Today
ARCO '05 (Madrid), the largest artfair in the world, opens it's doors
again. Besides that
there's a new media curatorial project presented by Mike Tribe called
blackbox,
there's also the new media art project by Antonio Cerveira-Pinto for
the MEIAC. 3 Parts of his project will be shown at the Arco. One of the
parts consists out of a presentation of the latest aquisitions of software-
and netart by the museum. For a explanation of Cerveira-Pinto's and MEIAC's
stunning project look at the full press release below.
Direct
link to Antonio Cerveira-Pinto's Metamorfosis project.
Link
to the Spanish Museum (Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte
Contemporáneo).
____________________________ ARCO '05, Madrid, 09-14 Feb
MEIAC stand: Metamorfosis/Esquema
MEIAC - Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo
(ES)
Program: "Museo Inmaterial (v2)"
Project: "Metamorfosis"
---- in ARCO 05: "Metamorphosis" preview: "Scheme"
---- at MEIAC, Septembre 2005: "Metamorfosis"
Curator: Antonio Cerveira-Pinto
Abstract :SCHEME
In ARCO will be presented the conceptual outline of the metamorphosis in
the 21st century art museum, and in particular the theoretical programme
of the evolution of the MEIAC in its near future.
On one hand, they will show the complete ideological and formal plan
of the architectonic change of the premises, some 25 thousand square
metres
where the museum is nowadays located. At the same time, a dozen workshops
of architecture will be connected on-line during the ARCO fair, showing
drawings and theories about the desirable metamorphosis of the museum
of post-contemporary art, and in particular, about the "Dialogue Fountains" :
buildings and small architectonic fantasies designed to strengthen the
museum1s global expansion, as well as its gentle integration in the city's
cultural life. The basic idea is to transform this relevant civic infrastructure
into a system of aesthetic and cultural attractors.
On the other hand, they will show some of the works of code art (and
technological art in general) acquired by the MEIAC in its second purchase
transaction
of immaterial works of art based on new cognitive languages, on the intentional
use of the most recent scientific discoveries (as for instance in the
field of biology), and on the elastic use of the new digital technologies,
both
interactive and communicative.
Finally, during ARCO 05, the MEIAC will start up a project of free broadcast
of works of art specially conceived for mobile phones. It is a pioneer
programme which collects and distributes immaterial works of art, under
the concepts and conventions of the free software movement. From the
web page designed for the Immaterial Museum (as an extension web site
of the
MEIAC), visitors to ARCO 05, or whoever it may concern, will be able
to download original wallpapers from a collection of the MEIAC-Immaterial
Museum to their mobiles.
This Immaterial Museum is at the same time a theoretical experiment and
a real initiatory process of the cultural metamorphosis, whose effects
on the museum world of the 21st century are not yet foreseeable. But
something is true: the 21st century museums are going to change deeply.
This initiative
by the MEIAC is a pioneer step on this direction.
Introduction: COGNITIVE,
GENERATIVE & DINAMIC ART
The code art in a database
museum.There is a straight line between conceptual art and code art.
The critical discussion on post-pictorialism,
post-realism and post-formalism, that
took place in the seventies, and degenerated into some horrible "conceptual
academia" during the nineties, found its proper way now. New media,
or better said, complex media may very well be the missing link between
late modern art and post-contemporary cognitive art.The Centre for Advanced
Visual Studies (CAVS), founded in the MIT by Gyorgy Kepes in 1968, the
pioneering work by the IRCAM ( Institut de Recherche et Coordination
Acoustique/Musique ), founded by Pierre Boulez in 1969-70, and the impact
that MIT's Media
Lab (instituted by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner in 1980-85)
has made later on technological art, or the relevance of publications
like "Leonardo" (first
launched in Paris by Frank Malina, in 1968, and then continued by his
son, Roger F. Malina, in California, since 1982) are just a few examples
in
the recent history of the cyber-technological and computing metamorphosis
of the most important creative processes in the transition from 20th
century art (i.e. modern
and contemporary art) to 21st century art (post-contemporary art). The
progressive growth, in the last ten years, in the number of artists,
works of art, publications, festivals and institutions (both public and
private), which specially focus on the systematic use of computers, on
computer design tools and computer-assisted programming and languages,
will inevitably generate a radical change in the already empty art system
- still dominated by the ideology of "contemporary art".
