The Avant-Garde Machine
Art and Science meet in Karlsruhe Center for Media and Art (ZKM) at a unique playground.
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The monitor in front of the visitor's rest room in the lobby of the ZKM displays uncommented, alternating black-and-white pictures of the sinks, urinals and toilet stalls. Those who ignore the shameless infringement of privacy and decide to venture inside are rewarded in two respects: Firstly, they don't have to worry about being observed because secondly, the room contains
centimeter-sized models of the aforementioned areas with video cameras installed above them. In other words, visitors are treated to what is essentially an art exhibition.
Jonas Dahlberg's ‚Safe Zones, No. 7‘ creates a direct link to our everyday experiences and disappoints those who expect the ZKM to be something of a final storehouse of eternal values. What the center does is to reawaken art from its Rip Van Winkle hibernation, ‚wire it up‘ and place it right smack in the middle of today's world of computer technology and media networks. ‚Media Art‘
is the designation for the avant-garde field from which the natural sciences and the art world both hope to obtain mutual benefits.
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Back in the mid-1980s, when concepts such as multimedia, interactiveness and networks were still the exclusive domain of experts, Lothar Späth, the former Premier of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, had the idea to set up a foundation for high culture in his high tech state. A commission of state politicians and local representatives of the city's art academy, university and its former nuclear research center, subsequently began examining how they could set up an institution that would study the impact of digital technologies on both our everyday life and on art. In this regard, the planners were very much influenced by the Media Lab at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, which was established back in 1980 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner. However, while the MIT project focused on fundamental physical and cererbral-physiological research, the idea behind the project in Baden was to concentrate more strongly on events that could be communicated through art. In 1989, the art historian and cultural manager Heinrich Klotz was appointed director of the project.
However, 60 million euros in state funding was not enough for the envisioned construction of a prestigious 60-meter-long glass cube, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Kohlhaas. The choice fell instead on a former munitions factory of the Karlsruhe–Augsburg industrial company in the southwestern part of the city. The facility, a protected historical site threatened by decay, was renovated with its new use in mind. Since 1997, it has been offering the ZKM a spacious venue for exhibitions and art activities over an area of two soccer fields. The originally planned cube has since given way to a version that only reaches the height of the former factory hall. Home to a music studio, it also makes the main entrance to the ZKM visible from a great distance.
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The Museum of Contemporary Art (MNK) has been part of the ZKM for three years. Under the direction of
its curator, Götz Adriani. the museum's distinguished collection includes modern painting as well as works representative of the transition from conventional video art to full-fledged digital installations. Wheras the MNK remains true to the work' status as objects of art, the ZKM's Media Museum ambitiously endeavors to present art on the thin ice of digital information design. Visitors can interact with the projections and virtual reality displays, whereby their reactions determine the changes that are subsequently made to the exhibits' virtual and audio forms. In ‚The Interactive Plant Growing‘ by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Migonneau, for example, the intensity with which living plants are touched by the visitor determines the speed of the plant's virtual growth as depicted on a projection surface. In another exhibit, in this case a virtual book by Masaki Fujihata (‚Beyond Pages‘), a click of the mouse on the virtual light switch in the book turns on the lights in the actual room. Here, the ‚please do not touch‘ signs commonly found in museums would be the kiss of death for this kind of media art.
„The ZKM is a pilot museum – we are the only independent facility in which guest artists and guest scientists produce their work onsite, and then display it to the public“, says ZKM director Peter Weibel, before also mentioning the museum's new function as a production venue for digital art forms. Media art is interdisciplinary. Media art is created in a team. Media art is also expensive, since it places great demands on hardware and software. This is why the ZKM offers guest artists from around the world the opportunity to use the technical, scientific and social infrastructure of the facility for six months. In return, the artists agree to allow the museum to exhibit or present their work for a certain period of time.
The competence centers that work behind the scenes at Media Museum are actually what make such a guest-artist program possible: The Institute of Music and Acoustics, The Institute of Network Development, The Institute of Visual Media, The Institute of Basic Research, which covers the fields of Complex Dynamic Systems (chaos), Cognition, and Interface Technologies. Plus the Media Library–which, unlike the institutes, is open to visitors–contains an extensive music, video and book collection on the the subject of contemporary art and media.
