Interdisciplinarne magistarske studije Univerziteta umetnosti u Beogradu Grupa za digitalnu umetnost

teorija forme
itanka

priredio Dejan Grba kolska godina 2005/2006.

What is Computer Art? ............................................................................. 5

A. Towards an Ahistorical Assessment of the Computer Art Scene ..............................5 B. Descriptive Analysis ................................................................................................10 1. George Nees: Schotter ..................................................................................11 C. Software Art Computer Art ...................................................................................13 1. Alex McLean: Forkbomb ................................................................................13 2. Adrian Ward: Auto-Illustrator...........................................................................15 D. Conclusions ............................................................................................................16 Notes ..........................................................................................................................18

Kraftwerk ................................................................................................ 23
A Brief Study of the Concept .......................................................................................23 Kraftwerk, The Early Years '71 - '73.............................................................................24 Kraftwerk Interview ......................................................................................................28

Read_me, run_me, execute_me ............................................................ 31

Generative art Software art ......................................................................................31 Dragan Espenschied/ Alvar Freude.............................................................................32 textz.com ....................................................................................................................33 Performance of code vs. the fascination with the generative,......................................36 Program Code as Performative Text ...........................................................................36 How To Do Things With Words ...................................................................................37 Code as a mobilisation and/or immobilisation system ................................................38 Focus on an invisible performativity.............................................................................39 Codeworks: "M @ z k ! n 3 n . k u n z t . m2cht . fr3!"..................................................40 mez.............................................................................................................................40 Netochka Nezvanova..................................................................................................41 Performativity and Totality of Genotexts.......................................................................41 Notes ..........................................................................................................................43

On a Number of Aspects of Artistic Computer Games ........................... 47

I. Introduction: Theres no turning back now! ...........................................................47 II. Modification .............................................................................................................50 Jodi: SOD (1999) ................................................................................................51 Joan Leandre: retroYou r/c (2000) ......................................................................51 Tom Betts: QQQ (2002) ......................................................................................52 Lonnie Flickinger: Pencil-Whipped (2001) ...........................................................52 Cory Arcangel: Super Mario Cloud (2002)...........................................................53 III. Abstraction..............................................................................................................54 Arcangel Constantini: Atari Noise (1999) .............................................................55 Jodi: Jet Set Willy 1984 (2002) ........................................................................56 Norbert Bayer (Mr. Ministeck): Touchscreenss (19982001) ............................56 IV. Socialisation ...........................................................................................................57 Olaf Val: swingUp Games (2001)........................................................................57 Volker Morawe/Tilman Reiff: Painstation (2001)...................................................58 SF Invader: Space Invader (since 1999)..............................................................58 Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann: Shooter (2000-2001) ...............................................58 V. GAME ARTNOT YET A GENRE.........................................................................59

Generative Tools..................................................................................... 61 The Methodology of Generative Art ........................................................ 63

Notes .......................................................................................................................... 75

Bioart, Between Ethics and Aesthetics.................................................... 77 Mythical Bodies I..................................................................................... 81

In the beginning there was....................................................................................... 81 the image of humans? Cyborg bodies and their contours ...................................... 82 The Promises of Monsters ....................................................................................... 82 Interface gender ......................................................................................................... 83 Artificial humans or anthropomorphism as imperative................................................ 84 The future Eve............................................................................................................. 84 Creators and their creatures ....................................................................................... 85 Stories of creation, revisited ........................................................................................ 86 Living images ............................................................................................................. 86 Hybrids of art and science .......................................................................................... 87 Making monsters ........................................................................................................ 88 Reinvent yourself! .................................................................................................... 90 Notes .......................................................................................................................... 91

Mythical Bodies II.................................................................................... 95

Body projections under posthuman conditions ........................................................... 95 The body as software ................................................................................................. 97 Image processing methods ...................................................................................... 101 Cyborg subjects and their masquerades .................................................................. 104 Cyborg technologies ................................................................................................. 107 Playing and learning................................................................................................ 111 New heroines?.......................................................................................................... 112 Digital drag ............................................................................................................ 113 Making sex ............................................................................................................. 114 De-monstrations of the monstrous ........................................................................... 115 Rock the Horror Picture Show. ................................................................................ 115 The doctrine of the monsters .................................................................................... 116 Notes ........................................................................................................................ 117

Spisak literature .................................................................................... 121

What is Computer Art?

Matthias Wei

An attempt towards an answer and examples of interpretation

No instrument plays itself or writes its own music. Per Cederqvist[1] That which is programmable must also be computable. Frieder Nake[2] It is understood that the artistic goal of THE SOFTWARE is to express conceptual ideas as software. It is also understood that THE SOFTWARE is partially automated, and its output is a result of its process. Despite the process being an integral part of THE SOFTWARE, this does not imply nor grant the status of artwork on the output of THE SOFTWARE. This is the sole responsibility of YOU (the USER). Signwave Auto-Illustrator LICENSE AGREEMENT (for Version 1.2), 7.3

A. Towards an Ahistorical Assessment of the Computer Art Scene The history of reflection on the artistic use of computer software and hardware did not begin with transmediale.01. For artists who employ computer programming, however, that event, as the first international festival of its kindthe origin of which,like the origin of virtually all of the efforts in art history involving new procedures in technology-based artistic strategies and production methods lies in video technologyprovided an impetus for new, more extensive explorations of software programmes, and found its most recent, and broadest platform to date at the Ars Electronica 2003. [3] In classical art appreciation, however, it is generally ignored that the computer is and has been both a tool and a component of art for nearly as long as the machine itself has existed. A reappraisal of this history, one that attempts to place it in an art history context, is still needed. [4] This perspective shifts when we consider the international art scene, and the many varieties of computer art that closely follow developments in the technological domain. Accordingly, in what follows, two stimuli will be provided for looking at computer art in an art history context. The first clarifies the historicity of the phenomenon by stages. In the second, I will emphasize the role that description plays, in order, on the one hand, to show that close examination facilitates differentiation, so that comparisons between older and newer works are possible, and on the other, opens up the possibility for a more profound understanding of computer art. Going against the trend of using more and more new categories, based on different technologies, to classify art movements, I suggest making use of the traditional and comprehensive term computer art to refer to the use of digital methods in the arts. For this reason, I will proceed in an historical fashion in the first part, and, by means of a loose narration, I will point out connections that have been neglected to date. In the second part, I will examine four works from different time periods that, in my opinion, are especially good examples for illustrating the history of computer art. First of all, in order to be able to focus on and understand the phenomenon of computer art, a setting is required. It is important to note that the following definition contains no requirement for a type or category. Precisely for this reason, I will, however, favour the term computer art over software art because the former implies an historically integrated factor that permits a comparative investigation ofcomputer art. Using this approach, I will establish connections between the latest phenomena, which have achieved great popularity, for example during transmediale.01, and works from the sixties and seventiesconnections which cannot generally be seen by looking at the testimonials and essays on the computer art of the present. [5] For the first time, these connections make it possible, by looking at the artistic use of computers from an historical perspective, to draw closer to an appreciation of its contexts and their importance for and within art as a system. [6] Contrary to conventional practice, I will draw no type 5

distinctions between immersive artificial worlds, which are generated using computers, and software art programmes. In recent art history, this division has led to a less than fruitful connection between interactive environments and video art, which, as a supposedly logical consequence from the history of film, [7] has prescribed the digital as the medium of the future with a Gestus des Advents. [8] By computer art, I understand that artistic activity that would not be possible without computers, and those works that would not have any meaning without the computer.
Sommerer/Mignonneau Life Spacies 1997 Life Spacies is an interaction and communication space, where remotely located visitors can interact with each other through evolutionary forms and images. Life Spacies enables visitors to integrate themselves into a 3 dimensional complex virtual world of artificial life organisms that react to the visitors body movement, motion and gestures. The artificial life creatures also communicate with each other and so create an artificial universe, where real and artificial life are closely interrelated through interaction and exchange. A Life Spacies web page allows people all over the world to interact with the system as well: by simply typing and sending an email message to the Life Spacies web site, one can create one's own artificial creature. The creature will then starts to live in the Life Spacies environment at an exhibition site where the on-site visitors directly will interact with it.

Therefore, there are various meaningful areas where the use of computers arises for and within a work of art [9] . Whether we are dealing with a specific script that can run on any ordinary computer (and that actually requires it for the desired performance [10] ), or with a remotely connected installation which generates creatures (e.g. Life Spacies) using distant computers over the Internet with local user input data, that are then shown in a projection room [11] , without the user being able to follow the reactions of the systemboth of these situations are determined by the utilisation of computer systems and a communication structure, and would be unthinkable without these components. These technologies are necessary and constitute meaning for the work of art. If one looks at more recent published surveys on the history of art in the twentieth century, little or no information about the

computer as a tool for generating art will be found. [12] At the same time, it appears that the early years are very well documented. At the beginning of the seventies, both writers and artists, in addition to their artistic and scientific works, presented their ideas on art theory andas in the case of Herbert W. Franke,Georg Nees or Kurd Alslebenhave all separately and repeatedly written down their ideas for practical aesthetics. [13] By looking at the formal similarities with the works of the pioneers, who themselves appealed to a cyberneticallymarked aesthetics of information, it becomes clear how close computer art is to other systems of art. In the classical arts, there were several points of contact between concrete and constructive tendencies and Op Art or kinetic art. Within the framework of a general interest in the theoretical paradigm of cybernetics, there were, even in the sixties and even in the arts, intensive discussions of its core ideas. [14] By way of example, we might consider the art machine of Victor Vasarely, which produced a different work daily, or perhaps the works of Gerhard von Graevenitz, who considered the role that chance played in the fine arts. [15] This also applies to Herman de Vries, who, in his early work, dealt both theoretically and artistically with chance and the concept of information. [16] Especially in the implementation of chance elements as structure-forming working principles, there were some artists who worked using traditional materials but then became computer users no later than in the modern era. [17] If one looks at the professions from which computer artists come, it is conspicuous that only a few genuine artists work with computers. Manfred Mohr is one of them. Trained as a gold and silver smith, this jazz musician studied painting in Pforzheim, which no doubt explains why his work is more often discussed in the context of the classical arts. In 1998, to redress the balance, the Bottrop Josef-Albers Museum Quadrat, which was particularly outstanding in the concrete/constructive arts, presented an extensive individual exhibition of his work from the sixties to the end of the nineties. [18] Although Mohr used computers to perform the calculations, he actually produced the images by using classical techniques, such as painting, which then made them compatible with the classical market. Using graphics, the first computer artistsfar removed from theoretically colored prophesies such as those formulated by Herbert W. Frankeaddressed a classical observer in the same way that digital literature addressed a reader by means of a book. Erwin Steller: Computers and Art In 1992, Erwin Steller described and systematized the relationshipbetween Computers and Art. His text is a draft of a lecture given at the University of Karlsruhe, and he concerns himself with the more recent history of art. He describes computer art as being a consequence of the great movements that revolutionized the fine arts at the beginning of the twentieth century. [19] He then compares works resulting from these movements to works produced by computer artists. First of all, he defines photography as the first interface to technology-based art (p. 15ff.). The focus of his discussion is on whether images generated using technology up until the discovery of the camera obscura are art. He then presents the distrust, which is felt by many towards technical aids with the question: Can [] objectifying such a poor imitation of reality still be art? Other than the arrangement of a still life, the posing of subjects or the search for a suitable detail in a landscape, can anything be designed actively?'' [20] Steller does not undertake an investigation of specific correspondences or of any line of succession between the earlier technology-based arts and computer art. He simply compares assertions concerning the judgment that photography too was rejected in its early days, just like computer art. In a later chapter, Steller describes the radical changes in art in the twentieth century as reflecting the movement from the concrete to the abstract on the one hand, and the discovery of concretion (according to the definition by Theo van Doesburg [21] ), on the other. He methodically connects picture syntax as it was presented in the form of an elementary principle by Kandinsky in his writings on the theory of art, with the graphics of the computer artists. [22] Steller sees a further element for comparison in Op Art. In his opinion, systematic and mathematically-formulated imaging

processes are especially suited for automated production. [23] This is basically similar to the view advocated by Franke suggesting that the status of the equipment is raised to great heights because of its intrinsic capacity for precision, but it is only understood as a tool. [24] In addition, both chance and the symbolic nature of works of art that have been developed with computers, have been chosen as central themes. In his chapter on generative and informational aesthetics, Steller discusses the theoretical foundations ofcybernetically influenced aesthetics, and, above all, how the artists mentioned previously wanted to put them into effect. Here he criticizes the artists intentions of making artefacts and their effects quantifiable and therefore calculable, as being a matter of taste. [25] Without discussing the changed contexts of new art movements, he links the trends in computer simulation to Pop Art and other realisms although it is not clear how appropriate it is to speak of art with respect to the examples given. [26] The author speaks about the visualization of mathematical formulae and their alienation on the basis of fractal computations and their variants, which were in fashion at the beginning of the nineties, as well as the charm to be found in mathematical oscillations. In his summary, he leaves the world of art and attempts a critique of the machine itself. It therefore follows that he can only criticize the duality of high tech and the computer as mere devices. [27] Nonetheless, in his book he attempts to catalogue computer art systematically from the perspective of a more general history of art. However, he ignores the positions of artists like Myron Krueger, whose interactive environment, called Videoplace, has less to do with video art than with computer art. [28]

Myron Krueger Videoplace Two people in different rooms, each containing a projection screen and a video camera, were able to communicate through their projected images in a shared space on the screen. No computer was involved in the first Environment in 1975. In order to realize his ideas of an artificial reality he [Krueger] started to develop his own computer system in the years up to 1984, mastering the technical problems of image recognition, image analysis and response in real time. This system meant that he could now combine live video images of visitors with graphic images, using various programs to modify them. When Videoplace is shown today, visitors can interact with 25 different programs or interaction patterns. A switch from one program to another usually takes place when a new person steps in front of the camera. But the Videoplace team has still not achieved its ultimate aim of developing a program capable of learning independently.

The concept of artwork that Steller therefore implicitly hands down is tied to the materiality of products from the palettes of those media used by classical, visual art. He subsumes strategiessuch as performanceswhich are distinguished by the fact that they can be captured within a definite time frame, in just a single paragraph under the immaterial, a concept that was current at the time, and that Florian Rtzer investigated shortly before the appearance of his two-volume work on art forums, which Steller also cites. [29] Three phases in the history of computer art The history of computer art can be classified into three larger phases, defined by and dependent on what was technically feasible at the time. [30] In the first phase, computer art fed back into practical aesthetics, which in turn developed out of the two models of abstract artabstraction and concretion. This phase ended in about the middle of the seventies. The output consisted of graphics along with works like Videoplace by Myron Krueger, for example. As computing capabilities increased and industry, from mechanical

engineering to film,discovered simulation, immersive artificial worlds suddenly began to be used for technical and artistic experimentation. This was a trend which characterized prominent institutions like the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe or the Ars Electronica, and therefore also the media arts scene. With the recognition that contemporary physics had called into question the role of philosophy as the primary field for the development of world views, models like Chaos Theory, which motivated artists interested in mathematics and cybernetics like Karl Gerstner to create new imagistic worlds, began to be seen as sources of inspiration for the art scene. [31] At that time, technical arts became institutionalized at institutes of technology along the lines established at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT. Frieder Nake summarizes: Computer generated images are booming. Activity in computer art during the sixties was a trifle compared with the attention that has been paid to it since the middle of the eighties. Exhibitions, awards, books, programs, products. There was hardly a department or school of fine arts in the USA that would not have had a few computers sitting around. [32] The concentration on images, the constant insistence on the production of twodimensional visualizations on the one hand, and the extremely expensive development of three-dimensional image machines, like the Caves [33] , on the other, led to a schism in computer art. While the artists of the sixties were working under a paradigm of an art of precision, they were rather insensitive to those arts which dedicated themselves more to communicative or politicizing actions. Performative work could not be taken up by artists who were object-oriented. For this reason, no direct influence from the artists and pioneers of the technically-oriented arts of the earlier period is detectable on the contemporary computer art scene. [34] As an example of ahistoricity, let us consider the case of the Munich Make-World Festival of 2001. Organized by Olia Lialina and Florian Schneider, the show was nothing more than an aperu. Graphics by Herbert W. Franke were exhibited, but no connections were made between theses works and contemporary, partially animated works. In addition, the thematic focus of the festival was activism. And it was only the contextualization as expert that allowedFrankes graphics, as the work of an artistengineer, to be appreciated. [35] At present, at least on the Internet, there are two initiatives that are worth looking at, both dedicated to using computer codes as the raw material for artistic creation, but each proposing a completely different project. The more prominent Web site of the two is runme.org. Since festivals usually function as the main medium for presentation in the media arts, a festival was organized after contemporary works in computer art had been collected, a festival whose structure differentiates itself from other exhibitions by virtue of its annual change of location. The second project goes back to an initiative by Adrian Ward and Alex McLean, called generative.net. But even here, historical precursors from the same domain are not to be found. In the case of generative.net, this is especially surprising because, after Franke, the Anglo-American scene had essentially been characterized by continuity. Yet another factor makes writing a history of computer art difficult. Although the development of the computer itself has of course become worthy of a museumbecause of the ubiquity of the digital worldearly computer art has not. Denied the conventional means of exposure via museums and public displays, computer art can seem confusing. Without the benefit of the relevant computer codes, and in the absence of technicians, machines or competent art historians with the ability to read such source codes, only the material artifacts of computer art are visible. [36] What is astonishing about this discontinuity in art history is not so much the realisation that there have been users with artistic interests ever since the beginning of the first electronic calculating machines, but that computer art could not, for a long time, spread as widely as video technology, for example, which appeared at about the same time, or other storage media such as audiotape. The reason for this is not only the complexity of the machines that had to be used and the fact that, at first, specialized personnel were needed to operate them. Restricted access to machines, which

in the early days of computers was completely different from what it is now in the PC age, was the main reason why there was little acceptance on the part of the critics. Computers were usually rare and extremely expensive pieces of equipment, and computing facilities offeredwork places only for top experts in their special fields. The machines were run constantly in research environments and in critical business domains, where the risk of failure had to be kept to a minimum due to time and cost considerations. In addition, the size of the first machines has to be kept in mindthey occupied entire rooms. The late democratisation occurred after the development of personal computers such as the Altair 8800 (around 1974), the Apple I (1976) or, at the end of the seventies, the Sinclair ZX680 (1979). Computer use spread, especially when the Commodore C64 came on the market in 1982. [37] Despite the availability of the early play consoles, it took some time before there was broader interest in computer hardware. [38] In addition, from around 1970 onward, skepticism towards machines and their role in society grew. The naive belief in the technically possible as a cure and support for the deficiencies in the human condition dissipated, finally leading to an antitechnology, anti-computer stance in political activism. [39] During that period, with the academic field of art history being marked by conservatism, there was no interest in reappraising how technology related to the fine arts of the present. With the far-reaching fame of Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, other paradigms had become important in art criticism whereby the production of material by graphic artists was no longer acceptablesomething which had been done earlier as a concession to the art market. [40] Dieter Daniels describes this with the help of the concept of interaction: During the sixties, the interaction between the public, the artists and the works themselves became a characteristic element of the new forms of art, outside the established categories and institutions. Intermedia was the term for the ideal of surmounting types and technologies. In place of being inaccessible, Happenings and Fluxus offered the audience the opportunity to determine its own experiences with art to a great extent. The goal of erasing borders between artists and the audience, and the removal of the differences between production and reception, had many parallels with the political demands of the 1968 uprisings, after the means of production had been occupied by those who were consumers of the products. [41] For this reason, static computer graphics, which comprised most of the computer art of phases one and two, only became part of the system of art in an irregular manner, because, for a long time already, art had been trying to changesocial practices through artistic action. In addition to this, given that the technology did not make possible what could already be achieved in the analogue worldwith its mail, fax and copy machine networksit is understandable that computer art made no lasting impression on the aesthetics of information. B. Descriptive Analysis In the computer art of both of the two first phases, there is a conceptual gap between the experimental and multimedial efforts by American artists, and the graphically oriented forms of German provenance. Two positions will make these differences clear. In the following, I will contrast the Videoplace of Myron Krueger, whom I consider to belong to phase two, with a phase one work of George Nees called Schotter. [42]

10

Georg Nees Schotter Schotter is a computer graphic from the 1960s, produced by a structured operation by random generators that lead to the discovery of new images. This graphic visually displays the relationship between order and disorder, and the effects of change. Image 38 [Schotter] is produced by invoking the SERIE procedure [...]. The non-parametric procedure QUAD serves to generate the elementary figure which is reproduced multiple times in the composition process controlled by SERIE. QUAD is located in lines 4 through 15 of the generator. This procedure draws squares with sides of constant length but at random locations and different angles. From lines 9 and 10, it can be seen that the position of a single square is influenced by random generator J1, and the angle placement by J2. The successively increasing variation between the relative coordinates P and Q, and the angle position PSI of a given square, is controlled by the counter index I, which is invoked by each call from QUAD (see line 14).

1. George Nees: Schotter Schotter by Georg Nees is a portrait-format graphic assembled from twelve sets of twentytwo squares each, each set having the same length along the sides. Read from left to right, as one would read a European language, it shows disorder that increases from top to bottom as one views the graphic. [43] The visible defines the order, which is not the same as the order of the pictures, but an optimal state in which the squares lie along a horizontal line, forming a row in which each one is set precisely beside the next one, so that straight lines are formed by the upper and lower edges. This state is not seen in the picture. Row by row, the state of disorder successively increases down to the lower border of the picture. The program creates disorder through the rotation of each square at the point of intersection of its diagonal, and also through the increasing distortion in the graphic space. This graphic introduces a number of questions related to the relationship between an image that is constructed and one that is computed. For this reason, the slight possibility of gaining insight through viewing has to be assessed by comparison with a work of classical constructive art. [44] In this way, by means of observation, the intent of the picture, or its inherent logic, can be recreated. But then, what is the actual content of the picture? It can be said that the picture illustrates the relationship between order and disorder. This, however, arises through priorknowledge that is already interpreted, and that then leads to the above description. In this way, the rather orthogonal section of ordered squares in rows next to each other (up to row 6), can be evaluated as a state of higher ordering compared to the lower section of the image. By mere viewing, however, it cannot be exactly determined to which processes the increase in disorder is due. The coordinates and inclinations of the squares could of course be measured. This would already

11

result in the defining of a boundary that could not crossed by inspection. On the contrary, it must be assumed that the observer actually sees past the sense of the picture or extracts each of its senses visually without having them supported contextually. With additional viewings, a spatial effect is seen, an optical illusion of a gentle turning from the inside out in the center left and lower right of the image area. If one then draws in the context, which is that this is a graphical realization of a mathematical model that was coded by means of a formal language, then the question arises as to what the image is above and beyond a specific visualization randomly generated by a machine? This leads to the core question: is the depiction then a picture, a diagram, a technical drawing, or something in between? At first, as a result of successive examinations of the image from top to bottom, the impression of increasing deviation from the system of order arises, as described above. Upon further examination, structures appear even as disorder increases; structures that cross over from the formal context of individual pieces through their respective positions relative to each other on the surface, to new non-rigid geometrical figures. An interpretation allows us to claim that the condition of increasing disorder allows ordered structures within the image to appear, without clearly fixing them into definite geometrical forms. This effect can be described using information theory by saying that super symbols are being formed in the region of disorder. [45] They can be described as having dynamic and contingent qualities. The upper portion of the image, however, is static. This leads to the realization that by interpreting the results of observation on a higher plane, dependent elements of order are visible within the realm of disorder. This does not occur in the region of the image with higher order. Here it isevident that an additive lining up of squares can in turn lead only to the formation of other squares or rectangles. [46] We still have to consider the programming that actually gave rise to the image. The optical evidence for simultaneous states of order without the generation of formally divergent super symbols with a relatively gradual transition into disordera disorder that evokes contingent and formally divergent super symbolspoints to a feature in the programming. For this reason, the role of programmed chance in the parameters would have to be taken into consideration. Following the artist's description of the process [47] , it can thus be concluded that the meaning of an image, which adds value to that which the work has as a diagram of a formula, can only be deduced if an integrated investigative model is applied, comprising both observations and investigation of the computational foundations. [48] In a logically deterministic computer program, this action then imposes a relationship between an experience in observation and knowledge about the abstraction of a problem. [49] It is therefore seen that understanding is determined exclusively from a unilateral investigation of the source code, on the one hand, and the sheer examination of the image alone on the other. This is because, in contrast to a composition created in the traditional way by the visual calculations of an artist in a series of trials, or simply through the creation of an image however it came about, an examination of the source code shows that in Schotter, it exists in the form of one of the n-possible graphical states of the program. In terms of computer art, this is the key element of this work. [50] 2. Myron Krueger: Videoplace By contrast, Myron Kruegers Videoplace is a dynamic work in both function and genesis, a work that, at first glance, is difficult to compare to a graphic as in the example above. Under no circumstances should the visual be compared; instead, it is the way the computer itself is used. This is a work in progress, one on which this computer scientist has been working since about 1974. [51] Kruegers primary goal is the development of user interfaces for manmachine combinations. He pursues an approach oriented towards the physical and communicative range of the extremities and sense organs of humans. In his environments, no parallelworlds in which people immerse themselves are developed. Instead, the actor in his installation is not restricted by technology applied to his body but rather possesses complete freedom of movement so that he can respond to visual and acoustic stimuli. As a rule, this

12

work consists of a surveillance camera which is linked to computers through feedback systems. The computers calculate the movements of the users and the reactions of the system to the input data in real time. Because of this, a fundamentally different understanding of the computer and its suitability as a tool for the artist is conveyed. Krueger describes the motivation behind his work as follows: As I observed how artists stood in relation to their traditional tools, I noticed what they were doing with computers around the end of the sixties. I found that they were making art in a truly time-honored fashion. That seemed wrong to me. If the computer was to revolutionize art, it had to define new forms that would be impossible without it, and not simply help create traditional works. [52] What appeared unthinkable at the time when Nees' Schotter was created in the seventies, for Krueger became a driving force in achieving the above-cited re-assessment of ideas on computer art: reactions in real time. The complexity of switching, by using tactile and visual sensors, serves not just to control and trigger certain functions. In his description from 1990, it is seen that the system possesses two functional modes. In one of them, the machine alone decides what type of interaction, from among the range of possible sequences, will be running. In the other mode, there is a human teammate, an operator who takes control. The computer is used as a switch in this mode of operation, but in the first mode, the complexity of the human reaction is determined and interpreted within an environment of a group of machines. The second mode was exclusively a transition phase for Krueger in 1990 until the technology was so far developed that complex ways of integration became possible through the use of the machine alone. C. Software Art Computer Art Now, in a third phase, are we experiencing a renaissance of computer art as software art? [53] Will it once again be the art of the programmer that will befed back into a contemporaneously developed idea of artistic creation on the basis of a code at the festivals of activist artistic activity? There is again less of an impetus coming from art academies than from other professions, such as software development (Antoine Schmitt), and media layout and design (W. Bradford Paley). This connection possesses an Archimedean point in the movement related to free software, which has had the greatest influence on the present-day scene of the artist-programmer. [54] Along with this, there have been accompanying debates over copyrights, concepts of artwork, the role of the artist, and software code and how these relate to the legal system and the arts. With all these other concerns, the computer art scene also has a political and critical element, which has become the main theme of the software developed by Adrian Ward, for example. The works presented here share a conceptual aspect which can clarify where the differences with the earlier works reside. [55] In contrast to the works of Nees and Krueger, both works show a high degree of self-referencing. In these works, which do not simply rely on pseudo-random generated graphics, the degree of generative contribution is evident from their conceptual viewpoints, and illustrates other modes of use. 1. Alex McLean: Forkbomb The ENTER key has acquired power that corresponds better to the meaning of the word in poetry, that is: to makethan all of the poetry and literature in history. Friedrich A. Kittler [56] The Forkbomb, which Alex McLean wrote in 2001 using the Perl [57] scripting language, is essentially a thirteen-line program that found its way into the art community through transmedial.02, where it won a prize. [58] In describing the function and action of the script, a certain radical quality is apparent, coupled with the claim that this piece of software is art: in the end, it is nothing other than an uncontrolled system halt. Through mechanisms that will be described here, the code gradually paralyzes the system on which the interpreter [59] applies the script. This occurs through a so-called process that branches out more and 13

more and launches an avalanche of identical processes, and continues on untildepending upon the capabilities of the computerthe system resources are exhaustedand a system halt results. At that point, an output is produced as a bit pattern of zeros and ones. On the homepage of transmediale, we can read the following: The pattern in which these data are presented can be said, in one sense, to represent the algorithm of the code, and, in another way, to represent the operating system in which the code is running. The result is an artistic expression of a system under stress. [60] see the microanalysis of Forkbomb. In general, the script initializes a cascade of loops which, although they follow a programmed logic, use the inherent logic of the system itself in a way that it was not intended to be used. When the program is started, a succession of zeros and/or ones can be seen on the standard output device, which nowadays is usually a monitor screen. From this, the part that the while statement has already executed can be recognized. [61] The computer gradually becomes paralyzed. As this happens, the output changes. [62] The software can also be interpreted as being a random generator. [63] Here however, it does not fulfill the function that it had in the work of Nees, for example. In any case, the program can also be understood as displaying the finite nature of the computer contrary to the attributes ascribed to it by industry, which, in advertisements, has elevated the machine to mythic levels of capabilities and possibilities.
Alex McLean Forkbomb Forkbomb is a short section of code, which, when executed, gradually disables a computer system. The state of the system during this time can be seen on a display in a rather clumsy notation consisting of zeros and onessee the text Microanalysis by Matthias Wei for a detailed reading of the source code.

The program is efficiently written and so fulfils the requirement of a normal computer program. In the way it works however, it overturns the paradigm of functioning. In principle, it is programmed taboo breaking. If an attempt were made to use the program in a productive context, there would be no more productivity because, most likely, the system would have to 14

be restarted again and again. In this respect, it is something very different, something other than that which, by means of norms and other controls, is brought under control and classified as art and, at least in theory, remains controllable. [64] In the digital day-to-day world, it is tempting to compare this to a virus. [65] By placing the section of code in an artistic context, another arrangement for both the code and its developer is appropriate. As a rule, if the legal system steps in quickly to arrange the safeguarding of normalcy, lawsuits will be brought against programmers who do not follow the dominant paradigms of the respective programming languages, but rather use these languages intentionally for destructive purposes. [66] If the functionality is described metaphorically as a virus, and is interpreted as such, then there is room for discussion. For this, only a limited analysis of the code, such as is undertaken above is needed. But here the work falls apart into code/effects and the context noted above, without there being any conclusions drawn concerning possibly significant formalisms or conventional subjects. On the positive side, this would, however, contradict the definition of computer code which, being clear and unambiguous, excludes any semantic relationship to its elements. [67] In a way, every higher language possesses the possibility of semantically charging symbols. These are the variables the naming of which is arbitrary. McLean calls the core variable of the program strength. As described earlier, a my has to stand in front of this variable since all variables must be declared accurately. This produces the phrase my strength. If a lyrical I were put into the text, then some interpretation would be needed to provide meaning. The instruction twist could also be viewed similarly, a word that, in the context of programming, could be chosen arbitrarily, and which forms the anchor point for the goto instruction. It does, however, seem that the relationship of three semantically charged symbols, relative to the formal arrangement of the code, is rather arbitrary. The probability that there is then a subtext behind what is explicitly stated is small. 2. Adrian Ward: Auto-Illustrator A completely different approach is adopted by Adrian Ward, who has written support programs for products from the software maker Adobe, whose name immediately brings to mind completely conventional software for the construction and revision of pictures and drawings. Autoshop and AutoIllustrator have been released by a company called Signwave. The prefix Auto already betrays the fact that the user is partially incapacitated. Wards programs have been modeled on Adobes standard image manipulation program Photoshop, and the vector graphics program Illustrator, respectively. Both programs show how the tools that are employed control the appearance of any possible image that canbe constructed. Being different from the satirized software, both offer functionalities that influence usage. As a result, the user gets the feeling that he is losing the possibility of controlthe very feature that large software companies used to attract customers. By going beyond the merely satirical, the programs revealand exceedthe way that manufacturers of proprietary software conduct themselves. The user is spoon-fed with the usual built-in, attention-grabbing mechanisms: for every update, an Internet connection is opened. Users who do not wish to register are regularly faced with the request to enter a serial number (see Fig. 8-10). On the other hand, in order to freely navigate the programs, registered users have to enter a yard-long chain of characters. Yet even before any type of work can begin with Auto-Illustrator, the user is forced to enter into an end-user licensing agreement. While this is normally a rather complicated undertaking because of the nature of the license text variety, and one that can hardly be understood in its entirety by those without legal training, [68] Ward provides the user with something to read that deserves attention. In this text, which is a contract between agreement between the viewer/user and the artist in the sense stated by Ernest H. Gombrich, who maintained that only in exceptional cases are the illusions of art illusions of our actual surroundings. [69] Ideas of controllability sold by contemporary

15

production software break down here as almost all of the tools behave contrary to expectations. In any case, even designers have already recognized that in creating images, they can rely and fall back on machine support. Accordingly, a clause in the license also mentions that the user has assigned the software itself as being the creator of any printed or otherwise published work. But the core of the software is not there to allow the artist to use the different random generators that swallow up images, hunt down bugs on screen or write by themselves. [70] Much more important is the context, whose entire breadth is artistically, subversively and discursively under discussion. While the designer tries to make the tool his own, unwieldy though it may be, something unexpected happens: the means of production are infiltrated by art. [71]
Adrian Ward AutoIllustrator Both programs, Autoshop und Auto-Illustrator, compellingly ridicule commercial pedantry and, on one hand, enlighten us as to the meaning of software as a tool and, on the other, cross the boundaries existing between the creator of a work and the work itself.

Because of all of the copyright restrictions and limits placed on the user, all the symptoms of a paternalistic group ofproducers of digital content become virulent here, and ever more evident the more intensively one becomes involved with the software, and this also means reading the licenses, README files and abouts, and interpreting menus and the dialog boxes. D. Conclusions For the moment, this software is the tentative culmination of the development of computer art and, from the perspective of art history, the protagonists have no other links to each other beyond the utilization of a machine whose processes are controlled before and after every text by text. [72] And this is disregarding any outputs. In the beginning, there was an image, whether in motion or not, which, by means of symbolic script, could be programmed to be under the control of a computer. In the end, Ward chooses mimicry and not mimesis. If Nees, Nake and Noll and other pioneers still had to deal with the burden of sluggish machines, they nevertheless tried out many processes for creating images. And, with the introduction of methods of inspection and description, these results produced meaning. Here the role of the programming of images as being something applied is clear. Switching and reactive systems are complex, as Kruegers Videoplace example should have shown. The role of the computer there is completely different, even if it is used to produce images in real time. Forkbomb should have shown how computer code can be used as an object of investigation. Although the pressure of the mechanical to achieve precision always carries with it the restriction of the possibilities of expression as a requirement for its functioning, it

16

is in principle possible that the code, under certain circumstances determined by comments, variables or by the use of other solution methods, can be active in numerous ways. In the end, Adrian Ward points to an entire range of phenomena that today are bound up with the culture surrounding the computer. He places these in an artistic subversive context that he himself has created, in a way that has been unique until now, in order to create a tool out of his work. With this, the circumstances of reception change dramatically. Although Nees could still deal with the contemplative observer, this has changed already for Kueger because his observer has space-imageexperiences and is prompted to undertake different behaviors in different situations of human-machine interaction. To be sure, the Forkbomb provides an extremely symbolic output as a result, consisting of a changing sequence of zeros and ones that rather blatantly refer to the mathematical placeholders for the two possible states of the universal machine. However, the aesthetic limits are called into question: the script can be changed and the source code is supplied along with it. It can be put into any context whatever and applied under different operating systems. This transparency permits the user-recipient direct access to artistic material. Besides being an implicit and quasi-real machine parody, the work also stands for a culture of free software, which is also indirectly called for by Ward with his Auto-Illustrator. This software also outlines the consequences of excluding the user, who is incapacitated legally, systemically and practically. The works he produces do not belong to him; nor is he able to see how all the processes work, and, because of the random generators, he has to give up control over the software. In all three phases, the generative factor, which has been written in subconsciously is subjected to increasing restrictions. It completely determines the appearance of the image and, through its meaning, constitutes a constructive means of exchange itself (Nees). The modern experience of contingency is a condition for the sensation of freedom in the installation by Krueger. The Forkbomb can also be understood as a random generator. As its core functions, Auto-Illustrator possesses generative elements. The computer art of the present creates more room for interpretation than would have been the case in the early years. The essential means of interpreting works of art was description. It is thus clear that description, even in the case of computer art, produces differences and therefore meaning, because it establishes comparability. It therefore makes sense to speak of computer art and not software art. A history of computer art must therefore move forward in an integrating fashion by describing and interpreting its subjects, and not merely by contextualizing them.

