Editor

Tincuþa Heinzel

ART, SPACE AND MEMORY

IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Collection “Spaþii Imaginate”

 “Spaþii imaginate” Series coordinator: Augustin Ioan
English proofreader: Barbara Bartos
Cover: Ionuþ Ardeleanu-Paici
Photo credits: Claudia Robles - Konfluentia (2007).
Sub-editing: Ameluþa Viºan

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Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naþionale a României

Artã, spaþiu ºi memorie în epoca digitalã / coord.: Tincuþa Heinzel. –
Bucureºti: Paideia, 2009
Bibliogr.
ISBN 978-973-596-551-8

I. Heinzel, Tincuþa (coord.)

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 Editor
Tincuþa Heinzel

ART, SPACE AND MEMORY

IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Translators:
Barbara Bartos, Patricia Comãnescu,
Tincuþa Heinzel, Simona Klodnischi,
Ancuþa Ionescu

paideia
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4
 INTRODUCTION

Tincuþa Heinzel

The revolution that took place in the consumption of electronics

and digital communication devices in the second half of 20th Century
compels us to speak of a real technological revolution. Digital
technologies have become the common denominator of the way we
represent and utilize different elements that compose our environment:
sound, image, and information, thus creating a new model for
understanding reality. They had a direct impact not only on the conditions
of our everyday life – and our models of social interaction, but they had
induced changes in the way we represent and understand the world.
The correlations – that can be made between the different elements of
the phenomenological environment and the interfaces that translate these
correlations, the interactions that take place between the physical and
virtual space – involve a complex set of processes. The change they
produced compels us to reconsider the conditions of our modern lives,
while their potential demands to be explored. The speed with which all
these technologies integrate into our daily life, the possibilities they
offer, the utopias they generate, are part of a process in which creators
and users constantly interact in defining and negotiating these new
structures of everyday life.
There is no wonder that the problems raised by the new media have
been and will continue to be the subject of complex investigations. The
approaches are diverse, as well. Not few of those asked to describe and

5
define the phenomenon, have referenced concepts and terms that were
outlined in earlier studies of technique and its contexts. The influences
of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and Marshall McLuhan are
enlightening at this point. It should not be neglected also, the association
often made between the study of new media and the phenomenon of
modernity. Precisely these types of associations have demanded some
of the most complex approaches in the analysis of digital media.
Interdisciplinarity has become mandatory. Borrowing concepts from
different disciplines turned out to be a viable approach, as well. The
separation of genres was often questioned; reorganizing the research
methods and their institutional recognition are polemic issues. The social
and political dimensions of the new media are often subject of theoretical
research.
If quantification has become the motif of modern times, then
digitization is its most salient expression. If the Greek classical
philosophy distinguished between téckhne and episteme, this relationship
had been reformulated from a modern perspective. The complete reliance
on instrumentation in science (Latour) and the mathematization of reality
(Koyre) pushed the scientific explanation and production to become
closely related in modern epistemology. The technology is not an
imitation of nature any more, but an extension of it. The volume and the
impact of scientific and technological research in our everyday life make
it a cultural act. Today, technology and science are asked to push the
frontiers of knowledge, while art is asked to mirror these new
experiences. What can and should art and aesthetics do in these
circumstances?
Based on the presentations made during the conference “Areas of
Conflu(x)ence: Art, Technology and Space in the Digital Era”, organized
by the Association 2580 in Sibiu in the fall of 2007, the texts assembled
here are questioning the relationship between art and technology in the
current digital era, focusing on the impact of new media in our lives.
The issues addressed during the conference, discuss the models of
perceiving and understanding this new environment. If the tools we use
have an influence on the way we deal with our environment, are we
using them at their fullest potential? What traps are to be avoided? What

6
do we expect from technology? Should the new technologies be a matter
of concern? If the proposed area of exploration was wide, from the
existence of the virtual space, to the creation and organization of
databases; from the surveillance of the internet and of the public spaces,
to the liberty of expression and the promotion of open source software;
from the digitization of cultural patrimony, to the integration of
experimental methods into artistic creation – the conference tried, to
present different current theoretical positions related to these issues.
The studies presented here can be divided into two groups. We find
texts that are debating the framework of our existential structures and
sensibilities, seen through the current framework of technological
impact. The other group tries to quantify the precise experience gained
from diverse artistic and technical projects. Whether descriptive,
analytical, or even polemic, the texts gathered here try to identify the
role of art and aesthetics in contemporary society, to question the forms
they take, or to propose new ways for their future interaction.
Using as a starting point the abundant innovations in imaging and
communication devices produced today, Bogdan Ghiu discusses the
concept of visibility and the way it defines reality. If modernity has
always tried to adjust and correct the way things have become visible,
today democratic transparency and generalized visibility lead to an
uncontrollable irrepressible generalization of control. If in the past there
were only insular visible aspects, today they seem to be out of control.
The subject proposed by Bogdan Ghiu tries to clarify how a pertinent
significant act can be realized in the current media-overwhelmed
environment.
Bogdan Ghiu places the source of today’s visibility in the lineage
of Giorgio Agamben’s concept of „bare life” or Michel Foucault’s
concepts of panopticism and biopolitics. The super-production of power
(Agamben) and the generalized panopticism (Foucault) are contributing
to the dissipation of the architectonic structures of power. The new
visibility does not promote mimetic representation; the image of man
has long since left the attention of the power generating structures. The
“post-neo-panopticism” is not interested in the image any more, but in
registering the continual flux of data. The power doesn’t look to
“des-figure”, but to “de-figure”. Free from the constraints of

7
representation, the new visibility is not interested in the image of the
man, but in the man himself, trying to short-circuit him, to traverse
him. The modern man who finds himself in a continuous process of
escape, part of the flux itself, is an equipped man, a technology wearing
man, preoccupied by technology, which he ends up somatizing it.
What art can do in this omni-visibility and trans-visibility caught
between bio-métrisable (fr) and bio-maîtrisable (fr)? For Bogdan Ghiu,
art can recreate the distance, can restore the corporeality. Or for doing
this, art must be reborn as ars and techné, must become an art of an
hyper-perceptible existence in the imperceptible.
The relationship between art and technology is also questioned in
the 2005 interview with Woody Vasulka. Recognized as a pioneer of
video art, Woody Vasulka was an experimenter and a creator of
technology. Approaching this new medium, that was video art in the
1960s, Woody Vasulka has tried to conquer it. By altering,
deconstructing, and reconstructing the magnetic and electronic impulses
which are the medium itself, Woody Vasulka had hoped to break the
structures that defined the analogue media, still dominant at the time.
In the interview, the artist talks about the hopes of an entire generation
to take over, in a critical way, the dominant forms of representation, to
produce a change in the narrative structure, not only technologically
but ideologically, as well. The fact that this attempt, this search for a
new utopia, is not completed, is from Vasulka’s point of view, almost a
necessity.
In a text that discusses the creation of musical instruments and
digital technologies, and their impact on the musical composition, Paolo
Ferreira Lopes analyzes their categoriezation and operational
structures, as well as the paradigms and the models of interaction that
these imply. Refusing to create delineate a hierarchy between informatics
and music, the author looks to offer a gnoseologic understanding of the
notion of interaction, based on the analysis of the material elements,
and the software used in his own compositions. Defined in informatics
as a dynamic principle (Wegner), the interaction is the notion describing
the adaptability of digital computation relative to the real world, and in
the case of music, the direct correlation between these two elements

8
and time. The formalization of the interactive processes can lead to two
forms of interactivity: one orientated towards the internal space of the
machine, and the other having an impact on the human-machine
relationship. Considering the data, the author finds it difficult to establish
a real time relationship, the notion of musical performance being
dependent on its time-based character and its interpretation imposed by
the software. The introduction of a sequence in real-time opposes de
facto the act of creation, an act which implies reflection. The paradigms
of interaction in music are built through the development of musical
models whose relevance in real time is translated in a spatial sound
effect. That is the reason why the interaction that can be established
between the composer/interpreter, the computer, and the traditional
instrument cannot be attached to a principle of causality, in which there
is no temporal synchronicity but only the interpretative act.
The text of Sophie Fetro, “Digital Surrealities. Design and
Architecure: Arts of F[r]iction” inventories the influence exerted by
the virtual reality technology on architecture and design. The author
shows that if digital imagination was built around the notion of
simulating reality, not less spectacular is inserting a bit of fiction into
reality. The concept of mimesis in the digital context cannot be clarified
outside of the current digital utopias and, the author notes that the fictive
space built by these new technologies, undoubtedly leads to a new
utopian era. If the mediation and the tasks imposed by architectural
competitions invite the use of digital visualization techniques, the use
of these technologies leads to the hierarchization of the image. The new
way of reading the information, imposed by the digital culture,
transforms the code not only into a new way of representation, but into
an actor of the project. Surrealistic inspiration finds its expression not
only in the attempt to go beyond reality, but also in the way in which
digital language exploits mathematical models as way of avoiding the
intentional and predictable act. The exchanges between the architectural
design and the computational design lead to a new production and
fabrication process. Transcribing the distortions of the materials,
questioning the principles of industrial repetition, are ways that allow
for a gradual understanding of reality. Thus, the computational device
is less a tool for rationalization, as much as a tool for the interpretation

9
of reality. The hyper-reality of the digital era, transforms the current
architecture into a “computational performance” art.
Most often technical development is assimilated into a modern
perspective that builds itself around the notion of progress. Augustin
Ioan’s text about the experiment in Romanian architecture puts into
question precisely the lack of such preoccupation after 1989. The author
is mapping the reasons why the notion of “habitation” does not find its
expression in today’s projects and innovations, while arguing that this
situation does not exclude the research. Polemicly, the text deconstructs
the politico-economic socialist context and its heritage, and classifies
the possible forms of refuge of the architect facing the political power.
Even though there weren’t any outstanding acts, the neo-primitive
investigations, the experiments in industrial architecture and the
impressive participation in international contests, were ways in which
the Romanian architects have tried to detached themselves from the
conformism imposed by the communist state. The question the author
is trying to answer is how to define some viable forms of experimentation
that could function in the current conditions of economic and technologic
austerity in Romania. He points out the concept of “virtual heritage” –
the digital reconstruction of patrimonial projects, well as drawing
attention to crisis housing and sustainable architecture as relevant
solutions.
The interaction between the artistic representation and the
theoretical and the scientific ways of understanding the world has often
been debated in the histories of science, arts, and ideas. Gemma San
Cornelio and Pau Alsina’s text “Spaces of Flows: Processes and Places
in Spatial Media Artworks” discusses the question of spatial media in
the contemporary arts, and takes as starting point an incursion in the
history of notions and concepts of space as they had been defined over
time. The declared purpose of this “archaeological” investigation is to
determine the type of relationships produced by the information and
communication technologies today as they relate to space, via the new
forms of cultural production and consumption. Last but not least, by
making a parallel between the historiography of the concept of space
and the models of contemporary artistic practice, the authors try to define
a theoretical framework for analyzing the current media art production.

10
 Three of the texts presented here are discussing problems related
to digital archiving. If collecting and archiving are processes that can
be subject of research onto themselves, the digitization of collections
poses a series of questions of technical, intellectual, juridical, and
aesthetic nature. In the lineage of the medieval cabinets of curiosities,
the museum is probably the most vivid modern expression of collecting,
presenting, classifying, recording, and studying of material culture. The
digitization of collections and archives, the research of pertinent ways
of displaying them in a digital context is the subject of a diverse series
of projects, some of them highly debated (see, for example, the Google
virtual library and the opposition of the French National Library). The
three texts published here present three different approaches regarding
the collection and digitization of archives. Presenting projects of different
complexity, the texts describe three ways of capturing and presenting
the artistic message as it is transferred from the analogue to the digital
format.
anarchive is a collection of CD-ROMs, DVDs and internet projects
lead by Anne-Marie Duguet that explore the complete work of an artist
based on different archives of his/hers activity. The originality of the
project consists in inviting the artists to select the elements to be included
in the data base, and offering them the opportunity to think of an original
way to structure and navigate the data. The objective of the collection is
to offer an instrument of historical and critical research for work of an
artist, and to take advantage of the new reproduction and documentation
tools available in order to save a recording of a perishable artistic
intervention, such as an installation, a performance, a video recording,
or an intervention in public space. In the present text are offered details
about how the “TK” DVD, dedicated to the French artist Thierry Kuntzel,
was realized. The different ways of accessing the data and the
relationship between the different parts of the digital archive, make of
the TK DVD a work in itself.
Heike Helfert’s text brings to attention the archiving and restoration
project “40yearsvideoart.de”. The project tried to offer an overview of
the different tendencies and modalities of expression in German video
art beginning with 1963 until today. Besides developing a critical method

11
for the analysis and interpretation of the works, a special effort was
made to digitally collect, restore, and archive the works included in the
collection. Even if it may seem strange that a relatively young medium,
as the video, can raise preservation concerns, the degradation of the
magnetic support, and the shortage of hardware devices that allow the
reading and processing of the video material, requires its restoration
and transfer from the magnetic support to digital format. But this transfer
is not only technically problematic. The relationship established between
the original work and its digital versions, and the attempt to preserve
the authentic experience of the work, are not details to be neglected.
One of most significant issues in the process of digitization is the
concept of free software. Movements like “open source” tried to tackle
the issue of free access by proposing different sets of interventions.
MEDIARC – Open Source Multiuser Central Archiving System: Web
Application for the Electronic Management of Documents and Other
Files, tries to put into practice an open source system for on-line
archiving, which allows data entry into a database by accessing different
peripherals: scanner, digital camera, video camera. As Peter Tomaz
Dobrila and Uroš Indihar state, the project tried to respond to the
safety and security needs of a database, to offer reliable technical
solutions and system stability, and to have a friendly user interface.
Mediarc is a technical project that looks to offer answers for the
preservation of a variety documents by offering easily accessible and
efficient solutions.
Based on diverse artistic and aesthetic experiences, the publication
offers possible answers to the way in which image and sound are affected
by the digital technologies of today. This collection of texts is organized
around different types of imagery and sound, spatial forms and forms
of memory to be found in the current digital context. The volume
approaches the ways in which new technologies have influenced the
artistic production, its organization, its spatial representation, and its
perception, as well as, the complexities involved in the organization of
a database or an archive. The present book has attempted to present
various layers of theoretical research on new media, and to highlight a
few points of view and possible ways of approaching it.

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 Thanks to all those who contributed to the materialization of this
project, to the participants at the conference, to the authors of the texts,
and to the translators: Barbara Bartos, Patricia Comãnescu, Simona
Klodnischi, Ancuþa Ionescu. Thanks, also to Augustin Ioan, the
coordinator of the “Imagined Spaces” collection and to Eugenia Petre
from Paideia Publishing House who made possible the publication of
this volume.

(Text translated from Romanian by Barbara Bartos)

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14
 CHAPTER I. Types of Imagery and Sound and
Their Interaction

IMPERCEPTIBLE, HYPERCEPTIBLE:
THE NEW HODOLOGICAL CONDITION

Bogdan Ghiu

Which visibility? How many visibilities ?

“Art in the new field of visibility”... Which visibility? What kind of

visibility? Where does “novelty” lie here, what does it actually consist
of? And what does the “new field” – specifically “the new field of
visibility” mean?
My amazement and hence my questions are not at all preliminary
and not in the least rhetorical. Should therefore the “novelty,” the
innovation, lie in the fact that the contemporary world visibility has
passed beyond, gone over a threshold, that it has undergone a “qualitative
shift” and turned into a “field”? Has it, as my thread would suggest,
become sweepingly generalized, thus inducing a broad reorganization
of the entire “field,” with irreparable consequences? And if this is where
the “novelty” lies, what reference should we use in the attempt to define
the novelty we feel, we perceive? Otherwise said, which should be the
benchmark, the term of comparison, “the old field of visibility”?
In an implicit wording again – is this all about an evolution that has
finally reached the threshold, the final break-up, turning from latent
into manifest and evident actuality? Is this about a slow evolution that
could have been avoided, a “drift” for the prompting of which we feel
guilty, but that proves to have been inexorable and that has now finally

15
come off victorious? It’s something like that that we actually conceive
modernity: as a process concomitantly fatal and that could yet have
been avoided, adjusted, corrected, as a deviation from the straight
triumphal way that proves itself to have been “the royal path,” the
mainstream our historic “moralized” conscience remains to haunt from
now on, accompanying it, spectrally walking it along full of remorse.
An objective process, a path, the hodos between two fixed points,
dissociation, division, dualist perspective on history: a new
impersonation of history, impossible to live subjectively.
Visibility thus seems to have become a “field,” to have grown
coextensive with the entire mundane field, thus changing it radically:
we live in a “new field” because this field was conquered by visibility.
The novelty, the shift, thus seems to be defined by the coextensivity of
visibility with the “field.” A “qualitative leap” rendered possible by a
“quantitative accumulation.”
However, I consider that visibility fields were also in place so far,
but they were insular, well delimited and controlled: the visibility fields
of the past were controlled control spaces.
Well, according to our presupposition, these well-controlled control
spaces have now escaped our control, leading to the generalization of
visibility and thus to an incontrollable generalization of control. We are
living in a society of uncontrolled and incontrollable control.
When today we say visibility, we say exposure, denudation,
intrusion. Hence, we say transparency. In the political discourse and
generally, in the public contemporary discourse, both visibility and
transparency are bestowed with an ambiguous, deceitful, alternate
speech: we celebrate the democratic transparency and visibility, public
non-concealment and at the same time deplore their historical victory.
The incontrollable is in fact exactly this purely ideal line, a line of
psychic scission hard, impossible to draw, between these two attitudes,
between the triumph of the Lights and its consequences.

Three far too expedite concepts

“Novelty” does not only consist of this two-sided, abettingly-valued

generalization of visibility. There exists, I think, a new visibility and

16
exactly this - not the field-like generalization of the “old” visibility - is
the source of the novelty of “the new field of visibility.”
Coupling the concept of “bare life” proposed by Giorgio Agamben
with the concept of “panopticism” and that of “biopolitics,” as Michel
Foucault has designed and mapped them, is quite in vogue. But in this
case we are faced with a non-critical takeover of immediately and hastily
serviceable critical instruments of sensibly different lines of critical
thought.
Giorgio Agamben’s “bare life” describes the denudation, the
exposure of humaneness, the ruling power’s production of
non-rule-of-law spaces, of exception-to-law spaces, of juridical
exceptionalism, where humaneness ceases to be defended, protected
and is made available for monstrous experiments. As a matter of fact,
for an overproduction of power. Spaces where life is being “laid bare”
are totalitarian spaces, confined and excluded at the same time:
confinement outside the society, outside the reach of justice, of the
rule-of-law, sometimes right through their instrumentality.
The uncritical fashion of the immediately-critical employment of
Foucault’s concept of “panopticism” spares me any description. The
also Foucauldian concept of “biopolitics” still preserves a certain aura
of indeterminacy, but is expeditely - and hence with equally hasty lack
of criticism - translated, clarified by its correlation with the concept of
“bare life.”
In our critical applications, we live in the evidence of these three
concepts. Artistic thought, particularly, uses them increasingly often
and with ever growing success. Yet, their broad serviceability tricks us
and the hasty critical gestures that derive from the uncritical utilization
of these concepts lead to an ambiguous, double-sided criticism, where
the delineation between celebration and denunciation triumphantly
displays its impossibility.

“Power to the people”: trans-visibilty and senseless-

ness

In a direct, immediate, hasty use the three concepts do not describe

innovation, the novelty about the “new field of visibility,” but the old:

17
totalitarian political conditions, therefore exactly the exception
situations of contemporary normality.
The major contemporary shift as regards visibility is the appearance,
proliferation, generalization and standardization of a fundamentally new,
un-recognizable and irreducible type of visibility. The old panopticist
visibility bred offspring. The new transparency, new visibility, are no
longer mimetic-representational. It’s exactly the image that they are no
longer related to. The image of man, the image of bare life no longer
matters, is no longer pertinent to contemporary production of
(over)power. Contemporary power itself has been subjected to a
qualitative “shift”: its steady, state operating mode is all the time that of
a supra-power.
Yet the difference against the past is that it no longer isolates itself,
that it no longer gets piled up or stored, but flows: supra-power in
continuous flow, exactly due to its new condition of “flow.” Static power
is permanently under the threat of opposition, limitation, constraint,
counteroffensive. Modern-traditional panopticism was cutting out and
defined spaces, screens; it defined itself in space and as well-delimited
space it materialized as an architecture of power. Today, the old
architecturalization of power is doubled by the converse
dis-architecturalization of power. Architectonics, the architectural layout
itself disappears, I mean they disappear as pertinence to the production
of power: they were yielded to the society that continues to believe that
the stake is there, that this is the target.
The current production of power forsakes its panopticist, micro- or
macro-totalitarian correlation with space, spaces, materiality. It shifted
to the dimension of time, by annulling it: time is transcended, time is
all the time past.
Post-neo-panopticism no longer produces representational, material,
mimetically-recognizable images of humaneness. The image of man
was dismissed, it no longer counts for the power, is no longer of interest
for power production: it was yielded to society, where arts and media
are claiming it in a fratricidal dispute. The dispute over man’s image,
over the images about man has become a society game.
Post-neo-panopticism is no longer interested in images. It now
performs a permanent-automatic scanning of humaneness, producing

18
abstract, purely idealized information records in a continuous flow.
Under conditions of accelerated speed, of “light speed” of the flow,
arts, in their fight for image with media, no longer can touch, attack,
affect the economic scientism power production currently builds on ––
the adjusted, automated production of supra-power in a continuous
steady mode. Power no longer needs images. They become, I repeat it,
the consensual stake of the social game between arts and media.
We face a radicalization of the “bare life” phenomenon, actually
its coming into full effect. “Life denudation” has transcended man, the
new visibility and new transparency: it scans man “stripping” him in
continuous flow down to what is called “human” or - more correctly –
the infra-human pattern: sets of pertinent information. It is there, at that
level of humaneness that the manipulation of man takes place today. As
“men,” as “people,” we are free – also enter the artistic-media dispute
over the images of ourselves – because the shape “man” or the level of
pertinence of what we call “man” were made available, yielded back to
“civil society”.
To man, “humaneness” is un-recognizable and irrepresentable. It’s
this scientific-economic “transparent-rendering” and “visualization” of
“man” down to the human pattern that a reorganization of rule-of-law
regimes derives from.
The historic regimes of visibility and power do not replace each
other, but add up and redistribute: the old normalization, or the
“modern-type” normalization defines today the locked, punitive,
explicitly legal regime, whereas the new visibility, the invisible or
trans-visible visibility, the production of non-visual, extra-visual images
of humaneness define the new normality.
The old panopticism we rush to denounce and represent in our
critical celerity, defines today this specific locked regime, the space of
explicit punishment, the space of exception, of situations of juridical
exceptionality. Only here do concepts like “bare life,” “panopticism,”
“biopolitics” effectively, literally apply.
But the phenomena described by these three concepts have
themselves evolved, they have surpassed their historic literal stage and
constitute the new regime of contemporary normality. And this is
imperceptible, un-noticeable, un-recognizable, irrepresentable.

19
 (Artistic) dis-figuring and (technological)
de-figuration: “ultra-human” man

As types of scientific formalization, the schemes of communication

are identical with those of the power schemes. They are both reversible
schemes of production, accomplishment, effecting. By both the concept
of “bare life” and that of “panopticism,” of barren-panoptic existence,
modern man was celebrating himself as conspicuous victim, object,
target and support of power. The submissive, extorted, exploited
subject-object is the great anti-hero of modernity, the reference of bulky
bargaining and prophetic-apocalyptical imprecations of modernity.
Well, I believe that today we have really become free. Become? It
would be more exact for me to say got free. Power production, its
communication-production-effecting scheme, no longer needs “man”
and his images, his representations. Power emerges and is preserved
today not by des-figuring man, but by de-figuring him. We are free
exactly to the extent whereby we were delivered, let to go, dismissed
from the great krato-dicy of alienation. Man is today important in the
form of “humaneness” that stretches underneath. It’s down there,
underneath, that all “globalisations” and “worldwide-expanding”
processes take place. We did not become, but remained free: the
voluntarist finalism of modernity is manifest today in the form of a
deliverance, of residual humanity.
And it is exactly for this reason that even when we voice criticism,
we actually celebrate: a granted victory, a conceded triumph. But today,
the new visibility goes through us. Humaneness is dissociated from
man by the latter’s reduction to “resource”. Man is important, pertinent
only as a “human resource”
And in this capacity, he renders himself happily, jubilantly to this
reduction not only in the spaces especially intended for this purpose of
the old panopticist power production, but also through his “normal”,
continuous, current existence of subject-patient whose permanent
“normal”-clinical condition is that of being connected to life-support
machines.
The political revolution of modernity has grown automated,
miniaturized and undergoes a ceaseless decline by a double and

20
contradictory process that “frames” the entire social field, transforming
precisely the society into a field: somatizing and “idealizing” itself,
abstracting and idealizing itself, “rationalizing” itself through merger,
through osmosis with technology, that progressively loses its own “body”
and which we now confer more and more bodiness to, hiding, resorbing,
naturalizing it: instead of the “organless body”, the body with
increasingly more organs and “accessories”.

The equipped man: „equi-pathy” and the society of

departure

Man, the current individual (shall we call him modern? Shall we

call him post-modern? Maybe call him hyper- or ultramodern? Or call
him otherwise, pretending that we could still give him a name?) is an
equipped, an ever better equipped man. He no longer needs to sedentarily
shut himself in the house in front of the TV or the PC, his ears walled
off by loudspeakers, his eyes escaping through the walls of rolling
images. He evaded, he circulates, he is moving all the time: he dwells
inside the flow, is part of it, one with it, he is the flow itself. Between
the outer (financial, media, advertisement, commodity, individual and
crowd) flows and the inner flow of each of us, the individual as such,
the entity “individual” is no more than an interface, a contact and
recording toggle-switch decision surface, an activation surface, just like
Aristotle’s metaphysical intellect in his treaty De anima.
Contemporary man carries technology, wears technology (the
technological suit), this increasingly becomes a part of his mandatory
corporal equipment and is underway towards somatization: the current
individual embeds technology in his body, carries the TV set with him,
transforming himself into the screen and relay for social market
messages.
He is a man occupied by technology, an equipped man: mobile
phone, portable computer, MP3-player on his ears, automobile, train,
plane, fellow-people etc.
He shut himself in the Heideggerian “open” he has so long yearned
for. Yet he thriftily, territorially manages his flow. He territorializes the

21
much-frowned upon de-territorialization which thus becomes a false
deliverance. He runs away, he unceasingly evades just to shut, to seclude
himself as swiftly as possible (that’s what speed serves him for) on the
move.
However, in what sense, or senses, can we speak about the current
individual as about an equipped man?
1) Because, as I said, he carries purportedly “communicational”
equipment.
2) Because he operates inside an equipage, because he leads an
“equipped” existence: the others, the society have turned from
community, family, human environment etc., into the equipment of each
separate individual. Hence, man as collective equipment of man. (Love,
couple, work, living.)
3) If we were to play (just a little) with words, current man can also
be considered as equi-path, as structurally afflicted with “equi-pathy”
and manifesting “equi-pathologies”: the pathology of “mass
individualism,” the pathology of equivalence and equipotency.
Derived from an ancient Anglo-Saxon word (scipian) and another
just as old Norwegian one (skipa), the seamanship term équipe
(documented for the first time in 1160) meant in old French “to get
aboard,” “to navigate”, but in the later form – eschiper – it meant
something close to what we understand today by “escapade” and through
“escapism” (eschipre meaning “seaman”). Also in old French, équipée
meant “embarkation,” “setting off for adventure.”
So, we get equipped to leave. We get equipped - inclusively with
all the others, our fellow people serving as equipment, as “human
technology,” as “social suit” - to leave.
We set off equipped, we equip ourselves in all the senses of the
word. Technology as such, is departure: a literally built metaphor (a
word of Greek extraction, metaphora means until today “transposition”).
We set off in the flow, we are the flow: existence in /as adventure. We
actually live in departing, we permanently, incessantly leave without
arriving, without preoccupying ourselves with the arrival, the coming:
“send,” “start”, it’s departure itself that counts: technologically we set
off unmoving, in an immobile nomadism. In current society departure

22
was uncoupled from arrival, the trajectory, the existential track were
stripped off their initiatory, teleological feature. We live in a society of
departure, in ever homogenously equipped equipment-cities and
societies: an equipment-humanity, messaging ourselves into the settings
of the others.

