saved eternally.

Julijonas Urbonas was from his very childhood fascinated by the phenomenon of the amusement park. As an architect he remained professionally interested by what he calls the physically observed aesthetics of ‘gravitational theater’. Since then, the issue is at the very heart of his creative life, from artistic to scientific articles. His work has been exhibited internationally and received many awards, including the Award of Distinction in Interactive Art, Prix Ars Electronica 2010, one of the most prestigious awards in the media arts. In his free time, Julijonas – by creating, experimenting, and writing – explores the experimental æsthetics of technologies and gives lectures on this subject. His creation Euthanasia Coaster which is exhibited in Update_4 has to be seen in this context

Ann Van Sevenant was asked to place immortality in a philosophical context. She combines the concept of advancing technology and increasing life expectancy. In her contribution she asks some pertinent questions, which go back to Plato and Zoroaster, and she nuances our vocabulary, pointing out the difference between immortal, timeless and imperishable.

Bram Vandeveire questions the evidence with which ancient art is considered worthy for conservation, while this seems less obvious for contemporary art. Specifically, he acquired a lot of professional knowledge about art forms such as video, and he was confronted with the initial difficulty of its long-term conservation. If there exists no flexibility – what he sees as a necessity – to experiment with new supports and to convert the original masters to newer formats, video art could well not be forever.

As an employee of the RMFAB Pierre-Yves Desaive knows how a museum regards digital artwork. As an art critic, he knows how other art critics look at digital artworks. And as a teacher at La Cambre in Brussels, he teaches his students about NetArt, because although they are very familiar with the Internet, they do not know much about the role it plays in the creation of contemporary art.

Marko Stamenković is a PhD student at UGent, specializing in suicide as a phenomenon and symptom of global media culture, and has published several texts on this subject. During the conference he brought a performance with text, video and song based on the project Imagen Descende of the artist André Catalão.

Christophe De Jaeger approaches the timelessness of art from his study of the pioneers of computer art. Although this was often considered as purely technical Spielerei by many other mainstream artists from the sixties, he concludes that many of these works are equally well recognized in the canon of art and museum collections, making them kept for ‘eternity’.

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The artist Stanza makes art that, although using a carrier (which may take various forms), is not bound by time and space by the data he uses. Sometimes these dates are hacked or exist in the virtual world. The disturbance in the data flow has the effect that the work may no longer exist at that time. His self portrait lasts 107 years before it will be fully established, a period which probably exceeds his own lifetime. The artwork will therefore still exist or will only be completed when he is no longer there.

Rosa Menkman was co-author of the glitch manifesto. Responding to the error (in computer systems) recalls the 19th-century notion of the academic ‘défaut’: the deviation from the norm (or ideal) which meant a source of creativity for the modernist artists. In the 21st century Rosa Menkman seems to build further on the same principle, that seems to generate an eternal life, based on the creative interpretation of a given state.

Peter Beyls is one of the pioneers of computer based art and enjoys international fame. In the quest for immortality, he examines the processes and mechanisms of nature and how we can implement a computerized universe by which art is produced.

Jean-Paul Fourmentraux approaches ‘Immortality’ by artworks without a well-defined beginning or ending. He relies on the research program Praticables - Dispositifs Artistiques : les mises en œuvre du spectateur that examines the role the public plays in the creation of contem-porary art.

Angelo Vermeulen is an artist, but first studied biology and even obtained a PhD in this science. His work and methods are consistent with the idea of immortality, in the sense that the algae which he often uses in his works, can be considered as an immortal ‘artistic medium’. He indeed still works with the algae of his first culture dating from 2002.

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Program:

Thursday, November 15th

2:00 p.m.: Stef Van Bellingen: Introduction

2:15 p.m.: Frederik Leen (3:00 p.m.: Q & A)

3:15 p.m.: Maarten Baes (4:00 p.m.: Q & A)

4:15 p.m.: Pause

4:45 p.m.: Frederika Huys (5:30 p.m.: Q & A)

5:45 p.m.: Pause

7:15 p.m.: Artist talk: Julijonas Urbonas

7:45 p.m.: Ann Van Sevenant (8:45 p.m.: Q & A)

Friday, November 16th

10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m: Workshop Rosa Menkman

2:00 p.m.: Stef Van Bellingen: Introduction

2:15 p.m.: Bram Vandeveire (3:00 p.m.: Q & A)

3:15 p.m.: Pierre-Yves Desaive (4:00 p.m.: Q & A)

4:15 p.m.: Pause

4:45 p.m.: Marko Stamenković

7:15 p.m.: Christophe De Jaeger

7:45 p.m.: Stanza

8:15 p.m.: Peter Beyls

Saturday, November 17th

2:00 p.m.: Stef Van Bellingen: Introduction

2:15 p.m.: Rosa Menkman (3:00 p.m.: Q & A)

3:15 p.m.: Jean-Paul Fourmentraux (4:00 p.m.: Q & A)

4:15 p.m.: Angelo Vermeulen (5:00 p.m.: Q & A)

5:15 p.m.: Yves Bernard

6:00 p.m.: Announcement of price Update IV and audience

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Welcome by Stef Van Bellingen, moderator

Mr. Van Bellingen, moderator, welcomes the speakers and the audience, and briefly outlines the context within which the colloquium is taking place, i.e. the biennial contest Update (in particular its fourth edition), in which the new technologies in the arts are discussed. In this context, it seemed relevant to choose as subject the question whether or not (contemporary) art is meant to be ‘immortal’. This theme was inspired by the death of a close acquaintance of the moderator, raising the perhaps somewhat sinister question what – in our society that is increasingly determined by the new technologies – should happen with his Facebook account.

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Frederik Leen – Immortal art kept forever

Mr. Frederik Leen is curator and head of the Department of Modern Art at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB) in Brussels. He has a PhD in art history. As the speaker, in a former life, also taught scienti"c drawing, the moderator expects an almost ‘mathematical’ de"nition of the criteria he applies when purchasing works for his department.

Any purchase by the department must meet, in addition to criteria related to the artistic and historical value of the work, also curatorial criteria because of the short and long term responsibility of any museum that is financed with public funds (this implies that museums financed with private funds not necessarily have to respect these criteria). The core mission of a museum could be summarized under the title of his 1996 publication ‘Eternal beauty – shown temporarily’, provided of course that the notion of ‘eternal’, as indicative concept, be sufficiently clearly defined as ‘maintainable for a very long time (in terms of centuries )’.

So it comes down to the fact that a museum is responsible for the physical integrity of the works in its collection, and for the taking of the necessary protective measures to keep the artwork intact. Hence, when elaborating a collection policy, the aspect of ‘sustainability’ of an art work is relevant, and Frederik Leen has also defended this point of view at the ‘Modern Art – who cares?’ symposium, where it did not meet unanimous agreement. Basically every artwork starts to degrade from the moment it is created, but the rate at which this happens depends on the materials used and the conditions in which the work is

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kept (though some of this information is not always known in advance: for example, what is the lifetime of supports of pictures?). More and more contemporary artists are aware of the impermanence of their work, and prepare manuals or instructions explaining how it should be handled in the future. In the case of Lawrence Weiner, these are general guidelines valid for his whole œuvre. But not all artists do this, and for some works, such an approach is far from obvious: take the example of a work that is created in situ: once the exhibition in question is over, the life of the work is basically over too; these and other highly perishable works are in their present form not collectable as art, at least by museums financed with public funds. It always concerns works in which, case by case, the collectable nature has to be considered. Fixed criteria are difficult to establish, because also the responsible people do not escape the Zeitgeist.

Mr. Van Bellingen points to the problem that the prices of works by living artists can rapidly rise, so – if a museum waits too long to purchase a work, in order to be sure first about the collectable nature of a work – the purchase can have become too expensive. For a museum such as the RMFAB, it has indeed often become too expensive to purchase works of exceptional significance, even if this actually would be the task of a museum. Moreover, such an expensive purchase with funds from the community (we are talking about millions of euros) would be difficult to justify socially, given the numerous priorities which have to be financed with money from the tax payer. Such expensive purchases also have a noticeable impact at the political level. The museum can only hope that one day such work can be acquired through patronage.

The moderator also raises the question whether in addition to the durability of the materials used, no more substantive criteria have to be taken into account in order to evaluate the ‘immortal’ character of a work. Frederik Leen replies that a museum anyway has to make a selection from the wide offer, and several criteria, including substantive ones, come into play. But preservability is and remains decisive: he refers to analog videos whose tapes are so degraded they cannot be read anymore; he was opposed to the purchase of works on this carrier in the past, which was not always appreciated by his colleagues, but now it appears that, had the museum – quod non – purchased such works, this should be considered as lost money (only the idea behind the video would remain). The digitization of media has largely solved this problem.

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Questions & Answers

Q. Does the museum have a pre-acquisition policy?

A. A pre-acquisition policy is actually the same as the previous collection policy, and the curators indeed first make a pre-selection amongst the works offered, based on the collection policy; a proposal to purchase is then submitted for approval to an external independent advisory board.

Q. In the world of dance and theater scripts are used for the performances, so that they can always be repeated. Is this not feasible for the fine arts, in order to increase the ‘life time’ of an art work?

