In Australia, the discourse on New Media has recently been given a considerable boost. Last December, four New Media symposiums took place, all of them focusing on the promises, techniques, research and »delusions« of the New Media. By looking at two - very different - events, »Emergence« and »fibreculture,« it is possible to draw some conclusions about the politico-cultural state of affairs Down Under. But they also raise the more general question of the relationship between artistic tendencies and politico-economic representational strategies in the field of New Media.

For the second time since 1999, in December 2001 the Faculty of Art and Design at Melbourne's Monash University put on the »International Conference on Generative Systems in the Electronic Arts,« this time with the motto »Emergence.« As the title suggested, the conference was centered around demonstrations of self-generating programs for image and sound production, as well as IT research projects. The following discussions also soon showed that the participants were primarily people interested more in computer science than culture. The artist Alan Dorin, who is very well known in this scene and co-initiated the conference with Jon McCormack, said absolutely seriously - but completely in keeping with the view of art prevalent at the whole event - that it was only a matter of getting art on the wall or into the exhibition space to allow viewers an undisturbed enjoyment comparable to the enjoyment of nature. So, alas, any further artistic discussion about the content of the sometimes very complex programs and remarkable research - for example, Rob Saunder's remarkable examination of creativity using artificial societies of agents - was superfluous from the very start. Only through topical art theoretical interrogation of the question of representation would the field of self-generating software take on any artistic relevance. But at »Emergence,« such confrontations were avoided, with everyone withdrawing into an academic niche together with a mixture of spectacular image/sound productions and programming problems. This niche was sponsored by a number of state-backed institutions: the Centre for Electronic Media Art at Monash University (CEMA), for instance, an interdisciplinary research and production center that was set up to research technical possibilities and their critical implementation in electronic media art; the equipment was partly provided by Cinemedia, a publicly accessible institution financed by the state of Victoria. Cinemedia is at present building a big multiplex cinema in the prestigious Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne, which will also house production facilities, equipment hire facilities for anyone, and the biggest public video library in Australia.

In contrast to »Emergence,« the first meeting of the mailing list »::fibreculture::,« which had been founded half a year previously by David Teh and Geert Lovink, was about the critical reflection of Australian IT politics in the cultural context. For example, the politically instigated computerization of schools and universities was to be confronted with the contents and ideological repercussions of politico-economic hype. The three-day conference »Politics of a Digital Present - An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory« took place in the various rooms of the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. Here, the audience could barely be told apart from the organizers, both as regards the seating plan and the talks. Although there were quite a lot of notebooks in the audience, only a few speakers made use of them. At »Emergence,« on the other hand, the Powerpoint presentations that have now become a world-wide communications ideology were standard. At »fibreculture,« a reader was presented that brought together a revised and supplemented selection of »threads« and texts posted in the Net. The topics tackled in it, in various degrees of detail and quality of research, range from the consequences of the September 11 shock and its Net and TV reception (Anna Munster), to »Grassroots and Digital Branches in the Age of Transversal Politics« (Guy Redden), to manifestos like »Hack« by McKenzie Wark.

Even though the two conferences differed greatly in content and form, they both form part of the social field of the »IT ambience,« which, although characterized by heterogeneous interests, still unites elements of one single phenomenon: the utopian social concept of progress and development through the projection of an innovative use of the computer medium.

[b]Image-Creating New Buildings[/b]

The very names of the numerous Australian institutes and initiatives that have recently been set up, as well as the rhetoric used to promote them, bear witness to the hopes they carry - i.e. the joining up of artistic creativity with New Media. This is the case even when the they seem partly to be tactical formulations meant as critical interventions in the politico-economic discourse. The »Centre for Ideas« at the Victorian College of the Arts, for example, defines itself in its advertising brochure as an advanced institute. The primary focus is on the fundamental principles of interdisciplinarity and collaboration/collectivity, which are based on a »radical departure from the conventional teaching models in arts education.« Remember: those were the basic terms used in the nineties in the critique of academic institutions in Central Europe. On a second level, the institute wants a »creative exchange between students and staff« so that its »own team« can be organized and a project defined, using various media. At the conclusion of the three-layer study program, an »exciting public event or art work« is to be presented. Concepts like the ones mentioned here can be found in all areas involving New Media training. So, despite the balance between the projected critical reflection of New Media hype and future-orientated promises of a »different« exploitation of media, here, too, the familiar strategy of the rhetoric of the new together with the critique of traditional art forms and technologies of corporate representation is employed. The newness of an institution is underlined with a new building and its image-promoting medial reproductions. This demonstrates a globally widespread method of institutional self-justification:

The phantasm of a combination of art, technology and New Media that is expressed here - which is characteristic of numerous art and media colleges established (not only in Germany) since the start of the nineties - undiminishedly conveys the self-fulfilling prophecy of the New Economy as it is perhaps still possible in Australia, which has been spared heavy economic crises. In addition, the institutionalization of the New Media that has already been carried out in the Northern Hemisphere is repeated in this specific combination - exactly as previously happened with video art. At least the questions posed by »fibreculture« tend towards a participatory criticism that tends to take its vocabulary from representational and media discourses of practices influenced conceptually or through cultural studies, instead of claiming autonomy like »Emergence.«

All in all, it is possible to see a structural connection in this field between critics and economists, technology nerds and text exegetes. The structural and biographical gap between Net activists, people pedagogically or artistically involved in institutions, and marketing strategists is just as small as the step today from software research to its commercial exploitation. In this connection, Australia seems no different from the Northern Hemisphere.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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