Happy biometry: living “in”-visibility

Between the “old” transparency-visibility that still builts on image,

and the new transparency-visibility, that of “man” scanned through in
continuous flow down to the “human pattern,” of the residual deliverance
of humanity accompanied by its images, by its dissociation into “human
resources” as an informational-technological portrait pertinent to the
new economy of power production, between these two visibilities: “the
old” one, defining today’s “exceptional” situations and punitive spaces;
and a “new” one, that defines life’s “normality” itself in our societies,
between the old transparency-visibility that operated with images of
man art was having access to, and the new transparency-visibility where
man has turned from the condition of emitter-producer and
receptor-addressee-beneficiary of power-information (as he was in the
old - today attentively circumscribed visible regime of visibility), where
man has become “human resource,” he is rather a medium, relay and
channel between these two visibility modes, man is today squeezed in
as between two lenses, two screens, interleaved.
Between brackets said, he is exactly in the condition opposite to
that described by the concept of plasticity initiated by Catherine
Malabou1 (subject to recent, captivating, incipient discussions). Man
has become that Dead Part or Dead Zone between the central tower and
the circular peripheral wall of Bentham’s Panopticum.
Contemporary man is interleaved between two visibilities: a
conceded one, that works with images and which media and arts dispute
each other, and another one that transcends man, through man, scanning
him down to the “human pattern,” and which is the really important
level for a critical analysis. Between dis-figuring that operates with
images, and de-figuring that goes beyond the images in a kind of a live

23
television broadcast of pertinent data and information at the speed that
causes the production of power and supra-power, man has become a
medium framed by the technological continuum.
According to Gilbert Simondon’s analysis (in his Course about
Perception2), media technology has exploited the perception deficiencies
of human senses, the natural difficulty of establishing a useful perception.
Important to man, says Simondon, are those machines that facilitate a
practical perception of use in conditions of exception, in extreme
conditions, in environments where perceptibility – already naturally
reduced and cumbersome - becomes progressively hard to accomplish.
A good perception hinders the occurrence of accidents. Dangerous
“exception” environments are those characterized by speed, action in
flow. But the old hodological condition of “exception” has today become
normal, current, it belongs to day-to-day life. We actually live
increasingly dangerous: soldier-men, pilot-individuals, “servo-engines”
permanently mobilized in a true “ontology of the enemy3”.
We live between the imperceptible favored by media technologies
- that arts do and can fight with - and the hyperceptible produced by
contemporary connectivity and portability, rigidly interleaved between
omni-visibility and trans-visibility. The technological continuum,
non-separatibility, define the new “human”-biometric condition of man,
the “ultra-human” and “ultra-humanized” man, man sunk in
“humaneness,” undermined through “human,” through the bio-metering
of existence. The “biométrisable” (in French) existence becomes an
increasingly “bio-maîtrisable” existence. The new visibility is
“in-visibility”: the imperceptible as a frame-condition of
hyperceptibility.

Art as public space: des-figuring versus de-figuring

What can, under these circumstances, art do? What can art still do
when image-built reality, when the image - be it even multiply disfigured
- no longer counts as a game and social convention, when de-figurativity
competes des-figurability ?

24
 It can restore the distance, the spacing, denouncing the sped-up
already accomplished process of merger and osmosis between
humaneness and technology, of reducing “man” to the condition of
medium and relay between “human” and technology-borne existence,
that can thus become measurable in bio-technologic standards. At the
same time, contemporary art restores the body, corporality and
instrumentality, denouncing the false scientist-naturalized
man-environment continuities against the human - technology osmosis,
against the “equi-pathy” and portable connection, of man-field.
The virtue of virtual images is conferred by their capacity to induce
an update – in its turn virtual - that does not go beyond the field of
virtuality, but unceasingly expands it, virtualizing the entire field of
reality. But until recently, virtual technologically produced images still
benefited by a technologic “body” of visible gear that could still draw
attention upon their technological artificiality. But now, following the
trend of their own products and processes, the devices themselves
“virtualize,” becoming identical to images, taking after them: getting
increasingly flat, compacted, interleaved, non-corporeal, disappearing
vertiginously. Only now does the image become really ideal, with no
technological body, ready to somatize into the ideality of the human
imagination.
This is where art intervenes – or needs to intervene, following its
sovereign animal instinct, restoring and manifesting the “synaptic”
exteriority (according to J.-P. Changeux4), the delimitation of the body
in the environment against the transformation of humaneness in a field
and correlatively remaking serviceability: existential techniques against
technology, ethics versus technological estheticism (forms symbolizing,
pointing to and inducing the flow, flow forms, fluid forms that make
reference to each other also by figural way, symbolizing the
technologic-economic market processes, self-representing themselves:
vector forms, time-forms.) Art restores the public space, reconditioning
man in the new “ultra-humanist” field of “humaneness.” Art renders
handicraft essence, the existential do-it-yourself, pointing to a possible,
hard to foresee post-technological condition of man: the rebirth of the
hand, the eye, neo-tactility aimed at re-distancing man.

25
 In the imperceptible frame of hyperceptibility we live in, in this
authentic communitarianism, nationalism a communism of machines
and with machines, art reminds of the urgency of finding a way to restore
the level of perceptibility under extreme conditions, the path - hodos –
in the adverse mined territory, where the other messages represent the
noise. It restores the minimal threshold of perceptibility.
Getting back and concluding, I think that concepts like that of “bare
life” (G. Agamben), “panopticism” or “biopolitics” (M. Foucault) need
to be applied only to the “ultra-human” condition of the contemporary
man. Power production was by way of economics returned to “civil
society” and this one, “takes photos”, produces, changes, and frantically
consumes images of itself, happy to retrieve itself into a
hyper-neo-perception “in the new field of visibility,” where it actually is
the field, offering itself as a an environment of hyper-perceptibility and
trans-visibility of scientific economic coding & recoding: “humaneness
through man, and from man.”
A new humanity emerges: new mergers, new osmoses, new alliances
are underway. Art in the strict meaning of the word “disappears, gets
reabsorbed, “comes down” and “dwindles,” becoming usefully invisible,
re-becoming ars and teckne, art of hyperceptible existence in the
imperceptible. You hear this from someone compelled to learn how to
stay on the watch for transitions and permanently transform survival
techniques into life arts.

(Text translated from Romanian by Simona Klodnischi)

References

1. Catherine Malabou, L’Avenir de Hegel. Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique,

Paris Vrin, 1996; (dir,), Plasticité, actes du colloque du Fresnoy, Paris, Éditions
Léo Scheer, 2000; Que faire de notre cerveau?, Paris, Bayard, 2004; La plasticité
au soir de l’écriture. Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction, Paris, Éditions Léo
Scheer, 2005.
2. Gilbert Simondon, Cours sur la Perception (1964-1965), Éditions de la
Transparence, 2006.

26
 3. Cf. Peter Galison, “The Ontology of the Ennemy: Norbert Wiener and the
Cybernetics Vision”, Critical Inquiry, no 21, pp. 228-266, apud. Céline Lafontaine,
L’Empire cybernetique. Des machines à penser à la pensée machine, Paris, Le
Seuil, 2004, pp. 33-38.
4. Jean-Pierre Changeux, L’homme neuronal, Paris, Fayard, 1983. “Synapse:
jonction entre neurones, mais aussi entre neurones et d’autres catégories cellulaires
(cellules musculaires, glandulaires). A son niveau, les membranes cellulaires de la
terminaison axonale et de la surface innervée se juxtaposent, mais ne fusionnent
pas” (p. 414):

27
28
 VIDEO – BETWEEN UTOPIA AND HISTORY.
INTERVIEW WITH WOODY VASULKA.

Tincuþa Heinzel

Introduction

Woody and Steina Vasulka moved to New York in 1965 and, along
with a new environment, they have also discovered a new medium:
the video. In a certain way they were pioneers. Their artistic trajectory
started with the use of the video camera for recording New York’s
underground art scene. Later their interest was directed toward the
medium itself and toward the language it proposed; the result was the
alteration, deconstruction, and reconstruction of the electronic data. Their
efforts continued and culminated with the creation of the Digital Image
Articulator, a digital image device specifically build to manipulate
electronic images in real time with the use of custom software. Realized
in collaboration with Jeffrey Schier, the Digital Image Articulator was
one of the first image synthesizers ever build. Their latest works explore
what Woody Vasulka calls “media machines and non-centric space”.
Being ones of the first to use video and electronic devices with the
purpose of producing image and sound artifacts, the Vasulkas looked to
inventory the possibilities offered by the apparatus. As Woody Vasulka
put it in the interview, the new material provided by the electronic
instruments had to be experimented with, had to be discovered. The
logic behind this approach was resumed by Claudine Eizykman and

29
Guy Fihman in the formula: “to understand in order to manipulate, to
manipulate in order to invent, to invent in order to understand.”1
If photography and film were subservient to the “dominant eye” of
the film camera, video offered all the possibilities of an unexplored
field. Being an exponent of cinematic arts, video was in the direct lineage
of film. Woody Vasulka’s merit is that of succeeding, from the very
beginning, to transcript the source video code by inventorying the
vocabulary of the electronic image and by mapping its syntax.
Considering his preoccupations with the fundamentals of language,
it was probably unavoidable that, at a certain point, Vasulka would
approach the issue of the narrative structure. If reality was as it was,
seen from the perspective of the film camera, “the reality of the
apparatus” promised freedom from the constraints of the established
narrative format. The purpose was to escape the principles of the
narrative, as it was understood up to that point, and to reveal a possible
poetic of technology.
As Marco Maria Gazzano stated, “for the artists Steina and Woody
Vasulka, the creative process represents a dialogue with the machine, in
which they are not only masters of an instrument, but the receptors of
its capacities”.2 As observers of machine’s capacities, the artists are
asked to provide the conditions which allow it to manifest itself. Far
from being dehumanizing, this approach proves to be a highly subjective
way of artistic expression. In a discussion with Peter Weibel in July
1987, the latter remarked the fact that the Romantic idea of the author
is highly present in Woody Vasulka’s discourse. If today’s technology
seems to minimize author’s role, it also seems to hold back people:
“use technology to free people, not to enslave them” Woody Vasulka
said in the interview.
Wanting or not, we find ourselves in the middle of the technology
conundrum. Considering the impact that technology has today, it is not
surprising that the positions took by different people are so diverse.
From a technophobe’s point of view, to a technophile’s point of view,
the palette is quite wide. Technophobia is generally skeptic of any artifice
and manifests its support for the natural order. In most of cases, moral
aspects are detached from the technological phenomenon, fact that leads

30
to a constant appeal to the traditional and symbolic culture3. It has been
argued against such an attitude by pointing out its simplistic view and
the rather poor way in which it defines technology.
From a totally different perspective, the technophiles not only
advocate for a constant co-existence of the human-machine relationship,
but, as it happens in Gilbert Simondon’s case, they argue for a cultural
integration of technology, education playing a central role in this sense.
Even so, what could probably be criticized is precisely their initial claim:
the presupposition that there is a scientific solution for any kind of
problem thus, avoiding any critical approach.
From this point of view, Woody Vasulka position seems to define
itself: it is about the cultural integration of technology, but in the same
time, the technological culture must build itself on the basis of critical
inquiry.
Perhaps, one of the central keys to understanding the technological
phenomenon is its own technical character. As defined by Gilbert
Simondon, the technologic character of an object is given by its ability
to be grounded both in the technologic field as well as in the social,
economic, or political fields. In “The Forms of Existence of Technical
Objects”, Gilbert Simondon defined the technical character of an object
as the quality that it allows it to be compatible with other elements
inside the technological field. The technical character of an object cannot
be separated from the evolution of technology, and in fact, is the
instrument of this evolution.
Born out of artifice, the technological object is the result of the
technologic inertia. Thus, it not objectified, in the same way as
technology itself cannot be objectified. One of the values of the
technological object can be measured in its utility; that is, in its capacity
to be compatible with the technological and cultural fields
simultaneously. This quality was defined by Jean-Pierre Seris4 as
innovation. It could be said that the principle of innovation involves the
harmonization of the technological with the social, economic, and
cultural fields.
On the other hand, we need to discus the invention. A technological
invention clarifies a principle, while innovation deals with the

31
development and practical application of this principle. Any pioneering
activity that highlights the characteristics of the technological process
itself, by this leading to the reassessment of the system, aims to clarify
a technological principle.
The tension that dominates Woody Vasulka’s work is that between
invention and innovation. We can state that Vasulka is a pioneer of video
art and that his work relates to the aspects of invention. Describing the
code of the machine, revealing its capacities, readjusting the functional
system itself, are all elements that define invention. Though they are art
objects of critical questioning, Woody Vasulka’s works don’t show any
interest in harmonizing with the rules of the social, political, and
economical systems, in other words, with the constitutive elements of
culture. What the poetics of the machine reveals in Vasulka’s work is
the raw character of the machine itself, only this takes place with a
critical eye on the act of innovation.
How to innovate? Isn’t this, in fact, the central question of
modernity?
The following interview took place in September 2005 at ZKM,
Karlsruhe, Germany.

Interview with Woody Vasulka

ZKM, September 8, 2005.

Tincuþa Heinzel: I had the chance to assist at one of your conferences

held last year at Paris 1 University, and I also saw some of your
catalogues, like the one published by Cinedoc in Paris. They’ve raised
some questions for me, and I would like to use this opportunity to find
out some of the answers. What interests me - and this would be my first
question - is the way you generally relate to technology. I would like to
know how you define your approach to art and technology.
Woody Vasulka: I suppose you are asking me the perfect question,
so I will give you the perfect answer...
TH: Yes, I know, the questions are always more difficult than the
answers...

32
 WV: And you wouldn’t come all the way here if you didn’t know
the question. OK.
After a series of experiences in film, photography and music, the
idea of the art material imposed itself. The electronic sound offered the
first kind of understanding of a different organization of sound. The
sound produced by voice, or by musical instruments, or in other
“normal”, analogue way was confronted by the sound produced by the
electronic equipment. And the electronic equipment started to organize
the sound based on the internal functioning of the apparatus. And this
was basically the first “critique” of the analogue world. It was about a
world that existed for centuries, that developed itself like a coding system
- and I am referring here to music composition and its elements, like
harmony, pitch, and rhythm - which suddenly found themselves resetted
by new instruments and new ways of organizing sound. And this was
probably the most interesting thing: this inquiry into how the music or
the sound environment can be made without involving the reality of the
objects that have vibrating surfaces, namely the musical instruments.
With the electronically generated sound structures we do not look
anymore outside into the acoustic space, but we are looking inside the
electronic instruments. Outside is the acoustic space that you need to
record or to hear, but if you do it internally than you can produce those
sounds within the apparatus. And the resulted discourse marked a
different force within a different world. There was a curiosity to explore
this other world, which was of course combined with the existence of
digital instruments – digital instruments that are not operational could
not be operated by the direct influence of the hand or (traditional t. n.)
musical instruments, but by code. When you can develop, organize,
and produce sounds directly from code, and the code is not simply a
score, then you can understand the difference.
So this kind of unity of the instrument, this new way, this new
material has also been adopted by the visual world. Immediately before
us was the film. And the filmmakers were already, at this stage in the
Sixties, involved in experimenting with the format. The format is
somehow an interface between the human experience and the forms of
abstraction, whether they are narratives or visual. The colors and other
various components of the image were transferred then into the

33
organizing electronic instruments, where they were no more exclusively
recorded through a camera, through the lens - which is a sort of how the
human eyes look at this world - but all these components begin then to
be constructed internally inside the instrument, and, in fact, became the
critique of the previous camera obscura. These are, certainly, the
principles of digital instruments. Later, of course, this idea was expanded,
so that audio and video became mutually interactive. It is a kind of
eurhythmics, or whatever, activated by a sort of dependency on each
other‘s energy and time potential. It was this entire electronic world
which led to the conceptualization of the material, which was then
translated, or made audible, or visible through the analogue world of
the speakers and monitors.
This separation between the world in which we grew up and the
world that contained new instruments, new materials, and new codes
was important to us. This transition is the reason for my work, and
Steina’s work, as well. We can say that we came from parallel
experiences and a few years later we took different directions in our
work. But this idea of the material being defined, being somehow
described, and then the system being treated as behavior, that somehow
has a certain development, or evolution, it became in the end a practice.
And we really played - like musicians play - we played with audio-visual
electronic instruments for a long, long period of time. And that’s how
we got our world to open.
TH: And do you feel that in fact, the digital and the electronic
media have allowed a change in the material source of art?
WV: One reason for that is curiosity, because you have to know
the secrets of the world. Before, it was a sort of professional technological
cast - like the priests - therefore in order to understand the technology
they kept it separated from society. Just remember that we grew up in
the Sixties, when these rules of engagement were about taking over the
secrets of the industrial society, and practicing them, and tearing them
apart. So it was also a political statement, when everything underwent a
transfer from the hands of the industry to the citizens. And we were
citizens who could play with the fire of gods, so to speak. It was in a
way some kind of a coup. Of course, that also made the separation
between the traditional world and the new world.

34
 Suddenly the dominant role of the camera couldn’t be denied, and
the dominant role of the microphone couldn’t be denied either. So the
new instruments contained all the old media that existed before. And
then they became sort of independent. We came immediately like owners,
taking over this generation of devices. Our generation was, and still is
such an owner. That was the reality of the Sixties. It was a whole
generational movement, and there were many reasons for that: there
was still war in Vietnam, for example, in the States there was the Civil
Rights movement, Jimmy Hendrix was still alive, and so on. And there
were many economic, socio-politic, and aesthetic reasons that made
these things happen. And there was also a technological change, which
made that the components became smaller and cheaper. There was a
new generation of designers. And they instituted, or we all instituted,
this kind of movement. It wasn’t really a programmatic movement, but
it was far away from the instrumentation of the current way of producing
images, sounds, and performances. It was a sort of separation from
Hollywood and the established market which were corrupted.
TH: There is a question that comes to my mind listening to what
you said. It concerns the relationship between the material and the social
condition of art, as well as the cultural and the political context. In one
of your catalogues, when you are speaking about the nature of the film,
you really accuse somehow the cinema and the photogram - as a static
image – for being limiting elements required to produce narration. You
take a somewhat critical attitude against towards narration. But there
are also some art theories which relate the very concept of art to that of
narration. From their perspective, art is a sort of narration of the society,
or of the history. Now, I am quite interested how you relate to narration,
knowing also that later you return to it. Is this another topic in your
work?
WV: The first idea about the “camera obscura” - to present the
world as it is - had an important role in this matter. My generation and
the whole 20th Century were profoundly convinced that this was a form
of reality. It was not only a pictorial reality, but it was also a symbol -
since it was a moving image - a symbol, or a cliché, of the story, of the
narration. And the narration, being either melodramatic or analytic, tried
in a way to criticize the world we were looking at. But this was still the
dominant way we looked at the new material.

35
 I was looking for a different image. It was no longer the image of
the world, or that of reality, or of social reality, or of gender, or of the
narrative system. What I tried to do, was to identify a different image
that came from a different world. And this image was independent, was
not specified, had no assignment. It becomes a kind of pure, ethical
indifference because the machine at that time was not employed by any
kind of ideology or instrumentalist ideology - like television. It was
very much undefined. So, it was a certain period of freedom while
working with this material (the video). There was no definition and no
tradition to be used. All this was the very change of the image. And
what had to be figured out was the reason for that change: what made
this change possible and how to employ these basic primitive elements
to structure something different from the world that we knew? Later in
my life, in the Seventies, I attempted to question these artifacts that I
could find in the electronic world and to question how these artifacts
could actually be used.
So I made two long pieces: “Art of Memory” and “The
Commission”, which raised these questions. But they weren’t really
made to succeed, they were conceived to question if this narrative
possibility exists. There is a language that is made by electronic means,
and there is a vocabulary that could be used and re-contextualized in
order to remake a content, to create a new narrative.
But these questions were already asked by some independent
filmmakers, such as Paul Sharits - I don’t know if you know his films.
These authors questioned the new narrative or abstract narrative, one
that can be achieved by colored fields, or with a minimum of elements.
It was a sort of minimalist ideology still carrying on the very
unambiguous narrative content. What does this mean? Nobody really
knew. We were looking for a change in the state of our mind, a mood
that conveys a possible reflection upon the world. It was about a different
domain - one that was not reflected through people’s feelings that love
each other or kill each other. So these were the questions that, I think,
my generation tried to answer. And that’s why I made these two works.
But I found out that they had completely failed, because they were just
designed for people to look at and say if such an attempt is possible or

36
not. That means I didn’t create them to succeed, but to question these
things. Yet one of them succeeded somehow, because its subject was
history, you know, recent history, like “Art of the Memory.” Many people
thought I’d gave too many clues, still the film dealt with the 20th Century,
a 20th Century which was a sadistic system of wars - especially the
Second World War – and this system was a sort of instrument for the
development of this narrative.
But that was rather unusual in my work, because right after that –
and I’m referring now to the Eighties - I got turned on to robotics, so to
speak, not really robotics - like human robots - but a kind of media
constructions. I always tried, all my life, to look for what the code is,
what the most basic, primitive, simplest code could be. What is the
code that could set a new effort, in - you know - a sort of rewarding
direction for this new material? But there was also this curiosity about
what it does, and what it supports, or how we could form it, and how
could it be learned. Because this material taught me a lot, and if this
experience is valid, it has to be passed on. And this is another question.
And this is still the question…
TH: Speaking of transferring, I understand that you are working
now on archiving and digitizing some video (VHS)5 works. I am referring
specifically to the “Oasis” project.
WV: That’s right! I’m looking back and I’m trying to see what
happened, what was accomplished. I see a lot of unfinished works. A
lot of them! And I’m thinking of what that means. With this project I’m
looking to build a repertory of all these works, to see which works are
related, which are outside of the trends. So I try to establish a history of
styles. I’m not looking for an overview, and video and computer media
have widely spread genres. They are very broad: we can see works that
tell a story, we can see documentaries or abstract films. It’s a broad
arena. I am looking at it historically and I’m trying to see what has been
developed. So I would like to narrate a sort of paradigm, the only
paradigm in my work that interests me. But it’s not even possible to
finish it because there is too much data. And there is also the problem
of the collective approach. I don’t know if a discussion about the
collection has its place here. Anyway, I’m going to get through it and

37
I’ll do what I can. I will take care of my friends; some of them have
passed away by now. So it’s like a kind of gong.
TH: You have described your work like some kind of research.
And I consider that somehow, your approach is similar to a scientific
research. You were speaking of a paradigm…
WV: What is a research? A research is an attempt to understand
the way the world works. Scientific research has to deal with more or
less successful experiments, while the aesthetic experiment doesn’t really
have any options. The aesthetic experiment has to deal with aesthetic
evaluations, with the opinions of one or the other, with approvals and
norms. So, art has much more limits. It’s not true research. Actually it’s
more like certain passions, like obsessions, driven by desire, and that is
limiting.
In science, a failed experiment has the same value as a successful
one. Maybe not quite the same value, but scientists experiment in order
to crown their success. I don’t think that art works this way. If art
produces non-art, it has no meaning. Art is made to succeed, in some
strange way, and this narrows down its options.
Also, another problem I have with science is that it takes place in a
different environment. It is not an independent activity. It’s usually done
in a governmental or institutional environment and by that is often subject
to institutional changes. Art, the best art I know, is usually done outside
of the institutional realm.
On the other hand, science is well funded, while artists are never
well funded. We cannot fund art enough, because it doesn’t produce
sufficient returns. Scientists can change the world, they make atomic
weapons, they are looking for solutions to produce more energy.
Especially today, art is completely powerless in the current world
configuration. Art cannot make you rich, cannot improve your living
conditions, or whatever else. Art has been marginalized. It is no longer
auxiliary to power - like it was when it used to work for the church -
when the artists were called to depict the heavens in such a way as to
attract as many people as possible and to keep them believing in the
promise of the eternal life. Art does not hold that Ace card anymore.

38
 Of course art has a certain power, a transcendental power, of making
a little daily object - like a canvas - to be priced from $20 or $12 to $30
million. And how it does it, it is still a transcendental mystery. But it
does work, somehow, sometimes! And this is the very provocative power
of art. But of course, usually the artists have long since passed away or
they aren’t part of the transaction anymore. All this happens behind
their back. The questions raised by the artistic creation have always
provoked extreme behaviors. Of course artists are like crazy people,
but then, there is a community of artists that knows how the system
works, and where each artist appreciates the work for the other.
We had an experience, perhaps six or eight years ago, with a group
of artists and scientists in a laboratory in Santa Fe. It all ended in a
complete disaster. Maybe it is possible to combine art and science. I
think this is just a theory. There is not evidence of such a practice. It’s
impossible. But that’s just my opinion. I could be totally wrong. Other
people could support the contrary, that this relationship is real, and that
these people like each other, that they work together, that they develop
magnificent art. But I’m not aware of these situations.
Maybe science and technology have a lot in common. Maybe the
only thing common between art and science is indirectly, though
technology. The link between art and science is made through
technology. This is almost evident. I will never doubt that.
TH: I am quite surprised by your answer since your artistic interests
are so tightly related to the video material. Sometimes you give the
impression that your work follows the same directions as the scientific
research. I think your answer is very much related to the contextual or
sociological aspect of the work.
WV: You see... Let me define it in a different way. Most
collaboration initiatives between art and science actually come from
science, because in order to exist, science needs an everlasting project.
But if you consider all the scientific theories, after centuries of questions,
only a few survive. Still, scientists have always fought to prove the fact
that their work is as creative as that of the artists.
But art has an unshakable past. There are paintings that go way
back to the prehistory, works documented throughout the centuries.