A. This is already happening for ephemeral artworks such as performances, but often the context in which they are carried out is missing or insufficiently known. A performance from 1959, even if it is faithfully recreated by the same actors, today, in 2012, does not have the same statute, meaning, experience level and impact as the original version. This is comparable to music of which the scores still exist, but we do not know how it originally sounded. The same goes for theater performances and declamations in dead languages. In all these cases, the original piece is re-created from scratch. It is therefore important to describe the integrity of a work of art as accurately as possible, including its environment. In the visual art, this is a relatively rare phenomenon, which is not a problem as long as the artist is still alive. If a material piece of art is recreated, it is a reproduction. There is a wide range of reproductions sometimes made by the artist himself or under his direction, so possibly with the help of assistants (a replica and copy). One can refer to the latest analysis techniques which allow very detailed descriptions (including of matters invisible to the naked eye). But even then one should not have the illusion that a museum could re-construct the historical context of a work of art, which is a prerequisite for the under-standing of this type of artwork. A museum collects and displays originals, not reproductions or reconstructions. The public knows and expects this. If a reproduction or reconstruction is shown, e.g. for di-dactical reasons, this must only be done under the strict understanding that this is clearly indicated.

Q. Is a museum allowed to let a work of art ‘die’?

A. No, even if it was damaged: one never knows to what extent in the future new techno-logies will be developed making it possible to restore an artwork, even if this is damaged or degenerated.

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Maerten Baes – Astronomically immortal

Mr. Maarten Baes is professor of astrophysics at the Astronomical Observatory, University of Ghent. His main research "eld is the invisible part of galaxies: gas, dust, dark matter and black holes hidden among the stars. He leads a team that combines observational data of the largest telescopes on Earth and in space with state-of-the-art computer simulations.

Astrologists are engaged in the study and scientific explanation of the structure of our solar system, galaxies, galaxy clusters and the large-scale structure of the universe, and what is striking are the huge scales of distance and time involved.

Astronomy and cosmology have seen a very rapid development during roughly the latest one hundred years. It was, for many centuries, e.g. a mystery where the sun’s energy to shine was coming from, and our ancestors were sometimes looking for a divine explanation; the mys-tery was solved only at the beginning of the twentieth century through the discovery and study of nuclear fusion, which occurs at the unimaginable small scale of atoms, but by the vast number of such processes (for the sun, there are 9 × 1037 nuclear fusions per second), they determine the behavior of the sun on an unimaginable large scale. The fact that stars go through an evolution and are not static, is established and understood only since the begin-ning of the twentieth century, especially by analyzing on the one hand, the surface tempera-ture, and on the other, the brightness of stars by means of so-called Hirschsprung-Russell diagrams. It appeared that ‘normal’ stars like our sun have a lifespan of about 10 billion years

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(our sun is about halfway), but for massive stars, this is ‘only’ 100 million years or 1/100 thereof.

The evolution of stars is now fairly well understood, but what about the evolution of the universe, which is studied in cosmology? Cosmological questions are as old as mankind, but it took till the special relativity theory of Einstein in 1905 before scientifically based answers could be given. Thank to this theory we know that time is relative, and that there is only one universal constant, namely, the speed of light, which is the same for each observer, regard-less of the speed with which he is moving. This implies that time advances at a slower pace for a moving observer than for a stationary one, but the differences are only noticeable at very high speeds. Thanks to the general theory of relativity, we now know that time is influenced by gravitational fields that curve the four-dimensional space-time in a significant way. In extreme cases, such as black holes, time even comes to a standstill.

The accuracy of these theories has been proven experimentally, e.g. because they provide an explanation for the deviations in the path of Mercury (that cannot be explained by Newton’s theory of gravity), or for the phenomenon of gravitational lenses which arise because light is deflected under the influence of the force of gravity.

These theories, combined with cosmic observations, teach us that the universe is undergoing an expansion (see Hubble’s law), which suggests that around 13.7 billion years ago, the universe started from a central ‘primeval atom’ that ‘exploded’ in the Big Bang, and formed the starting point of the current (still evolving) universe. The theory of the Big Bang, which was formulated i.a. by the Belgian Lemaître, is not only based on and validated against the motion of the galaxies that we can observe, but also on the chemical composition of the universe which goes back to the first minutes of its existence, and on differences in back-ground radiation that we perceive and which also date from the Big Bang. The theoretical models developed converge now towards a standard model, which, however, presupposes the existence of forms of ‘dark matter’ (which account for about 22% of the total mass of the universe would belong) and ‘dark energy’ (accounting for some 74%), both of which we are, with the current state of the technology, as yet unable to observe. This model also indicates a continued expansion of the universe, until all matter will fall apart. Nothing appears to be forever, certainly not individual stars, and not even the universe as a whole.

Since the speed of light is finite, this means that we currently see galaxies as they were in the past (i.e. when the light left the star system in question). Currently we can ‘look back’ in time to about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, or about 13 billion years ago; with the new gene-ration of telescopes that are planned, both on Earth and in space, we will be able to look even further into space and thus even more back in time.

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Questions & Answers

Q. Does the speaker believe in space travel to other solar systems or galaxies?

A. No: even the closest star (Proxima Centauri) is over four light-years away (compared to the distance Earth-Sun which is only eight light-minutes), making traveling to even this star unfeasable.

Q. Given the fact that we observe galaxies always as they were in the past and therefore also where they were in the past, can we determine their actual position?

A. This is only possible for the nearest neighbours of our Milky Way, for which we can determine the velocity vectors, but not for more remote galaxies.

Q. Can we experience the impact of the relativity theory in practice on Earth?

A. The actual impact of the relativity of time is, in fact, negligible for everything happening on Earth or even in our solar system.

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Frederika Huys – Concepts for conservation of contemporary art –

a world of spare parts and executable scenarios Frederika Huys was Head of Conservation at the S.M.A.K. museum in Ghent (Belgium) between 2334 and 5626. In 5622 she created ‘The House of Conservation’ (www.thehouseofconservation.com) as a professional enterprise to deliver an optimal service to museums, galleries, artists and collectors. She performed conser-vation on works of artists like Marcel Broodthaers, Wim Delvoye, Carsten Höller, Suchan Kinoshita, Yves Klein, Edward Lipski, Bruce Nauman, Panamarenko, Marthe Wéry, Franz West.

In order to understand how we have been able to elaborate a methodology for the conser-vation of art works such as installations, Frederika Huys describes some key moments that have gradually shown us the way to follow. How do you deal with a collection of contem-porary art that is an assembly of various forms and materials? How do you deal even with a single work of art that in itself is a collection of various forms and materials? It is clear that dealing with such collections requires a broad knowledge, which can only be achieved by working together. This was also the conclusion of the International Symposium Modern Art - Who cares?, held in 1999. This symposium is historically important because, for the first time, specialists from all over the world were brought together in order to think about the conser-vation of contemporary art. How do you deal with new paint systems, plastics and mono-chrome paintings, what do you do with a motor-driven work of art or a room full of equip-ments?

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Exchange of knowledge was aimed at different levels. Restorers should have insight in the material and in the methods used by the artist. New methods of preserving and restoring contemporary materials should be passed on more quickly. In response to this problem, from 1999 onwards, the network INCCA (International Network for the Conservation of Contem-porary Art) was set up, with the aim to encourage cooperation and to exchange knowledge on the conservation of modern and contemporary art. Besides an information platform, INCCA is also a database that collects meta data such as interviews with artists, or on the use of materials and conservation practices. The interviewing of artists became globally more and more important, and on the initiative of the Dutch Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art, ten artists were interviewed about their œuvre; these interviews were also published later on.

Huys was asked to conduct the interview with Marina Abramović, which turned out to be a extraordinary experience. Abramović had strong views on both her own work and the general handling of contemporary art in collections. Some quotes of the artist are today still very relevant for Frederika, including the ones pertaining to where the confusion started:

Marina: ‘Actually, doing this interview is really a very useful thing to do because there is so much misunderstanding. There have been many misunderstandings since Joseph Beuys made his work with margarine. I mean that so many questions have to be answered.’

What did Marina actually mean with ‘There have been many misunderstandings since Joseph Beuys made his work with margarine’?

Huys refers to the work Wirtschaftswerte of Joseph Beuys (1980). The installation is composed of an angled metal rack, on which were placed several hundred food products. A large plaster block was placed in front of the rack. The corners of the block were damaged, and Beuys wanted them to be repaired with butter each time the work was exposed. After some years, the butter increasingly penetrated the plaster block, thus weakening its strength. The butter symbolizes fat, i.e. nature. As a man-made object, the plaster stands for culture. Eventually, nature overcomes culture, and the block will fall apart. Beuys introduced the process, the variability that art works may undergo during their existence. But how will society react to this variability?

Marina says: ‘I think it’s important to realize for artists and museums today, that artists are always making changes and so many artists can’t finish the piece.

They have a huge problem in finishing. The piece is never really ready… I think this is a basic concept. You’re kind of attached and you can’t finish. I don’t understand. I like to finish my pieces. And maybe I like to do another version later as a kind of continuum, a process of recreating works. This is difficult for the museum. It needs to have one concept, static and fixed, and that’s that.” – “So there is always the best artist – the artist who finishes his piece – and the bad artist who changes, who does not complete his work… It is so clear.

A work has to be done and that’s it, but if your work will change, then the entire structure of the museum should change as well.

We still have museums on a 20th century based structure. The museum is the public, the viewer, and the object on the wall. I think that communication is necessary between living artists and museums

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that have works in their collection. It has to become a constant dialogue. I think that’s a kind of a life-long process.’

Is conservation a lifelong process in which the owner and the artist are in a permanent dia-logue, or can some artworks also be preserved and presented without the prolonged involvement of their creator?

In 2004 started the European project Inside Installations, in which 26 museums and research institutions exchanged information about preserving their most complex works. One of the case studies of the S.M.A.K. was the art work Voorstelling by Suchan Kinoshita, consisting of a large cabin with two rooms, one for the visitors, and one filled with all kinds of devices and objects with which performances can be executed.

