The title of the exhibition held at last year’s »Interstanding« festival was »End Repeat.« In their introductory text, the curators wrote that artists were called upon by the exhibition to stop »hurling,« and to explore not only visual interfaces, but also »invisible« interfaces designed for the other senses. The festival thus sought a new starting point that, on the one hand, was meant to put an end to video art based on the rehashing of old concepts and, on the other, provide digital art with a new outlet. In fact, like the »end of painting« in Minimalism in traditional exhibition contexts, video art in »End Repeat« turned out to be a cul-de-sac leading to a technological »nowhere.« The ascetic, cool art, almost devoid of retinal pleasures, of zero-zeros, end repeats in nothing, in a sort of techno-Minimalism.¹

This year’s conference, which I would like to focus on here, was no doubt tamer than previous ones, especially when compared with »Interstanding 1999,« where the main paper was presented by Saskia Sassen. Several other speakers at this conference also tackled the topic of Net criticism, starting with various hacking methods and the potential for reapplying low-tech technology, and ending with the ludicrously high prices of software and hardware. The discussions were mainly inspired by neo-leftist strategies and methods, the anti-art movement, and situationism.

In contrast, this year’s conference offered practical solutions, analyzed the history of media art, and made the ballroom dancers in Beverly Hood’s performance dance in Web chat rooms. No trace of Peter Lamborn Wilson’s or Pit Schultz’s radical rhetoric here. Nonetheless, software solutions representing a challenge to the large corporations were also presented at the conference, such as Adam Hyde’s »Frequency Clock,« an alternative to Microsoft’s »Media Player« that offers better performance - and is completely free into the bargain. In the course of my interview with Hyde, I asked whether he ever planned to patent it. He seemed genuinely surprised, as if such a thought had never crossed his mind, and said he had no commercial interests whatsoever.

Another intriguing project was Sabine Seymour’s »Fashionable Technology/Techno Design.« For years, Seymour and her fellow artists have designed clothes equipped with digital pick-ups and other special appliances: »wise clothes,« as Ando Keskküla has called them. This project certainly has its roots in digital technology, but also is also connected with the history of technological culture. It reminds one not only the first wave of hardcore technology as used in electronic music, but also of the history of the relevant subculture, where the freakiest ravers adorned themselves with all sorts of blinking and flashing electronic gadgets. Seymour’s wearable technology is naturally more advanced. She takes the body one step closer to being the perfect cyborg, equipped with sensors and processors. But this has nothing to do with biotechnology in the style of Eduardo Kacs. The clothes have a good chance of becoming everyday casual wear, available for purchase in any shop in a few decades’ time. They also imply, however, that we ourselves will be available at every single moment, thus giving rise to a certain paranoid moment. But Seymour’s experiments take place under the conditions prevailing in the fashion and club world, so up till now no one has hunted down anyone - except friends - on the basis of their clothes. Besides, Seymour promises that the clothes will all have an »OFF« button. After all, we are easily traceable even today thanks to our mobile phones, something which has already had an impact on the design of our clothes and bags.

From being a biennial festival, »Interstanding« is to grow into an event running the entire year. As the accompanying rhetoric suggests, digital technology has now become a normal medium »in art, science, and our everyday life,« which fully justifies the desire to turn »Interstanding« into a daily occurrence. Yes, one »Interstanding« a day, please!

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

---