17

Notes:
[1] Per Cederqvist, Version Management with CVS, Chapter 1.2 What is CVS not? [2] Frieder Nake in: Kunstforum International, vol. 98, p. 94. [3] Andreas Broeckmann, Susanne Jaschko (ed.), DIY Media Kunst and digitale Medien: Software, Partizipation, Distribution, Berlin, 2001 (also in documentation for transmediale.01 International Media Art Festival Berlin). Ars Electronica took place for the first time at the Bruckner Festival. [4] Heike Piehler, Die Anfnge der Computerkunst, Frankfurt/Main, 2003. The author simply points out sources without connecting the works to other phenomena in art at the time. At the same time, the publication fails to explore significant connections to computer history in general, while theory likewise falls by the wayside. With this book, she continues to promote the building of myths and, in no way contributes to an understanding of the complex situation of art in relation to computers. [5] Florian Cramer/Ulrike Gabriel, Software Art, in Andreas Broeckmann/Susanne Jaschko (ed.), DIY Media Kunst and digitale Medien: Software, Partizipation, Distribution (DIY mediaart and digital media: software, participation, distribution), Berlin, 2001 (also documentation of transmediale.01 international media art festival, Berlin), p. 2933. With the notion of history in mind, in contrast to the authors, I do not see La Monte Youngs instruction as a piece of software over and above a transfiguring metaphor. As always, software must be presented in whatever form that can be read by machine. Otherwise, it is merely an instruction. Yet everyday speech cannot be transferred into machine language without the help of standard language. [6] The rather cursory backward connection that Gabriel and Cramer undertake in regard to minimalist and concept art or Fluxus can possibly be broadened. [7] Still, in 1996, this is what Nicoletta Torcelli decides in Video Kunst Zeit. Von Acconci bis Viola (Video, art, time. From Acconci to Viola), Weimar, 1996, p. 299 with an outlook on Interaktive Kunst (interactive art) and the Body Electric. In the middle of the nineties, some already antiquated key words like Rhizome (p. 302) and data goggles (p. 303) were sprinkled in haphazardly, and placed exclusively in the context of simulated worlds. This makes the actual carrying out of the works of the time appear to be artistically clumsy (p. 304). These works, oriented simply towards evaluating images with regard to how accurately they simulate reality, are a blind alley. [8] Or else to an avalanche of categories. See runme.org, where, at the beginning of December 2003, 22 entire sections were opened that actually only describe characteristics. See Niels Werber, New (literary) economy? Neue Medien, neue Literatur im World Wide Web. In this text, Werber criticizes the evangelical rhetoric that is used, on the one hand, by periodicals like WIRED or Red Herring, and which has, on the other hand, been taken on by philosophers like Norbert Bolz. What is more, according to Werber, reality has already proven that it has long ago overtaken what was prophesized. What Werber notices as being the situation on the Internet at the time of the New Economy can be directly transferred to the prophets of immersive worlds, cyborgs and other promoters of contemporary visions of technology. [9] I do not consider merely controlling the switching that synchronizes four DVD players for a projection to be computer art. [10] Exemplary for this is Alex McLeans Forkbomb, which will be discussed further below. [11] As in the piece Life Spacies (1997) by Laurent Mignonneau und Christa Sommerer. [12] Ulrich Reier/Norbert Wolf (eds.), Kunst-Epochen Band 12: 20. Jahrhundert II, Stuttgart, 2002, proceeds according to the classical model. The authors, however, stop with video art. Interactive environments are no longer objects of interest to researchers. At any rate, for example, Kunst Brockhaus in zehn Bnden, Band 2, Bik-Deu, Mannheim a. o., 1987, p. 268, attempts a definition. It says that computer art consists of graphics and objects which can be produced with the aid of computers. In place of the original, there is a programme which can be called up at will. The themes from abstract art appear mostly in ordering systems such as serial-like lining up or rhythmical variations. [13] Herbert W. Franke, Computergraphik Computerkunst, Munich, 1971; also Gottfried Jger, Apparative Kunst. Vom Kaleidoskop zum Computer, Cologne, 1973; by the same author: Phnomen Kunst. Die Grundlagen der kybernetischen sthetik, Cologne, 1974. See Kurd Alsleben, sthetische Redundanz, Quickborn, 1962, as

18

well as Max Bense, Einfhrung in die informationstheoretische sthetik. Grundlegung und Anwendung in der Texttheorie, Reinbek, 1969 and Abraham Moles, Kunst & Computer,Cologne, 1973. [14] Hans-Joachim Flechtner gives us a contemporary insight into this science in Grundbegriffe der Kybernetik. Eine Einfhrung, Munich 51984 (1970). [15] Susanne Pfleger, Vasarely nach Vasarely, in Richard W. Gassen (ed.), Vasarely. Erfinder der Op- Art, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1998, p. 184. Kornelia Berswordt-Wallrabbe, Gerhard von Graevenitz. Eine Kunst jenseits des Bildes, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1994, p. 72 ff. A good and comprehensive insight into the introduction of methods of chance in the creation of images and other works is given in Zufall als Prinzip. Spielwelt, Methode und System in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Bernhard Holeczek, Lida Mengden, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, 1992. See also Peter Gendolla/Thomas Kamphusmann (eds.), Die Knste des Zufalls, Frankfurt/Main, 1999 and Holger Schulze, Das aleatorische Spiel. Erkundung und Anwendung der nichtintentionalen Werkgenese im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich, 2000. [16] Andreas Meier (ed.), herman de vries. to be, Stuttgart, 1995, p. 2553. [17] For example, in Schotter (19641968) by Georg Nees, which will be analysed further below. 18Manfred Mohr, ed. by Ulrich Schumacher, Bottrop, 1998. [18] Manfred Mohr, ed. by Ulrich Schumacher, Bottrop, 1998. [19] Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. Programmierte Gestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken, Mannheim etc., 1992. I will deal in some detail with this book because it is the only one which provides very comprehensive connections to the art history that has been handed down. Steller is himself a computer artist, although originally, he was a natural scientist. [20] Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. Programmierte Gestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken, Mannheim etc., 1992, p. 18. [21] Which states in brief that concrete art means nothing more than what it is by itself. See Max Imdahl, Is it a Flag, or Is It a Painting? ber mgliche Konsequenzen der konkreten Kunst in, id., Zur Kunst der Moderne (Gesammelte Schriften, Band 1, ed. by Angeli Janhsen), Frankfurt/Main, 1996, pp. 131180. [22] E.g. Fig. 2.6, Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. Programmierte Gestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken, Mannheim etc., 1992, p. 34. [23] Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. ProgrammierteGestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken, Mannheim etc., 1992, p. 119. [24] Herbert W. Franke/Gottfried Jger, Apparative Kunst. Vom Kaleidoskop zum Computer, Cologne, 1973, p. 101. This shows that Franke/Jger, as well as Steller, develop their esthetic from a movement of rational precision, that, for example, cannot include undetermined factors, real time actions or communications arts. [25] Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. Programmierte Gestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken, Mannheim etc., 1992, p. 212. [26] Steller is here reflecting the spirit of the time as he refers to examples of the three-dimensional, quasirealistic technique of ray tracing. Pure immanence does not allow in any way that in this art, which came up two decades after the blossoming of Pop Art, the contexts of that art, for example the role of Warhols Factory, be reflected. [27] Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. Programmierte Gestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken. Mannheim etc., 1992, p. 352. [28] Cf. Chapter B 2. Myron Krueger. [29] Erwin Steller, Computer und Kunst. ProgrammierteGestaltung. Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer sthetiken, Mannheim etc., 1992, p. 360; Florian Rtzer (ed.), sthetik des Immateriellen.Das Verhltnis von Kunst und Neuen Technologien, Teil 1, in Kunstforum International, Vol. 97, 1988(part 1) and vol. 98 (part 2), 1988. See Florian Rtzer (ed.), Das neue Bild der Welt. Wissenschaft und sthetik, in Kunstforum International, Vol. 124, 1993, where the union between simulation theory and visualization by mathematics and its influence on the art

19

business is closely examined. The early computer artists Herbert W. Franke and Frieder Nake were given a chance to speak here. [30] I do not define the phases as concretely as the Digital Arts Museum, which absurdly has the multimedia phase beginning in 1996. This concept was not only reflected by Herbert W. Franke and Gottfried Jger, in Apparative Kunst. Vom Kaleidoskop zum Computer, Cologne, 1973, p. 81, it also found an early realization in Kruegers Videoplace. 31Karl Gerstner, Basel etc., 1992, p. 4363. [31] Karl Gerstner, Basel etc., 1992, p. 4363. [32] Frieder Nake, Knstliche Kunst. In der Welt der Berechenbarkeit, in Florian Rtzer (ed.), sthetik des Immateriellen. Das Verhltnis von Kunst und Neuen Technologien, Teil 2 , in Kunstforum International, vol. 9, 1989, S. 88. [33] Here is a link to the license holder of this technology. [34] This is a sensitive issue because, in 1979, it was Franke, among others, who co-developed Ars Electronica from an idea for a computer art exhibition. In 2003, Code as the Language of our Time was the programme focus. However, neither Frankes nor other historical positions come up in the catalog. See Gerfried Stocker/Christine Schpf: (eds.), Code Language of our Time. Ars Electronica 2003, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2003. This looks different in the music scene. The great influence of Karlheinz Stockhausen can be recalled, or, for example, the current laptop-musicians scene today. [35] The artist as an expert, in: make-world festival munich germany YES border= location=YES, p.24 f., p. 1821, 2001. [36] A decontextualization of early computer art in favor of a pure work-immanent observation method is to be approached carefully. The role of clarity has to be checked from one work to another. [37] All data from computer-archiv. [38] It is therefore no wonder that Frieder Nake at first viewed the democratization of computers very skeptically; see footnote 30. [39] An indication that new technologies were already being questioned during the sixties is the film The War Game made for the BBC in 1966 by Peter Watkins. It presented a scenario for a world after an atomic war. [40] Herbert W. Franke, Computergraphik Computerkunst, Munich, 1971, p. 119f. [41] Dieter Daniels, Vom Readymade zum Cyberspace. Kunst/Medien Interferenzen, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, p. 64. [42] Heike Piehler, Die Anfnge der Computerkunst, Frankfurt/Main 2003, Fig. 41. The graphic, which came from the Clarissa collection in the possession of the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, is left untitled by the author (inventory # CG 155 d). She dates the sheet from between 1964 and 1968. It is a silk-screen, after a plotter drawing, 99 by 69 cm and, according to Piehler, carries the description Computergrafik mit Siemens-System 4004, gezeichnet mit Zuse-Graphomat. See also Georg Nees, Generative Computergraphik, published by Siemens, 1969, p. 241. [43] There are two orientations. Besides the variations described here, the work has often been turned. That is according to Georg Nees, Generative Computergraphik, published by Siemens, 1969, p. 242, Fig. 38, Herbert W. Franke, Computergraphik Computerkunst, Munich, 1971, Fig. 20, p. 30, or Karin Guminski, Kunst am Computer. sthetik, Bildtheorie und Praxis des Computerbildes, Berlin, 2002, Fig. 44, p. 100. [44] A detailed analysis of the content of the work, with a comparison to an image that was not produced digitally, would be beyond the scope of this work however. [45] For the concept of a super symbol, see Kurd Alsleben, sthetische Redundanz (Aesthetic redundancy), Quickborn, 1962, p. 36. However, for the boundaries of the abstract concepts of informational aesthetics, refer to Rudolf Arnheim, Entropie und Kunst. Ein Versuch ber Unordnung and Ordnung (Entropy and art. An essay on order and disorder), Cologne, 1996, p. 25 ff. and 30 f.

20

[46] The concept of chance and its cosmological meaning in physics is included here. See Grupen, Claus: Die Natur des Zufalls (the nature of chance), in Peter Gendolla and Thomas Kamphusmann, Die Knste des Zufalls (The arts of chance), Frankfurt/Main, 1999, p. 1533. [47] Georg Nees, Generative Computergraphik (Generative computer graphics), published by Siemens, 1969, p. 241, also for source code. [48] Whether this makes an exclusive interpretation of source code possible would have to be analyzed in a further study. [49] For a discussion of determinism, see Hans-Jrg Kreowski, Logische Grandlagen der Informatik (Logical foundations of computer science), (Handbuch der Informatik Vol. 1.1) (Handbook of computer science, vol. 1.1.) Munich, Vienna, 1991, p. 13 ff., as well as the narrow definitions by Ulrich Kaiser, C/C++, Bonn 2000, p. 19, 23, 25. [50] As a second step, it should be clarified whether it was a matter of the result of a single programme run or of a chosen procedure, which would lead to the publication of this specialized article. [51] For details of installation, see Ske Dinkla, Pioniere interaktiver Kunst von 1970 bis heute (Pioneers of interactive art from 1970 to the present), Ostfildern, 1997, p. 6396 as well as Myron Krueger, in InterAct. Schlsselwerke interaktiver Kunst (InterAct. Key works of interactive art), Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997, p. 6267. [52] Prix Ars Electronica 1990, category of interactive art. [53] During the previously mentioned telephone conversation on Nov. 17, Herbert W. Franke disagreed, pointing out that, in his opinion, English history did not experience the extreme breaks that could be seen in the German speaking world. [54] For the concept and context of free software, see Volker Grassmuck, Freie Software zwischen Privatand Gemeineigentum (Free software versus private and public ownership), Bonn, 2002. [55] There was a deliberte exclusion of the coding of graphics, like those that comprise a large part of the Whitney Artport Project CODeDOC, published on the Internet in September 2002. These programs could be used for comparative purposes with the help of software-specific descriptions. However, they conceal newer contexts and focus exclusively on the aspect of visualization. [56] Friedrich A. Kittler, Daten ? Zahlen ? Codes, Leipzig, 1998, p. 20. [57] See the web site Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language)[http://www.perl.org]. [58] See the transmediale web site and the sources of this program. [59] Perl is an interpreted language, the execution of whose program code is made possible by a host program, the Perl interpreter. The code is written purely using text and data, and is input on a command line, or other interface, into Perl. In this sense, it is not a stand alone program (executable, portable) but rather only a script. [60] See the code illustrations [Fig. 6]. [61] The characters are arbitrary however, and others could be substituted. [62] After five cycles and with an input of 2 on the command line, a Linux-System, Kernel 2.4.21144Athlon with Perl 5.8.1 will produce, for example, the following result: 01100, 01100, 00101, 01001, 01100. [63] Thanks to Stefan Krecher from the Chaos Computer Club for this tip, who has interpreted the spreading out of numerous threads as generating a pseudo-random sequence of zeros and ones. [64] That is evident in some troubled answers from hackers in response to a question by the author. The programmers only saw the destructive aspects of this work, and evaluated it as follows: Destructive nonsense isnt interesting. And cheap: _(){ _&};_. [65] See Florian Rtzer, Ein Computervirus als Kunstwerk, Telepolis, June 8, 2001. In addition, the work refers to the history of art theme of the artist as an institutionalized outsider. See Donald Kuspit, Der Kult vom Avantgarde- Knstler, Klagenfurt, 1995; Ernst Kris, Otto Kurz, Die Legende vom Knstler. Ein geschichtlicher

21

Versuch, Frankfurt/Main, 1995, and Wolfgang Ruppert, Der moderne Knstler. Zur Sozial- and Kulturgeschichte der kreativen Individualitt in der kulturellen Moderne im 19. and frhen 20. Jahrhandert, Frankfurt/Main, 1998, p. 225 ff. Also see Justin Hoffmann, Destruktionskunst. Der Mythos der Zerstrung in der Kunst der frhen sechziger Jahre, Munich, 1995, p. 19ff. [66] For a conceptual definition in contrast to normality, see Jrgen Link, Versuch ber den Normalismus, Opladen/Wiesbaden, 21999. [67] Friedrich A. Kittler, Code oder wie sich etwas anders schreiben lsst, in Gerfried Stocker/Christine Schpf (eds.), Code Language of our Time. Ars Electronica 2003, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2003, p. 18: Codes are therefore supposed to be unique alphabets in the sense of modern mathematics, unambiguous and countable, the shortest possible sequence of symbols. But thanks to their grammar and because they are endowed with unheardof capabilities, they can nevertheless endlessly reproduce themselves []. In an article by McLean, Adrian Ward and Geoff Cox, the differences between various semantic levels in the code itself are explained. For example, a problem can then be solved in different ways. And these solution paths reflect their own individual semantics and allow the decisions of the programmer himself to be objects for analysis. [68] Signwave Auto-Illustrator LICENSE AGREEMENT (for Version 1.2), 7.2 SOFTWARE AS MEDIUM. [69] Ernst H. Gombrich, Kunst und Illusion. Zur Psychologie der bildlichen Darstellung, Stuttgart/Zurich, 1978, p. 306. This communication, however, is only to indicate that between the artist and the user of art, there is something like a contract with certain definite prerequisites. This can also be established for painting as well as for contemporary, media based arts. And here it is explicitly implemented as a legal device that has lastingly shaken the bourgeois notion of art. [70] More on probability mechanisms, a programmers text for the Autoshop. [71] Interestingly enough, there already is a volume that presents Auto-Illustrator as a tool for designers: Jim Hannah, 4x4 Generative Design (with Auto-Illustrator, Java, DBN, Lingo): Life/Oblivion Reviews, London, 2002. [72] Script as the knowledge dominant culture technology. Friedrich A. Kittler, Daten ? Zahlen ? Codes, Leipzig, 1998, p. 22.

22

Kraftwerk
German experimental group widely regarded as the godfathers of electronic pop music. The original members were Ralf Htter (b. 1946 Krefeld, Ger. ) and Florian Schneider (b. 1947 Dsseldorf ). Htter and Schneider met while studying classical music at Dsseldorf Conservatory in the late 1960s, and their early work with a five-piece band called the Organisation showed the influence of the German keyboard band Tangerine Dream. Adopting the name Kraftwerk ("power plant"), Htter, Schneider, and a series of collaborators forged an austere sound and image as part of a small but highly influential cult of German bands who experimented with electronic instruments long before it was fashionable. The movement, dubbed "Krautrock" by British journalists, also included innovative bands such as Can, Faust, and Neu!, but Kraftwerk became the best known. The foundation for Kraftwerk's music was the sounds of everyday life, a concept first fully realized on the 22-minute title track of the Autobahn album (1974). Repetitious, monotonous, lulling, and entrancing, "Autobahn" became an unlikely hit in Europe and the United States (where it was played on commercial radio stations in severely edited form). Subsequent albums explored such subjects as radios and trains with a combination of childlike wonder and cold objectivity. The band revolutionized ideas about how a "rock" tour should look and sound by appearing in the United States in the guise of identical mannequins who performed their music exclusively on keyboards. The title of their album The Man-Machine (1978) epitomized the concept. Although the band recorded rarely in the 1980s and '90s and virtually stopped touring, its music was a huge influence on New York hip-hop, particularly Afrika Bambaataa's hit "Planet Rock"; Detroit techno dance music; Neil Young's album Trans (1983); the collaborations between David Bowie and Brian Eno; and the synth-pop of Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, and countless others.

A Brief Study of the Concept The essence that Heidegger was talking about, is something that has a direct link to Kraftwerk's ideas and attitudes towards their music. They create on a one to one level with technology. Their computers are their assistants rather than their tools. The technology Kraftwerk uses goes beyond the means to an ends basis, and becomes larger than it's original intentions. This is the essence of technology Heidegger was talking about. Technnology is nothing technological, especially in the music of Kraftwerk. The music goes beyond sound, and on to visual sights of creative outlets of technological minds and users.

23

Kraftwerk, The Early Years '71 - '73 1968, when it all started If you really would like to understand the history that created the Legends, you must understand the situation in post-war Germany in the end of the sixties. Most German bands played cover versions of British or American songs and they only added some foreign accents. A new generation of young West Germans where living in the shadows of the "cold war" and the tension between East and West. There was a will to recapturing a German cultural identity and that caused a new wave of music and films. There are three bands that has a lasting influence on todays music and those experimental legends include Tangerine Dream (I was once a member of their Fan-Club), Can and of course Kraftwerk. Can, the first experimental band The first band to emerge was Can and they where formed in Cologne in 1968. Most of the members where classically trained and they performed music with improvisational layers of sound together with a steady rock beat as a base. This new "rock like" music with little or no structure sounded unlike everything that hit the charts. This music inspired many German bands and UK music press tagged it as "Kraut Rock". Kraftwerk arised from this experimental explosion as the natural link between electronic pop music and German avant-garde. Organisation, a mixture of sounds The history of Kraftwerk begins when Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Htter met in Remschied, near Dsseldorf, at the Kunstakademie (Academy of Arts). They are both classically trained musicians and they went on to study at the Dsseldorf Conservatory. They formed a group called Organisation whose early music was a mixture of sounds, feedback and rythm. The band took part in various performances at art galleries and universities. 1969 Back in 1969 the experimental wave of German music was creating some commercial interest and recording deals where signed. This was a world which was very different from the UK or USA rock scene. Many of the German music students considered themselves as performance artists who were making a musical art statement. One of the most notable influences on all early German rock groups was Karlheinz Stockhausen. As leader of the Darmstadt school, his influence on the electronic music field was immense. His experiments with electronic sounds were also influential on rock musicians further afield - his picture being one of those included on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper LP. I have heard that it exists a bootleg with a concert featuring Stockhausen and Kraftwerk playing together in '71 or '72. The bootleg has six tracks, three Kraftwerk songs played by Stockhausen and three Stockhausen songs played by Kraftwerk! 1970 In early 1970 Ralf and Florian chosed to record a LP as members of the band Organisation. The line up was Fred Monics on drums, Butch Hauf on bass, Basil Hammoudi on vocals, Florian on flute and violin and Ralf on organ. They signed to the English label RCA and that was an unexpected step for a German band in those days. The front cover featured a pseudomythological drawing by the mysteriously named Comus, of the sort that was fairly common place on LP sleeves in the early '70s. Tone Float The LP Tone-Float was only available as import in Germany and it failed to sell many copies. I think that the album is interesting but it lacks direction and it has a lot of weird noises. It's available as a bootleg CD and is a must for every fan, but I don't recommend it as an introduction to the Kraftwerk sound.

24

I thought earlier that the self titled album KRAFTWERK was their first album and it was recorded in the autumn of the same year. Now appearing as a duo, Kraftwerk (Power Plant), Ralf and Florian could concentrate on the ideas that created the famous Kraftwerk sound. KlingKlang, the birth of a studio An important thing happened this year, they established their own studio in the center of Dsseldorf. In the same building as it is today, it was set up in a 60 sq meter rented loft in close proximity to the main railway station. This studio was the beginning of the KlingKlang studio. After fitting out the room with sound insulation material they started recording sounds on stereo tape machines and cassette recorders with a view to taking the tapes to a fully equipped studio for final mixing. 1971 With a successful album, KRAFTWERK, the band's confidence had grown and they played more live concerts in Germany than before. The concerts were often advertised with a poster featuring the red and white traffic cone with a naked woman superimposed on it. These concerts featured the line-up from the LP and after a short while Andreas Hohman left. They continued as a trio with Klaus Dinger and then the band were joined by Michael Rother (guitar) and Eberhardt Krahnemann (bass), a five piece line-up which was to only last for one session. When Krahnemann left the band he was amazingly followed by Ralf Htter himself. This was a moment that could have been the end of the band as we know it today. For six months Florian, Rother and Dinger played music that bore a closer remembrance to Rother and Dinger's later work with Neu!. The trio recorded a 35 minute session at Conrad Plank's studio which was never released. However they made a performance on German TV in 1971 for "The Beatclub" and that recording is available on the Anonymous Tone Float bootleg. This first TV performance by Kraftwerk shows Florian with his flute and electronic equipment, Rother on guitar and Dinger on drums. Soon after this recording Dinger and Rother formed Neu! and establishing themselves alongside Kraftwerk as the second definitive Dsseldorf cult group. Ralf and Florian reunion "Kraftwerk 2" Ralf and Florian rejoined and released the "Kraftwerk 2" album. The LP was produced in just seven days between 26th September and 1st October 1971. The album was released on the Philips label and is a musical extension of the first KRAFTWERK LP. The cover concept is a direct continuation and it's so similar that people might have assuming that it was the first album slightly re-packaged. The first album achieved sales of around 60 000 in Germany and the second LP fared slightly less well, possibly due to the ambiguous cover and title. Ralf Htter: "The culture of Central Europe was cut off in the thirties, and many of the intellectuals went to the USA or France, or they were eliminated. We are picking it up again where it left off, continuing this culture of the thirties, and we are doing this spiritually". 1972 In this year the interest in UK for German music had grown enough for the two first LPs to appear as double LP on Philips progressive Vertigo label. The LP appeared with a new sleeve depicting an oscillating blue electronic wave signal. The first two LPs were also re-released in Germany in 1975. At that time it was obvious that Kraftwerk's success wasn't going to be an overnight affair. With the first two albums they had created a sound that were far outside traditional parameters of pop and rock music. They were more revered by other musicians

25

than by the general public and it was clear that Kraftwerk were very much musician's musicians. German music evolves The first two Kraftwerk LPs had still failed to make any great international impact for the group. By 1972, Tangerine Dream and Can were producing some of their best works and although Kraftwerk were equally creative, they still were considered a secondary division with a cult following. One obvious reason for this is of course that the public outside Germany had no performances by which to judge them. They had taken the decision very early on not to involve themselves in normal rock tours or accept support slots. This was totally different from Can, who had already toured England, or even Tangerine Dream who, despite huge banks of equipment, were also touring regularly. Kraftwerk hadn't decided how to present their music live to a bigger audience. On the financial side they made enough money to be self-sufficient and expand their studio. It is now quite clear that Kraftwerk were beginning to build up considerable reputation for themselves. Although not yet reflected in world-wide sales, they were also gaining a notoriety further afield for avoiding the norms of rock music that were now being adopted by some of the other German groups. They were on the way to harness some of the elements that would later lay any comparisons with their improvising compatriots to rest and firmly establish them as the creators of industrial and electronic pop music. Herv Picart: "Kraftwerk are an avant-garde group who transform the electronic into beautiful." They were conscious of trying to present something that was more of a multimedia event, being visually as well as musically out of the ordinary. In this context, the light show, was an early version of the video screens that the group would later use. This concert was also the first to utilize the newly built drum machines which they operated themselves. They may well have been the first ever group to use such machines live. However, their obvious success of their first concert in Paris, couldn't hide the fact that they were still seen as a curiosity group in Germany, Britain and France." 1973 First concert outside Germany In February 1973, Kraftwerk accepted an invitation to play their first concert outside of Germany. They took part in a two day festival of German music held at the Thatre de L'Ouest Parisien in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris. The first night featured Kraftwerk and Guru Guru, the second spotlighted Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel and Klaus Schulze. The festival was organized by the French magazine Actuel and parts of the concerts were filmed and broadcast by French TV music program Pop 2. The festival was reviewed by Herv Picart in the French magazine Best. "The group is made up of two contemplative intellectuals, Ralf Htter (keyboards, electronics) and Florian Schneider-Esleben (flute, violin, keyboards, electronics), coming from Dsseldorf. Their music is very smooth, very slack, a kind of long bewitchment, similar to Terry Riley, made by the prolonging and superimposing of multiple rythms and circular melodies. The public was surprised at first, by the music alone, then when the lights went off and a screen appeared with luminous arabesques projected onto them, the spell was complete." Emil Schult, the man behind the image It was at this time that Florian meet Emil Schult, an electric-violinist, who became a close friend of the group, encouraging them to adopt the imagery and identity that they so far lacked. Emil was born in Dsseldorf, but had spent some time at school in the States. After

26

returning to Germany he became an art student at the Dsseldorf Academy studying under artists Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. His masters degree covered many aspects of the visual media including painting, photography and film, but also brought him into contact with some of the more revolutionary political student movements of the time, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit known as Rote Dany (Red Danny). Bendit had been a spokesman for the student riots in Paris "May Revolution" in 1968. In the beginning Schult's involvement was just a musical one, becoming a regular visitor to their studio, contributing to various jam sessions by playing guitar, flute and his home made electronic violin that had so intrigued Florian. In the early summer of 1973, the group embarked on a German tour, again traveling around in a Volkswagen van. They played a set of mostly improvised music, with Ralf on keyboards, Florian on flute, hawaiian guitar and violin, Emil on guitar and electric violin and a friend of Ralf's, Plato Kostic, on bass. Plato was also an artist working under the pseudonym Plato Riviera, and is today an architect in Greece. They played various concerts and festivals often to audiences of 2000 people or more, such was the appetite for spontaneous and improvised music at the time. Ralf Htter: "In 1971 Kraftwerk was still without a drummer, so I bought a cheap drum machine giving some preset dance rythms. By changing the basic sounds with tape echo and filtering we made the rythm tracks our second album. Our instrumental sounds came from home-made oscillators and an old Hammond Organ that gave us various tonal harmonies with its drawbars. We manipulated the tapes at different at different speeds for further effects." New recording, "Ralf und Florian" This LP was released in November of that year, the situation regarding their rather anonymous image was on the way to being rectified. "Ralf und Florian" by it's very title put the group on first name familiarity with the record buying public, and to this day is almost synonymous with a nickname for the duo. Both musically, and perhaps more importantly conceptually, they were beginning to hone down their ideas to a few basic concepts and display the clear-signed approach that would be so prevalent on later LPs. As well as in their yet-to-be named studio (Kling Klang) in Dsseldorf, the LP was recorded at the Cornet and Rhenus studios in Cologne and the now defunct but then fashionable Studio 70 in Munich. It was once again co-produced by Conrad Plank who helped to organize the recording sessions in the two Cologne studios where he had arrangements with the owners to use them at night. Due to Schult's influence, the original German cover positively brimmed with humor, as if trying to shrug off the serious experimental image that had surrounded the first two LPs.

27

Kraftwerk Interview
(first published in Triad Magazine June 1975) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------While the casual listener may be quick to draw comparisons to Pink Floyd and "space music" in general, in reality there is far more to Kraftwerk than that. Space is only a part of the total Kraftwerk concept, for it also includes Time and Mechanics, and not only time and space, but visual and other sensory phenomenon. They are working with artists in other fields in conjunction with their music and are anxious to begin producing video discs of their art. Lyrics are becoming a more regular part of their music. Autobahn has a fully descriptive character taking the listener for a quick cruise down Germany's famed superhighway. It becomes and indistinguishable blend of vision and reality, as it begins with a slam of a car door and proceeds to imitate the sounds of the cars whizzing down the road. The mysterious whispering tones of "Kometenmelodie" soar lightly into the ether and leave the listener with a grandious spatial experience. They perceive commonplace occurrences and transform them into dramatic situations. Just as writers and poets play with words and phrases, painters play with colors and perspectives, and sculptors play with shapes and forms, so Kraftwerk plays with sounds. The qualities attributed to the arts are equally applicable to their music. It is shaped, phrased, colored, molded, mixed and modified into a unified experience. The music is sketched on broadly fundamental lines leaving the setting and filling in, to a great extent, to the listener. In such such a vague and ethereal art Kraftwerk excels in transforming the commonplace sounds of daily life to a stirring and spiritual experience. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Interview with Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider by Saul Smaizys Triad: is the term "space rock" applicable to your music? Ralf: We are part of the Industrial generation. We grew up. . . Florian: . . . very impressed by these machinery rhythms that we used in our music, the mechanical aspects of life. Technology is no enemy to us. We use technology as it is. We also like nature but you cannot say the Technology is any better or worse than nature. You have to accept all of these things as they are in the world today. Ralf: We have aspects in our music that refer to space, like Kometenmelodie, but we also have some very earthly aspects that are very direct and not from outer space but from inner space like from the human being and the body, and very close to every day life. Florian: We see films and we go out and get optical impressions and so this often has an influence on our music and it becomes an acoustic film or acoustic poetry. That's the way that we try to express what we have seen and what we have heard. Several years ago we were on tour and it happened that we just came off the Autobahn after a long ride and when we came in to play we had this speed in our music. Our hearts were still beating fast so the whole rhythm became very fast. Triad: The spinning of a roulette wheel is the basis for another one of your tunes. Ralf: Yes, movement. The idea is to capture non-static phenomenon because music itself is a non-static phenomenon. It deals with time and movement in time. It can never be the same. Triad: Does dance have a part in your music? Ralf: Yes, in Germany some modern ballet companies have used our music to create their own versions of ballet for this music. Florian: The choreography was like a computer dance,. like robot dance. Very mechanical in its movement on stage. Ralf: We also kind of dance when we perform. It's not that we actually move our bodies but it's this awareness of your whole body. You feel like a dancer. Florian: Your brain is dancing. The electronics are dancing around in the speakers. Ralf: We've had this idea for a long time but it has only been in the past year that we've been able to create what we feel is a loudspeaker orchestra. This is what we consider Kraftwerk to be, a non-acoustic electronic loudspeaker orchestra. Ralf: The whole thing is one instrument. We play mixers, we play tapes, we play phasers, we play the whole apparatus of Kraftwerk. That's the instrument. Including the lights and the atmosphere. Florian: Sometimes I can taste the sounds. There are a lot more feelings than just the feeling going through the ears. The whole body can feel the sounds. Ralf: Imagine the trees. What do the trees sounds like? You don't even have to make the sound audible. You can just write out the suggestions and the reader can imagine the sound or reproduce the sounds spiritually in his brain. Triad: Do you listen to other kinds of music other than electronic?

28

Ralf: Oh yes. Sometimes we listen to the radio and we also listen to life, to noise, or to what people normally regard as noise, which is of course the source for environmental music. If you walk down the street you can hear a symphony if you are open enough to listen to it. Florian: That's what you learn from working with electronics. You go to the source of the sounds and your ears are trained to analyze any sound. We hear a plane passing overhead and I know all of the phenomenon that go into the make-up of the sound, the phasings, the echos. All these things that happen in nature. . . Ralf: . . . and the more you learn the more you enjoy it. You can always discover new sounds that you've never heard before. It's amazing sometimes when you listen to the context of the sounds. It could be the animals in the park, with the cars and the people mixing together. Florian: The association field is very large in music, meaning that somebody can make some special sound put them on tape and broadcast them to 50 people or 100 or 1,000 and each one of those people has a different impression of the sounds they have heard. It's not like the cinema where nearly everybody sees the same thing. I think the optical is much more fixed but when you have music you have so many different sorts of musics in the brains of the people. Ralf: Yes, musics. Many musics. Florian: When you are on stage you can focus the music to all these different brains, but you know there are a lot of different receptions. Some people fall asleep, some people are excited, others don't like it and go out, others come back, some stay in their seats. So there are a lot of different reactions to the same thing. Ralf: We improvise in the way it is used in Oriental and raga music. It's not harmonically structured. Florian: We prefer to make sounds. Sound symphonies. We use a lot of natural harmonies. . . like from the overtone scale. We try to do things simply, the simpler the better. We tried to do a lot of complicated bullshit in the past where everybody tried to play as many notes as they can in a second or a minute, but after awhile we came down to the essential thing. Ralf: You have to face yourself to come to the point where you really think about what it is that you want to do. Not to hide behind too many notes or to hide behind . . . Florian: . . . the speaker cabinets. Ralf: . . . to open up to the simplest things. Florian: We don't like these sort of bombastic sounds, we prefer more refined sounds. Ralf: It took years of development, step by step, for us to get to what we are doing now. And it will take more steps to do something else. Florian: We started out with acoustic instruments. We had a lot of friends who have played with us in the past, and so life goes on and some of them leave and others join. We finally came to a point where we decided that we didn't want these loud drum kits on stage with us. Then for a year we played with just the two of us. We used a rhythm machine but this was not entirely satisfactory. It would be good for one piece but too boring to use for a whole evening, and so we decided to build electronic drums because we wanted to have rhythms in our music. We designed and built them and are now playing with two electronic percussionists in the group. Ralf: It gives a lot of possibilities to change the sound because electronic music is created out of white noise, so you can take whatever frequencies you like, or you want, for your particular concept of music - and with these electronic instruments you can pick out the frequencies that suit you. Like a painter, you can choose whatever colors of the spectrum you like for that projection of your painting. Florian: We are working with a painter now who can realize some of our optic visions. Ralf: We don't think of ourselves as musicians, but rather as people who create out of the different media or ways of expressing yourself, whether it is painting, poetry, music, or even film. The ideal is to communicate to people. Florian: We don't really know where this whole thing will drift, perhaps more to optics or to words. Ralf: We are waiting for the video disc, which will soon be available in Germany. This will probably be the next step we want to go on to because we have so many visual ideas along with the music and they both influence one another.

29

30

Read_me, run_me, execute_me

Code as Executable Text: Software Art and its Focus on Program Code as Performative Text

Inke Arns
Software is mind control. Come and get some. [1]

'Generative art' has become a fashionable term over the last two years and can now be found in such varied contexts as academic discourse, media arts festivals, architects offices, and design conferences. It is often used in such a way that it cannot be distinguished from the term 'software art', if not as a direct synonym for it. Generative art and software art are obviously related termsbut exactly what their connection is often remains a mystery. This essay attempts to shed some light on the relationship between generative art and software art. Generative art Software art According to Philip Galanter (2003), generative art refers to "any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural intervention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art." [2] Thus, generative art refers to processes that run autonomously, or in a self-organizing way, according to instructions and rulespre-programd by the artist. Depending on the technological context in which the process unfolds, the result is unpredictable and thus less the product of individual intention or authorship than the product of the given working conditions. [3] This definition of generative art (as well as some other definitions) is, as Philip Galanter writes, an 'inclusive', comprehensive, wide-reaching definition, which leads Galanter to the conclusion that "generative art is as old as art itself." [4] The most important characteristic of any description (or attempted description) of generative artin electronic music and algorithmic composition, computer graphics and animation, on the demo scene and in VJ culture, and in industrial design and architecture [5] is that generative processes are used to negate intentionality. Generative art is only concerned with generative processes (and in turn, software or code) insofar as they allowwhen viewed as a pragmatic tool that is not analysed in itselfthe creation of an 'unforeseeable' result. It is for precisely this reason that the term 'generative art' is not an adequate description of software art. 'Software art', on the other hand, refers to artistic activity that enables reflection of software (and softwares cultural significance) within the medium or material of software. It does not regard software as a pragmatic aid that disappears behind the product it creates, but focuses on the code it containseven if the code is not always explicitly revealed or emphasised. Software art, according to Florian Cramer, makes visible the aesthetic and political subtexts of seemingly neutral technical command sequences. Software art can base itself on a number of different levels of software: source code level, abstract algorithm level, or on the level of the product created by a given piece of code. [6] This is shown in the wide variety of different projects ranging from 'codeworks' (which consist only of ASCII code and in most cases cannot be executed) and experimental web browsers Webstalker (1997) down to executable programmes. Just as software is only one of many materials used in generative art, software art can also contain elements of generative art, but does not necessarily have to be technically generative. Thus, the terms 'generative art' and 'software art' cannot be used as synonyms under any circumstances. Rather, the two terms are used indifferent registers, as I will attempt to show in the following passage.