39
There are masterpieces. And then you take science. All of a sudden,
every scientific domain is questionable. Of course we can say that
Einstein’s theory has held up for a century, but can you imagine the
number of theories that have been forgotten? This has already happened
many, many times before and it’s still happening. And of course, we
can think of the work of scientists as an intense effort to convince their
own community of the existence of something, but this goes on only for
a short period of time.
Art is usually a conglomeration of symbolic, iconic, or whatever
other kind of sentences. So I think art and science are not really similar
processes, even if many scientists deny that, and even if the French
Academy brought them together in the 18th Century, calling itself the
“Arts and Science Academy”. This marriage can only be made in heaven.
Anyway, this is an observation. I’ve met many scientists and I’ve
met many artists, and I’ve seen not only profound differences in aesthetic
thinking, but I’ve also seen profound differences in their social
environment. And that is irreconcilable. But it depends on the angle
from which you look at it. Somebody else can convince you that this
relationship is true.
TH: Which are, from your point of view, the next steps to be done?
What things are important for you, and what things will be, from your
perspective, of interest in the future?
WV: What I see as an important issue in the future is basically
what it is called the utopian model. My generation has known several
of these projects, the socialism, or the communism, in which we grew
up, and which you probably know very well. And then there were these
promises of the market economy, saying that everyone will work and
make money, and eventually become rich. When you look at the latest
catastrophe in New Orleans, than you see that actually what the poor
people of New Orleans are looking for is comfort. What these people
lack is the fact that their existence has nothing to do with the market
economy, and that what counts is the human quality of life. We’re talking
about a new aesthetic, a new understanding, which is kind of an old
discourse. Then, there is the promise that through automation we will
free the human being from enslavement – it’s 19th Century utopian
thinking.

40
 So, suddenly there is a crisis of thought. Then you have to ask the
question why, and what is our existence? Are we here to build a large
predatory capitalist system or to oppose it to Marx’s old model?
I think we live in very strange times. Then, there are the waves of
wars that are no longer considered aberrations. They are even called
“preemptive”, and I’m referring here to the concept of preemptive war.
It is an aberration! It consists of a war prepared and paid for from the
national budget. It is the budget that goes to war. Of course this is nothing
new. But it contrasts so much with all these promises of evolution, let’s
call them of “enlightenment”, which was the latest evolutionary concept.
There have been a series of patents, like those aiming to eradicate
poverty, and these concepts keep coming back into the United States.
So it is the very existence of a person that is questioned.
And art is now placed in a no man’s land. If you look around, and
see how far removed the artists’ concerns are from the official interests,
you realize that these officials aren’t interested in improving the
governmental strategy anymore. Only in Bhutan, from what I’ve heard
lately, there is a kind of kingdom there, and they are talking about the
Gross National Product being happiness. It sounds so strange! But the
man was correct, what counts is the happiness of his people. But this is
an approached that was used in Germany during WWII, as well. So, the
future is this unfulfilled promise of the past reconfigured as a vision.
And eventually, I think, we have to decide what the value of human
existence is. Is it to get a job? More and more people are born because
there is a need for more slave labor. Or is there any way people can
choose to live according to the talent, ability, or whatever old terms
might define their abilities.
So I am interested in the story of a generation. We, my generation
and I, we were totally involved with every aspect of the social condition,
including that of the video. It did not matter the format: be it abstract,
non-narrative, non-figurative, video was especially politicized from the
inside. We were extremely realistic of the politics of the time; we took
advantage of those politics. The generation of the Sixties in the United
States and everywhere, became the actors of a certain style of social
movement, the actors of historical movements. It is what’s lacking in

41
the art of today. I don’t know why. But I believe it is a deep human
crisis: to find out who we are, and what we should be. And looking at
the media, you cannot think otherwise. The crisis raises questions like:
what is all about in the end, what kind of explanations do we get? What
is the relationship between government and people, and what is the
relationship between people and industry? Are we exploited? Should
we be exploited? What about the people that cannot be employed,
because they don’t have the ability to maintain a job, but who, maybe,
could be productive through their aesthetic innocence? These
arrangements, and then the religion, are the same thing. It took us four
centuries to get rid of the religious oppression. And suddenly in the
United States begins its exacerbation again. And then there is a certain
kind of Islam. We have this repetition of the past over which none of us
has control, and on top of it, there is this democratic process which
justifies it.
So, I became just an observer. I’m looking at the past and I’m trying
to imagine what was, and what the process that allowed it to be born
was. So I am reflexive, I am not a creative person anymore. Sometime
I am tempted by the idea of making art, because there are so many
unfinished areas, or areas that have just been neglected, and this, because
the time has passed so fast, and the evolution of the media was so rapid
that we barely could touch on some of these things or describe them in
some way.
If allowed, I would like to make a suggestion: use technology to
free people, and not to enslave them. But there is no evidence that such
a thing is happening. It’s about free people who don’t want to participate
in the way that society forces them to. There is a struggle for personal
choice. It is not about liberation, but about something that supports the
values of tolerance and will advance the qualities that in the end do not
follow the industrial and political necessities. Anyway, that’s all I can
say. Do you have any other questions?
TH: No, for the moment these are all my questions.
WV: Use my answers, and if they don’t help you, forget them. You
know, I’m only an instrument.

42
 TH: As am I, probably.
WV: We all are.
Thanks to Woody Vasulka for the interview. The residence at ZKM
was possible with the support of DAAD – German Academic Exchange
Service.

Notes

1
Steina et Woody Vasulka – Videastes, 1969-1984: 15 annees
d’images electroniques -â. Ed. Cine-MBXA - CINEDOC, Paris, 1984.
(catalogue)
2 Gazzano Marco Maria – « On the Trail of the Fire from the Gods »,

in « Steina e Woody Vasulka – Video, Media e Nuove Immagini nell’arte

Contemporanea », Ed. Fahrenheit 451, Roma, 1995 (catalog). p.13-23.
3
Philippe Pasquier - « L’intelligence artificielle et la création
contemporain en réflexion. La question de la technique ». Parachute,
no.119/2005, pg. 154-164. In his article, Pasquier reviews the position
of some philosophers in respect to technology: he recounts Jacque Ellul
technophobia and Gilbert Simondon technophila, as well as the radical
emancipating position formulated by Tristam Engelhard.
4
Séris, Jean-Pierre, « Technique », Ed. PUF, Paris, 1994.
5
transcription note

43
44
 A GNOSSEOLOGICAL APPROACH OF THE
CONCEPT OF INTERACTION REAL TIME IN
MUSIC – SEVERAL PARADIGMS AND MODELS

Paulo Ferreira-Lopes

Abstract

Digital technology and the tools of artistic expression. Reflection

on several operating structures resulting from the integration of digital
technologies in music and sound production. The digital musical
instrument: an ontological perspective on the main structures of sound
manipulation – interfaces and interactions. Paradigms and interaction
models.

1. Introduction

My fascination with interaction stems from my childhood, when I

was passionately interested in the construction of sound producing
instruments.
As for my research interests of the last ten years, they can be
illustrated by the impact and implications of the lutherie of musical
instruments on musical compositions based on digital technologies.
The construction of musical instruments, more specifically those
created through digital lutherie, presuppose the meeting, vicinity and

45
intersection of several subjects and of different fields of
knowledge.
As for the specific case of my work, and for the personal application
of my research, one can discern several domains which coexist and
structure the development of my projects. Actually, these domains
represent indirectly the different components and parts that structure a
musical instrument, as well as the applications that I intend for them.
The individual complexity of each of the parts and components of the
musical instrument as well as the complexity according to which each
of the parts connect to each other, determine in the end, the degree of
complexity of the instrument.
For both the method of accessing the instrument and for the process
of sound production, this implies mastering and deepening our
knowledge on subjects such as the representation, interaction, interface,
support and on the back-end side, the computer science involved.
Invariably and generally, in my work as well as in my mind, the
relationship between computer science and music is not structured in a
hierarchical form.
This means that the digital environment and the use of digital means
in the conception of an instrument, goes beyond the materialization of
the instrument, of its sound, or of its function controls. Materially
speaking, digital technologies and computer science are but a few
elements in the chain of creation. The material specificity of each of
these elements naturally and permanently determines not only the
dimensions and the characteristics of the instrument, but also the limits
of the composition and the outline of the network that leads to its
finalization due to the endogenous characteristics of the instruments.
In this sense, one should consider that the use of digital technologies
generates reflexes and interactions in the field of the musical
composition, concerning both its macroform and its microstructure.
This means that the elements – hardware and software – which
representare the basis of a the computer science-based work and which
enable the production of the basic material of musical composition –
namely the sound - coexist within a chain of multiple interactions, whose
components are the composition, the performer and the composer.

46
 In order to support this basic idea, I quote a paragraph from of my
PhD thesis:
The musical instrument may be the material motivation of the
musical composition. The limits and the challenges of its complexity
can direct the contents and the form of a musical composition. The
musical instrument may become at the same time the object of a
composition. It is not unusual for the composer to create his own
instruments in accordance with a pre-established ideal which evolves
in fragments, with the progression of his lutherie work as his instrument
begins to take shape. The musical instrument can, on the other hand
function as a mirror, by means of reduction or redunndancy, enabling a
shallow access to the main outline of musical reality. (pp 162-163)
In this respect, several of the main aspects related to the concept of
the musical instrument1, are proven to be the essential aspects of the
mentioned approaches:
• through the study of the connections between the user and the
surface structure of the musical instrument: the interface
• through analyzing the relationships between the user and the
more profound and abstract structures of the musical instrument: the
interaction.

2. A gnosseological approach on the concept of in-

teraction

In general, the concept of interaction as defined by the different

fields of communication sciences is the result of communication seen,
either from a conversational or visual point of view (including gestures).
As for the quantification and the measure of the interaction, the
fluctuation between these two variables is conditioned by the type of
support used by the communicational phenomenon.
In the case of traditional media, the interaction proves to be weak
as the communication is unilateral.
In the case of the new media – especially those transmitted or fixed
on a digital support - the interaction proves to be strong, as the

47
communication mechanism is theoretically established according to an
exchange model, which proves to be very strong, according to the
participant’s personality.
Trying to identify the common aspects of the most widespread
approaches towards the concept of interaction, one can mark note, on a
macro-dimensional level, that the mainstream understanding of the
general concept of interaction is directed either to a category focusing
on the action and the transfers of states – which is reached due to the
action moving to other possible states – (Dance: 1967; McLoughlin:
1988), or to a category which defines the concept of interaction as a
process catalyzing instable states directed towards principle of
communication and exchange. (Rafaelli: 1988)
In short, the concept of interaction, according to the communication
science, is based grosso modo on the communicational phenomenon. If
case certain divergences come up regarding the communicational
phenomenon, their occurrence may be explained by the specificities of
the media and of the instruments related to different fields of research,
as well as, by the specificities induced by quantifying the signification
of each media.
As for computer sciences, and especially those influenced by the
fundamental thought of symbolical interaction, I have inferred several
taxonomies, modalities and degrees of interaction in the framework of
interaction between man and machine, as will be discussed we later.
One of the most interesting paradigms tackling the concept of
interaction is that of Wegner’s. The concept of interaction, analyzed by
Wegner (Wegner: 2001), moves away from the simplification based on
the communicational principle mentioned earlier. The concept of
interaction introduced by Wegner evolves to a dynamical principle,
requiring an extensive flexibility of calculation which must adapt to the
reality, and to connect to the temporal axis.
This concept reveals thus, a new principle, as compared to the quite
closed communication chains in which the information was exchanged
and converted by algorithmic calculation previously. However, in order
to offset some of the opposing reactions to his algorithmic calculation,

48
Wegner presupposes that the association between algorithms and
interactive technologies, based on the concept of adaptive interaction,
can lead to solving the problems more efficiently and closer to the
human context.
Consequently the concept of interaction, from the computer science
point of view and by comparison to communication sciences, implies a
greater complexity, as its definition becomes extremely formalized in
some cases, or branches into several fields of knowledge, in other cases.
As I tackle the concept of interaction from the point of view of computer
sciences, my research evolves two different levels.
At this point, I will mention my study developed in the context of a
my PhD thesis tackling on one hand the definition of the concept of
interaction oriented towards the internal space of the computer and
towards the space of calculation, and on the other hand, towards the
impact of the human-machine relationship on the concept of interaction.

3. Interaction and real-time in music

A few attempts to study the relationships between music and

interaction compel the us to reflect on the concept of real-time. Real-
time, in the technical terminology of musical composition delimits the
vast connotations of interaction and music. In this respect, one has to
consider the lack of precision found in few attempts to understand the
principles of causality between real-time and interaction, especially when
these theoretical speculations eliminate the interaction between mixed
forms of music or recorded music. Here is the Manoury’s position on
the subject:
“Considered from the point of view of an intelligent interactivity
between musician and machine, the interpretation, as I said it previously,
needs to reintegrate itself into the body of the electroacoustical music…
so that the performer should no longer be the slave of the machine, but
the contrary…” (Manoury: 1987).

From this point of view, it is not difficult to conceive real-time as if

it could simultaneously include many unique aesthetic tendencies and,

49
at the same time, limit the topic of interaction to certain technological
contexts. According to Manoury, in the case of mixed-media works
that use previously recorded music are the integration of reactions to
all kinds of interactions is inexistent, as the interpretation is an exogenous
manifestation. For interpretation, the concept of interpretative variation
is highly dependant (if not exclusively dependent) on the time axis.
This argumentation implies that in the mixed compositions, using
pre-recorded music, or the compositions recorded exclusively on media,
the interaction, derived from the principle of time interpretation, cannot
take place, as the time dimension does not allow for interpretation, due
to the fixed and unchanging medium of the composition.
However, if we take into consideration the relationships between
architectural space and the acoustic conditions needed by a musical
composition, one can immediately note the countless interactions, which
also include the acoustics of a space, without mentioning the importance
of the speakers as instruments of perceptive reproduction, which can
enhance the interpretation of a piece.
Here is Horacio Vaggione’s commentary on the immanent
characteristics of the outer surrounding space of the composition and
its interactions with the concert hall: “We have to add to this the
characteristics of the concert hall’s reaction, which is a true resonance
box: the sounds thus projected will spring to other “ghostlike” locations
drawing unique paths for each elevation and each tone.” (Vaggione:
2000: pp. 7).
If, on one hand it is true that real-time enables a direct intervention
on the sound processes involved and the implementation of wider
interactive processes during the concert, one can often note that the use
of real-time, observed in a more refined light and in certain applications,
encounters serious problems because of several limitations. In this sense,
it is worth mentioning that due to its nature, these limitations will never
find a solution through technologic development because these problems
are a the result of time irreversibility associated to certain uses of real-
time technology.
In my opinion, among the number of potential advantages brought
by real-time technologies to the field of music its most profitable use

50
resides, essentially, in digital lutherie: the building of digital musical
instruments and their association to the traditional instruments.
On the contrary, real-time compositions or certain methods of sound
production, more specifically related to several families of sound
synthesis, do not really find, in my opinion, the space of reflection and
construction/deconstruction, from a real-time perspective, inherent to
musical creation and composition. Even if, from a certain point of view
real-time technologies introduced the concept of flexibility and intuition
in musical composition, I think nevertheless that the use of real-time
requires apprenticeship and the substantial mastery of different fields
of knowledge. This approach is also valid for the composer as for the
computer scientist, but most of all for the performer.
In this sense, considering the costs, especially the time costs and
the compositional complexity implied by the real-time when composing
a musical piece, each time I have to begin a new project, I have to
reconsider and to exactly forecast the consequences of such a choice.
I quote for example my work “Sotto Voce”, for which the production
time and the time of setting the digital instrument was so long, that
certain technical solutions adopted at the beginning of the project were
simply outdated after almost 20 months of work.

4. Paradigms and models of interaction

There have been almost twenty years since electronic technologies

were present in my creative work, simultaneously associated with
reflections of diverse natures. The introduction and use of digital
technologies in my work starts with the beginning of the nineties, being
interested in real-time technologies since 1993, especially those
involving multi-channel distribution, what is more commonly named
spatial rendering.
As far as my whole body of reflections is concerned, the topic of
interaction has a very important role. In this sense, and as a result of my
observations, the musical composition often compels the composer to
develop models, evenit does’t do it in a systematic way. These models,

51
adapted to specific situations, enable the establishment of a
catalogue-memory or of a musical notation which generally and
musically reflects the paradigms of interaction between the composer,
the composition, the musicians and the instruments. In this way, I
developed a classification model for an interaction paradigm
(Ferreira-Lopes: 2004) founded on two main typologies: genre (discrete
or non-discrete) and directionality (unidirectional/multidirectional).
The typology concept, tries to explain the types of interaction and
communication models, which are the basis of a relationship formed
on principles of cooperation and exchange between two realities:
• the performer through his music;
• the digital musical instruments.
These two typologies enable the standardization of:
• the global process;
• the local process;
• the micro-local process.
As for the global process, one can remark that it is associated with
non-discrete time developments, while a local or a micro-local process
is associated to discrete time developments.
Among the analyzed cases, which are quite different from a
multicasting device such as an interactive CD or DVD, one can deduct
that the configuration of an interactive device, and more specifically
that of a digital musical instrument, reflects undoubtedly a rather formal
choice than an aesthetical one. In this sense, one can conclude that real-
time and the consequences of its use don’t allow us to infer an universal
aesthetic status.
Not only did this kind of reflection have an enormous influence on
the creation and the composition of my musical pieces and of the
instruments involved, but I also introduced the computer as a means of
expression and as concert instrument since the computer may
simultaneously be the creative instrument and my ideal digital musical
instrument. This is a consequence of my intervention, via the computer,
during the concert, in the creation of musical pieces along to the other
performers, and aside my interventions in setting the acoustic levels
(on the mixing console) or in adjusting the equalization. In this context,

52
the computer integrates functions similar to those of the musical
instruments as it not only is the means of connecting traditional
instruments to the musical device, or only transformating the
interventions of the performers, but it is also an autonomous instrument,
which I control in a unique manner. That is, when I use the computer in
concert, I control it and interact with it as well, using peripheral devices
(sensors, joystick, mouse, etc.) that are especially configured and
assembled ergonomically for a specific work.
On the other hand, the integration of the computer in the concert as
a musical instrument, implies that the quality of the musical outcome
and the quality of the interactions, especially those resulting directly
from my intervention, depends entirely on the quality and on the
complexity of the surface structures or on the deeper and more abstract
structures of the musical instrument. The quality of the musical outcome
during the concert also depends on the time that I spend rehearsing on
my instrument, often very intensely, before the rehearsals. My presence
in the realization of my musical pieces, during the a concert, implies
the specific construction of the instruments, and the development of
(quasi meta-technical) strategies in order to play my instruments, and
thus, acquiring the status of performer along that of composer.

5. Conclusions

As for the specific aspects concerning my instruments and the

particular objectives of each instrument, I’d especially like to mention
in this article two projects: “doN” and “Sotto Voce”.
Concerning my composition “doN”, the main objective of the
project was that of confronting the musician with the possible extensions
of his instrument, some of them of a material nature, like the mutes of
the trumpet, and other virtual, as digital filters modeled after the mutes
of the trumpet.
Within this structure, the construction of my digital musical
instrument and of the global system aimed to model the mutes by
applying filters on the trumpet signal. The solutions for constructing
the instrument, as described in my research paper from 20002, followed

53
several stages. At the beginning of the project in October 1998, I tried
the implementation of filters using the Fourier transforms as well as
general techniques of convolving the signal, based essentially on Gérad
de Caussé’s work. Finally, at the end of 1999 I abandoned the transforms
trying to establish the functional basis of the instrument on the FIR IIR
filters, connected to tools of spread modulating spectrum (the ring
modulation principle). This solution allowed me to have quite a flexible
instrument when it comes to calculating the computational power of
the computer and the musical outcome, as well as, the aspect of
communication between performers and instruments, according to my
research. The modeled mutes enabled an outcome similar to the
acoustical reality of the trumpet reaching dissonant paradoxes opposed
to the source. In the case of “Sotto Voce” for cello and live electronics,
the paradigms are completely different from those of “doN”. In this
composition I wanted to work on two aspects: the first aspect being the
3D spatial rendering, the second that of instrument replication in real-
time.
As for the 3D spatial rendering, I actually wanted to create an
environment different from the common models, whose spatial
modelling signifies either a movement of the source, or a model of
acoustical space, or both at the same time. My idea was to split an
object in four dynamic segments which enable us to monitor its evolution
in the field of time/frequency.
Then, after the splitting using the band-pass filter and after
treatments based on the FIR and IIR filters, I relaunch in the space the
outcome of the aforementioned operations using four speakers. This
operation, globally speaking, enables the spectator to acoustically rebuild
the disjunctions initially operated, using the acoustical multiplicity
spread in the space. Thus, throwing in space residues generated by a
sound source which is the cello, the audience must assemble the resulted
fragments in a single point where they can rebuild the pieces of a previous
deconstruction. As for the second aspect, the main objective was to
combine the musical structure of the instrumental part and the
coordination of each of the four instruments, whose modules included
each an IIR FIR band pass filter, using the cello.

54
 Considering that signal processing modules (the filters) are fed
acoustically by the cello signal, this operation enables the reproduction
of the cello signal x times, as well as autonomously duplicating the
associated instrument. This means that the cellist plays simultaneously
five instruments independent from one another. This type of challenge
is only possible thanks to the principles according to which I specifically
structured this instrument:
• the principle of non-causality between the manipulation of the
instrument and its impact on the musical outcome;
• the non-synchronization in time of the manipulation of control
interface and its impact on the musical outcome;
• the diminishment of musicians’ gestures as they relate to the
evolution and the development of the musical content operated by the
digital musical instrument.

6. Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Horacio Vaggione for his precious advice and

orientation. I would also like to thank ZKM for hosting my projects.
This research was developed with the support of Fundação para a
Ciência e Tecnologia, in Lisbon and of the POCI2010 program.

(Text translated from French by Patricia Comãnescu)

7. References

Ferreira-Lopes, P. ; Étude de modèles interactifs et d’interfaces de contrôle

en temps réel pour la composition musicale. PHD ; Paris ; University of Paris VIII
- Dep. of Sciences and Technologies of Art, 2004.
Ferreira-Lopes, P. , Coimbra D. and Sousa Dias, A. : “Music and Interaction:
Consequences, Mutations and Metaphors of the Digital Music Instrument” in ACTAS
do 2º Workshop Luso-Galaico de Artes Digitais; Vila Nova Cerveira / Portugal ;
2005.
Garnett, G. E. ; The Aesthetics of Computer Music in Computer Music
Journal vol 25 no. 1; Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2001.

55
 Goebel, J. ; “The Art of Interfacing : Senses, Sense and the Discipline of
Playing Interfaces” in The Sciences of the interfaces (p. 306-314) ; Tuebingen :
Genista VERLAG, 1999.
Jensen, J. ; Interactivity ; Tracking a new concept in media and communication
Studies in Computer Media and Communication ; Oxford : Oxford University Press,
1999.
Manoury, P. ; “De l’incidence des systèmes en temps réels sur la création
musicale” in Actes de la Conférence ARTE E TECNOLOGIA ; Lisbonne : Fondation
Calouste Gulbenkian ;1987.
Vaggione , H. : “L’espace composable sur quelques catégories opératoires
dans la musique électroacoustique” in M. Solomos et J-M Chouvel (Ed.):
Espace : musique, philosophie. ; Paris, L’Harmatan ; 1998.
Rafaeli, S. ; Interactivity : From New Media to Communication (pp110-134)
in Sage Annual Review of Communication Research ; Beverley Hills - Newbury
Park : Sage ; 1988.
Risset, J. C. ; Evolution des outils de création sonore in Interfaces
homme-machine et création musicale ; Paris : Hermes; 1999.
Weibel, P. ; “The Art of Interface Technology” in The Sciences of the interfaces
(p. 272-281) ; Tuebingen : Genista VERLAG ; 1999 .
Winograd, T. : Interaction Spaces for 21st Century Computing, in John Carroll
(ed.), Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, Addison-Wesley, 2001.

Notes
1 We highlight the concept of interface as one of the most important concepts
introduced by the research on the diffrerent aspects of the interaction within the
musical composition.
2 http://ima.zkm.de/~pfl/publications3/rap00.html

56
 CHAPTER II. Spatial Forms

DIGITAL SURREALITIES.
DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE:
ARTS OF F[R]ICTION

Sophie Fetro

If certain digital images are based on the simulation of the reality,

others, on the contrary, are designed to introduce a part of fiction into
reality. The digital representations that imply directly the question of
mimesis in the deign1 arts become sometimes so autonomous that they
confirm Georg Simmel’s considerations related to the work of art as
“existence par-delà la réalité”2 (existence beyond reality). A new form
of imaging is being created due to digital design. The spaces, digitally
defined, seem to move away from reality and to generate unlikely, almost
fictitious spaces. However, the arts of design that involve the digital
realm in their creative process, don’t give up reality entirely. On the
contrary, they count on the abstraction and fictional power of digital
representation in order to enrich the architecture, and the perceptible
and practicable environment with a new dimension. Not only did the
development of the CAD challenge architect’s and designer’s
relationships to the traditional operating modes, but it also questioned
their capacity to change their work habits and approach to reality.

1. Digital Utopias

Developers, architects and designers have high hopes in the repre-

sentational and programmatic possibilities offered by new media, es-

57
pecially the 3D software and modeling programs. They base their dream
of a neverland and set off to conquer new territories on these technolo-
gies. Intimately connected to utopia through invention and prediction
the arts of design unveil new ways of organizing the space and the
human environment, somehow akin to the utopian worlds described in
literature 3 or seen on film 4, or to the ideal cities imagined by
Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. The architects and
designers who propose to both transform reality through their designs
and to create new realities, developed new methods which highlight
this relationship between design and utopia. The digital world and Tho-
mas Mourus’ visions have two features in common: rationalizing real-
ity and introducing Science Fiction5 in this process. The utopia6, namely
the imaginary island invented by Morus, found in the digital space a
place of possible existence and visibility. This purely fictitious space
could recall the ‘nowhere-space’ of the computer networks. Marked by
the search of the ideal city, by the echoes of Eden and of the lost
Paradise7, as well as by eschatological visions, the present digital
utopias, although removed from their religious origins and their bibli-
cal models, remind us of the prophetic traditions as they make out of
computer imaging the measure of a new eloquence. Messenger of both
the worst deviations and the most promising visions, digital imaging
reveals the ambivalent characteristic of the utopia, where the nightmare
intersects the dream. Fostering the imagination of the ideal city, the
digital space may be a refuge from reality, the “nowhere-space”, as
Marc Augé8 puts it, of a cathartic deliverance from contemporary fears
and anxieties. The 21st Century inaugurates a new utopian age thanks
to the development of the digital world and of computer graphics imag-
ing techinques. Despite previous totalitarian drifts caused by the mate-
rialization of certain political and social utopias, the hope for the
successful application of visionary projects is still there. A good ex-
ample is the project to rehabilitate a housing complex in Netherland by
the Greg Lynn FORM9 architecture firm, or the energy saving BedZed
garden-city in Great Britain10.

58
 2. The Art of Representation
The Subordination of the Project to the Image

The media coverage of the projects, their digital broadcasting on

the Internet and the use of competitions are challenges that determine
architects and designers to develop their projects through digital imaging
technologies. They engage thus, in producing overwhelming images,
that give their projects the necessary attention grabbing “shine”. The
design or architecture projections are more than ever so dependant on
the image, to the point that the projects don’t even need to be executed
in order to exist. Either they could not be materialized for budgetary
reasons or due to modification impediments, or even because these
projects assume their virtual existence as is, for many, the digital space
is a voluntary exile. This existence, dependent on the image, does not
deter the interest from these projects, nor from their possible posterity.
Like the previously non-executed projects11, they are a visual testimony
that enables the understanding of the age and of its practices. The use of
synthetic images in the arts of design and the visual proliferation enabled
by the computer leads to a state opposed to the “lack of iconicity”12
mentioned by Cyrille Simonnet, namely to a surplus of iconicity. This
type of reasoning that values the visually attractive object excludes from
the beginning the modest object. This hierarchy imposed by the image,
even if not new, dominates and opens the way to the a visual overload at
the cost of less demonstrative projects, or of projects that don’t privilege
the image.

