www.aec.at  
 
 
 
 
Statement of the Interactive Art Jury

It didn't prove to be easy to identify the three winners among the final selection of work but after extended discussion we decided to give the awards to the following three projects:


Blast Theory, Can you see me now? (Golden Nica)
Blast Theory's mobile game Can you see me now? may still capture only the humble beginnings of what our networked future will look like but it points to a new era of interaction in an inventive way that raises profound questions about embodiment. Unfolding both in the physical and virtual world, the game essentially takes the form of a chase where online players navigate their avatar through the streets of a city map in order to escape from "runners" in the physical city who are hunting them. The runners – equipped with a handheld computer-cum-GPS tracker that sends their position to online players via a wireless network – attempt to "catch" the online players whose position is in turn sent to the runners' computers. The virtual players can send text messages to each other and receive a live audio stream from the runners' walkie talkies. The game is over when the runners "sight" their virtual opponents and shoot a photo of them (which obviously just captures empty space). While the technologies could be implemented in a more fluid and seamless way (the military is using more advanced equipment), the game achieves a noteworthy level of merging and collapsing physical and virtual space. Compared to predecessors such as Botfighters – which relied on mobile phones and SMS messaging to create a shooter game played in the virtual and physical world – Can you see me now? succeeds in exploring the issue of "presence" in a more substantial and inventive way. Artistic experiments in telepresence have mostly focused on the fusion of images from remote places in a new, virtual "image place" or on remote interventions in physical space through robotic devices. Blast Theory's project operates on the boundaries of telepresence and -absence: through networking, absence creates a presence in its own right that is absurdly documented in the sightings photos. Photography, an established mode of technological representation, becomes obsolete in the face of a presence – consisting of virtual movements – that leaves no physical trace. As its title indicates, the project questions the very process of seeing itself, suggesting a form of perception independent of embodiment. At a time where GPS technology and "networked cells" are mostly associated with destructive or negative potential (surveillance, war machinery, terrorism), Blast Theory emphasizes the creative possibilities of the human and technological network.

Maywa Denki, Tsukuba Series - Award of Distinction
With their Tsukuba Series, the "art unit" Maywa Denki – led by "president" Nobumichi Tosa – has taken experiments with electro-mechanical musical instruments to new levels. The Tsukuba Series consists of approximately two dozen instruments or musical devices that are played mechanically or computer-controlled through motors and electromagnets. The highly original instruments are the result of a unique combination of invention and craft and include devices such as "electric mallets" as a base unit used in various configurations; a remote-controlled pedal organ (with a built-in 100V controller) that plays six guitars at the same time; a saxophone-shaped Yankee horn built from bikers' klaxons that produce sounds on 6 scales accompanied by lights blinking on each blow; or an electric "music saw" that is shaped and operated like a bow. The Tsukuba Series stands in the tradition of both George Antheil's Ballet mécanique (1924) – which was performed by traditional instruments in combination with 16 player pianos, electric bells, a siren and different-sized airplane propellers – and the work of Seattle-based sound sculptor and composer Trimpin who has been interfacing computers with traditional musical instruments. Maywa Denki have extended the concept of electro-mechanical instruments into wearable configurations and live performance and developed considerable talent at performing their instruments in contexts ranging from pop to avant-garde. They are at the crest of a developing trend to augment live performers with robots or robotic extensions in order to replace "preformatted" speaker systems. Maywa Denki succeeded in transforming what could essentially be considered "folk art" into a pop-cultural movement that treats creative work as "product" and encompasses anything from videos to nonsensical machines and toys.

Margarete Jahrmann / Max Moswitzer, nybble-engine-toolZ - Award of Distinction
http://www.climax.at

Billing itself as a "radical meta-art system shooter" and "collaborative statement tool," Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer's nybble-engine-toolZ explores very different forms of interaction to the other two winners. The project may be more of a deliberately abstruse experiment than a transparent implementation of a tool – it doesn't conceal its self-ironic attitude – but investigates important aspects of networked, open systems and real-time programming tools. Referring to the nybble (half a byte, or four bits) as a basis of digital conversion and software logic, nybble-engine-toolZ is a peer-to-peer server network and modification of the Unreal game engine that self-reflexively constructs the game itself out of network processes. Players may log on to the engine from various locations – including the installation, a 180 degree circular screen – to navigate the environment, meet other players and bots (in this case, representations of server processes) and communicate with them. Shots fired in the environment generate anti-war mails or calls for peace to a government server; pressing buttons on the gamepad sends ping commands to government servers. The log files produced by the network traffic itself and data on the hard disk (text, images and sound) become raw material for 3D "movies" out of which the game environment itself is constructed. The environment thus consists of real-time network activities. As a conceptual proposal, nybble-engine-toolZ raises important issues about generative art, the possibilities of software and engines as tools. Game engines are arguably one of the most important (and underexplored) generators of narrative in the broadest sense. Jahrmann / Moswitzer's project opens up the engine – as a tool and algorithmic framework for handling the "mechanics" of game playing – and makes it reflective of the process of playing itself. nybble-engine-toolZ points to the possibilities of game playing as editing of code and rewriting of the very tool that creates the game in an open collaborative system.



© Ars Electronica Linz GmbH, info@aec.at