It would still be unfair to disregard the importance of modern and contemporary
art in the metamorphosis which present-day art is going through. In fact,
very soon we will need to study some of its most seminal contributors
: Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, the analytical Cubism, Paul Klee,
Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malévitch, Joseph Albers, Hans Hofmann
or Matisse..., to name just a few.
From a conceptual point of view, what we call today "new media" or "software
art" has its more precise origins in the progressive fusion of
the formalist, plastic and musical avant-garde movements of the 20th
century
(i.e. the pictorial abstract movement in general, the atonal movement
of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and the proposals
by Pierre
Boulez, Karlhein Stockhausen, Luciano Berio or Krzysztof Penderecki)
with the technological and social experimental tendencies by artists
of the
image like Moholy-Nagy, Nam June Paik (specially encouraged by John
Cage and Georges Maciunas) and Andy Warhol.
The very first years of the English group "Art & Language",
the structures by Sol Lewitt and most of the components of the North-American
minimalism (Judd, Andre, Bochner, Flavin, Michael Heizer, James Turell
), James Coleman1s expanded fotography, Douglas Gordon1s video de-constructions,
or even Blinky Palermo1s solid-state paintings, are but many more
references to consider when trying to define the genealogical tree of this
brand-new
technological and generative front in the artistic culture.
Before 1976-77, when Steven Wozniak and Steve Jobs introduced Apple
I and Apple II, being these the first personal computers conceived
for
a domestic
market and which meant the decisive step in the current computational
revolution, the evolution of the contemporary arts (broadly speaking)
was based on
the expansion and increase of technologies for the production, spreading,
promotion and selling of musical, audiovisual, informative and pro-performance
machinery demanded by the mass. At the same time, from a selective
avant-garde perspective, we experienced a sort of philosophical stand-by
of the artistic
praxis. Actually, in what we call "visual arts", what happened
after the experiments with Pop Art and Conceptualism has been a continuous
artistic absorption, of a narcissistic nature, half political, half
rhetorical. I think we can speak about a crisis of
the technological
aspect of art. Lacking a sense of creative and individual belief
in the new technological tools? which also obeyed the radical and
massive
change
of the artistic scenery? , the 20th century theoretical artist seemed
bound to modify their creative will by a purely rhetoric-speculative
exclusion,
or even worse, to become a mere fool of "The Society of the
Spectacle".
Due to the inclusion and the complete corporate control by all the
aesthetic, industrial, urban and media production/distribution system,
achieved by
the seductive and post-modern capitalism in the second half of the
20th century,
the theoretical artist lacked once again that quantum of social autonomy
without which it is impossible to transform the artistic activity
into something more than just a well-done job but for an aimless
cause.
If, on one hand, the freelance and theoretical artist born out of
the 18th
century democratic revolutions, some kind of last Hegelian artist,
can neither simply renounce to their wide vision of reality, nor
on the other
hand, can avoid the frenzy of the continuous structural innovation
of its machines, it is more than appropriate then, to this respect,
to agree
with
Franz Boas about his thoughts on the primitive art (1927), when he
declared that as far back as our knowledge about our predecessors1
works of art
allows us to analyse, the formal aspect has invariably been attached
to the technical experience.
|
It
is precisely this "technical
experience", or better some kind of combination of experience
and skill, not necessarily manual, what the late-contemporary plastic
artist has failed to have. When we speak of technical experience, in
the context of hyper-technological societies, it is necessary to point
out that we clearly refer to a predominantly cognitive one. In the
present situation of aesthetic production, filtering in a sublime (and
pro-performance) manner depends more on our cognitive instinct than
on our manual one. Moreover, the chance to train this cognitiveinstinct
depends mainly on the mastering of new and complex production tools,
which implies a skill less manual than mental, plus a familiarization
with a collection of operative systems packed with cybernetic interfaces
and formal languages, all of which defines the new post-human techno-sphere.Even
the practical verification of those purely theoretical experiments
of the artistic praxis will be impossible without the continuous recourse
of those new intelligent tools. Thus, it is the mastering of these
tools what will, in the 21st century, give way to the production of
a new sense of the form which Boas made reference to. This is, definitely,
the rise of a new "techne".