The Photogenic Object

Designers’ fascination with computer tools leads to a new form of

seduction of the project by the image. With the wider introduction of
CAD in the deign process, the flattering characteristic of the realistic
representation was amplified more than ever before. If, up to then, the
architectural photographer was the one capable of enhancing a building’s

59
appearance thanks to exposures, framing or to favorable lighting,
nowadays the photographical quality of a building is predefined and
refined by computer programs (that enable the choice of the best vista,
light, skin effects, etc.). This is transposed in the digital projects to a
specific luminosity, properly or metaphorically speaking. As opposed
to the film camera, which functions based on the light sensitivity of the
medium, the 3D modeling software is based on an internal luminescence
that give the virtual objects a particular aesthetic quality. As Mark Wigley
puts it in his text, Back to Black13, “a new iconography is born”, founded
on a process of inverting the principle of drawing with black on white.
With digital technologies, a project is no longer solely marked by the
architect’s or designer’s gesture or imprint, but also by the computer
programs employed.

Seeing the Landscape Through Virtual Perspective

The 3D and CAD programs are new visualization devices

producing not only original imaging but also largely modifying our
perception of the “real” environment. Illustrating the “artistization”
that Alain Roger debates in his Court traité du paysage (Short Treaty
on Landscape)14 there is a similar phenomenon that perceives the
landscape through the virtual grid filter. So, what one sees is no longer
a work of art or a building, but, mainly a virtual design that has first of
all emerged as an image. Although this vision requires a certain level
of visual education (a culture of the virtual image), the media, via
advertising, the cinema via special effects or even the whole visual
media environment (architecture, design, visual communication, etc.),
are the promoters of a passive but effective education of the eye. New
household and outdoor and indoor landscapes are about to flourish
both in real life as well as in the virtual environment. A new surface
quality appears, as for example in Arik Levi’s “Meteor” series of tables
featuring mirrored and faceted surfaces or even Jean Nouvel’s “Agbar”
tower in Barcelona.

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 3. Digital Surrealities
The digital promises: images more real than nature
itself.

Each designer has a different relationship to the digital image. Some

aim to design projects close to reality, whereas others have a different
goal, namely to design projects purposely removed from reality and
thus embracing a different logic. For the latter, the computer, due to its
features, may enable the creation of new identities. This operating mode
functions based on the figurative capacities of the representational tool
employed, and is typical for the 20th Century design process. As
axonometry, according to Yve-Alain Bois15, initialized a new vision of
the space, especially with artists like Gerrit Rietveld, contemporary
architects and designers consider the digital tool not only a simple
representational device, but also an essential part, and sometimes even
the main part of the project. The computer tool, able to produce images
“more real than nature itself”, facilitates a digital overtaking of reality.
It invites designers to dismiss the imitation of reality and invent a new
one. The project of designing a Reebok store proposed by the American
studio CAP16, which consists of rendering an athlete’s spatial and
vectorial dynamics juxtaposes athletic performance with visual
performance. Its strangeness, partially caused by the distortions of the
volumes, by the bluish reflections, by the dim light and absence of any
object or individual, reminds us of the “unprecedented” characteristic
that Aragon was referring to when analyzing the surrealist artworks.
These images, which one doesn’t know where to really situate,
somewhere between reality and fiction, introduce a doubt in what is
being perceived. Actually, they claim an indescribable and singular
quality which questions the visual experience.

Surreality, the Indetermination Principle and Ran-

dom Processes

The approach of the projects which tackle the field of surreality

share with the surrealist conceptual adventure the same desire to dismiss

61
the permanence of the known world. But, as opposed to the surrealists,
the designer using digital tools within his creation in order to enhance
the quality of reality, focuses less on a the process of introspection and
searches inside the machine the means of stimulating his imagination.
If the surrealists overtook reality by means of guided writing, the
unconscious and the dreams, contemporary designers find the subjects
of a new, oneiric, and creative power within computer programs,
mathematical models and algorithms. Even if reality is still the main
guideline, the designers who work with digital tools also work to overtake
them and thus emphasize the surrealist expression. The principle of
reality is questioned not by the unconscious but by the way in which the
user explores the formative and informing potential of the virtual
environment. In architecture, there are many who orient their research
towards the programmatic indetermination. This way of creating, based
on mathematical models and the generative and dynamic possibilities
of the software, becomes, paradoxically, a means for the designer to
determine the evolution of conventional program development
methodologies, by associating data in an original manner in order to
espace pre-established outcome. The computation level, provided by
the computer and which consequently eludes the designer, becomes for
him a means of escaping from pure intentionality and predetermination.
Greg Lynn FORM’s works (the complexity theory)17, or Oosterhuis.nl’s
(who aims to produce a live architecture, “e-motional”)18, demonstrate
that digital means, despite their mathematical expression, can produce,
in spite of any preconceptions spaces in permanent interaction with the
humans.

New Processes of Formatting and Manufacturing

With the development of 3D imaging, the creative and conceptual

models are updated. While designers of digital spaces borrow concepts
from architecture and urbanism (website architecture, digital space,
website construction, networks), inversely, architects tend to borrow
principles of organization from the digital field (ramification,

62
stratification, connection, virtuality, etc.). These exchanges are translated
into architectural projects through interwoven structures, spatial
structures with complex connections (bridges, gateways, embankments),
through the stratification of levels and surfaces, and very often through
“seamless”19 spatial and formal continuity.

Ensure the Transcription of Distortions and Digital

Continuous Forms

Rendering digital visions into reality not only involves the research
for new materials and new physical properties (acoustic and formal
qualities, sizing, wear and shock resistance, thermal and phonic
performance, etc.), but also pushes designers to find new ways of
modifying the already existing material. The flexible materials, the
resins, the linoleum, the textiles, twist, twirl, bend, while the rigid
materials are fragmented into facets in order to render the formal
continuity and the flexibility of digital projections. The New Fiera Milano
exhibition complex, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and Schlaich
Bergermann und Partner, illustrates magnificently the digital strangeness
originating from this work’s transposition of the virtual into reality.

Computer Science - Strangeness Factor in Indus-

trial Design

In design, the upheavals may be represented, as asserts Frédéric

Migayrou, by the emergence of a possible digital continuum20 in the
production flow of the project. The projects made through digital
production, or the projects using the techniques of stereolithography
initially employed in the fast prototyping field (M. Faltasi’s objects,
Skets furniture by Front Design, or Patrick Jouin’s Solid chair) directly
link the conceptual and the manufacturing processes of the object.
Actually, the introduction of biological data in the programming of
design objects (application of the osteoporotic damages on a plastic

63
garden chair by Robert Stadler), as well as the use of variables in the
process of formatting an object (i.e. EZCT’s project of computational
chair design using genetics and Greg Lynn’s one-of-a-kind tea & coffee
towers designed for Alessi) challenge the fundamental principles of the
industrial manufacturing production (serial conception, pragmatic
relationship between from & function). They also bestow it an
unprecedented strangeness. The digital processes generate paradoxical
objects in the field of furniture design. As opposed to the digital
continuum mentioned above, they value first the conceptual process
over production and manufacturing methods. It is the case of several
projects engendered by the computing of the extrusion. The Frédéric
Ruyant’s “Mobilier en ligne” Radi designers’ “Ray” stool, YED
Transalpin’s “Living in a box” or Marc Newson’s “extruded” furniture
series are symbolic for the way in which the computing tool induces
the forms. In these four projects, there is no effective extrusion but an
imaginary one, virtual, enabled by the representation of digital forms.
Thus, the manufacturing method doesn’t correspond to the virtual
generative process of the project. These projects seem actually to
illustrate this difference between the digital visualization, the conceptual
approach of and the technical processes of industrial manufacture. As
opposed to Alvar Aalto’s furniture made of bended glued-laminated
timber or Marcel Breuer’s furniture of metal tubes, which are based on
the exploitation of the physical, structural and formal properties of a
specific material, the furniture digitally conceived highlights mainly
the designing process that has created them. Consequently, with CAD,
it is not always the material that dictates the formal and structural identity
of the project; it is rather the virtual design that defines the forms the
materials need to take.

Surreal Experiences

While the surrealist experiences tend to reduce the difference

between inner life and lived experience, as Marguerite Bonnet says about
the surrealist adventure, they tend to “weaken the opposition between
what is inside us and what is outside us”21, the digital projects aren’t

64
always based on reducing the difference between themselves and reality.
Digital projects sometimes seem to come close to the “ideal”22 existence,
as mentioned by Georg Simmel regarding the work of art, reflect a
constant tension with the reality. The architects and designers using
digital means devote themselves mainly to explore the multiple links
between reality and fiction. They search for possible relationships
between the two, aware of the “the simultaneity between the inside and
the outside”, to put it in Georg Simmel’s terms. The computing applied
to architectural and design projects is not a tool of extreme rationalization
of reality but rather of interpretation, allowing reality and fiction to
relate. Front Design’s chest of drawers could put into phisical form this
complicity between digital design and reality.

Andrea Branzi’s “Culture of Surreal”

The projects using the abstracting power of digital imaging could

be integrated into the “surreal culture”23 invoked by Andrea Branzi.
The strangeness of certain images and the fascination induced by them,
contribute to the overtaking of the reality by the digital tool. For Branzi,
the surreal culture, whose fundaments originate in the Latin culture and
“start from the international Surrealism including the Dadaism and the
Metafisica art movement”, employ methods of creation founded on the
convergence of heterogeneous elements, which “greatly enhance the
consistency of reality”. This surreal culture which “tends to make reality
more complex and richer” could be continued by digital practices.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP’s24 project of Shanghai’s Aeroport
3rd terminal, reflects the architects’ and image creators’ capacity of
producing representations of the project that illustrate an extraordinary
degree of strangeness in spite of an entirely rational construction.
Multiple white sloping panels compose a roof with no boundaries
covering an artificial Eden where luxurious vegetation shelters an
idealized population. With the development of new technologies, this
surreal culture seems to have gone beyond its Latin origins and to have
flourished in international architecture and design. However, the use of

65
computing is not enough to warrant the interest of a production. For
Branzi “this ability, identical with the one of a ‘master of ceremonies’,
adorning a reality consumed by others, creates poison or pleasure by
skillfully and mysteriously issuing relationships and becomes finally
the soul of the banquet, the grey eminence of the encounter.”25

4. Hyperreality: Age of Digital Mega-structures

If for Andrea Branzi, some artistic manifestations could generate a

surreal culture which enhances reality, or its consistency, according to
his expression, contemporary architecture and design projects, whose
ambition seems to be “the enhancement of reality”, are easily confronted
with the issues of gigantism and excess. This is no longer a spiritual
enhancement, sensitive and metaphorical as Andrea Branzi understood
it, but a physical and spatial growth serving a political and commercial
intention. The many projects effectively executed, as well as the many
complexes, as those planned for the Olympic games in Peking, the airport
areas, and the different cultural and touristic complexes of Shanghai
mark the beginning of an demonstrative age, now more than ever. As it
was the case with 19th Century universal exhibitions, the architectural
projects and their execution are involved in an eloquent demonstration
of the last technical innovations. The excess and the oversizing prolong
the tradition of an architecture of power.

An Art of Computational Performance

The quality of the digital imaging, its hypnotic character, the

graphical and constructing potential of digital programs, the
resourcefulness of those who make use of the computing equipment,
make of the architecture of today an art of the computational
performance. The improbable visions that result from it (architectural
promenades, dynamic lighting, etc.) attract our curiosity. Design studios
and designers employ multiple artifices and effects capable of adorning
their projects. The mastering of computer modeling tools can generate
projects and achievements that overrule traditional references. The

66
overhangs seem to defy the laws of nature. The more and more complex
building coverings and the multiplication of resin structures are true
challenges to the engineering skills. However, the grandiloquence of
certain propositions puts into question the interest and the validity of
spatial and physical transcriptions of certain virtual designs. Even if
they have a delightful appearance, the proposed spaces look often
immoderate and impracticable for the pedestrian. On the other hand,
the execution of certain projects which need considerable prodigality
of means (monumental building sites, quantity and importation of raw
material, wasteful use of glass surfaces, etc.), seem to ignore
contemporary ecological problems.

Degenerative Amplifications: “Apotheostrophical”

Projects

The vast complexe of Abou Dhabi, where big names of architecture

(Frank O’Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel and Tadao Ando) gave an
example of their art, is symbolic of this current performative art. The
juxtaposition of projects having in background the sea, aligned and
equidistant is grotesque. These projects whose appearance is impeccable,
bear inside the signs of a degenerative amplification of the computing
potential applied to architecture and to the organization of human spaces.
Often elegant and highly seductive, these projects display grand formal
and spatial qualities, but also illustrate the subjection of the architecture
and design to the commercial and political authority. Resulted from the
“sublime blooming” of the design, conception, and building techniques,
they also may be considered dystopical deviations of digital delusions.
The gigantic size and the spectacular effects they employ hide sometimes
the scarcity of the proposed device and or of the actual service. These
projects that we may call “apotheostrophic”, as they assemble
contradictory qualities which mix in the same project, perfection and
folly (apotheosis and catastrophe) are emblematic for the beginning of
21st Century. The drama of digital utopias, if there is such a drama,
resides in the power of illusion and of bewitchment of their images,
capable of fascinating whereas their content may be questionable.

67
Computing may be then identified to a hallucinogenic device capable
of amplifying reality beyond the reasonable. If architecture has always
been the place of manifestation of power, the digital and virtual images
that it employs and that it produces, have a seductivity that makes
possible the its manipulation.

Hyperrealism and Hyperrealities

The designers and architects who currently employ figuration digital

visualization techniques, may favor the development of what Jean
Baudrillard calls “hyperreality”26. The critical analysis he makes without
concessions, doesn’t forecast a very bright future for the arts of design
that use digital means, especially when these arts take the hazardous
path of simulation. For him, “the age of simulation opens on a liquidation
of all the frames of reference (…) so this is no longer about imitation,
nor about duplication, nor about parody. This is about a substitution of
reality with the signs of reality“.  The tendency to imitation and the
attempts to “revive reality” via digital reproduction leads precisely to
the “disappearance of the objects in the process of representation.” In
this context, the arts of design could participate and encourage the
“elimination of the references” mentioned by Jean Baudrillard. But, if
certain projects seem to take refuge in an art of simulation and justify
this flee from content and finality, hyperreality could actually be the
that visual quality of digital images which generate a perceptive
confusion thus enabling a differentiation from the reality. This way the
simulation of reality and reality itself are not confused anymore but
able to generate a new parallel esthetic experience>: a counter-reality.

Critical Utopias and Counter-utopias: Between

Denounciation and Fascination

If the projects may create signs and raise questions through images,
they can also be the critical expression of a clear-sighted look as they
question the world as well. Didier Fiuza Faustino’s projects (Corps en
transit or The 1m² House) could be called hyperreal, as they are based

68
on the power of virtual representation and reflect a possible critical
quality of digital images. The counter-utopian characteristic of his digital
visions, close to sci-fi imagination, remind us of the reality of Thomas
Morus’ utopia or of the critical utopias of the Italian (No stop-city of
Archizoom Associati, or Superstudio’s Continuous monument) and
Anglo-Saxon (Plug-in City and Archigram’s Walking City) radical
movements. The utopia does not represent any longer a finality in itself,
but the means of a clear-sighted reflection on the functioning of the
society and on its possible contradictions. It would be a shame then to
reduce the content of virtual images to senseless signs, as in computing
simulation and especially in 3D modeling one can find the search for
new experiences and an original interpretation of reality. Hyperreality
could represent this visual quality of the projects as related to digital
design. This quality interprets reality through the image and transforms
it proposing original forms, situations and environments. Thus, beginning
with André Breton, continuing with Georg Simmel and Andrea Branzi
and passing by Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreality, there are several possible
degrees of relating with reality. Reality does not dissolve into the digital
world, but instead it multiplies and becomes more complex. The
“neo-figuration” produced by contemporary designers and architects
by means of digital technologies, even if is sometimes related to an
“invocation of the simulation” as Jean Baudrillard puts it, it is also
marked by a process of remoteness and differentiation from to reality.

5. An Art of F[r]iction

Already based on a balance between imaginary projections and

reality, the architecture and design projects have seen the digital world
amplifying the come-and-go sway between projection and reality,
between formal ideal and material technical solutions. In this relationship
between designer and computing environment there are several
come-and-goes based on the alternation between reality and fiction,
and on the constant interpretation of information. The role of the designer

69
is then, to guide these intersections and to modify not only his virtual
representations so that they elude pure abstraction, but also to translate
them into reality in order to so that they become meaningful and find a
reason to be. The designer’s and architect’s work, as they employ
computer science according to modern technologies consists in
transforming the virtual and the reality alternatively, and the permanent
connection of these two universes so that the feasibility of the project
and the palpable real world could inspire each other. The arts of design
are not only fictional arts, but the manifestations of a possible “friction”
between reality and imagination, which implies a mutual enrichment.
It is this conjunction between reality and imagination that is reflected
by computer generated projects more than ever. In resonance with the
idea of digital space, a reciprocity between real space and visualized
space is established.

Of the Necessity of Digital Utopias

Not only did digital technologies facilitate the design and conceptual
work of designers’ and architects’ but it also represented the starting
point of a reflection on reality and imagination. Initially stimulated by
the search for realism, the 3D modeling seems aimed to go beyond
mimicry, to imagine new horizons and to seek adventure in surreality.
If some may be tempted to think that virtual reality may prove to be
more desirable than reality and could even replace it, we prefer to think
that the virtual manifestations do not deny reality but rather highlight
differentiated, parallel and simultaneous existences. The fear of seeing
the digital world substituting reality, is replaced by the necessity of
accepting its multiplication and fragmentation. Some theses seem to
question the positive qualities of digital imaging, we have tempted to
prove that different projects which use digital technologies in their
conceptual and in their methods of visualization, could actually enable
an endorsement of reality rather than its rejection or negation.

(Text translated from French by Patricia Comãnescu)

70
 Notes
1 We understand by « arts of design », all artistic activities, as architecture
and industrial design which are based on design work aimed for usage.
2 Georg Simmel, La Tragédie de la culture, Rivages poche editions, Petite

bibliothèque, Paris, 1988.

3 Le meilleur des mondes, 1931, Aldous Huxleys. 1984, 1948, George Orwell.
4 Metropolis, 1927, Fritz Lang.
5 Catalogue of the exhibition « Utopie, la quête de la société idéale en

Occident », directed by Roland Schaer, exhibition presented at BNF from April, 4

to July 9 2000. Cahier pédagogique.
6 Ibid. Utopia : Latin neologisme quotation from ou-topos (the place of

nowhere) and eu-topos (place of hapiness).

7 The utopia, long identified in medieval tradition to the earthly paradise of

Adam and Eve, may still appear in the idealised contemporary visualizations,
through the presence of idealized vegetation and a luxurious and flourishing flora.
8 Marc Augé, Non-lieux : introduction à une anthropologie de la

surmodernité, Seuil editions, Paris, 1992.

9 Greg Lynn FORM, renovation of the Kleiburg, Bijlmermeer building,

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2001-2005, in Catalogue de l’exposition Architecture

non standard, éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2003, p.96.
10 Project BedZed, Beddington, Great Britan, 2002. In À vivre n°30, mai-juin

2006, file Pour une Europe durable, proposed by Éric Justman.

11 We think of Cénotaphe de Newton by Étienne-Louis Boullée or of Plan

Obus by Le Corbusier for Alger city. See the review Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,
n° 354 - septembre 2004 - Le pouvoir des images, documents et fictions.
12 Cyrille Simonnet, Le béton histoire d’un matériau, Parenthèses editions,

2005, chapter Un matériau sans image, p.115.

13 Mark Wigley, Back to black, in Architectures expérimentales 1950-2000,

collection of Frac centre, éditions HYX, Orléans, 2003, p.27.

14 Alain Roger, Court traité du paysage, éditions Gallimard, 1997.
15 Yves-Alain Bois, Avatars de l’axonométrie, in Images et imaginaires

d’architecture, éditions Centre Georges Pompidou/CCI, Paris, 1984, p.129.

16
Technique et Architecture n°479, Imaginaire scientifique, article
Cinématique, Concept de boutique Reebok, Shanghai (Chine), p.44-46.
17 Greg Lynn, Variations calculées, in Catalogue de l’exposition Architecture

non standard, éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 2003, p.90. 

18 Oosterhuis.nl, Une architecture « e-motive», in Architecture et numérique,

collection Frac centre et SCEREN CRDP académie Orléans-Tours, Saint-Amand-

Montrond, 2005, p.46-47.

71
 19 Gilles Delalex, La rue sans couture, Catalogue of the exhibition La rue est
à nous...tous !, éditions Au diable vauvert, 2007.
20
Catalogue of the exhibition Architecture non standard, Frédéric Migayrou,
Les ordres du non standard, Centre Georges Pompidou editions, Paris 2003, p.26.
21 Margueritte Bonnet, André Breton et l’aventure surréaliste, 1975, 1988

José Corti editions.

22
Georg Simmel, Op.cit.
23 Andrea Branzi, Nouvelles de la métropole froide, design et seconde

modernité, traduit de l’italien par Christian Paolini, éditions du Centre Georges

Pompidou, Les essais, Paris, 1991, p.59.
24 Revue H.O.M.E. Wohen Architektur Media Mobil, n°8, 2007, projet du terminal

3 de l’aéroport de Shanghai par les architectes Skidmore, Owings&Merrill LLP.

25 Andrea Branzi, Op.cit.
26 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacres et simulations, Galilée editions, Paris, 1981.

72
 EXPERIMENT IN ROMANIAN ARCHITECTURE

Augustin Ioan

Something in the etymology of the term “planning” tells us of the

necessity to anticipate, to continually pro-pose through the architectural
project something permanently innovative, provocative, new. The trendy
terms of today are somewhat different: “uncanny”, “unheilmlich” or
that Heideggerian “not-home”. It seems paradoxical to speak of not
being totally home in a philosophical, or even architectural text that
praises the tiny house of the Black Forest mountains (or by extension
any traditional culture, as Mircea Eliade knew well), for its capacity of
allowing the being to reach its essence through active protection which
is, in fact, the act of habitation. And still, the anxiety produced by this
“projective architecture” (considered vanguard in the past, now being
called “experimental” – as in the book by Peter Cook from 1970 – but
always “fantastic”, as proclaimed by the 1962 Conrads & Sperlich’s
eponymous book) is, on a long term, a fertile one.
Projective architecture anticipates the houses of the future, even if
it often gets stuck there without the ability to produce real inheritors.
Many sci-fi films are still shot today in buildings belonging to the
architectural vanguard. Detroit’s Renaissance Center - four blue glass
cylinders surrounding a central one - is an indisputable star that can be
see all too often on the movie screens: the concept of the hotel with an
atrium open through the height of the building began in Atlanta, at the
Peachtree Center and still gives vertigo to its visitors. Hyatt Atrium

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Hotels are to be found everywhere nowadays, including in Budapest,
but the Renaissance Center still remains the star of the genre. On the
other hand, there are new buildings in which one can see the past not
the future. The socialist realism, and partly the post-modern era have
created this type of architecture of the past, aged and on the most part
nonfunctional.
At the 1939 World Exhibition in New York, while at the Romanian
pavilion one could eat grilled meatballs and listen to Maria Tanase,
elsewhere one could see the Futurama - an exhibition representing the
city of the future, of the kind that have always intoxicated the minds of
dreamers. It should be noted that, similarly to what happened with
Antonio Sant’Ellia’s sketches from the beginning of the 20th Century
and those form the Futurism era, this type of architecture does not seem
to age. The cars, the fashion, the tastes have changed – I would hesitate
to use the term “evolved” – but that radical architecture continues to
fascinate through its “otherworldliness”, so well defined in English with
one word.
Deconstructivists decided to inhabit this rejection of the comfortable
shelter, and from the beginning, they did it programmatically.
Constructivism wanted to be the travel companion of the Russian
communism (and if it did not receive the immediate benefits of what
Lenin offered them, it certainly shared their faith under Stalin), while
Deconstructivism is a cynical demonstration of the intellectual ability
invested with the power to manipulate the shapes in ways never seen
before. In extreme, with the couple Eisenman – Derrida we can speak
of the “construction as philosophical object” of the newest kind; the
architecture seemed to come out of a millenary inertia during which it
only imported concepts, themes, styles and judgment criteria from
everywhere else but itself.
Not in Romania. Romanian architecture is, with the exception of
Marcel Janco, one that has refused to experiment, to project, to anticipate.
Lacking the “traditional” engine of a respectable avant-garde, it was
content to import, copy, vary, or simply stagnate. We discuss influences
and reactions to these influences, but never priorities. The source of
this lost cause, and especially, the possible solutions for this “fight against
the wind”, are… “coming soon”.

74
 Prof. Alexandru Sandu, urbanist and past Dean of the Institute of
Architecture in Bucharest, noted often in his interviews that no cultural
achievements have been made in Romanian architecture of the past three
or four decades. Interestingly, this lack of cultural dimension of our
architecture does not imply necessarily a complete lack of theoretical
research. On the contrary, the ‘60s, ‘70s and even ‘80s, are periods in
which the efforts of architectural research – sporadic and individual,
but especially without consequence for what was being built at the time
– are rediscovered only now, after they overlapped almost two post-1989
decades. While doing research for an exhibition (so far remaining
virtual) dedicated to the post-war Romanian architecture, I received
many “drawer” documents from my colleagues of the ‘80s generation
– because it exists even an unknown ‘80s national architecture style, of
which no one seems to have written, besides my modest attempts to
document it. Studies, projects, texts of the times, local exhibitions and
participations in international competitions (who knows today that
Romania had more participants in the Tête Defénse competition
organized by Mitterand then the US? Or that Romanian architects have
regularly won prizes and awards at the glass architecture completion in
Shinkenchiku, Japan?). Only now, the interdisciplinary experiments of
Mircea Enescu from Costineºti gain the importance they deserve, as
well as the surfacing of technological experiments with atypical
structures – viewed also, in an unfavorable light by comparison to
modernity - made for the social, cultural, sporting, and industrial projects
of the time. This is an exploratory effort that seemed to be a relief valve
against the pressure buildup caused by the dysfunctional situation of
the Romanian construction industry.
Thus, these explorations functioned as an avoidance from reality
and not – as they should – as an engine for the improvement of the
current practice. That is why this type of research was one that more
often would offer utopias than solutions: those clusters of neo-medieval
apartments with workspaces at street level, surrounding communal
courtyards for which Florian Biciuºcã received a prize at the International
Biennial in Sofia (Bulgaria); how could they be anything but evasions
from the ghetto apartment blocks of the last decade of dictatorship?

