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For each error, the internet assigns a number; “404” means “Not found” and announces that what we are looking for is not there. This has become one of the most frequently read errors in internet searches. The first “4” indicates an error by the user, as in an incorrect address or a search for page that does not exist. The “0” means a general error of syntaxes—a mistake in a letter of the address—and the last “4” is for “Not found.” This mechanism obligates us to turn from an established route and to find another. And here is where the artist appears and turns the obstacle into an opportunity. |
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Between Tech Support and Software = Art – Gina Valenti and Mariano Guzmán
For each error, the internet assigns a number; “404” means “Not found” and announces that what we are looking for is not there. This has become one of the most frequently read errors in internet searches. The first “4” indicates an error by the user, as in an incorrect address or a search for page that does not exist. The “0” means a general error of syntaxes—a mistake in a letter of the address—and the last “4” is for “Not found.” This mechanism obligates us to turn from an established route and to find another. And here is where the artist appears and turns the obstacle into an opportunity.
This year will be the third time that Rosario becomes the headquarters for the 3rd International Festival of Electronic Art 404. From the 30th November until the 3rd December 2006, authors and producers from all over the world will find a place to exchange, debate and show their works. The categories will be Net Art, Still Image, Animation, Video, Music, Audio-visual Set, Theory, Performance and Installation. The venues are set to be Plaza Cívica and Parque de España Cultural Centre. Recommended by the UNESCO internet site and complemented by international experts, the 404 Festival has become one of the principal festivals on the world electronic scene.
Starting with an international annual call and a later selection of the work, 404 tries to offer opportunities to artists whose originality, theoretical uphold and experimentation guarantee their proposal. The 404 Festival is a non-profit independent project, whose principal objective is to spread artistic production in the electronic art field all over the world, making a production environment where artists can relate to each other and their works.
One of the principal objectives of 404 is to provide access to the electronic culture, trying to erase all the obstacles—economic or functional—giving tools, intellectual experience and practices to the group of artists and the audience. The purpose of the project is to try to put the user nearer to a new paradigm, which appears variable and diffused from the beginning. All of this will become possible from the experience of producers of this art and theory.
It is not our job to minimise or reduce the art into a close or familiar model. We try to get rid of a strict model, giving the artist the freedom to use their power to move the work into fiction, turning their ideas and their work in actual and true theories. This is the temper of the Present Art or “Current Languages,” whose speech luckily cannot be translated for now.
“Current” preceding the word “art” means something that its title will be instantly dissolved by time, simply by being named in such a manor. Therefore we refer to it as “Present Art.” Are we prepared for the challenge of describing it? To describe current art or “Present Art” we logically refer to the immediate past, where the “other” exists.
For a long time, artists used the tools, which brought on technological advances, to model a sculpture, to make a movie or to develop a work of art on the internet. But it is not the dazzle of technology that produces art works, it is the capacity to generate emotion, to create realities.
The last few centuries have been identified by the direct relationship between art and skill. Most of the people still think that the way to create is to dominate the technological environment.
“La Multimedia, lenguaje en formación, transita un primer estadio, el imperio de la fascinación por la novedad, la fascinación por los dispositivos tecnológicos en sí mismos. Pero llegará un momento en que estos dispositivos se volverán transparentes y la Multimedia entonces deberá enfrentar el desafío: empuñar un martillo, y, a su estilo, construir una casa, una mesa, una Imagen del Mundo”. -Andrea Sosa—“La Plata”
We have chosen two works that were presented in past editions of the 404 Festival that couldn’t be made without technology but are art, in the capacity that they have to create realities and not because of the technology that is used.
Transfers was a project presented by Matt Roberts, an American artist who specializes in video performance in real time and lecturers on Art in the University of Stenton. Transfers explored the participation of the audience at a mobile environment, allowing a passenger in a taxi to generate a unique piece of art. During his trip the passenger experimented with the manipulation of audio and video of the urban scenery in real time. This was then registered by a camera and a microphone in the same taxi. The new image of the outside was projected on two LCD screens and on a stereo system that was inside the cab. The image and sounds captured became the new environment where the taxi driver and the passenger turned into performers. When the trip ended, the passenger obtained a CD with the recording of the movie of the performance.
From Australia, Mark Chyper makes his contribution. Biophilia allowed the audience to participate in the creation of organic shapes based on the distortion of the shadows. Biophilia was about a term coined in 1984 by the social-biologist Edward Wilson. It refers to the necessity for living organisms to be connected with others and those that belong to different species. Chyper and Roberts, allow us to see that electronic art exceeds the private space that is generated between the user and the computer, bringing the interactivity to a further horizon, including geographies, organisms and atmospheres. This fact transfigures the known environments turning them into a reality that wants to expand its limit.