Sometimes, when I am looking for a metaphor to express this deep change in
the formalization levels of the processes which generate the present-day
art, I always think of music. A score by Mozart is a determinist programme,
whose performance gives light to a reality that, up to the moment of its
precise outcome, was no more than a possibility (a potential reality).
The written music is not, actually, music, but meta-music, in the sense
that its algorithmic character makes it the generative vortex of the work
itself, that is to say, its own and little God. The musical instruments,
the players, the acoustic conditions of the concert hall, and the audience
are, then, the interfaces of both creation and reality of such a music
composition.
The
most wonderful aspect about all these fields of art is some kind of
conceptual immortality which characterizes meta-art. A music score,
as opposed to a painting, is not so much an abstract representation
of images and feelings, but rather its genetic code. When we analyse
a Mondrian from the Boogie-Woogie series (1942-43), we do not try to
measure the degree of figurative abstraction of that painting in relation
with the streets of Manhattan. What we do is, however, capture the
formal quality, that is, the immediate quality, of the picture in front
of us. All over the years, our appreciation of Mondrian1s painting
might vary, especially due to the change in our cultural priorities
and preferences, but we should not expect to see any change in the
aspect and texture of the paint which would not be the result of the
spectral effect of light and humidity on the canvas. Just metaphorically
we can say that exhibiting a painting is the same as executing, or
even interpreting it. In fact, the best thing we can do with a good
painting is preserving it. Nevertheless, in order to give life to a
Mozart1s piece there is the need to execute the score, the need to
interpret what the composer has written down, the need to tune the
piano, the need to require silence. As a consequence, Mozart1s compositions
sound very differently if played on an 18th century piano, on a late-19th
century pianola, or on a 20th century electro-acoustic keyboard. Its
timbre chromatism and the chosen cadenza, no matter how well the pianist
may play it, can slightly modify our auditory and musical perception
of the piece.
The aesthetic musical reception depends as well, on the other hand,
on such factors as whether the pianist is a human being or a robot,
whether we
listen to it in an open-air festival, in a concert hall, in our car driving
at 100 miles per hour or through our stereo headphones. In other words,
Mozart's pieces are programmes written in a specific formal language or
code. Their artistic performance is only possible with the use of an interpreter
(human, mechanic, or computational) that is able to execute the encoded
instructions within the musical language. The reception, finally, requires
modulation from a series of control systems ( potentiometers andthe like
). In this sense, we can classify written music as an analytical art whose
existence is merely potential.Something very similar takes place nowadays
with what we could call "aesthetic attractors", conceived for
a visual (or audio-visual) perception, owing to the intensive use of computational
tools and languages.
The dynamic character of the 21st century art implies yet one more radical
feature: its generative elasticity. With this I refer to its own operative
complexity, born and distilled from its new genetic code, which transforms
the post-contemporary work of art in a true cybernetic system of sensations,
in a game of metaphors, in an omnipresent communication system and in an
interactive navigation panel. From the point of view of a museum of contemporary
art, this new reality might resemble a Pandora1s box, from which an uncontrollable
pandemonium threatens to come out. It is not really like this. Yet it is
also true that something will have to change in the institutional perception
of post-contemporary art, so that the necessary metamorphosis of museums
and art galleries, devoted to these cultural manifestations of that former-future
in which we are living, can take place.