75
 The way the architectural experimentation needs to be discussed is
thus tainted by the meanings that the historical avan-garde, especially
the Western one, has conferred to it. As a consequence, we discuss the
experimentalists as “vanguard battalion” of the artists, those that detach
themselves from the status quo – seen without exception as retrograde,
academic, historically exhausted – in order to leave it behind. Politically,
they are radical and excessive: revolutionaries of all kinds regularly
found on the left of the political spectrum, practicing a rhetoric of
demolishing the status quo - the manifest, the slogan – and using its
fragmentation as the motif of their art. The rule is to oppose, breaking
away from the dominant discourse both in society (from which they
break off through a bohemian lifestyle), as well as in art. They want to
re-define the society along with the art that it - horribile dictu! - favors.
At this point, it would be good to mention, that in the strict sense of
the word, the experiment does not exist in the post-war Romanian
architecture. Neo-vanguard does not exist, the radical experiment does
not exist, and least of all, a complete, open opposition to the dominant
discourse. Whenever there is a distancing from the discourse of the
establishment, it lacks program and coordination, it is isolated, being
hidden inside the realms of the totalitarian society: concealed. I believe
though, following the thematic article offered by Dragoº Gheorghiu1,
that the key term with which to begin a conversation about the Romanian
experiment is “context”. Thus, we cannot speak only of experiment,
without referencing the context that it addresses and to which the
experimenting artist is mandatorily referenced against. Dragoº
Gheorghiu makes a solid analysis of what, outside context, could be
investigated while looking for the experiment; on the other hand, he
sees the official discourse as one in perpetual relocation, capable of
colonizing those folds of society that might escape its control, which is
otherwise complete.
Seen, in Deleuzian terms, as “spaces of flight”, during the
dictatorship the artistic genres have been under stricter control than the
overall society. As soon as it seemed that an “escapist” discourse would
gel, it was immediately incorporated in the official rhetoric or silenced.
The areas of society that could easily be controlled were allowed to

76
survive as possible release valves both for the artists as well as for their
public, and this especially when the power could foreseen any possible
gains. This would be the case with all those experiments related to
folklore, vernacular architecture and that entire field of neo-primitive
investigation that has so powerfully impregnated Romanian architecture
of the ‘70s and ‘80s, to the point that it persist to this day, unchanged.
There were mixed: Blaga with Noica; transcendental meditation with
Matyla Ghyka and his divine ratios; the Masons with the Pythagoreans
and the structural paths of the traditional Romanian house with those of
Cheops’s pyramid via Brâncoveanu and his villas surrounding Bucharest.
The Romanian postmodernism, as it has been2, and as much as it has
been, was informed by this snobbish, traditionalist discourse which,
with regards to what was going on in the mainstream architectural theroy,
embodies – even if it seems paradoxical - precisely that different
perspective inherently implied by the experiment.
At the farthest conservative end of this type of discourse, the
experiment is defined also as a hybrid of the most resistant traditionalism
– which is not foreign of past political associations with the extreme
right - and contemporary architecture. I understand that it is risky to
speak of experimentation in the case of Constantin Goja’s work,
especially in regards to its theoretical aspects. Still, his studies for the
renewal for of artistic expression – through a seemingly indirect route:
by exploring tradition – deserve more, despite being obsolete and
forgotten, along with the nationalist communism from which,
unfortunately, they cannot be dissociated.
During the same time, an interesting experimentation device – used
much more in the past than now – were the architecture competitions. It
is a little known fact that there were more Eastern European architects
participating in the contest for the Defénse district in Paris than Japanese
and American ones. During those years (the ‘80s) the attempt can seem
almost heroic. Going abroad meant evading the vernacular rhetoric,
with all its limitations and risks; thus it could have become a good
chance for an alternative. The awards received by the Romanian teams
at the contest in Schinchenciku (Japan) prove the same interest in
“escaping” – geographically, but also from the excessive order of the
communist rhetoric.

77
 I place in the same context, but with more precaution than when
discussing the contests, a significant part of the works – exuberant, but
especially never executed – destined for foreign lands. The third world,
North Africa or the Arab peninsula, contain a significant number of
works by Romanian architects. Octogon magazine dedicated them a
special issue, because they did not confirm completely the criteria for
experimentation: made by state governed enterprises, strongly controlled
both when leaving (i.e. Romania) as well as on their arrival (i.e. often to
countries with an even harsher totalitarian regime than Romania), the
Romanian works abroad were most often a collective product.
Consequently, they are clearly different from contests, where the
participants were individuals or small teams, outside of the state directed
theme and without its assistance or control.
It is evident that some of the participants in these obscure contests
ended up designing what would become “The House of the Republic –
Victory of Socialism”, were convinced they are experimenting – and
they really did, unknowingly participating in the invention of a new
state conformism: anti-modern, retrograde, lacking architectural culture
and anti-urban. Probably – devoted comrades or just manipulative people
– they were convinced of possessing the necessary abilities to
manipulate, on their turn, the client/the state, which in this case was the
head of the regime. Some believed themselves to be close to a “Faustic
pact”, the type made by Speer, like poor Anca Petrescu. Others thought
they will have the freedom, in this ocean of verbal confusion, to sneak
in the strictest “bofillisms”3, as it seems to transpire from a series of
interviews I have done during the ‘90s with architects who have worked
there. But, it later became clear they were terribly mistaken. Some of
them have admitted it, like Mr. Alexandru Beldiman. Many more are
still perpetuating this belief, explaining, explaining, explaining…
Still, all post-war years, beginning somewhere in the early ‘50s,
propose an unusual type of “experimentation”. Withdrawing into those
areas of architecture that least interested the totalitarian power to
monumentalize, some architects practiced their craft in industrial
architecture. The fact that there is a clear break between the monumental
architecture of the administrative or political power and social

78
architecture, respectively “technical”, is not a secret to anyone. Similarly,
the fact that some social programs, secondary to Party’s objectives,
became theories for experimentation is also well known. To this lack of
social and urban conspicuousness we owe, for instance, many of the
successes achieved by the successive teams of architects under Emil
Barbu Petrescu’s direction during the ‘80s in sporting, industrial and
especially youth programs. In the homonym issue of Arhitext magazine
dedicated to Email Barbu Petrescu, Radu Drãgan called this gentle form
of escape, able to produce remarkable works, “parallel architecture”.
This expression remains valid even if we define the missing element,
the context to which it was “parallel” to, this architecture that escaped
(not always completely) the strictest state control. Of course, not all
this architecture fulfills the criteria for experimentation, even when it
was particularly rigorous and interestingly solved. The use of structures
atypical in the Romanian practice of the time, including tridimensional
metal elements (strangely little used in a country with so much steel as
Romania during those years) as in the case of Ion Mircea Enescu’s
sports halls, is an experimental approach that should be revived.
From all the material I was able to collect for this text – limited
compared to what I know as “drawer projects” – very few confirm the
theme, even in the absence of traumatic circumstances. If we include
this context circumstance in our calculations, these works become
“blindingly” experimental. I leave to the reader the pleasure of
discovering them. What should be pointed out though, is that after almost
two decades4 the experiment has not been practiced or encouraged. The
Biennial of Architecture organized by URA5 does not have to this day a
section for projects/experiments. Why? Only the Annual contest
organized by ORA6 in Bucharest has opened the door to projects, but it
doesn’t count, yet, on experiments either, only on the fact that so far
they have not been produced. Encouraging only finished works, or works
not yet finished, helps in establishing a terrifying conformism, one that
fills the exhibitions rooms and isolates the few remarkable works that
exist. The school is a favorable space for practicing experimentation,
and the last years seem to have setoff a series of initiatives in this
direction. Changes in the curriculum will certainly produce positive

79
effects in a medium term. Maybe, some teachers should worry that the
students who stood out in the treehouse contest in US were those that
received low grades in class for sketches on the same subject, and thus
were not considered among the “outstanding” (according to their
instructors).
The Romanian participation in architectural contests like Europan
or the one in Schinchenchiku, Japan remains to be seen, especially when
there is a strong component of experimentation and conceptual
investigation in architecture, urbanism, technology, and material science.
I believe that architecture cannot survive without constant attempts to
renew itself, to put itself into discussion repeatedly. If this self-reflecting
dimension lacks in a field – of any type, but especially one already
conservative, like architecture – it will cease to generate interest, more
likely imploding. Art survives by getting rid of itself repeatedly. But,
Romanian architecture is, unfortunately for its future, lacking from the
beginning the “research gene”. Since the work of the National School,
investigation has not been seen as the foremost tendency in architecture.

What could it mean to experiment in a systemic

crisis? Case study: Romania

Due to globalization, the land of innovation coming from the second

and third worlds narrows down more and more. The reasons for this are
not always, and not totally, their responsibility. More and more people
will leave abroad – usually it is the cream of the crop that does it,
precisely those that could have had the ambition to experiment – and
we will be more and more colonized by architects and corporations
lacking any hint of ambition to reform. What remains between these
two opposing colonizations is too little for a long term survival.
Statistically speaking, a guild in which only one out of a thousand pushes
ahead by himself – unknown and/or completely unappreciated at his
true value by his colleagues – while the others are waiting for the future
to go by for the sake of a mediocre present, it is not, I’m afraid, a group
one should place any bets on.

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 1. Virtual Heritage

Virtual Heritage (hereafter VH): this is the subject my friend

Alexandru Nancu has directed me to in the wake of the project ReSITUS
he coordinated. My technical contribution to the most effective way of
virtually replicating the scanned monuments is minor, but I do have an
advantage over my younger colleagues, because I have been exposed to
the VH concept since 1993, when I was in Cincinnati, Ohio, at one of
the most important research centers on this subject. During the following
years, as well as in my subsequent visits in 1999 and 2004 I was able to
closely observe the work of one of the frontrunners of this virtual
restoration technique, my professor Mr. John E. Hancock. Through this
technique he was able to reconstitute archeological sites of the Hopewell
culture that have been partially destroyed by agriculture or urban
expansion.
What exactly does VH do? It reconstitutes in virtual reality (VR)
those archeological sites and/or monuments that are in an advanced
state of degradation or have even disappeared. This type of reconstruction
has a large array of potential clients. On the commercial end would be
the tourism industry. It is one thing to see the ruins of Micene and another
to travel through the virtual rendition of the site (before or after visiting
the real site) as it looked when was built or in its subsequent
reconstructions. At the other end it is obvious that the VH technique
could be used most sophisticatedly in research.
VH allows us another extraordinary thing, which is the ability to
experiment with restoration, in the sense that, based on varying criteria
more than one virtual restoration proposal could be made. I will not go
into all the archeological details. But I have given the example of Troy,
one of the VH projects that were in works in Cincinnati. It is known that
there are a number of successive archeological layers, each representing
a different stage in the development of the city. Let’s imagine such a
site. What does it mean to restore Troy IV or V? Obviously the two
cities are not completely different. The previous city was used as quarry
for the new one, in the same process that formed each previous state
before. And so, when we restore, how do we decide if a column, a

81
sculpture, or any other recycled piece belongs to Troy IV or Troy V? To
whom do the columns of pagan temples, deliberately brought as symbol
of subordination from all over the new Christian empire to support the
cupola of Santa Sophia cathedral in Constantinople belong to? To the
temples from which they have been removed, to the cathedrals, or to
the historical process that led to these temples? Most likely the answer
here would be: “it’s impossible to decide”.
John Hancock worked for the tourism industry, but not from a
commercial standpoint. He prepared the VH material for the National
Parks that protect the remnants of the Hopewell culture. Contemporary
with Jesus, the Hopewell is a strange and extinct culture. No one knows
who they were, certainly not Native American Indians, and especially
why they disappeared completely. They knew enough sacred astronomy
to be able to orient their temples after the Moon and its natural cycles
or after the equinox. The European colonists have plowed their sacred
earth mounds and erased their traces. Some have remained under golf
courses or under some schools. Prof. Hancock’s studies are an
introduction for the park visitors to this culture, done in a way that
emphasizes the qualities of the VH technique, as well as pointing to
some of its limitations. Depending on ones point of view, these qualities
and limitations could be hard to distinguish from one another.
Too many alternatives of virtual restoration could complicate the
decisions in a real restoration case, or they could even hold them back
completely: why should we invest in restoring a site or building if we
could walk through it via VH as if we would be in that remote,
inaccessible, ruined place? Furthermore, a high resolution image of a
scanned object brings into discussion the concept of immediacy. In other
words, the virtual image of an object returns the object to “mark 0”, the
moment of its scanning. The excess of physical detail is limited by the
extremely short period of time registered by the process. If our aim is
fidelity, time-wise, its range is very short. A similarly accurate
registration done after a certain period of time would differ dramatically
from the previous one because time changes the geometry of an object
and decomposes its matter. Similarly to the quantum physics paradox
in which it is impossible to determine the physical position of a

82
sub-atomic particle and know its speed in the same time, too much
detail in a VH project is sabotaged by the short time span it covers,
because bringing something into being and its opposite are processes,
not instantaneous events.
The marble is a process not an object, wrote Lee Smolin in a book
about quantum cosmology translated in Romanian. The houses are
processes, and not all the processes involved in imagining a house are
achievable; many, as proved by the VH technique can only exit in virtual
reality. For those, few or many, who might be, like me, admirers of
Antoni Gaudi, I would like to give you hope after my last visit to
Barcelona. Yes, La Sagrada Familia cathedral will be finished as planned
in 2020. It already exists in a kind of finished state, one that fits our
times so well: as a souvenir of the completed construction, available in
all the tourist shops in Barcelona. I believe that by the time of its
inauguration we will be able to experience it via VH. A virtual patrimony
means that historic castles and buildings - especially when a physical
reconstruction is not possible anymore - are “reconstructed” in virtual
reality the way they would have looked at some point in their history.
Do you think it is easy to translate architectural plans intro 3D? No. It
involves as much creativity and decision work as architectural research.
I have participated in many study sessions in the Virtual Heritage lab at
the University of Cincinnati regarding some building in some
archeological layer of Tory, debating how could it be known if a certain
stone in a certain building was new. Could it be a reused fragment from
a previous temple, or from a previous iteration of the city, which in
time has become quarry for the new buildings?
Indeed how could it be known? After a major cataclysm (or after
few more decades of neglect), the church of Densus, will become a
ruin, and the archeologists of the future will have the same dilemma:
are they looking at a Roman temple that became a church or are they
looking at a church? And how will they know that there was a church?
Of many basilicas we still don’t know if they were meant to spread
justice or, after they have been taken over by Christians, meant to offer
salvation. Another example would be the upside-down tombstone used
at the foot of an altar table in a church, as can be seen at the Romanian

83
Peasant Museum. How should we define it? And from what state of the
building process was it removed in order to be incorporated in another?
Of course, you will note that this type of questions do not apply to
Gaudi: in the end, we are discussing a projection into the future, through
virtual reality, of a building7 which the devout architect did not finish.
Consequently, is it possible to reconstruct through virtual reality
something that has not yet been consecrated by being brought into being?
While you’re thinking of an answer, here is another example: there is
an online Palladio museum where some of his architectural dreams are
made visible, not as they have been build but as the maestro imagined
them in his four books on architecture. Is this virtual patrimony? Yes.
And what does this VH tell us about architecture? If it is to compare the
(quite significant) differences between virtual and real villas, we will
maybe discover something about the many changes that a project goes
through until it becomes a building, with the approval of both parties.
Let’s return to Gaudi.
Gaudi did not build the whole cathedral, but he has designed it in
its completeness. Discovering his atypical geometries, similarly to the
geometry surrounding the black holes in contemporary cosmology, the
architects that try to understand Gaudi’s drawings can understand and
translate them into stone only now. This is how it was possible to execute
the “light lotuses”, (which represent both cosmic explosions and/or black
holes) from the deep seated ceiling of the cathedral. Only now! After
the discovery of fractals, of foreign attractors and of the bending of the
time-space continuum, it is possible to understand the drawings and
models of an artist that died more than a century before these discoveries
in math and physics, least in architecture, were made. Thus, VH is in
this case, a method of anticipating the final look of a monument or its
possible image, different from the way we see it now, or will be seen in
the future. This is precisely what my colleagues at the Foundation for
Habitat and Art in Romania, (IMUAU) at the institute of Opt-Electronics
at the University of Piteºti have began to research in the project on the
Barbaþia from Cîmpulung Muºcel and the church from Corbii de Piatrã,
from which have resulted a series of scans of these monuments. I believe
this practice of experimenting with the virtual processing of reality,

84
beginning with visualizing a historic monument and ending with the
virtual reconstruction of all its potential restorations is very favorable
to our time and space and expected to produce surprising results in the
future. The VH data in Romania is very different form that in the US.
But paradoxically, the few similar aspects can enhance a vanguard
approach in restoration: there are many monuments that could be
researched, modeled, and restored. Investing in a VH laboratory is
significantly less expensive that doing the actual restoration. The practice
of restoration in Romania is lagging. Lagging as well are the policy, the
patrimony legislation, the public discourse. So far, the best answer (as
long as the experts, lawmakers, and patrimony administration still
remains blind) is Virtual Heritage.

2. Experimenting with Sustainable Architecture

a) The Poor Architecture

Suddenly, poverty has become fashionable. Adding to that, the
natural disasters, which are surprisingly effecting us too this year, and
people’s migrations put us in unimaginable situations, which we thought
could not happen to us. Characterized by a minimalist aesthetic without
a social mission and autistic artistic expression “lacking aesthetics” (i.e.
an extreme form of modernism), the architecture dedicated to those
social segments (that elude the architect whose compensation is a
percentage of the project’s cost), has all of a sudden become fashionable.
Of course, a certain “coquettishness” with the “people” exists (Marxist
expressions taught by a very prized communist critic of capitalism,
Fredric Jameson), all of this being the common denominator of the
American intellectual “resistance”, especially in universities.
What seems to be evident lately is that more and more nonprofit
organizations, foundations and other voluntary organizations have
become involved in residential architecture; moreover, the result of their
work tends to be incorporated into mainstream architecture, as we can
easily observe in the book The Next House8 which proposes this
approach as a model for the future.

85
 Today, social activism in the developed Western countries is
concerned, perhaps, mostly with the narrower problem of creating
permanent or temporary shelters for homeless people, but there is a an
area of concern that unites both the Western developed countries
(including here Japan), and the developing states in the East, that is the
emergency shelter, needed in large numbers in the aftermath of a natural
disaster or war. The recent earthquakes in Turkey and Greece, for
instance, have transformed the drama of suddenly loosing ones home
into a major crisis for the respective countries. The answer: shelters
being built on hundreds of square miles9, without any other concern
than to provide basic protection. This is why a preventive thinking based
on which the state would finance the research and construction of a
sufficient number of prefab shelters is necessary10. Some architects,
like Gans and Jelacic (from New York) work on an even more basic
level than that of emergency shelters for the survivors of natural disasters.
Starting, probably, from the premise that not all people in need of a
shelter are in this situation against their will, they have designed a shelter
that emphasizes even more its temporary nature. Labeled “extreme
housing”, they refer to a certain type of shelter with is “less then a
house” and this is, possibly, because it is more urgently needed that a
house. Emergency architecture needs to take into consideration: speed
(that of on-site construction or of assembling prefab parts), portability,
as well as temporality (inherent to its very existence). Moreover, the
portability and mobility of such a construction are inversely proportional
with its lifespan11. As an example are to be seen the medical structures
designed for catastrophic events like September 11, 2001, which use
military trucks as ”structural” elements12.
In other words, inflatable or flexible architecture can be thought of
in terms of strength of its components or materials. Inversely, fixed
architecture is by necessity thought of in terms of its durability. The
materials and the construction methods used in emergency architecture
bring into discussion the concept of ephemerality and disappearance.
These characteristics define some predictable materials like earth and
wood, but contemporary architecture has come to favor others even
more perishable that these.

86
 The architects who investigate the limits of durability don’t always
have their own tradition as an inspirational source, as it happens with
Shigeru Ban, as well as his Metabolist predecessors (from whom he
redeemed himself at least in terms of his ability to conceive of a movable,
temporary architecture). The Japanese architects are able to equally relate
to both the contemporary space they try to address as well as to its
traditional past (the temple in Ise, with its paper walls is one such
example). Such an approach would define the Japanese architects as
“retro-futurists”, at the intersection of archaic and modern. According
to Newsweek magazine, a new roof material resistant to tornados was
conceived by two professors at the University of Delaware. It contains:
soy straw, down, newspapers and waterproof adhesive. The use of straw
bales, wattles and other “temporary” materials is still practiced in rural
areas of Romania. They are mostly used for buildings and shelters –
farm annexes – but not for houses. The “modernization” has practically
eliminated the use of natural/local materials and the inherent construction
techniques from the architecture of the rural house, and has replaced
them with concrete, tin, and double-pane windows. The strange
combinations that I have seen in the ‘90s, like a concrete structure
covered in bricks of clay and straw, or the proud church in Urziceni
(designed by me), covered, in a rush, with cemented cardboard because
the construction funds have been prematurely depleted, give an idea of
the confusion that exists regarding the use of materials, a confusion
that architects have the responsibility to clarify.
There is an element in this “(re)architecture” (the term was proposed
by ªerban Cantacuzino as a book title regarding conversions) that is
concomitantly contemporary and archaic. The final stage of an
architecture is often times seen as a great opportunity for the next. A
city or a building could become the site for a new construction (normally
in the aftermath of a natural disaster), or could become a quarry for
another settlement or building. Sometimes the more or less innocent
incentive for recycling abandoned buildings is the inflated price of
construction materials (a frequently seen process in Bucharest during
the ‘90s and the predominant source of brick for new residential
architecture). I myself have used perfectly intact bricks, still baring the

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proud stamp of its pre WWII manufacturer. I have recycled it from a
previous neighboring demolition, using it towards a new house as it
was free, and evidently superior in quality to the mostly broken brick
one could purchase as “new”.
There is nothing special in recycling modern buildings, especially
modern industrial buildings, which should not impede the creative use
of any construction materials, natural or artificial, new or recycled,
regardless of their previous use. We have at our disposal whole “quarries”
of such materials, as proved by the project in Cãlãraºi – which
nostalgically, due to it being exiled from the city - I would call
remarkable.
One of the most serious problems of contemporary Romanian
society – be it national or local - is its complete disinterest in social
housing in the true sense of the word, meaning housing for those who
depend on social services. Similarly, there is no preoccupation in
researching emergency housing in a country haunted by the specter of
devastating earthquakes. That is why every catastrophic event catches
the government and local builders unprepared, and their solution is
pitiful: building long term, expensive and, useless to say, ugly housing.
Instead of a strategic preoccupation for a responsible administration of
such construction, the situation is solved small-mindedly and without
any overall perspective. In architectural contests, while those afflicted
by a catastrophe sit outside without shelter, the criterion requested is
“local character”. The only class dedicated to extreme housing and
emergency architecture is taught by me at IMUAU13. I am not aware of
any coherent effort on behalf of the state or city authorities to indentify
those who could offer a solution – from architects and builders to possible
donors and the army. Recently, the president of ORA14 has shared his
concern regarding this dreadfully irresponsible lack of interest from on
the part of authorities.
We are not leaving in times of generosity or of Christian
self-sacrifice (or social-democrat for that matter). Now is the time of
the wolves and scavenger vultures, while there still is something to take
or destroy in the country. But when natural disasters will come one
after another, and there’ll be need for such housing, we want it to be

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known that we did not sit when we should have worked, like the others,
that we did not build houses for the nouveau riches while those leaving
under the poverty line survive in indescribable conditions, that we have
not taken part in the general indifference, be it on the left or on the
right.

b) Extreme Housing – Goal of the Median Inhabitation?

The term ”extreme housing” (used by the architects Gand & Jelacic
in their project for shelters in Kosovo (see www.architecturefor-
humanity.com ) is meant to become part of the theoretical architectural
lingo. Thus, let’s try to peel off its layers of meaning and in the process
add to them.
“Extreme housing” refers to a certain type of shelter which is “less
then a house”, and that is probably because it is more urgently needed
than a house. In other words, ”extreme” references the need more than
the solution.
The temporary shelter questions the very definition of inhabitation.
If the temporary shelter – the basic form of inhabitation which does not
need more then minimal preparation to take place – is seen on one
extreme of the process of habitation, then we must meditate on what is
to be found in-between. Instead of defining the architecture of the home
as an “enhanced” shelter (by decorating it with symbols, as proposed
by Robert Venturi), in the term discussed we are faced with a reversal
of meaning: we are expected to “know” already what it means to inhabit
in order to be able to speak about the shelter in its radical form. And
what does this “extreme” mean exactly? Does it mean reducing the
elements of inhabitation to their minimum, to the point of discussing
an inhabitation of “crisis”, and implicitly temporary, or does it mean
something more, maybe a proposal for a new way of habitation? If we
were to speculate, since we are not discussiong the house per se but the
act of inhabitation in an extreme form, we could safely say that it is the
process not its “cover” that concerns us here. Extreme inhabitation might
not mean sheltering from crisis as it could mean inhabitation in crisis;
not a protective, calming refuge which could divert the attention from
the emergency situation, but on the contrary, an anguished habitation,
in which the shelter does not protect anymore, being itself affected by
the extreme situation in which it exists.

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 Years ago, in a conversation with Christopher Alexander, Peter
Eastman hoped that the housing architecture would resist its seemingly
predestined tendency to evade the social anguish particular to its location.
If architecture is a mirror image of society, why should the house be
different by retreating from society and refusing to reflect its positives
and its negatives? In other words, by extrapolation, could we ask that
the process of habitation itself be more active rather than reactive/
passive? Retreating, hiding, resting – all actions traditionally and almost
unquestionably associated with the duties of the house are questioned
by that active habitation exposed by Heidegger in “Building, Dwelling,
Thinking”15. For Heidegger, the habitation space is active, one that
transforms the being in an almost “agrarian” way, as he puts it, invoking
the Latin term colere (culture). Through an active habitation and through
building for an active habitation, the act of habitation evolves towards
the full realization of its essence. (Heidegger, 2001, 145-6).
It is hard to imagine a bigger difference between the ways Heidegger
saw the problem of habitation and that proposed by Eisenman, during
the same conversation. Still, something profound ties these two
perspectives together: the idea that habitation implies action, engagement
(even physical), openness, and not passivity, detachment, and
introversion. In this sense, could extreme housing possibly be a goal
for contemporary habitation? The apartment tower proposed by Santiago
Calatrava in downtown Manhattan is a type of “rise against”, different
from that practiced by Neemia in the reconstruction of Jerusalem. Living
at such height and in such a charged area (in the proximity of Ground 0)
will be a radical act, almost a manifesto for habitation. The radical quality
of this type of habitation continually engaged in a complex
socio-economic net, implies participation, engagement with the
community problems – beginning with its close vicinity and ending
with its placement in ensemble – but in the same time, implies a fertile
territory for investigation, introspection and self redefinition, in and
through the process of habitation itself. The house, in extreme habitation,
becomes a nodal point for opening the self towards the other, opening
the self towards the world, opening the one towards the many and vice
versa opening the community towards the individual.

