Post Post
Eröffnung: 03.09.2015, 15.30 Uhr; Ausstellung bis 07.09. Postgebäude, Bahnhofplatz 11, Linz
Interface Cultures Student Exhibition and Seminar at Ars Electronica 2015
Studierende der Studienrichtung Interface Cultures der Kunstuniversität Linz präsentieren ihre Projekte im Rahmen der Ars Electronica „Post City“, in der alten Postzentrale am Hauptbahnhof Linz. Die Ausstellung steht unter dem Motto „Post-Post“ und zeigt eine provokative Antwort auf die neuen Post-Medien Trends.
KuratorInnen / Organsiationsteam
Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Michaela Ortner, Reinhard Gupfinger and Marlene Brandstätter
Ausstellungseröffnung: 3. September 2015, 15.30 Uhr
Ausstellung bis 7. September 2015, geöffnet von 10.00 bis 19.00 Uhr
Post - Post Seminar: 05.September, 14.00 bis 15.30 Uhr, Post City, Knowledge Capital District
Information zur Ausstellung und zu den Projekten in detuscher Sprache.pdf
Post-media, post-web and post-digital are the new buzzwords of our times. Media are now available everywhere and anytime; in fact, it is becoming difficult to switch them off and remain “off-grid.” Smart devices, geo media and surveillance systems are spinning a dense panoptic web all around us. [1] The physical world is becoming increasingly infiltrated by digital technologies, while social networks have turned us into “smart mobs” whose behavior can be foreseen and pre-calculated. It has become the norm to have almost all facets of our lives augmented by media. Post-media merely means that media are now an integral part of our technological lifestyle.
Herlander Elias states that in this post media world nothing is ever finished and “update is the default setting.” [1] According to him, our screen civilization is so accustomed to interaction and connectivity that interfaces have become invisible; we do not even notice them.
But there is a downside to all of these increased interactions and connections: we need to constantly pull, save, collect, publish, edit and connect, but we are also beginning to realize that all of this is not really necessary. A kind of protest movement is emerging in this “post-Google” and “post-Snowden” world, where the old is the new new and being passive and critical is the new trend.
So how about being post-post, instead of being post-media? Being beyond something else is a sign of progress, but what about being beyond being beyond? Are we really there yet?
This year’s Interface Cultures student project exhibition constitutes a provocative answer to the new post-media trends. The projects that are presented can be futuristic, retro, post-, pre-, post-post or just art. While we of course need to be aware of new technological and societal trends and to reflect on them, we do not need to feel obliged to follow all of them. Being post-post is our artistic answer.
Post-Post Student Exhibition
The location of this year’s student exhibition in Interface Cultures is interesting in many ways: it is the former headquarters of the Austrian Post Office in Linz. Last year this company moved out and this year the Interface Cultures students have moved in. There, 23 international students will exhibit art works which they realized during the past year of studies. Visitors can expect a variety of projects, which will be just as multifaceted as the lectures at the department of Interface Cultures. Some examples are briefly described in the following paragraphs.
Inspired by the Games Workshop, Nathan Guo developed his project Wanderlust, which utilizes the digital dartboard system as an agent of a Google map navigator. Patricia Margarit Castelló produced a collective videogame called Eisenbahnbrücke's nightmare (The Nightmare of the Railroad Bridge), that has to do with urban development and shows us how historical buildings are currently being dealt with.
The lecture in media archeology probably had an influence on the installation OHP III, which was created by Davide Bevilacqua and Clemens Bauder. They use overhead projectors with additional film rolls in a manner that turns them into alternative cinematic devices. By hacking objects Yen Tzu Chang develops her series of works called Transplanting. She originates from Taiwan and has noticed that many everyday objects are used more or less frequently in Austria than in her home country. This observation inspired her to develop electronic products and combine them with parts of the human body. In Jure Fingust´s project Take your time a common traffic light is used in a totally different context than the usual one.
Daniel Samperio and Gisela Nunes are two exchange students from the University of Minho in Guimarães, Portugal. They made use of their residence at Interface Cultures to improve their current projects. Gisela Nunes´ installation Break the Ice invites the visitors to participate. It asks them to step on a sheet of ice and see what happens! Daniel Samperio developed the artwork Medium Standard together with Mario Costa. In the collaborative space it defines, three tangible objects - coins, dry leaves and a Newton´s cradle- control the multi-media environment in real-time.
The critical use of technological developments is the basis of LARD by Oliver Lehner. He employs long range acoustic devices (LARDs), which are normally used by the military and the police to control agitated crowds, as an organ of speech for the voices of protest from all over the world. Nina Mengin´s critical statement on the usage of social platforms is called #innerstagram. She questions the widespread belief that every single moment of our life is worthy of being captured with a mobile phone. Pictures of a different kind represent the point of departure for Isidora Ficovic´s exhibit, which is called The gesture of drawing light with a body movement, Form 24. There, a digital camera becomes the object, which displays abstract graphics that are digitally produced in the course of an interactive performance.
