TRANZISTOR
The Center for Drama Art in Zagreb invites you to a talk:
27.11.2007, Tuesday at 19:00
net.culture club MaMa, Preradovićeva 18, Zagreb
Martin Breindl / alien productions /
On Sharing Control
The production of art with media has changed completely within the last 10 years. The big high-end studio, with all its expensive technical gadgetry and therefore hierarchic structure, is out. Now, the small artist's studio or even the living room serves as space for the production of art and – as e.g. in the case of net.art – sometimes also as the stage of performance. A new type of artist has emerged, largely as a result of the new (and affordable) technological developments: the “producer”. As if it were the most natural thing in the world s/he works on ideas, contents, structures and forms in a way that we could hardly imagine till now.
Work in non-hierarchic structures and dynamic systems demands new ways of acting, new ways of looking on things. We have to skip many common features of our weltanschauung and develop new ones. One of the crucial abilities to step further will be: sharing control.
Art with media is too complex for a solo-artist – this fading reverberance of a 19th century conception – to handle alone. Thus, we have learned to co-operate with others (artists, technicians, scientists among others). Quickly, we have learned that mere delegating does not lead us far. Hierarchic systems have given way to ad-hoc-collaborations, interest groups, networking, and horizontal models. We have learned, too, that it is possible to create open structures within a project for active creative interaction by the audience without losing the idea or concept. Accepting this is not so easy, because basically all participants have equal rights in non-hierarchic structures: artists, users and machines.
Accepting machines as partners in a team-working process, not as mere executive tools, is another step. This doesn’t mean a glorification of man-like robots either. It means to accept machines as parts of the whole dynamic organism, together with their imperfectness, their bugs and their handicaps. Collaboration between machines and us means sometimes to share control with them. This kind of communication means that sometimes we are the listeners and sometimes the machines are.
For the last 15 years the artists of alien productions have initiated, produced and participated in numerous net.art-projects, thus exploring the fields of communicative and collaborative practice. On the other hand they have developped installations and -performances creating new ways of interaction between human, machine and environment by the use of sophisticated interface-technology. alien productions’ works are attempts to actively shape our mediated environment by the means of art, as well as mirrors of the radical changes of the relationship between humans and technology.
alien productions – in 1997 alien productions was founded by media artists Andrea SODOMKA (A), Martin BREINDL (A), Norbert MATH (I) and August BLACK (USA) as an artist's network for theory and aesthetics of new technology and media. They all - either separately or together or in co-operation with other artists - have worked in the realms of technological art since 1985, Andrea Sodomka and Martin Breindl work together since 1987. The range of their works includes intermedia-performance and -installation, electronic music, net.art, radio art, sound art, interactives, video, visual arts and artistic photography. They realised projects on the occasion of many festivals, symposia, exhibitions and concerts in Austria, Bosnia, Canada, Columbia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the USA.
alien productions stand especially for co-operative projects with other artists, technicians, theorists and scientists. alien productions are not a group of artists in a classic sense, but an open network of creative power, where specialists of different provenance work in an interdisciplinary way. alien productions make public appearances in changing constellations.
The basic artistic team now is formed by Martin Breindl, Norbert Math and Andrea Sodomka.
*
Tranzistor researches the intersections of sound art in new media practice, radio play in the context of contemporary theater and radio documentary feature in today's culture of mediation, technological advance and intensive communication.
Contact: ivana [at] culturalkapital [dot] org
Tranzistor is supported by The Ministry of Culture, Republic of Croatia.
top