31

I/O/D WebStalker WebStalker is a browser that imitates the structure of the Internet. If the user types in a WWW-address, the page appears as an HTML-code while the hyperlinks are presented as graphics. WebStalker was developed by a team of programmers and artists as an indirect critique of large web concerns inspiring illusion of actually being able to move when clicking ones way through the Internet. Settled between technological development work and art, this project demonstrates a simple and reduced alternative to Netscape and Explorer, and makes available a mechanism that can be used to investigate the structural depths of the web. Contributors were: Graham Harwood, Stephen Metcalf, Scanner, Mark Amerika.

Dragan Espenschied/ Alvar Freude As part of their thesis insert_coin, Dragan Espenschied and Alvar Freude secretly installed a web proxy server at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart in 2000/2001. Taking the slogan "two people controlling 250 people," the proxy server used a Perl script to manipulate both students and faculty members entire web traffic on the Academys computer network. The goal of this, according to Espenschied and Freude, was to "examine the users competence and critical faculty in terms of the every-day medium Internet." [7] This manipulated proxy server forwarded URLs entered to other pages, modified HTML formatting code, and used a simple search-and-replace function to change both news reports on news sites (by changing the names of politicians, for example) and the content of private e-mails accessed via web interfaces such as Hotmail, GMX, and Yahoo!. The manipulated web access was in place for four weeks without being noticed by students or staff at the Merz Academy, and when Espenschied and Freude revealed details of the experiment, practically no-one was interested. Although the artists published an easy-tofollow guide to disabling the filters, only a very small percentage of those affected took the time to make a simple adjustment in order to regain access to unfiltered information. [8]

32

Espenschied, Dragan; Freude, Alvar insert_coin: Hidden mechanisms and hierarchies in the most free medium of them all Two people had content control over 250 people. Through manipulating web traffic without the knowledge of any user, we wanted to test how competent people are with this everyday medium and how crucial their attitude towards the internet is. We changed search engines into denouncing services, changed the daily news on magazine and newspaper sites, even changed words in private email messages accessed through a web interface like hotmail. Nobody took notice we could easily fake authenticity as we had full control over the URL, the only prove that makes data unique in the web. When we revealed the experiment to the students and the staff of the academy, providing very easy instructions how individual students could turn off the filtering, there was little to no reaction. Until today, most of the computers in the academy acess the web through the filter. (...) Our experiment has proven that manipulation (not simple blocking!) of internet content is easy and efficient. The Internet is by no means uncontrollable, without hierarchy or immune to power. Users have no idea about how a medium works that becomes more important every day in fields of politics, economy and privacy. Espenschied/Freude in: www.medienkunstpreis.de (2001)

textz.com My second example, walser.php, walser.pl, and makewalser.php by textz.com/Project Gnutenberg, is a form of political literary [9] software, or more specifically anti-copyright activist software and was developed as a reaction to one of the largest literature scandals in Germany since 1945. The file name walser.php is not only an ironic reference to walser.pdf, an electronic version of Martin Walsers controversial novel sent by the Suhrkamp publishing house via e-mail and later recalled; it is a php-script that takes 10,000 lines of source code and uses the php-interpreter to generate an ACSII text version of Walsers Tod eines Kritikers (death of a critic). While the php source code does not contain the novel in visible or readable form and can thus be freelydistributed and modified under the GNU General Public License, it may only be executed with the written permission of Suhrkamp. [10] While Espenschied and Freude's experiment on filtering and censorship of Internet content points out softwares practically infinite potential to control (and be controlled), walser.php offers a practicable solution with which to handle the commercial restrictions, in particular, that seek to hinder freedom of information through digital rights management systems (DRM). Whereas insert_coin temporarily makes a dystopic scenario reality by manipulating software, textz.com with walser.php develops genuinely utopian "countermeasures in the form of software." [11] These projects are generative in the best sense of the word. And yet neither insert_coin nor walser.php perfectly fits the definitions of generative art as they are currently used in the design field. Philip Galanter, who I have already quoted and is surely among the most prolific generative art theorists at present, defines generative art as a process that contributes to the creation of a completed work of art. Celestino Soddu, Director of the Generative Design Lab at the Politecnico di Milano technical university in Milan and organiser of the "Generative Art" international conferences, also describes generative art as a tool that allows the artist or designer to synthesise "an ever-changing and unpredictable series of events, pictures, industrial objects, architectures, musical works, environments, and communications." [12]

33

textz.com walser.php In May 2002, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt Daily Newspaper) (FAZ) refused to preprint parts of Martin Walser's latest novel Tod eines Kritikers (Death of a Critic). According to FAZ publisher Frank Schirrmacher, there are blatant parallels between the novel's main character and the famous Jewish literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. In addition, Schirrmacher rejects the novel due to its repertoire of antiSemitic clichs. Shortly thereafter, the dispute over Walser's novel was passionately pursued in both the German and the international media. To clarify the issues at hand, Walser's publishing house, Suhrkamp Verlag, started to send out copies of the novel to newspapers and television stations. One way to do this was to distribute the novel as a PDF document, which led to the circulation of unlicensed copies on the Web. While Suhrkamp Verlag decided to publish the novel early on 26 June 2002, textz.com had already become aware of the electronic manuscript. However, being a pool for electronically published, critical production of texts, textz.com did not seem to be too interested in Walser's work, and thus deleted a file titled walser.pdf from the website by moving it into the virtual trash can.1 Shortly afterwards, textz.com received a warning2 from Suhrkamp Verlag's legal department for acting against the copyright laws. However, the suspicious file walser.pdf did not contain the notorious manuscript by Walser. Instead, it contained Bruce Sterling's The Hacker CrackdownLaw and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. The American author himself had authorized this e-book as Literary Freeware. The book discusses copyright regulations and violations in the field of electronic publication. It thus became obvious that textz.com had not violated Suhrkamp Verlag's copyrights, and after a short e-mail correspondence the issue was closed. On June 24, 2002, textz.com made a further strategic step: instead of selling Walser's manuscript directly as a text file for downloading or setting up another link to a corresponding copy, textz.com published the 10,000 lines-source code of a Perl script.3 With a Perl interpreter, a ASCII text version of Walser's novel can be generated. While the PHP file itself does not contain a visible and readable version of the text, the manuscript can be distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation. On the website, text.com makes sure to mention that the script must not be downloaded without the written permission of Suhrkamp Verlag in Frankfurt. Furthermore, the Perl script walser.php contains the utility makewalser.php with which it is possible to create PHP scripts for other texts as well.

The artist could then produce "unexpected variations towards the development of a project" in order to "manage the increasing complexity of the contemporary object, space, and message." [13] And finally, the Codemuse web site also defines generative art as a process with parameters that the artist should experiment with "until the final results are aesthetically pleasing and/or in some way surprising." Generative art and generative design areas these quotes showmainly concerned with the results that generative processes produce. They involve software as a pragmatic-generative tool or aid with which to achieve a certain (artistic) result without questioning the software itself. The generative processes that the software controls are used primarily to avoid intentionality and produce unexpected, arbitrary and inexhaustible diversity. Both the n_Gen DesignMachine, Move Design's entry to the Helsinki Read_Me Festival 2003, and Cornelia Sollfranks Net Art Generator, [14] which has been generating net art at the touch of a button since 1999, are ironic commentaries on what is often (mis)taken for generative design. [15] insert_coin and walser.php extend beyond such definitions of generative art or generative design insofar as, in comparison to more result-orientated generative design (and also in comparison to many interactive installations of the 1990s, which hid the software in black boxes), they are more concerned with the coded processes that generate particular results or interfaces. Their focus is not on design, but on the use of software and code as cultureand on how culture is implemented in software. To this end, they develop 'experimental software', a self-contained work (or process) that deals with 34

the technological, cultural, and social significance of softwareand not only by virtue of its capacity as tool with which arbitrary interfaces are generated. In addition, the authors of 'experimental software' are rather concerned with artistic subjectivity, as their use of various private languages shows, and less with displaying machinic creativity and whatever methods were used to form it. "Code can be diaries, poetic, obscure, ironic or disruptive, defunct or impossible, it can simulate and disguise, it has rhetoric and style, it can be an attitude," [16] reads the emphatic definition from 2001 transmediale jury members Florian Cramer and Ulrike Gabriel.
Cornelia Sollfrank Net Art Generator Nowadays, work is placed on a level with duty, compulsion, obedience, conformity, monotony and exploitation, but scarcely with a practice of creative enjoyment of (Negri/Hardt). Even day-today art production bears few signs of this creative pleasure, being characterized more by requirements and deadlines. The net.art generator offers one way out of the rat-race: automized art production. Artists save valuable time and energy. In the scope of the Female Extension project in 1977, Cornelia Sollfrank generated individual Netart projects for 289 virtual artists with the aid of a computer program (Perl-script) that collected and automatically re-assembled HTML material at random on the WWW (http://www.obn.org/femext). Developed in 1999, the net.art generator is the artists sequel to her Female Extension. Sollfrank commissioned four programmers to build a Net-art generator. The very different solutions they came up with are accessible over a start screen which was likewise autogenerated. The generators can be distinguished according to the more text-oriented or image-oriented bias of their search procedures. The complexity of the results differs likewise, and they address different search engines. They work for Sollfrank in accordance with the motto adorning the start screen: A clever artist makes the machine do the work! Playful though this approach to the basic tenets of (Net) art may be, the net.art generator raises essential questions about art in the information era about, for instance, authorship, authenticity, original versions, the material of digital media, the notion of the artwork and the location of digital art. (Source: Inke Arns in: Update 2.0, Goethe-Institut (ed.), Munich, 2000)

Software Art The term 'software art' was first defined in 2001 by transmediale [17] , the Berlin media art festival, and introduced as one of the festivals competition categories. [18] Software art, referred to by other authors as 'experimental' [19] and 'speculative software' [20] as well as 'non-pragmatic' and 'non-rational' [21] software, comprises projects that use program code as their main artistic material or that deal with the cultural understanding of software, according to the definition developed by the transmediale jury. Here, software code is not considered a pragmaticfunctional tool that serves the 'real' art work, but rather as a generative material consisting of machinic and social processes. Software art can be the result of an autonomous andformal creative process, but can also refer critically to existing software and the technological, cultural, or social significance of software. [22] Interestingly, the difference between software art and generative design is reminiscent of the difference between software art that was developed in the late 1990s and the early computer art of the 1960s. Artworks from the field of software art "are not art created using a computer," writes Tilman Baumgrtel in his article Experimentelle Software (experimental software), "but art that takes place in the computer; it is not software programmed by artists in order to create autonomous works of art, but software that is itself a work of art. With these programmes, it is not the result that is important, but the process triggered in the computer (and on the computer

35

monitor) by the program code." [23] Computer art of the 1960s is close to concept art in that it privileges the concept as opposed to its realisation. However, it does not follow this idea through to its logical conclusion: its work, executed on plotters and dot- matrix-printed paper, has an emphasis on the final product and not the program or process that created the work. [24] In current software art, however, this relationship is inverse; it deals "solely with the process that is triggered by the program. While computer art of the 1960s and 1970s regarded the processes inside computers only as methods and not as works in themselves, treated computers as 'black boxes', and kept computer processes veiled inside, present software projects thematise exactly these processes, make them transparent, and put them up for discussion." [25] see the (somewhat polemic) Comparison of generative art and software art. Performance of code vs. the fascination with the generative, or: "Code has to do something even to do nothing, and it has to describe something even to describe nothing." [26] The current interest in software, according to my hypothesis, is not only attributable to a fascination with the generative aspect of software, that is, to its ability to (pro)create and generate, in a purely technical sense. Of interest to the authors of these projects is something that I would call the performativity of codethat is, its effectiveness in terms of speech act theory, which can be understood inmore ways than just as purely technical effectivenessthat is, not only its effectiveness in the context of a closed technical system, but its effect on the domains of aesthetics, politics, and society. In contrast to generative art, software art is more concerned with 'performance' than with 'competence', more interested in parole than langue [27] in our context, this refers to the respective actualisations and the concrete realisations and consequences in terms, for example, of societal systems and not 'only' within abstract-technical rule systems. In the two examples above, the generative is highly politicalspecifically because changing existing texts covertly (in the case of insert_coin) and extracting copyrighted text from a Perl script (in the case of walser.php) is interesting, not in the context of technical systems, but rather in the context of the societal systems that are becoming increasingly dependent on these technical foundations. First, however, there is the fascination with the generative potency of the code: "Codes [are] individual alphabets in the literal sense of modern mathematics [], one-to-one and countable, i.e. using sequences of symbols that are as short as possible, that are, thanks to grammar, gifted with the tremendous ability to reproduce themselves ad infinitum: Semi-Thue groups, Markov chains, Backus-Naur forms, and so on. That and only that distinguishes such modern alphabets from the one we know, the one which can analyse our languages and that has given us Homers epics, but that cannot set up a technical world like computer code can today." [28] Florian Cramer, Ulrike Gabriel, and John F. Simon Jr. also have a particular interest in the algorithms"the actual code that produces what is then seen, heard, and felt." [29] For them, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of computer technology is that code whether contained in a text file or a binary numberis machine executable: "an innocuous piece of writing can upset, reprogram , [or] crash the system." [30] In terms of its 'coded performativity', [31] program code also has direct, political consequences on the virtual space that we are increasingly occupying: Here, "code is law." [32] Program Code as Performative Text Ultimately, the computer is not an 'image medium', as it is often described, but essentially a 'text medium', towhich all sorts of audio-visual output devices can be connected. [33] Multimedia, dynamic interfaces are generated from (programmed) texts. Therefore, it is not enough to talk in terms of the "surface effects of software"that is, dynamic data presentation through the staging of information and animationof a "performative turn in graphical user

36

interfaces," [34] because this view is too attached to the assumed performativity of those surfaces. Rather, when considering software art and net art projects (and indeed software in general), one should be aware that they are based on two forms of text: a phenotext and a genotext. The surface effects of phenotext, for example, moving texts, are generated and controlled by other textsby effective texts lying under the surface, by program code, or by source texts. Program code distinguishes itself in that saying and doing come together inside it. Code is an illocutionary speech act (see below) capable of action, and not a description or representation of something, but something that affects, sets into motion, and moves" [35] In this context, Friedrich Kittler refers to the ambiguous term 'command line', a hybrid that today has been almost completely eliminated from most operating systems by graphical user interfaces. Some 20 years ago, however, all user interfaces and editors were either command line orientated, or one could switch back and forth between modes. While pressing the return key results in a line break when in text mode, entering a text and pressing the return key when in command line mode is a potential command: "In computers [], in stark contrast to Goethes Faust, words and acts coincide. The neat distinction that the speech act theory has made between utterance and use, between words with and without quotation marks, is no more. In the context of literary texts, kill means as much as the word signifies; in the context of the command line, however, kill does what the word signifies to running programmes or even to the system itself." [36] How To Do Things With Words In a series of lectures held in 1955 under the title of How to Do Things with Words, [37] John Langshaw Austin (19111960) outlined the groundbreaking theory that linguistic utterances by no means only serve the purpose of describing a situation or stating a fact, butthat they are used to commit acts. What speakers of languages have always known and practised intuitively," writes Erika Fischer-Lichte, "was formulated for the first time by linguistics: Speech performs not only a referential function, but also a performative function. [38] Austins speech act theory regards speech essentially as action and sees it as being effective not on the merit of its results, but in and of itself. This is precisely where the speech act theory meets the codes assumed performativity: [When] a word not only means something, but performatively generates exactly that what it names. [39] Austin identifies three distinct linguistic acts in all speech acts. He defines the 'locutionary act' as the propositional content, which can be true or false. This act is not of further interest to us in this context. 'Illocutionary acts' are acts that are performed by the words spoken. They are defined as acts in which a person who says something also does something (for example, a judge's verdict: I sentence you" is not a declaration of intent, but an action.) The message and execution come together: Simply "uttering [the message] is committing an act. [40] Thus, illocutionary speech acts have certain effects and can either succeed or fail, depending on whether certain extralinguistic conventions are fulfilled. 'Perlocutionary acts', on the other hand, are utterances that trigger a chain of effects. The speech itself and the consequences of that speech do not occur at the same time. As Judith Butler notes, the "consequences are not the same as the speech act, but rather the result or the 'aftermath' of the utterance." [41] Butler summarises the difference in a succinct formula: While illocutionary acts take place with the help of linguistic conventions, perlocutionary acts are performed with the help of consequences. This distinction thus implies that illocutionary speech acts produce effects without delay, so that 'saying' becomes the same as 'doing' and that both take place simultaneously.rlaquo; [42] Insofar as 'saying' and 'doing' coincide, program codes can be called illocutionary speech acts. According to Austin, speech acts can also be acts, without necessarily having to be effective (that is, without having to be 'successful'). If these acts are unsuccessful, they represent failed performative utterances. Thus, speech acts are not always effective acts. "A successful 37

performative utterance [however] isdefined in that the act is not only committed," writes Butler, "but rather that it also triggers a certain chain of effects." [43] program codes, viewed very pragmatically, are only useful as successful performative utterances; if they do not cause any effect (regardless of whether the effect is desired or not), or they are not executable, they are plain and simply redundant. In the context of functional pragmatic software, only executable code makes sense. [44] Code as a mobilisation and/or immobilisation system Code, however, does not only have an effect on phenotexts, the graphical user interfaces. 'Coded performativity' [45] also has direct, political consequences on the virtual spaces (the Internet, for example) which we are increasingly occupying: program code, according to the U.S. law professor Lawrence Lessig, "increasingly tends to become law." [46] Today, control functions are built directly into the network architecture, that is, into its code, according to the theory that Lessig outlines in Code and other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). Using the Internet provider AOL as an example, Lessig makes insistently clear how through its very code AOL's architecture prevents all forms of virtual 'rioting'. Different code allows different levels of freedom: "The decision for a particular code is," according to Lessig, "also a decision about the innovation that the code is capable of promoting or inhibiting." [47] To this extent, code can mobilise or immobilise its users. This powerful code remains invisible, however; Graham Harwood refers to this as an "invisible shadow world of process." [48] In this sense, one could refer to the present as a 'postoptical' age in which program codewhich can also be described as 'postoptical unconscious', according to Walter Benjaminbecomes "law." I developed the term 'postoptical' while dealing with the concept of the 'ctrl_space' exhibition that took place in 2000 and 2001 at the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. This exhibition, which was dedicated solely to the Bentham panoptic-visual paradigm, outlined the problematic (and here, polemically formulated) theory that surveillance today only takes place if a camera is presentwhich, considering the various forms of 'dataveillance' practiced today, is an outdated definition. The term 'postoptical', on the other hand,describes all digital data streams and (programmed) communication structures and architectures that can be monitored just as easily but which consist of only a small portion of visual information. [49] In his A Short History of Photography, Walter Benjamin defines the 'optical unconscious' as an unconscious visual dimension of the material world that is normally filtered out from people's social consciences, thus remaining invisible, but which can be made visible using mechanical recording techniques (such as photography and film: slow motion, zoom). In his words, it is a different nature which speaks to the camera than speaks to the eye: so different that in place of a space consciously woven together by a man on the spot there enters a space held together unconsciously. [50] He goes on to say that even if photographers can justify their work by capturing others in action, no matter how common that action is, they still cannot know their subjects behaviour at the exact moment of capture. Photography and its aids (slow motion, zoom), he claims, reveal this behaviour. They allow us to discover our optical unconscious, just as psychoanalysis allows us to discover our instinctive subconscious. With Benjamin's definition of the optical unconscious, one might today refer to the existence of a 'postoptical unconscious', usually hidden by a graphical interface in computers, which must be made visible using suitable equipment. [51] This 'postoptical unconscious' could be considered in terms of program code that surfaces/interfaces are based on and which, with its coded performativity, algorithmic genotext and deep structure, generates the surfaces/interfaces that are visible to us, while the code itself remains invisible to the human eye.

38

Knowbotic Research Minds of Concern: Breaking News This project consists of a gallery installation, a Web interface (called Public Domain Scanner) and a free downloadable news ticker. Through the Web interface: the Public Domain Scanner, visitors can select Minds of Concern groups, movements, or NGOs like Oxfam, the Freedom from Debt Coalition and COSATU that are engaged in critical global activities in the networked society. This list also includes artistic media activists and international media artists. Through a virtual slot machine (part of the Public Domain Scanner), visitors win one of the NGOs or artists as a target (mind of concern), and can trigger network scans which investigate the security conditions on the target's Internet server. These scans sense whether the targeted server is secure or open to hacker attacks. The results of these scans, the riskfactors of the servers, are made available in the exhibition on a hyperbolic weaved spatial matrix , visually depicting the strength or vulnerability of a server to people worldwide. (Knowbotic Research) Matthew Mirapaul, New York Times, Mai 13, 2002: The dispute calls attention to one of the very points the piece is intended to make. Because the lines between public and private control of the Internet are not yet clearly defined, what artists want to do may be perfectly legal, but that does not mean they will be allowed do it.

Focus on an invisible performativity Many artistic and net activist projects that have dealt with the politics of electronic data space (such as the Internet) since the late 1990s aim specifically at code and seek to remove the transparency of these technical structures. Artists and net activists have drawn attention to the existence of the hotly contested data sphere on the Internet (Toywar platform), built private ECHELON systems (Makrolab by Projekt Atol/Marko Peljhan), developed tools toblur ones own traces on the Internet (Tracenoizer. by LAN), and thematised the increasing restriction of public space through the privatisation of telecommunications infrastructure (Minds of Concern: Breaking News [52] by Knowbotic Research. ). [53] While the everyday understanding of 'transparency' is usually clearness and controllability through visibility, it means exactly the opposite in IT, namely that something can be seen through, can be invisible, and that information is hidden. If a system (for example, a surface or graphical user interface) is 'transparent', it is neither recognisable or perceptible to the user. Although information hiding is often useful in terms of reducing complexity, it can also lend the user a false sense of security, as it suggests a direct view of something through its invisibility, a transparency disturbed by nothing, which one would be absurd to believe: "Far from being a transparent window into the data inside a computer, the interface brings with it strong messages of its own." [54] In order to make these messages visible, one has to direct ones attention to the 'transparent window'. Just as transparent glass-fronted buildings can be transformed into milky, semi-transparent surfaces in order to become visible [55] , postoptical IT structures must also be removed of their transparency. In communications networks, similarly, the structures of economic, political, societal power distribution must be made opaque and thus visible. Ultimately, it is a question of returning the computer science-based definition of transparency (that is, the transparency of the interface: information hiding) to its original meaningclearness and controllability through visibility. [56]

39

Codeworks: "M @ z k ! n 3 n . k u n z t . m2cht . fr3!" Works in the area of software art, therefore, focus on the code itself, even if this is not always explicitly revealed or emphasised. Software art draws attention to the aesthetic and political subtexts of ostensibly neutral technical command sequences. That which is surely the "most radical understanding of computer code as artistic material" [57] can be seen in the so-called 'codeworks' [58] and their artistic (literary) examination of program code. Codeworks use formal ASCII instruction code and its aesthetics without referring back to the surfaces and multimedia graphicaluser interfaces it creates. Works by Graham Harwood, Netochka Nezvanova, and mez [59] introduced in this context bring to mind the existence of a 'postoptical unconscious' that is usually hidden by the graphical interface. The Australian net artist "mez" [60] (Mary-Anne Breeze) and the anonymous net identity Netochka Nezvanova (also known under the pseudonyms nn, antiorp and Integer) have been producing for some time in addition to hypertext works and software that allows real-time manipulation of video, also text works that they usually send to mailing lists such as Nettime, Spectre, Rhizome, 7-11 or Syndicate in the form of simple e-mails. Except for attachments and the increasing use of HTML texts, e-mail as a text medium allows the use of ASCII text only and is therefore (technologically) restricted. mez and antiorp, however, have both developed their own languages and styles of writing: mez calls her style 'M[ez]ang.elle' while Netochka Nezvanova/Integer refers to it as 'Kroperom' or 'KROP3ROM|A9FF'. Both deal with the artistic appropriation of program code. Those not familiar with programming languages cannot recognise much more than illegible noise in this contemporary form of mail art, which gives the impression of a file that has been incorrectly and illegibly formatted or decoded by a software program. Those who are semi-literate in the domain of programming languages and source code, however, will soon realise that this is computer code and programming language that are being used and appropriated. The status of these languages, or parts of language, however, remains ambivalent: It oscillates in the perception of the recipient between assumed executability (functionality) and non-executability (dysfunctionality) of the code; in short, between significant information and asignificant noise. Depending on the context, useless character strings suddenly become interpretable and executable commands, or vice versa performative programming code becomes redundant data. mez mezs self-created art writing style , 'M[ez]ang.elle' is modelled on computer languages [] but without being written in strict command syntax. [61] It contains a mixture of ASCII art and pseudo-program code. Like the portmanteau words of Lewis Carroll and James Joyce," writes Florian Cramer, "the words of mezangelleinterweave in double and multiple ways. The square brackets originate from programming language and are borrowed from common notation of Boolean algebra in that they reference several characters simultaneously, thus describing polysemy." [62] mez lets individual words physically become crossover points of different meaningshere, we are dealing with material ambiguity or polysemy implemented into linear text or, to echo Lacan, with the realised "vertical" of a point, [63] that is the simultaneous presence of different potentialities within the same word: mez introduces the hypertext principle of multiplicity into the word itself. Rather than produce alternative trajectories through the text on the hypertext principle of 'choice', here they co-exist within the same textual space. [64] mezs texts enter into an endless shifting of meaning that generally cannot be specifically defined. This polysemy is, as noted by Florian Cramer, also a polysemy of the sexes, as is found in many of mez's texts: "'fe[male]tus' can be simultaneously read as 'foetus,' 'female,' and 'male.' Other words take on the syntax of file names and directory trees as well as the quoting conventions of e-mail and chats." [65]

40

Netochka Nezvanova 'M @ z k ! n 3 n . k u n z t . m2cht . fr3!', taken out of Netochka Nezvanova a.k.a. Integer's signature, stands for "Maschinenkunst macht frei" (machine art brings freedom). Integer became well-known in 1998 for bombarding mailing lists with e-mails that, at first glance, appeared to contain only illegible noise, that is, she deliberately entered a form of noise into human (tele)communication. On second glance, however, it can be seen that the e-mail contains a mixture of human and machine language. Integer calls his language 'Kroperom'. It is distinctive in that the phonetic system of the Latin alphabet is replaced by the 256 characters of the American Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), the lingua franca of computer culture. For example, in the Kroperom word 'm9d', the phonetic value 'ine' is replaced by 'nine'. This language makes use of more than just phonetic substitution, however. In 'm@zk!n3n kunzt', the '@' replaces the 'a', the 'zk' replaces the 'sch' sound, the exclamation mark replaces the 'i' and the '3' the letter 'e'. Characters are also replaced according to both visual similarities ('!' for 'i') and visual and phonetic analogies ('3' or 'three' for'e'). The human language - in this case, a mixture of German and Englishis interspersed and infiltrated with characters and computer code metaphors. In addition, the Kroperom text receives an emphatic quality through its extensive use of exclamation marks (which stems simply from the frequent occurrence of the letter 'i' in the German language) and transforms the executable computer commands into oppressive, sometimes amusing, human commands: "Do this! Do that!" The reader has to make use of various strategies in order to decipher these from the script consisting of letters of the alphabet, numbers, and ASCII characters. This impedes and destabilises the reading process and triggers different associations. On this point, Josephine Barry writes: "The act of reading becomes pointedly self-reflexive and, in terms of chaos theory, nonlinear experience with each word representing a junction of multiple systems." [66] The question of whether the Kroperom text, which is very similar to an executable program code, can be compiled at another location in the computer and become machinereadable, capable to run, and thus executable, remains unanswered. Performativity and Totality of Genotexts Whether or not Jodi's walkmonster_start () e-mail is executable code is also questionable. It is perhaps more the knowledge of potential executability and performativity of code that plays a role here, and not so much the current technical execution. Geoff Cox, Alex McLean, and Adrian Ward, however, argue that "the aesthetic value of code lies in its execution, not simply in its written form." [67]
Jodi walkmonster_start () On October 22, 2001, Jodi put an extensive text onto the international e-mail list Nettime. The text seemed to be a critical comment on contemporary political crises and wars and the way they were discussed on cultural platforms on the Web. But above all, the text turned out to be an impressive poetic work. The military order of linguistic and typographical features gave the text the appearance of an obsessively encoded inventory or a strategic diagram or plan. Readers who know both English and programming languages were also able to see that the poem is a functional source code in the programming language C. Indeed, the text is one part of a source code of Jodi's untitled game. This code is based on the source code of the commercial computer game Quake. By holding back the information about its origin and function, Jodi's e-mail made visible the esthetical and political subtexts of seemingly neutral sequences of technical commands. (Source: Florian Cramer, Discordia Concors: www.jodi.org, in: [plugin] / Tilman Baumgrtel / BroFriedrich (eds.), Install.exeJodi, Basel, 2002)

41

While this statement must be accepted for insert_coin and walser.php, as their controversy (and perhaps even their poetry) lies in their technical execution, this definition must be relativised in terms of the structure of codeworks. The poetry of codeworks lies not only in their textual form, but rather in the knowledge that they have the potential to be executed. This leads us to the question of whether formal program code can have an audience outside the machine that it addresses. Can formal code be performative without the machine that implements and executes it? I agree with Florian Cramer, who contests that "machine language [is] only machine readable": "It is important to keep in mind thatcomputer code, and computer programmes, are not machine creations and machines talking to themselves, but written by humans." [68] It is trivial to observe that manmade computer code can also be read by other humans or translated back into human language. People were able to go through the entire battle scenario of walkmonster_start () as soon as they received the e-mail, without compiling it beforehand. The generative aspect of 'codeworks' should therefore be emphasised (and the definition of the generative broadened), as code is not only executable in technical environments, but in a wider sense, it can also become productive in the reader. In these projects, the human language is infiltrated with mechanical control codes and algorithms similar to the heretical technique of speaking in tongues or the Surrealist criture automatique (automatic writing), both techniques that seek to deactivate consciousness (putting one into a trance or state of sleep) in order to give voice to the divine or the unconscious. In contrast to the Surrealist theory that freeing the unconscious leads to social revolution, the creation of a half human, half machinic, hybrid language would appear partly fervent and partly compulsive. If not evidence of a seizure of power, the convulsive appearance of the 'postoptical unconscious' is at least one more sign that this is not about speaking, but that we are being 'spoken', as per Lacanian theory. Favouring program code over surfaces/interfaces, genotext over phenotext, and poiesis over aisthesis leads to a liberating effect in the ASCII works and codeworks by mez, Jodi and Netochka Nezvanova insofar as the focus on 'postoptical unconscious' allows for the removal of deception; it removes the delusion that, or rather allows one to take leave of the belief, for example, that even today, surveillance can only take place when a camera is present. Codeworks draw our attention towards the increasing codedness and programmedness of our media environment. These works use the poor mans medium, text, which also appears performative or executable in the context of the command line. By working specifically with this ambivalence of simplicity and totality of execution, they warn of the potential totalitarian dimension of algorithmic genotext.
Translation by Dr. Donald Kiraly

42

Notes:
[1] Slogan for the program Web Stalker (1997) by the London artists group I/O/D. [2] Philip Galanter, What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory, in: Generative Art Proceedings, Milan, 2003, p.4. [3] See Geoff Cox, anti-thesis: the dialectics of generative art (as praxis), MPhil/PhD Transfer Report 2002: "In broad terms, 'generative art' is applied to artwork that is automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using instructions to define the rules by which the artwork is executed. After the initial parameters have been set by an artistprogrammer the process of production is unsupervised, and as such, 'self-organising'. Work unfolds in 'real-time', according to the properties of the technology employed or the particular circumstances in which the instructions are carried out. The outcome of this process is thus unpredictable, and could be described as being integral to the apparatus or situation, rather than solely the product of individual human agency or authorship. Adrian Ward gives a similar definition: "Generative art is a term given to work which stems from concentrating on the processes involved in producing an artwork, usually (although not strictly) automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the rules by which such artworks are executed.". [4] Philip Galanter, What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory, in: Generative Art Proceedings, Milan, 2003, p.1. [5] Philip Galanter, What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory, in: Generative Art Proceedings, Milan, 2003, p.2, calls these domains the four "main clusters" of generative art. [6] Is it at the level of source code? If so it's a form of typographic layout or illumination. Is it at the level of abstract algorithms? If so it's a form of conceptual art or architecture. Is it at the level of the output of the program? If so it's a form of preparatory sketch, Rob Myers, Re: 'Code as Art' Digest [from the PD List], in: [eu-gene], Jan. 1, 2004. [7] See Espenschied/Freude's text on the International Media Art Prize, 2001. [8] Even several months after the experiment had ended, Web access was still being filtered on most of the Academy's computers. [9] Florian Cramer, walser.php, in: Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin (Hg.),Read_Me 2.3. Reader, Helsinki 2003, pp. 7678, here: p. 76. [10] See: textz.com, Suhrkamp calls back walser.pdf, textz.com releases walser.php, o. J.,; Michael Thomas, "Tod einer Kritik. Walsers umstrittenes Buch als Perl-Script im Internet", in: Telepolis, June 27, 2002. The pngreader project functions in a similar fashion except that here, texts are encodes as PNG graphic files and can hence be freely distributed. [11] Florian Cramer, walser.php, in: Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin (Hg.), Read_Me 2.3. Reader, Helsinki 2003, p. 77. [12] Celestino Soddu, Generative Art and Architecture. [13] Celestino Soddu, Generative Art and Architecture. [14] Cornelia Sollfrank, net.art generator (1999). [15] See Olga Goriunova / Alexei Shulgin, n_Gen Design Machine, in: Olga Goriunova / Alexei Shulgin (Hg.), Read_Me 2.3. Reader, Helsinki, 2003, pp. 6667, here: p. 66. [16] Florian Cramer / Ulrike Gabriel, Software Art, in: Broeckmann, Andreas / Jaschko, Susanne (ed.), DIY Media - Kunst und digitale Medien: Software - Partizipation - Distribution. Transmediale.01, Berlin, 2001, pp. 2933, here p. 33. [17] Other notable events: Kontrollfelder (Dortmund 2001, curated by Andreas Broeckmann and Matthias Wei,; the "Read_Me" Festival, conceived by Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin (Moskau 2002, Helsinki 2003, and the exhibitions Generator (GB 2002, curated by Geoff Cox, "CODeDOC"(New York, Sept. 2002, curated by Christiane Paul, I love you - computer_viren_hacker_kultur (Frankfurt/Main, Jan. 31-Feb. 5, 2003, and the software art repository Runme, launched in January 2003. Further examples of software art can be found on these Web sites. The most historically significant year in terms of software art is 1970, during which three software art-related events took place: Jack Burnham's exhibition "Software Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art, which took place at the Jewish Museum; the exhibition curated by Kynaston McShine at MoMA in New York, entitled "Information"; and the foundation of the magazine Radical Software by Beryl Korot, Phyllis Gerhuny, and Ira Schneider.