For a public collection it is a challenge to show performance art in its galleries. How do you keep performing from morning till evening? Do you repeat the same performance over and over again? The questions, imposed by conservation and presentation needs, were submitted to the artist, and a performance manual was developed. This manual contains a custom made card game with icons that refer to objects and to the electronic functions available in the cabin of the performer. At the start of the performance, cards are randomly drawn and placed next to each other, thus determining the sequence of the actions. In this way, the performance is never the same and the ‘tool’ responds to the wishes of the artist.

In addition to a performance manual, also a conservation manual was developed, in which the conservation of the materials was investigated. Maintaining a polyurethane curtain of the installation is a good example for taking a look at the contemporary ways of manage-ment and conservation.

Besides the traditional conservation of what exists, there is also discussion, in the field of contemporary art conservation, about opportunities such as duplication, reproduction or migration of certain elements. In the context of the conservation of new media art, it is generally accepted that a work is copied in a new format or that parts of the hardware are replaced. These strategies can also be applied to more plastic elements of the art work, such as an object, made personally by the artist. The green PU curtain will eventually discolor and become brittle. The artist prepared, together with the team of SMAK, a video in which she shows, step by step, how this object can be reproduced.

In the preservation of contemporary art, a very wide range of methods can be applied, for example:

— the techniques that are also used for ‘traditional’ art works

— the replacement of parts (which supposes that a sufficient stock must be foreseen at the time of the creation / acquisition of the work)

— the copying of parts

— the re-execution of an act in accordance with the guidelines of the artist

— the establishment of the fullest possible documentation on how the work was created (e.g. by filming the creative process, with interviews of the artists, with plans and drawings).

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Huys also refers to the exhibition Seeing Double at the Guggenheim Museum (NY 2004). She labels this exhibition as historically important because it showed two versions of the same art work side by side in a museum context: the original one, on the verge of perishing because the technology used of the work is not supported any longer, and a duplicate in which new sustainable technology was integrated.

In 2010 a second edition of the Modern Art - Who cares? symposium took place. During this symposium Huys organized a workshop where artists were invited to reflect on the practice of restorers today. The artists Nedko Solakov and Andreas Slominski participated in the discussions and indicated that often the ultimate element is missing from the descriptions that are made today. A manual for a contemporary art work should be a lively thing, it must ‘grasp’ what parameters are really important for that particular artwork. New ways of documenting also include such aspects as light, sound, environment and atmosphere of the art work.

Huys provides with her company innovative no-nonsense practices applying custom made conservation strategies and tools for the long term. She points out that, provided the proper documentation has been assembled, most contemporary artworks can be preserved forever.

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Questions & Answers

Q. The character of interactive artworks not only depends on what the artist intended, but

also on how the public interacts with the work. How can this be incorporated into the documentation?

A. For such interactive works, also interactive documentation must be created in which future experiences can be integrated. Artists first indicate the interactive nature of their art work. Some artists facilitate the interpretation and the interactivity, but not all of them do so.

Q. What happens after the death of the artist, especially in the case where the documen-tation is incomplete or even non-existent?

A. In such cases, contact should be made with the parties that have inherited the ‘copyright’ of the art work. But action is, of course, necessary nów. In the past, artists may have been insufficiently conscious of this aspect, but the principle of the establishment of such ‘scores’ is now generally accepted.

Q. Are there special techniques that would allow to slow down or even stop the degradation of works such as the one of Beuys?

A. The possibility to keep work or elements thereof under a nitrogen atmosphere, allowing a delay in its degradation.

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Julijonas Urbonas – Designing Death: G-design, Fatal Aesthetics,

and Social Science Fiction Mr. Julijonas Urbonas is a designer, artist, writer, engineer and PhD student in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. From his childhood he has been working in the "eld of amusement park development. By having worked in such an environment – as an architect, rides designer, carnival responsible – he became fascinated by what he calls the physically perceived aesthetics of ‘gravitational theater’. Since then, this subject is at the very center of his creative life, from artistic work to scienti"c articles. More recently, this has become the subject of his doctorate in which he conducts research on Gravitational Aesthetics.

His work has been exhibited internationally and received many awards, including the Award of Distinction in Interactive Art, Prix Ars Electronica 2010, one of the most prestigious awards in the media arts. In his free time Julijonas explores – by creating, experimenting, and writing – the experimental aesthetics of tech-nologies, and gives lectures on this subject. He lives and works in London and Vilnius.

His work Euthanasia Coaster was created in this context: initially the artists aimed to design the ‘ultimate’ coaster. The term ‘ultimate’ was to be understood as follows: users of this roller coaster would not survive the ride. This would be due to the fact that, because of the speed that the roller-coaster trolley gets when it descends from the height of 500 m, at the completion of a loop, a centrifugal force is created that is so large that the blood would be squeezed from the brain, so that this does not get any oxygen anymore: the person would at first experience a brief euphoric feeling, which would rapidly turn into a loss of his sensory perceptions (hearing, sight, starting with the loss of color consciousness = gray-out), to result

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in unconsciousness (= black-out) and ultimately in death, all within only a couple of minutes. The coaster contains, rather for purely aesthetic reasons, also a number of hot-line elements creating a spin effect. Although the design of the roller coaster has seven loops, only one or at most two would be needed to obtain the effect described. It is to be noted that the dia-meter of the loops decreases from one loop to the next, which offsets the effect of the de-creasing speed of the trolley, so that the centrifugal force which is exerted on a rider remains constant (at the equivalent of 10 g, 1 g corresponds to Earth’s gravity). Note that these loops have the shape of a clothoid, and that the artwork has a model scale of 1/500. Such clothoids are also used for example in the design of bends in roads.

The physical and psychological effects of g-forces on humans are illustrated by means of a film of a jet pilot training. To offset the effect of g-forces, combat pilots wear special g-pants that reduce the flow of the blood from the brains into the legs.

In the elaboration of his concept, the artist has had contacts with psychologists who spe-cialize in suicide, and it was found that self-murderers often choose a nice place for their ultimate act, and thereby respect certain rituals. If the eight-track real-scale would be built, it is therefore almost certain that it would exercise a great attraction on potential self-mur-derers.

What about the social acceptability of the work that could be labeled as a form of ‘social science fiction’ as also appears in some SF films? The work was shown at the exhibition of the Science Gallery in Dublin in 2011, and has gathered a lot of media attention and responses. It was also addressed in a rather humorous BBC broadcast. At certain moments, the artist re-ceived 20,000 hits per day on his website, with messages ranging from suggestions, to offers to act as guinea pigs, or to hate mails calling him a Nazi or the incarnation of Hannibal Lecter (also of Lithuanian origin). One reaction, coming from a NASA employee, pointed out that the ride would not be fatal to humans without legs, because they would keep enough blood in their brain during the ride. Another person asked for a detailed scan, of which he had made a tattoo.

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Questions & Answers

Q. Are there plans for building the roller coaster at full size?

A. No, but there is still an interest for the construction of an ‘ultimate’ roller coaster, though the term ‘ultimate’ would be filled in in another way than the one of the artist, who him-self is rather indifferent to whether or not having realized his project at full size, since he does not wish to take position in the debate on euthanasia.

Q. What have been the reactions in Lithuania itself ?

A. The work has received little reaction in Lithuania, and has not led to a profound debate about euthanasia, although Lithuania has one of the highest suicide rates in the world (but maybe the statistics are not very reliable).

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Ann Van Sevenant – A mortal way of being immortal

Mrs. Van Sevenant is Doctor of Philosophy (University of Brussels) and was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp. She is the author of "fteen books on contemporary philosophy (in Dutch, French, Italian and English).

Already in Antiquity Romans made death masks of their deceased, which were then kept as such by their heirs, or used as a model for a statue to keep the memory of the dead ‘alive’. Today things are quite different. The medical knowledge is evolving so rapidly, that the average life expectancy is currently increasing with three months each year, and from 2025 on with 1 year. It is anticipated that, by 2050, it will be technically possible to save the full information content of the brain of a dead person, and download it to a computer, which can be interpreted as a form of ‘immortality’. One also speaks about physical immortality, which would mean that the spiritual evolution somehow stops. If man no longer dies, he will probably stay put morally and existentially.

The question of immortality is discussed in the writings of Plato during the 4th century BC, but it actually goes much further back in time: Zarathustra treated it as early as (probably) the 14th century BC.

Ann Van Sevenant refers to two quotations from Plato:

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1) Eros is not an inexhaustible resource, continuing to donate out of supreme generosity. Eros itself must be fed through a spiritual fertility associated with wisdom and sense of justice

2) to please Eros would mean that we, as mortals, are aimed at immortality, not literally through reproduction, but in a spiritual way. Be in love with immortality equals pleasing Eros, and thus continuing to receive Eros’ benefactions.

These quotations from Plato suggest that he recommends that a person of high morality should not pursue direct results, because this leads to a rapid depletion of his good ideas. Plato says that a man survives, so in a sense is ‘immortal’, through what he leaves behind: his natural and/or spiritual offspring. This brings us to the distinction between the terms ‘im-mortal’ – ‘infinite / unfinished’ – ‘forever’ – ‘timeless’ – ‘imperishable’, whereby the latter concept is perhaps better applicable to creations of artists who thus become ‘immortal’ through ‘imperishable’ artworks.

This leads to the question what motivates an artist to do so: is it an inner, existential need, or is it only for the purpose of rapid successes without depth? Some works shown in Update_4 point in the first direction, namely the creation of works from an inner need and based on questions that linger and possibly influence our lifestyle; from that point of view, the artists involved respond to the criteria Plato postulated, namely act from a sense of justice and goodness.

On could quote in that context the little-known artist Victor Vanhaelen, who creates an art work virtually every day ‘because he simply cannot do otherwise’, but who never exhibits, and who, when asked about his ‘immortality’, replied with a ‘je m’en fous’ (I don’t care).

