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Going to the Country
An outgoing to the hinterland in search of simplicity, a one-day excursion designed to get the Festival's activities off the beaten track and onto a path less surfed as a way of seeing things in a productive new light
The trend towards simplicity is reflected not only in information technology and design; it’s also manifested by an ever-more-fervent longing for tranquility amidst the commotion all around us and an often cliché-ridden conception of the simple life. Back to nature, the new spirituality, and buzzwords like “cocooning” and “neo-Biedermeier” are examples of people’s efforts to demarcate realms for a retreat inwards. In order to investigate these aspects of simplicity—including the contradictions inherent in them—Ars Electronica will be going on a retreat of its own and moving the Festival for a day to St. Florian, a baroque monastery near Linz.
The choice of this location alludes to the Baroque as metaphor of the interplay between simplicity and complexity. This is simplicity as manifestation of “focusing on the essentials,” the connotations of which range across a spectrum extending from spirituality to design; at the same time, it is simplicity’s implicit effort to recognize the “essence” of things, to establish its place in a grand order, and—as J. S. Bach did in music—to endow it with an algorithmic form. Here, simplicity is one of the two sides of a single coin.
The baroque splendor of the St. Florian Monastery of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, a center of religiosity and spirituality since the 4th century, will serve as both venue and resource conducive to fruitful experience. This abbey is an amplifier and catalyst of the complex interrelationship between the simple and the simplistic, and the unfolding of what turns out to be their manifold, multidimensional facets. A program tightly scheduled with attractive options means that attendees will constantly be called upon to make decisions about where to concentrate their energies, but also makes it possible to switch back and forth between lineups of activities running parallel. The aim is to split up the interpretational pattern of the theme’s juxtaposed conceptual pair in the manner of a kaleidoscope and to keep it in motion—through programmatic linkups, cross-positionings, parallel channelings, diametrical oppositions, concrete and associative references; in the form of musical presentations and performances in which the collegiate church’s spectacular organ encounters contemporary electronic sounds; in settings including speeches, workshops, installations, projections and readings, as well as during excursions through the monastery’s historical strata and spiritual realms, tours of the organ builder’s workshop, and even an introduction to the art of origami.
Music and Sound
The musical lineup will be dominated by the monastery’s grandiose organ, the so-called Bruckner Organ. This monumentally resonant instrument with its 7,386 pipes is both the point of departure of a musical journey and itself an impressive symbol of the Festival theme. This is an instrument that produces sound in a way that is as simple as can be—a current of air is passed over a sharp edge and is thus made to vibrate—and yet its complexity has led it to be crowned the “Queen of Instruments” whose modular mode of construction anticipated that of the modern synthesizer. In collaboration with monastery organist Robert Kovács, two of the leading protagonists of the Spire collective, Mike Harding and Charles Matthews, have put together an itinerary of musical time travel that begins at the roots of organ music (Robertsbridge Codex from 1335) and culminates in the digital loops and tonal transformations of Christian Fennez.
In between, there’ll be sound installations—for example, Norwegian artist Leif Inge’s granular synthesis that extends J. S. Bach’s famed Toccata and Fugue in D minor to over 200 minutes.
The Marble Hall with its powerfully vibrant acoustics is a most impressive venue in which to see and hear Scapha, a sound sculpture by Hilke Fährmann and Jürgen Schneider.
The 14 strings of this 10-meter-long instrument generate tonal strata that come across as just as archaic as they are seemingly orchestral. The way music resonates in the Marble Hall and the length of time it reverberates there mean that each note can consummately unfold.
Viennese digital composer Rupert Huber will also take advantage of the harmonic resonant space of the 15-meter-high Marble Hall for his piano improvisations.
This journey through musical history will then proceed to the monastery basilica’s crypt for a sampling of the Gregorian vocal artistry of Wiener Wiener Choralschola under the direction of Robert Kovács.
The minimalism of the Gregorian chant enters into a dialog with the sound poetry that Charles Amirkhanian has selected for the sound installations in the monastery’s long ambulatories.
One of the monastery’s most fascinating features is its set of chimes, eight bells precisely tuned to the C major scale, which will ring out this Festival day with a composition by Michael Nyman. Then, it’s back to the monastery basilica for the big Spire concert (organ & electronics) that will conclude our 10-hour journey through the history of music and sound art.
Theory and Discourse
In accordance with the multifarious aspects of the Festival theme, the discursive program elements are dispersed. Lecture-presentations, round-tables, and demos take place in many instances simultaneously at different locations. You have to make a choice.
The Panel Discussions
John Maeda & Friends (Olga Goriunova, Jason Kottke, Burak Arikan)
How a new generation of designers is dealing with the growing
complexity of our world.
Wolfgang Blau (journalist), Oliviero Toscani (artist) and
Donatella della Ratta (media researcher)
How pressure exerted by the mass media to simplify messages
is ruining politics and democracy.
Thomas Macho (cultural theoretician), Peter Wippermann (trend spotter/analyst)
and a representative of the canons of St. Augustine
How the wish for deceleration and simplification is manifesting
itself in commerce, culture and religion.
