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FREEMOTE Festival has arrived! Five days of electronic arts and co-creation, a 4000 m2 stage for contemporary creative communities and enlightened souls. Installations, exhibitions, AV performances and masterclasses; all come together during this shared exposure event in a former railway warehouse. We encounter numerous crossovers, in which art, technology, media, performance and science have joined forces.This is new media art, where traditional boundaries have seized to exist, and imagination is the only threshold to a world unknown. With all senses heightened in euphoria, 'experience' is the only verb that counts.One would think...
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Traditional paintings and Dutch Delftware are firmly embedded within an art-historical context, as they have been studied for decades and therefore given (cultural) meaning in the whole. We've created typologies for art, based on the material that has been used, the techniques that have been applied. Painting, sculpture and photography -for example- are characterized as being different art forms, nodes of expression with their own systemtatic allocation of value. Even though crossovers did actually exist, the system of typologies took care of them.
However, new media art has blurred these boundaries in full. Interactive installations are both analog and digital (if we could even distinguish these domains to begin with). And how do characteristics of photography differ from those of 3d-modelling in a digital age? -
We often find that any traditional typology has difficulties in describing what the art object actually is. The computer is no medium in itself, rather it represents all kinds of different media in a new mode of perception. And with feedback loops and different kinds of 'interactivity', new relationships with the surrounding world are established.
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$Value == ?But instead of pondering too much about the questions raised, we're interested in a cultural consequence: if we have trouble looking at new media art from an art-historical perspective, how then do we determine its value? Because value is always a matter of institutionalized context and tradition. Cultural value, that is. There's also cash value (largely based upon cultural value, but also determined by the materials and techniques one uses, expensive hardware for example). And last -but maybe of true importance- there is personal, emotional value. Let us not forget, art is here to stir our feelings; to enchant or disguist, to comfort or disrupt.Dutch television hosts a popular show that runs for many years now: Tussen Kunst & Kitsch (overseas known as 'The Antiques Roadshow'). In this show, guests enter the stage with a piece of art they've brought along (heritage, or perhaps found at a jumble sale). After they share a personal story, experts from within the field judge it for their cultural value and determine its insured value. Then the camera zooms in on the guest, to capture his every moment of joyful surprise or utter disappointment. SETUP thinks the time has come to take this tv format for a spin: let's try to value media art in a similar way. New media art; what's it worth?This is 'Tussen Kunst & Glitch', the antiques roadshow goes digital.
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The impossible gone possibleDuring FREEMOTE, numerous art works are exhibited by their creators. However, no one dares to ask what it's worth: it's a somewhat forbidden question, as all artists and visitors are here mainly to experiment with new techniques, in which the act itself might be more important than the actual outcome. However, these works are addressed and exhibited as being art, so let's try to value them in a similar sense. Just to find out if it's possible at all."Valuing media art? But... how? I wouldn't even know where to begin, that's somewhat impossible!"Exactly. That's why.
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(FREEMOTE is all about taking initiative, that's why we love this video. After reading about our event, Mourad Bahrouch took effort to create this. Amazing! Go check out his work at mouradbahrouch.com, it's awesome!)
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On the air in 3, 2, ...We've created this whole studio setting, a television scenery with conversation table, multiple rolling cameras and an audience. In advance, we saw a performance of Mariska de Groot, whose soundscape attracted many curious visitors passing by and made the crowd turn silent in amazement. Mariska creates instruments, installations and performances in which the visual aspect of sound generation becomes visible. She demonstrated 'BMP/BPM~Light Synth', an optical sound project based on the discovery that form and light produce sound. This invention actually dates back to the early 1920s, but was never this visible to the user. Here we have a perfect example of a modern art piece that's rooted in a -hidden- historical tradition.A more than perfect starting point for our show.
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"I'm an outsider, a layman. I'm probably the only person here who doesn't really understand of all this technology". Our host Erwin Wieringa -known for his talent to bridge gaps between people- starts out with a personal story. "I brought a picture I like." Holding a painting with some horses, he explains how this piece got intertwined with memories of his parents. "An expert would say this isn't real art; to me it's worth a million." With this anecdote Erwin points out our main question: what is 'value' in the arts?
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In conversationThe following contains some highlights of all conversations (the full video registration will be online soon).Valued: Light SynthFor Mariska's 'Light Synth', American (new media) art historian Edward Shanken sheds some light on the history of optical sound synthesizers. These objects -being machines- are based on a similar technique of producing sound (although Mariska's machine does process information digitally). However, comparing them proves quite a challenge, as the machine is not the art object in itself. In Mariska's case, the performance as a whole (including elements of light and staging) could be considered art, in which the machine has become a tool to pursue this experience.In addition, Edward points out that contemporary art museums often struggle to preserve these arts, being unable to display the 'original' whole (if any, considering any performance could slightly differ). Therefore, due to the complexitity of what art actually 'is', determining its value is extremely hard. "It's definitely worth something", is as close as we get.