On the other hand one can quote Derrida, founder of the deconstruction philosophy, who observed a universal human desire to leave something behind after his death, not only in the form of works (books, works of art), but also through his everyday gestures.

The moderator notes that Plato links his concept of ‘immortality’ to the condition of a moral ideal, while there are also many examples of people whom we remember and who were any-thing but moral, even if they were acting from an inner need. Is this not in contradiction with what Plato writes?

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Bram Vandeveire – (Im)mortality of contemporary video art, some reflections about

sense and nonsense of the conservation of contemporary video art Mr. Bram Vandeveire was trained as a photographer and video technician. On a freelance basis, he does exhibition installation tasks for several artists such as David Claerbout, Johan Grimonprez, Chantal Aker-man, etc. Musea like SMAK, De Pont and Bozar turn to him for the implementation of complex multi-media (video) installations.

He is also working, on part time basis, at the School of Arts in Ghent (KASK in HoGent), as coordinator of the postgraduate program TEBEAC (Exhibition & Management of Contemporary Art), a postgraduate education program in collaboration with UGent and SMAK.

Concerning the aforementioned symposium ‘Contemporary Art – Who cares?’, one could point to the ambiguity of this name: in English, ‘Who cares’ can be understood as ‘who minds?’ but also as ‘who will look after?’ Currently, the MSK is busy restoring the Mystic Lamb, and no one raises the question about the appropriateness thereof: there is quasi-una-nimity about the fact that this work should be conserved optimally for future generations, and that the necessary funds have to be made available. For works such as Wirtschaftswerte by Beuys, this might already be less obvious, and sometimes critical questions are raised in this respect. For contemporary art work: who cares? In the early 1990s, in Flanders, after a pre-liminary investigation into what was possible in that area, a BMW (= maintenance staff) training was set up at post-graduate level, which was integrated, in 2005/2006, into TEBEAC

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(exhibition and management of contemporary art), a post-academic initiative supported by the SMAK, Ghent University and the Highschool of Ghent. Its curriculum is mostly based on case studies of artworks in different materials or on different carriers (in the broadest sense of the word), and so in other words with a very different degree of transience; materials management and exhibition go hand in hand; students can also do internships, and en-counter, in the course of the academic year, also various artists and experts; collection build-ing is also part of the curriculum, which also focuses on curatorial policy and practice, and addresses the conservation of contemporary art works that are composed of an increasingly variety of materials, some of which are rapidly perishable (and sometimes are, as a matter of fact, so intended by the artist).

A conceptual question is whether video art is immortal? Collecting such art works poses technical challenges to a museum: by way of example: a work of Nam June Paik in which videos were initially shown on monitors consistinf of cathode ray tubes that are no longer produced (and by the way contained toxic materials such as lead that are now banned); spare parts are increaseingly difficult to obtain, so museums are faced with the dilemma whether such work can still be exhibited, in which case they could make use of other / newer technologies than those originally used by the artist. In this context it should also not be forgotten that art has become ‘big business’ so that owners are willing to pay costs to avoid that their artworks lose their value. This aspect is perhaps less relevant for video art that is hard to sell, but that is confronted with the fact that the techniques used in the past have changed significantly. Specifically, the question arises how a master version of the video can be created and preserved? This raises the question whether it is possible to establish a protocol to ensure the conservation of video art, but a limited set of guidelines can be for-mulated concerning the production of a master, based on the following principles:

1) people involved must have sufficient technical knowledge and insight in the different technical parameters that are specific to video art and which all must match with one another to avoid failures

2) the technical knowledge should make it possible to create a fully documented file, both during the design phase, the construction phase and the closing phase of the (video) artwork in view of the production of a master.

When presenting video art work there is a whole chain of elements that all must be right, be-cause otherwise a failure will occur at a later stage, during a future presentation. Reference has already been made to the example of old monitors that by lack of money, lack of time or other reasons cannot be repaired or supplied anymore. The ethical question arises whether a video art work can be ‘recreated’ on more recent monitors? Some form of experimentation should be permitted, otherwise video art would indeed be mortal (as the equipment needed would no longer be available). In this context, the conservation and reproduction of colors can create big problems, e.g. the case of Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) by Grimonprez which was to be shown at an exhibition at SMAK in 2011/2012, starting from the observation that the colors in the final stage (mastering) were not well calibrated, or that, when transferring the finished video work to the master tape, the right cabling between different devices was not used everywhere. It can also happen that the hardware used in the projection has been poorly calibrated or not at all, or that the different devices do not match. In digital recording, this problem is in principle no longer an issue, but when it comes to converting

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analog images to digital images, one must carefully examine how exactly the analog work looked like.

In the case of photographs (especially the light boxes with pictures of Venice from the artist David Claerbout) the color is also determined by the quality of the paper and other printing conditions (ambient temperature, condition of the maintenance of the equipment, etc.). It happens that the paper that was originally used, is out of stock, and also that the used print-ing techniques have changed, making it therefore impossible to print to a gradation light / dark identical to the original one; the parameters used in the first print have not been documented.

Other problems which one sometimes faces are simply the breaking down of hardware, or the making of wrong human choices in terms of hardware.

In any case, a plea should be held for making variable masters that are tailored to the type of work that is being made, and for documenting them as accurately as possible, so that at a later stage sufficient technical information is available to correctly convert the work into a better master format in yet another newer and higher resolution.

Each recreation of a work for which such problems occur, should look for appropriate solu-tions, with full respect of the original intentions and methods of the artists. But inevitably the question raises whether ensuring in this way the ‘immortality’ of a work, still fully respects its ‘authenticity’?

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Questions & Answers

Q. What is the average life time of a master version?

A. This is about three years, after which a new master should be made. With this in mind, Bram Vermeiren can agree with the fact that Mr. Leen in the past has opted not to purchase analog videos for the collection of the Royal Museums (see the discussion of November 15th).

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Pierre-Yves Desaive – Contemporary Art and Digital Art: different ecosystems, same

DNA Mr. Pierre-Yves Desaive is a graduate in art history and an art critic based in Brussels. He is professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels, where he teaches Contemporary Art and Media Art. He is a member of the Digital Art Commission of the Ministry of Culture. He is also aHliated with the Royal Mu-seums where he is responsible for the digitization of the collections, and the coordinator of various digitization projects, including the European project Digitizing contempary Art with PACKED as coordinator; he works with 5J partners.

In 1989 the first symposium on the long-term prospects of digital art forms was organized by the Getty Museum. The collections of the Royal Museums consist almost exclusively of ‘con-ventional’ art (for which the aspect of ‘immortality’ is usually less problematic than with contemporary works of art), and the museum has some digital artworks, but they are cer-tainly not part of its core business. If necessary, an appeal is made to external expertise in such matters, and this is a good formula which, however, should be further developed. On the other hand, the museum is already far advanced in the digital access to its collections, and is well acquainted with the problems that occur (e.g. the preservation of CDs and DVDs). It has participated in various projects in the European context, and he feels he can say that managing digital images (and other information) no longer poses significant problems: al-though technologies and formats are still evolving, a conversion from old to new hardware and software seems assured (though there is still a problem because of the digital recording

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of colors, where the computer world works with RGB codes, while photographers and the printing industry use CMYK codes; both systems appear not fully compatible with each other, and the different positions will soon be published online by the museum).

With regard to the archiving of (‘stand alone’) digital art and network art, a number of problems arise similar to those of conceptual art, performances and creations in situ; such works evolve over time, and the question then arises at what stage in their life should a ‘recording’ (= complete file or ‘score’) be made which can then be archived. One example is that of a net-artwork that referred to other .com websites: initially most of the links yielded no result (error 404), but now they do. The question is at what time a digital copy should be made of this work. But perhaps more important is that the documentation of the work is kept rather than the work as such. Several projects such as ARGOS and PACKED help artists in the development of guidelines for the preparation of dossiers in which they describe their work, but the role museums can and should play as ‘knowlegde centers’ in the field of conservation of artworks, should not be overlooked.

The RMFAB itself is not yet ready for NetArt / media art, although these art forms appeared almost 15 years ago (cf. Documenta 10, albeit still in a very modest way, and without Internet connection) and some museums have already bought such works; they form as it were a separate ecosystem compared to contemporary art, with separate events, although both have a lot of ‘DNA’ in common.

Finally, here are some concrete examples of ‘immortal’ works or works that deal with ‘im-mortality’. A first example concerns the project Mission Eternity by eToy (not to be confused with eToys!), where digital information concerning deceased persons (called pilots) is stored on PCs of living persons (called angels), to safeguard it for ‘eternity’. Another example concerns the recording, via web cam, of the life of Chr. Boltanski, where the images are stored on a system in the MONA in Tasmania; another example is the series of paintings of Roman Opalka, bearing consecutive numbers; finally there is the project Every Icon of John F. Simon, with a computer filling a pattern of 32 by 32 pixels; the number of possible ways to do so is so large that this computer has several eons ahead of it.

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Questions & Answers

Q. Since museums often are reluctant to purchase digital artwork, how can artists ‘make a

living from their art’.

A. There are no ready-made solutions, and new forms of collaboration between artists and museums will have to be looked for.

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Marko Stamenković – Antropomorphe

Marko Stamenković (23LL, Vranje, Serbia) is an art historian, critic and curator based in Ghent. He is member of IKT – International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, and is a PhD Researcher (since 5622) at the University of Ghent – Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Center for Ethics and Value Inquiry.