Bill Buxton (Microsoft Research), Bernd Wiemann (Vodaphone Research),
Marko Ahtisaari (Nokia Design Strategy).
How software developers, hardware producers and service providers
are trying to create user-oriented technologies.
Lecture Performances
Tmema featuring Erkki Huhtamo
This lecture performance brings together interactive visuals & sound performances and media archeology, and builds an artistic bridge to the speeches by the interface designers.
A Journey into Sound Poetry
Charles Amirkhanian conducts his audience through more than 50 years of
artistic work with voice and language as tonal and musical material, and
presents the works he has selected for the sound installation in the
monastery’s ambulatories.
Inside—Toshio Iwai
One of the most interesting personalities in interactive media art today is Toshio Iwai, a native of Japan and this year’s Ars Electronica featured artist. His career path, philosophy and works will be the focus of a two-hour presentation including some demos and a live performance.
SemaSpace—Gerhard Dirmoser
The systems analyst and tireless
producer of gargantuan semantic networks dealing with media
art themes presents a huge archive installation in the monastery library and elaborates on the analyses and principles of depiction.
The Readings
No condensed rundowns, no abstracts, no executive summaries—what you’ll get are texts the way they were written, word for word. You can spend the entire day listening in the monastery’s impressive baroque library. Texts are by Paul Virilio and St. Augustine. An added highlight: the premiere of John Maeda’s new book The Laws of Simplicity.
The Aesthetics of Complexity
Perusing the collections of minerals, fossils and paintings assembled during the Baroque Period makes it clear to visitors that the age-old human compulsion to put things in order, to order the insights into those things, and to arrive at new insights as a result of this ordering is a strategy of simplicity, a sort of cognitive ergonomics whose aesthetic ideal is to be found in the fields of mathematics and theoretical physics in the concept of symmetry—that the way of the world is most probably the way of theoretical consistency.
It is into this centuries-old setting that we are implanting the media of our age—semantic network visualizations, generative computer graphics and digital worlds of sound. This is a correspondence whose purportedly diametrical oppositions refer to precisely that which they have in common.
Soundpoetry in the monastery’s ambulatories, a sound installation by Rupert Huber in the Prelate’s Garden, visualizations of digital data and networks by Nomadix, Ben Fry, Lia and others in the Baroque Gallery.
Contemplation
Meditation in the quiescence of the crypt and garden conversations with the fratres of the monastery.
Workshops and Exercises
Origami intro class, Arduino—open hardware, archery, organ-building workshop, as well as tours through the monastery grounds (crypt and vaults, library, Imperial Room, organ, set of chimes).
The Location: The St. Florian Monastery of
The Canons Regular of St. Augustine
The grave of Florian (who died a martyr in 304) became a place of Christian pilgrimage that gradually developed into an abbey-like settlement. The remains of walls under the collegiate church date back to the 4th century. The first documentary mention of the monastery's existence was in the 8th century, when it was severely damaged by raiding Avars and Magyars. In 1071, Bischop Altmann of Passau reformed monastic life there and restored the church and the other buildings. Provost David Fuhrmann (1667 – 1689) initiated a comprehensive reconstruction of the entire complex. This ambitious project lasted 66 years and was completed in 1751.
The St. Florian Monastery is one of Austria’s most impressive works of baroque architecture. It is a consummate, harmonious baroque ensemble in which each successive master-builder left a trace of his own inimitable personal style.
The Monastery Library
St. Florian’s library is one of the oldest and most impressive monastery libraries in Austria. Its holdings total approximately 150,000 volumes, of which 108,000 (60,000 titles) were printed prior to 1900. Of these, 952 titles (1.6%) are incunabula, 35,443 titles (59.2%) stem from the 16th–18th centuries, and 23,493 (39.2%) from the 19th century. The approximately 800 medieval manuscripts are the monastery’s most valuable treasures. In 1930, St. Florian acquired the estate of Viennese orientalist Rudolf Geyer (1861 – 1929). Even twenty years later, Geyer’s holdings were still regarded as the greatest collection of Arabic literature between Rome and Berlin. To date, only about a third of Geyer's books have been catalogued.
The “Bruckner Organ”
The instrument was constructed by Slovenian organ builder Franz Xaver Krismann (1726 – 1795) under Provost Matthäus Gogl between 1770 and 1774. With 74 registers (including several duplex ranks of pipes) distributed over three keyboards, it was a monumental piece of work in its day. Until 1886, it was the largest organ in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Over the years, it has been structurally altered and enlarged many times.
Following restoration in 1994 – 96 by the Kögler Company, Upper Austrian organ builders, the instrument was upgraded with an electrical power supply for the organ’s action and a completely new console with an electronic system of presets (4 x 640 combinations, a floppy-disk-drive memory unit and a device for automatic playback via magnetic tape). Today, the organ is set up with 7,386 pipes divided into seven departments, and has 103 registers.
Sets of Chimes Installed in the Year 2000
A unique feature of the monastery’s basilica is its set of chimes acquired at the turn of the millennium. The tones of the heavy-ribbed bells radiate an unexpected sonority and warmth. The chimes include all eight notes of the C major scale. Their precise ringing characteristics and exacting internal harmonies make possible a huge number of combinations.
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