www.aec.at  
 
 
 
 
Stahl Stenslie: Interactive Art Jury Member

During the last years, interactive art has gained increased acceptance and institutionalisation in academia and research. Last year's Prix Ars Electronica jury found that many art works by younger artists seemed to follow certain common solutions of how to design an interface and how to relate images and sounds to interactivity. Do you share this view?

Stahl Stenslie: Every generation makes its own revolution. It doesn’t start by inventing the wheel a second time. The way we (read: the media-dinosaurs ) gloriously approached interactive art in the nineties is now passé. Both from a technological and cultural perspective we are now quite somewhere else. Unfortunately our understanding of field of computer-based, interactive art has to a certain extent stiffened. That’s why we see a lot of standardised solutions and second-wheelers. It also might be that we, spoiled by the technohype, hope for the right things from the wrong direction. We shouldn’t. The establishment of the digital happened in the 90ies and the old-new-media are now behind us.

The new pioneers are moving on into the uneasy and emotionally loaded Post-Digital decade. Currently we’re in a deadlock where the pre-digital art is rendered powerless but the digital art is established, absorbed by society and therefore made weak. So, what happens now? In my opinion the next revolution will be less about technology, and more about culture. What do we really want from the techno-arts? Do we really want it at all? Does – or can - it empower us? The new Post-Digital media art gets new conceptual power by liberating itself from the "digitalism": the rigid digital thinking. Not that we will ever leave the digital domain. It has become a part of reality, but if you still hail it you’re a fool. If you fight it you’re a coward. The best solution to the current boredom of media arts is to challenge our established notions - and change them.

Take Muhammad Atta. He has been called the worlds greatest video-artist. This is debatable, but not that he has, and still is causing a lot of media-art dealing with art-after-the-accident. The problem - that also Stockhausen commented - is that none of these meta-pieces will ever come close to exerting a similar impression on the world. As gruesome as it might sound, being a media-artist after Atta means also coming to terms with media-technologies far less empowering than the immense impact of the post-digital, human-technology that his action signified.

I’m not too worried about the future of art + technology. The currently uneasy phase is fundamentally creative – simply because it keeps us hungry, watchful and on the move. We are now entering a zone for a new sensitivity. It’s experienced on the backdrop of past code-cold media, mirroring the new needs, hopes and actions experienced in a world ruled by conflicts, failed New Economies and ill-fated globalism.

You are noted as one of the fathers of Cybersex, but it seems that others fields are much more attractive now. Has cybersex lost ist sex appeal? Which are the main trends in interactivity now?

Stahl Stenslie: My cybersex projects were really early prototypes on tele-tactile communication systems. We still can’t experience such installations except inside the relatively protected media-art scene. Therefore, except for the few thousand participants of cyberSM, we’ve never had real teledildonic cybersex. Spoiled by the immediacy, simplicity and cleanliness of sex-chatting there hasn’t yet been a real need to expand bandwidth towards multisensory telecommunication. And, as McLuhan said, "cold media" (small bandwidth) can be all the more fascinating simply because it allows us to fill the information gap with fantasies ... Therefore we have to ask ourselves if high-bandwidth, multisensory interactivity is something we want?

In reality I don’t think we have a choice. In not too long, tactile cybersex will be a standard option. And as a part of a much more complex palette of interactive options. If we see the nineties as the completion of the information society, we’re now well into the communication society. The next phase could be the emotional society (ref. the Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies). Not because we get so egocentric, but because the coming generations of technology (3G and onwards) will allow for the wireless Internet - everywhere and at low costs (ok, that’s a long term scenario). Physically locating the user by network tracking combined with GPS will increasingly allow for personified technology. The network will know where you are, who you are and what you need. It will be like the individualized commercials of “Minority Report” combining your virtual credit-card personality with your real craving flesh. It won’t function because of retinal scanning, but because you walk around like a cyborg of smart, wearable technologies.

Our de facto marriage to the chip will increasingly become event and experienced based. We are then likely to see a renaissance of physical location technologies combined with physical stimulus of sensor / sensitivity suits. Right now I could weave you a wireless, sensory underwear with 256 haptic effectors. Ever imagined to feel your lover's path? Or physically code urban space? If not cybersex, we’ll definitely see a lot of physical graffiti). And we’ll be one step closer to the vision of The World as Interface.

And what if you don’t want it? You’ll learn to love it.

You are working on cognition and perception manipulative projects, spezializing in multi-sensorial interfaces. Can you explain the main focus of your work?

Stahl Stenslie: Art can be understood as a manipulation of our perception of reality. In this context my work deals with psycho-physical maniplulation, that is it deals with the modeling of sensorial data through psychic and physic mise-en-scène: Different stimulations are used to provoke special moods and experiences in the spectator / user. The experiences made in these manipulative spaces are not "natural", but stimulated and modeled by media. Tele-tactile sensations – as with cybersex – are one example, multisensorial environment and communication systems as in my project Erotogod are another example.


Which criteria must be fulfilled by a project worth of a Golden Nica in the category of Interactive Art?

Stahl Stenslie: With the recent culture-technological changes in mind, I think that the phenomenons of artistic energy and expressive power has become more important. To cite the Bataille monument by Hirschhorn "Energie - Ja, Qualität – Nein". This statement represents in itself a quality, but it has foremostly a cultural and creative liberating importance. Formal demands and aspects of Media Art more often than not put the spontaneous creative down. Away with that. For the sake of freshness, it’s sometime necessary to play it wild.

On the other hand, technological superiority will always be important. But, in a world where artistic media tools have became cheap and standardized, it is no more the main-measure for being the best.

Personally I’ll be looking for visionary projects with a double-edged function as cultural weapons. That is, projects that change the way we see and experience this world. Let there be interactivity! Empowerment! And by any media necessary.



© Ars Electronica Linz GmbH, info@aec.at