Andre Catalão Lara Dhondt Before the actual talk, the film Antropomorphe by Andre Catalão and Lara Dhondt is projected to the audience; these artists also hold a performance based on the Portuguese fado Lenda da Fonte (Legend of the Fountain; music by Domingos Silva and Natalino Duarte), which was originally sang by the 9 year old João Pedro, in 1995 at the international talent music show Bravo Bravissimo. It tells the story of two lovers who used to meet at a fountain at a certain hour of the day, but one day she stops coming, and the people from her village discovers she had died. The love between the couple ended abruptly, and as a consequence, the fountain has dried.

Sin embargo, uno de los sentidos de imago en latín, etimología de nuestra palabra “imagen”, designa la máscara mortuoria que se vestía en los funerales de la antigua Roma. Esta acepción vincula no sólo la imagen, que puede ser también el espectro o el alma del muerto, con la muerte, sino también con toda la historia del arte y de los ritos fúnebres.

Martine Joly (2009)

If life gives man the form of a man as a living, animate human being, which form does death give man as a dead, inanimate human being? When man, as a dead, inanimate human being is no longer man as a living, animate human being but a corpse instead, does death then give man the form of an object? If a dead man is no more man as a living human being but an incomplete human being turned into a corpse indeed, does death give any form to inanimate the object of a dead man’s body – an entity that is no more animate or living, but inanimate or dead, an object, as a matter of fact, yet still human? In other words, does death give a dead man the form of a humanoid object?

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Yes, it does. And this form, the anthropomorphic form, is no more to be recognized only as a corpse but a mask: a death-mask, het dodenmasker, Die Totenmaske, la máscara mortuoria, le masque mortuaire, la maschera mortuaria, посмертная маскa. In Portugal they call it a máscara mortuária: it is there, in the European South, near a town called Midões in the region of Tábua, that André Catalão and Lara Dhondt conceived their project Antropomorphe (2012), which is also the title of this paper. As my personal way of approaching what had already fascinated this artistic couple (a tomb of an unusual, mysterious kind, carved into a granite rock, “an immortal statue built upon mortality” in their own words), I will draw on some aspects of contemporary thought around visual cultures of our times and our past, in their relation to death, dying, and places of memory. What is death? If there is any single answer to this deliberately simplified and seemingly un-avoidable question, one among numerous possibilities could be that “death is an unequivocal and permanent end of our existence” (Nagel 1970). If death is therefore inseparable from our existence in the way that it has to be defined by the notion of ‘the end’ overcoming what has preceded it, Nagel adds to the discussion by asking “whether it is a bad thing to die?”. His hypothesis introduces “difficulties about loss and privation in general, and about death in particular”. Thus asking the question what is bad about death (instead of what is good about life) introduces the asymmetry that is revolving around the loss (of life) rather than the state of being dead: “If we are to make sense of the view that to die is bad, it must be on the ground that life is good and death is a corresponding deprivation or loss, bad not because of any positive features but because of desirability of what it removes”.

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Why is it that the subject of death in general has attracted for centuries such an enormous body of writings, both scholarly and popular, but also of image-making through the repre-sentation of death? For Douglas J. Davies, a social anthropologist and professor at the Depart-ment of Theology and Religion at Durham University (UK), death is “a subject that touches practically every aspect of life.” In his book A Brief History of Death (2005) he stresses the very particular nature of the human interest in the subject of death, as compared to any other subject. Davies in that regard says: “The inevitable interest we all have in death – whether voiced or silent – is, often, unlike the interest we possess in other subjects. This one is in-fused with emotion, whether that of the experience of bereavement or of its anticipation, or of the thought of our own mortality” (Davies 2005).

If “the history of death is a history of self-reflection” (Davies) then our view of death should be understood as a mirror-situation: mirroring ourselves in and through the idea of death. Here I refer to the kind of mirroring operations by which we understand death as a final and unknown stop at the path of our life – the last stop towards which we all keep going through life. Death is a myth of which we might have only heard vague rumors or, indeed, stories without any certitude. Nonetheless, what we desire to know about it and what we would like to see – by experiencing death through the faculty of sight – remains hidden, as it must. History of death as a history of our self-reflection constantly reminds us of at least three things: (a) how incapable we are of seeing our own death; (b) how impossible it is, for a living human being, to grasp a full view of what it looks like to be on the other, unknown side of the visible itself; (c) how impossible and frustrating it might be to long for seeing that other (invisible) side of life without any possibility to return to this side of the visible.

History of death as a history of self-reflection (and therefore of self-observation, looking at the image of one’s own self) introduces one of the most significant aspects for this paper – the relationship between death, images, and self-perception. What is it then that makes the relation between death and images so strong? And what is it that we could actually see in front of a powerful and always invisible image of death?

The relation between death and images is fundamental. It is fundamental for our own under-standing of ideas around death and images independently from each other but also, and even more importantly, for our understanding of their mutual relationship through their respect-ive materiality. Why does materiality matter here? Because it is in the materiality of images and image-making operations (both in terms of image-production and image-perception) that our relation towards mortality and immortality is put into force. Hereby my reference to immortality denotes traces and remnants of previous living, what remains and what must remain following the disappearance of humans, but also the disappearance of objects, of me-mories, of archives, of values, of the world at large.

The relation between death and images is essential inasmuch as it links death to the image “which can also be the spectrum or the soul of the dead, but also [as it links] the entire history of art and funeral rites” (Joly 2009). In her seminal book Introduction to Image Analysis Martine Joly (Professor Emeritus at the University Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux III in France) reminds us of the significance of this particular relationship in the world, different from all other potential relationships that might serve our analysis, by pointing out the material, cultural and ritual significance of the phenomenon of death-masks. In etymology, a death-mask evokes the origins of the very term image (imago, in Latin). Imago is an image

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that denotes a mask of death – an object that, in its turn, represents the facial features of a human being who passed away. By representing those features (human or anthropomorphic features, to be precise) as recorded post-mortem, death-masks allow subjects of death to inscribe themselves into the history of self-reflection as a history of death. Self-observation therefore becomes a paradoxical and double-oriented operation, since subjects of looking escape all possibilities of actually seeing the image of their own selves while dying or in the state of death. Such an impossibility, on the other hand, also enforces those who have the possibility of looking to see the image of the Other (of someone else dying or already dead). It is in this game of looking where the immortality comes to the spotlight by being literally dis-played, put to light, through a death-mask. By being exposed – publicly, in an open-air ritual ceremonial procession as it used to be the case in the antique Roman past – it becomes in-scribed into human histories precisely where the subjects of looking exercise their practices of seeing the image of death, and from a very particular viewpoint.

The viewpoint I am here referring to is the ambiguous viewpoint situated in-between two essential positions. Without this binary approach no idea about imagery of death as a death-mask could have ever been possible. One is the position of those dying or already dead (i.e. the “blind” models) upon whose faces the masks are being cast, without them having an opportunity to actually see what their own death-mask looks like, simply because they are no more alive. Another is the position of those witnessing their death (i.e. the “looking” sub-jects), the observers of casting processes, or onlookers of material traces of those processes. The witnesses are those who keep their privileged status of spectators viewing the spectacles of death through death-masks of other people, similarly to traditional spectators of memento mori imagery. The puzzling aspect of such a witnessing lies, nonetheless, in their role of spectators of human features in others’ death-masks yet as if their own death-masks, in anti-cipation, appear in front of their eyes. By looking at someone else’s death-mask, the living humans also look at their own (virtual) death in the future to come. This is why the afore-mentioned mirroring situation, taking place at the moment of looking, becomes transparent in the image of another human’s death (and not mine, for example) or, precisely, in the death-mask of a dead man observed by his/her living Other:

The corpse, whose horror seems to be precisely that of the living being become inert object […] is never wholly object, for it is always also image – an image of otherness that is also, paradox-ically, the image of self, image as self. […] Thus while we can never see our own corpse, we always see in the corpse of another something of what has constituted our selves. That is, we see a subjectivity at the same time that we see an object; we see the degree to which subject-ivity is the seeing of an object. This, and not death, is the source of the horror we feel when we look upon a corpse.

Schwenger 2000

During the funerals in ancient Rome an imago/death-mask was worn in the sense that it was publicly exposed (exhibited, displayed) to those taking part in the ritual procession either as the protagonists of the ritual or its mere onlookers. Additionally, a death-mask is not only a constitutive term for the relationship between vision and mortality, but also for an ultimate image of human relation to the invisibility of death, a false solution to come up with the im-

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possibility of men to enter the invisible and unknown realm of death from a viewpoint allow-ing them to return. A death-mask is a compromise by which mankind attempts to overcome that unbearable condition of living at the edge of visibility, a viewpoint from which, in order to become effective by crossing death’s entrance door, there is no escape, no return. Death-mask materializes human’s failure to overcome this obstacle (the point of no return) and to build upon an apparatus of vision as an ideological apparatus – the one that aims at making sure the face of death can become visible, while for the “blind models” themselves (the deceased, whose image is rendered immortal by a wax or plaster cast made of a person’s face following death) the image of their own image of death remains ultimately invisible.

