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The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
— Neuromancer, William Gibson
Brigitta Bödenauer, an Austrian artist, who is on an artist-in-residence program organized by the WRO Art Center, Austrian Cultural Forum and the Artist In Residence Programme AIR Wro, has joined the authors of the Tapes: Rewind series in October. Together, they have prepared a video program devoted to techno dystopia and cyberpunk aesthetics on the basis of the works found in the WRO Collection.
authors of the series: Dagmara Domagała, Maurycy Wiliczkiewicz, Kamil Kawalec
cooperation: Brigitta Bödenauer
Works
Jill Scott (AU), The Digital Body-Automata, 1997, TV program excerpt, 2:21
Jill Scott’s triptych is a part of the Medienmuseum’s collection in the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. Variable components of the installation are activated through physical contact and viewers’ interaction with a specially designed space. By touching the metal objects, the viewers can see animated characters on the screens that represent five different kinds of fantasies about the mechanical transformation of body through technology. From the medical manipulation, through the fascination with androids, object-to-human transformation and mechanical body creation, to the history of artificial intelligence and the idea of uploading the mind to a computer.
Time and place of the documentation: WRO2000@kultura, the Meridian 17th exhibition, Museum of the University of Wroclaw, November–December 2000.
Stelarc (AU), PSYCHO/CYBER: Event for Scanning Robot and Laser Eyes, 1993, documentation of the performance, 4:15
A hydraulic CNC arm is supporting the weight and determining the constraints of the body’s movements. Stelarc experiments with the physical constraints imposed by his body, develops strategies to expand its capabilities, interfacing his body with a robotic prosthesis and digital technologies. The artist draws attention to increasing automatisation and fear of involuntary evolution of cyborg zombies.
Time and place of the documentation: MuuMedia Festival, The Cable Factory, Helsinki, May 1993.
Courtesy of the artist.
Antonin De Bemels (BE), Il s’agit, 2003, video, 4:09
In this videographic work, De Bemels keeps on researching the physical and visual limitations of the movement, dance and human body. The main focus of the piece is the static torso; it seems to blend in with the rhythmically invigorating limbs of dancer – eyes closed, his head twisting like that of a puppet. Il s’agit offers an illusory and complex metaphor, relating the human body to machine-like patterns and shapes. In a cybernetic “ballet mécanique” of fluttering, wriggling arm gestures, the organism seems to develop and multiply itself, and then reassemble for a short but peaceful moment.
Work of the 11th International Media Art Biennale WRO 05 program.
Jeffrey Shaw (AU), Disappearance, 1992, documentation of the installation, 1:23
The work is a part of the Medienmuseum’s collection in the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. A CRT video monitor mounted on an industrial forklift truck creates a virtual representation of a pirouetting ballerina. As the forklift shifts the monitor up and down, the ballerina is presented from head to toe; when the forklift rotates, the ballerina appears to turn. There is a real time camera inside of the engine compartment of the vehicle that records and displays the image of the ballerina. The machine incarnates her pirouettes in the form of self-reproduction. The installation evokes ballerina figurines found on the top of music boxes that Shaw considers the first-generation robots.
Courtesy of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe.
Piotr Wyrzykowski a.k.a. Peter Style (PL), There is No Body, 1999, TV program excerpt, 14:32
There is No Body is a virtual performance based on an interactive body model of David EveryBody, a character inspired by Michelangelo’s David sculpture. David, made in the image and likeness of Peter Style, doesn’t have a body. He is merely an encoded piece of information which can be reinterpreted by the participants of this virtual performance. David is not a universal representation of “everybody”, he is rather a representation of “every body”, an immortal matrix saved in the ROM memory.
Place and time of the documentation: the Privacy exhibition, State Gallery of Art, Sopot, production: TVP Gdansk, realisation: Joanna Gula Cichocka, 1999.
Courtesy of the artist.
Istvan Kantor (CA), The Trinity Session, 2001, video, 7:29
The work features the action-based technological media work of the MachineSexActionGroup (MSAG). It explores the socio-physical aspects of trans-kinetic ecstasy and the techno-orgasmic ambiance of high-speed information exchange through a site-specific machine-cult performance focusing on robotic stimulation, desktop eroticism, office furniture-sex and cybersportecstasy.
The work of the MachineSexActionGroup manifests a new vision of the technological performance theatre that Istvan Kantor has initiated in the late 90s in Toronto. Kantor formed MSAG in order to develop a new physical and technological laboratory theatre where the dramatic narrative elements are replaced by conflicting kinetic actions and noise. Updating Wilhelm Reich’s theory, the work of MSAG concludes that sexuality and technology are the centre around which both social and inner life of the individual revolves. Radically designed MSAG performances explore the physical structure of the body and the tools of today’s technology in relation to sexuality and systems of information machinery.
The video was produced for the TransSexTech residency project at the Trinity Square Video media art center in Toronto.
Courtesy of the artist.
C.U.K.T. (PL), Wiktoria Cukt, 2000, election campaign report, 12:56
Between populism and democracy. Artists associated with CUKT (Centralny Urząd Kultury Technicznej / The Central Bureau of Technical Culture) before the 2001 presidential elections in Poland organized a professional presidential campaign for the virtual candidate controlled by a special software called “The Electoral Citizen Software”. Wiktoria Cukt was meant to be a perfect candidate, meeting both realistic and unrealistic expectations of her supporters. She demonstrated a faith in direct, participatory democracy without unnecessary, harmful middlemen. Cukt’s campaign slogan was: “Politicians are useless”. Her office campaigns were followed by raves during which signatures for her official candidacy and membership declarations for the Wiktoria Cukt political party were gathered. The CUKT’s action remains the most meaningful manifestation of contemporary Polish activism and actionism so far.
Courtesy of the artist.
Castigliano Quamontes (US), Revolt of the Masses, video, 2:00
A non-human voice recites a passage from one of the most important pieces of the modern social thought, i.e. Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset.
Work of the 7th International Media Art Biennale WRO 99 Power of Tape program.
Jennifer & Kevin McCoy (US), Transmission, video, 7:30
The video takes the form of an intercepted transmission with a message from a lost traveller.
Work of the 7th International Media Art Biennale WRO 99 Power of Tape program.
TRT: 56:35