Authors
in the Immaterial Museum department of MEIAC's collection; new aquisitions:
01 -- 0100101110101101, "Perpetual Self Dis/Infecting Machine" y
" Biennale.py"
02 -- Alexei Shulgin, "ABC"
03 -- Amerika-Reddell-Silva, "SOS"
04 -- Andre Sier, "Struct_4"
05 -- António Carvalho, 10 fondos para moviles
06 -- Arcangel Constantini, "Atari-noise"
07 -- Brian Mackern, "Maquina Podrida (La Desdentada)"
08 -- Christian Montenegro, 10 fondos para moviles
09 -- France Cadet, "Flying Pig"
10 -- Electronic Disturbance Theatre - EDT, "DDK - Disturbance Developer
Kit"
11 -- Gustavo Romano, "Nocturno"
12 -- Han Hoogerbrugge, "Nails #2"
13 -- John Klima, "Train"
14 -- Joan Leandre, "NostalG"
15 -- John F. Simon Jr., "Every Icon"
16 -- Konic thtr - Rosa Sanchez y Alan Baumann, "Soliloquio"
17 -- Lisa Jevbratt, "Out of the Ordinary"
18 -- Maite Cajaraville, 10 fondos para moviles
19 -- Marta de Menezes, "Nature?"
20 -- Nuno Valério, 10 fondos para moviles
21 -- Olia Lialina, "My Boyfriend Came Back From War"
22 -- Pedro Zamith, 10 fondos para moviles
23 -- Peter Luining, "Research"
24 -- Santiago Ortiz, "La esfera de las relaciones"
25 -- Vuk Cosic, "Metablink"
26 -- Young-hae Cheng Heavy Industries, "Artist's Statement No.
45,730,944"
Dialogue Fountains: five
basic conditions for an architectural operation
The first basic condition is that Metamorphosis collaborative workshop
should take into consideration that every building, interactive sculpture
or installation should be feed by solar energy.
The second basic condition
is that this project will take place in a 25K sqM terrain, where a
contemporary art museum (MEIAC) and green
park
already exist. The MEIAC is settled in the Spanish town of Badajoz,
very close to the Spanish/Portuguese border. The climate is either
very cold
or very hot. There is very high Solar exposure most of the year (more
than 300 bright days/year.
The third basic condition is that the entire territory will be a free
wireless Net port.
The fourth basic condition is that architecture and art should go glocal
and interactive. This means using high-low technologies.
The fifth basic condition is that we are running out of gas. So one
has to look for both creative, sustainable and ship solutions.
Authors
- architects, Dialogue Fountains
FpD_a ? Aula do Risco, S1A Arquitectos, Gap
Arquitectos: Daniel Jiménez/
Jaime Olivera/ J. Manuel Honrado ? "Fuentes para el Diálogo" (master
plan)
FpD_b ? Mr. Fung - "Babilonia" (garden and landscape
design)
FpD_01 ? Matias Pintó/ Mateo Pintó ? "Tierra" (Earth)
FpD_02 ? n ARCHITECTS - "Sombra" (Shadow)
FpD_03 ? S'A Arquitectos/ Pedra Silva Arquitecto ? "Terraza" (Esplanade)
FpD_04 ? a.S* Pedro Costa/ Célia Gomes ? "San Valentín"
FpD_05a ? Colectivo Cuartoymitad ? "Muro" (Climbing
Wall)
FpD_05b ? David Campos Delgado ? "Pista" (Skateboard)
FpD_06 ? Gabinete de Arquitectura, Solano Benítez/
Alberto Maritoni ?
"
E-vernadero" (Greenhouse)
FpD_07 ? Cero9, Éfren Garcia Grinda/ Cristina Diaz Moreno ? "Museo
Inmaterial" (Immaterial Museum)
FpD_08 ? LCM Fernando Romero ? "Mimésis"
FpD_09 ? AIRRIGHTS architectural studio: Elsa Caetano / Ottevaere Olivier
?
"
Sonrisa" (Smile)
FpD_10 ? 011 estudio ? "Palavra" (Word) |