This situation is challenging as it reveals the meaning behind the word autopsia in its double sense at least. On the one hand, it translates as “seeing with one’s own eyes,” whereas autop-sia stands for a form of post-mortem examination of someone else’s corpse (seen with one’s own eyes, which is the role usually performed by privileged perspective of forensic experts, pathologists or criminal coroners, in cases of unnatural death). On the other hand, in this specific case (the case of image-making through production and perception of death-masks) autopsia stands for an examination of someone else’s corpse whose facial features allow me (the viewing subject) to see someone else’s death (the object of looking) as it appears from an external viewpoint, judging by the appearance of his/her death mask. Moreover, the features of someone else’s death-mask allow me to see (if ‘seeing’ is a proper term at this point at all) the imprint of my own death yet to come. This is a new and interesting situation where a sin-gular death, through images precisely, gains its expanded social dimension. It stretches from a singular body (a corpse, as it is, and its face in particular) toward a plurality of bodies en-gaged in the process of looking – looking at someone else’s body as a dead body of their own (viewing) selves in antecessum. This allows me to borrow, as one of the central theoretical postures here, the argument expressed not so long ago by W.J.T. Mitchell (one of the most usual “suspects” in contemporary visual theory) and what he claims about images. He under-stands them as being “not just a particular kind of sign, but something like an actor on the historical stage, a presence or character endowed with legendary status, a history that parallels and participates in the stories we tell ourselves about our own evolution from creatures ‘made in the image’ of a creator, to creatures who make themselves and their world in their own image” (Mitchell 1986).

For anyone willing to understand the essential role images have played in death (the philo-sophy of death and its rituals) the very materiality of a death-mask becomes an inevitable point of reference through which our practices of looking, as much as our practices of being, fight an eternal battle over the territory of vision. This battle occurs precisely in a mutual exchange of gazes between what is overexposed and what remains underexposed, between what is put on display and what is being observed via the object of display. If images are indeed of the order of monsters, then their ultimate monstrosity is inherent to our attempt to show (to put a spotlight on something in order to “make it visible”) what must neverthe-less always remain hidden. The monstrosity of images thus relates to the invisibility of death in a formula that brings together the visible materiality of a death-mask with the invisible immateriality of death itself. The Being of Images does not lie in what we are able to perceive and to perceive it as monstrous indeed (here the monstrosity refers to what in Portuguese catholic tradition is called ostensório, or custódia, while in French it refers to monstrance). It

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lies exactly in what we are not and will never be able to perceive beyond what is de-monstrated in front of our ignorant eyes.

This inextricable bond between images and death, in particular, is what brings me slowly back again to the concluding revision of the main points expressed before. One is based upon singular, self-centered perspective of looking by which a mirroring operation occurs at the moment of looking at someone else’s death through a death-mask. Another revolves around aspects that bring our individual sense of death and dying closer to the social body of cul-tural and national, transcultural and transnational communities of onlookers (of images of death and dying). And finally, the third thought provides a connection between the singular and plural ways of looking at/through the idea of death in order to highlight “the sense of hope manifested in places of memory” (Davies 2005) unlike the sense of loss expressed in myths on the origin of death.

REFERENCES Douglas J. DAVIES (2005), A Brief History of Death. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Martine JOLY (2009), Introducción al análisis de la imagen. Buenos Aires: La Marca.

W.J.T. MITCHELL (1986), Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Thomas NAGEL (1970), “Death”, in Noûs, 4:1, p. 73-80.

Peter SCHWENGER (2000), “Corpsing the Image”, in Critical Inquiry, 26:3, p. 395-413.

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Christophe De Jaeger – The computer, a forgotten artist in the 60s and 70s -

history of computer based art as compared to non computer based art Mr. Christophe De Jaeger started as an independent curator, has among others worked on the photo festival of the Cultural Center of Knokke, and is now connected to the BOZAR in Brussels as responsible for the photographic department. The subject of his lecture is part of a research he currently performs at the University of London. In this context, he was given the opportunity to personally meet and interview many of the pioneers of computer based art.

The computer has made its appearance in art in the 1960s. A distinction can be made be-tween two types of computer-based art: on the one hand, there are figures that are created using a computer algorithm; on the other hand, there are computer-controlled installations. In the first category, the creations of G. Nees by means of a plotter can be mentioned, but also the program AARON of Harold Cohen, causing a computer to generate figures, like a human being, on the basis of rules that are programmed; the computer is here much more than a device that drives a plotter, but can, by application of those rules, proceed to its ‘own’ creations. In the second category falls, as one of the first works, Collage of Mobiles by G. Pask of 1968, which consisted of ‘male’ and ‘female’ sculptures whose interactions are computer-controlled, and are also influenced by input from the public. For the first category, it is rele-vant to distinguish between the periods before and after 1986: in the first period the pioneers would themselves write programs to generate the drawing figures, while in the second period, thanks to the availability of Paintbox, this was no longer needed.

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Can computer based art be considered as a form of mainstream art, which then enrolls in the overall history of art, with parallels with other non-computer based art forms from the same period, such as minimalism, constructivism, concretism. In principle answering this question requires a definition of what mainstream art is.

When the first computer based art works were created, the attitude from the mainstream art world was negative: it were in their eyes no more than technical experiments, without emotional value, rather tedious, although of complex design, but not art, and artists felt that the established art institutions would never buy computer-based works for their collections. To the advantage of computer based art advocates the fact that the computer has made possible interactivity (which is now an essential part of many artworks), that computer based art can be seen as an exponent of the rationalism that prevailed in the 1960s, and that – contrary to what was claimed – many art institutions have indeed bought such art works for their collections.

Through his research, a more grounded answer can be formulated by making a comparison between the two art forms from different viewpoints: economic, philosophical, sociological and political.

From an economic standpoint, let us remind that this art form originated in the 1960s, years of high economic growth, followed by the oil shock in 1973, which led to economic crisis. Two sectors experienced no disruption by the oil shock: the computer industry (then dominated by IBM mainframes) and the mainstream art sector (with representatives such as Warhol). But the computer based art, during this whole period, kept a ‘low profile’. Never-theless, there were a number of commercial galleries that exhibited such works, which indi-cates that an economic basis for computer based art did exist.

Also the scientific-philosophical world discussed this art form; remember the groundbreak-ing debate with i.a. Beuys and Bensen, and to common characteristics that can be observed between concrete art and computer based art (see e.g. the works of Manfred Moore).

A comparison from a sociological point of view shows that many pioneers did not see them-selves as artists but rather as technicians, and often they looked really ‘civilised’. But then there is of course the question of the definition for the term ‘artist’: in many contemporary interactive works the visitor is partly ‘artist’ himself.

From a political standpoint, it can be stated that the mainstream society stood rather averse towards the computer, which was perceived as a device primarily for military purposes (cf. the use of the first computers for the investigation of the development of the atomic bomb). Some mainstream artists even did not hesitate to ridicule the pioneers of computer based art.

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Questions & Answers

Mr. Stanza points to the aspect that, in many cases, the pioneers have not signed their works, as if it was not they but the computer who was the real artist. He also points out that these pioneers worked with computers which were still very expensive at that time, and for that reason the artists actually belonged to the former ‘establishment’, which almost by defini-tion is mainstream.

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Stanza – Open ended art

Stanza is active in many artistic "elds: he started with linear artworks such as paintings and prints, has been active with interactive installations, and now works on open-ended works, the result of which depends on the input that the work gets from one or more external sources. He has also produced 22 music albums.

Stanza now concentrates mainly on such open-ended systems in urban environments, where the input is supplied mainly by CCTV (closed circuit television) systems. The creative process consists of three steps: first, the collection of the necessary input, then processing it, and finally its visual representation in one form or another (on screen or otherwise).

A first illustration of the way in which he engaged is a collage of twelve screens showing images of CCTV systems. These images have been hacked, which immediately raises the question whether the artist may call himself the owner of the artwork, given the fact that it is based on images of which he is not the owner; a second question is whether the work subsists in the case of a failure of the CCTV screens. In any case, it is so that the work of art is not fixed in space nor in time.

Generally speaking, the question arises how a more cultural meaning and form can be given to data that are collected. In Stanza’s work Genomixer, use is made of the DNA sequence of the artist, which consists of a long sequence of the nucleotides A, C, G and T. This sequence is displayed on screen, accompanied by music that was composed by the artist. Mapping the

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entire sequence will take 107 years. This work may in a sense be regarded as a self-portrait of the artist.

Another example of the collection, processing and poetic representation of information is the Public Domain project of Stanza, in which he put ten CCTV cameras at the disposal of individuals, and then processed the images they recorded in his own CCTV network. Other examples were the observation of sheep, whose movements were then converted into music by means of an algorithm.

Another project is Sound Cities, which recorded sounds from different cities around the world and then converted them into numerical values; the database is open source, and anyone can use the numerical values as input for their own art work.

Stanza also refers to a project in the Plymouth Art Centre, where images of twenty CCTV cameras in the gallery are sent to a central point, whereby the movements of the visitors are represented by moving circles, including the movements of the visitors of the room where the central point itself is located.

The work that is now proposed in Update_4 is a further development: the parameter values that are measured by sensors located in London and converted into numerical values, are used to recreate the illusion of an urban environment. The chain contains both the link ‘real → virtual’ and the link ‘virtual → real’.

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Peter Beyls – Aesthetic Strategies of Survival

Peter Beyls is an artist and scientist whose artistic production is rooted in software development; he creates generative systems in formats for music, visual arts and hybrid formats.

Can the observation of how nature works teach us lessons about the ‘immortal’ character of what culture produces.

Generally speaking, it can be stated that nature tries to create order from chaos, on the basis of processes that respond to the laws of nature. An example of how molecules can be brought to a form of cooperation that so to speak mimics true life, are the chemical oscillators dis-covered in the 1950s. The question is whether the observation of such processes can contri-bute to the development of computer programs as simple as possible and yet, through design, try to create order in chaos.

Generally speaking, a comparison of artifacts created by nature with artificial ones, created as a result of culture, shows the following:

- Natural artifacts come into being in a bottom-up mode, whereas the artificial ones do in a top-down mode

- Natural artifacts can constantly change and adapt to changing circumstances, the artifi-cial ones cannot

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- Artificial artifacts have a single fixed focus / objective, natural artifacts have a moving focus

- The approach of nature automatically leads to diversity, through the evolutionary process

- Natural artifacts are the result of synthesis, the artificial ones of analysis

- Natural artifacts are completely interactive, the artificial ones are at best ‘responsive’ and react to a trigger in a preprogrammed way.