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 The shelter proposed by Gans & Jelacic does not “solve” the
problem of those without a home, as the charity night-shelters don’t do
it either. On the contrary, it creates a situation in which it attracts attention
to itself, not as a symbol of personal/collective drama that needs to be
“treated” or “healed” through blame or pity, but as a form of habitation.
On its own, such a shelter may bring fame to its designers who show it
in a gallery or on the web, but it does not solve the lack of shelter.
Maybe because in their understanding, the term ”extreme housing” is
not something less than a permanent house, but something more then a
temporary, mobile shelter.
On the contrary, the term I propose here is that of “hyper-housing”,
in which the home is more than a house, it includes the social, economic,
and spiritual trajectories of the neighborhood as a unit, of the community
as a site and as a universe. The house becomes then, the center of my
world, and by analogy the public space becomes the center of our worlds,
located openly. The shelter is not only a) individual, the way it was
described so far, but exists as b) community/collective shelter (in the
care of the community, of the church, and not of the state’s social
services), as a sanctuary and as a right to the comfort of the sacred
space. We thought it important, for example, to propose for the pilot
project done with Habitat and Art in Romania foundation (HAR) in
Bujoreni/Vâlcea not only a house for crisis situations but a spiritual
space as well, a church. The church is a privileged space of shelter for
individual or collective psychological dramas, a space for the healing
prayer (or just comforting prayer, in such situations), the presence of
such a space alongside a basic shelter, in the context of extreme housing,
can help in facing the trauma rather the ignoring it.

c) Extreme Architecture in Romania

Due to the modern construction technology we are able to detach
the architectural design from the materials involved. The world is full
of famous buildings that push the limits of materials, sacrificing comfort
for a powerful image. Of course, we can build glass towers in Dubai,
and of course that glass has reached the strength of many materials
with good thermal variation. But glass will never behave as well as the

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materials that, from the beginning, have provided thermal resistance
similar to a solid wall. We already know that our energy resources are
limited and, where they still exist, they come with heavy political
agendas. Only a few days ago the Ministry for the Environment has
discovered that the sources for renewable energy are not easily available
to the consumers and will propose legislation to encourage their use.
Not only does the Ministry for the Environment need to support this
inevitable process, but so does the Finance Ministry, because good policy
cannot be implemented through the benevolence of the investors or by
force, but through an intelligent taxation system. For example, the use
of at least one alternative energy source needs to be mandatory by law
for all buildings in Romania, or at least for those over a certain size
(and for all public ones). Reducing the taxes for those that comply should
also be mandatory in order for the use of “green” technology to be cost
effective compared to the “traditional” sources of energy (because we
also have bad traditions that have killed the independent thinking of
pre-modern architecture). On the other hand, increasing the taxes on
the already prohibitive price of gas and electricity should encourage a
faster transition to the use of alternative energy. Abroad, solar energy
and the heat pump are the norm. Houses that are completely independent
of the electrical system are more and more common and better designed;
finally, we even have as lifestyle model the house that not only uses, but
generates energy. It is inadmissible that in places blessed with good
exposure to wind and sun power plants still burn heavy oil in order to
produce thermal energy”.

Principles of Planning

We know that even in Romania the climate is changing towards

extremes, with sudden variations in temperature. The South of the
country is becoming dryer. The forests, at this point, can be renewed
only through political decisions (which, for now, do not exist), because
we have long since crossed the limit of natural self-renewal for this
living resource. In conclusion, even the architects need to reconsider
their planning models. Claiming that we are designing based on the
models of Western architecture does not apply anymore: please look at

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the current Western architecture and you will see that in Romania
everything, from the tall office buildings to the villas are still built based
on the pre-WWII and immediately post war architecture, often poorly
assimilated.
“Intelligent” facades that collect and store solar energy are doubling
their positive impact on the site. We should, perhaps, think of the
architecture of the traditional dirt hut, not only as a form of poor
architecture (as it is seen at the Village Museum, for example) but as a
form of contemporary eco-architecture as well, for the absence of walls
make these buildings a vessel for conserving the internal energy of the
building.
We need shade and coolness. The solution is not the air conditioning
system that avidly consumes electrical power at prohibitive prices. A
well designed house, even in desert conditions, does not need the artificial
cool air (which, we are constantly told is harmful to our health). In
conclusion, the volumetric articulation of the buildings themselves needs
to change. I feel it’s obvious that we should stop using terraces only for
their “modern” look (meaning stylistically obsolete, for lack of a better
argument) and that the awnings need to be designed in such a way as to
provide appropriate shade based on the sun exposure of the house,
besides their traditionally use. A simple look over the border at the
traditional architecture of Bulgaria, Greece, and Turnkey can teach us
how to design an extended awning supported on wood consoles, and
how expressive these consoles could be. If climatically speaking we are
“migrating” South, we need to follow the time tested architectural models
of the South, which are still remembered and used by traditional
architects.
The solid space conserves more than the empty space. We should
maintain a well balanced ratio between the solid and the glassed surfaces
or walls. And especially, we need to use internal courtyards. A good
ventilation of the interior is achieved if we orient the building, and all
its adjacent units (i.e. apartments), towards at least two cardinal points.
In the Middle East are used other forms of air circulation, using the
vertical movement of the air through ventilation wells between the
basement of the building (which could even contain a body of water)

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and the levels above. The light-well courtyards of our pre-WWII
buildings play this useful role to the day. In any case, gathering more
buildings into one block surrounding a courtyard, as opposed to the
building with four external walls, conserves more energy. Interior
courtyards offer, on the one hand, shade and cooler temperatures for
the interior spaces, and on the other hand more intimacy from the public
space. Maybe we should give up, in the urbanization plans proposed, to
the independent house with smaller and smaller plots and to give a
chance to the “surrounding-building”, the introverted building, or the
house-garden ensemble with internal shade. The Roman villa knew
already all these principles and it is not at all shameful to admit that it
was right, and the architecture of today is not.
We need vegetation. If we end up using terraces, it would be a good
idea to use them as green surfaces, which should also extend to facades
as sun protectors. If we deplore the loss of green spaces, we should act
not by limiting construction but by intelligently using the construction
site. Interior gardens have long been used in office building architecture,
just that we seem to be looking only at old architecture books not the
most recent examples! A viable garden is not necessarily tied to the
ground, and thus we should not automatically reduce it to the available
size on the construction site. Gardens can also be vertical surfaces
(facades and fences but also multi level structures traversed internally
by promenades). Already existent surfaces can be covered with
vegetation and recovered as parks for the city unlike anything built so
far. The facades of apartment buildings could be transformed from
radiant heat sources into “lungs” of the city. The viaducts near the Bastille
opera in Paris offer one such solution, while the urban policies practiced
in Bonn, Germany where covering the terraces of apartment buildings
with vegetation is deliberate are another.
The construction materials, their textures, and colors could be, as
well, the keys of an instrument that the architect could “play” a cooling
“music”. Natural materials first of all – the earths, from the unfired clay
to ceramics, but also the stone and the wood – are all here, waiting for
our awakening. They are waiting for us, the architects, to cease to be
salesmen for a dumb-down industry that poisons our air in order to

94
make the concrete and asphalt from which we ultimately end up running
from. Why does the Danube delta need to be covered in concrete when
we could built good houses on stilts and stone like always? Why does
the mountain need to be covered in concrete when stone and wood are
all there, under our eyes burned by the “light” of a dying modernity?
All these questions would be rhetorical but in Romania and some tropical
countries. As one who has written the architectural norms for the Danube
Delta area, I know what resistance anyone can encounter when it
undermines a “tradition” wrongly built on the idea of “modernization”,
to which communism was only its gangrenous stage. I also know with
what awe my colleagues discover the forming qualities of the earths,
and how the simple proximity of a castle, like the one from Argamum
(Capul Doloºman, Jurilofca), poses the same questions I am posing
here after two thousand years of proud endurance. In a way, this text is
an indirect homage to the Foundation for Habitat and Art in Romania,
and to all those who, for the last few summers, taught us slowly, almost
against the will of those who feel that such experiments reveal their
own traditions, that the architecture needs to change in Romania too in
order for it to fit – or not, when necessary – the place and the climate. If
the place and the climate become extreme, similarly our built
environment needs to rethink itself. If critical thinking succumbed under
the fascination with producing a maddening technology, it needs to be
reinvented.
These are the premises of the text I proposed to Tincuþa Heizel: a
synoptic map of the post-WWII Romanian experimentalism, followed
by a panorama of the experimental potential in contemporary Romanian
architecture. I hope that such a project does not seem outdated compared
with the most recent experiments of my other colleagues represented in
this publication. During the conference in Sibiu, which is the source of
the present volume, I have given a talk together with Ciprian Mihai
about the inherent complexities of philosophy and architecture. For this
volume though, in the absence of Ciprian I thought it fit to present this
“site-specific” text, discussing the experimentalism as a hidden aspect
of post-WWII Romanian architecture, respectively after 1989.

(Text translated from Romanian by Barbara Bartos)

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 Notes

1 “Context and Experiment in Architecure” in Experiment in Romanian Art

after 1960 (Bucharest, CSAC, 1997), p.108-112.
2 I am sending the reader the a text dedicated to this subject in my book:

Bizatium after Bizatium after Bizatium (Constanþa: Ex Ponto, 2000).

3 Reference to Ricardo Bofill (translator’s note).
4 Since 1989 (translator’s note).
5
Architects’ Union of Romania (translator’s note).
6 The Order of Romanian Architects (translator’s note).
7 La Sagrada Familia (translator’s note).
8 by Lola Gomez & Cristina Montes (translator’s note).
9 The neverending forest of houses between Istabul and Ankara was a post-

apocalyptic sight for the professors and the students of “Ion Mincu” University of
Architecture with whom I was travelling on this route in 2001. I do not know how
much did this sight change since.
10
In Romania, non only this way of thinking does not exist at an official
level, but from my experience working with the Foundation for Habitat and Art in
Romania, I could see the fury with which the local authorities of Vâlcea (county
and city) have responded to such a project on the day of the opening (the fall of
2001), claiming that it misrepresents the efforts of the government to engage with
a similar problem in the county – specifically the collapse of a settlement situated
over a abandoned salt mine, and where the reconstruction costs have been much
more than the sum granted to the HAR Foundation. On the other hand, the wood
church that accompanies the pilot housing in Bojoreni had been promised by Sen.
Adrian Paunescu to a community in Serbia that had previously offered him an
award, and which strangely has forgotten to built an Orthodox church in an Orthodox
country, fact that would have transformed a project financed by EU money in one
of fiscal evasion. Alexandru Nancu and I have vehemently denied our opposition
to the ex-commissioner of PUR announced donation during the opening, which
led to the denigration of the project by the bullied employees of the city hall for the
remainder of the evening. We have been lectured in “cosmopolitanism” and “false
orthodoxy” and other ‘50s accusations. For details about this incredible episode,
see the magazine Ianus/2002. Of course, not even the publication of this project in
mainstream media had any effect on the MLPTL, the company that builds this
social housing - simple apartment buildings identical with those built before 1989
– at much higher prices that they would go for on the market!
11 For more detials see Robert Kronenburg, Portable Architecture, Oxford:

Elsevier/Architectural Press, 2003, 3rd edition.

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 12 Stephen Verderber, “Compassionism and the Design Studio in the Aftermath
of 9/11", Journal of Architectural Education, volume 56, isue 3, February 2003,
pp. 48-62.
13 “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest

(translator’s note).
14
The Order of Romanian Architects (translator’s note).
15 Martin Heidegger, „Building, Dwelling, Thinking” in „Poetry, Language,

Thought” translated by Albert Hofsadter, London: Harper Perennial, 1976.

Republished in 2001.

97
98
 ON FLOWS, PLACES AND SPACES: TOWARDS
A FRAMEWORK FOR LOCATIVE MEDIA
ARTWORKS

Gemma San Cornelio, Pau Alsina

Abstract

Information and communication technologies have redefined our

understanding and relationship with space as much as (far from
techno-deterministic approaches) the other way around, in reciprocal
co-production with the social and the technological. The networked
society and its specialization on information flows have brought us new
territorial configurations through processes that are being constantly
recreated by the variable geometry of global information flow. Mobile
phones, wireless networks, or GPS technologies have made possible
the instantaneous connection between location dependent information
and physical spaces. New forms of cultural production and consumerism
are being explored in association with those new spatial practices.
Geomatics, the incessant tagging of objects and the world itself,
have delivered new forms of representing the space as much as new
forms of perception of that space through tools and techniques used in
land surveying, remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
or Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The use that artists make of media
technologies in relation to space interventions suggest a stimulating

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way of approaching the study of how these technologies shape and affect
our everyday life, and by extension, the creative practice. In this context,
art practices using what has been defined as “locative media”, or in
other words, locative media artworks, should be regarded as a set of
emerging practices that deal with our relationship with space in varied
forms and that may be challenging current and previous theoretical
approaches to space.
The aim of this chapter is two-fold: first of all, we want to dig into
an “archaeology” of space-related concepts throughout history,
establishing connections between theoretical sources and artistic
interpretations of space. The question of experiencing and representating
space has been at the heart of many debates on technological
developments in our contemporary societies, being approached from
very distinct disciplines: from philosophy to architecture, including
social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology or geography, or even
media studies. We will focus on such theories and interpretations in
order to highlight different layers of space-related concepts in relation
to the practice of art. Secondly, we will investigate the transformation
of the subjective perception of space, through the study of different
locative media artworks, as case studies for the use of information and
communication technologies. Through the analysis of these theories
and practices we will further seek to outline a proper and useful
theoretical framework for the current practice of locative media art.

1. The nature of space

Throughout history, the concept of space had different

interpretations in the Western philosophical tradition. Western
philosophers raised different questions about space, particularly
initiating a discussion about its objective nature. The main positions
can be summed up as follows: space was understood as position of
objects, as enclosure of objects, and as field.

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 The first one to be considered was space as a positional quality of
the material objects in the world, an affirmation made in order to find a
particular way to solve the problem of the nature of space. We can find
this concept in Aristotle, regarding the nature of space as a place, as
“the immobile limit that embraces a body,” which was identical with
the notion of space for Plato. There is no space without material objects,
and therefore there is no possible void, as Aristotle explained in his
Physics.
This notion became established through some authors of the
Renaissance and then, also by Descartes in his Geometry. Descartes
defines it in a more expressive way than by size and figure, and we end
up thinking more on the lines of the latter definitions when we think of
space. But both are identical, and have just a nominal difference.
Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz argued against the existence of the void.
Leibniz, against Newtonians, said “if space is a property or an attribute,
then it must be the property of a substance. The limited empty space,
whose defendants believe exists between two bodies, would be the
property of which substance?.”1 This concept almost disappeared in
Western philosophy, with the exception of Heidegger, who said that
“being-there”, the human reality, is unique in its nature through its
relationship with things.
The second position considers that space is the enclosure. This
position was supported by the old Atomism that believed in the existence
of the void and its infinity. Epicurus, Zeno, Lucretius, and later Giordano
Bruno followed this concept. Then Newton, against Leibniz’s arguments,
extended this notion in science as did Kant. For Newton “the absolute
space, by its own nature without relation with anything external, is always
the same and immobile. The relative space is a mobile dimension or
measure of all absolute spaces, determined by our senses through its
position respective to our bodies, and that is commonly considered as
immobile space.”2 Absolute space is then the measure of all dimensions
of space.

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 The third understanding was the concept of space as field, which in
some way, represents a return to the notion of space as place. The forth
dimension adds time to the traditional three-dimensional understanding
of space. It is illogical to think of space without implying a field, when
the possibility of measuring it through non Euclidean geometries exists.
Therefore the notion of field paradoxically substitutes the notion of
space, and the fusion between space and time as a continuum makes its
appearance in the Physics of Minkowski, the Theory of Relativity, or
the undulatory mechanics of Schrödinger for example. Nowadays it
still is the most comprehensive notion of space applied to contemporary
physics.
During Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci or Alberti used
the system of geometric perspective as a tool for the representation of
space in their artworks. The mathematization of the representational
space is, as Panofsky explains, the expressive force of a particular notion
of space completely different from the modern concepts, as it also
represents a totally different conception of the world itself. In art history,
we could think of many artists being inspired by Euclidean geometry,
as a way to visualize and measure the space. But the non-Euclidian
geometries of Lobachevsly or Rienman also captured the attention of
artists, especially when Einstein and his Theory of General Relativity
were used to explain the physical space. As the space is wrinkled by
gravitational fields, generated by massive stars and galaxies, in the
cosmic space the shortest distance between two points is not a straight
line anymore.
This way of representing space also had a tremendous impact on
German idealism, as it did for Kant’s philosophy and its Euclidean
geometry, as well. Artists around the world tried to inspire their work
on these ideas, as a new way of explaining the universe and the nature
of space and reality. For example artists and architects as Le Courbusier
and Ozenfant (through their magazine “L’Esprit Nouveau”), the De Stijl
group and Theo van Doesburg (with his design for a house in the 4th
dimension of space-time), Laszlo Moholy Nagy (through his art and

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design classes), Max Bill (in his art and math series as the Moebius
strip), Kazimir Malevich (with his Suprematist Machine) , El Lissitzky
(with his Proun artworks and his manifesto of A. and Pangeometry,
honoring Lobachevsky), Naum Gabo (with his kinetic sculptures) André
Breton and Marcel Duchamp (and the ideas of mathematician Poincairé)
or Salvador Dalí (through many of his artworks like “The Persistence
of Memory”) amongst others, got inspired by these ideas generated by
the Theory of Relativity and the non-Euclidean understanding of
space.

2. Social space and its dualities

We could also consider space through social theory, as linked to

the different notions of space mentioned above. For example, social
theories on space focus on the conventional understanding of space
provided by institutions (states and governments)3, and differentiates
them from the spatial practices of ordinary users (the citizens). The
accent on the personal and subjective experience of space, and its
separation from “institutional” or panoptic consideration, is one of the
most important features that define the diverse concepts on space in
social theory.
Anthony Giddens, one of the most prominent contemporary
theorists, in “Modernity and Self-identity”, distinguishes three elements
to describe the dynamic character of modern social life: the first one is
what he defines as “the separation of time & space.” Giddens states that
in the pre-modern society, time and space were connected through the
circumstances of place, but in the late capitalist societies there is a
separation of these two spheres. This separation involves, above all, the
development of an empty dimension of time, the main lever which also
pulled space away from place4. In this sense, a universal dating system
(the calendar), the clock, and maps are just some elements that have
contributed to the separation of time and space, so that “it provides a
basis for their recombination in ways that coordinate social activities

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without necessary referencing the particularities of place.”5 In this way,
as he points out: “Modern social organization presumes the precise
coordination of the actions of many human beings physically absent
from one another, the “when” of these actions is directly connected to
the “where” but not, as in the pre-moderns era, via the mediation of
place6.”
Thus, one of the most relevant consequences of the separation of
space and time is that, actually, it is not essential to overlap in space and
time in order to share a (collective) experience. Related to this, there is
another result of the transformation of space: the coexistence of what
has been labeled as “globality” and “locality”, two concepts originally
introduced by Giddens and used very commonly nowadays by scholars,
regarding a social and economic model. The coexistence of locality
and globality, as McLuhan initially proposed, is facilitated, or partially
caused, by all the different media that have emerged during the twentieth
century. This thesis has been later supported by K. Gergen, Anthony
Giddens, and more recently by Manuel Castells.
The mediated practice of space, that is, the experience of space
through media points to one of the most relevant questions regarding
space in contemporary art and culture: the distinction between the visual
and the corporeal understanding of space. This duality is expressed by
some authors, like David Clarke’s or Alois Riegl. David Clarke talks
about “visuality” and “hapticality” in cinema; to Clarke, the concept
“visuality” recalls the space perceived by the detached, voyeuristic eye,
and “hapticallity” defines the space perceived by the mobile, living
body7. “Haptic space” is also a central concept in Alois Riegl’s writings,
one of the important authors in the modern aesthetic theory, who defined
the artistic evolution in the visual Western arts in terms of a shift from
“haptic space” to “optical space”. In “haptic space”, exemplified in the
primitive systems of representation, the objects are isolated inside the
visual field. The scenes are formed as links to the objects, and accumulate
one above the other, without being organized in a homogeneous and,
unitary space. In the “optical space”, on the contrary, the space is

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represented using the perspective system, defined by the Renaissance
painters, and used until today, particularly by means of photography or
films. Considering this approach, Clarke’s concept of hapticality would
recall that of Riegl, in a way that an image (a shot) taken from a very
close distance may appear incomplete, unorganized, and sometimes
distorted. In our view, this distinction (argued elsewhere by San
Cornelio8) it is not only due strictly to the different systems of
representation, but also to how images allude to sensuality and evoke
emotions. “Visuality”, thus, would refer to an optical and pretended
objective way of understanding the human experience, while
“hapticality” would refer to the body, and the other senses of the human
being.
Following a similar duality, Michel de Certeau, in “The Practice of
Everyday Life”, analyzing “spatial practices” in the city, elaborates a
theoretical model where he distinguishes two types: “voyeurs” and
“walkers”. Borrowing from Baudelaire’s notions the “voyeur” and
“flaneur”, De Certeau describes the city experienced by either “voyeurs”
or “walkers”9. The “voyeur” point of view is defined as gazing at the
city from above, transformed into a solar eye and looking down like
God. That is the way “Walking in the City” begins: the author is standing
at the top of the World Trade Centre gazing over Manhattan. From this
vantage point, the city is offered up to the “voyeur” as a whole, a
graspable image, in contrast with the messy city that one moves through
down below. The “walker”, hence, is the anonymous person walking
and experiencing the city. In the author’s words, “walkers” are
practitioners that make use of spaces that cannot be seen10. The “voyeur”
would be the figure representing an optical point of view, a representation
with perspective, holistic, but not paying attention to small things or
particularities. The “walker” is a person who practices and lives the
space from the inside. As proposed by San Cornelio11, applying these
theories to film analysis throws light on the particularities of the image
and shifts from the voyeur’s to the walker’s perspective as it is shown in
the following examples.

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Fig.1.“voyeur” perspective People from Fig. 2 “walker” perspective Caresses ©
Rome 2003 © Istituto Luce y Roma Els Films de la Rambla, S.A
Cinematografica

Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 the shift from “voyeur” to “walker” perspective in Wings of Desire
© reverse-angle pictures

Finally, Henry Lefevbre, talks about “production of space” and

distinguishes between absolute and abstract space. “Absolute space”
defines the space as lived, as opposed to “abstract space”, in which
space is conceived rather than lived, in other words, “absolute space” is
a representational space, rather than a representation of space. Following
Lefebvre, the representational space is more related to nature and fertility,
and the representations of space are geographic or transportation and
communication route maps. “Absolute space” (pastoral, agricultural,
or space in origin) shows the relationship between urban space and its
surroundings: the nature, forming a “texture” that encloses them both.
“Absolute space” has dimensions, but not the dimensions of the abstract
or Euclidean space12. For instance, as Lefebvre defines it, Greek temples
are absolute spaces because they imply notions of divinity; the same

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occurs with tombs and funerary monuments that also belong to the
absolute space. “Absolute space” addresses not the intellect, but the
body (threats, punishments, emotions)… In “absolute space” people
inhabit nature, but retaining a bond with their severed surroundings,
governed by the logic of capitalism. On the other hand, “abstract space”
is political, instituted by state. On first impression it appears
homogeneous, eliminating differences, but after a closer look it becomes
illusory because it is defined through empirical metaphors13.

Fig. 5. Google map from aerial perspective, representing Lefebvre’s

abstract space

Actually, the empirical representation of space has been critically

observed, both in social and art practices. The main assumption of such
critical approaches is that conventional cartography, which aims to
achieve objectivity - as it is commonly understood - is, in fact, influenced
by a subjective view, related to power (for example the northern
hemisphere is situated at the top of terrestrial globes, while the

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developing countries are at the bottom). Thus, there have been some
alternative responses, such as feminist geography (D. Massey), or the
situationist movement in the Fifties of the Twentieth Century.
Particularly, Guy Debord, proposed the “Derive” as a method for
exploring space, as an alternative to journeys and maps. This experience
consisted of a rapid passage through varied environments of the city by
a group of people, letting themselves be drawn by the attractions of the
terrain and the encounters they found there. Chance is a less important
factor in this activity than one might think: from a derivé’s point of
view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents,
fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit
from certain zones. In this sense, Dérive would be connected with
psychogeography, that is, the study of the effects of geography on
individuals14.
This way, it could be stated that Situationist practises are, to some
extent, a response to the theories previously drawn, as well as other art
practices related to space, such us performances and interventions
(installations) in public buildings and open spaces. Furthermore, many
appropriations and personalization of maps are currently taking place,
thanks to location-based technologies.

3. Transformation, substitution and disappearance

of “place”

Some other contemporary authors go a step further and point to the

transformation or possible disappearance of the notion of “place”. This
position is overtly represented by Marc Augé definition of “non-places”.
In an anthropological sense, the place is a symbolic space, where one
can read, partially or totally, the identity of its inhabitants15. It is also a
rhetoric territory where the practitioners share signs and have things in
common. Thus, the basis of Augé’s theorization of non-places is based
on their contrary conditions, that is, spaces where the identity,
relationship, and history of its practitioners can not be read. Within the
category of non-places, he includes three types of spaces: spaces of
circulation (motorways, airports, petrol stations…) spaces of
consumerism (super markets, hotel chains…) and spaces of

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communication (screens, cables, waves…) 16. Augé states that in a first
level of analysis, these are not places where long-term social
relationships can be inscribed. These places have empirical existence
and they are spreading towards the suburbs (peripheries) and
characterizing what he defines as super-modernity. Nevertheless, the
opposition between places and non-places is relative; it depends on the
place and the moment of the day17. This assertion opens the possibility
that through an intense experience of these spaces by its practitioners,
they can be turned into “places”. Auge draws on Rem Koolhas idea of
“generic city” 18, which is defined as a uniform model of a city where
the skyscraper is the definitive typology. It is a city without history,
without layers, superficial like a film studio, in a process of never ending
self-destruction and renewal.
Other post-structuralist authors, such as Lyotard, deny the category
of place, although with different arguments. Concretely, he claims the
dissolution of epistemic coherence. For him, narrative elements
disintegrate into “clouds” of linguistic combinations, and “heterogeneous
moments of subjectivity that do not cohere into an identity19. This way,
he criticises the notion of domesticity or dwelling, thus denying the
category of “place” as source of identity. For him, the notion of place is
a nostalgic response to the conditions of late capitalism, or in other
words, it is a product of the market. In a more general perspective,
Poststructuralist geography emerges from the deconstruction of
pointilistic articulations of space, time, and place. Immutability gives
way to fluidity, and the poststructuralist space is broken up into
discontinuous elements that are branching without an unifying frame
of reference, breaking up a given space into fragments. This leads to a
non-unified final form, which could be conveyed in terms of heterotopia,
or a manifold space without a common measure. The manifold spaces
are folded in many ways as “the model for the material sciences is the
“origami” or the art of folding”20 as Deleuze and Guattari affirm. Many
artists or architects, as for example Peter Eisenman, have been
extensively inspired by these ideas, as much as by the non-Euclidean
parameters hidden inside them. Marcus Novak is another architect
directly inspired by the ideas of Deleuze and Guattary, exploring the

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immense possibilities of the folds and multiplicity as key factors for his
creations.
From an aesthetic point of view, Baudrillard points to a spatial
representation and experience based on the idea of simulacrum, as he
explains broadly in his work, Simulacra and Simulation (1981). His
work is based on the prominence of the image in our society up to the
point that images substitute “reality”, thus living in a continuum of
simulated experiences. His work has been extremely influential not only
in sci-fi or futuristic films like the Matrix trilogy, but also in the
conceptualization of the cyberspace as a disembodied space, strongly
determined also by the technological developments of Virtual Reality.