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Valued: Spatial SoundsIn preparation for the conversation between conceptualist Taco Stolk and Edward Shanken, SETUP drove to Rotterdam and collected a 4 meter long piece of the art work itself. We're talking about 'Spatials Sounds (100dB at 100km/h)' by Marnix de Nijs and Edwin van der Heide. Like a watchdog, this machine scans the surrounding space for visitors and reacts by swinging its rotating arm with tremendous force and loudness. Taco: "I love this, because most installations are all about the cognitive process within the viewer, or all about the state of technology. This work is less controlled, more alive on a very animal level."In return, Shanken informs us about a much older, similar work. 'The Senster', one of the first computer controlled interactive robotic works of art, made by Edward Ihnatowicz in 1970 (commissioned by Philips, Eindhoven).
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Looking back, The Senster is a very unanimated, static object. "It used to be a hallmark, a vision of the future." While technology develops, previous technological art works 'devaluate' within decades, in a sense that is unknown to traditional fine arts (Taco: "If Spatial Sounds is animal like, isn't it allowed to die?"). According to Shanken, market value has to be a combination of production costs and how the artists ouvre is valued in general. Spatial Sounds is -roughly- estimated between 50.000-100.000 Euro.
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“Vanavond ben ik wild-eyed boy bij Freemote (Utrecht), item over Virtual Boy /w @YoJaviSan tijdens de Antiques Roadshow: http://freemote.nl/program
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Valued: Virtual BoyTheorist/critic/journalist Javier Sancho brought forward the 'Virtual Boy', to discuss it with journalist and game expert Niels 't Hooft. In advance, Niels wrote an article about it ('A magnificent failure', check it out in the box below). Virtual Boy is a video game console, made by Nintendo. As a head-mounted display, it -attempted- to create an immersive experience through the illusion of depth. "The beauty of it, is that this is not just a crazy art object in a museum; it's actually a mass product, about a million were made." From the general accepted idea that VR would become the next best thing, Nintendo tried to remain ahead of competition and actually released it.Virtual Boy can be considered 'art', as it represents a widespread belief about what the future would hold: expectations about VR were way ahead of what it would become. However, twenty years later it is approximately 200 dollar, "So I already have a 30 dollar return of investment."
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Valued: Alt-30On behalf of Studio L-F, game designer Mark de Vreede talked about Alt-30, a Kinect-based projection on the floor that thrives on the playfulness and curiosity of visitors passing by. When standing in reach, this work connect all participants by drawing triangles and generating an audiovisual experience. In conversation with choreographer Bianca van Dillen, there is some discussion about what it 'is'. Bianca: "It does require understanding to play this game." Mark: "I wouldn't call it a game, it's more like an 'experience'." When Bianca askes if it could become art one day, Mark replied "Isn't it?" He elaborated -somewhat ironically- "If it will be featured in a museum one day, then I guess it's art. That's the rule." From her experience working with dancers, Bianca advises to look more closely to how people put this to use, how they're moving around all over the floor, interacting with it.
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Understanding"These conversations show that there's so much more we need to learn about making sense of media art. There's so much more to it than I knew!"'The Antiques Roadshow goes Digital' has put forward some really interesting notions and insights. We saw that it's hard to determine what the actual work 'is', considering it's often no longer just 'the object' on its own. In (de)valuating these works, we also need to understand how we look at 'aging' technology. Does ancient technology decreases value, and if so, in what kind of way? When does a new media art work become an icon?
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With this live show, we've tried to open up a discussion about media art's value. Even though we couldn't always reach for the 'cash value', it did provide us with insights of how we could determine somewhat of a valuation. And in addition, it has given us some wonderful, personal stories to cherish. We would love to hear how you value this event; comments can be put on our website or uttered in the social media surrounding us.
After Erwin Wieringa provided us with some closing statements, all could gather for a performance of Tarik Barri. While he took us for an amazing flight through his audiovisual universe, I couldn't help but wondering... "How would I value this work?" -
We like to thank Dr. Edward Shanken, Mariska de Groot, Bianca Stigter, Bianca van Dillen, Javier Sancho, Niels 't Hooft, Mark de Vreede and of course Erwin Wieringa for their performance in our show.Thanks for watching, and a goodnight to you all.
Report: The Antiques Roadshow Goes Digital
Thursday, 8th of December 2011, FREEMOTE Festival (NUtrecht). Text: Frank-Jan van Lunteren (@fjvanlunteren), Photos: Dongwei Su (@dngwsu)