43

[18] For an early, programmatic concept paper on software programming and art, see Geoff Cox / Alex McLean / Adrian Ward, "The Aesthetics of Generative Code" (2000). An attempt to formally define and research the archaeological history of software art using literary and artistic examples can be found in Florian Cramer, Concepts. Notations. Software. Art, Mar. 23, 2002. [19] Tilman Baumgrtel, Experimentelle Software. Zu einigen neueren Computerprogrammen von Knstlern, in: Telepolis, Oct. 28, 2001. [20] Matthew Fuller, for example, distinguishes between 'critical', 'social', and 'speculative software'. See Matthew Fuller, Behind the Blip: Software as Culture, in: Nettime, Jan. 7, 2002. [21] Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin define 'artistic software' as 'unpragmatic' and 'irrational': "[I]f conventional programmes are instruments serving purely pragmatic purposes, the result of the work of artistic programmes often finds itself outside of the pragmatic and the rational."(Olga Goriunova / Alexei Shulgin, Artistic Software for Dummies and, by the way, Thoughts About the New World Order, in: Nettime, May 26, 2002. [22] See transmediale 04. See also the panel discussion from transmediale.03 (Knstlerhaus Bethanien, Feb. 4, 2003), and Olga Goriunova / Alexei Shulgin (eds.), Read_Me 2.3 Reader about software art, Helsinki, 2003. [23] Tilman Baumgrtel, Experimentelle Software. Zu einigen neueren Computerprogrammen von Knstlern, in: Telepolis Oct. 28, 2001. [24] Typical for this context is the works of the 'allegorists', one of the founders of which was Roman Verostko. See Roman Verostko, Epigenetic Paining: Software As Genotype, A New Dimension, in: Christine Schpf / Gerfried Stocker (ed.), Ars Electronica 2003: Code - The Language of Our Time, Ostfildern, 2003, pp. 156167. This includes formulations such as: The essential character of each finished work is derived from the 'formgenerating-procedure' or 'algorithm' acting as genotype. For this reason one could say that the finished work is an epiphany, or manifestation, of its generator, the code. For me each work celebrates its code []. [25] Tilman Baumgrtel, Experimentelle Software. Zu einigen neueren Computerprogrammen von Knstlern, in: Telepolis, Oct. 28, 2001. [26] Rob Myers, Code as Art Digest [from the PD-List], in: [eu-gene], Jan. 4, 2004. [27] The distinction between competence and performance is credited to Noam Chomsky's generative transformation grammar (See Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, MA., 1965); the distinction between langue and parole is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure (See Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gnrale, Paris, 1967 [1916]). [28] Friedrich Kittler, Code oder wie sich etwas anders schreiben lsst, in: Christine Schpf / Gerfried Stocker (ed.), Ars Electronica 2003: Code - The Language of Our Time, Ostfildern, 2003, pp. 1519, here: p. 18. [29] Jury statement on Software, Transmediale 2001. [30] Jury statement on Software, Transmediale 2001. [31] Reinhold Grether, The Performing Arts in a New Era, in: Rohrpost, July 26, 2001. [32] Lawrence Lessig, Code and other Laws of Cyberspace, New York, 1999. [33] See Florian Cramer, Fr eine Textwissenschaft des Digitalen, lecture at the Erlangen Germanistentag, Oct. 1, 2001. [34] Peter Matussek, Performing Memory. Kriterien fr einen Vergleich analoger und digitaler Gedchtnistheater, in: Paragrana 10 (2001), Issue 1, pp. 291320. [35] See Inke Arns, Texte, die (sich) bewegen: zur Performativitt von Programmiercodes in Netzkunst und Software Art(texts that move: the Performitivity of programming codes in net art and software art), in: Inke Arns, et. Al. (ed.), Kinetographien, Bielefeld, 2004. [36] Friedrich Kittler, Die Schrift des Computers. A License to Kill, 2 [undated typescript]. [37] John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Claredon Press, 1962. [38] Erika Fischer-Lichte, Auf dem Weg zu einer performativen Kultur, in: Paragrana 7 (1998) 1, pp. 1329. [39] Judith Butler, Hass spricht. Zur Politik des Performativen, Berlin 1998, p. 67. [40] Judith Butler, Hass spricht. Zur Politik des Performativen, Berlin 1998, p. 67. [41] Judith Butler, Hass spricht. Zur Politik des Performativen, Berlin 1998, p. 31. [42] Judith Butler, Hass spricht. Zur Politik des Performativen, Berlin 1998, p. 31

44

[43] Judith Butler, Hass spricht. Zur Politik des Performativen, Berlin 1998, p. 31. [44] As already mentioned, non-executable code also has a purpose in software art. [45] Reinhold Grether, The Performing Arts in a New Era, in: Rohrpost, July 26, 2001. [46] Lawrence Lessig, in: futurezone.orf.at: Stalin & Disney - Copyright killt das Internet (Stalin & Disney Copyright is killing the Internet), In: Rohrpost, May 30, 2000. [47] Lawrence Lessig, Die Architektur der Kontrolle: Internet und Macht, in: Transit/Eurozine, Oct. 28, 2000. [48] Graham Harwood, Speculative Software, in: Andreas Broeckmann / Susanne Jaschko (Hg.), DIY Media Kunst und digitale Medien: Software - Partizipation - Distribution. Transmediale.01, Berlin, 2001, pp. 4749, here p. 47. [49] See also Timothy Druckrey, Secreted Agents, Security Leaks, Immune Systems, Spore Wars , in: Ursula Frohne / Thomas Y. Levin / Peter Weibel (ed.), Ctrl_Space. Rhetorics of Surveillance from Betham to Big Brother, ZKM Karlsruhe / Cambridge/Mass., 2002, pp. 150157. [50] Walter Benjamin, Kleine Geschichte der Photographie (A Short History of Photography), in: Benjamin, Walter, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, Frankfurt/M., 1977, pp. 4563, here p. 50. [51] One must also qualify this by saying that Benjamin's 'optical unconscious' describes phenomena below the level of human perception that must be suppressed in order to reduce complexity. Today's 'postoptical subconscious', however, refers to program codes that are deliberately hidden, whether to reduce complexity or in order to establish closure and privatisation. [52] Part of the Open_Source_Art_Hack exhibition, The New Museum, May 3 June 30, 2002. [53] See Inke Arns, Netzkulturen im postoptischen Zeitalter, in: Sigrid Schade / Georg-Christoph Tholen (eds.), SchnittStellen, Basel, 2004 [forthcoming]; Inke Arns, Art Will Be Code, Or It Will Not Be: Medien- und Netzkunst im postoptischen Zeitalter (media and net art in the postoptical age), in: Save Privacy. Grenzverschiebungen im digitalen Zeitalter, Berlin, 2002, pp. 6266; Inke Arns, Netzkulturen, Hamburg, 2002. [54] Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA., 2001, p. 65. [55] This surface can be used for the projection of images and can be seen, for example, on the faade of the former VEAG headquarters (now Vattenfall) in Chausseestrae in Berlin. [56] See Arns, Netzkulturen im postoptischen Zeitalter (Net cultures in the postoptical age). [57] Florian Cramer, Exe.cut[up]able statements: Das Drngen des Codes an die Nutzeroberflchen, in: Christine Schpf / Gerfried Stocker (eds.), Ars Electronica 2003: Code The Language of Our Time, Ostfildern, 2003. [58] See Alan Sondheim, Codework, in: American Book Review, Vol. 22, Issue 6 (September/October 2001). [59] See Florian Cramers for more examples, nettime unstable digest. [60] Other pseudonyms include: data[h!]bleeder, ms post modemism, mezflesque.exe, ova.kill, net.w][ho][urker, and Purrsonal Arreah Netwurker. [61] Florian Cramer, sub merge {my . ASCII Art, Rekursion, Lyrik in Programmiersprachen, in: Text & Kritik, special issue dealing with Digital Literature, H. L. Arnold und R. Simanowski, No. 152 (October 2001). [62] Florian Cramer, sub merge {my . ASCII Art, Rekursion, Lyrik in Programmiersprachen, in: Text & Kritik, special issue dealing with Digital Literature, H. L. Arnold und R. Simanowski, No. 152 (October 2001). [63] See Jacques Lacan, Das Drngen des Buchstabens im Unbewussten oder die Vernunft seit Freud, in: Lacan, Jacques, Schriften II, Olten, 1975, pp. 1755, here p. 28. [64] McKenzie Wark, Codework,in: American Book Review, Vol. 22, Nr. 6 (Sept./Oct. 2001), here p. 5. [65] Florian Cramer, sub merge {my . ASCII Art, Rekursion, Lyrik in Programmiersprachen, in: Text & Kritik, special issue dealing with Digital Literature, H. L. Arnold und R. Simanowski, No. 152 (October 2001). [66] Josephine Berry, The Thematics of Site Specific Art on the Net, Dissertation, University of Manchester, September 2001. [unpublished typescript]. [67] Geoff Cox / Alex McLean / Adrian Ward, The Aesthetics of Generative Code. [68] Florian Cramer, Digital Code and Literary Text, P0es1s-Symposium, Sept. 27, 2001, 4f.

45

46

On a Number of Aspects of Artistic Computer Games

Tilman Baumgrtel I. Introduction: Theres no turning back now! This opening scene is etched into the minds of an entire generation of computer players: a hall with grey walls, from which several passageways branch off; and in the background, dark mountain scenery. There are no humans around. We have landed at the Union Aerospace Corporation, a research laboratory on Phobos, a moon of Mars. Weor, more correctly, our avatars in the first person Shooter game Doomare part of a unit of Space Marines who have been deployed to find out what happened to the people who had been working at the laboratory. After secret experiments, during the course of which matter had been sent through ominous gateways on an inter-dimensional journey through the universe, radio contact with the station had broken off. Securing your helmet, you exit the landing pod. You hope to find more substantial firepower somewhere within the station. As you walk through the main entrance of the base, you hear animal-like growls echoing throughout the distant corridors. They know you're here. There's no turning back now.[1] Thus begins the famous and notorious first person Shooter Doom, which rangin a new era in the development of computer games when it was released in December 1993. The game comes from Texas computer game manufacturer id Software, which at the time was known for producing games with an extremely high level of violence. But the company also enhanced the technical possibilities of computer games. The genre of first person Shooters for the PCgames that are seen through the eyes of a fighting protagonistwas basically ids creation. But the most important of the developments that came from id was not the new perspective from which it allows its users to view computer games. In fact, id converted the principles of a hacker ethic[2] into a functioning business model. It has released the code for its games and has sold them over the Internet as shareware. In this business model, which is only possible in a digital economy, the program is available free of charge and only those who like it pay for it, but they can then also use additional functions. This sales technique was the basis for the breathtaking success of a business that made its founders multimillionaires. And when they discovered that their fans had hacked their games and had developed several versions of their first successful game Wolfenstein 3Ddo you think they called the prosecuting attorney? No, they did not. In fact, as a feature in the next releases, they provided users with the possibility of creating their own user-edited versions of the game! David Kushner describes the consequences in his book Masters of Doom, a biography of sorts of id Software. The protagonists on the scene are John Carmack and John Romero, the founders of id Software and a kind of Lennon/McCartney of computer games: Hey, Romero told Carmack one day at the office, Here is something you have to see. He booted up Doomor at least what was supposed to be Doomon his computer. Instead, the trumpeting theme of the Star Wars movie began to play. The screen was filled, not with Dooms familiar opening chamber, but instead a small, steelcoloured room. Romero hit the space bar, and a door slid open. Stop that ship! a voice commended from within the game. Carmack watched as Romero jolted down the hall past bleeping droids, white storm troopers, laser guns, the deep bellows of Darth Vader. Some hacker had completely altered Doom into a version of Star Wars. Wow, Carmack thought. This is gonna be great. We did the Right Thing after all.[3]If a defining scene were sought for artists that deal with computer games, then this might be it. And if a defining scene were sought for the considerably larger community of gamers who, day after day, spend their free time modifying their favourite games according to their own taste and generating their own versionsthen this is also probably the one. Doing the right thingin this connection, meant not taking his own creation Doom too seriously,

47

but instead offering other hackers the opportunity to modify the game as they see fit; or rather paradoxically, taking his own cultural product Doom just seriously enough so that hackers were offered an opportunity to modify the game as they pleased. With Doom, a medium developed out of a game, an opportunity to create one's own worlds. With Doom, id Software put a potent piece of software for creating three-dimensional spaces into the hands of its customers. Of course, in 1994, there might have been methods by which better 3D simulations could be generated on PCs than Doom. But as easily as this? This was a Shooter game, which, because of its violence, immediately found a place of honour on a German government list being scrutinized for literature harmful to young people, was programmed in such a way that users could even write themselves into a game. Experience with computers was needed, to be sure, but the ability to program was not necessary. According to David Kushner, [this] was a radical idea not only for games but for any medium. It was like having a Nirvana CD with tools to let listeners dub their own voices over Kurt Cobains, or a Rocky video that let viewers excise every cranny of Philadelphia for ancient Rome. [4] On January 25, somewhat more than a month after the Internet release of Doom, Brendon Wyber, a student at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, published the Doom Editor Utility (DEU) on the Internet. This program, which has been improved upon again and again, and which came about with the help of amateur programmers around the world, made it even easier to hack Doom and construct personal versions. Doom crossed with Star Wars? Why not a version of Doom in which the Simpsons fight Ronald McDonald? In the following years, articles appeared again and again in the press describing how students had changed their high schools into models of a Shooter gamemost ofthem using Doom as a model, or the follow-up game Quake, for which there was a mature level editor already availablefollowed by sheer indignation that the young people had made their school into a venue for virtual Shooter orgies. The critics certainly overlooked the fact that in doing so, the students had learned to work with a program that allowed 3D modelling and whose use a few years earlier had still been the privilege of industry and wellequipped research laboratories. Other games followed suit and also put tools for game creation in the hands of their users, turning consumers into producers of virtual fantasy worlds. In the case of the action game Half-Life, the modifications were so extensive that a complete new game came into being: Counterstrike was to become one of the most successful computer games of all time. Now, the possibility of modifying games to a greater or lesser degree from their standard versions is basically a standard feature. The action figures, maps and levels created by gamersthat is, the playing fields of computer playerswere often offered as downloads on the Internet and brought their creators prestige on the gaming scene. The depiction of space, which characterized this level, had been the Holy Grail of academic computer visualization at the beginning of the nineties. Because of Doom and Quake, this technology came into childrens playroomsand into artists' workshops. The possibilities that computer games offered their creators did not remain hidden for long, especially from artists who worked with new media or the Internet. The first attempt by an artist to use a computer game[5] as an artistic medium appears to have been ars Doom by Orhan Kipcak and Reinhard Urban. Their game, which was shown at ars electronica in 1995, was a crude satire on the art business, obviously in the tradition of context art of the early 1990s. Verena Kuni writes about the game in Blitzreview[6]. No one helps anyone, growls the players alter ego as it stumbles through catacombs as Nitsch, Baselitz or Beuys, armed with either a shotgun, paint brush or another tool. These catacombs are easily identifiable as being a digital model of the Bruckner House (the location where the ars electronica took placesee footnote) whose somewhat stiff 1970s' charm rather unwillingly couples with the characteristic SS prison aesthetictypical of Doom. A report for ORFOnline describes the

48

work as follows: After getting on board via the Internet, a user receives a character mask, perhaps that of Georg Baselitz, Nam June Paik or Arnulf Rainer. Then, with their tools Baselitz' thumbs, Paiks remote control or Rainers paint brushworks of art and artists can be destroyed.[7] The article in the catalogue of the ars electronica names, among others, Ecke Bonk, Heimo Zobernig, Jrg Schlick and Peter Kogler as belonging to the opponents, among whom were other artists and critics as involved inner circle artists.[8] The favourite victim of ars Doom players was said to have been exhibition director Peter Weibel.[9] The work started a certain tradition. Afterwards, artists like Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson (see below) as well as Florian Muser and Imre Osswald (with a level that was created after the example of the Hamburger Galerie fr Gegenwart[10]) strived to introduce computer games as a commentary on the art business and its institutions. Among the first artists to deal with games as a medium was the artist-duo Jodi, who, however, blazed a completely different aesthetic trail. In 1999, as guests of the Budapest Media Art laboratory C3, they made a first modification of first person Shooter Quake,[11] which has since been followed by many more new variations under the name Untitled Game. [12] These depart in ever stronger, alarming and exciting ways from the appearance and rules of the original game. About the same time, Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer, with their work entitled LinX3D (1999), brought the game called Unreal into an abstract debate with the materiality of code. The works of Jodi and Moswitzer/Jahrmann, therefore, led to several themes which would soon interest other artists. While simple modifications of existing architectures into computer game architectures quickly turned into a blind alley, these artists concentrated on the special graphic qualities of the games. These were subjected to merciless deconstruction in a manner similar to that done earlier on the Websites of Jodis Internet projects. For Jodi, the manipulation of the graphical interface was not enoughthey also began to be interested in the non-visual aspects of software. This included, for example, the users guide and the game physics which Jodi changed to the point of being almost completelyunusable for the game. This is the approach that artists like Tom Betts and Joan Leandre used as a starting point in their work. In this text, we will concern ourselves with art that has come about through interchange with games. Therefore, works that utilize codes of computer games as the foundations for their own works will be in the focus of attention. I will not, however, limit myself to this area alone. It seems to be in the nature of this topic that artists have not limited themselves to exclusively re-working codes but have dealt with all facets of the many levelled themes of computer games. This specifically also includes excursions into traditional areas of art productionlike painting, installations or video. This multi-facetted nature had a pleasant side effect for the exhibition called games. Computerspiele von KnstlerInnen which could be seen in 2003 at the hARTware medien kunst verein[13]. The presentation, which I conceived and for which I acted as a curator, together with hARTware founders Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ, could not limit itself to showing computer programs running on computers but also had to include installations, paintings and video. The following ideas developed from working on this exhibition.[14] I have divided the following overview into three loose categories: abstraction, modification and socialization. Although the first category deals with works that directly follow the historical methods of graphical abstraction, the second focuses on works that deal with direct, artistic intervention into software. Works that will be considered under the category of socialization leave the narrow realm of direct interaction with computer programs and concern themselves with the surrounding socio-cultural environment of gamestheir playing, their reception and their position in the real world, in which they are components of complex connections between technology, economic interests and a highly developed fan culture.

49

II. Modification The point of departure for artistic work with computer games was the possibility of modifying the games themselves by using level editors. All approaches that start with changing the game interface were first established after artists from the media and Internet art scene had begun to discover the possibilities of modifying computer games. These modifications result in the premises of theoriginal game leading to either partial or complete absurdity, or they contradict those premises explicitly. In this way, they also differ from most of the modifications that had been introduced by fans. As a rule, fans contented themselves with new decorations of existing structures, whereas artists carried out very many far-reaching changes, some of which led to the games becoming completely unplayable. Meanwhile, even the notorious Shooter games, that is, the so-called first person Shooters, put programs capable of developing three-dimensional spacesthe so-called level editorsat the disposal of their users. Using these programs, the players could create their own levels; this was a method of keeping gamers tied longer to a particular game. In the meantime, these programs were, to a certain extent, even being used by architects to visualize their blueprints. The first person Shooter, which presents a game from the perspective of the person doing the action, also always deals with the depiction of perspective and space. Even the illusionary character of the spaces, which were developed in this way, made artists become interested in these programs from the very beginning. The software versions that the artists came up with use commercial game software in ways for which it was not intended. These modifications penetrate like parasites into the existing program which they alter andgoing from partial to complete unrecognizabilityalienate, and therefore exploit their own artistic goals. With respect to these works, artist Annemarie Schleiner writes: Like the sampling rap MC, game hacker artists operate as culture hackers who manipulate existing techno-semiotic structures towards different ends or, as described by artist Brett Stalbaum, who endeavor to get inside cultural systems and make them do things they were never intended to do.[15] The art history of the 20th century is full of examples of these types of appropriations and redesignations, including: the Ostranenie of Wladimir Shklovsky[16], Bertolt Brechts Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect), the recontextualization of Pop Art or the dtournement of the Situationists [LI Debord]. The distortion of aesthetically complete pieces can be regarded as one of the most effective and workable ideas of modern art. Media scholar Claus Pias pointed out the parallels between the artistic modifications ofgames and the Appropriation Art of the 1980s. At the same time however, he states that he was not out to discredit the ideology of originality, authenticity or expertise from which the [computer art] undertook its critical mission within the institution of art If there is an ideology of computer games that could be deconstructed by appropriation, then perhaps it is in the nature of humanistic arrogance to wrongly believe that the game is in the possession of the subject.[17] Tobias Bernstrup / Palle Torsson: Museum Meltdown (1996-1999) Tobias Bernstrup, a Swede, would be one of the first artists to personally attempt his own game modifications. In 1996, together with Palle Torsson, he modified the game called Duke Nukem so that it depicted the museum in which he was exhibiting.[18] With regard to the first version, which the Arken Museum in Copenhagen displayed, the artists say the following on their web site: Since the museum was recently built and had a somewhat superficial architecture, we thought it would be interesting to do something that dealt with the idea of the entire exhibition space. The interior had a lot of fake details, like big metal panels and doors. This fake hi-tech style corresponded well to computer game aesthetics. When we found the game Duke Nukem3D, which had a level editor, we decided to transform the actual space into a game environment. Since then, he has frequently re-arranged this work, under the title Museum Meltdown, for other exhibition venues, including, among others, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Center for Contemporary Art in Vilnius which were designed

50

with the Warcraft level editor for the game Doom. The artists have emphatically pointed out that they also view their project as a commentary on the art world operating system (Thomas Wulffen): The range of human interactions in our game is very limited, the rewriteable program code of the game contains the basic lab for understanding the art world through game theory.[19]
Joan Leandre retroYou r/c: FCK TH RED GRAVITY CODE retroYou r/c is an interactive software art project, which is based on a regular computer game. Leandre reprogrammed the software of a racing game in several stages, by manipulating the rules through which space, movement, gravity etc. are simulated. The game as such is still recognisable, however it cannot be navigated in the usual way. The application runs of its own accord, rather like a screen saver, and reacts only marginally to the users actions. (source: http://www.transmediale.de/en/02/awardnom.php ?sect=2)

Jodi: SOD (1999) Jodi has subjected the game Quake to a radical treatment, resulting in all objective details and all textures being removed, with only abstract symbols remaining. This precursor of Quake, which was also developed by id Software, is now reduced to just a mysterious black and white landscape in which only rarely can be seen what is being hunted or what is blocking the way. The castlewith the intertwined passageways, through which the player has to find his way, looks like a gallery in which only copies of Kasimir Malevitch's Black Square are hanging on the walls; Nazis have become black trianglesthey are recognizable because they occasionally yell Achtung! Of all the game modifications that Jodi has produced, it is the graphical aspects that are the most reduced. At the same time however, the mechanics of play of the original game are respected. SOD is quite playable and is really fun to play, as the reviews in the computer game magazines have so often noted. In addition, the game is Jodi's hommage to the programmers at id Software for technical breakthroughs that they have achieved by creating threedimensional spaces on PCs. Joan Leandre: retroYou r/c (2000) In retroYou r/c Joan Leandre has reprogrammed a race in several levels, and changed the rules by which space, movement, gravity etc. are simulated. The game, in the original form of which, small, remote-controlled cars had to be steered through an American suburb, is only recognizable as such in the first few versions. Later modifications become increasingly more abstract and the game becomes less and less navigable in the usual sense: cars fly though the air instead of driving on the road and if attempts are made to control them, they hurl themselves more and more uncontrollably through space. Joan Leandre continued this approach with retroYou nostalG, which subjected a flight simulator to similar treatment.

51

Tom Betts: QQQ (2002) In Tom Betts' QQQ, initially, we see images that look like they were formed in a broken kaleidoscopesometimes in icy blue and white, sometimes in warm shades of brown. In addition, there is roaring and droning to be heard. A human silhouette suddenly appears to be seen running through the confusion. Seasoned gamers recognize the figures: they are martial arts fighters from the first person Shooter Doom rushing through the game to frag one another; that is, to shoot each other down. Upon closer inspection, parts of the passageways, staircases and halls that form the background and the playing field for Doom can be seen in the image fragments. Tom Betts has taken apart the individual elements of the game, the task of which is actually to simulate an apparently realistic, three-dimensional space. What used to be rooms now looklike nonrepresentational images in constant motion, so the work could also be viewed as if it had abstract characteristics of computer gamesthat is, if the source from which these images arise were not available. Tom Betts runs his own server through which fans of the Shooter game can play against each other on the Internet. Without the players knowing it, data traces left behind on the server are gathered together and become part of the work. So QQQ is actually a hidden Internet work of art which extends itself by receiving input from unsuspecting players via the White Cube in the exhibition room. Data control the images that the observer sees in the exhibition room: a shimmering confusion of colours and shapes on which the observer, however, has almost no influence. The perspective can be changed, but QQQ offers no further interaction'. With QQQ, Betts not only modified the interface of the game but also the entire complex, technical infrastructure of an online game. In addition, he drew the players milieu into his work. When the work is installed, it is sometimes completely quiet. But at night or at the weekend, it can suddenly spring to life and start droning if online players match up against each other in industrialized nations. If players occasionally leave the game without warning, then the image that was seen from the perspective of a fighter is suddenly left behind, and it becomes very, very quiet.
Tom Betts QQQ

Lonnie Flickinger: Pencil-Whipped (2001) If QQQ by Tom Betts appears to be the ultimate in visual sophistication, then PencilWhipped by Lonnie Flickinger appears to be the exact opposite. The game shows a peculiar black and white universe. The walls, floors and roofs look like they were scrawled by a threeyear-old. There are also little scribbled figures that dance around the player and annoy him. If one of these figures is struck, a muffled thud is heard, and the figure falls over like a piece of cardboard. While normal first person Shooter games put all their efforts into looking as realistic as possible on the computer monitor, Flickinger does the exact opposite. His game landscape looks like a three-dimensional version of a picture scribbled by a child. In contrast to other computer games, Flickinger does not try to imitate reality as faithfully as possible. 52

Instead, he creates a very idiosyncratic universe which calls into question the status quo of game design.
Lonnie Flickinger Pencil-Whipped

Cory Arcangel: Super Mario Cloud (2002) Like Arcangel Constantini, Cory Arcangel hacked and modified, not a piece of software but of hardwarethe cartridge on which the game Super Mario is stored, or rather, was storedto produce Super-Mario Cloud.[20] This is because, by disconnecting some contacts on the circuit board and putting in a chip for which Arcangel wrote his own program, superhero Super Mario disappears, together with all the obstacles over which he has to jump. Only a few comical, white clouds remain in a blue sky. Arcangel took away all the narrative elements of the game and everything that made it dynamic.

Cory Arcangel Super Mario Clouds Super Mario Clouds is based on the Super Mario game for Nintendos NES game console. Cory Arcangel hacked the game and modified it so that all that remains of the game are the white clouds on a blue sky. Gone is the main character, Super Mario, who the player had to guide through a labyrinth in the original jump and run game, just like the obstacles, landscapes and opponents that lend the game its narrative structure. Those people who are familiar with the game can imagine them on the empty background, everyone else will just see the cartoon-like display of a sky. The work was created on the basis of a manipulation of the hardware and software. Cory Arcangel had to open the cartridge, on which the game was stored, and replace the Nintendo graphics chip with a chip on which he had burned a program he had written himself. Cory Arcangel is a member of the Beige Programming Ensemble who have focused their artistic programme on the hacking ethic of manipulating existing technology, thereby taking the modification of legacy technology to absurd extremes: the group have published computer programs pressed on records and organise an annual competition for cassette disk jockeys. (Source: Tilman Baumgrtel, http://www.hartware-projekte.de/programm/inhalt/games_file/werke.htm#arc)

53

III. Abstraction Many works that deal with computer games from an artistic perspective have concentrated on the genuinely graphical nature of computer games and have sought the types of images that actually can only be produced with this medium. In addition, the representational conventions and, above all, the visual limitations of games have become important subjects for artists. In such works, computer games often appear as a kind of further development or a curious variant of abstract painting. This theme is inherent in the development of computer games, which in the beginning could show little more than geometrical shapes. The building-block look of the first games for video arcades or early play consoles like the Atari 2600 actually recall historical techniques of picture-making in stunning ways. Ancient Greek and Roman mosaics or the Moorish alicatado (tile covering) of the Alhambra in Granada are only two examples of historical production methods that show a clear connection to the pixels from which computer images are constructed. In the meantime, the fact that early games of the seventies have an obvious connection to abstract art of past eras has almost become a commonplace in academic discussions. Mark J.P. Wolf, an American media scholar writes: The video game began with perhaps the harshest restrictions encountered by any nascent visual medium in regard to graphic representation. So limited were the graphic capabilities of the early games that the medium was forced to remain relatively abstract for over a decade.[21] Like many computer players who had been socialized through games during the seventies and early eighties, Wolf is also of the opinion that the further graphical development of computer games, which nowpermit the creation of almost deceptively accurate photorealistic fantasy worlds, is not just a step forward aesthetically: This great, untapped potential will only be mined by deliberate steps back into abstract design that take into consideration the unique properties of the video game medium.[22] Many of the artists who modify computer games have done him this favour and stress exactly those abstract, non-object bound aspects of computer game graphics. It is not necessary to be preoccupied with dates, which is popular in German media theory, in order to notice that the visually poor early days of computer games fall into a period in which creative minimalism was also considered a virtue in the arts. During the period in which computer games like Spacewar (1962), Pong (1972) or Asteroids (1973) only consisted of two-dimensional elements on a black background, a radical reductionism was en vogue in the fine arts as a result of minimalist and concept art. [23] The parallels do not stop with the scanty visuals: artists like John F. Simon Jr. (who in the nineties became one of the first software artists) have repeatedly pointed out similarities between conceptbased and software-based art. I see parallels between my work and works by those like Lawrence Weiner and Sol LeWitt at the end of the sixties, says Simon. Their wall sketches especially were nothing more than a set of instructionsI believe that software and programming are a natural continuation of this concept because software is basically nothing more than a set of instructions The ideas of some concept artists could be written as programs and could then be implemented by a computer. The art works would then simply produce themselves. Or, more simply: art does what it says. Thats the way I look at my programs.[24] Florian Cramer has also taken up this argument, but emphasizes that, compared to its historical predecessors, software art today is, no longer a laboratory construct and paradigm of conceptualistic purification but rather, since the spread of errorridden code from PCs and the Internet, a cause of crashes, incompatibilities and viruses; a symbol of contingency instead of stringency. [25] The defect paradigm has also played a role in artistic modifications of computer games although, interestingly enough, a considerably smaller one than in Internet and software art. Above all,destructionor should we say creative modification?is the focus of works that specifically concentrate on using the true graphic qualities of games as visual raw materials like, for example, in Arcangel Constantini's Atari Noise or Jodis JET SET WILLY 1984. [WB und http,//jetsetwilly.jodi.org] By way of example in what follows, I will present some of these works that deal explicitly with abstract representational forms of computer games.

54

Arcangel Constantini: Atari Noise (1999) Arcangel Constantini is a hardware hacker. In the scene, these are hackers whose efforts are not directed towards breaking into software but rather into the equipment on which software runs. His work called Atari Noise[WB und http,//www.atari-noise.com], which has been shown at international festivals and exhibitions, is a rather crude modification of the wellknown Atari 2600 console. This piece of equipment, which came on the market in 1977, is a predecessor of todays popular console types like Playstation or Gamecube. In contrast to the leading consoles, which were generally delivered only with preinstalled games, the 2600 could be fed with cartridges on which games were stored. The apparatus was connected to a television set. Constantini, a Mexican, modified the consolewhich today can be bought cheaply at flea markets or on Ebayinto an audiovisual noise pattern generator keyboard, as he calls it. This means that crossed some of the elements of the play console with each other so that it was no longer the correct images that were shown but rather a chaotic muddle of distorted picture elements. For example, a tennis game became a row of greenish and bluish lines where a serious effort was required to recognize any pattern. Constantini added a row of buttons to the console chassis with which the image could be modified continually. This deconstruction of visual raw materials is not just part of a long, modern tradition of alienation, which we will see in the next chapter on modifications. Atari Noise refers to one of the most important works of media art: the Videosynthesizer (1969/1992) by Nam June Paik, but in a low-tech version. While at that time Paik had to bring in Shuya Abe, a technician, in developing a machine where moving images could be manipulated in real time, Atari Noise reflects a media culture in which the required hardware is available as scrapelectrical parts. The perpetually new images that the machine generates stress the special properties of these game screens by creating abstract distortions, and make it clear that there is simply no other medium that can produce such images.
Arcangel Constantini Atari Noise

Paik, Nam June; Yalkut, Jud Video Synthesizer and TV-Cello Collectibles Together with the electronics expert Shuya Abe, Paik developed between 1969 and 1970 a video synthesizer allowing the colours and shapes from different images to be mixed and manipulated. Paik saw in this innovation a major step making video an artistic medium: This will enable us to shape the TV screen canvas as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colorfully as Renoir, as profoundly as Mondrian, as violently as Pollock and as lyrically as Jasper Johns. (Edith Decker, Paik Video, S. 152.) Posterity was not the immediate concern, however, the instrument being intended for use in live performances with a function comparable to the audio synthesizers for concerts. According to Paik, the video synthesizer had 'to be played in real time like a piano. From a purely artistic viewpoint that is highly interesting a truly new thing that has no precedent. You simply play and then see the effect.' (Nam June Paik, Klnischer Kunstverein, Kln 1976, S. 133.) The video synthesizer was first used in the four-hour live broadcast 'Video Commune' transmitted by WGBH in 1970. Pictures mixed live from completed videotapes and camera images were shown to the accompaniment of Beatles music. The studio crew was joined by passers-by Paik invited into the studio from the street. Early TV Experiments/Video Commune (top row) Video Commune/Early TV Experiments (bottom row).

55

Jodi: Jet Set Willy 1984 (2002) Jet Set Willy 1984 by Jodi, which was created for a travelling exhibition in Basel, Berlin and New York, is an alienated version of a game for the Sinclair Spectrum, one of the first affordable home computers at the beginning of the 1980s.[26] Since it is a modification, it could be included in that category as well. However, since Jodi has been showing the work not only with the possibility of interactive self-service but also as a linear video projection, I have decided for a different category in this case. Without the usual possibilities of intervention, the viewer sees the images go by like a combination of abstract cartoons in the Oskar Fischinger tradition and an animated work of concrete poetry. At first, apparently meaningless chains of letters from code segments appear on screen, which at best make sense only as images put together with letters. Then multi-coloured quadrilaterals move through a room built out of thick beams, immediately reminiscent of Mondrian paintings. Later versions of Jet Set Willy 1984 develop this aesthetic further in another direction where, for example, all the colours are removed from the game or the playing scenarios are replaced with nothing but text. Of course, this makes the work a modification of an existing game that is reminiscent of the work of Tom Betts or Jodis own modifications of Quake and Quake. Yet while Jodi show a pre-enacted version as a video, they use their workas Machinima filmmakers doas software in order to produce their own films and to give their work another conceptual direction. Instead of deconstructing the contents of the program, only its re-designation as a tool for generating animations is in the foreground.
Jodi JET SET WILLY 1984

Norbert Bayer (Mr. Ministeck): Touchscreenss (19982001) Norbert Bayer uses computer games to generate picture motifs for his plastic mosaics. This Berlin artist, who operates under the pseudonym Mr. Ministeck[27], turned the toy of the same name from the seventies into his medium. His series, called Touchscreens, is based on screen shots from games on the C 64 home computer. Bayer re-materializes these immaterialimages that represented an initial contact with digital images for an entire generation of computer users. His works are reminiscent of Pop Art in their emphasis on technical composition, like the use of rasters, which Roy Lichtenstein or Sigmar Polke stress in their paintings, or the blurring and fuzziness of photographs that Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter produce.
Norbert Bayer Touchscreens

56

IV. Socialisation As should be clear by now, computer games are not only a fascinating aesthetic development but also a social movement. This is shown by different phenomena like, for example, LAN parties, in which as many as several thousand players face off against each other in a kind of tournament. Then there are online players, who in games like Ultima-Online, have created their own economies, whose products are traded for real money in real life'. There are also amateur graphic artists who, using the photo album function from The Sims, build entire photo novels. J.C. Hertz speaks of a decentralized culture that rapidly learns, adapts and selects for best practices. This culture and its processes are perhaps the Industrys greatest assets. [28] The works that will be described in the following section deal with the social culture that has been built up around computer games. They also take a quick look at their targets from the outside, as it were. Instead of dealing with the inner life of the gamesthe codeand instead of making the superficial into a major theme, they deal with how computer games in the real world are relocatedwhether it be via the elements through which we interact with them, or via the forms used in their construction. They check their interfaces with reality and make us aware how limited our hold on the virtual worlds always is, despite all the technical progress that has been made. Olaf Val: swingUp Games (2001) Olav Val developed a computer game at minimal expense. He made a simple game using transparent plastic film, bicycle lamps, a small circuit board and a few electrical parts. Val describes his work as follows: The games are conceived so that they can be easily transported and installed swingUp Games is oriented towards acting as a point of communication with a wide audience.[29] Apart from this, they also function as a pedagogical media project: Val holds workshops where young people can build and program their own games and de-mystify how video gamesoriginate.
Olav Val swingUp Games

57

Volker Morawe/Tilman Reiff: Painstation (2001) Creators Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff have even shown their Painstation on the Harald Schmidt Show (a popular evening program on German TV until 2003). Their game is a version of the classic game of Pong. Unlike in the original game, if one of the players misses a ball, that player is not punished by having a point being given to his opponent. Instead, punishment comes in the form of direct, physical pain: his hand is tormented by heat, electric shocks or blows from a small whip. Such painful reality comes from a completely abstract, immaterial game, a reality that, for once, confronts the players with real consequences for their actions in virtual space.
fur Painstation The painstation is an arcade cabinet. The opponents stand facing each other. The duel is based on pong, the well known game of console tennis from the early days. The instructions are easily explained: The players right hand uses a knob to control his pad. The left hand has to remain on the PEU (Pain-Execution-Unit), so it creates an electric circuit. The game can start. Moving the paddle vertically the ball must be subtly returned into the opponents direction. If a player misses the ball, its not only annoying but also painful. This slip causes massive anguish. How massive depends on which PIS (PainInflictor-Symbol) the lost ball hits: heat, lashes or electric shocks all of different duration and combination torment the left hand (the new name of pang comes to the authors minds). In case one of the competitors lifts his hand off the PEU either out of painoverload or he blacks out- he loses the duel. And sorry to say, he has to bear the losers brunt. The winner gets it all: the respect, the booze and the sexual attention. The next time someone urges you politely to choose the weapon, choose the painstation. The PainStation is a custom-made two player table console, driven by an Apple PowerPC. The analog/mechanical parts of the interface are controlled via an analog/digital converter and hand-crafted electronics. The game itself is a beefed-up version of the classic Pong written in Macromedia Director. (Source: Volker Morawe/Tilman Reiff: www.painstation.de)

SF Invader: Space Invader (since 1999) The French artist hiding behind the pseudonym SF Invader took the computer game title with its entire double meaning literally, and unleashed an invasion of digital art figures into real space. Using tile mosaics, he leaves his mark in public spaces with figures from the classical computer game Space Invaders (1978): he sticks the little attackers from the cosmos on the faades of houses, street signs, and bridgeseven the Brooklyn Bridge and the Hollywood sign are not safe from attack from outer space. His campaigns, which, in the meantime, have taken place around the globe, are meticulous and have been documented in maps, photos and videos on an opulent web site www.space-invaders.com. In case anyone has any doubts, he has the proof: They are among us! Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann: Shooter (2000-2001) Within the space of a year and a half, the artist duo Sann/Geissler organized a series of LAN parties at their studio to which they invited players who were passionate about games. The results of this collaboration are documented in the two-part Shooter. Using a front-mounted camera on a monitor, they photographed players, always from the same perspective, and put them on video while they were playing against each other on a LAN. Through body language,

58

gestures and facial expressions, they mirrored the drama of the conflict. Just like Painstation, this work deals with the rematerialisation of immaterial processes, and with the human relationship to unreal, virtual spaces. Above all, however, Shooteris a portrait of a generationthe gamer generationthat otherwise received hardly anyattention from the public or the media; whatever attention it did receive was negative. V. GAME ARTNOT YET A GENRE The origin of artistic computer game modifications is at the end of a detour for arts that deal with new media. Artists have been using the Internet since the middle of the nineties. Hype about the Internet had come out, but actually, it was a comparatively exotic medium at that time, and Net Art profited from this. Likewise, at the end of the nineties, artists increasingly turned to the difficult-tounderstand area of desktop software before they finally discovered the mass phenomenon of computer games for themselves. The discovery of this secular theme in secular art also needed time, although computer games at this point would have already been available as objects of artistic modification for nearly forty years. Artistic experiments should therefore not immediately be elevated to the position of a new art movement la Net.art or Software art. Their methods are too divergent for that. Many of the artists who work with computer games have of course been active in the areas of Internet and software art. Yet it would be a simplification if the works this essay focuses on were looked upon as a subcategory of Software art. To be sure, they are to a large degree actually based on code, and are actual software. Yet in contrast to most software works that do not come out with internal commentaries on programs and computer functions, many of these works take up definite positions on a multi-level social, economic and political network of themes that go far beyond simply re-designating or recontextualising software. Whoever works as an artist with computer games is dealing with a subject that has now become an integral part of Pop culture, even if it is socially marginalized, at least in Germany. This marginalization certainly stands in no relation to the cultural and financial importance of computer games. In the USA alone, computer games represent a 2.5 billion dollar business annually. They are part of the media socialization for most young people in western industrialized countries and, at the same time, one of the most important motivations for building faster and faster, higher performance computers. Artistic experiments with computer games apply not only to code but also, along with this entire cultural and economic complex, to a mature social culture that hasbeen built around computer games. Art that deals with computer games therefore has quickly moved beyond the boundaries within which most Internet art and software art is situated. At the same time, in games, art has found a subject with which it had much in common structurally. In his famous essay Homo Ludens, Dutch historian John Huizinga convincingly demonstrated that the apparently so regressive game is in reality the origin of human culture, and therefore of the fine arts as well. To be sure, Huizingas remarks on contemporary art of his time remain rather superficial, [30] yet many of the elements that he describes as being fundamental to games are also valid for art: their apparent meaninglessness and pointlessness, their position outside of the everyday world, their being forever childish. Even if many artists of the 20th century have integrated elements of games into their own work, it is in works like those described above where art and games first came together in mutually complementing forms.