4. The opening and the ubiquity of place

In recent years, the empirical information and descriptions of space

have increased spectacularly: mobile phones, wireless networks, and
GPS technologies have introduced the possibility to instantly connect
ubiquitous information with physical spaces. As Felix Stalder affirms,
“the effects are dramatic and are still unfolding. What logically belongs
together no longer needs to be in one place in order to function as a
single unit (…). For the first time ever, it is becoming possible to be
geographically distributed and still act as a unit in real time.”21
As many authors have already stated, ITC and the transportation
systems have defined a new space for social interaction, in the last
decades. In this space, interaction takes place in real time across very
large distances and is shaping and shaped by the flow of information,
people, and goods. It is, in Manuel Castells words, “the space of flows”:
a space that is organized for, and created by the constant movement of
people, goods, and information over large distances. The space of flows
is not so much organized to move things from one place to another, but
to keep them moving around. In the space of flows, arrival becomes
elusive, virtually indistinguishable from departure. Castells writes: “Our
societies are constructed around the concept of ‘flow’: flow of capital,
flow of information, flow of technology, flow of organizational

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interactions, flow of images, sounds, and symbols. The flow is not just
one element of social organization: it is the expression of the processes
dominating our economic, political, and symbolic life.”22.
Castells proposes a new spatial model that characterizes what he
defines as the “network society”. In his own words it is a “new spatial
form characteristic of social practices that dominate and shape the
network society: the “space of flows”. In this model, he recalls also
Rem Koolhas’ generic city, for considering it the architectonic expression
of the “space of flows” in the information age23. The meaning of the
term stresses particularly the idea of flows, where flows are understood
a “purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchanges and
interactions between social actors holding spatially discontinuous
positions.”24
Castells defines the “space of flows” in relation to the space of
places, which is considered a previous paradigm where the physical
localization was a determinant factor. This position has been criticized
by other authors, because, in a way, he is still supporting the idea that
places have lost their identity due to the use of technologies and have
become a sort of abstract places not linked to a particular location. For
Moores, Castells is quite right to begin by identifying the relation
between flows and places as central to any social theory of space in the
network society, but quite wrong to think of the “space of flows” and
“the space of places” as diametrically opposed forms with completely
separate “logics”25. Moores considers that they are not opposed because
“place” is not self-contained, (as Castells suggests) but has extensions
outside (emotions, livings…). In other words, places are open, as Massey
defines them: places should be thought of as “not so much bounded
areas”, and she points to “the openness of places” in “global times”26.

5. Defining a theoretical framework for locative

media artworks

Recalling the last theories, it would seem at first sight that the
conceptualization of “space of flows” is a suitable framework for locative

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media projects, as far as they deal with space, through technological
devices, such as mobile phones, GPS, PDA, or computers, which are
constantly sending and receiving data flows. Nevertheless, this would
be a shallow approach, only based on the technological side of these
artworks, and would leave aside their aesthetic and conceptual
components. Although there is not an official definition of the term
“locative media” its initial use is attributed to Karlis Kalnins in 2003
and it was the 2006 topic of a special issue of the Leonardo Electronic
Almanac. In the Wikipedia the term is summarized as “media of
communication functionally bound to a location. They are digital media
applied to real places and thus triggering real social interactions. While
mobile technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop
computers, and mobile phones enable locative media, they are not the
goal for the development of projects in this field. Ben Russell puts it in
other words: ‘Locative media is many things: a new site for old
discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other
people; a framework within which to actively engage with, critique,
and shape a rapid set of technological developments; a context within
which to explore new and old models of communication, community
and exchange; a name for the ambiguous shape of a rapidly deploying
surveillance and control infrastructure’.27“
In a technical sense, locative media is closely related to augmented
reality (reality overlaid with virtual reality) and pervasive computing
(as in ubiquitous computing). Yet, whereas augmented reality strives
for technical solutions and pervasive computing is interested in
embedded computing, locative media concentrates on social interaction
with a place and with technology28. Hence, from a conceptual point of
view many locative media projects have a social, critical or personal
(memory) background in relation to the notion of space and place, which
links them with other contemporary practices, such as land art, or
interventions in the public space. As Manovich points out29, although
place-based arts have long and rich histories, the novelty of locative
projects seems to be in the way they include technological agents to
express and index spatial relationships, in order words, these projects
have the possibility to augment or enhance the notion of space.

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 For Manovich the context for exploring new aesthetics of space is
provided by augmented reality techniques, constituting - beyond its
technological side - an aesthetic paradigm: “The previous image of the
computer era –VR user traveling in a virtual space- has become replaced
by a new image: a person checking email, or making a phone call (…)
while in the airport, in a street, car, or in other actually existing space.”30
With the previous assertion Manovich describes what he understands
as a shift from the Virtual Reality paradigm to the Augmented Reality
paradigm. For Manovich, Augmented Reality becomes, in a way,
opposed to Virtual Reality because in a typical Virtual Reality system,
all the action is done in a virtual space, so that physical space becomes
unnecessary and its vision is completely blocked. In contrast, Augmented
Reality systems help the user to do the work in a physical space by
augmenting this space with additional information. “[Although] physical
space was always augmented by images, graphics and type; (…)
substituting them with electronic displays makes possible to present
dynamic images, to mix images (…) and to change the content at any
time.”31 This way, the difference between the Locative Media approaches
to space and that of other non-technologically-mediated interventions
in public spaces would be the interchangeability and dynamics of data.
Moreover, for Manovich, Augmented Reality is conceptually very
similar to wireless location services, in other words, to locative media:
“the common idea is that when the user is in the vicinity of objects,
buildings or people, the information about them is delivered to the
user”32. Thus, augmented space and locative media are absolutely
related, and they can be regarded as the same aesthetic paradigm. One
of the key notions where these aesthetics can be explored is public space,
in consequence, Manovich proposes to learn from architecture - and
commercial branding such as Prada’s - what kind of strategies are more
suitable to provide an extensive use of these public spaces. Overlaying
dynamic and contextual data over a physical space is a particular case
of a general aesthetic paradigm: how to combine different spaces
together. (…) “it is crucial to see it as a conceptual, rather than just a
technological issue, as something that already was often a part of other
architectural and artistic paradigm”33.

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 In the following paragraphs we provide some examples illustrating,
on the one hand, how locative media artworks are dealing with this
aesthetic paradigm, and on the other, how these projects are related
with previous reflections on space. Trying to establish a temporary
perspective, the “audio walks” by Janet Cardiff may one attempt to
include narratives (in this case fictional) in the experience of walking
along a city. Generally “audio walks” are pieces that suggest to follow
a trajectory through spaces where a narration – recorded in an audio
track - leads the action. One of the pieces is “The Missing Voice (Case
Study B)”, commissioned in 1999 and continues to run. These narrations
are listened by earphones connected to a CD player or iPod, combine
instructions to the user (go down the stairs, look through the window…)
with fragments of a story, sound effects, and other types of data. Although
technologically these are not complex projects, their own nature reveals
an absolute immersion with the spaces that the spectators experience.
The importance of the place, cannot be denied in this project, as far as
every point in the narrative is conditioned by the very spatial coordinates
the spectator is covering.
Walking in the city, inspired by different sources or motivations
was the premise of the project “1000 Joyce Walks”34 . It was a
participatory global intervention aiming to create a day of
psychogeographical exploration with 1000 interventions in 24 hours
across the globe. The project, performed initially on June 16th 2008
(Bloomsday) aimed to remap routes from James Joyce’s Ulysses to any
city in the world cited in the novel, to be used as the basis of walks
which navigate urban space in a new and unexpected way. The technique
used in this project is what is commonly known as “geotagging”, that
is, tagging specific spots into Google or other online maps, its theoretical
source of inspiration being Situationism.
Another project which is also based in exploring and augmenting
the experience in the city is Interurban by Jeff Knowlton and Naomi
Spellman. The project was initially presented in 2004 at FutureSonic in
Manchester UK. Utilizing a Tablet PC, GPS card and custom software,

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InterUrban plays back pre-recorded narrative elements read by voice
actors to weave a story structure in Manchester’s historical city center.
This location aware narrative unfolds as the user/participant moves
through real space. Environmental factors such as time of day and user/
participant location, distance traveled, heading and proximity to
hypothetical or historical events determine how the narrative unfolds.
The discontinuities on the reception of this information have to do with
specific points of wireless connection, thus providing a mixed experience
to the participant.
Although the previous examples illustrate the aesthetic potential of
overlaying information over a physical space, so that its exploration
connects “interactions between the two spaces, between vision and
hearing, and between present and past”35 the project more evidently
linked to Manovich’s suggestion to learn from architecture and
commercial strategies is The Artvertise, a project that is currently being
developed by Julian Oliver, Clara Boj and Diego Diaz. The main idea is
taking sites dense with advertisements as an exhibition space. The
procedure will consist of ‘training’ a computer to recognize billboard
advertisements, logos and other commercial images, and then, ‘replace’
them with alternative material. These images will be seen through a
device of augmented reality visualization, currently a kind of binoculars,
as depicted in the following image (fig. 6) of a simulation of Time Square
in New York. The project is at the moment being tested in different sites

Fig. 6 Simulation of “The Artvertiser”

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and its appearance would look like in (fig. 7) which is a test in Madrid.

Fig. 7 Test of “the

Artvertiser” in Madrid
In order to complete this framework it would be useful the recall
the idea of “place duplication” suggested in the work of Scannell36. By
this concept he meant that “public events now occur, simultaneously, in
two different places: the place of the event itself and that in which it is
watched and heard. Broadcasting mediates these two sites”37.
The place duplication is at the heart of the experience in the project
Can You See Me Now? by Blast Theory. This project started in 2001 and
it has been performed in many different locations. A loose narrative
framework is established requiring players to answer the question, “is
there someone you haven’t seen for a long time that you still think of?”.
Participants can then access an online virtual environment constructed
to replicate the actual streets of the selected city. As they navigate the
virtual city they are chased by members of the Blast Theory team who
appear as avatars in the “virtual” world. The remote participants must
avoid the Blast Theory chasers; if a chaser gets within five meters of an
online player, the player is “seen” and is out of the game. When it occurs,
the Blast Theory victor takes a digital photo of the real space where the
participant was seen and this photo is displayed on the webpage38.
Participants are also able to see the avatars of other players and runners,
and can chose to exchange text messages with them and hear the verbal
commentary of the Blast Theory runners via audio-stream and via

116
walkie-talkie. Klitch describes her own experience in the game this way:
I have the uncanny realisation that I am running alongside these
performers, I have become a material-informational entity that exists
not only in the virtual world, but also elsewhere in the real world39
In a sense the project Can You See Me Now makes more evident the
colliding of the two spaces at the same time by connecting both the
experience in the physical space with the online space. This is not a
trivial observation, because despite the fact that there has been a lot of
research based on the Internet in the last years, there is still a tendency
to separate virtual space from the so-called “real” space, whereas the
experiences on both sides are equally real. Much of the early academic
literature in this area has tended to focus on the nature of spaces or
places apart from the rest of social life, rather than treating the Internet
as continuous with other social spaces, and as part of everyday life. As
previously said, this idea is highly influenced by the notion of simulation
but also of simulacrum as a paradigm of a detached representation of
reality. In contrast, it does not make sense any more to believe in this
concept since the Internet is full of geographical information, as
Townsend and others suggest. Furthermore, as it has been argued along
this chapter, locative media projects propose a complete fusion between
places and, in our view, there is no doubt that their experience should
be considered as a whole and not separately. As Miller and Slater state,
“only understanding this connection we will be able to understand that
the openness or the possibilities of being interconnected are part of the
same experience”40.

6. Conclusions

As implied above, the different examples of locative media

introduced in this chapter, constitute a very complex and diverse set of
artistic practices that are currently emerging, and consequently there
isn’t much research done on them. One of the main reasons, in our
view, is that they can be examined by many different disciplines and
points of view and consequently put in different frameworks, or
approached them in an interdisciplinary way, as we intended in this

117
chapter, bringing together theories from social and aesthetic perspectives,
trying to overcome technological determinism. Although precisely their
technological orientation would suggest that we are facing a new body
of art practices, the truth is that there are many references to both space
theories and contemporary art practices in them: from a historical and
conceptual point of view they are related to public space interventions,
happenings, land art, and performance art.
Furthermore, and drawing on Manovich insights, they are framed
in the augmented space aesthetics, constituting a new paradigm of space
experience based on the interconnection of physical spaces and virtual
data. Related to this, from a theoretical and social point of view, these
practices although they are close (or part of) the conceptualization of
“space of flows”, their practical and evocative approach would suggest
the opening of the ‘place’, rather than its disappearance, as Massey or
Scanell have suggested. This is another line of research we are currently
exploring.
We definitely believe that locative media allows the rethinking of
some artistic practices, but at the same time, these artworks provide
scholars with the opportunity to explore suitable frameworks in order
to analyse them from diverse perspectives. We have tried to shed some
light on these projects and to demonstrate how artistic practices can
contribute or can reflect on the social experience of place through (new)
media, but there are other aspects to be explored (Manovich proposition
on archaeology could be one approach) in the current media practices.
In this broad framework, and analysing some individual projects in depth
we will be able to come to more conclusions and critical understandings
not only of locative media art, but also of contemporary and media art
in general.

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Notes
1 Leibniz, W.L. IV Lettre à Clarke., 8,Op., ed. Erdmann, p 756
2 Newton, I (1687) Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. I, def 8,
scol.
3 Michel Foucault (Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1995),
Michel de Certeau (The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984), Henri Lefebvre (The
Production of Space, 2004) or Marc Augé (Non-Places: Introduction to an
Anthropology of Supermodernity, 1995) are just some references.
4 Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge: Polity Press

p. 16.
5 Giddens, A. Op. cit. p. 17.
6 Giddens, A. Op. cit. p. 18
7 Clarke D. (1997) The Cinematic City. New York: Routledge. p. 8-9
8 San Cornelio G. (2008) Live Cities: Film and Media Approaches to

European Cities, in Shifting Landscapes, Christensen and Erdogan (eds.)

Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Press, p. 198-220.
9 Baudelaire’s voyeur is a sort of distant observer who is not concerned with

the life of the city; whereas the “flaneur” is a person who walks among the people
in the street and in contact with them (he is quite interested in prostitutes and
beggars, whom he considers to be very important in the portrait of the modern

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city). In fact, both figures (voyeur and flaneur) are essential in the description of
his notion of modernity. Some decades later Walter Benjamin also talks about the
flaneur.
10 Certeau, M.(1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of

California Press, p. 93.

11 San Cornelio, G. (2008) op. Cit. P. 201
12 Lefebvre, H. (2004) The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell, p.

235-236.
13 Lefebvre, op. cit. p. 285.
14 Coverley, M. (2006) Psychogeography. London: Pocket Essentials.
15
Augé, M. (2007) “Sobremodernidad. Del mundo de hoy al mundo de
mañana”. Contrastes: Revista cultural, no. 47, pp. 101-107
16 Augé, M. op. Cit., p. 105
17 Augé, M. op. Cit., p. 106
18 Koolhas, R., Sigler, J. & Mau, B. (1997) S,M,L,XL: The Generic City. The

Monacelli Press.
19 Lyotard, J. P. (1992) “Domus and Megapolis” in Inhuman. Stanford:

Standford University Press.

20 Deleuze, G. (1989) El pliegue: Leibniz y el Barroco. Madrid: Paidós. p. 6
21
Stalder, F. (2001) The Space of Flows: notes on emergence, characteristics
and possible impact on physical space [online document] see references.
22 Castells, M. (2001) La galaxia Internet. Reflexiones sobre Internet, empresa

y sociedad. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés Editores p. 412.

23 Castells, Op. Cit. p. 421
24 Castells, Op. Cit. P. 412
25 Moores, S., (2003). “Media, Flows and Places”. MEDIA@LSE Electronic

Working Papers. Londres: London School of Economics. p. 4.

Stalder also points to the influence of the spaces of flows on the space of
places. “London and New York are becoming more integrated (…) it’s a indication
how the space of flows connects places to one another that are similar and thus
how the space of flows is actively reconfiguring the space of places”. F. Stalder,
2001 (see references)
26 Massey, D. (1995) “The Conceptualization of Place”, in D. Massey and P.

Jess (eds) A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization. Oxford: Oxford
University Press/Open University, p. 59
27 Russell, B. (2004) “Transcultural Media Online Reader Introduction”, TCM

Online Reader 2004. [online document] see references

28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locative_media
29 Manovich, L. (2005) The poetics of augmented space: Learning from Prada,

p. 1
30 Manovich L., op. cit., p. 1.

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 31
Manovich L., op. cit., p. 2
32
Manovich L., op. cit., p. 4
33 Manovich, L. op.cit., p. 6
34 http://www.stunned.org/walks/bloomsday.html
35 Manovich, L. op.cit., p 7
36
Scannell, P. (1996) Radio, Television and Modern Life: A Phenomenological
Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
37 Scannell, P. op. cit., p. 76.
38 Klich, Rosemary (2007) “Performing Posthuman Perspective : Can You

See Me Now?”. Scan Journal, vol. 4 number 2, August 2007

39 Klich, R., op. cit.
40 Miller, D. & Slater D. (2000) The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach.

Oxford: Berghan. pp. 4-7

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 CHAPTER III. Types of Memory

ANARCHIVE - DIGITAL ARCHIVES ON

CONTEMPORARY ART

Anne-Marie Duguet

anarchive is a series of DVDs and Internet projects designed to

explore an artist’s overall oeuvre via diverse archival material.
The project is an historical and critical research whose main purpose
is to record and to increase public awareness on some of the most
important developments in contemporary art such as performances,
works in public places, video, installations, experiments with new
technologies. Beyond a mode of preservation and beyond producing
important databases about a whole body of work, the project aims to
incourage artists to develop new works through the use of digital
technologies.
Each production in the series is an archive, but it’s mainly an
“anarchive”, meaning, approaching artworks from new perspectives,
and trying to uncover unprecedented relationships between the works.
This research which belongs yet to archeology, is also an original
art project. The artists contribute to the creation of the DVD at different
levels, by allowing access and commentary their own archives, and
mainly by assuming the art direction of the project.
The titles in the anarchive series published so far:
- “Muntadas Media Architecture Installations” by Antoni Muntadas
(Centre Pompidou, 1999)

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 - “Digital Snow by Michael Snow” (Centre Pompidou, 2002)
- Title “TK” by Thierry Kuntzel (Anarchive/Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Nantes, 2006)
- “On the Concile of Nicea by Jean Otth” (Anarchive, 2007).
The series will continue with: Fujiko Nakaya, Masaki Fujihata,
Peter Campus, Victor Burgin, Jochen Gerz, Joan Jonas, Norman White,
Paul de Marinis, Bill Viola, Jim Campbell, Mona Hattoum, Gary Hill
and others.

An historical and critical approach

The archives of these artists, often quite extensive, provide the

opportunity for an historical, theoretical, and critical study based on the
existing works, in order to complete and synthesize them. It has to
preempt the loss of information as well as, supplement, incomplete or
poor quality documentation, which would not allow for an accurate
estimation of the different elements involved in a work and their
relationship. Sometimes new “documents” have to be produced with
the artist’s precious collaboration.
anarchive aims to develop new approaches for describing works
by using, for example 3D simulation to explore and understand how
installation elements are displayed and function together, or by producing
a kind of equivalent simulation of to an interactive action. The software
allows the interweaving of multiple relationships between the works,
and mainly between the projects and their diverse historic, social,
economic contexts. Each DVD includes an important database, which
without pretending to be exhaustive, represents a significant part of the
artist’s work. The research aims not just to establish chronologies or to
reinforce already established categorizations, but to offer new
perspectives on a work or body of work.

An original work

Experimentation with interface design and systems interactivity

plays an important role in the series. Each work is based on the individual

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approach of artists who have developed personal conceptual frameworks
and guidelines throughout an entire career. That is why, these authors
are more likely to suggest non-convetional proposals. The developers
involved in the project will be inspired by such approaches to engage in
research in their own field. The involvement of such high caliber artists
and the quality of the teams working with them, facilitate an original
approach and a multimedia production exploring all its possibilities.
The fundamentally pluridisciplinary nature of such a project requires
expertise in many fields: art history and theory, computer programming,
graphic design, writing, video production, etc. For this reason, a team
has been assembled to assist the artist for each DVD.

A reference and educative tool

These computer archives, which aim to expose the general public

to topics and questions in contemporary art, are also an educational
tool, as well as, a precious source of documentation for researchers,
critics and curators. Schools of art, art departments in universities,
libraries, media and art centres constitute the major audience of this
project.

Anarchive n°3 - Title TK

Book (648 pages) + DVD

TITLE TK by Thierry Kuntzel, is the third volume of the anarchive
series, both a new work and a database covering all of artist’s works.
First known for his work as a film theorist, Thierry Kuntzel is one of the
most important artists working in France today. He produced most of
his videotapes between 1979 and 1980, and since has created installations
with projected images, light and sound.
The book (648 pages) includes the transcription of about 600 of his
working notes, more than a half of them translated into English. The
DVD also presents these manuscripts, some of them being read by
Kuntzel. Through video excerpts of the works that are revealed

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interactively by the reader, there are main possible paths: body,
representation, and time. The variations in light and the changes in the
speed of interaction, the multiplicity of points of view and the place of
the viewer, the apparition and disappearance of traces, highlight the
processes of memory and perception, the fragility of all images, the
futility of any attempt to hold on to an image.
In addition, the description of nearly forty works, several theoretical
texts by Kuntzel being collected here for the first time. A selection of
texts referring to his works by authors such as Raymond Bellour, also
can be accessed in the database.
This DVD-ROM is both a database of Thierry Kuntzel’s entire
oeuvre and an artwork in itself.
Through images and sounds taken from his videos and installations,
interspersed with some of his notes, either written or read aloud, the
DVD offers three ways of approaching the work, highlighting some of
its key aspects. Each path has two entries. A few connecting points
along the way lead from one path to another, and imperceptibly guide
the viewer to other themes. At any moment along the way, the viewer
can set off on a new path.

Fig. 1 Fig. 2
„Using as background the last visualized documents, four functions can be activated
in the four corners of the screen: beginning on path, start another path, exit, artist’s
biography and access to the database.”

1 - The body and its distortion. Here we find skin and detail, the
caress of a gaze, but also a face erased by too much light, the body split
in two, reduplicated, transparent, beneath a sheet, behind a frame, leaves,

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glimpsed. At times a self-portrait, often caught in an electronic
disturbance, or seen from behind, as a child. All activity is minimal,
unhurried: smoking, contemplating, reading, passing by. The activity
of thinking, of desiring.
Entry 1: the body present, a hand touching a naked arm (Spring).
Entry 2: light-traces of what must have been another arm, a hand
holding a cigarette (Nostos 1).
2 - Landscape and representation. Here we see the horizon, a
panorama of San Francisco or Tampico, perspective, framing, windows.
The view and its obstruction, or simply the light that filters through a
door ajar to perhaps reveal some secret. Projected light, tracking light,
colourful variations, they transform a studio as they do the landscape.
Between dazzlement and darkness, another space, foliated, blurred,
sometimes takes shape.
Entry 1: the sea, waves and surf (The Waves)
Entry 2: the sea once again, with the laguna and Venice on the
horizon (Venises)
3 - Speeds. This would be the flutter, the intermittence, the series,
the tension between movements - of the camera or in the processing of
the image - and stasis, extreme slow-motion, the tomb. Time and
memory, between acceleration and freeze-frame.
Entry 1: The flutter of a heart and of a light on the inscription
“Nevermore” (Edgar Allan Poe’s Tomb)
Entry 2: the flicker of projected light (Still)
The association of these fragments is based on thematic or formal
affinities, or on the emphases particular to Thierry Kuntzel’s work.
Unaccompanied by reference notes or commentary, each image appears
in an almost random way on the screen, never returning to the same
place, it seeps from the edge or the interior of another image - the blue
of one merges with the ocre of another. Clouds of colour “take shape”
and form an image as we pay attention to them (for example if we
hover over them or click on them to accelerate the appearance of the
image emerging). Discovery is the guiding principle: elements appear,
attract our gaze, but it is up to the viewer to seize them to make the
image truly appear. It is left to the, viewer to free the image from the

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matter of the screen. If the viewer doesn’t intervene, the images simply
continue their interaction and incredible unfolding.
There’s nothing excessive here, no click, no menu.
Operating procedures:
Four functions can be found at the four corners of the screen:
Right-hand top: go back to the beginning of a path, start another
one;
Left-hand top: exit;
Left-hand bottom: Thierry Kuntzel’s biography;
Right-hand bottom: database; The database gives access to:
- documents about Kuntzel’s installations, videos, video installations
and other projects;

Fig. 3
„Screenshot with one of the artist’s sketches for Ete installation. The page gives
access to the database which includes documents related to the artist’s works, his
writings, some critical texts related to his work and a list of exhibitions.”

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 - a collection of 600 of the artist’s notes, handwritten or transcribed,
all his theoretical essays on cinema and video, compiled for the first
time;
- a selection of texts about his work;
- a list of exhibitions;
For each work, a variety of resource materials are available:
- a brief technical description;
- a commentary that may be a note by the artist, an excerpt from a
review or another short text;
- one or several excerpts from the video, or photos of the installation;
- several descriptions of the installations based the artist’s sketches;
- the artist’s notes - handwritten (that can be enlarged) and
transcribed - which directly refer to a specific work or are related it;
- additional documents: scores, drawings, photos;
- a few reviews or criticism or excerpts from essays directly related
to the work in question;
- works that are linked to it. Thierry Kuntzel often creates series:
the Nostos, the Tombeaux, the Saisons...
Language options (French or English) must be selected at the
beginning;
Working notes read by the artist;
When opening the DVD, an entry allows to hear the voice of Thierry
Kuntzel reading 67 of his working notes.

129
130
 SEARCH AND REPAIR. DIGITAL HERITAGE
AND TIME BASED ART.

Heike Helfert

On the evening of September 2nd 2004, a disastrous fire broke out

in the original building of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library in Weimar
and developed into the largest library fire in Germany since WW II.
The historical building, which belongs to the UNESCO World
Heritage, was damaged by fire and water, the third floor, and attic were
totally destroyed. Literary and musical manuscripts and artworks from
the 16th and 17th Centuries up to the 20th Century were completely
destroyed or seriously damaged.
This tragic loss of cultural and historical inheritance in a spectacular
fire attracted a great deal of public attention.
The losses were obvious and everybody could immediately see and
understand what happened to the physical objects of a precious archive.
With the great help of the public, huge parts of the historical building
were restored and in October 2007 the library was officially reopened.
Today the library runs a database of the “Catalogue of lost and damaged
books”.1
It seems that this physical connection between the object and the
information is easy to understand. But what if the object is no longer
physical and information is transformed into data? As long as
information is decipherable by humans the access to the resources is

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direct and can be followed by everyone. But when the essence of
information is separated from its carrier or medium in form of data, it
has no physical presence anymore and becomes machine-readable only.
Video art, in its physical presence, lies somehow in between. Stored
on reels or cassettes, the magnetic tapes are not readable by human
eyes. Machines must be used to get access to the artworks. And of course
it has to be the right machine for each of the diverse formats.
But more and more, the technical equipment for playing back the
tapes is no longer available, and therefore the piece of art is hidden in
some electronic coffin.

