Digital Art Weeks 2007

The Digital Art Weeks, the Meeting Point between Art and Technology at ETH Zurich, will be held from July 10 to July 14 2007. It is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts and consists of a symposium, workshops and performances. Extracts from an interview with DAW co-director Art Clay, conducted by Rachael Watts for Fylkingen's net journal, a forum for experimental music and intermedia art in Sweden.

28 June 2007

Can you explain what DAW07 is, what it aims to achieve, and its relationship to ETH?

Scientific research has long been an issue in academic institutions around the world; art, however, has not been included as a research field due to a cultural difference between science and art. With the advent of growth in the use of newer technologies in the arts, artists have been forced into gaining access to a large pool of knowledge. Scientific research institutes that have opened up to having artists join the research team have prospered from the creative mind of the artists in that the flow of ideas and the quality of communication have increased. Artists tend however by their very nature to make research visible, that is to bring the empirical basis of that knowledge into the domains of applied research. This type of cross fertilization is then very clear the reason as to how artistic knowledge can benefit scientific research and vice versa.

What role do you see technology having in relation to contemporary art practice?

The impact of technology within an arts context lies above all in the fact that the technology is used aesthetically and this use is primarily non-utilitarian in function. Viewers, who see how technology is such used, begin to realize that it can be used in creative and other ways than were intended. Also, certain aspects of technology can be presented better and clearer within an arts context. Once the viewers come to understand how the artwork functions, they have a much more clearer idea of what the technology is and how it effects society in general and the cultural environment in general.

Do you think it is fair to say that there is an inherent futurism with works dealing with new technologies?

The general tendencies in the arts often follow those in technology. Today, mobile communication is of key importance for both. Art projects using such mobile devices are best at bringing the technology used into critical view. Since good art is often dependent on its originality, the use of the technology can often be innovative, but not always. Artworks that deal with emerging technologies may be innovative, but there are several factors involved here, which determine the degree of innovation. The first factor is that one must differentiate between artworks using commercial technology and those involved in and stemming out of research situations. Commercial technology can often just be a novel application of research from yesterday or be a new application based in old technology. Other scenarios can be imagined, but the situation in which new research finds a novel application is rather rare. What is important to recognize is that there is no guaranty that artwork will have an inherent futurism just because it applies new technologies.

What is your response to the word techno?

I think that when it is combined with other terms, such as Shamanism, Animalism, Fatalism, Dadaism, Vandalism, Fetishism etc. it starts to take on a desperately needed new flavor and more interesting aesthetic direction. Pure generic dance music has little to do with progressive art, but it can wrap up events nicely. At the former ewz power plant, the festival will close with a big party splash centered around pop trivialities based on Warhol's "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" and then melt down into a dance club atmosphere. Before things get pure dance, you can check out bizarre performances, robotic sculptures, installations, a few nasty bands in the tradition of the Velvets. After midnight and last but not least be part of Zurich's party scene, when regionally and internationally famed Djs and Vjs make your bones jitter and your retina stretch beyond your eyelids with techno fetishism mixed together with a touch of Dadaism and a lot of animalism.

Finally, how do you posit DAW07 within the arts world globally, and can you see any particular trends arising in this still quite new area of art practice?

This year's program is based around the themes of the calls the DAW sent out world wide in the fall of 2006. At the famous Cabaret Voltaire, the program sets an accent on performance art using electronic media. The concept of the "performative surround" (the media articulated body in space) makes its way into the program under the guise of two DAW project calls, entitled "Cabled Madness" and "B.I.O.". So we at the DAW are not only making works with a technological long lever, but we are also making impact wit that on an aesthetic and social level too. The term 'Cabled Madness' itself refers to the critic of Joseph Weizenbaum that society went mad when it started to put consideration and trust into things like the Star Wars System of defense. In the same vain, but on a more rational level and without collateral damage, the scheduled performances are works that empower the performer in an explosion of the boundaries of the body and link the audience into the virtual of technologically animated space. Like Weizenbaum's plea for sanity in computer application, the works trigger critical observation in the mind of the audience and counter act the most logical form of evolution in the 21st century enabled by technology: Intelligence without morals.

More information at http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch