You call it art, we call it independence -
The work of Manu Luksch and
- AmbientTV.net from cross-media to cross-reality.
Business or Art? Many groups that may be seen as part of the TAKEOVER phenomenon tend to leave such categories behind and replace the distinction with the more important question of independence. Manu Luksch – the Austrian-raised and London-based founder of Ambient Information Systems Ltd (AIS) with headquarters in London and projects from Latvia to China – also rather describes her company in less corporate terms: “It is a tool, it can function as a company, as infrastructure, as an umbrella name for a group of people - which is not a consistent group of people-, it functions more like a plug-in system for people coming to work together on projects.”
AIS was set up as “production nest”, “action lab” and “think tank” in 1999 and brings together a group of streaming media producers, software and communication technology developers, arts and media professionals, who are exploring the potential and impact of convergence on emerging new film-, TV- and broadband genres. They are making use of a variety of formats such as iTV, documentary online, webcasts, interactive story telling, online games, events, etc.
Manu Luksch – who directed a number of documentary films and worked as artistic director of the Media Lab Munich – “chose the word “television” for AmbientTV, because it is this existing space between film and internet. It did not have this heavy connotation of everything that comes with a film production and it was not just this type of text-based internet.”
The cross-media project VIRTUAL BORDERS in 2000 dealt with the 3 million Akha and Hani people, who are spread across the borders of five national territories: China PDR, Laos PDR, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma (Myanmar). It is an example of a careful combination of different media in order to serve various groups of users and audiences: FM radio was used to reach the Akha people. To reach an audience which is still to be introduced to the subject matter, they relied on the engaging powers of linear film in the form of digital video. To make specific information and discourse accessible to an informed global niche audience, they published all materials online. To inspire 'modern' Akha to explore the internet as one potential tool to stay networked in times of their fading oral tradition, they initiated the first Akha-run website, www.hani-akha.org.
The notion of cross-media remains important for the work of AmbientTV.net, while they are shifting gradually towards what they call “cross-reality”, a shift also influenced by the work of Ilze Black who with her background in event culture joined Luksch in the core team of AmbientTV.net. Luksch explains the shift with a certain feeling of stagnation within pure media projects: “The projects have always been about exploiting cross-media and the net was just one media of many. Recently we are emphasizing on cross-reality: we want to combine the media realities with the real world realities. There is more and more an event character attached to the projects. I started questioning this idea of media-based work which then exists only in media. I just found my limits there, also conceptually. I had to avoid a “media loop” within media. I also felt at a point, that there is still so much generated here in the physical space and people experience this type of world and then it is maybe documented or re-purposed online. Which is a bit of a fake, it is not really an enrichment to add a space to the real space and then just mirror ideas or re-sell them. I was much more interested in creating ideas in a space which underlies different rules from that realworld space, and then to bring them back to the real world – finding out if it is an enrichment.”
In the spring of 2001 they produced “AmbientTV for Hotels” for an art exhibition “Please Disturb Me” at the Great Eastern Hotel in London, where they developed “Broadbandit Highway”, a self-generative road-movie, by linking hotel television with live webcams from the Internet. This provided a seamless transition between the private room of the international traveller and the intimate uncanny encounter with people and places from around the world. AmbientTV for Hotels abandons the conventional dramaturgy of television narratives and contributes to the atmosphere of the physical space. It is becoming part of the environment and is not confined to the screen, since, in ambient, there is no beginning and no end, it functions as extension of the room.
The idea of independence in its various aspects and concepts of “collaborative content filtering” and the importance of “peer-to-peer networking” run through the work of AmbientTV.net and are articulated in projects as the “broadband talks”, which they currently prepare. In their description of the intentions of the “broadband talks” Armin Medosch and Manu Luksch recently touched upon issues of curatorship and the roles of art institutions, that also have an impact in the TAKOVER topic: “Curatorship could, in such an environment, be replaced by new ways of collaborative content filtering. So far, this has been done mainly with text-based content and in a few cases with audio. Collaborative working and discursive practices could not be only led in written text but in audio and video and in real time. It is important to point out that the fears of the cultural conservative elite that such new media would be the end of many things, would, for example, abolish authorship and the artistic 'original' do not really apply; but new ways of assuring 'quality', deciding what constitutes 'meaning' and how to select and financially remunerate work will have to emerge.
It is important to discuss which roles art institutions will play in such an increasingly decentralised cultural environment. Last not least 'context systems' - so far provided mostly by relatively alternative artistic and cultural initiatives - will increasingly be provided by mainstream media agencies. Public Television Corporations throughout Europe are preparing to bring their audio-visual archives online. Highly relevant socio-political and - cultural historic programmes might become available for everyone from everywhere. “
Manu Luksch will also participate in the cultural channel of radioqualia and radioFRO at Ars Electronica 2001.
Sie nennen es Kunst, wir nennen es Unabhängigkeit - Die Arbeit von Manu Luksch und AmbientTV.net von cross-media zu cross-reality.
Ist es nun Geschäft oder Kunst? Viele Gruppen, die als Teil des TAKEOVER Phänomens angesehen werden können, lassen solche Kategorien gerne hinter sich und ersetzen derartige Unterscheidungen durch wichtigere Fragen wie die nach ihrer Unabhängigkeit. Manu Luksch – die in Österreich aufgewachsene und in London tätige Gründerin von Ambient Information Systems Ltd (AIS) – beschreibt ihr Unternehmen lieber als 'Werkzeug, es kann als Unternehmen dienen, als Infrastruktur, als Dachmarke für eine – nicht konsistente – Gruppe von Leuten, es funktioniert eher als Plug-In-System für Leute, die sich zusammenfinden, um gemeinsam an Projekten zu arbeiten!.
AIS wurde 1999 gegründet und bringt Produzenten von Streaming Media, Entwickler von Software und Kommunikationstechnologie sowie Kunst- und MedienexpertInnen zusammen, die das Potenzial und die Auswirkungen der Konvergenz auf neu entstehende Genres in Film, TV und Breitband untersuchen.
Manu Luksch – die bei einer Reihe von Dokumentarfilmen Regie geführt hat und künstlerische Leiterin des Media Lab München tätig war – zeichnete 2000 auch für Konzept und Regie des Cross-Media-Projektes Virtual Borders verantwortlich, das den in Südostasien lebenden Völkern der Akha und Hani gewidmet war und die Medien Radio, Film und Internet nutzte, um verschiedene Zielgruppen zu erreichen bzw. den Akha diese Medien zugänglich zu machen.
AmbientTV entwickelt sich aktuell von „Cross Media“ zu einem als „Cross Reality“ bezeichneten Arbeitsansatz weiter, der eine Stagnation bei reinen Medienprojekten überwinden soll und für bestimmte Medien entwickelte Inhalte aus dem „Medienraum“ in den realen Raum bringt. Ein Beispiel für diese Strategie ist das Projekt Please disturb me, bei dem im Frühjahr 2001 erstmals „AmbientTV for Hotels“ eingesetzt wurde, das die konventionellen Erzählformen des Fernsehens hinter sich lässt und zur Atmosphäre des realen Raumes beiträgt.
Konzepte der Unabhängigkeit und sogenanntes „kollaboratives Filtern von Content“ und die Bedeutung von Peer-to-Peer Netzwerken werden auch in den in Vorbereitung befindlichen „broadband talks“ verfolgt.
Manu Luksch nimmt im Rahmen des Kulturkanals von radioqualia und radioFRO am Festival Ars Electronica 2001 teil.