Digital heritage

This is where “40yearsvideoart.de”2 comes in, organizing a project

on digital heritage that archives German video art from 1963 to the
present.
Memory is an important term in the field of heritage, regardless if
it is digital or not. Memory is used in a technical sense as storage of
data or as a reservoir for the images that have to be remembered. But
we are also talking about memory in terms of recollection and time. In
creating an archive or a compilation like “40yearsvideoart.de” we are
preparing now the memory of the future.
Like most projects on cultural heritage “40yearsvideoart.de” is
designed to store or even re-store objects from the past, to combine
them with current pieces and to prepare them for future use.
The project focuses on saving, maintaining, and mediating the
cultural heritage of video art, which has become one of the most
influential art forms of the Twentieth Century. The project consists (or
consisted) of three major features: a symposium, an exhibition and a
research edition of video art in Germany from 1963 to the present. This
complex project was carried out by five museums in the Federal Republic
of Germany: the institutions responsible for the overall project were
the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the K21
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf. They worked together
with three partners – Kunsthalle Bremen, Lenbachhaus Munich, and
the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig.

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 Saving the cultural heritage of video art – what does
this mean?

Video art nowadays is one of the most popular forms of expression

in contemporary art. You will find it in most contemporary art shows or
biennales. However as simple and easy the presentation of video art
might seem to the public, because of its apparent immateriality, this
genre has its inherent troubles. Sometimes, it turns out that a video
work is just as ephemeral as its time-related perception. Down in the
archives and cellars, a dramatic decay of historical works of video art is
constantly taking place. Due to their physical condition, videotapes
require professional help (at the latest 20 years after their origination).
Typical examples of the process of deterioration are the loss of magnetic
signals or the sticky-tape-syndrome.3 Today, numerous works of art are
preserved only in a damaged form, and continue to disappear because
their support materials decomposes more and more quickly. This process
of decline affects, above all, the early original tapes. The progressive
destruction of video works poses an acute threat to a significant element
of 20th Century art. In order to save the content, the works have to be
transferred to another physical format. Today, this means digital storage.
What is carried into the future is not the physical tape or the reel
containing the signal; it is the magnetic information of the image. In
order to save great parts of the genre of video art, the urgent steps of
digitization, restoration, and storage have to take place.
One may raise the question: can our heritage be digital? In the case
of video art, it will have to be digital or it won’t be visible anymore in
the future, like Rudolf Frieling, head of the project, tirelessly points
out.
The project was carried out over the course of two years from 2004
to 2005 as an initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
During this time a lot of decisions had to be made. First of all, an
independent jury met to highlight the works that represent the diverse
aspects and decades of video art in Germany. What came out was an
exemplary selection of works, a panorama of 59 historic but also current
works ranging from 1963 up to the present. This initial,

133
overview-oriented selection is now traveling around the world with the
help of the Goethe-Institute.
As soon as the selection was made, the research for the original
master tapes begun in a confusing field of copies, masters, sub-masters,
copies of copies, new archive masters, etc. The aim was to restore or, if
not necessary, to store the works in the best possible quality. Another
objective was to try out and find an exemplary method of restoring
video material and preparing it for long-term storage. In most cases the
tapes were cleaned and digitized at ZKM by the “laboratory for
antiquated video systems” before the restoration process took place.
This was realized image by image in the digital state. A special software
named DIAMANT (by HS-Art, Graz, Austria) was specifically modified
for the particular problems of early magnetic videotapes. This process
was documented with the assistance of the project conservator Patrícia
Falcão, and can be found on the website.4
Concerning the practical, as well as, the theoretical issues of
preservation, restoration and archiving of video art, a symposium was
held in Düsseldorf in order to bring together international experts in the
field. It also tried to analyze today’s technical possibilities and future
perspectives of maintaining archives.5
To bring up one issue that turned out clearer and clearer while
dealing with these questions I’d like to quote Rudolf Frieling: “The
field of technologies has always been a dynamic one. In the meantime,
however, we have learned to no longer rely solely on the hypothetically
best possible archiving medium, but rather to develop a strategy with
many complementary options. But the aim of the current research will
be, as far as possible, to store uncompressed data in order to be ideally
prepared for a future change of format.”6
Another important concern of the project was not only to assemble
and store an overview of German video art and to maintain it, but also
to make it accessible to the public. Major problems in teaching video
art history are the problems of unavailable or illegal copies of the video
works.
A research edition in DVD format was produced as an overview of
video art in Germany. It includes more than 28 hours of historic, as well

134
as, current works by 59 artists, distributed as a box set of 12 DVDs. The
DVD research edition is directed to the study and discussion of video
art in academies, universities, schools etc. Due to copyright restrictions,
the set can only be ordered by institutions from the fields of research
and education for internal viewing.
Finally the overview of the works was exhibited at the same time
by the five participating museums. Apart from this, each museum
presented its own perspective as an extension and contextualization of
these videotapes. The spectrum of these exhibitions embraced the
“1960s” (Bremen), the “1980s” (Düsseldorf) as well as the present
“Update 06” (Munich). Held in two locations was a “revision” of the
selection – in light of the chosen artists from the former GDR (Leipzig),
and with regard to the existing collection of video art and restoration
practices (Karlsruhe).
The attempt to exhibit early video art leads to another question of
preservation of time based artworks:

The question of experience and authenticity

In a way the notion of “work” and “original” stands against the

concept of “version” and “occurrence”. We are talking about the
ambivalence between the historicity of the work and the need for
protective processing to enable its adequate experience.
To give an example I want to mention two CD-ROM archives that
were also realized at ZKM by Dieter Daniels and Rudolf Frieling. The
first was “Media Art Action” and the other “Media Art Interaction”.
They were released on CD-ROM, designed to run on computers with
specific operating systems and programs. Nowadays these operating
systems are outdated and obsolete and only “historic” computers, at
least from the year 2000 are able to display the CD-ROMs properly. If
one tries to run the CD-ROMs on a current computer the speed would
be too fast and the menu wouldn’t be navigable anymore. To keep the
material accessible anyway, it was migrated and incorporated into the
follow-up project “MediaArtNet”7 which is an online project.

135
 Store, emulate, migrate, reinterpret are the catchphrases for the
preservation of media or time-based art. The Variable Media initiative8
appropriatly calls this process, in their 2003 publication, “Permanence
Through Change”9.
Or, to outline the field currently questioned by the Ludwig
Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research: “... how far [can] time based
projects be preserved not only as documentation but also as potential
for actual experience? Could an actualization, re-enactment, or
translation of the work to the contemporary context and technology
provide a more adequate experience of the work than the extensive
documentation of its historic presentation and reception contexts? How
do artists, curators, researchers, and archivists balance the quest for
historical authenticity and contemporary readability? Which role can
digital archives and platforms play within this context?”10
These are questions which are currently discussed by people who
have to handle time based art. Recently there was a conference on exactly
these topics in the frame of the re:place conference in Berlin organized
by LBI. And of course there is no general solution to these questions
but the attempt to find individual solutions for specific projects.
Another strong issue is the question of contextualization.
“There have been extended discussions about the information a
media art database should contain in order to provide thorough
information about often unstable and hybrid types of works. ...What
additional information is necessary in order to describe the socio-cultural
and institutional framework of art-production and presentation? Is it
useful to save and add as much further details as possible? Do we have
to make strict choices in order to avoid information excess? And if so,
what are the meaningful criteria? What different kinds of additional
information do exist, and what can we achieve by adding them to the
content of a media art database?”11
All these questions were also lively discussed when developing
MediaArtNet12.
Although this project is not meant to be an archive in terms of
collecting artworks but rather their depictions in documents and excerpts,

136
it deals with the question of contemporary re-presentation of time-based
art.
MediaArtNet is an online platform that tries to give an overview of
media art while using means of presentation adequate to the specific
source medium. MediaArtNet does not only offer information on
audio-visual material in text form, but presents them audio-visually if
possible. Again, the intention was to make resources of media art
accessible. During the process of development, endless questions about
the inner and outer structure of the project have arisen.
What is the focal point of the content? How can this be specified
and at the same time kept open for future expansions? This must be
taken into consideration already during the design of the interface or
the online appearance. So we decided to give space to future
amplifications in a very early state of the development.
What is the additional advantage of an online resource like
MediaArtNet?
It is not only the online accessibility and the attempt of a proper
way of representing media art. It also carries the potential of creating
additional content references. How can these cross-references be
generated and displayed? We decided to work with different layers of
information. A basic level is showing the scientific text of a specific
topic, and the other concentrates on the artwork and the artist, which is
linked to the text. These layers are displayed in different windows in
order to be able to get back to the base text as easy as possible. Thanks
to the fact that a database supplies the information at the work-artist
level, other connections can be originated from this context. Editorial
supervised links, as well as, automatically created semantic relations
can be placed. But the condition to achieve a function like the creation
of semantic relations is to have reasonable metadata of all the material
that you hold in the database. A useful balance between necessary and
unnecessary information has to be found. You can never be sure if a
future theme or chapter will not bring up a new keyword, item, or
technique you have to explicate.
Dealing with archives is acting within a paradox. It means to look
backwards and forwards simultaneously, and to transform in order to

137
Fig. 1. Screenshot of the welcome page of MediaArtNet with random image
from www.mediaartnet.org

Fig. 2. Cover of the book 40yearsvideoart.de - Digital Heritage: Video Art in

Germany from 1963 to the Present (Edt. Rudolf Frieling, Wulf Herzogenrath,
Ostfildern 2006)

138
maintain. It implies to be strict in order to keep a consistent structure
and to be flexible in order to adjust to future requirements at the same
time. The science-fiction author and founder of the Dead Media Project13
Bruce Sterling notes: “Curators, conservators, and archivists are much
closer to the future than most of us mortals. That’s because they store,
catalog and preserve - they physically touch - the objects of the past and
present that people in the future will see“.14

Notes
1 http://opac.ub.uni-weimar.de/DB=2.2/SET=1/TTL=1/START_WELCOME
2 http://www.40yearsvideoart.de
3 “Magnetic tape construction consists of a thin binder layer comprised of

iron oxide or metal particles that records the magnetic signal and is supported by a
thicker film backing or substrate. The magnetic layer (or top coat) consists of
magnetic particles suspended in a polymer binder. The binder holds the magnetic
particles in place, and binds them to the substrate layer. ... Degradation of the
binder occurs whether or not the tape has ever even been used or recorded on.
Normal humidity in the air seeps into the binder and weakens its physical
characteristics - a process known as hydrolysis (bad analogy, but much like soaking
the labels off of a glass bottle). When this occurs (it’s just a matter of time), the
binder delaminates from the substrate and turns into (for lack of a better technical
term) a gooey sticky mess. The phenomenon is known as ‘sticky-tape-syndrome’”
see: http://www.videointerchange.com/tape.htm
4 see: http://www.40jahrevideokunst.de/main.php?p=2&n1=5
5 for documentation of the symposium see: http://www.40jahrevideokunst.de/

main.php?p=2&n1=4
6 Rudolf Frieling at the symposium on 40yearsvideoart.de, see
documentation: http://www.40yearsvideoart.de/main.php?p=2&n1=4&n2=25
7 http://www.mediaartnet.org
8 http://variablemedia.net

(Founding Members of the Variable Media Network include Berkeley Art

Museum/Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley; Franklin Furnace, New York;
Guggenheim Museum, New York; Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science,
and Technology, Montreal; Performance Art Festival + Archives, Cleveland;
Rhizome.org, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis).
9
Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach, The Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and The Daniel Langlois Foundation for
Art, Science, and Technology, Montreal, 2003.

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 10 quoted from the conference program of Online Archives of Media Art:
http://media.lbg.ac.at/en/veranstaltungen.php?iMenuID=3&iEventID=91
11 ibid.
12 http://www.mediaartnet.org
13 http://www.deadmedia.org
14
Bruce Sterling: Digital Decay, in „Permanence Through Change: The
Variable Media Approach“, 2003, p.11.

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 MEDIARC – OPEN SOURCE MULTIUSER
CENTRAL ARCHIVING SYSTEM: WEB
APPLICATION FOR THE ELECTRONIC
MANAGEMENT OF DOCUMENTS AND OTHER
FILES

Peter Tomaž Dobrila, Uroš Indihar

Abstract

Mediarc (Media Archive) is an Open Source archiving system that

functions as a library of the list of files, into which we can enter new
contents and tables from a scanner or other peripheral units, digital
camera and digital video camera. It is aimed at various organisations,
institutions, foundations, small and medium sized enterprises, companies,
public and private legal bodies and individuals. Its applicability is very
wide, while it is a completely open system, which gives everybody an
opportunity to define his/hers files, subfiles and attributes according to
his/hers own needs and adapting to his/hers own activities.

1. Archiving As a Consequence of Celebration

KIBLA Association for Culture and Education (ACE KIBLA) has

been using and developing open source software from its very
beginnings, since its establishment in 1996. We have implemented
several projects that were based directly on open source systems, some
of them related to education and culture, and have developed a number

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of software solutions and system applications. The Kibla server system
and computer network, integrating the complete system of the Narodni
dom Maribor Cultural and Event Centre public institute, has also been
based on open source software and GNU/Linux operation system.
In 2006 at the occasion of 10th anniversary of Kibla Multimedia
Centre (MMC KIBLA) the webpage (URL: http://www.kibla.si/) has
been redesigned based on state-of-the-art standards and open source
software. This was followed by managing the exceptionally large, and
especially diverse archive, i.e. materials stored by Kibla. These are kept
in the form of various media, both analogue and digital, from newspaper
and magazine articles and clippings to music, VHS and beta video
cassettes, films, photographs, slides and in recent years predominantly
digital recordings, from photographs and mini DV cassettes to CD’s,
CD-ROM’s and DVD’s. In the past year after the webpage was
redesigned, a great deal of material was saved on Kibla server, which
made it available to public.

Figure 1: Mediarc – a screenshot displaying the range of possible selections

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 2. Archiving as a consequence of quantity

Considering the fact that archiving is one of the most current as

well as troublesome issues within the digital reality field, we have
decided to create software for archiving the materials owned by Kibla.
Archiving being the central topic of numerous debates and conferences,
and also being discussed in Slovenia at various levels, we are certain
that this solution can be a tool or the basis for developing such software.
It is primarily intended for public use by organisations and institutions
that wish for and need such software. However, they must also be able
to use it and integrate it in their operations, and their computing system
must be compatible with the applicative solution.

Figure 2: Mediarc – a screenshot displaying a range of possible inputs

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 The archive of Kibla, based on open source software, might present
an example of digital archiving, which is undoubtedly the easiest and
most economic way. Besides the high level of safety this method ensures
an integrated technical reliability of archiving and system stability, a
user-friendly updating process, as well as high public accessibility and
easy overview of the data.

3. Archiving as a consequence of ecology

Since no additional media are required, we can undoubtedly consider

this solution economical and particularly environmentally friendly. It
is also rational in terms of space and can be easily expanded with
additional system memory, peripheral units, or further developed, based
on current user experience, new findings, or the needs of both archivists
and computer experts.

Figure 3: Mediarc - a screenshot displaying showing possible ways entering data

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 Mediarc (Media archive) is an open source archiving system,
functioning as the file list library. New content and tables from the
scanner or other peripheral units can be entered, such as from the digital
or video cameras.

Figure 4: Mediarc - a screenshot displaying the list of possible data groups

When working with a scanner, the document to be saved must be

placed on it. The person scanning the file puts it in the common folder,
from where it is then processed by the media archive administrator,
who moves it into a specific folder from the folder list. So far the
subfolders foreseen within the list have been “Letters”, “Contracts”,
“Photo Album”, “Files”; and “Documents”. Additional subfolders with
new contents can be added to the list upon choice, existing subfolders
can be deleted if not related to the needs or definitions of the working
environment. The principle is the same for acquiring data through other
peripheral units (camera, video camera).

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 4. Order as consequence of archiving

Data is entered into Mediarc by title and that is how the software
arranges it. All the key data that is needed and indispensable in archiving
must be entered as well. For the section of “Letters” these are: the title,
address, date, place, number, and the subject, possibly also a comment
on what the letter is about. For “Contracts” these are all the information
about the contract, a numeric code, the contracting parties and legal
representatives, for “Documents” is necessary to include record and
fiscal data about a certain company and its status, such as the registration
and tax status, as well as the type of company, e.g. sole proprietor, limited
liability company, public company. The “Photo Album” requires the
address, place, time, author and a comment from which project or
program the photo originates and whom it is intended to. “Files” relate
to documents that are of key importance and historical significance in a
certain company, which includes statutes or rules of engagement,
registration, statistical classification etc.
For the purposes of each company or person, subfolders can be
created or deleted, and similarly the chosen attributes of each individual
subfolder can be added or removed. The program also enables arranging
and editing the submitted data, in case a mistake occurred or somebody
realized the archive would have been more transparent or accurate if
the data was defined and classified in another way.

Figure 5: Mediarc - a screenshot displaying possible document search

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 Mediarc also features an integrated search function. The name of
the document must be entered in the browser. If searching for all
documents related to one client, the chosen client must be clicked and
the program displays all the documents related to them – letters,
contracts, files, photographs etc. Even more, all the documents are linked,
meaning that letters are linked to contracts, files, photos, contracts to
letters, photos to files, files to contracts etc., which enables the user to
review the complete picture of a business, or project, as well, any
personal developments.

5. Archiving for all

The Mediarc open source multiuser archiving system is therefore

intended for a variety of organisations, institutions, foundations, small,
large and medium-sized companies and other corporate entities, public
and private legal entities as well as individuals. Its applicability is very
wide, one of its best features being the fact that the system is completely
open, enabling anybody to define its folders, subfolders and attributes
according to their own needs and adapt them to their own activities.
We are certain that this software solution by Kibla can be of great
help to everybody, also fuelling further discussion on how to deal with
archiving and particularly how to accomplish it. Unquestionably, it can
serve as an example based on direct user experience, as well as on its
technologically available and innovative open source solution. This
program is available to all potential users for free on the Kibla server.
It can be found on the Internet at: http://www.kibla.org/mediarc/

6. Archiving presents in public

Upon completion of the project, a public presentation was organised

in MMC KIBLA and KIT KIBLA Communication and Information
Point (URL: http://kit.kibla.si/), the latter featuring a multimedia
classroom to implement free computer education programs, courses
and workshops. We use it to inform the experts and the general public

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and integrate it in the program of KIBLIX IT, the Kibla festival related
to open source, as well as, program and system solutions, (URL: http:/
/www.kiblix.org/), organised in cooperation with LUGOS Linux Users
Group of Slovenia (URL: http://www.lugos.si/).
A presentation took place at the 14th Days of Slovenian Informatics
with the headline “With Informatics to New Business Opportunities”,
which took place from 11th to 13th April, 2007 at the Grand Hotel
Bernardin Congress Center in Portorož.
The open source archive was also presented at the conference Areas
of Conflu(x)ence - Art, space and technology in the digital era, panel;
Types of Memory, 4th October 2007, in the Romanian city of Sibiu
within the European Capital of Culture 2007 program.
The last presentation was organised in January 2008 in Ljubljana
as part of the SCCA symposium on Digital archives within a European
project supported by the e-ContentPlus program.

7. Archiving says thanks

To implement the open code archiving system, which is now

completed and available for use, KIBLA Association for Culture and
Education (ACE KIBLA) has received support from the Ministry of
Education, Science and Technology – Information Society Directorate
pertaining to the Open Source Based Software.

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 AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Tincuþa Heinzel (editor) is an artist, theoretician, and curator. After

studying visual arts at Arts and Design University Cluj and cultural
anthropology at Babes Bolyai University, Cluj, Tincuta Heinzel is currently
PhD candidate at Paris1 University Panthèon-Sorbonne under the direction
of Pierre-Damien Huyghe. She is the recipient of the French Government
Grant (2002-2003) and of the DAAD research grant (2005) at ZKM | Center
for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany. She initiated and coordinated the
„Areas of Conflu(x)ence” project organized as part of the program European
Capitals of Culture, Luxembourg - Sibiu in 2007.
Bogdan Ghiu is a philosopher and writer, poet, media analyst, and
professor at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters. He is the author
of several books of philosophy and media theory. He has translated Bataille,
Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Paul Veyne, Bergson, Duras, Sarah
Kofman, Artaud, Baudelaire, Leiris, Didier Anzieu, Louis Calaferte, Annie
Le Brun, in Romanian. Currently he is member of the Administration
Council of Romanian Society for Radio Communications. He is also a
contributor at Luceafarul and IDEA art + society magazine (Cluj Napoca).
Paolo Ferreira-Lopes is a composer and theoretician. He studied
composition in Lisabona (with Constança Capdeville), in Paris (with
Horacio Vaggione, Emmanuel Nunes, Antoine Bonnet and Curtis Roads)
and in Darmstadt (with Karlheinz Stockhausen). He is the recipient of the
French Government Grant (1996). He received his PhD from Paris VIII
University (2004). In 1997 Paolo Ferreira-Lopes was awarded the
composition prize at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany. Since 1998 he is
artist in residence and researcher at ZKM | Center for Art and Media,
Karlsruhe. Since 2004, he has been the director of CITAR - Research Center
for Science and Technology in Art and Professor at the Catholic University,
Porto.

149
 Woody Vasulka is an artist and curator. Together with Steina Vasulka
he began experimeting with video in the ’60s. Woody Vasulka studied metal
technology and hydraulic mechanics at the School of Engineering in Brno
and filmmaking at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He lives in
USA since 1965. In 1971, together with Andreas Mannik, Woody and Steina
Vasulka founded The Kitchen, a non-profit interdisciplinary organization.
He taught at the Center for Media Studies at the New York State University.
After working with the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor, in 1976 Vasulka
collaborated with Don MacArthur and Jeffrey Schier to build a computer
controlled personal imaging facility called The Digital Image Articulator.
He received the American Film Institute “Maya Deren Award” in 1992
and the Siemens Media Art Prize in 1995.
Augustin Ioan is an Associate Professor at the University of
Architecture and Planning in Bucharest, Romania. Holding a MSArch
degree (with honors) from the University of Cincinnati, OH (1994), the
author also has two PhD degrees in History of Architecture (1998) and
Philosophy (2002). He has published extensively in Romania, Hungary,
and the US, where his latest book, Sacred Space (2002), appeared at the
same time he was winning the competition for the Orthodox Patriarchal
Cathedral back home. Former senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of
Cincinnati, OH, Augustin Ioan is currently Head of School of Advanced
Studies at the University of Architecture and Planning in Bucharest.
Sophie Fetro graduated from Ecole Supérieure de Cachan, France in
the “Art and Industrial Creation” department. Sophie Fetro is a teacher of
applied arts and PhD candidate at Paris1 University Panthèon-Sorbonne.
She participated in “Le Temps des Appareils” seminar coordinated by
Pierre-Damien Huyghe and earned accolades at the fifth edition of the
Design Biennial, Saint-Etienne in 2006.
Gemma San Cornelio is a lecturer at the Communication Department
at Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain). She holds a PhD in
Audio-visual Communication (2003) and a degree in Fine Arts (1999) by
Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). Currently, she coordinates a
research project focused on contemporary art practices related to new media,
funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
(HUM2006-02317). Her last publications are: ”Locative Media and art
practice: explorations on the ground”  Artnodes (2008) and Arte e identidad
en Internet (Barcelona, 2008).
Pau Alsina is a philosopher, lecturer in the Department of Arts and
Humanities at University Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, and researcher

150
at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute - IN3. He is the director of Artnodes,
an e-journal promoted by the University Oberta de Catalunya which
analyses the intersection between art, science and technology.
www.artnodes.org.
Anne-Marie Duguet is a professor at Paris1 University
Panthèon-Sorbonne and Professor/Researcher at the iCinema Research
Center, University of New South Wales, Sydney. She is the Director of
Centre de Recherche en Esthétique du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel
(CRECA), and the author of several books (Vidéo, La mémoire au Poing,
Jean-Christophe Averty) and articles about television, video and new
technologies. Published in 2002, her most recent book is titled Déjouer
l’image: créations électroniques et numériques.
She has also curated exhibitions like: “Jean-Christophe Averty collages/
découpages“ - Espace Electra (Paris, 1991) and “Thierry Kuntzel“ - Galerie
Nationale du Jeu de Paume (Paris, 1993). She is Editor in Chief of the
“Anarchive” DVD series, which provides a comprehensive record of the
works of Muntadas, Michael Snow, Nam June Paik, Thierry Kuntzel among
others.
Heike Helfert is a cultural scientist working in the field of media art.
During the last few years she has worked for institutions like Expo2000,
Edith Russ Site for Media Art, ZKM | Center for Art and Media and the
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. For the ZKM she worked
on mediaartnet.org and 40yearsvideoart.de.
Peter Tomaž Dobrila is an electronic and IT engineer and a musician
who focuses on the creative use of the new technologies. In 1996 he
co-founded the Multimedia Centre KiberSRCeLab – KIBLA (MMC
KIBLA), Maribor, Slovenia. Two years later he co-founded the Association
for Culture and Education KIBLA (ACE KIBLA) and became its president.
He managed MMC KIBLA and ACE KIBLA until 2004. Since then he
has participated in numerous congresses and conventions on Internet and
multimedia and information culture. During 2005-2007, Peter Tomaz
Dobrila has worked intensively in the New Media Art filed; being adviser
for many ART festivals (Ars electronica festival 2005, 2007), actively
participating in EVA (Electronic Imaging the Visual Arts & Beyond) and
Echilot Conference in Moscow. He acts as consultant and advisor in cultural
matters and is a fellow of the European Academy for Digital Media
(EADIM).
Uroš Indihar is a system administrator and IT supervisor at KIBLA –
Association for Culture and Education, Maribor, Slovenia.

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 CONTENTS

Introduction – TINCUÞA HEINZEL ........................................................ 5

CHAPTER I. Types of Imagery and Sound and Their Interaction ...... 15

- Imperceptible, Hyperceptible: the New Hodological Condition -
BOGDAN GHIU. ................................................................................... 15
- Video – Between Utopia and History. Interview with Woody
Vasulka. – TINCUÞA HEINZEL. .......................................................... 29
- A Gnosseological Approach of the Concept of Interaction. Real Time in
Music – Several Paradigms and Models. - PAULO FERREIRA -LOPES. 45

CHAPTER II. Spatial Forms. .................................................................. 57

- Digital Surrealities. Design and Architecture: Arts of f[r]iction - SOPHIE
FETRO. .................................................................................................. 57
- Experiment in Romanian Architecture - AUGUSTIN IOAN. ................ 73
- On flows, places and spaces: towards a framework for Locative Media
Artworks - GEMMA SAN CORNELIO and PAU ALSINA. ................. 99

CHAPTER III. Types of Memory. ........................................................... 123

- Anarchive (Digital Archives on Contemporary Art) - ANNE-MARIE
DUGUET. .............................................................................................. 123
- Search and Repair. Digital Heritage and Time Based Art. -
HEIKE HELFERT. ................................................................................. 131
- MEDIARC – Open Source Multiuser Central Archiving System:
Web Application for the Electronic Management of Documents and Other
Files - PETER TOMAŽ DOBRILA and UROŠ INDIHAR. .................. 141

Authors’ biographies ................................................................................... 149

152