Movement or not? That is the question posed by three art projects that are presented in the exhibition. Martin Nadal´s Death of Things (DoT) is a series of moving figures representing public personas. What they do depends on whether the people they represent are still alive.
While the pictures in Ivan Petkov´s installation Time Based Ghosts are switched off, you won´t see any content. Shapes seem to emerge from irregularly blinking points until the video is stopped.
The installation Pop the Movie by Carina Lindmeier and Federico Tasso is based on a popcorn machine which activates the movies. Every time a piece of popcorn pops, the movie moves forward by one frame.
What if, in real life, we were able to make a connection with a conversational topic instead of a person? BullShut App is a mobile phone application which attempts to make it possible to avoid awkward moments at all kinds of social events. The goal of the project which Marta P. Campos and Tassilo Posegga present is to create a conversational space that connects two individuals for a brief period of time. An interaction of a total different kind is the basis of Interfight by César Escudero Andaluz. He uses an Android app, which he developed by duplicating the android GUI. In it, desktop icons are made to behave like animals and react aggressively to the physical interface.
Another project of a more applied nature was developed by a group of students of Industrial Design and Interface Cultures. In it, they elaborate future scenarios for car break downs in 2050. In their collaboration with the Austrian ÖAMTC, they discuss service issues such as “what will mobility be like in 2050”.
Jens Vetter developed the Netz, a net of flexible rubber tubes which is suspended in a room. In the middle of it, there is a speaker. Touching or stretching the net generates a sound that it will play back.
As we see, this year’s student projects really do move freely between the different media: digital, analog retro, new and old. They are composed of media, post media and post-post media.
Post-Post Seminar
Besides featuring these student projects, we will also hold a small international seminar. There, scholars and artists such as Prof. Herlander Elias from University of Beira Interior in Portugal, Prof. Machiko Kusahara from Waseda University in Tokyo, Prof. Erkki Huhtamo from UCLA in the USA, Prof. Ryszard W. Kluszczyński from the University of Lodz in Poland and Prof. Stahl Stenslie of Aalborg University in Denmark and Prof. Christa Sommerer and Prof. Laurent Mignonneau will discuss the latest trends in media art. They will also reflect on the topic of post media and interface criticism from an artistic point of view.
For example Herlander Elias will talk about technological changes that impact contemporary society and have resulted in the formation of a “post-computer” and “post-Internet” person. He will explain the characteristics of this new type of person, whom he calls “Homo Cypiens” (as both “Intelligence" [Sapiens] and "cyberspatial” or “digital” [Cyber]), while Prof. Stahl Stenslie will reflect about “Prêt-à-Post: Joy, Fear and Ecstasy.” In his argument dead technologies, dead communities or dead life or any other post-condition are a form of a new Prêt-à-Porter, custom fit to your custom written game-of-life. Prof. Ryszard W. Kluszczyński will talk about relations between new media art and the art@science phenomenon. In his paper Towards the Third Culture he wrote that the @ symbol linking both sides highlights that in the newest practices which combine art and science the digital and media technologies play a very important role. [2] Using as examples works of such artists like e.g. Ken Feingold or Guy Ben-Ary, he will discuss the thesis that art@science is a post-media chapter in the history of new media art.
Prof. Christa Sommerer and Prof. Laurent Mignonneau from the University of Art and Design Linz will talk about their latest project “Portrait on the Fly” where interactive portraits of media experts and scholars are converted into plotter drawings.
The aim of this post media strategy is to conserve images of historic figures involved in media art – an ephemeral field that is obsessed with novelty and change.
Prof. Machiko Kusahara will talk about post media tendencies in Japanese Device Art, f.e. the Post-Pet projects by Kazuhiko Hachiya, where artists consciously commercialize their artistic products.
Professor Erkki Huhtamo will reflect on “Post-O - Media Archaeologies of Imitation and Innovation" and the significance of the post label in media culture through the concept Post-O which he recently launched.
Prof. Dai XiaoRong (Deputy Director of Digital Media Institute Shanghai Conservatory of Music)
[1] Herlander Elias, Post Web-The Continuous Geography of Digital Media, Formalpress, 2012. [2] Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, “art@science. About Relations between Art and Science”, In: Towards the Third Culture. The Co-Existence of Art, Science and Technology, ed. R.W. Kluszczynski, CCA Gdansk, 2011, p. 33.
Performance Night
Fri. 4.9.2015, Post City, Gleishalle
8.20 p.m. to 8.35 p.m. “Unify” Jürgen Ropp, Arno Deutschbauer
9.15 p.m. to 9.45 p.m. “Looper” Jens Vetter
Music Monday
Mon. 7.9.2015, Post City, Gleishalle
11.30 a.m. Performance self-luminous by Yens Chang
In the exhibition:
2.20 p.m. / Netz by Jens Vetter
2.40 p.m. / LARD by Oliver Lehner