In the context of computer based art it is also relevant to have a proper definition of the term ‘machine’. According to Michel Carrouges a machine has to meet four requirements: it must be autonomous, ‘single’ – it should work according to a certain logic – it must interact with humans – a human has to witness its operation. These properties were later also re-cognized by Duchamp.

This definition does not exclude machines that can evolve from simple devices to highly complex machines, that are so to speak a form of artificial life.

A number of works integrate natural elements into art.

A first example of a cybernetic artwork is a kind of computer-controlled animal, created by Edward Ihnatowicz, who drew inspiration from the scissors of a lobster. A second piece is a hybrid implementation by the Australian artist Oron Catts, in which organic and inorganic elements are mixed together. An important name in this respect is Stelarc, who, for example, developed a mechanical arm as a kind of third arm to his body, and that was able to write two words (evolution and decadence).

This artist also developed the first body artwork, with his body executing a kind of choreo-graphy based on his own nerve impulses and on stimuli that were given to a body half by converting emails into electrical signals. Stelarc also created, along with Nina Sellars, the work Blender, in which a container of about 5 ℓ is filled with body fluids, blood, grease, nerves etc. of the two artists. Eduardo Kac used DNA to create works of art, in this case by com-bining DNA of a rabbit and a jellyfish.

Concerning the theme of the conference, namely Immortality, Peter Beyls refers to the com-puter expert system on which Harold Cohen has been working for 40 years, and that contains all the aesthetic rules which he applies in his work; this program is now capable of auto-nomously creating artworks (also in colour) in the style of Cohen. This raises the question of what will happen after the death of the artist? May the works that this computer program then generates still be considered as original creations?

Peter Beyls also deals with a number of his own creations, in which he works with cellular automata which can create patterns by using simple algorithms; these patterns can then be converted into music through another algorithm. The patterns are created in several steps, and in a more complex implementation of the principles, it is as though each next step is controlled by the previous ones, so actually in a way in which also nature proceeds. He is also working on complex systems, that, as in nature, not only have the capacity to evolve, but also to learn. Such systems make use of a multitude of sensors, and as is often the case, he then converts the collected information into sounds, so into music.

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Peter Beyls also looks ahead to what technological evolution will bring us in the future. He thinks of propagation starting from a cell of any body part – of facial transplant – of nano-technology – of combinations of natural and synthetic molecules – of massive global net-works.

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Rosa Menkman – From Xenoglossy to Cliché

Rosa Menkman is currently preparing a PhD thesis on digital art eOects. More speci"cally, she investigates glitches, and she is co-author of the so-called glitch manifest. Her artistic / theoretical work focuses on visual artifacts that arise due to ‘accidents’ in analog and digital media.

Two types of definitions can be given of the word ‘glitch’: a technological one and an artistic one. Technically speaking, a glitch occurs due to a programming or other error in word pro-cessing and image editing programs, making an undesirable phenomenon to occur. The user of the program does not know what is happening, and wether the problem can be solved. From an artistic point of view, a glitch is rather the effect that the problem has on the user, who experiences a ‘glitch-moment’. In glitch art, artists try to provoke such experiences by deliberately introducing errors in the computer techniques.

Glitches can be caused by the fact that programming languages, and in particular techniques for compressing images, not are aligned. In general, all information circulating on the Inter-net has, in one way or another, been compressed; different compressing algorithms can be used, adapted to the type of information or images, or to the objectives perceived. But they all have in common that compression, of course, implies the omission of information. For digital artists, this is disturbing, either because, by compressing a posteriori, part of their creative work is destroyed, or because the use of compression techniques a priori limits their

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artistic freedom (e.g. by limiting the palette of colours or levels of brightness that may be used).

As said, a problem of incompatibility between the compression techniques lead to glitches, but they can also be triggered: currently nine image formats are commonly used (RAW, JPEG, JPEG2000, GNP, TIFF, GIF, Photoshop, Terra and PNP), and in each of these it is sufficient to adjust some parameter values, to obtain distorted images. These techniques are also being used, for example, to give an analog look to digital images. The algorithms for such distor-tions, which originally could be labeled as glitch art, are now standardized and available in many image editing programs. In a sense, the objectives of glitch artists are eroded, because what was originally intended as a way of disturbing the ‘establishment’, is quickly integrated by the latter rapidly.

In this context, Rosa Menkman draws a parallel with the evolution of language. Her interest in languages was awakened by reading the book Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. It describes a library containing books only of 410 pages, and one copy of all the possible combinations that can be made with the letters of the alphabet and the conventional punctuation signs. Hence, this library contains all the possible books ever to be written, and this in all languages, including also the ‘perfect’ book. Some visitors are looking for this perfect book, but they lose their minds in that quest. On the other hand, this library also has books with errors in it, and a team of ‘purifiers’ is constantly trying to detect and destroy such copies.

Her interest in languages was also sharpened by reading 1984 by Orwell, in which he descri-bes a society whose citizens are obliged to use Newspeak, a language with a limited voca-bulary, which inevitably limits the intellectual creativity and freedom of these citizens. This is not the case as long as they use Oldspeak, and with the launch of its first PC, Apple used this metaphor, by saying that his PC would restore Oldspeak, i.e. would promote intellectual freedom. Today, Apple is precisely one of the companies that forces its customers into a certain straitjacket thus limiting their intellectual freedom.

Such a phenomenon also occurs with Facebook, where users are obliged to respect several standards. A concrete example of how intellectual freedom is restricted on Facebook, is the prohibition of the use of diacritics (eg ǟ, ḗ, ḯ, ṓ, ṹ, ṧ). Pages containing such characters are deleted by Facebook, including those of Rosa Menkman herself (after contacting Facebook, they were restored, and she even got an offer by Facebook to help find glitches in their pro-grams).

As a conclusion, it can be stated that contemporary artists are testing the boundaries of the system and try to push them further, but that this is actually the same as what artists in the past have always done. Glitch artists oppose, in their way, to the Newspeak-like situations (cf. the New Esthetics), where we are forced to use rules, norms and standards that actually restrict our intellectual freedom.

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Questions & Answers Q. Do there exist ways for preserving glitch-art?

A. Most glitch-artists are well aware of the fact that technologies and standards get out-dated, precisely because in their works, they are testing the boundaries of existing tech-nologies and standards, and in a broader perspective, question a number of social stan-dards. From this point of view, the glitch movement actually is a broader social movement and not limited to the creation of purely visual glitch-effects.

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Jean-Paul Fourmentraux – Praticables – Dispositifs artistiques

Mr. Fourmentraux is a sociologist, anthropologist and professor at the Universities of Lille and Paris. He conducts research regarding the impact of the Internet on the way of creating contemporary art.

The subject of ‘Immortality’ will be approached by considering art works without a well-defined beginning nor end. The lecture will in particular be illustrated on the basis of results of the research programme ‘Praticables – Dispositifs Artistiques: les mises en œuvre du spectateur’, that examines the role that the public plays in the creation of contemporary artworks.

It is undeniable that the Internet affects artists in the way they work to create art. They often make use of so-called ‘dispositifs’ which then, after a certain time, appear to result in applications for the general public. Jean-Pierre Fourmentraux draws attention to the term ‘dispositif ’ to denote contemporary art: in the 1960s, the term ‘installation’ was current, subsequently replaced by ‘work created in situ’, and now by ‘dispositif ’. This evolution in the naming ran parallel with the role that the public plays, and which has evolved from origi-nally a rather passive visitor, over visitors who themselves come into the picture, to visitor whose movements and gestures play an essential role in the creation of the artwork: without the audience there is no artwork anymore. It is particularly this role that is being studied in the research programme ‘Particables’ or ‘Médias praticables’.

The role that the public can / should play can be illustrated by analyzing three examples.

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The first is the work Réanimation by an artist trio. Its visual aspect consists of a screen on which silhouettes can be seen that are created by an algorithm; this algorithm uses as input the movements of the audience observing the artwork, but these movements are accompanied by music, which in turn is determined by the movements of a dancer, that form the input of still another algorithm. These two algorithms are therefore at the heart of the work, whereby what is projected on the screen or played as music, is the result of the actions of the audience and the dancer together. These are always different, yielding an ‘immortal’ character to the work.

The second work is Discontrol Parties, that has been shown at a festival in Valenciennes. The artist recurs to technologies that are used for surveillance purposes, but adjusted to avoid the use of the movement of a signle individual, but instead to capture the movement of a whole group. This information is entered into a ‘dispositif’ which then generates music, and can therefore be used in a context of festivities; here the idea is that the public, through its actions and movements, puts the system to a test and ultimately tries to crash it.

A third example is the work Capture, realized in Montreal by the consortium Hexagramme, which focuses on the study of the potential industrial valorization of new techniques that artists use in their contemporary creations, and to this end receives grants from institutions that are funding scientific innovative research.

Capture is a robot simulating a rock group, in a performance without beginning nor end. The program scans the internet for music and text fragments, and ‘recreates’ them, and this basically in an endless loop. It has thus a generative nature, which is not limited to music, but also includes the aspect of the merchandising of the virtual rock group. Human inter-vention is only required to guide the processes, but people – once the ‘dispositif’ is developed – do no longer play a creative or generative role, giving the work a ‘perennial’ character.

On the basis of these examples, a description of the characteristics of these so-called ‘médias praticables’, can be given, as compared to the rather traditional media. It is in any case clear that the interactive character, thanks to the Internet, has evolved from interventions ‘here and now’ by the public, to interventions that are not localized anymore. Also, it is so that the works actually only come about through the input given by the audience into the program that the artist has created. Without this input, there is no artwork. In fact, the artists take a certain risk here, because if the public does not actively intervene, the intended artwork is not created. What also characterizes the ‘médias praticables’ is the fact that the screen on which the result of the interaction is visualized, is actually only a small part of the artwork: the bulk of the creative work of the artist consists of the software that he designs; to use a musical metaphor: it is like a score that the audience can interpret, or perhaps better yet, an instrument that it can play at will. This presupposes that the public appreciates the ‘immersive’ nature of these ‘médias praticables’, which can be classified as ‘œuvres ouvertes’ in the broadest sense of the word.

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Angelo Vermeulen – Building Living Computers, Terraforming Volcanoes and colonizing Mars

As a visual artist with a doctorate in biology, Angelo Vermeulen is always at the crossroads between art and science. In 5663 he started SEAD (Space Ecologies Art and Design), a platform for artistic research on space colonization. He works together i.a. with the space agencies ESA and NASA.

In his lecture, Angelo Vermeulen will describe three projects, and then discuss his future plans, where the scientific layer of his work plays an important role.

The first project is Biomodd. The term mod or modding is inspired by the phenomenon of case modding, where computer enthusiasts convert their computer in a manner comparable with what car enthusiasts do with their car (car tuning). This leads to possible overheating of the PC, hence this subculture is constantly looking for ways to dissipate heat, by designing spe-cial cooling elements. This lead to the idea to look for more creative ways to use this heat than simply using cooling elements. In addition, Angelo Vermeulen was also affected by the problem of e-waste. These approaches have led to the Biomodd project, which seeks to build a biotope using recycled computer material; the waste heat is used for stimulating plant growth inside the computer. It also introduces algae cultures. Another ‘layer’ that is added to his work has a social nature. Biomodd is always the result of a co-creation, where only the basic concept is elaborated by the artist, and then the project receives, in situ, its concrete shape through brainstorming sessions and thanks to the active collaboration of multi-

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disciplinary project groups. This approach implies that the final result is always different and depends specifically on the place where, and thus the culture in which, it will be realized. Moreover, the system that is built is essentially a computer network accessible to gamers, whose games influence the heat generated, and therefore the vegetation growth.

A first version of Biomodd came about in the Aesthetic Technologies Lab in Athens (Ohio), where Angelo Vermeulen stayed for four months, and collaborated with other artists but also with more technical staff specialized in biology, design and programming. The end result was a structure of 2 m high, constructed on the basis of 5 recycled computers, and coupled to an ecosystem with plants, algae and fish. The algae are cooling the processor of the server. These are in turn heating an aquarium with fish, and the warm and fertile fishing water is finally used as irrigation water for the various plants. Referring to the theme ‘Immortal’ of the colloquium, the artist observes that the algae actually can be considered an ‘immortal’ artistic medium; he still works with the algae of his first culture dating from 2002; these algae travel with him to wherever a new Biomodd project will be realized, and are therefore by now already mixed with similar algae from all over the world, forming as it were a living archive, able to survive even very extreme conditions (e.g. dehydration).

The project was also implemented in the Philippines, a country eminently characterized by a culture of community building. This work was done at the foot of Mount Makiling, which the locals believe to be inhabited by a spirit Maria Makiling. She would severely punish environ-mental crimes, hence the population shows great respect for the ecological system in this mountain. The co-creation here has led to a sculptural structure in which many local wood-carving is integrated, so it received this typical baroque-like, Filipino look.

Meanwhile Biomodd has become an open source project that is realized in different places around the world, without the intervention of the artist.

The most recent version with which the artist has collaborated, was realized in New York for the exhibition ReGeneration in the New York Hall of Science. This museum is located in an area where mostly Hispanics live. The local population was, as always, actively involved in the implementation, including by workshops organized by the artist on the recycling of e-waste. In this realization, a number of new concepts were explored:

- The use of renewable energy, particularly solar energy, to cover part of the energy needs

- Urban farming, by ensuring that the cultivated plants were edible (e.g. tomatoes)

- Entangled reality, attempting to influence plant growth by a further reaching integration than just through the recycling of waste heat. More specifically, this was done by the incorporation of environmental sensors that informed the computer about the state of the ecosystem. Also various forms of simple robotics were incorporated into the ecosys-tem. These were systems that could provide assistance to the plants: water, humidity plant flipping, etc. This created a feedback loop, or put in another way, an entanglement effect. The real ecosystem and the virtual system on the computer network influenced each other in a ceaseless interaction.

A second project that Angelo Vermeulen wishes to discuss is part of the MELiSSA-program of the European Space Agency. This program aims to build an autonomous ecosystem that

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could be used for long-term space travel. This ecosystem provides food, water and oxygen and recycles the new waste from the astronauts. This has inspired the artist to set up the SEAD platform (Space Ecology Art and Design). The SEAD term also refers to the ‘seeding’ of life. Terraforming is a – still fictitious – concept, where a dead planet, by using biological and physical techniques, is transformed into a planet that could harbour life. The artist has used this concept of terraforming after an eruption of Mount Merapi on Java. The flanks of the volcano were covered with lava and were initially bare, because lava does not contain nitrogen – an element that is essential to plant life. Some bacteria are able to take nitrogen from the air and then, in symbiosis with certain plants, to pass it ‘in exchange’ for nutrients that the bacteria need. Again, the artist, in collaboration with artists, architects, microbiolo-gists and the local population, realized a project which eventually took the form of a tri-angular tower in bamboo, with several floors, where biologists their carry out their terra-forming experiments. Not all experiments succeed, but some do, so this tower could become a symbol of hope in the otherwise desolate landscape. The son of the family where the artist could stay incidentally, after his departure, built his own miniature version of the tower where he performs experiments.

A final project that Angelo Vermeulen wishes to describe is part of the Wittenveen+Bos Art+Technology Award he received in 2012. He got the opportunity, together with engineers from Wittenveen+Bos, to work on a project which consisted of a concrete sculptural spaceship that, in theory, should be completely autonomous. The result was exhibited at the Bergkerk in Deventer. As always, the artist opted for the formula of co-creation, in this case, especially with engineers, which led to an interesting confrontation between the approaches of engineers and artists. The former first work out a plan that they then realize, while the latter proceed rather by trial-and-error, step by step, see if an idea is viable, and slowly let the structure ‘grow’. This is somewhat similar to the way in which nature operates. The result is a sculpture of about 20 m long, which consists for about 80% of recycled materials, and in which biology, art and engineering are mixed together; the structure includes a cockpit, a kitchen and a holodeck.

In addition to these completed projects, Angelo Vermeulen treats a project he soon will participate in. It concerns the HI-SEAS project funded by NASA, that investigates how future colonists of Mars will vouch for their food. The artist was, along with four Americans and one Canadian, selected from 700 international applicants, who will be observed during four months in a habitat imitating the living conditions on Mars, and which is located in Hawaii. The participants will realize, in that period, a number of private projects, and in the case of the artist, these will include tele-operated space farming. He believes that his candidacy was selected because he has much experience with the realization of projects in complex en-vironments and in different social circumstances.

The moderator noted that the fact that the artist has a scientific background, puts him in an almost unique position. Angelo Vermeulen confirms that this certainly has contributed to creating an atmosphere of trust between him and the engineering team of Witteveen+Bos, and therefore to the success of the project.

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Questions & Answers

Q. How one can come to successful co-creation?

A. Angelo Vermeulen is preparing a new doctorate at the University of Delft, where this aspect will be studied in more detail, but it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions. It is true that success depends on a delicate balance between, on the one hand, allowing freedom, and on the other hand, instructing the team. In case of inadequate control and especially during the absence of the artist there is tension in the group, which can often be traced back to a feeling of insecurity among the team members. Concerning the interaction between engineers and artists, in general three forms are possible:

1) the engineers work out a project completely, and ask, in a final stage, an artist to ensure that the result ‘looks nice’; this is an old and outdated vision

2) the artist learns to know the world of the engineers, and creates, with the knowledge he acquired, a work autonomously, but without that there is really a dialogue

3) the artist and engineers work together in a real dialogue, in which the artist would give the necessary guidance, but without a prescriptive stance.

Q. How does the artist concretely fill in the term ‘immortality’ in his work?

A. The emphasis lies more on creating new ecosystems and life forms in art, than on immor-tality in the strict sense of the word.

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Yves Bernard (IMAL) – Some final remarks

Yves Bernard is the founder and driving force of IMAL in Brussels, where part of Update_4 is being held.

The purpose is to share some reflections on immortality in the art with the public, in which the aspect of immortality is approached from the question: what happens to data about indi-viduals, and especially artists, once they are available on the Internet or in the cloud and basically can be spread and edited in an unlimited way.

In a first reflection in this context reference is made to the computer program AARON, on which the artist Harold Cohen has been working about 30 years, and in which he has incur-porated his own creative ideas. This program is now able to autonomously create drawings in the style of Cohen himself, and therefore could continue indefinitely. One can therefore say that part of the brain of Cohen (and more specifically its creative part) is now included in an ‘immortal’ computer program.

A second reflection addresses the question whether, in the knowledge that there are data stored in computer systems that are preserved even after our death, we should already, during our life time, try to actively influence these data, or on the contrary accept this in a passive way. In the words of Chris Marker about his so-called second life: Imagine that we manage to program [the avatars that represents our second life] with all our memory, and once they may go by themselves even when we are not here.

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In a variant of the first reflection reference is made to the website Jacksonpollack.org, created by Miltos Manetas; this is a program that actively creates work in the style of Pollack (called drippings), making his creative processes therefore immortal, albeit by a third party.

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