59

Notes:
[1] Hank Leukart, The Official Doom FAQ. The data are sold as part of Doom and Doom II. [2] Stephen Compare Levy, Hackers. Heroes of the Computer Revolution, New York 1984 (Delta), pp. 3949. [3] David Kushner, Masters of Doom. How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture, New York, 2003, p. 166. [4] David Kushner, Masters of Doom. How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture, New York, 2003, p. 166. [5] Karl Gerbel/Peter Weibel (eds.), Mythos Information Welcome to the Wired World, @rs electronica 95, Vienna/New York, 1995, pp. 254257. [6] Blitzreview 76 [7] Michaela Adelberger, Hans Dampf auf allen Sites [8] The involvement of these artists could not be determined definitively, but they are still included. [9] Der Spiegel 27/1995, p. 183. [10] Florian Muser und Imre Osswald, No Room Gallery [11] Jodi, Ctrl-Space [12] Jodi, Untitled Game [13] Tilman Baumgrtel (ed.), gamesComputerspiele von KnstlerInnen, hARTware medien kunst verein, Dortmund/Frankfurt a. M. 2003. [14] GamesComputerspiele von KnstlerInnen is one of an entire series of exhibitions that dealt with computer games by artists. Here is a subjective selection of some other presentations on this subject, some of which have taken place only on the Internet, and others in galleries and museums, Synworld, T0 Netbase, Vienna, Cracking the maze, Switch-Website Trigger Game Art, Gammaspace, Melbourne Reload, Shift e.V., Berlin Loading, Galleria Civica Civica d'Arte Contemporanea, Montevergini, Ortigia. A regularly updated overview of computer game projects can be found at Selectparks. [15] Annemarie Schleiner, Cracking the maze - Game Plug-ins and Patches as Hacker Art [16] The Russian literary critic and formalist Viktor Shklovsky introduced the term ostranenie (i.e. making strange, defamiliarize) in his 1917 study Art as Technique. [17] Claus Pias, Appropriation Art & Games, Spiele der Verschwendung und der Langeweile, in Tilman Baumgrtel (ed.), games Computerspiele von KnstlerInnen, hARTware medien kunst verein, Dortmund/Frankfurt a.M. 2003, pp. 1631, here p. 30. [18] Tobias Bernstrup [19] Museum Meltdown [20] Cory Arcangel, Introduction [21] Mark J.P. Wolf, Abstraction in the Videogame, in id., The Video Game Theory Reader, New York, 2003, pp. 4766, p. 47. [22] Mark J.P. Wolf, Abstraction in the Videogame, in id., The Video Game Theory Reader, New York, 2003, p. 47. [23] The dating of computer games from this period is not completely undisputed. I have relied upon the dates given by Van Burnham in her book Supercade (Cambridge, MA., 2001). [24] Tilman Baumgrtel, net.art 2.0 Neue Materialien zur Netzkunst, Nurenberg, 2001, p. 103. [25] Florian Cramer, Zehn Thesen zur Softwarekunst, in Gerrit Gohlke, Software Art Eine Reportage ber den Code, Berlin, 2003 (Knstlerhaus Bethanien), pp. 613, here p. 8. [26] See Tilman Baumgrtel (ed.), install.exe, Basel, 2002. [27] Vgl. Norbert Bayers Website. [28] J.C. Hertz, Gaming the System, in Lucien King (ed.), Game On, London, 2002, pp. 8697, here p. 97. [29] Olaf Val in Tilman Baumgrtel, (ed.), games Computerspiele von KnstlerInnen, hARTware medien kunst verein, Dortmund/Frankfurt a. M. 2003, p. 87. [30] See the chapter entitled Spielformen der Kunst in Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel, Reinbek bei Hamburg ,1987 (Rowohlt Encyclopedia), pp. 173188.

60

Generative Tools
Editorial [1] Tjark Ihmels, Julia Riedel
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/generative-tools/editorial/

As the computer spreads ever more rapidly as a tool, IT procedures are increasingly featuring in artistic processes. Hence art production has a technology at its disposal that is otherwise known only from informatics, industrial working practices, robotics and research into artificial intelligence. All the basic creative decisions are broken down into individual steps and sent to the computer as digital procedures. The recipient gains new insights into the creative process and new access to the conceptual basis of a work of art. This means that the idea of the autonomous artistic personality is called into question and the artist's position in our modern media society reconsidered. The following terms can be found in the art context in the generative tools category: code art, software art, algorithmic art, programming art, generative art, generative design. This list does not claim to be complete. Clearly there are overlaps in terms of content, so that it is necessary to work out generally valid definitions and develop more approaches to differentiating content. Hence all the authors' texts give insight into fundamental questions within the thematic complex. [2] The essays on this keytopic are devoted to historical classification, aesthetic demands and using generative tools conceptually. We are interested exclusively in the artistic position. Key startingpoints are applying aesthetic selection criteria to a logic outside the artist's detailed control, and also connections between aesthetics/chance, aesthetics/logic and aesthetics/interaction. The novelty of the categories to be created derives among other things from the keywords nonrepeatability, noncontrollability and non-human creativity. The introductory text Generative art methodology uses artistic standpoints from 1950s music history to show how different the aims can be, even though all the artists were using aleatory or serial methods. Leaving aside all considerations involving music theory, the only question to be addressed is what possibilities the use of such a method can offer in terms of form and content, and how this is reflected in current artistic practiceworks by John Cage, Yannis (Iannis) Xenakis, Max Bense, Manfred Mohr, Harold Cohen, Brian Eno and others are discussed, as well as some current positions from recent years. The differences between, as well as the very few overlapping points within, the texts show how complex and wide-ranging this still young field of work is, and identify aspects that need to be elucidated; these emerge not least from terminological definitions and differentiations. Inke Arns' text, which is published in the present book, Read_me, run_me, execute_me. Code as executable text: Software art and its focus on program codes as performative texts), points out sceptically how the term generative art has become fashionable in the last two years, appearing in contexts as different as academic discourses, media art festivals, architecture practices and design conferences. Here the term is often used if not as a synonym for software art, then without any clear differentiation from it. Generative art and software art do have something to do with each otherbut what that is usually remains obscure. Generative art, says Arns, defines processes that run according to determined, previously fixed rules or instructions autonomously (of the artist-programmer) or through selforganization. Generative art is interested in generative processes (and also in software or code) only to the extent that itseen as a pragmatic tool that that is not itselfquestioned serves to produces an unforeseeable result. And it is precisely for this reason that the term generative art is not appropriate for describing software art, which identifies an artistic

61

activity that enables reflection on software (and its cultural significance) within the medium of software. In the classical art system, no notice is usually taken of the fact the computer was and is a tool and component of art, and that it has been so for as long as the machine itself has existed. A reappraisal of this history, dealing with embedding in the art-historical context, is still desirableMatthias Weiss asserts this in What is Computer Art?. He therefore comes up with two incentives for art history to address computer art: he explains the historical nature of the phenomenon, and he also stresses the role of description, in order to indicate that differentiation is possible only after detailed consideration, without which comparable features of older and more recent works cannot emerge to open up the possibility of a deeper understanding of computer art. He goes against the trend of using a constant stream of new categories for shifting the art system into a field of different techniques, suggesting instead that that the essentially traditional and all-embracing term computer art should be applied to the phenomenon of digitality in the arts, because it implies a historical and integrative element that makes connections with a comparative examination of computer art possible. He uses the term to place newer work from recent years into what he calls a family relationship with the computer art of the 1960s and 1970s. As a complement to the more fundamental texts, Tilman Baumgrtel reflects in Modification, Abstraction, Socialization. On some aspects of artistic computer games on the possibility of modifying games , as this is now a more or less standard features computers offer, and has arrived in artists' studios as well as children's rooms through Doom and Quake. His contribution deals with the art that has emerged from examining games. He focuses on artists who have mastered computer game codes and used them as a basis for works of their own. But it seems to the in the nature of this subject matter that artists do not restrict themselves to merely working on the code, but have concerned themselves with all facets of thecomplex theme of computer games. Excursions into the more traditional fields of art productionlike painting, installation or videoare expressly included here. New generative tools are constantly being developed both as commercial software like the Koan music software or as an artistic statementfor this see also Sven Bauer, who developed his Fnf Rume (Five rooms) project for this key topic. So generative tools are used in all fields of artistic creation, expanding the possibilities for presentation, distribution and interdisciplinary work. All the textual contributions refer to currently produced works of art. However, this survey is impeded by the different approaches used to develop and present platforms and applications temporarily at festivals and network forums. The corresponding projects cannot always be found on the Web. Some projects only run for a certain length of time for conceptual reasons, sometimes websites are switched off or put to different use. A fully differentiated discussion about the artistic quality of generative artworks has only just got under way. The selection of texts brought together in Generative Tools provides an overview of the current state of the discourse and indicates that further specifications are needed.
[1] Editorial in collaboration with Rudolf Frieling [2] All contribution go back to a symposium on the subject of Generative Tools, to which the Institut fr Mediengestaltung in Mainz invited the authors on May 15, 2004. Florian Cramer also took part, as well as the authors, presenting ten theses with examples on software art in his lecture, which is recorded by video excerpts online.

62

The Methodology of Generative Art

Tjark Ihmels, Julia Riedel http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/generative-tools/generative-art/

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, musical game of dice www.musikserver.at/.../mw_hs.pdf

Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart developed a "musical game of dice"[1] that contained most of the elements that today are associated with generative tools. The piece carries the explanatory subtitle "Composing waltzes with two dice without knowing music or understanding anything about composing. For this, Mozart composed 176 bars of music, from which sixteen were chosen from a list using dice, which then produced a new piece when performed on a piano. Sixteen bars, each with eleven possibilities, can result in 1,116 unique pieces of music. Using this historical example, the methodology of generative art can be appropriately described as the rigorous application of predefined principles of action for the intentional exclusion of, or substitution for, individual aesthetical decisions that sets in motion the generation of new artistic content out of material provided for that purpose. With regard to the piece of music mentioned, it was not a matter of a unique playing by the composer. A work sheet for Adagio KV 516 shows an outline developed from principles similar to those that apply to the game of dice. It can be assumed that behind this process was a serious method that Mozartsometimes used for his compositions. To describe this method, musicologists introduced the concept of "aleatoric music"[2]. The name is derived from the Latin " aleator" (the dice player), and could not be more appropriate for the above example. In aleatoric music, the principles of chance enter into the composition process. A considerable number of musical pieces belong to this genre. A few of these compositions will be presented here in the context of generative tools because fundamental artistic requirements were postulated in those pieces that have to be introduced in the current discussion on generative art. In an exemplary overview, it will be shown in the following that there is no standard artistic position connected with the concept of "generative", but rather, a method of artistic work which was and is employed with the most diverse motives. At the same time, it is interesting to observe that this way of working appears not only in connection with a certain genre, but has in fact established itself in nearly every area of artistic practice (music, literature [3], the fine arts). The works to be presented in this article were chosen as examples depicting basic artistic starting points of "art in defined dependencies". With examples of three artistic viewpoints from music history of the nineteen fifties, it will be first pointed out how different the paths to achieving a goal can be, even though all three artists used aleatoric or serial methods. Beside any considerations of musical theory, the question that needs to be discussed is what contextual and formal possibilities the application of such methods offer.

63

John Cage, Imaginary Landscape No. 4, 1951 In the composition for 12 radios, 24 performers, and director, two performers each operate radios whose kilocycle, amplitude, and timbre changes are notated. The score was conceived using the same methods as those used for the composition The Music of Changes, namely the factors of chance adapted from the Chinese Book of Changes. According to Cage, this complex and time-consuming compositional process has the following goal: It is thus possible to make a musical composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and traditions of the art. The sounds enter the time-space centered within themselves, unimpeded by the service to any abstraction, their 360 degrees of cricumference free for an infinite play of interpenetration. Value judgments are not in the nature of this work as regards either composition, performance, or listening. The idea of relation being absent, anything may happen. A mistake is beside the point,, for once anything happens it authentically is.

John Cage used chance as a defined rule in a rigorous fashion to exclude predetermined connections. He was concerned with making sounds possible in a way completely independent of the composer. To do this, Cage for example used sound carriers (instruments) which were completely independent of his composition. In "Imaginary Landscape No. 4" (1951), he wrote a piece for 24 radios. He laid out rhythms and sequences Using traditional notation. The result, however, remained unplanned, dependent upon the place and time of the performance, broadcast frequencies and radio programme structures. Cage's efforts culminated in the piece entitle "4'33" (1952).
John Cage, 4'33'', 1952

There is only one hard and fast parameter: the length of the piece. Without any help from musicians, theresulting sound is produced from the moment the piece starts from different accompanying noises; for example, the rustling and the clearing of throats by the public, or the rush of traffic. His artistic goal was to have the sounds sort themselves out. Serial music, which developed out of the tradition of aleatoric works[4], mainly represented by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Henri Pousseur or Gottfried Michael Koenig, took the exact opposite approach in the nineteen fifties. Serial compositions subordinate all acoustic characteristics, such as pitch, duration, touch, tone colouring, and loudness independently of each other to the same principles of order; for example, number ratios. In this way, it is possible to force separate musical aspects into a complete relationship on a higher order. As a system of order, mostly series (dependent upon the twelve-tone system) or continuous tones are used, which, in order to avoid repetition, vary constantly. Aesthetic criteria of music are subordinated to the principles of order. This method gives the composer total control over every imaginable detail of composition. The work is independent from the nuances of interpretation and can therefore be seen in a larger context.

64

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Study II, 1954 In further developing Arnold Schnbergs twelve-tone technique, promoted by his students Alban Berg and Anton von Webern, not only should pitch and pitch duration be aligned, but now too, the mathematically-deducible details of tone coloring for the structure of the piece.

It therefore appears logical that for work on serial compositions, electronic instruments were used. "In principal, it is not at all a matter of the use of unusual sounds, but rather that the musical order in the vibrational structure of the sound processes is driven out, so that sounds that occur in a composition are integral components of this and only this piece, and come about from the rules used to construct it " [5]. With the help of the instruments, sound could be constructed from the individual parameters. The introduction of electronic devices made the translation of the composer's directions into machine-readable instructions necessary, so that mathematical operations came in during the process of composing. With "Studie II" (1954), Karlheinz Stockhausen was the first to publish a score for electronic music, indicating the exact placement of instruments and describing how the piece would unfold. In 1959, however, Stockhausen opened up his compositional work to subjective interpretation. In "Zyklus fr einen Schlagzeuger" (cycle for a percussionist) , individual decision possibilities were again allowed, determinedby the presence of a musician. Yannis (Iannis) Xenakis rejected the introduction of series and constructed his serial music (like virtually no other composer) from mathematical, architectonic, and even geological calculations. In establishing his principles of order, he was striving for a working connection between the different spheres of art. He was seeking the threedimensional sound that unites music and architecture. His active collaboration in the studio of Le Corbusier during the 1950s, enabled Xenakis, who had studied architecture in Athens, to introduce his musical skills into architecture. He designed "Pans de Verre Ondulatoires" [6], the window arrangement of the cloister, and the principal faade of "La Tourette" [7] (1955-1959) according to criteria of musical rhythm (see also the "Philips Pavillion" from the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels). Above and beyond this, Xenakis made crucial contributions to the development of the computer programme called UPIC (Unit Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu), [8] which translated graphics into music. Complex, computer-controlled universal music was supposed to serve in simplifying the composing and democratising of music. The goal was to create a programme structure understandable even by laymen, but which nevertheless implemented nuanced facets of constructed sounds. It should be stressed that, through the introduction of a higher order system of rules, and its consistent implementation, works of art were created that succeeded in producing connections between apparently disparate structures and aspects, and this resulted in unique, complex and diverse sounds. A prerequisite for this was ensuring that each musical parameter would be viewed as being independent from every other, that each would be treated as structurally equal, and that the resulting sound would be understood in connection to the time factor. In Cage and Stockhausen, different artistic interpretations of the same working method produced two artists who could not be more different from each other. An area of work was therefore created in which opposite poles could be related to each other. Within this region, bounded by these two extreme positions, Xenakis united music with the working structures of the natural sciences, architecture and the other arts. He tried to apply their principles of order to his music and to influencethem with his own music. It must, however, be stressed that besides anyintellectual considerations which stand behind each position referred to above, the question of design or form was what provided the crucial impetus for 65

artistic work. The general artistic goal, which each of these artists pursued in different ways, was to free sounds from the will of the composer. In this respect, three fundamental thought structures for artistic work with generative elements are indicated that are valid not only for music but also occupy artists in other fields. Generative methodology places its own demands on the fine arts. Since the late 1960s, individual pioneers of computer art have set out to establish generally valid rules for creating generated artistic works. In the following, using works by Max Bense, Manfred Mohr, Harold Cohen and John Horton Conway as examples, four fundamental conditions are presented below for employing generative methodology in the fine arts. By 1965, Max Bense had already introduced the concept of 'generative aesthetics' and defined it as "[] the combination of all operations, rules and theorems [], that can be applied to a number of material elements functioning as symbols and through which aesthetic conditions (distributions or arrangements) can be produced deliberately and methodically [9].
Manfred Mohr, Cubic Limitz, 1972 1977 In Cubic Limit, Mohr introduces the cube into his work as a fixed system with which signs are generated. In the first part of this work phase (197275), an alphabet of signs is created from the twelve lines of a cube. In some works, statistics and rotation are used in the algorithm to generate signs. In others, combinatorial, logical and additive operators generate the global and local structures of the images. In the second part of this work phase (1975 77), cubes are divided into two parts by one of the Cartesian planes. For each image the two partitions contain independent rotations of a cube. They are projected into two dimensions and clipped by a square window (the projection of a cube at 0.0.0 degrees). By rotating both parts of these cubes in small but different increments, long sequences of images are developed.

By using the laws of statistics, Bense hoped to achieve a rational basis for creating images. He subdivided picture surfaces into tiny squares and investigated the individual colour values, looking for internal connections in order to be able to create new images according to predetermined criteria. But he was unsuccessful in this endeavour and gave up this method. From then on, Bense dedicated himself to semiotic examination, thereby pursuing the artistic goal of "[ &] a rational production of art []"[10] through a rational production of symbols. The target of his investigations therefore remained the aesthetic process. "Actually, such aesthetic systems, just like information, are expressions of a distribution and selection process, and both the relative frequency of a symbol as well as the relative freedom that one has to choose it from among other available possibilities, are generally, at the beginning of the aesthetic process, in no way statistically preferable with respect to frequency or choices of other symbols (which are in general set in advance). On the whole, theprobabilities of being chosen and of appearing are, at first, equal for all the symbols in the available group"[11] .The aesthetic act of formation however belongs to "that class of processes that start with purely stochastic equal probabilities in the course of which, however, the probability with which certain symbols can be chosen and appear becomes greater and greater while the probability

66

for certain others [] becomes smaller and smaller, and finally disappears" [12]. Manfred Mohr[13] worked under the theoretical influence of Bense. He attempted to respond to calls for the creation of a rational art, also known as artificial art , through the realisation of logical and unemotional concepts, organized in such a way that all aesthetic decisions were taken over by a computer programme. In the series Cubic Limit (1973-1977) a normal twelve-edged cube is systematically dismantled in order to produce the pictures. The cube remained the form in Mohr's work, later being extended into the four-dimensional, so-called, hypercube with 32 edges. Through the systematic application of operations such as rotation, addition/subtraction etc., an inexhaustible number of aesthetic signs was generated and became the material of Mohrs artistic work. For the cycle Frhe Algorithmische Arbeiten (early algorithmic works) (1969-1972), Mohr added text to his pictures, thus making the procedures used to make graphics by computer more accessible, and, at the same time, demystifying the role of the artist by underlining the automated nature of the decision-making process. At the beginning of the 1970s, Harold Cohen developed the computer programme Aaron[14].
Harold Cohen, Aaron, 1974 Aaron is a computer program that can paint plants and people by itself. It is the work of the California artist Harold Cohen, who programmed the first version back in 1974. However, Aaron's original capabilities did not extend beyond circles and squares. Since then, Cohen has continuously improved the system, making it one of the systems with the longest continuous development in computer history. Cohen taught Aaron more and more rules about perspective, human anatomy and the optical foundations of plants, for example, that branches become increasingly thinner as they get longer. At the end of the 1980s, a series of works was created on people in a botanical garden. At the beginning of the 1990s, Aaron learned how to use colors. Since then, it has been capable of perpetually creating unique originals of people and plants since the system can combine many different rules for drawing. Other motifs are outside of its repertoire.

This drawing machine first produced abstract and then figurative drawings, to which Cohen later added colour. In the 1980s, Cohen succeeded in equipping the programme with the ability to make independent colour choices as well as to apply the colours itself. The programme became functional with a complex set of rules in which Cohen formulated generally accepted aesthetic requirements for lines, surfaces, forms and colours and analysed their arrangement on a sheet of paper. In this way, he worked out the generally accepted characteristics of each of the elements and provided them with small inaccuracies for purposes of variation. Automated creation then, must first of all proceed from ageneralizable representability, not from the individual characteristics of a form. What is represented is not a tree, but rather the principle. Bense and Cohen attempted to turn aesthetic decision-making processes into algorithms, that is, to analyse the basic creative questions and break them down into workable units. This method clearly differs from that of image generation by means of fractal sets, something which was

67

becoming very popular and which merely translated mathematical approximation processes into points of colour. So a canon was created with possible rules for automated application of creative decisions. In 1970, the American mathematician John Horton Conway developed his Game of Life[15] as one of a series of so-called simulation games.
John Horton Conway, Game of Life John H. Conway is known for his work on combinatory game theory, including his books On Numbers and Games) and Winning Ways For Your Mathematical Plays, in collaboration with Elwyn R. Berlekamp and Richard K. Guy). John Horton Conway is also known for his example of a two-dimensional cellular automaton. Each cell can take on two states: alive or dead. With this cellular automaton, complex systems can easily be modelled and studied. The name comes from the fact that it first emulated a predator-prey system. If a predator field is surrounded by four prey fields, a prey field is replaced with a predator field. If there is an empty field next to two adjacent prey fields, it also becomes a prey field. If a prey field is the neighbour of two prey fields, it becomes an empty field. Numerous variants of these basic rules are possible.

This simulation involves the development of succeeding generations of cells on a chessboardtype grid. Depending on their neighbouring cells, they either remain alive, die or create new life. The development of the following generation depends on certain rules, specified for its predecessor generation. Even with relatively simple output configurations, it is extremely difficult to foresee the next-generation constellation. It has to be played, and only by playing can one experience the perpetual surprises. Game of Life is very highly regarded among the rule-dependent designs and has gained a cult status among very different groups of users. Its rules interested mathematicians, the clarity of design attracted many of an artistic persuasion and, last but not least, the players were enthusiastic. A great many computer programmes were developed that copied Game of Life, and during the seventies and eighties it caught the attention of many computer users. The life spans and graphic forms of the most varied populations of cells were observed and analysed. Alongside the short-lived organisms, stable populations develop from connections made with two or three neighbouring cells_these Conway referred to as still lifes. The constellations were systematically given names like Blinker, Glider or Eater. From the meetings of such constellations, glider guns for example, can develop after thirty generations. There were numerous investigations, some of which continued down to the 1,102nd generation, reported a stable population and described it in detail. The fascination of the game was to be found both in itscomplexity and its predictable unpredictability. Game of Life made it possible to subordinate graphic aspects to a continuous system and, in so doing, to generate forms independent of the individual: this was achieved by basing it on an algorithm modelled on the life cycle. For many of the artists who became involved with generative methodology, Conway's Game of Life represented a comprehensible starting point. In March 2001, the interdisciplinary artist Brian Eno gave a lecture on his method of composition with reference to Conway's Game of Life at the London ICA and introduced the term generative to the music scene. His work Generative Music 1 was first performed in 1996 at the Urban Aboriginals XI Festival in the Parochial Church in Berlin.

68

Brian Eno, Generative Music 1, 1996 Brian Enos' installation, Generative Music 1 dated 1996 (exhibited within the framework of the 11th Urban Aboriginals Festival at the Parochialkirche in Berlin) was, as an event, rather unspectacular, but it actually had revolutionary potential with respect to its manner of production; the music was generated by a PC set up between two rows of pews. With the help of a software program called SSEYO Koan, it continuously produced short ambience pieces which were all situated within certain parameters determined by Eno, but which were changed each time by the computer brain. Eno said: I truly believe that our grandchildren will one day say to us: do you mean you really listened to the same piece over and over again? This program was able to select from among about 200 sounds and then compose a piece out of them. In this way, new improvisations and variations were perpetually created.

With Generative Music 1, Eno, who had already created important works featuring varying changeable sounds for his ambient music in the mid-seventies, reduced the task of the composer to defining the connection between sound and individual parameters, and the choice of the available sound characteristics. The implementation of generative music allowed the technical development of commercial software[16], capable of producing perpetually changing music. Brian Eno is reported to have said: I think our grandchildren will probably look at us in wonder and say: 'You mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?[17] It's an idea that clearly relates to current ambitions within generative art_to create a constantly evolving form, a form that exhausts its potential for development as a result of this process. Rules are unavoidable for this kind of art because continuous decisions on the further development of particular stages have to be taken which, in turn will influence what follows. The specific rules necessary here are to be understood in terms of value-free systems for algorithmic process control. An algorithm is a finite list of well-defined instructions . For each problem within a class of problems, an algorithm, after going through many steps, will finally arrive at a solution by implementing the instructions one after the other [18]. If then, a complex set of rules such as that provided by an algorithm is to be the basis for generating form, it begs the question of what requirements must be met in order to lend expression to a form. Strictly speaking there are two different andpartial aspects to be addressed here. First of all, generally accepted rules have to be found by which forms and colours can be generated (see Bense and Cohen). Secondly a system for the continuous change and variation of the forms to be generated needs to be devised which will take the first set of rules into account (see Conway). Against this background, the artistic fascination with generative methodology concentrated henceforth on continuous processes. The technology used plays a major role. It substantially determines both the possibilities and the extent of the systematic application of rules as was shown with all the work presented so far (cube synthesizer or computer, for example). The Internet offers ideal conditions for the generation of art by continuous processes, providing an interface by which many people can simultaneously work on a project. In addition, it opens an almost inexhaustible pool of new forms and subject matter for collective access. What is remarkable is that despite the rapid spread of this medium since the 1990s and the concomitant idea of democratisation and deindividualization of a process-governed form, no fundamentally new artistic positions with reference to generative methods were developed. What is special about the Internet is that it is not restricted simply to one use, it moves across genres, finding applications in every conceivable field of artistic activity. It makes connections possible between the most diverse artistic fields and disciplines. For example, process visualization, animation, installations, sample music, programmed applications etc. The following selected examples from these 69

fields illustrate the versatility and range of applications for generative methodology in the Internet age. In a kind of automated collage creation, websites such as http://www.potatoland.com/shredder search for pictures by means of search engines, or by entering URLs, and assemble them in line with given parameters to create independent artistic works. In Drawing Machines 1-12[19], Marius Watz documents the information flow on the Norwegian governments server. He draws distinctions between micro and macro structures in the dataflow, generating artistic works from this over a specified period of time.
Marius Watz Drawing Machines 1-12 In Drawing Machines 1-12, Marius Watz documents the information flow on the Norwegian governments server. He draws distinctions between micro and macro structures in the dataflow, generating artistic works from this over a specified period of time.

At the end of the nineties, the group of artists from Cologne known as Knowbotic Research created a work theycalled IO_dencies[20] (a model for several city projects), in which they made visible the urban force fields such as the city of Tokyo (1997), for example. Ten city areas, selected for their density of traffic and business activity, were declared "intensity zones" on the basis of this energy potential. They could be divided into sub-groups (humans, information, economy, traffic, architecture) and could be altered graphically, either individually or together.

Knowbotic Research IO_dencies IO_dencies is the incorporeal description of a project series in which electronic interfaces, treated as behavioral models, are conceived and tested in collaboration with participants of different cultural and social contexts. Investigated during the parallel project phases (in Tokyo, So Paulo, Ruhrgebiet / Germany, Venice) are specific forms of creative action as well as the interventions of current constructions in public spaces. In the exhibition, the current conditions of these inter-discursive information engines are made accessible on an intuitive and abstract level, and showcase in part an electronically-supported public realm.

70

In 2002, the group of artists called Mashica programmed their work Hommage to Walter Marchetti_movements of a fly on window between 8 am and 7 pm one day in May, 1967 on a Website http://mosca.mashica.com. A number of flies from 0 to 99 move at random across the imaginary window of the computer screen. The only link on the page leads to a listing of the mouse positions traced by the user during the session. A symbolic fly then crawls once more over the mouse route, thereby visually representing the fact that the users' behaviour is just as aimless and random as that of the other flies. The forms and figures generated in this animation appear to have independent life, and, freed from linear dramaturgy, to have overcome defining rules. The soda group works in the same domain with its project sodaconstructor [21]. This involves the building of a graphical creature that moves back and forth with simulated independence. The joints of the structure can be moved with the mouse and it can be turned, pushed or distorted. Alternatively, it can be influenced by virtual gravitation, collisions or friction. The structure can be equipped with other mass constellations, even reconstructed, and can produce sounds.
soda sodaconstructor http://www.sodaplay.com/constructor/ Graphical elements move about with a simulated life of their own. The ankles of these constructed beings can be moved using the computer mouse, they can be turned, shifted or decomposed. As an option these constructions can be influenced using virtual gravitation, the impact of a collision and friction. They can be equipped with new coordinates for weight and density, reconstructed in total and made to produce sounds.

Carsten Nicolai used generative methodology in his installation bausatz noto (construction kit noto infinity), at the Galerie Eigen + Art in Leipzig in 1998. Four record turntables (Technics MKII) were placed next to one another, set within a table. On each of the turntables lay a record. On a total of 48 grooves loops were added which could be played over headphones or external loudspeakers in the gallery foyer. Because of the high variability of the playing, an infinite variety of versions could be generated by the individual elements. Carsten Nicolai supplied the material and the equipment; the public (as the DJ) produced the sounds. The results depended on chance and were not repeatable.
Carsten Nicolai In 1997-98, under the sign (infinity), Carsten Nicloai developed a series of works in various media and on various sites. The use of recurring modules makes them a single project. The basic elements are an amorphous sign that Nicolai christened the 'snowman syndrome' and 72 sounds, 45-second loops he calls Spins. The quiet, repeating sounds recall fire engine sirens, whale song, bird chirping, or African drumming. But all are tones distorted and processed from everyday devices such as radio, fax machines, telephones, modems, or human speech. The sound waste of our means of communication, multiply overlaid and mixed, becomes a minimal music sound track.

71

Carsten Nicolai, , 1997 1998 I am fascinated by sounds, images, and signs, the imaginary forces they develop, and how they directly affect everyone. You can't grasp them or capture them in words, and yet everyone perceives them. They disturb and move you. When you walk through the city, you are accompanied by and wrapped in thousands of sounds, noises, and signals. What do you retain in your filter? What just goes past you?

Carsten Nicolai, , 1997 1998 In the city of Kassel, the visitor encounters two phenomena whose connection is not immediately apparent. As graffit on walls and sidewalks, but also as a button on the lapels or t-shirts visitors, he sees Nicolai's amorphous sign, without any indication of its origin. 72 different sounds can also be unexpectedly heard in public spaces: from loudspeakers at the train station or airport, in the department store, or on the regional radio station. 'Many people did not perceive this work as art,' says Nicolai. Carsten Nicolai, , 1997 1998 Aside from the documenta catalog, an event and an installation demonstrated that this functionless sign and the equally mysterious sounds were connected: on opening night, June 21, 1997, loudspeakers built into a stage played all 72 sounds. The site is the central, unused empty space of the asending and descending spiral of the department store parking garage directly beside the Fridericianum. Beginning from the sound material of the 'Spin', five musicians from the groups '', 'komet', and 'byetone' develop a live performance on this stage. A large sun-sail floating above everything bears this sign, which is also found throughout the city. Afterward, the stage and sail remain as the installation 'stage', where the 72 sounds can be heard for the remaining 100 days of the documenta exhibition.

72

Carsten Nicolai, , 1997 1998 Part 2: Labor In the small room of the gallery EIGEN+ART, Carsten Nicolai exhibits the equipment he used to produce the 72 sounds, a mixture of old and new technology: oscilloscope, sinus generator, mixing board, amplifier, and loudspeakers now permit the visitor to interactively explore the potential of this sound laboratory.

Carsten Nicolai, , 1997 1998 Part 3: Construction Set noto In the framework of a solo exhibition in the Galerie fr Zeitgenssische Kunst showing primarily Carsten Nicolai's paintings and objects, visitors can use record players on a table to play four selected 'Spin' vinyl records. The professional DJ technology allows intuitive mixing, acceleration, and deceleration of the sounds to ever-new rhythms and structures.

Carsten Nicolai, , 1997 1998 Part 4: construction set.noto infinity The provisional end point of '' is this Internet project in the framework of the Tokyo Goethe Institute's Techno-Cultures. Here, eight of the 72 'Spin' sounds can be controlled and mixed using a minipulable mixer found on the WWW page and the four record players of 'construction set noto '.

With his Fnf Rumeproject was developed in the course of a research scholarship at the Institute for Media Design. http://www.img.fh-mainz.de/~sbauer. (five rooms) project (2003), Sven Bauer made the task of the serial composers visual_the freeing of form from the artist. He sees his artistic work as research. Bauer prepares his research results in an almost didactic way. Using an approach similar to that of the serial composers, he isolated five design parameters (colour, substance, position, inclination and abstraction) and subjected the form to the so-called attractor principle, borrowed from astronomy. In each of the five rooms, formative influence is assigned to the three attractors, which rotate around the threedimensional form (the cube as initial form). The 15 attractors (three per room) are assigned continuously controllable degrees of freedom. They may therefore suddenly change their 73

movement, and by so doing, partially shift the influence radius on the object, they may slow down or even come to a complete stop. By this means, Bauer succeeds in carrying out test arrangements for detailed settings as well as giving free rein to chance aspects and making possible the combination of both. The respective parameters are transferred to a twodimensional graphic which then endlessly reflects the interaction (modifiable within the predetermined framework) of all attractors. In contrast to the application-oriented examples mentioned above, there is a smaller number of artists for whom rules and instructions play a central role in artistic endeavour [software art][22]. For them it is not a case of applying foreign systems and rules in order to free the form from the individual, but rather to define the system of rules itself as a work of art. "dot-walk"[23] from socialfiction.org raises regimentation to an art form by giving instructions for a walk through a city. These instructions correspond to an algorithm and can be traced back to a simple computer programme: //Classic.walk Repeat [ 1 st street left 2 nd street right 2 nd street left ] The psychogeographical project "dot.walk" supplies instructions (software) on how to use a city (hardware). In principle, however, this artistic position offers no compelling case for involvement with programmed software, providing instead a general reflection on rules and their use. The artistic interest in this case is concentrated on the instruction. In conclusion we can say that generative methodology was adopted across genres and over a wide time span. The middle years of the last centurywitnessed the emergence of artistic approaches in which this method was seen not only as an aid, but also as an integral part of artists' work. The method itself however was not central in their view, but, recognised as the principle suited to the realisation of their artistic goals, was used accordingly. At the same time, computer artists were involved in searching for ways of generating forms. With the spread of the Internet, a tool was available which carried the principle of generation within itself. It was appropriated into all areas of artistic creation and offered new dimensions in representation, distribution and interdisciplinary co-operation. From this, many areas of application were discovered in which the generative method could be used. Along with all these application-oriented uses, the rules involved, as well as their programming, began to attract the interest of artists. What was of interest now was not the rule as a means to create form, but rather the rule as such. On the basis of the works referred to here, we can say that as a principle, generative art justifies from within itself the necessity of its being generative.