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Peter Weibel, 58, who has been director of the ZKM since 1999, switches into top gear when the conversation turns to the link between art and science. A mathematician, media theorist, artist and curator, Weibel established the Institute of Basic Research because „avant-garde media artists not only cross over disciplines but also operate in the vicinity of natural science.“ The idea of point of contact between art and science is not new: For example, Renaissance painters who strove to create a natural sense of depth in their work had to use knowledge gained in the areas of mathematics, architecture and optics. „Those who wish to explore the possiblities offered by the most versatile machine in human history, the computer, must be able to understand it“, says Weibel, But why set up a basic research area at an artistic institution?
The goal of basic research is to expand scientic knowledge that is not necessarily directly applicable to industry or commerce. This means that basic research is by nature open to artistic endeavors in the field of media technology. However, artists don't just go to the Institute for Basic Research at the ZKM and ask a scientist to „find out who the brain of an observer will react to my video installation, and tell me how I can register and incorporate this reaction into my exhibit.“ The fact that science and art speak two different languages makes such direct cooperation impossible. Nevertheless, the physical and institutional connection between the Institute of Basic Research and the ZKM ensures that artists and scientists communicate without reservations. They can thus establish relationships based on mutual understanding.
Three pyhsicists working under the direction of Hans H. Diebner conduct basic research according tho their own wishes. They have now decided to examine chaotic systems such as neural networks more closely, and develop interfaces that can link human brain and artificial networks. One of the goals of such efforts is to increase understanding of the mechanisms involved in creativity. However, the ultimate goal of developing systems capable of creative acitivity remains a project for a distant future.
In addition to its many scientific publications, the Institute of Basic Research at the ZKM has produced so-called Perfomative Science. This involves the expansionof image-generating procedures for interactive installations. The ‚Liquid Perceptron‘ simulation by Diebner and Seven Sahle, for example, visually depicts an active neural network that reacts to the movements of observers in front of a video camera by producing specific image patterns. „But we still wouldn't call ourselves artists“, says Diebner. A helpful side-effect of such installations is that they present the results of research done at the ZKM to the public.
One study concerning pattern recognition in realtime even shows hwo theoretical acitivities in basic research can find practival application: „Such recognition systems can make it possible to control things like pacemakers or robots without any time delays–a feature that could be critical in certain cases“, says Diebner. However, Diebner also thinks that scientific freedom alone will not be enough to improve the quality of research at the ZKM in the long run. Like the state's Ministry of Science and Art, Diebner also believes there should be clear structures of cooperation with the Technical College (Hochschule), the Karlsruhe Research Center and the university. Exemplary cooperative relationships with Prof. Rüdiger Dillmann at the Institute of Robotics, and Prof. Thomas Beth at the Institute of Algorithms and Cognitive Systems are to be expanded. Prof Deussen, who coordinates cooperation with the university, also hopes that contacts will be intensified. One promising way of doing this is to hold unversity lectures in generals studies at the ZKM.
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Is the artist in danger of disappearing behind the wall of scientific theory and being strangled by the cables of modern technology? On the contrary: „It is only when the artist enters the realm of mathematics ans physics that he or she can develop perspectives that lead the way out of the technology trap“, says Weibel, in reference to the role of avant-garde artists. „The most important job of such artists is to propose alternative realities to the commercially oriented reality promoted by the huge corporations. They have to be able to see a door on the virtual wall where the engineer sees absolutely no possibility of escape. Artists must continue to be visionary.“
Theoretical contemplation of media is nothing compared to the sensual pleasure of partaking in artistic visions. The ‚Web of Life‘ installation that is on display in the Media Museum since March 2002 literally lives from its visitors's handshakes of greeting. Having been read by a scanner, the lines of the visistor's hand are used to alter not only a virtual mesh pattern and a stereoscopic projection of blended video images on a 24-square-meter screen but also the sound emitted by 72 speakers distributed throughout the room. The observer therefore literally becomes a part of the meshed web, which links reality to the virtual world. The constant flow of images and sounds is also fed in protable terminals, which send scanned hand lines at various locations around the world back to the central installation via the Internet. In a manner typical of the ZKM, the ‚Web of Life‘, which was designed by Michael Gleich and Geoffrey Shaw, the outgoing head of the Institute for Visual Media, brings the future vision of team of media artists back to reality–and will continue to do so for the next three years.
As it moves and vibrates, the ZKM is under no obligation to separate art from game-like technical experimentation. With its exhibits, the Karlsruhe center has one foot firmly placed in the present. Thanks to its alliance of art and science, the other one is confidently striding towards the future.
Ulrich Schendzielorz
This article was published in the magazine ‚Bild der Wissenschaft Plus, Research and Develoment in Baden-Württemberg‘.
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