74

Notes:
[1] The notes of this piece, which is not cited in Kchel, can be found at http://www.musikserver.at/content/logicfun/mw_hs.pdf. [2] Cf. Klaus Ebbeke, Aleatorik, in MGG, Sachteil, Bd. 1, Spalte 435-445 and Reinhard Dhl, Exkurs ber Aleatorik). [3] In this regard, refer to Georg Philipp Harsdrffers "Frauen-Zimmer Gesprech-Spiel[en]" (1641-49), in which "Wrterzuwurf (the calling out of words)" is presented as a parlour game. Cf. Reinhard Dhl, Vom Computertext zur Netzkunst. Vom Bleisatz zum Hypertext. [4] Cf. Rudolf Frisius, Serielle Musik, in MGG Sachteil, Bd. 8, Spalte 1328-1354 and also in www.frisius.de/rudolf/texte/tx919.htm. Karlheiz Essl, Serialismus als Denkmethode in [http://www.essl.at/bibliogr/stockhausen.html#L2]. [5] Karlheinz Stockhausen, Arbeitsbericht 1952/53 p.35 as well as Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Bd.1: Aufstze 1952-1962 zur Theorie des Komponierens, edited and with an afterword by Dieter Schnebel, Cologne 1963. [6] Cf. Sven Sterken, Les annes Le Corbusier, in Litinraire architectual de Iannis Xenakis, http://www.iannisxenakis.org/real.htm. [7] Willy Boesiger and Hans Girsberger, Le Corbusier 1910-65, Basel, Boston, Berlin 1999, p. 256-277. [8] Cf. http://www.ccmix.com. [9] Max Bense, Aestetica: Einfhrung in die neue Aesthetik, (1.Aufl. 1965) 2. erw. Aufl., Baden-Baden 1982, p. 345. [10] Manfred Mohr, in Ausst. Kat.: Algorithmus und Kunst: Die przisen Vergngen, Hamburg 1993, p. 38. [11] Max Bense, ibid. p.214. [12] Max Bense, ibid. p.215. [13] Cf. http://www.lastplace.com/EXHIBITS/S/Spotlight/Mmohr/artiststatement.htm. and Mihai Nadin, Alea iacta est, in: http://emohr.com/tx_nadin_d.html. [14] Cf. http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com, http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w05/cohen_h.htm. [15] Cf. http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/Life32.html, http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html, http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife. [16] The software used is SSEYO Koan Pro. The Koan software offers various tools for the production of selfgenerating music. Firstly, in 1994 came Koan Plus, a player which generated music from audio files. Brian Eno worked with the beta version of Koan Pro which came onto the market in 1996. Koan Pro is author software that makes it possible for the user to define and edit musical parameters specifying the framework within which the computer can vary and improvise. SSEYO have greatly expanded their range and the software is useable online. Further information, free test versions and plugins at http://www.sseyo.com. [17] Cf. http://www.techno.de/frontpage/5_09/fourban.html. [18] Frieder Nake, sthetik als Informationsverarbeitung, Berlin, Heidelberg 1974, p.88. [19] Cf. http://odin.dep.no/tegnemaskin/index_e.html drawingmachine13.net, the continuation of this project is now online, cf. http://www.unlekker.net/proj/drawingmachine13. [20] Cf. http://www.krcf.org/krcfhome/ODENS_TOKYO/1IOdencies1.html. [21] Cf. http://www.sodaplay.com/constructor. [22] Cf. Florian Cramer and Ulrike Gabriel, Software Art, Jury-Statement Transmediale, 15.August 2001 in http://www.netzliteratur.net/cramer/software_art_-_transmediale.html, http://www.runme.org, http://www.rhizome.org. [23] Cf. http://www.socialfiction.org/dotwalk and http://runme.org/project/+dot-walk/.

75

76

Bioart, Between Ethics and Aesthetics

Tiziana Gemin

By means of technology these days' sciences produce aesthetics images so it is not surprising the artistic field produces works which look like genetic engineering surgical procedures or laboratory experiments. Faced with some operations our aesthetic but also ethics sense is often put in a critical position. We are forced to redefine the border between animate and inanimate world and our definitions of subject and object. Bio art art manipulating life mechanisms doesn't have a precise thematic manifesto and it involves a lot of very different projects whose contents and methodologies are relative to biotechnology. The promoter of various bio art exhibitions and author of the Biotech

Art book Jens Hauser gave a lecture at Ars Electronica 2005 entitled Bio Art Taxonomy of an etymological monster on the difficulty of finding bio art works parameters or limits.

Almost ten years ago to appeal the audience bio art works were based on conventional art forms iconography. They were genetic images and virtual creatures' sculptures. Genetic art has been a synonym of bio art for a long time. Think of D N A11 work where the basis of life is codified and then reproduced as a visual icon. It's enough to give a DNA sample using an appropriate kit and DNA11 creates a unique and unrepeatable graphic image. But scientific knowledge is gone beyond: for example some discoveries were made in the field of tissue and cell culture, in neurophysiology, in bio robotics, in the synthesis of artificial DNA sequences and in xenotransplants.

77

There are two different approaches to create artificial life: you can make use of an immaterial code or there's a more innovative approach: comparing bio technology to a practical, physic application. The concept of life as code is losing its appeal and today we tend to concretely use organic material. However it's still difficult to call bio art the computer simulations of biologic processes. Today's transgenic art artists tend to use organic materials and among them there's Eduardo

Kac that gave birth through his project GFP Bunny gave birth to becomes fluorescent under peculiar light conditions.

Alba , a transgenic rabbit who

According to Hauser one of the essential effects of this recent bio art metamorphosis is that bio art is moving towards a re-materialization of products. This doesn't mean there's a regression process and we're coming back to an art focused on the object: instead of graphic or figurative representations we now tend to perform, to find connections between bio technologies and economic, politic and social conditions. Bio art is now between real life and the symbolic reign of art. .

Another aspect of re-materialized bio art is in the use of the body as a game arena like it is in body art. So aesthetics becomes invasive as the project of the French duo Art Orient Object shows: they're programming a transfusion of filtered panda's blood. Body art artists too are coming close to tissue culture;

Stelarc wants to build an extra ear and

Orlan wants to create a culture of hybrid skins. They both collaborated with the Australian
research group TC&A (Tissue Culture and Art Project). Bio art and body art have also in common the fact their works live on as photographs or video documentaries.

78

Finally Hauser says it's impossible to give a unique definition of bio art or to connect it with specific procedures or materials. Bio art is above all a live art transformation that manipulates genetic materials. The Disembodied cuisine by TC&A performing installation is an example illustrating this complexity. During the Art Biotech exhibition an experiment was made to produce meat without killing. Artists cultivated some synthetic tissues starting from frogs muscle cells and they have been daily fed these cell cultures in a lab inside the exposition space for eight weeks. After this period they cooked the small pseudo-meat beefsteaks as a nouvelle cuisine plate they served up some volunteers. There were some escaped to death frogs staring at them from some aquariums. Although Hauser's argumentations are unambiguous I think the role of the artist is not yet well defined. It's not clear if the artist should give his contribute to knowledge production or he should warn people about possible wrong genetic uses. Bio artists seem to be interested in the relationship between these research areas and the social landscape but there's no answer yet even because the artists can constantly reinvent their role.

www.dna11.com www.ekac.org http://artorienteobjet.free.fr www.t c a.uwa.edu.au

79

80

Mythical Bodies I
Verena Kuni

Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-)creation in the fantasy space of technological creation (I): Old and new mythologies of artificial humans

Cyborgs are hybrid creaturesnot only as crosses between machine and organism, but also as constructs in which individual as well as social perceptions and projections, realities and fictions fuse together. If one looks at the images in which fantasies of cyborgs find concrete expression, at first they appear to fit smoothly into the history of artificial creations. This can be particularly exemplified by their form: Like their precursors in the literature and art of former centuries, it is striking how many cyborg configurations [1] in the arts as well as in popular cultureare modeled after the human (body) image. But what distinguishes them as creatures of an age marked by rapid developments in the areas of information and biotechnology from the artificial humans of the past? What expression do the promises of monsters (D. Haraway), which are associated with these developments, find in the images we have of artificial creations in human form? What can cyborg configurations as formations of (self-)creation in the fantasy space of technological creation tell us about our image of humans? Against the background of these questions, this two-part essay deals with thecontinuities and discontinuities that can be observed when one views current cyborg configurations in the field of tension between old and new phantasms of the creation of artificial humans. Part I introduces the old and new mythologies of the artificial human one encounters in historical and contemporary texts and images from literature and the arts, all the way to popular science fiction. Under the headword Mythical Bodies II, part II directs its focus on the monstrous promises and posthuman anthropomorphisms of stories of technological creation as reflected in computer-generated visions in contemporary art and our current game culture. In the beginning there was In the beginning there was an idea that had to take shape. Or more accurately: Each and every idea longs to take shape. It is not only this that brings an idea to life, but also what makes it communicable. It is form that lends it reality, which it already potentially has. This is why cyborg fantasies and cyborg configurations are steadfastly linked to one another. When Donna Haraway writes at the beginning of A Cyborg Manifesto that [a] cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction, [2] then we automatically try to translate this definition into images. How are we to imagine these hybrids? What place do they have in our social reality, in our fictions? If they are, that is if they are already both here as well as there, should it not then be possible to recognize and describe them as cyborgs? Recognizing of course requires knowledge about what is to be recognized. We will have to ask about characteristics that allow us to recognizeand identifycyborgs. And then when we have developed ideas about cyborgs and want to communicate them, we will have to give them characteristics that likewise allow others to recognize cyborgs. However, these characteristics do not develop graphicness until they can be linked with vivid ideas. Vivid ideas require contours in order to be able to take off as figures and become perceptible. Still, this says little about the course of the contours and the shape that produces ideas. And yet it says a lot, namely that we give them a body.

81

The idea of a body that is a hybrid of machine and organism allows us to virtually imagine and this principal potential should be kept in mindan almost endless spectrum of possible embodiments. [3] the image of humans? Cyborg bodies and their contours In view of the space of possibilities, it may at first seem strange that a conspicuously large number of the cyborg configurations we encounter in art have more or less human contours. This has historical and mythological reasons, in which on the other hand history and myth are considerably intermixed. First of all, let us refer back to the birth of the term cyborg. The Cyborg study is the study of man. This is the powerful first sentence of the final report by the same name that was submitted by a working group to NASA on May 15, 1963. Its subtitle was equally as striking: Engineering man for space. [4] When in 1960 Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline gave their idea the name cyborg, it was actually a matter of imagining a future humana human capable of surviving in space. [5] Something decisive would distinguish it from a common astronaut: technical apparatuses that equip the human body with supplementary functions and abilities, guaranteeing its ability to survive, were to be integrated into this body and organically fused with it. A small step for the fantasy, but a giant leap for humankind: This is the fundamental philosophy that until this very day has left its mark on cyborg utopias in science and technology as well as in the arts. However, we can also refer back to the deep rootedness of the cyborg utopias in the fantasy space of artificial creations, in which one idea has always proven to be particularly fertile: That of creating an artificial human. In Western culture, the traditional mirror relation between a human's godlike qualities and God's humanlike qualities plays a decisive role: Humans understand themselves as the measure of all thingsand in their ability to give life and procreate, they know themselves to be near their Creator. However, what separates them from the latter isand this is equally as decisivetheir finiteness, which also means the finiteness of their creative abilities. To overcome this finitenessabove all mortality, which inChristianity attests to the humanity of the Son of God, while his resurrection to eternal life proves his divinityis a desire that has lastingly characterized humans up to this very day. As it were: A fantasy of omnipotence that is nourished by the (self- )realization of human weakness, vulnerability and finiteness. The longing to be able to create artificial life, and in particular artificial humans, has its root in the wish to overcome one's own finiteness. Viewed against this background, it is no wonder that we encounter the embodiments of cyborgs primarily in human form. In other words: Cyborg configurations may herald the desire to overcome the human, all too human (F. Nietzsche) and thus be characteristic of posthuman thought. However, in that they originate in the human imagination and in that they always have to allow themselves to be compared with humans, they are decisively defined from an anthropocentric perspective. This is another reason why while they go beyond what is human, the images we have of cyborgs remain bound to those human contours they at the same time are supposed to breach. The Promises of Monsters This tension between being bound and overcoming is characteristic for the notions we have of cyborgs, and correspondingly also for the images with which we shape these notions. Donna Haraway stresses: A cyborg exists when two kinds of boundaries are simultaneously problematic: 1) that between animals (or other organisms) and humans, and 2) that between self-controlled, self-governing machines (automatons) and organisms, especially humans

82

(models of autonomy). The cyborg is the figure born of the interface of automaton and autonomy. [6] As long as the boundaries between animal and human or technical and human remain clearly marked, this has no consequences for humans, who believe to have the controlling power over animals and machines in their hands. However, cyborgs show that these boundaries are becoming permeable. [7] What this firstly means is a threatabove all one of the loss of control, which not lastly is a loss of control over one's own body and over its contours, which determine a person's identity. At the same time, however, there are a number of promisesthat are bound to one such dissolution of boundaries. Donna Haraway appropriately calls these the promises of monsters [8] which, as will be shown in the following, become vividly apparent in fantasies of cyborg configurations. The paradigm of the technicalin particular in the age of new technologiespromises the overcoming of weaknesses associated with biological existence, particularly the frailty and mortality of the human body. This is not only a feature of Klines and Clyne's cyborg concept, but also of numerous cyborg fantasies we encounter in science fiction literature and in filmslet us look at, for instance, the Terminator embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the series of films by the same name. [9] . From certain viewpoints, positive qualities can also be gotten from the animal-likefor example where instincts and abilities are more highly developed in animals than in humans. The Borgs from the science fiction series Star Trek, [10] who at first glance seem fairly humanoidand who are admittedly not cyborgs but living beings who have passed through another evolution than humansare characterized by a collective, interfaced intelligence modeled after species of animals who tend to form swarms and colonies, which makes them strategically superior to humans. And after all, the promise of a potential for liberation can also lie in a loss of control where the mechanisms of control represent oppression or at least restriction. It is precisely this potential that Donna Haraway highlights in her A Cyborg Manifesto : According to Haraway, cyborgs break with the tradition of a creation controlled and dominated by humans, a creation that refers to a genealogy of creators and creatures and in which neither the boundaries between humans and animals or between humans and machines, nor those between subjects and objects are clearly defined. [11] This erodes a number of classic dichotomies upon which the supremacy of the Western, white, male is traditionally based. Those who do not profit from traditional relations of power may find it much more appealing to discover cyborg potentials for themselves. Interface gender One of the interfaces at which the wish to breach the boundaries prescribed by the measure of humans andthe effectiveness of bonds with the measure of humans clash in a particularly striking way is gender. This can already be discerned in the two boundaries whose becoming permeable Haraway identifies as the condition for the emergence of cyborg configurations. [12] The animal is associated with the bond with sexuality and biological sex, which as instinctive and unbridled is subject to the maxim of the survival of the speciesboth falls short of and transgresses what is considered to be the condition humana. The loss of the human ethos of a consciously regulated sexuality would at the same time be accompanied by an abandonment of control functions, which can be imagined as liberating. In contrast, the paradigms of the technologicaland this already applies for automatons as well as machines, all the more for IT systemsseem to imply the promise of overcoming the bonds with body-gender reproduction. However, automatization can also imply a delegation or an abandonment of human functions of consciousness. The notion of a sex machine is equally compatible with the animal as well as the technological. Therefore with regard to the aspect of gender or sexuality, something ambivalent, whose oscillations will be dealt with later, is attached to both figures of transgression. 83

But for the time being one could ask why cyborgs even have to have gender: Must not one assume that an artificial creation does not require a sexual act of procreation either for its manufacture or for its reproduction? This is a question that with complete justification could be directed towards the precursors to cyborgstherefore the fantasies of artificial humans we encounter in cultural and art history: From the legendary golem from Jewish mythology, [13] Pygmalion's living sculpture, and the uncanny doll Olimpia in E. T. A. Hoffmann's novella Der Sandmann, [14] to Frankenstein's monster in Mary Shelley's novel of the same name; [15] and numerous science fiction fantasies, from Villiers de l'Isle Adam's The Future Eve [16] and the woman robot Maria in Fritz Lang's Metropolis [17] to the replicants in Blade Runner. [18] If one looks at the interface gender here, certainly the answer turns out quite clearly: The bodies of these creaturesthis is demonstrated bothby the stories that tell of them as well as the images that are in circulation about themare very clearly marked by a gender (and bring about meaning) that is more or less oriented towards traditional concepts of maleness and femaleness. Artificial humans or anthropomorphism as imperative The imperative of anthropomorphism states: Gender belongs to the successful production of a human. And this means a gender that is one or the other, in any case one which allows unambiguous classification. This is the law with which scientific, juridical and social authorities in our society must equally comply with, as they appear to be at pains to assure its continued existence. They are not only backed up by the cultural history of religious and mythological traditions that relegate dual or mixed gendered figures to the realm of the numinous or the monstrous. For long stretches this is also reflected by the (art) history of fantasies of artificial humans. In these tales of creation it is the decided aim to create an ideal-typical embodiment of the natural gender, a real man or a future Eve, by means of art and technology. In other words: What distinguishes or should distinguish these artificial/artistic creations from natural humans is not only their outer perfection, but also their having overcome human, all too human weaknesses. This is what they have in common with cyborgs. However, what identifies these kinds of artificial creatures as perfect humans of a second nature is not only their human shape, but also their genderwhich by the way, as will be shown, is not seldom in a specific relation of tension with that of their creators or their manufacturers, who in turn represent the side of the humans who as a godlike artist or ingenious engineer follow in the footsteps of God the Creator. The future Eve The protagonist in the science fiction novel The Future Eve, the inventor Edison, proudly prophesies his future Evean incarnation of the eternally female created by means of the highest skill and most modern technology: But this copy will outlive the original and always look young and alive. It is artificialflesh that will never age. [19] His artificial woman may be modeled after a living woman and is for this reason a copyhowever she is a copy that in several respects is supposed to be superior to the original. Above all in that she triumphs over the impermanent nature of human life and human beauty. In addition, Hadalythis is the name of Edison's future Eveis also highly intelligent and has refined manners, traits that make her all the more desirable. Unlike humans of the same sex, because she for her part has no active desire or other further demands on men, she exhibits a certain emotional coldness that even her admirers find uncanny. At this point the perfection of the artificial womanquite similar to the animated doll Olimpia in E. T. A. Hoffmanns Der Sandmann, 84

[20] reveals itself to be a monstrous trait. For this reason, Edison will ultimately destroy his invention. Meanwhile, in the age of information and biotechnological producibility, Hadaly appears to embody herself under new circumstances. In the meantime, in the profane reality of postmodern everyday media, the future Eve has taken shape in a highly prosaic way. The femmes fatales digitales who conjures up our Internet connection on the monitorthese are those not always picture-perfect but current cliches of beings who virtually exceed femininity, such as those we otherwise encounter everywhere in the mass media. Appropriately, as early as 1997 the first issue of Konr@d, the glossy magazine published in conjunction with exhackers, presented Naomi Campbell on its cover as a sexy cyborg; on the inside of the magazine they had her pose with her knees turned inwards and eyes chastely lowered. [21] In other ways, too, digital technologies and their image carriers or image multiplication equipment prove to be true bachelor machines. [22] Whether one looks at the concepts for willing avatars and virtual film divas, such as those the MIRALab has been creating for several years now, artificial pop starlets such as Kyoko Date [23] or computer game figures and heroines such as Lara Croft [24] or the new Eve we encounter in Xavier Roca's REConstructing EVE (1999): They are all in their own way sisters of the future Eve idealized surrogate women who have what real women do not have or promise to deliver, what real women in themeantime refuse to. And they are all copies without an original. This even applies to MIRAlab's virtual Marilyn: As similar as she may be in her outer contours, her facial expression and gestures to her model, the actress Marilyn Monroe, she is nothing more than the copy of an image consisting of data recordsand strictly speaking even an artificial figure in which the image of another artificial figure is brought back to life.
Javier Roca RE-Constructing EVE Xavier Roca's RE-constructing EVE is an Extended Virtual Environment (EVE), whose title refers to Villiers de l'Isle Adam's novel L'Eve future (1886). Viewers enter a space that is populated by bodies in various configurations and in metamorphosis.

In this sense, future Eve reanimates nothing more than an old image: Eva before or after the Fall of humanity. Although the biblical legend maintains that this Eve was the first natural woman, we know very well that she is nothing more than a phantasm. Creators and their creatures This myth of creation has something to do with art, yet it was the sculptor Pygmalion who first allowed man to emerge as the creator of an animated figureas an artist, who like a lover worships his statue so enduringly that the gods take pity upon him and endow the image with life. In the future Eve this miraculous animation of art to life repeats itselfit is certainly not coincidental that it occurs in mirror correspondence to those cyborg myths that would like to see flesh equipped by the art of technology. However, what distinguishes modern variations of the Pygmalion legend is the fact that the modern creatorartist- engineer is no longer dependent upon the mercy of the gods, but he understands how to endow his artificial woman with life himself. This connects her with the tales of another thread which also leads to the cyborgs; and although it originally knew no female creators, it did know male creatures. This thread, too, begins in myth and religion: Here we find

85

Adam Kadmon, the primordial man out of clayand the golem, whom Rabbi Low created out of clay after the model of the first man. [25] In her feminist science fiction novel He, She and Itone of the texts that inspired Donna Haraway to write her Cyborg ManifestoMarge Piercy interwove the story of the golem with that of a cyborg in order to expose the trail that leads into modernity. [26] Piercy's golemlike that in the legendis created as a dimwitted helper, as a simple-minded fighting machine that does not learn to be a dangerous being until it has learned to be likea human. In this respect he resemblesin contrast by the way to her cyborg Yod, whose artificial intelligence is trained by a woman who makes him into a being gifted with both reason and empathy [27] the main character in one of the most well known tales of artificial humans: The monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the first creature not to be born under the sign of art, but under that of modern (natural) science. [28] And it is the first creature that deserves to be called a cyborg: Because here, human flesh is revitalized by means of technology; an organism is technologically endowed with life. Stories of creation, revisited Against this background it is no wonder the under the sign of cyborg configurations, the old stories of artificial humans are also celebrating a boomin the arts as well as in popular culture. [29] But where are the decisive interfaces of this cultural heritage between the developments in the area of digital technologies on the one hand, and in the sector of genetic or biotechnologies on the other hand, which have so obviously contributed their fair share to this boom? What connects the digital technologies with genetic technology, at least at a metaphorical level, and at the same time constitutes the tertium comparationis to the phantasms of artificial humans handed down through cultural history is the suggestive promise to be able to discover and reproduce the formula of life itself: to create life. [30] Living images Genetic technology is associated with the art and cultural historical tales of artificial humans because it indirectly deals with the artificial manufacture of organic lifewhile it directly manipulates the genetic code, i.e. operates at the level of a program, which in turn allows it to be more easily associated with the digital technologies. The mixing of technological paradigms may be inadmissibleit is nevertheless significant. Thus the short circuit from biological to digital technology and to the simulation of artificial life in a virtual reality can reveal to us that in the discourses on genetic technology the issue is less one of endowing life with matter than it is of mobilizing images: the issue is the propagation of a particularimage of humans. In this sense, both technologies actually have something in common: Not only in that they appear to reproduce where they actually reproduce something, but also in that they appear to produce where they are reproducing something: Viz. precisely that normative image of the human that with respect to gender concepts also transports traditional norms. The association of both technologies with the mythological narrations that tell of the artificial or the artistic animation of bodies fits into this context: What Dr. Frankenstein (acting for the legendary scientist) and Pygmalion (acting for the mythological artist) stand for is the creation of artificial life by endowing dead matter with life: in Frankenstein's case out of flesh, in Pygmalion's case out of stone. Strictly speaking, here it can also be said that images are being endowed with life. [31] As will become clear in the following, in rereading the old stories and in summoning back their moving images, however, it is not solely an issue of the prehistory or early history of

86

reproductive technologies, which compete with the biological (and sexual) reproduction of human life. Hybrids of art and science It is also characteristic that the equation since the Renaissance of the divino artista with the deus artifex on the one hand, [32] and with the both technically and artistically well-versed universal genius on the other hand, is also experiencing a true revival in the age of these new mythologies of creation. However, this is not only being demonstrated by reference to Leonardo da Vinci, who in the theoretical debates over art in the age of new technologies is encountered everywhere as a model for the ingenious artist-scientistengineer, adorning titles of Herbert W. Franke's polemic on art in the age of the computer [33] and the cover of the German edition of Bruce Sterling's cyberpunk novel Schismatrix, [34] and chosen as the name patron for numerous projects, for instance for the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST), who since 1968 has published the journal Cyborg Manifesto. And it is by no means only artists such as Eduardo Kac who claim for themselves the roleof scientist. Conversely, a number of scientists also like to behave like artists, or like Craig Venter compare themselves with artists. [35] In turn, the analogizations of the technologies and their superimposition with the mythical narrations, which lead to new mythologies of art and science (hi)stories, prove to be strikingin particular at the interface gender: The stories not only glorify the humanor more accurately putthe male effort to track down the secret of life. The issue above and beyond this is the possibility of improving nature, which from a perspective handed down by tradition and culture is understood as birth without a woman. [36] She is left witheven in current variations of this crucial topic, from the alien clone Ripley in Alien IV [37] to the cloned sheep Dolly [38] at best with the role of bearer, as the venue for experiments reserved for production artists. In fact, in historical examples and stories the creature is only ostensibly the main character. Rather it is the projection surface for a discourse whose phantasmatic coreand this is revealed by the stories' titlesfirst and foremostly revolve around the human/male creator, whose true The artist Sonya Rapoport begins at this interface with her web-based work Redeeming the Gene, Molding the Golem, Folding the Protein (2001). With the legend of the golem she uses a traditional story of creation as her point of departure, retelling it under the sign of genetic technology.
Sonya Rapoport Redeeming the Gene, Molding the Golem, Folding the Protein "Redeeming the Gene, Molding the Golem, Folding the Protein," is a mythic parody designed for WEB.viewing. It challenges current genetic engineering techniques by the creation of an artificial anthropoid, the golem, according to the ancient Hebraic ritual of Kabbalah. Lilith and Eve, maligned source of female evil for many years reinvent themselves by creating an ethical gene with which they mold the golem. The kabbalah gene, displaces the artist's gene that Eduardo Kac invented in his artwork, "Genesis." - Sonya Rapoport

If one follows this narration along the artificial DNA string, whose protein bases develop into a navigation system adapted from the Tree of Sephiroth in the Cabala, amongst other things one comes across the artist gene, the force behind which is Eduardo Kac and his works such as Genesis (1999ff.) and Alba, as well as the GFP Bunny (2000ff.) [41] Rapoport's protagonists Lilith and Eveprimordial female images of male fantasies of

87

creationset a cabalistic golem gene against the hybrid of Kac's self-assertion as an artistscientist, who in his works cites the paradigms of genetic technology in a positivist way. With the aid of the golem gene, not only is the artist gene purified, but Lilith and Eve are the delivered from the curse of demonization, which according to biblical legend weighs heavily on them, and are recreated.

Eduardo Kac Genesis Genesis (1998/99) is a transgenic artwork that explores the intricate relationship between biology, belief systems, information technology, dialogical interaction, ethics, and the Internet. The key element of the work is an artist's gene, i.e., a synthetic gene that I invented and that does not exist in nature. This gene was created by translating a sentence from the biblical book of Genesis into Morse Code, and converting the Morse Code into DNA base pairs according to a conversion principle specially developed for this work. The sentence reads: Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. This sentence was chosen for its implications regarding the dubious notion of (divinely sanctioned) humanity's supremacy over nature. Morse Code was chosen because, as first employed in radiotelegraphy, it represents the dawn of the information agethe genesis of global communications. Eduardo Kac GFP Bunny My transgenic artwork GFP Bunny comprises the creation of a green fluorescent rabbit, the public dialogue generated by the project, and the social integration of the rabbit. GFP stands for green fluorescent protein. GFP Bunny was realized in 2000 and first presented publicly in Avignon, France. Transgenic art, I proposed elsewhere, is a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes to an organism, to create unique living beings. This must be done with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life thus created. - Eduardo Kac

Making monsters If instead of the charismaticized genetic or digital engineer one contemplates the other side of creation, i.e. the creatures made by the creators, what starting points does the interface gender provide in particular?

88

What is characteristic for the artificial creatures of modernity at the intersection of art and science is that theyespecially when they satisfy the imperative of anthropomorphism sooner or later reveal their monstrosity, which not only demonstrates the failure of the act of creation, but also its inhumaneness. On the other side there is the throng of female doll-bodyautomatons, [42] whichif one goes by their contoursappear to come into the inheritance of Pygmalion's beautiful portrait. But this impression is deceiving: Like Galathea, they may have been endowed with life as objects of desire, their character, however, is more like that of the future Eve: As soon as they begin to lead their own life they develop demonic streaks, so that they immediately have to be put an end to. [43] It is no without reason that the artificial woman in Metropolis bears the epithet the false Mariabehind her remarkably beautiful exterior, which betrays nothing of her monstrosity, there lies the machine: a construction with nothing human about it. On the side of the male creatures, on the other hand, there is Frankenstein's monster, whose physical dimensions overshadow those of real men. As a dim-witted dummy, however, he embodies everything else except true maleness: he treats girls as if they were flowers, and he expresses at best clumsy desire towards the wife of his creator. These creatures are not natural daughters or real menand this becomes strikingly evident at the interface gender: A monster may be granted a mechanical or an animal sexuality. However, for its part it is characterized as monstrous, i.e. threatening and pathological. In other words: According to the core narrations, the creator's creatures represent counterpoles to the real/right human/man embodied by their creators. And little has changed in recent years. Rather under the sign of digital and genetic (re)productive technologies, continuities and reversions can be identified that in their deviations from exemplarymodels at best mark the intensification of monstrositytypically when the issue is the threatened boundary between artificialness and naturalness, between femaleness and maleness. The role of the monster turns out to be as plain as the transgression of this boundary/these boundaries appears to be a threat: The norm, to which the power relation between creator and creature ultimately belongs, is confirmed and lastingly stabilized by this. Ripley's uncanny upgrade in Alien IV, whichquite in the spirit of the transgression of boundaries Haraway describes as being characteristic for the new technological orderinscribes male and animal qualities onto her female body, was performed over her dead body. As males, cyborg heroes such as Robocop [44] or the Terminator I embodied by Schwarzenegger may struggle for the preservation of jeopardized ideals such as the nuclear family, which no doubt is supposed to allow them to appear to be human. [45] In the film Terminator II for instance, on the side of the good mother the latter battles against a dehumanized new technology embodied by the genderless T1000, and in Terminator III he is supposed to ensure that as the last human couple, her son and his girlfriend survive the end of the world to become the future Adam and Eve. [46] However, despite their bodies, which are hypertrophically equipped with male traits, they have no sexual identity of their own. Thus, the doubly connoted phallus always remains in the hands of the engineers: This is the only right place for it to be. Nevertheless, the interface gender can also prove to be the crucial point of potential deviance from the otherwise stereotypically developed narrations. Take, for example, the filmed version of the musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show [47] : Frank'n'Furter's creature Rockythe incarnation, so to speak, of a Mr. Universewas actually conceived as a playmate for his transsexual creator. On the other hand, despite the phallic overformation raised to a caricatureof his fingers to scissor blades, the main character in Tim Burton's variation on the tale of Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands, [48] exercises an 89

incomparable erotic attraction on women, whose hair he subserviently cuts, while the men, whose front yard hedges he trims, quite obviously sense acode-of-conduct battle or begin to suffer from fears of castration. In an unexpected turn of the promises of monsters (Haraway), [49] in this case the monsters exhibit subversive potential. Reinvent yourself! The monstrous promises of the new technologies are not, however, only reflected in the retelling or new versions of the old stories of the creation of artificial life. As a figure of the third, from now on new meaning is given to an old philosophical topos in that it also wants to be taken at its word: Selfcreation finds itself under the sign of the cyborg configuration in the age of its technological realizability. [50] Just as television or popular magazines contain advertisements for more or less unrestricted biomedical technologies for the improvement or even the correction of one's appearance, with the aid of new technologies the corresponding models are at the same time being designed, created and supplied. The imperative of these cyborg configurations is: Reinvent yourself! [51] And this includes the invention of a new body. Fewer and fewer limits appear to be being set to the becoming flesh of such a selfinvention, in which the traditional dichotomy of mind and body collapses in an unexpected wayand more and more people of both genders are reacting euphorically to the offer of reinventing themselves. In this sense, movie and pop stars, who like Liz Taylor attempt to avoid the aging of their body with cosmetic surgery, or like Michael Jackson completely transform themselves into an artificial figure, can be considered to be protagonists of posthumanism, whose maxim has become the imperative of cyborgization. [52] This does not, however, mean that they will lose their monstrous traits, which is the promise associated with this imperative: There continues to be something uncanny attached to the manipulation of the human body. This other side of the coin can no longer be solely viewed in the mirror of a science fiction satire such as Brazil. The protagonist in this film dreams himself time and again a fantasy world in which he transforms from a weakly average person into a superhero, while due to unsuccessful cosmetic surgery his aging mother mutates into a monster, who in the end cannot be held together by a human contour. [53] In the meantime,in the eyes of some of his former fans Jackson, whose features are distinctly marked by biomedical operations from pigment bleaching to nose surgery, appears to have become a monster. [54] It is no coincidence that this can be demonstrated by the fact that his outer appearance seems to change between man, woman and child, and that his sexuality is also suspiciously deviant. The interface gender once more proves to be the focal point of both the phantasmatic as well as the uncanny quality of (self-)creation.

90

Notes:
[1] In its original meaning, the term configuration denotes the arrangement and reciprocal reference of components to each other in a general structure, which is defined as an entity through these components and functions in a specific manner. While the term is normally enlisted in this sense in the arts for the structural analysis of works of art, it is also of central importance in the field of application of computer technologies. In popular thought, the latter meaning is increasingly eclipsing the former: One interprets configuration to mean the combination of system architectures up to their being equipped with specific capacities and interfaces to other systems, which in their organization are defined by the respective purposes and applications of, and demands on these systems. For an analysis of the cyborg phenomenon that is directed at the interfaces of art and media culture, the term configuration is helpful in two ways: Firstly, it suggests analyzing not only cyborg representations and metaphors, but also their functionsincluding the interfaces that support the different systems and discourses. Secondly, it brings into focus the outlined crossing of different, even ideologically molded systems of terms and meaning, which decisively influences cyborg fantasies and figurations. [2] Cf. Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181. [3] For a summarized categorization of cybervisions that currently allow reconceiving the relation between corporeality and identity under the sign of the term cyborg cf. Barbara Becker, Cyborg ManifestoTranshumanistenAnmerkungen ber die Widerstndigkeit eigener und fremder Materialitt t, in Was vom Krper brig bleibt. KrperlichkeitIdentittMedien, Barbara Becker/Irmela Schneider (eds.), Frankfurt/Main et al., 2000, pp. 4169, p. 44. In the following, the four areas Becker cites herevirtualization, immaterialization and multiplication of body and identity in electronic communication networks, genetic manipulation and bioengineering, the construction of intelligent artifacts [] by way of the simulation of living processes, and visions [] of the controlled regulation, redesigning or even the separating off of a body experienced as deficientwill reappear as prominent locations of or frameworks for a discourse on cyborg configurations; however, this categorization says little about the concrete formation of cyborg visions. [4] Cf. Robert W. Driscoll et al., Engineering Man For Space. The Cyborg Study, in The Cyborg Handbook, Chris Hables-Gray (ed.), New York, 1995, pp. 7581. [5] Cf. Manfred E. Clynes/Nathan S. Kline, Cyborgs and Space, in Astronautics, no. 26/27, Sept. 1960, pp. 7475. [6] Cf. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions. Race, Gender and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York, 1989, p. 139. [7] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, pp. 16 f. [8] Cf. Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others, in Lawrence Grossberg/Cary Nelson/Paula A. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies, New York, 1992, pp. 295337. [9] Cf. Terminator (USA 1984, directed by James Cameron); Terminator IIJudgement Day (USA 1991, directed by James Cameron); Terminator IIIRise of the Machines (USA 2001, directed by Jonathan Mostrow); for an overview of all three films refer to the Website movieprop . [10] Cf. Star Trek USA, first broadcast in 1966. [11] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, pp. 15 ff. [12] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, p. 17. [13] For different literary variations on this motif cf. the collection concerning the golem in Klaus Vlker (ed.), Knstliche Menschen. Dichtung & Dokumente ber Golems, Homunculi, Androiden und lebende Statuen, part 1, Munich, 1971; Gustav Meyrink, Der Golem (1914/1915), Munich, 1984. [14] Within the framework of a collection of stories on the theme cf. E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann, in Knstliche Menschen. Dichtung & Dokumente ber Golems, Homunculi, Androiden und lebende Statuen, Klaus Vlker (ed.), part 1, Munich 1971, pp. 181221. [15] Cf. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or: The New Prometheus (1818); for filmed versions cf. Frankenstein (USA 1931, directed by James Whale) and Bride of Frankenstein (USA 1935, directed by

91

James Whale); amongst the more recent filmed versions Frankenstein (GB 1994, directed by Kenneth Brannagh) as well asfrom the area of artAndy Warhol's Frankenstein (D/I/F 1973, directed by Paul Morissey). [16] Cf. Villiers de l'Isle Adam, L'Eve future (1886). [17] Cf. Metropolis, (D 1926, directed by Fritz Lang) as well as the novel of the same name by Thea von Harbou (1925), on which the screenplay was based. [18] Cf. Blade Runner (USA 1982, directed by Ridley Scott); the screenplay is based on a novel written by the American science fiction author Philipp K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electrical Sheep (1968); later sequels were published under the (film) title Blade Runner. The catalogue Knstliche MenschenManische MaschinenKontrollierte Krper, edited by Rolf Aurich/Wolfgang Jacobsen/Gabriele Jatho, Berliner Filmfestspiele, Berlin, 2000, provides a comprehensive overview of filmed stories of artificial humans. [19] Cf. Villiers de l'Isle Adam, L'Eve future (1886). [20] E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann, in Knstliche Menschen. Dichtung & Dokumente ber Golems, Homunculi, Androiden und lebende Statuen, Klaus Vlker (ed.), part 1, Munich, 1971, pp. 181221. [21] Cf. Konr@d. Der Mensch in der digitalen Welt, Hamburg,19971999. All together there were 13 issues of this Stern supplement. [22] For the topos of the bachelor machine cf. the exhibition catalogue JunggesellenmaschinenLes Machines Clibataires, Harald Szeemann (ed.), Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 1975; the new revised edition was edited by Harald Szeemann/Hans Ulrich Reck, Vienna et al., 1999. [23] Cf. Kyoko DateDK 96 (HoriPro Inc., J 1996); the documentation Natural Born Digital (D 1998, written and directed by Gusztv Hmos/Katja Pratschke) is also helpful. [24] Cf. Tomb Raider I, II, III (Eidos Interactive, GB/USA, first distributed in 1996); in the meantime, with Lara Croft. Tomb Raider (USA 2001, directed by Simon West) and Lara Croft. Tomb Raider IIThe Cradle of Life (USA 2003, directed by Jan de Bont) Lara has not only captured the screen, but has also found concrete human embodiment in the actress Angelina Jolie. For a long time, Eidos Interactive consciously avoided the latter by using changing models in order to uphold the virtual status of Lara. [25] Cf. Chajim Bloch, Kabbalistische Sagen, Leipzig 1925 for Adam Kadmon, the idea for whom goes back to the pre-Christian primordial man, and for the golem legend. [26] Cf. Marge Piercy, He, She and It, Wellfleet, Ms., 1991. [27] Piercy describes earlier versions of this cyborg, who had no right to a corresponding Education sentimentale, as raging fighting machines whose aggression also makes them unfit for service to human beings. [28] Cf. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or: The New Prometheus (1818). [29] Cf. Knstliche MenschenManische MaschinenKontrollierte Krper, Rolf Aurich/Wolfgang Jacobsen/Gabriele Jatho (eds.), Berliner Filmfestspiele, Berlin, 2000. [30] It is highly problematical to argue the analogization of biomedical or biotechnological methods for the artificial creation of life with digital creations of artificial forms of life, i.e. with the creation of artificial life in an artificial environment, not lastly because it encourages an aesthetization of the political in the service of disguisingfor instance in the suggestion of a comparable controllability of the processes and their consequences. It appears precarious above all in that principal differences between images as carriers of symbol policyi.e. a power policy at the level of representationand bodies as direct venues of power policy become blurred. Consequently, it is worth considering what makes these analogy conclusions so suggestive or even appear credibleand on the other hand, what biotechnologies actually could have in common with digital (re)production technologies. [31] For the topos of the living image at the interface of information and biotechnologies refer to the essay by Claudia Reiche, Lebende Bilder aus dem Computer. Konstruktionen ihrer Mediengeschichte , in BildKrper. Verwandlungen des Menschen zwischen Medium und Medizin, Marianne Schuller/Claudia Reiche/Gunnar Schmidt (eds.), Hamburg, 1998, [32] Divino artista is Italian for the divine artist, deus artifex is Latin God as artist. [33] Cf. Herbert W. Franke, Leonardo 2000. Kunst im Zeitalter des Computers, revised 2nd edition, Frankfurt/Main, 1987. [34] Cf. Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix (1985) and Schismatrix plus (1996).

92

[35] Cf. with regard to media perception e.g. Christian Schwgerl, Im Eiwei riecht's nach Geld. Nach der Humangenomentschlsselung wird nun der nchste Schritt getan: die Proteomik, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 14, 2002, p. 56. [36] Cf. Monette Vaquin, Frankenstein ou les dlires de la raison, Paris 1989. [37] Cf. Alien IVResurrection (USA 1997, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet). [38] For Dolly and Alien IV from a feminist perspective cf. Ulrike Bergermann, Reproduktionen. Digitale Bilder und Geschlechter in Alien , in Gender revisited. Subjekt- und Politikbegriffe in Kultur und Medien, Katharina Baisch/Ines Kappert/Marianne Schuller (eds.), Stuttgart, 2002, pp. 149171. [39] Following Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, Manchester, 1992. [40] With the subtitle of her Frankenstein novel, Mary Shelley indirectly built the bridge from the scientist to the artist. As early as the eighteenth/nineteenth century, the legend of Prometheus, which comes from Greek mythology (Prometheus stole the fire from the gods), was being read as an artist myth as well as a parable of the blessing and curse of technology or of man, who in his role as the developer of new technologies challenges his destiny. Cf.the exhibition catalogue Der verzeichnete Prometheus, Hermann Sturm (ed.), Museum Folkwang Essen, Berlin, 1988. References to Prometheus have recently become common again, cf. the catalogue on the Bonn section of the exhibition Gen-Welten: Gen-Welten. Prometheus im Labor?, Petra Kruse (ed.), Kunstund Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 1998, or Prometheus, Menschen, Bilder, Visionen (Vlklinger Htte, 1998), Erfindung des Menschen. Schpfungstrume und Krperbilder 1500 2000, Richard van Dlmen (ed.), Vienna et al., 1998. [41] Cf. Eduardo Kac, Transgene Kunst, in Life Science, ars electronica 99, Vienna et al., 1999, pp. 289296; Eduardo Kac, GFP Bunny, in Kunstforum International, vol. 158, Jan.-Mar. 2002, pp. 46 57. For more details on the subject of the overlapping of art and science cf. the chapter Transgenetic Bodies by Ingeborg Reichle. [42] Following the title of the catalogue PuppenKrperAutomaten. Phantasmen der Moderne, Katharina Sykora/Pia Mller-Tamm (eds.), Kunstsammlung NRW, Cologne, 1999. Cf. also the chapter on Doll Games by Sigrid Schade. [43] For more on this monstrous characteristic of the doll under the sign of cyborg configurations refer to the anthology PuppeMonsterTod, Johanna Riegler et al. (eds.,), Vienna, 1999. [44] Cf. RoboCop (USA 1987, directed by Paul Verhoeven). [45] The RoboCop is actually a human who was reanimated with the aid of cyborg technologies. He was a dead guardian of the law, which in view of his role allows him to appear as a complement to Frankenstein's monster, who is put together out of criminals. This also explains why he belongs to the good side despite his monstrosity. On the other hand the Terminator, who is embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger, first becomes more human than his successors manufactured with the aid of newer technologies in the sequels to the first film. This is why he can become a defender against the unleashed technologies. [46] Cf. Terminator (USA 1984, directed by James Cameron); Terminator IIJudgement Day (USA 1991, directed by James Cameron); Terminator IIIRise of the Machines (USA 2001, directed by Jonathan Mostrow). [47] Cf. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (GB 1975, directed by Jim Sharman, screenplay by Richard O'Brien). [48] Cf. Edward Scissorhands (USA 1990, directed by Tim Burton). [49] Cf. Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others, in Lawrence Grossberg/Cary Nelson/Paula A. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies, New York, 1992, pp. 295337. [50] Cf. Simon Scherger, Die Kunst der Selbstgestaltung, in Was vom Krper brig bleibt. Krperlichkeit IdentittMedien, Barbara Becker/Irmela Schneider (eds.), Frankfurt/Main et al., 2000, pp. 235252. [51] Cf. the section of images created by Dan Friedman (in collaboration with Jeffrey Deitch) in the exhibition catalogue PostHumanNeue Formen der Figuration in der zeitgenssischen Kunst, Jeffrey Deitch/Zdenek Felix (eds.), Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Stuttgart, 1993, pp. 16 ff. and in particular the motto that is added to the photographs of enlarged breasts: It's normal to reinvent oneself, ibid., p. 19. [52] This is the text of the motto with which Michael Jackson is represented in the section of images by Friedman/Deitch: Within the next thirty years the fear that we may not be able to distinguish real humans from replicants will no longer be science fiction. Cf. the exhibition catalogue PostHuman Neue Formen der

93

Figuration in der zeitgenssischen Kunst, Jeffrey Deitch/Zdenek Felix (eds.), Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Stuttgart, 1993, p. 17. [53] Cf. Brazil (GB 1985, directed by Terry Giliam). [54] Cf. Susan Straight, Ein Zombie an der Kchentr. Vor dem Prozess gegen Michael Jackson: Warum auch schwarze Jugendliche Angst vor ihrem einstigen Idol haben, in DIE ZEIT, no. 4/2004, 01/15/2004.

94

Mythical Bodies II
Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-)creation in the imagination space of technological (re)production (II): The promises of monsters and posthuman anthropomorphisms

Verena Kuni
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/mythical_bodies_II/

For an introduction into the context of mythical bodies and their cyborg configurations, refer to the introduction in Part I. Part II focuses on the promises of monsters and posthuman anthropomorphisms of technological stories of (re)production as mirrored in the computer-generated visions of contemporary art and the current game culture. Body projections under posthuman conditions Artists, male and female alike, reacted early on to the monstrous promises of the new technologieshowever in rather different ways. Be Art!, for instance, is the motto into which Natasha Vita More translated the imperative of cyborgization. As a dedicated extropian and transhumanisti.e. a follower of the view that with the aid of the new technologies, humans have to equip themselves to overcome the weaknesses, and above all the mortality, of their organismsVita More also regards her participation in courses to become a nutrition specialist, a fitness trainer and a futurologist as part of her training as an artist. For this reason, she not only consistently works on her own body using those bodytechnologies that are customarily available, in her project Primo Posthuman 3M+ (2000 ff.)which she wants to be understood as transhumanist net.artshe develops a design for the future that is intended to illustrate the conditions of the future posthuman body. This designer bodyan idealized and animated 3- D model based on Vita More's own body massdemonstrates the technological processes which are necessary to equip and upgrade the human organism in order to be able to remove political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits and to overcome constraints on our progress and possibilities as individuals, as organizations, and as a species, as formulated by Vita More's partner, the writer Max More, in his manifesto Principles of Extropy. An evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition. [1]
Natasha Vita More Primo Posthuman 3M+ Like her companion Max More, Natasha Vita More commits herself to so-called extropians or transhumanists and aligns her project Primo 3M + with how they imagine the future. The (art) term extropy serves as the metaphor for the manners and values conveyed by those striving to overcome the boundaries and limitations of human existence with the help of technology. These manners and values are carefully explained in the manifesto The Principles of Extropy written by Max More. A transhuman is a person in a transitional process. We find ourselves in the transhuman state when we make an effort to become posthuman and actively prepare ourselves for a posthuman future. This includes the knowledge and use of new technologies, which expand our abilities and raise our life expectancy; which investigate overlapping areas and the future-oriented transformation of our human condition, with which we elevate ourselves above the received concepts and behavioral patterns of mankind.

95

Since the late nineteen-nineties, to take measurements of the human body and project them into virtual space in order to explore the conditions of the posthuman body is a process that has been encountered frequently in art. In the meantime, like stimuli are by no means solely being supplied by science fiction fantasies, whichlike the cult film Tron [2] imagine humans' entry into cyberspace, but also by developments in the areas of information science and bioscience, where metric and imaging processes are combined with those of medicine, as, for instance, in the Visible Human Project: an anatomical computer model of the human body whose data records come from microscopically small slices cut from the corpse of an executed man. [3] The fact that this connects the Visible Human not only with numerous anatomical specimens in medical history, but indirectly also with the main character in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, who was assembled from parts of corpses obtained for the ambitious scientist out of the graves of hanged men, is less an absurd coincidence than it is a revealing detail: The ethos that puts forward that human dignity is inviolable even after one has died is transformed into an offer to poor sinners to at least once in this way serve the welfare of humankind. However, because the body donor in Visible Human was made this offer while he was still alive and he consented to the deal, in virtual space he resecuresat least virtuallythe unity of hiscontour. In contrast, the scars and coarsely patched cuts on the body of Frankenstein's creature, who is made up of disparate source material, identify it as a monster. Not least of all it is the altered technological processes that enable making the cuts of particularization invisible. Contemporary cyborg configurations therefore also stand out by their having incorporated both aspects: On the one hand the divisibility of the body into minute units, which are due to its informatization and cartographization, and on the other hand its assembly into a functional unit, whichat least at the simulation levelis intended to correspond to that of the human organism. For this reason, what is decisive for the interpretation of cyborg configurations is which interfaces are made or remain visible or invisible, and which interfaces are activated or deactivated. Very like the Primo Posthuman 3M+, Tina LaPorta's vision of a Future Body (1999) also presents a 3-D grid model of a body, whose contours identify it as female and which users can explore per mouse click. But unlike Natasha Vita More, LaPorta is not interested in the potentials of a technologically upgraded human body and its functions, rather her interest is directed towards a particular aspect of the monstrous promises of the new technologies, i.e. liberating the body from its bond to the materiality of the organic. Instead of translating these promises into a technoid materiality, the body is to be regarded as a system of data records that can be represented in its entirety in cyberspacea concept we not only encounter in the science fiction and cyberpunk literature from Philipp K. Dick to William Gibson, [4] but which is also related to the visions of enthusiastic representatives of robotics, who, like Hans Moravec, speak of humans one day being in a position to transfer intelligence and consciousness to a silicon chip. [5]
Tina LaPorta Future Body Future_Body explores the relationship between technology, the body, and female subjectivity within a net-worked environment. While the corporeal body disappears, it is replaced by an immaterial outline of our passing presence. The code, generated from image mapping software, refers to the body's DNA structure. As we shift toward a state of immaterial existence, technology increasingly eliminates all traces of material reality. The wire frame model of the female body is mapped as a series of links, a fragmented coded image to be read by a CPU and displayed on its monitor. Because the model itself is designed for mass distribution, once it has been uploaded into the virtual realm of the internet, it becomes accessible to anyone, anywhere at anytime. Thus, the female figure is everywhere and nowhere at all, invisible yet infinitely replicable.

96

LaPorta, however, intentionally leaves the promise unfulfilledwhich in this case again refers to the problematic analogization of the genetic and the digital codeof being able to make the concealed structures of a system visible, of communicating them or, if necessary, even manipulating them: Despite its complete transparency, its ubiquitous availability and the accessibility of the codes, which appear directlynext to their graphic conversion on the web site, the Future Body behaves hermetically. The matrix allows neither the locating of the body, nor do the data records convey contributive information. Although it has been placed into the Net, it is impossible to establish communication with it. Movement and voice are held captive in loops. And finally, the invitation to penetrate it also literally leads into thin air: Every zoom leads back to the whole figure, which for its parts goes away and disintegrates into separate parts. The cartographed, idealized body is nothing more than a shelland as such it is to a large extent uninteresting. The project EvaSys (1997 ff.) by the Austrian artist Eva Wohlgemuth [6] is not only optically, but also conceptionally related to LaPorta's Future Body. In EvaSys a 3-D scan of the artist's body, which appears to weightlessly propel through cyberspace as a data shell, constitutes the starting point. In the way the Future Body allows the projection of a technically and optically smoothed down, unclothed female body, which can be randomly circled, zoomed in on and palpated, at first EvaSys seems to offer nothing more than a further variation of IT-animated dolls such as the computer game heroine Lara Croft or the virtual pop starlet Kyoko Date, who not only resonate the marketing strategies of consumer culture, but also traditional gender perspectives. Whoever is not content with looking at EvaSys and navigating her through Net space will come across a number of packed nodes in the cartography of her bodyscape. If one touches these nodal points with the mouse, her voice begins to reveal more intimate things: From what I like, places and countries I have been to, up to how I spent my day. However, these confessions are hardly suitable for satisfying the voyeurism of a data sex tourist. Quite in the spirit of Donna Haraway, who in her Manifesto for Cyborgs establishes an increasing translation of the world into a problem of coding, [7] it is with cool precision that EvaSys furnishes us with Wohlgemuth's personal information as a pure data setfrom the measurements of her exterior to her credit card number.
Eva Wohlgemuth, EvaSys, 1997

The body as software Viewing one's own body as software andthough invery different waysmaking it an interface is an option that two artiststhe Australian Stelarc and the French artist Orlan have interpreted in a particularly radical way and consistently pursued for many years. Stelarc became known for his Suspensions: Between 1976 and 1989, on 25 different occasions the artist had steel hooks driven through his skin in order to suspend his body on ropes at different locations and in changing positions and situations. [8] However, Stelarc does not see himself in the tradition of representatives of Body Art, whoat precisely the

97

same moment in time the electronic media opened up new spaces to artdiscover the body in pain as their preferred artistic material and medium. [9] Rather the artist wants to regard his body as a manipulable and modifiable structure. [10] In his view, the skin has had its day as the traditional interface between the body and its surroundings; with the aid of technology it is now time to penetrate and stretch it, thus outfitting it with new functions. [11] The works Stelarc produced in the ensuing years resemble series of experiments, in which with the aid of various processes he subjects the structure and the functioning of the body to systematic examinations aimed towards extending and expanding the body into space. With growing ambition he falls back on the newest developments in the field of high-tech medicine, robotics and computer technologydevelopments which operate at the interfaces of humans and technology, which examine, expose and extend the functions of the body, not with a claim to improve them, butincreasingly soto substitute them as well. If humans, who stand out as organic beings due to a number of involuntary bodily functions, have in part always been zombies and on the other hand have always created artifacts, instruments and machines, which marks their growing cyborgization, then it is necessary to push ahead with their cyborgization and redefine the obsolete body (Stelarc). [12]
Stelarc, Suspension, 1976 1989

It can no longer be a matter of designing artificial limbs for a body whose flaws and malfunctions cannot, in the end, be compensated for, because under the posthuman conditions created by humankind by means of its technological developments, the body has itself become a malfunction, an incarnation of imperfection. As a radical consequence of this, Stelarc takes thereverse path: He allows his body to become a prosthesis for a technologized environment. His Third Hand may, at first glance, resemble a conventional robot arm that supports the function of the other two extremities. However, unlike the other two arms, it is not only moved by means of impulses coming from the lower extremities, which forces the body to completely reconsider its kinetic reasoning, in addition, in turn it also sends control impulses back to the body. The organic body proves to be a host organism for a piece of equipment that has fused so thoroughly with it that the equipment becomes capable of steering the body. Stelarc's Amplified Body, whose brain waves, muscle contractions, pulse and blood pressure are collected by various sensors, electronically amplified and used to control a complex light and sound machine, is only ostensibly the central player in his performance of the same name.

98

Stelarc, Third Hand, 1981 1994

Because in the end, the neuronal activities, the acceleration of the pulse, the rising and falling of blood pressure, i.e. that which makes it a mover, are responses to impulses the body experiences from its environment. The Ping Body, on the other hand, is hooked up to a network, enabling it to be stimulated and moved by users from all over the world. Integrated into complex technological feedback structures, whose interfaces enable them to become agents of other human and non-human systems, humans are no longer merely network users, rather they have literally become part of the network. As do so many science fiction fantasies, at first glance Stelarc's works seem to thrive on the same culture medium that science and art have produced in the wake of what Donna Haraway calls the C3I metaphor: commandcontrol-communication-intelligence, the credo of a colonialist cyborg mythology of white, western, patriarchal coinage. [13] However, one of the crucial characteristics of this mythology is that it is in service to the subject position, who continues to consider itself as the crowning glory of creation and man as the great creator, who competes with the deus artifex. Stelarc's radical identification with cyborgization, which implies a dissolution of the subject's boundaries, is in its own way closer to that of Haraway, who stresses: I'd rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess. [14] It is not a third eye that Stelarc imaginesas an extension of his body, which can hardly be brought into concurrence with the phantasm of a whole, god-like, white, western male body. It is a third ear, an Extra Ear, that is able to function as a broadcasting and receiving station with an interface to the Internet, [a]nd when no sound is being transmitted, the Extra Ear might whisper sweet nothings to the other ear anyway. Or maybe a good night lullaby. [15]
Stelarc, Amplified Body, 1996 1997

As the credo of his work on the cyborgization of his body, however, Stelarc cites a motif that we already encountered at the interface of the old and the new stories of (self-)creation:

99

Endowing images with life. IMAGES ARE IMMORTAL, BODIES ARE EPHEMERAL. The body finds it increasingly difficult to match the expectations of its images. In the realm of multiplying and morphing images, the physical body's impotence is apparent. THE BODY NOW PERFORMS BEST AS ITS IMAGE. Virtual Reality technology allows a transgression of boundaries between male/female, human/machine, time/space. The self becomes situated beyond the skin. This is not a discon- necting or a splitting, but an EXTRUDING OF AWARENESS. What it means to be human is no longer the state of being immersed in genetic memory but rather in being reconfigured in the electromagnetic field of the circuit IN THE REALM OF THE IMAGE. [16]

Orlan The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan In The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, the artist underwent facial surgery in order to make specific characteristic features from the world of art history appear more alive. Her models were Venus, Diana, Europa, Psyche, and Mona Lisa. In the process, not only were her face and body treated for the first time as a collage and manipulated (as demonstrated in the 1970s, for example, by Valie Export, Ulrike Rosenbach, and by Orlan herself), but also permanently demonstrated in keeping with a consciously anti-aesthetical criteriasince Orlans operations were also staged as medial events for the video camera. The consistently practiced artistic pose and stylization of the self leads here to the artificiality of all the operative corrections becoming heightened to the negative extreme, and manifesting themselves in their own hybrid state. Also see the exhibitions Omniprsence (1993) and Ceci est mon corps...ceci est mon logiciel.

A radical subordination to images that are superior to real bodies also marks the starting point of the long-term project with which in 1990 the French artist Orlan began her work complex The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan. Very much like the legendary painter Apelles, who reproduced only the most beautiful parts of his models' bodies in order to achieve the depiction on canvas of a woman of perfect beauty, Orlan takes familiar portraits of femininity from art history and puts them together on the computer to make an ideal portrait. [17] This epitome of idealized art-femininity consequently serves as a model for the redesigning of the artist's own face with the aid of a series of cosmetic operations. At first glance, in doing so she hardly differs from those women and men who have been operated on to change the size of their breasts or the shape of their nose to correspond with their own ideas of beauty, for which as a rule they also have specific models. The informatization andparticularization of the body, which Haraway points out as being characteristic of cyborgization, [18] has caused these kinds of operations to become increasingly common. In her pupation,--or better dollification--Cindy Jackson, who step-by-step has redesigned her face and her body to emulate a Barbie doll, does not consider herself a victim of patriarchal standards of physical beauty. Rather she claims with self-confidence: This is the ultimate feminist statement. I refuse to let nature decide my fate just because I missed out on the genetic lottery. [19] Orlan's artistic credo sounds very similar: My body is my software. [20] In fact, in The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan one can discern a consistent continuation of her early feminist performancesan ultimate feminism which, however, has a different emphasis than that

100

claimed by Cindy Jackson. She not only proceeds in a much more radical way than Jackson in the media marketing of her cyborgization by staging her operations as performances, recording them on video and offering them for sale on the art market. She also regards the photographs that show her before and after the operations and document the gradual mutation of her facial featuressuch as in Omniprsence (1993)as works of art and places them on exhibition. Above all, however, she ardently rejects the myth of the whole human those are devoted to who use the new body technologies to transform their own bodies according to an ideal image: It is characteristic for Orlan that the model for the Reincarnation of Saint Orlan was a patchwork put together out of disparate body images whose contours all too obviously compete with one another. Thus the transfer of this process to the human body hardly leads to an incarnation of supernatural beauty: Not only does the violence of the surgerythe scars, the swelling, the bruises that disfigure her facebecome visible in the photographs, there is also something monstrous about the result of this surgical processa face composed of the features of other persons. [21] This applies even more to SelfHybridations (1998 ff.), with which in a similar way Orlan has in the meantime also incorporated fragmentized ideals of beauty from other times and other cultures. [22] Phenomena of hybridization, as they are characteristic for the post-colonial age, arecondensed into figures of transgression, whose corpo-reality make the breaks and cuts visible instead of covering them upa working method similar to the one we encounter with the artist group Mongrel. Concurrent with their project Natural Selection (1998), in which stories about experiences of everyday racism were woven together using multi-media, they put out animated images and posters in which the facial features of people of different ethnic groups were stitched together. In the tradition of a culture which regards the idea of the whole white man as the crowning glory of creation, voluntarily imagining, recognizing or even creating one's self as a patchwork is connoted with fear. Correspondingly, it is hardly a coincidence that this is the material that freak shows and horror films fall back onfrom Frankenstein's monster to Jame Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs, who sews himself a second skin out of patches of skin he has removed from the women he murdered. [23] Image processing methods Under the sign of cyborgization it is in fact body surfaces that frequently become interfaces: They communicate the image of a human who under posthuman conditions is threatened by dissolution and who with the aid of techno- logical tricks now strives towards a wholeness that all too easily ends up as a patchwork. In the course of the nineteen-nineties, countless works were produced in which the suspended ambivalence of the utopias and realities of the new technologies found expression; cyborg configurations in which computeraided processes of image processing were used to lend shape to ideas and visions of future bodies. For instance when in his Pathologien medialer Konstitutionstypen (1994) Markus Kch projectswith a winkthe entire range of options offered by contemporary graphic instruments into an image atlas of physical defects, [24] or when in their computer manipulated portraits in the Dystopia Series (1994) the artist duo Aziz & Cucher erase specifically those areasthe eyes, the nose, the mouththat give facial features their identity and through which humans communicate with their environment. Their allegories on the virtues Faith, Honor, and Beauty (1992) alsoappear to have paid a dear price as modern embodiments of these ideals: like mannequins, their well-modulated bodies lack genitals.

101

Markus Kch Pathologien medialer Konstitutionstypen Poster series for the Institute for Media Diseases which is a fictional institute, a cross between a media art laboratory and a medical practice. It is the logical result of contemporary trends promulgating the digitisation of the body. In one succinct sense, this means scanning pictures of the human body, but in the final analysis it also means the complete digitisation of a living human being. This is a development which will certainly promote pathological deviations and lead to the outbreak of media diseases. As soon as one is able to perceive these manipulated bodies as (direct reproductions of) reality, that transformations that occur in bodies as a result of software programmes are in fact diseases, one can begin to commute back and forth between the normal and abnormal, reality and media reality. The laboratory as it appears in the internet contains information regarding the institutes main credo; it provides a few case studies, serves to inform and alert and also maintains an electronic hospital for emergency media treatment

Aziz, Anthony; Cucher, Sammy (Aziz/Cucher) The Dystopia Series: Maria With advances in digital technology and robotics, bioengineering is forging the link between the natural and the artificial. Likewise, contemporary photographic practice has entered the realm of the imagination, celebrating the virtual and fictitious. Furthermore, with the end of truth in photography has come a corresponding loss of trust; every image, every representation, is now a potential fraud. And as the eternal debate rages on about the appearance of truth and truth itself, simulation is the only truth we can trust. [...] In an electronic global culture dominated by the need for an efficient distribution of information, there is a gradual obsolescence of the body, as the Natural becomes subservient to the Technological. Through developments in digital technology, photography has been freed once and for all from the rigid conventions of Realism. Like life itself, it is now capable of representing not just what is real, but what is possible. Aziz, Anthony; Cucher, Sammy (Aziz/Cucher), Faith, Honor and Beauty, 1992

102

Alba dUrbano's project Hautnah (1994 ff.), on the other hand, allows designing the image of a dream body through computer simulation. On the basis of one's real body mass, which one enters into the computer afterwards, it then produces paper patterns that one can use to make T-shirts, suits, blouses or skirts. If one prints out and sews together the finished cuts, one can wear them like a second skin over the first one. [25]
Alba D'Urbano Hautnah The main part of the project hautnah (skin tight) is a suit, which is printed with life size nude images of the artist. Photographs of the body were digitalised with the help of a computer and then shaped to fit the surface of the fabric. Following the made of skin suit the clothing collection of the Il sarto immortale project was designed. These cotton satin dresses can be purchased from the artists website. The whole project consists of several elements: During a performance or rather installation, called Couture 1997, in the Art Club Wiesbaden two tailors worked up the printed body fabric into the above mentioned clothes. This was followed by the performance Laufsteg (catwalk) where the dresses were presented by models in a fashion show at the Art Cologne in 1997. The installation Display presents the project via video, patterns, clothes etc in various exhibition halls. During the event Outside the collection was displayed using ordinary advertising billboards throughout the city.

Using digital image processing methods, the figures in Inez van Lamsweerde's series Thank You Thighmaster (1993), with which the professional fashion photographer gained notoriety in the art business, were also cloned out of the bodies of models and mannequins. If due to the almost artificial smoothness and perfection of their limbs and the smoothing out of their external genitalia there is something uncanny about them, this applies even more for the protagonists in the ensuing series: For Final Fantasy (1993), Lamsweerde combined childlike bodies with the facial features of adult models; for The Forest (1995) she attached female extremities to male torsos.
Inez van Lamsweerde, Final Fantasy, 1993

Inez van Lamsweerde The Forest The Forest questions the way gender issues have been turned upside down. Men are framed horizontally, their hands being female hands, lips glossy, eyes shut. The obviously ecstatic state these feminine males are in is represented as the dissolving of pure masculinity, as something open full of desire. 4-part series of photographies with Andy, Marcel, Klaus and Rob (C-Prints).

103

Compared with the smooth doll bodies we encounter in Thank You Thighmaster, the irritation increases in as much as these are not media propagated, socially sanctioned physical ideals, but rather fantasies of the seductive woman-child and of transsexuals or transvestites: Images which may arouse desire, but at the same time mark figures of transgression. While for this work series Lamsweerde generally worked with professional models, in Me (1999) she becomes the model who passes through various ages and genders by projecting her own facial features onto other people's faces, thus fusing with them. [26] It is not only the transgression of gender boundaries that seems uncannywhich takes place less on the level of the image than in the eye of the viewerwhen the portrait of a man is identified as a self(portrait) (Me) of the artist. The promise of rejuvenation or even agelessness qua the upgrading and reequipping of the organic body, which is transported by the new technologies, is not only placed into the image, but it is also confronted with its counter-imagethus heightening the question of technological feasibility byLamsweerde's formulating it under the premise of self-creation: which in the case of her artificial aging oscillates with a moment of self-destruction. All of these works have one thing in common: Although they operatein a two-fold sense of the wordon surfaces, at the same time they suggest that the clutches of the new technologies are more far-reaching. Even if they do not proceed as radically as do Orlan and Stelarc, who turn their own physical bodies into a venue for the technologies, in their own way they lend expression to the suspicion that under the premise of cyborgization, physical boundaries and constitutions begin to become fluid, and along with them the boundaries and constitutions of the subject.
Inez van Lamsweerde, Thank you Tighmaster, 1993

Cyborg subjects and their masquerades It would be too simple, however, to regard solely the body as an interface at which the imperative of cyborgization can be construed or demonstrated in its consequences. It is not without reason that Haraway emphasizes that it is primarily our consciousness that makes us into cyborgs even now. Cyborg configurations of art do not solely negotiate the changing relation between human and technology, rather they also make reference to the social place in which this relation articulates itself. Accordingly, it is not only a matter of the constitution of the biological body, but also of the role models that are embodied, and not only of the physical, but also the social gendereven if the body is still not only the preferred venue for the discourses on cyborg configurations, but also the medium preferably used to lend them shape.

104

Mariko Mori slipped into the role of cyborg very early on. [27] In photographs such as Subway (1994) or Play with Me (1994) one sees her emerge into various everyday situations as a reanimated cult science fiction, Manga or computer game character. It takes a longer look at these works to detect in them moments of breaking away from the overdrawn images of femaleness provided by pop culture cyborg configurations.
Mariko Mori Play with Me In 1994 Mori created a series of photographies like Play with Me, Tea Ceremony, Love Hotel, Red Light or Subway, in which she envisioned herself as a post-human cyborg girl, a stranger that seemed to have leeped into real life from a manga comic or a video game thereby creating an irritation about the future. The works from this period are questioning the cyborg phantasies from Japanese animes and traditional female roles.

It is not necessary to insinuate that the artist's work is critical of contemporary culture. The light contact lenses in Mori's video Miko No Inori may lend her the uncanny gaze of a cyborg, but the soft spherical music ensures that the figure rubbing a crystal ball assumes the appearance of a savior descended from heaven. In contrast, in the 3-Danimated film Nirvana (1997), the goddess idolized by kitschy-colorful boddhisattvas, who also plays a leading role in other of the artist's works, fuses trivial pop culture with borrowings from traditional religious iconography in a highly harmonious way. And finally, in her project Wave UFO (19992002)a futuristic space capsule in which visitors can view their brain waves translated into fluid imagesMori combines old esoteric pipe dreams of a visualization of conceptional images with those from science fiction and applied technoscience in order, for her part, to now claim a place on the Mount Olympus of artistsscientists as a successor to Leonardo 2000. With this move she transports the phantasmatic space of her cyborg configurations from the virtual space of art into real space in two ways: On the one hand by directly involving her audience. On the other hand, as an artist she embodies an artificial figure that under the premise of futuristic masquerades revitalizes traditional images of femaleness and authorship, and succeeds in appropriating them for herself in a skillful blend. Lynn Hershman is one of the artists in whose work we encounter cyborg configurations long before the hype surrounding the new technologies in art and scienceand this in a variety of media: from performance to photography, film and video, to multi-media installations and interactive works. For the Phantom Limb Photographs (1980 1990), a series of classic black- and-white photographs, Hershman mounted cameras and other equipment onto female bodiesmostly in place of the head. By explicitly calling these works cyborgs, Hershman not only quashes the concordance of classic notions of cyborg configurations as technologically upgraded humans with Marshal McLuhan's thesis that media represent extensions of the human body, [28] she also states this more precisely with regard to the interface gender.
Mariko Mori, Miko No Inori, 1996 Mariko Mori, Wave UFO, 1999 2002

105

Lynn Hershman Phantom Limb Photographs The Phantom Limb Photographs is a series of black-andwhite photographs, where Hershman combines female bodies with different technical features like cameras or camera lenses These works merge human bodies with technological cyborgian attributes, pointing out our reliance on electronics and media , and how it invades our physical and psychological collective selves. (Lynn Hershman). Hershman's strategic substitutions of robotic appendages for female anatomical features also allude to the dehumanization brought on by technology. The distinction between the animate and inanimate is uncannilly effaced in these photomontages. (Christine Tamblyn, Art News, Summer 1990)

Ten years prior to this, in her real time/real space performance Roberta Breitmore (1971 1978) she had created an avatar, an artificial figure which she herself embodied. Considering that the contours of Roberta Breitmore's identity were produced from various media and social technologies of communication and recording such as newspaper advertisements, photographs and video recordings, but also psychiatric reports and human witnesses, one can easily detect a link to the artist's later work, which logically thinks these parameters ahead under the signs of new media. Unlike Roberta Breitmore, while Lorna (19731989), the main character in a video disc installation of the same name, embodies herself exclusively in the virtual space of the medium, the two Telerobotic Dolls, Tillie (19951998) and CybeRoberta (19701998) are animated dolls who serve as interfaces to the virtual space of the medium in real space. By on the one hand being able to see with their eyes, and on the other hand their further processing and communicating the information they retrieve from us, the gradation of the boundary between human bodies or sensory systems and their technical simulation or extension by the dolls is questioned and eroded. Hershman's more recent films go a step further: In Conceiving Ada (1996/1997), the computer expert Emmy, who wants to explore the memory of DNA, advances further and further into the story of Ada Lovelace, a mathematician, who together with Charles Babbage for her part is not only working on the Difference Engine, [29] but who also dreams of discovering the formula for artificial life. Via the interface of Emmy's computer, they both succeed in making a connection through space and timewhich extends so far that the daughter Emmy is pregnant with will carry Ada's genetic information. In Tekknolust (2002), on the other hand, the biogeneticist Rosetta Stone [30] secretly produces three clones out of her own genotype, which apparently only exist in virtual space as avatars or life forms endowed with artificial intelligence in reality, however, they continuously transgress the boundary to human habitat. Hershman succeeds in crossing both the imperative of anthropomorphism, to which the clones are subjected, with that of cyborgization, whose mirror they are. [31]

106

Lynn Hershman Teknolust Lynn Hershmans film is a Cyber-Fi Digital Film, one of the first shot with a 24p digital high definition camera as well as a revolutionary laser scanning camera and will feature an artificial intelligent web agent. Anxious to use artificial intelligence to improve the world, Rosetta Stone, (Tilda Swinton), a bio-geneticist, devises a recipe through which she can download her own DNA into a live computer mixture. She succeeds in breeding three Self Replicating Automatons part human, part computer. They look human, but are, in fact, intelligent machines . The SRA's, named Ruby, Marine and Olive (also played by Swinton), support their research, the SRA's sell consensual dreams on the internet. The only flaw in Rosetta's program is that the SRA's need the specific male chromo found only in sperm to survive, As the SRA's can not distinguish dreams from reality, Rosetta programs Ruby via movie seduction tapes to enter the real world and seduce men and share donations with her sisters, who ingest the sperm through hypodermic needles and tea. Unexpectedly, after contact with Ruby, the men suffer from impotence and unexplained rashes. Fearing a plague, medical experts alert the Federal Immune Patrol and enlist Agent Edward Hopper (James Urbaniak) to investigate this rampant virus. Hopper, and his cohort Dirty Dick (Karen Black) attempt to solve the mystery by seeking clues from the affected men. Ruby's contact with the real world introduces her to art, spirituality and the capacity to fall in love, which she does with Sandy, (Jeremy Davies) a lonely Xerox shop worker. All of the characters struggle to find love in a world that no longer needs sex to reproduce and a world where love is the only thing that makes things real.

Cyborg technologies However, not only have the means of creation and self-creation been extended with the advent of the new technologiesHershman's films also deal with thisbut so have the means of their communication through media. And this not only applies to the mediawhich transport images of creation and self-creation, but also to the media spaces in which they can be generated and communicated. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the Internet, which makes possible the interfacing of the basic generation medium for digital creations, i.e. the computer, has developed into one such communication space. If up to this point it has become clear which substantial impulses the theoretical, the artistic but also the popular cultural cyborg configurations have experienced through the examination and the use of the computer, then a whole number of themfor instance Stelarc's Ping Body, Lynn Hershman's Telerobotic Dolls or her film Tekknolust, but of course also Web-based works such as Tina LaPorta's Future Body or Eva Wohlgemuth's EvaSyssuggest asking about specific potentials that the computer as a generation space for, and the Internet as a communication space of cyborg configurations, have in store. Because the computeras is already suggested in the term personal computeras well as the Internet can be regarded as media not only due to their individual use but also their use in a collective space, in which processes and formations of individuation as well as their integration into a technological, social, spatial and historical environment converge, besides the traditional dichotomy of creator and creation, selfcreation as a figure of the third ought to play an outstanding role, and furthermore it should be possible to find crucial interfaces here that are significant for its design, communication and perception. Before these again become the focus of attention, however, it is necessary to state in precise terms which expectations are attached to the promises of monsters of cyborg configurations.
Stelarc, Ping Body, 1996

107

Tina LaPorta Future Body Future_Body explores the relationship between technology, the body, and female subjectivity within a networked environment. While the corporeal body disappears, it is replaced by an immaterial outline of our passing presence. The code, generated from image mapping software, refers to the body's DNA structure. As we shift toward a state of immaterial existence, technology increasingly eliminates all traces of material reality. The wire frame model of the female body is mapped as a series of links, a fragmented coded image to be read by a CPU and displayed on its monitor. Because the model itself is designed for mass distribution, once it has been uploaded into the virtual realm of the internet, it becomes accessible to anyone, anywhere at anytime. Thus, the female figure is everywhere and nowhere at all, invisible yet infinitely replicable. Eva Wohlgemuth, EvaSys, 1997

Technologies of the subject and technologies of gender The examination of the traditional stories of creation showed that within the framework of the tales and images in which they are communicated, one interface is particularly prominent: the interface gender. On the one hand as an index that not only makes the relation between creator and creation identifiable in its contours as a relationship of desire and power, but also marks the success or failure of the act of creation. On the other hand, and in connection with this, as that place in which the monstrosity of anartificial creation becomes visible. If this monstrosity on its part is closely coupled with the potential or the desire of the creations to themselves become subjects who are no longer subject to the laws of their creators, this is not only a general indication of the cultural fears associated with the monstrous promises of new technologies: They are promising and frightening in particular because they have to be regarded as technologies of the subject. [32] And as technologies of gender they are quite clearly particularly promising and frightening. [33] This also no doubt appears where we encounter cyborg configurations as figures of the third, i.e. of self-creation. It is hardly coincidental that in the nineteen-nineties, in both popular culture and the arts we find countless examples for images and narrations that explicitly regard the technologies of the self as technologies of gender and question them as to their potentials and limitations. If one bears in mind films as different as Monika Treut's documentary Gendernauts. A Journey Through Shifting Identities (1999), Hans Scheirl's cyborg splatter science fiction Dandy Dust (1998), and Shu Lea Cheang's science fiction porno I.K.U. or her Web-based artistic work The Brandon Project (1995-1999), which all thematicize the utopias and realities of transgressing gender boundaries, then it appears to be quite characteristic that as transgender subjects, their real and fictitious protagonists are

108

frequently perceived by society as monsterswhile they identify themselves in a positive way as cyborgs. [34]
Hans Scheirl, Dandy Dust, 1998

Shu Lea Cheang BRANDON The project, which is now offline again, was originally announced on June 30, 1998, by the Guggenheim Museum, presenting its first artist's project commissioned for the World Wide Web exploring issues of gender fusion and techno-body in both public space and cyberspace. BRANDON derives its title from Brandon/Teena Brandon of Nebraska, USA, a gender-crossing individual who was raped and murdered in 1993 after his female anatomy was revealed. Cheang's project deploy's Brandon into cyberspace through multi-layered narratives and images whose trajectory leads to issues of crime and punishment in the cross-section between real space and virtual space. The project, a multi-artist/multiauthor/multi-institutional collaboration, will unfold over the course of the coming year, with interface developed (1996-1997) for artist collaboration and public intervention: bigdoll interface, roadtrip interface (Jordy Jones, Susan Stryker, Cherise Fong); Mooplay interface (Francesca Da Rimini, Pat Cadigan, Lawrence Chua) and panopticon interface (Beth Stryker and Auriea Harvey). System programming by Linda Tauscher. During 19981999, we would invite guest curators to institute multi-author upload for each interface. In development with Society for Old and New Media, DeWaag, two netlink forum/installation are also scheduled for Theatrum Anatomicum interface (with Mieke Gerritzen, Roos Eisma, Yariv Alterfin, Atelier Van Lieshout): The first, Digi Gender Social Body: Under the Knife, Under the Spell of Anesthesia, to be held in fall 1998, will bring together noted cultural critics, genderists, surgeons, and bio-technologists to reconsider binary codes of male-female and the mapping of the digital body. The second forum, held in May 1999 in conjunction with the Institute on Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, is entitled "Would the Jurors Please Stand Up? Crime and Punishment as Net Spectacle." The event, which will incorporate avatar performance and the deployment of a virtual court system, will convene a panel of legal scholars and provocateurs to preside a net public trial of sexual assaults in RL (real life) and cyberspace. BRANDON is curated by Matthew Drutt, Associate Curator for Research, Guggenheim Museum (http://www.guggenheim.org) and produced in association with Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam (http://www.waag.org) Caroline Nevejan and Suzanne Oxenaar/curators; Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, Harvard University (http://www.arts-civic.org) Anna Deavere Smith and Andrea Taylor/directors; Banff Center for the Arts, Alberta (http://www-nmr.banffcentre.ab.ca) Sara Diamond/director of media arts. BRANDON is part of a broader program in the media arts being led by John G. Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum.

109

But what is it that at a more fundamental level constitutes the appeal of the promises of monsters? Deviation from the norm no doubt has a particularly attractive effect where the norm itself preserves existing relations of power that severely curtail individuals or whole groups of subjects in their existence and their development. While those who benefit from the existing power relations regard the monster as a counter-image and significant other of their subject position, it has a resistant potential in that as the epitome of transgression and mixing, it is neither the one nor the other: The peculiarity of the organic monster is that s/he is both Same and Other. The monster is neither a total stranger nor completely familiar; s/he exists in an in-between zone[] the monstrous other is both liminal and structurally central to our perception of normal subjectivity. [35] In an age in which weto use Haraway's wordsare all cyborgs, this can be unquestionably be asserted for the hybrids of organism and machine as well as for the way in which the characteristics of the cyborg body are recognizable in the condensed profile Rosi Braidotti draws up for the monstrous body: The monstrous body is a shifter, a vehicle that constructs a web of interconnected and yet potentially contradictory discourses about his or her embodied self. [36] Understood as a figure of transgression, displacement and confusion, the cyborg, like the monster, therefore possesses a resistant potential. [37] However, if one looks back at the traditional stories of creation, in which we encounter artificial creatures as monsters, the pressing question arises of how a factor of deviance is able to become a factor of subversion, because the uncontrollability of the creation is already a central theme that marks the monstrous as a deviation from the norm. But as a rule, this factor of deviation traditional stories of creation as well as their rerendering and rewording in literature and film also tell us thisremains firmly integrated into the logic of the freak show: According to this logic, the horrendousthe mixture of fascination and horror that distinguishes every deviation from the normcan be put on display and looked at with a pleasant shudder; in the end, however, it always remains or becomes banished. At least this is what is reflected in those tales that, after the creation of an artificial human, focus on its persecution and destruction. In contrast, as works by Stelarc and Orlan appear to postulate in a radical way, could the identification with the monster's position harbor promises for the future? What would this mean for all of thoseunlike Stelarc, Orlan and the protagonists of Gendernautswho are not willing to transform their own bodies into figures of transgression? The central role that masks and masquerades play in our culture to this very day verifies that the playful identification with figures of deviance has always been part of the temptations of monstrous promises. Traditionally, however, they have had a stabilizing function. This indirectly becomes apparent in the cultsurrounding a film such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where groups of well-behaved citizens put on costumes for an evening at the cinema, and under the premise of a carnivalesque masquerade slip into the role of Frank'n'Furter who in the end, however, is punished in a quite conventional way for his hybrid as a transsexual creator. Under the premise of the masquerade as well, a subversive potential can only be released if this is bound to the understanding that there is no true face to discover behind the maskor in this case: no true gender. Interesting here is the question of which experiences the people who play Frank'n'Furter, Janet or Rocky take with them into their everyday livesand whether these experiences alter their perception, their thinking, their behavior, and finally also the roles they play in their everyday lives. [38] At any rate, the keywords role play and masquerade appear to point in a direction that also could be made productive for the question regarding possible moments of subversion of the premise of a coherence of body gender, sexuality, gender identity and gender role, and their integration into the traditional, dichotomous gender hierarchy. And namely at that point at which we go

110

over to the computer from the more or less linear narrations in the print media and the (feature) film on the screen or on television. The media jump alone, however, is not the crucial point, because the same still or moving images that transport traditional notions of gender in the old media can just as well appear on the monitor of one's personal computer at home. Playing and learning Traditionally, in the field of computer technology terms such as (gender) role play and (gender) masquerade are associated with a completely different area, namely the classic Netbased communication environments of chat rooms, MUDs and MOOs. [39] Because when constructing an avataran alter ego, in whose identity one communicates and interacts with othersone has the option of choosing more than just one of the two gender identities, the latter can in fact be described as gender identity workshops: [40] As spaces of experience in which under the premises of role play and masquerade, dealing with gender roles and gender identities can be explored ina performative way. Scientific investigations have shown, however, that in itself this is no reason to imply that cyberspace has a subversive potential. Not only are the limitations of stereotypical gender categories experienced in this way, but also the boundaries of the game with gender roles and identities. And if this on the one hand intensifies perception of these boundaries and can support their critical reflection, it also shows that the usual gender-specific attributes are reproduced and in part even reinforced through doing gender. The latter can be established all the more for those areas of the Net that, unlike text-based communication environments, offer visual representations of gender. As an arena of representation, [41] in the World Wide Web in particular, stereotypical representations of femaleness and maleness, as they also circulate in other mass media, seem to dominate. [42] In view of the fact that in recent years, the WWW has increasingly developed into a world wide industrial park, it is also no surprise that alternative representations of gender or representations of alternative views of gender roles and gender identitiesas far as these are not already part of a carefully calculated marketing strategy remain marginal or reminiscent of the logic of the freak show and serve a similar purpose as in the other advertising media of the consumer and entertainment industries. But what could cancel out this logic of the freak show? Possibly precisely that factor that in the text-based communication and game environments, too, is most likely to be capable of contributing to crossing the stereotypical patterns of perception and self-perception or action, reaction and interaction within the framework of traditional gender dichotomies: The experience of gender as construction. If role play and masquerade, or more accurately put: a role play that allows gender to become discernible as a masquerade and doing gender to be experienced in interaction with others, are important vehicles, then at this point it suggests itself to have a look at the area of adventure computer games: These are computer games in which the players slip into the role of a main character in order to enter interaction either with programmed characters orcharacters activated by other players. [43] However, as a rule the artificial humans who act here as protagonists and representative figures, i.e. avatars of the players, are usually embodied by gender stereotypes that border on being caricaturessomething that can be demonstrated quite succinctly on one of those figures we previously became acquainted with as Future Eve's sister.

111

New heroines? Female heroines, as they populate the computer screens in the wake of the most well-known amongst them, Lara Croft, may represent strong fighters by nature, however at the same time, with their long legs, wasp waists, narrow shoulders, doll faces and above all their naturally protruding breasts they correspond with the familiar Barbie doll scheme from head to footas more or less incessantly propagated since the nineteen-sixties by the entertainment industry and the mass media of the Western world as the image of the ideal woman furnished with ideal measurements. Many of them also directly or indirectly cite the iconography of idealized images of women handed down by art history. [44] In Lara Croft's case, the artificialness of this kind of construction is obviouswhich in the eyes of her defenders lends her the characteristics of a post-gender cyborg (Haraway) [45] with whom players of both genders may identify. [46] Nonetheless, markings of a stable and uniform (female) identity dominate, which clearly contradict her interpretation of the cyborg as a creature in a post-gender world: Lara's life is geared towards stringentness, consistency and realizing her true mission; her behavior is predictable and permanently repeats itself; and her over-sexualization suggests an inherent femaleness. [47] Thus the designers of the game have supplied Lara Croft with a biography that corresponds with the imperative of anthropomorphism, also in respect to her human origins. [48] Her father, who is dead, is not only a model for her choice of career, but he also repeatedly plays a role in the basic plot of the games. In addition, the fact that Lara is never shown completely nude and never enters into relations with other characters that would suggest a sexual relationship fits into the heteronormative perspectivein the same way as the fact that all of her actions have to be steered by the playerswho are not directly in Lara's body, but who control it. And if Lara's hypersexiness is not transferred into sexual acts in the game itself, it is preserved quasi in virgin chastityall the more effectively as a promise to the playing voyeurs. It is hardly by chance that there are countless fan sites in the Internet in which Lara poses as a nude model or a soft porno starlet. There are also program sequencespatchesin circulation in which Lara performs a striptease, or as the Nude Raider even battles throughout entire game sequences. [49] And it is hardly by chance that numerous artistic works aim at accentuating precisely these ambivalent qualities of the charismatic game heroine: For instance when in his minimalist videos Flames 1+2 (1997), Miltos Manetas loops brief game sequences in order to let her repeatedly die a senseless death as the incarnation of the automatic game action implemented in her; or when the Dutchman Rob van Oostenbrugge poses as Lara@HAL (2001) at a meeting of hackers; or when in their performance series Lara Croft <listen:do> (1999) [50] the Norwegian group Motherboard invites one to continue the game with Lara in the real space of everyday life or in the space of a museum. [51]
Miltos Manetas Flames 1+2 The videos Flames 1 and Flames 2 are based on short sequences of the game Tombraider, in the protagonist dies a virtual death ending the game normally. Yet Manetas keeps the female protagonist in this situation thereby continuing the game and making it a stimulating experience to see her rise again and again after being defeated only to play another round - and so on ad absurdum. Instead of keeping her alive by playing the game with virtuosity, the idea surfaces that it might be more cruel to not let her die when faced with such an endless fight against death.

112

Both the creations by the fans as well as those by artists allow concluding that Lara is perceived as a sexualized object of desire, as an animated doll. In the same way that the patches and parodies of artistic appropriations accentuate the conventional in the construction of an artificial woman such as Lara, games can of course also be invented that appear to turn the tables: For instance when the group of artists VNS Matrix put forward their monstrous heroine All New Gen (1994/1995), who sets out with a wild gang of DNA sluts to sabotage Big Daddy Mainframe's data banks. [52] In her own way, this kind of heroine, who is decidedly directed at female players and because she is a monster is utterly useless as an object of male desire, is also unsuitable for upsetting traditional gender dichotomies.
VNS Matrix All New Gen Female cybersluts and guerrillas, anarcho cyber-terrorists infiltrate cyberspace and hack into the controls and databanks of Big Daddy Mainframe, the Oedipal man. The aim of the game is to sow the seeds of the New World disorder to the databanks and in this way to end the rule of phallic power. All New Gen refers to both new generations and genders. VNS Matrix plays with different sexualities and gendered roles, quotes from popular culture and cultural theory. Cybersluts resemble female action-dolls, and their well-designed interfaces acknowledge the role of gender technologies and made-up femininities.

Rather one might suspect a starting point for crossing gender relations in a game inviting its players to identify themselves with the game characters. Empirical studies have actually shown that only a comparably small percentage of male players describetheir relation to their female game characters as an object relationship or relationship of desire. And where there is an option, a far greater percentage prefer to slip into the role or the artificial body of a female game character. [53] Only in exceptional cases did those questioned indicate that their reason for this predilection was cross-gender identification in the literal sense. Rather, by changing genders players hope to gain advantages in the course of the game based on the functioning of stereotypes of femaleness on the part of the other players and find expression, for example, in the false estimation of aggression and strength, which can then be expressed in a willingness to help and have sympathy with the apparently weaker gender. Digital drag Can this term, which describes a conscious masquerade that refers to donning and taking off a gender body, which in turn has already been recognized or regarded as an artificial construct, also be applied to dealings with figures such as Lara Croft? And what would be the conditions for getting a subversive potential out of this masquerade? The feminist game theorist and practitioner Anne-Marie Schleiner actually suggests that from the start we should regard Lara Croft and other protagonists of an artificially constructed super-femaleness

113

under the premise of drag: an overdrawn femaleness, whose donning and overt flaunting can already contain the parody of the copied stereotype of femaleness beyond the consciousness of the fabrication of the role. In this sense it would now not be sufficient to regard a figuration such as Lara as a female Frankenstein, as a monstrous offspring of science, an idealized, eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well-trained technopuppet created by and for the male gaze. [54] And from this perspective, positions that view the game sheroe as a post-feminist role model for a strong femaleness, but in the end one that conforms with the dominating gender order, or whose crossing at best grants artificial characters the scope for their becoming a projection surface for lesbian desire, are oversimplified. Adventure games such as Tomb Raider may lack the interaction with other players characteristic of MUDs and MOOs, andthe avatar identity neither has to be constructed, nor can it be produced. Rather it is a matter of an industrially prefabricated skin that is equipped with the same rigid contours as a role model sanctioned by dominating social dogmas. A successful game nevertheless requires that the body and the personality of the artificial character can be navigated, that players of both genders can slip into Lara's skin, and that they be able to act for or as Lara. But as Judith Butler already pointed out by way of the example of Jennie Livingstone's film Paris is Burning and its protagonists, even acting under the premise of drag is not inescapably intended to be criticism oreven morethe subversion of normative gender categories. [55] Correspondingly, the terminal identity [56] of the artificial human cannot generally be assigned to a mechanism of affirmation or one of subversion. Rather it oscillates between that which has already been produced as the simulation of a human imageone could say: what is set in advance as skinand can invite identification just as well as it can invite distancing, and that which is discursively produced via processes of identification and interaction when the skin has been slipped on and filled with life, or is perceived as an artificial living thing and integrated into courses of action. In fact, as Randi Gunzenhuser notes with regard to the making a fetish of the female body of artificial figures such as Lara Croft, such a constellation can [] definitely lead to exciting models of resistance, within which there is a place for the self-reflexive games with identities and desire. [] Then as a fetish, posing becomes a strategic game, identification with the position of the technological fetish becomes a subversive counter-narration. [] In case of doubt it depends on who is assimilating the text. [57] And, it might be added, who brings it up performatively under which premises. Correspondingly, the playful identification with an artificial gender body as well as its functionalization may indeed be accompanied by the knowledge that in a dual sense gender is a masqueradewhose functioning is based on the fact that the mask is not the copy of an original, but the clone of a stereotypical construction. This process may not necessarily exclude an analysis or criticism of the model the construction is based onbut it doesnot inevitably include such criticism, nor is it assumed as a matter of course. Making sex From the observations made thus far, with regard to the imagination space of digital creation and the question concerning the (re)production of genders for the images of artificial humans, which we primarily encounter in this setting, in summary the following can be inferred: The producers of artificial humans may like to put forward that they created them according to models from natureand not only do they lay claim to the status of artificial life for their creatures, they frequently even cite an improved nature. However, when in the course of this body gender, gender identity and gender roleand thus gender differences on the wholeare formulated hypertrophically, this has the consequence that artificial humans ultimately

114

embody a monstrous gender. And this is the case regardless of whether they use gender as a weaponi.e. whether they are armed phallically as male or female fighting machines or function as a femme fatale of disarming sexuality with devastating resultsor whether they represent an ideal image of so-called maleness or femaleness, which is unattainable in real life and therefore instills fear. According to the logic of the freak show, the monstrous gender of these horror pictures assumes the role of a counter-image to the normality of the dominating gender order with stabilizing functions. In contrast, where would we find a possible starting point for other or altered perspectives specifically for the digital medium? As demonstrated, it could lie in the potential of doing or being gender under the premise of a digital masqueradewhich, however, only takes effect if this masquerade is not already a calculated and calculable part of a game function and thus quasi mechanically implemented. De-monstrations of the monstrous On the other hand, a deviating perception or a subversive treatment of these images is only possible if the horror has been recognized in its function as a function within the logic of the freak show and if this mechanism for its part is put on display or made experiencible as a mechanism. An artistic project that begins at this level is Francesca da Rimini's Doll Yoko: A Webbased, non-linear narration that works with hypertexts and images and which intertwines the various formations of monstrous and trivialized artificial femaleness until they become indistinguishable by allowing a girl murdered in the course of misogynous birth control measures to become a revenant. In her multiple manifestations, precisely those stereotypes that normallyplayed out as projections over her dead bodycontribute to a restrictive and normative fixing of traditional notions of femaleness are brought back to life in a kind of surplus production that bursts all perceptive capacities: Rock the Horror Picture Show. Conversely, what can also be helpful is the examination of the limitations cyborg configurations are subject to because the imperative of anthropomorphism clearly continues to be the decisive condition for our identification with the images we have of cyborgs. In Victoria Vesna's project Bodies INCorporated (1995 ff.) we are invited to create for ourselves a second body in cyberspace as a substitute existence. In this case, in the categories sex assignment and sexual preference there may be a whole variety of alternatives that approximately correspond to the range of offers in MUDs and MOOs. However, as soon as it comes to designing the body image, we are confronted with the familiar tight restrictions: The variety of the deductive possibilities that arise by our being allowed to assemble the substitute body piece-by-piece and equip it with all sorts of textures and sounds cannot obscure the fact that the contours themselves practically remain typically restricted: A part of the body may be male, female or child-likeif we do not want to entirely do without it. Whether we regard the avatars we have created as significant others or as alter egos or even as sexual playmates: what we create are freaksprojection surfaces endowed with life that despite the apparent variety of the monstrous turn out to be as repulsive and restricted as the stereotypes out of which they are put together.

115

Victoria Vesna Bodies INCorporated Initially, the participant is invited to construct a virtual body out of predefined body-parts, textures, and sounds, and gain membership to the larger body-owner community. The main elements of the online site are three constructed environments (subsidiaries of Bodies INCorporated), within which different sets of activities occur: LIMBO INCorporated, a gray, rather non-descript zone, where information about inert bodies that have been put on hold -- bodies whose owners have abandoned or neglected them -- is accessed; NECROPOLIS INCorporated, a richly textured, baroque atmosphere, where owners can either look at or choose how they wish their bodies to die; and SHOWPLACE!!! INCorporated," where members can participate in discussion forums, view star/featured bodies of the week, bet in the deadpools, and enter "dead" or "alive" chat sessions.

In this respect it is not surprising that many of the substitute bodies neglected, forgotten or discarded by their creators ultimately end up in the necropolis ofBodies INCorporated. This circumstance adverts to a question that already plays a central role in the majority of literary and cinematic stories of the creation of artificial humans and at the same time is its absurdity. Borrowing from the title of an essay by Margaret Morse, What Do Cyborgs Eat?, [58] the question could read: How Do Cyborgs Die? While the creatures were created to beguile human mortality, the central plot of the narrationsfrom the golem legend and Frankenstein to the Blade Runner and the Terminatorsoon focuses on how the monstrous promises, which have become reality, can be put an end to. If this fails, thenas in Terminator IIIthe definitive end of humanity is at stake. It appears, however, that a happy ending can only be achieved under the premise of a return to the conditio humana. At least if one believes in the doctrine of the primacy of the whole human. The doctrine of the monsters In contrast, from the direct dealings with artificial bodies, not just as permitted by computer games but also by artistic works that enable us to explore our cyborg condition in virtual space, we can learn something else. In the process, an identification with the position of the freak or the monsterdonning its skinis not as crucial as recognizing the function it has as a surface that can be made a fetish of, a surface that is not a shell for a core, but is already everything: The whole is an image thatreproducing the old stories or the traditional narrationsis intended to be revitalized or mobilized. This ultimately also results in a further decisive indication of why images of artificial humans are so prominently equipped with the features of physical gender in the first place: If they are personified proof of fathering without a woman, i.e. if they come from a test tube or the memory of a computerif they do not require dual biological sexuality for their reproduction, or if dual biological sexuality was not required for their productionthen we can assume that their physical gender decidedly serves the invocation and demonstration of femaleness ormalenessa femaleness or maleness that corresponds less with any reality of woman or man than it represents an idea of what femaleness or maleness should be. However, precisely with reference to the interface gender we can learn something else: Namelyin confirmation of Judith Butler's argumentnot only that gender, but also that sex must be considered under the premise of the masquerade. [59] In other words: At the moment we begin to abstract from its function for biological reproduction, in its specific role for producing meaning physical gender proves itself to be a function of the representation of a human image that is intended to be animated or revitalized in the artificial humans over their dead bodies, eerily brought back to life. And this, on the other hand, is an understanding that cannot only be transferred from the virtual reality of digitally generated image spaces to those art historical or historico-cultural narrations of artificial humans in general, but also to any other perceptual reality.

116

Notes:
[1] Cf. Max More, Principles of Extropy An evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition, (Version 3.11 2003). Cf. an older version (2.5 1993), which also provides insight into the in part significant transformation of the Principles. [2] Cf. Tron (USA/Taiwan 1982, directed by Steven Lisberger). [3] Cf. the Visible Human Project Claudia Reiche, The Visible Human Project. Einfhrung in einen obsznen Bildkrper, in Future Bodies. Zur Visualisierung von Krpern in Science und Fiction, Marie-Luise Angerer/Kathrin Peters/Zo Sofoulis (eds.), Vienna, 2002, pp. 7189. [4] Cf. the Visible Human Project; Claudia Reiche, The Visible [5] Cf. e.g. Philipp K. Dick, UBIK, New York, 1991; William Gibson, Neuromancer, New York, 2003. [6] Cf. Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, London, 1988. [7] Cf. Sabine Folie, evasys.personal information 1.0Subversive Krpersysteme, in Atlas Mapping. Knstler als Kartographen, Sabie Folie/Paolo Bianchi (eds.), Vienna, 1997, pp. 172177. [8] Cf. Elaine Scarry, The body in pain. The making and unmaking of the world, New York, 1985. [9] Cf. Barbara Engelbach, Zwischen Body Art und Videokunst. Krper und Video in der Aktionskunst um 1970 (Ph.D. dissertation, Hamburg, 1996), Munich, 2001. [10] Cf. Stelarc, Gesteigerte Gebrden/Obsoletes Begehren. Post-evolutionre Strategien, in Endo und Nano. Die Welt von Innen, ars electronica 92, Karl Gerbel/Peter Weibel (eds.), Linz, 1992, pp. 233239, p. 233. [11] Cf. Stelarc, Parasitische Visionen. Alternierende, intime und unwillkrliche Erfahrungen, in FleshFactor. Informationsmaschine Mensch, ars electronica 97, Gerfried Stocker/Christine Schpf (eds.), Vienna, New York, 1997, pp. 148157, p. 149. [12] Cf. Verena Kuni, Lost Medium FoundOn STELARC. A Dialogue With the Obsolete Body, in SIXCON Lost Media, Rotraut Pape (ed.), Offenbach, 2002, pp. 7686. [13] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, p. 164 and p. 175. [14] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, p. 181. [15] Cf. Verena Kuni, Lost Medium FoundOn STELARC. A Dialogue With the Obsolete Body, in SIXCON Lost Media, Rotraut Pape (ed.), Offenbach, 2002, pp. 7686, p. 86. (The quote stems from the video recording of a lecture held by STELARC at the Hochschule fr Gestaltung, Offenbach, on February 19, 2002, which was transcribed by Verena Kuni.) [16] Cf. Stelarc, Von Psycho- zu Cyberstrategien: Prothetik, Robotik und Tele-Existenz, in Kunstforum International, vol. 132: Die Zukunft des Krpers I, Nov. 1995Jan. 1996, 1995, pp. 7281, p. 81. [17] Cf. Orlan, De l'art charnel au baiser de l'artiste, Paris, 1997; Jill O'Bryann: Saint Orlan faces reincarnation, in The Art journal, vol. 56, 4, 1997, pp. 5056. [18] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181. [19] Cf. Cindy Jackson, quoted in the BBC News, Making Cindy into Barbie?,; Cindy Jackson, Living Doll, London 2002. [20] Cf. Orlan, This is my Body, this is my Software, cited in Barbara Rose, Art Cuts, in Face, no. 52, Jan. 1993. [21] Cf. the chapter Postsexual Bodies by Marie-Luise Angerer. [22] Cf. Orlan, Self-hybridations, Pierre Bourgeade (ed.,), Romainville, 1999. [23] In the context of images of (self-)transformation as visions of the monstrous in art and popular culture cf. Verena Kuni, Metamorphose im Zeitalter ihrer technischen (Re-)Produzierbarkeit, in Technologien des Selbst. Zur Konstruktion des Subjekts, Eva Huber (ed.), Frankfurt/Main, Basel, 2000, pp. 5275.

117

[24] Cf. Siegfried Zielinski, Markus Kchs Institut fr mediale Krankheiten, in Kunstforum International, vol. 132: Die Zukunft des Krpers I, Florian Rtzer (ed.), Nov. 1996Jan. 1996, 1995, pp. 200205. [25] Cf. Alba d'Urbano: Hautnah, in Kunstforum International, vol. 132: Die Zukunft des Krpers I, Florian Rtzer (ed.), Nov. 1996Jan. 1996, 1995, pp. 9093. [26] Cf. Inez van Lamsweerde. Photographs, Zdenek Felix (ed.), Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Munich, 1999. [27] For Mori as a cyborg cf. Yvonne Volkart, Infobiobodies. Art and esthetic strategies in the new world order, in Next Cyberfeminist International, Cornelia Sollfrank/Old Boys Network (eds.), Hamburg 1999, pp. 6168 [28] Cf. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Toronto, 1964. [29] The cyberpunk authors Bruce Sterling and William Gibson dedicated a book to this first calculating machine, which is considered to be the original form of the computer; cf. William Gibson/Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine, New York, 1990. [30] A name that not without good reason is reminiscent of the media theorist and transgender activist. Sandy Stone, who also regards herself as a cyborg; cf. Stone's homepage as well as Allucqure Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, Cambridge, MA, 1996. [31] As indicated in the title, this explicitly passionate perspective also distinguishes Tekknolust from the artist's early works in that significantly more ambivalence is attached to the cyborgization. Cf. also the early video Seduction of a Cyborg (1994), in which Hershman associates the infection of technology into the body with an attack on its immune system. Also refer to the text Collective Bodies by Margaret Morse. [32] Following Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, in Technologies of the Self, Luther H. Martin et al., (eds.), Amherst, 1988. [33] Following Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender. Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction, Bloomington, 1987. [34] Cf. Verena Kuni, Gendernauts im Netz, in URTUX. Kein Ort, berallKunst als Utopie, Jahrbuch '01/'02, Institut fr Moderne Kunst Nrnberg (ed.) in association with Verena Kuni, Nuremberg, 2002, pp. 262 295. [35] Rosi Braidotti, Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt. On Teratology and Embodied Differences, in Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs. Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace, Nina Lykke/Rosi Braidotti (eds.), London, 1996, pp. 135152, p. 141. Cf. also Rosi Braidotti's Teratologies. [36] Rosi Braidotti, Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt. On Teratology and Embodied Differences, in Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs. Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace, Nina Lykke/Rosi Braidotti (eds.,), London, 1996, pp. 135152, p. 150. [37] Cf. the chapters Monstrous Bodies and Unruly Bodies by Yvonne Volkart. [38] Cf. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York, 1959. [39] Cf. Elizabeth Reid, Identity and the Cyborg Body, Ph.D. dissertation, Melbourne, 1994 Shannon McRae, Flesh Made Word. Sex, Text and the Virtual Body, in Internet Culture. David Porter (ed.,), London, New York, 1997, pp. 7386; Gender in the Internet Age in The CPSR Newsletter, vol. 18, 1, Winter 2000 [//www.cpsr.org/publications/newsletters/issues/2000/Winter2000/index.html]; see also the contributions by Christiane Funken and Angela Krewani in: Was vom Krper brig bleibt. Krperlichkeit Identitt Medien, eds. Barbara Becker/Irmela Schneider, Frankfurt/Main et al. 2000. [40] Cf. Amy Bruckmann: Gender Swapping on the Internet (1993) [41] Cf. Verena Kuni, The Art of Performing Cyberfeminism, in Next Cyberfeminist International. A Reader, Old Boys Network/Cornelia Sollfrank (eds.), Hamburg, Berlin, 1999, pp. 6972, p. 70. [42] With respect to the question of how counter-concepts to these stereotypes might look cf. Verena Kuni, The Future is Femail. Some Thoughts on the Aesthetics and Politics of Cyberfeminism, in First Cyberfeminist International. A Reader, Cornelia Sollfrank/Old Boys Network (eds.), Hamburg, 1998, pp. 1318. [43] Cf. Natascha Adamowsky, Spielfiguren in Virtuellen Welten (Ph.D. dissertation, Siegen, 1998), Frankfurt/Main, 2000. [44] Cf. Randi Gunzenhuser, Darf ich mitspielen?, Literaturwissenschaften und Computerspiele (2000). [45] Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, p. 150.

118

[46] Cf. Anne-Marie Schleiner, Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons?, in Leonardo, vol. 34, 3, 2001, pp. 221 226 as well as Anne-Marie Schleiner Female Bobs arrive at Dusk (1999), which will appear in Cyberfeminism. Next Protocols, Verena Kuni/Claudia Reiche (eds.), New York, 2004. Compared with Haraway's cyborg utopia, the promise of this kind of choice of identification would signify a reduction in as far as Haraway refers to the cyborg as a creature in a post-gender world: [I]t has no truck with bisexuality, preoedipal symbiosis. Cf. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway (ed.), New York, 1991, pp. 149181, p. 150. [47] Cf. the chapter Lonesome Raider Lara Croft, in Birgit Richard et al., Girls who got game. Die Konstruktion von weiblichen Reprsentationsbildern in Computerspielen, final report of the research project of the same name (19992001), J. W. Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt/Main, 2002. [48] Kyoko Date also has a consistent biography, to which belongs information about slight physical afflictions such as near-sightedness; cf. www.sternenkratzer.de. [49] Cf. Anne-Marie Schleiner, Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons?, in Leonardo, vol. 34, 3, 2001, pp. 221 226. [50] Cf. the documentation; Lara also has a starring role in the preceding multi-media performance project Switch Bitch (1998), which dealt with gender stereotypes in digital space. She also appeared as Rala Froct in the media-net performance series Idoru (1999), after William Gibson's novel of the same name, in which the Motherboard players embodied fictitious game heroines, cf.Motherboard. [51] Cf. my overview on artistic strategies regarding computer games and the gender perspective: Gender Games Art Patch Work, in Birgit Richard et al., Girls who got game. Die Konstruktion von weiblichen Reprsentationsbildern in Computerspielen, final report on the research project with the same title (19992001), J. W. Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt/Main, 2002 - as well as the corresponding charts with synopsis, comments, bibliography and links, esp. part II, KnstlerInnenprojekte. [52] Cf. VNS Matrix, Game Girl, cited in Jyanni Steffensen, Slimy metaphors for Technoscience. The clitoris is a direct line to the Matrix (1998). [53] Cf. Kathryn Wright, Gender Bending in Games (2001). [54] Cf. Chris Csikszentmihalyi in a lecture on Lara Croft at San Jose State University, April 1998, cited in Anne-Marie Schleiner, Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons?, in Leonardo, vol. 34, 3, 2001, pp. 221226. [55] Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter. On the Discursive Limits of "Sex," London, New York, 1993 (Chapter 4: Gender is Burning. Questions of Appropriation and Subversion). 57 Following Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, London, 1993. [56] Following Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, London, 1993. [57] Cf. Randi Gunzenhuser, Darf ich mitspielen? Literaturwissenschaften undComputerspiele (2000). [58] Cf. What Do Cyborgs Eat? Oral Logic in Information Society, in Margaret Morse, Virtualities. Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture, Bloomington et al., 1998, pp. 125151. [59] Cf. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London, New York, 1990 and Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter. On the Discursive Limits of "Sex," London, New York, 1993.

119

120

Spisak literature za predmet Teorija forme

predava: Dejan Grba teorija forme: 1. Radenko Mievi (prir.), Izbor tekstova za izuavanje predmeta teorija forme (3. izdanje), Univerzitet umetnosti, Beograd, 1989. 2. Milun Mitrovi, Forma i oblikovanje (2. dopunjeno izdanje), Nauna knjiga, Beograd, 1987. 3. Kosta Bogdanovi i Bojana Buri, Teorija forme, Zvod za udbenike i nastavna sredstva, Beograd, (1. izd.) 1991. i (2. izd.) 1999. 4. Rudolf Arnhajm, Umetnost i vizuelno opaanje, Univerzitet umetnosti, Beograd, 1987. 5. Nathan Goldstein, Design and composition, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1989. umetnost u digitalnom domenu: 1. Dejan Grba (prir.), itanka za predmet Teorija forme, tampano i elektronsko izdanje, Univerzitet umetnosti u Beogradu, 2006. 2. Lev Manovi, Metamediji, Centar za savremenu umetnost, Beograd 2001. 3. Oliver Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003. 4. Critical Art Ensemble, Digitalni partizani, Centar za savremenu umetnost, Beograd 2000. opte: 1. Guy Debord, Drutvo spektakla, Anarhija / Blok 45 (http://www.modukit.com/anarhija-blok45/pdf/004_DEBO.PDF), Beograd, 2002. linkovi:
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/mediaartnet/ http://www.artificial.dk/index.html http://www.furtherfield.org/index.php http://www.hz-journal.org/ http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/index.html http://www.virtualart.at/common/recentWork.do;jsessionid=9A5B32CFD582DD2025F46D4E12FDFF17 http://www.v2.nl/ http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/ http://w3.tii.se/en/ http://firstmonday.org/index.html http://userwww.sfsu.edu/%7Einfoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html#kinetics http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03/ http://biotehnologija.grupa.org.yu/ http://t-o-d-o-r-o-v-i-c.org/ http://tadar.net/ http://www.kraftwerk.com/ http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/8880/index.html http://www.jodi.org/ http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/ http://makrolab.ljudmila.org/ http://www.equivalence.com/labor/lab_mp.shtml http://www.asymptote-architecture.com/ http://www.kalpakjian.com/ http://www.ekac.org/ http://www.jochem-hendricks.de/ http://www.cityarts.com/lmno/ http://www.2minds.de/ http://www.bernstrup.com/meltdown/main.html http://www.beflix.com/

121