Media-Scape in Novigrad / Cittanova

 

Symposium, Workshops, Presentations, Screenings, Exhibitions

 

2006 "Per(mutations)" Part I

2007 "Per(mutations)" Part II

2008 "Per(mutations)" Part III

2009" Per(mutations)" Part IV

By expanding its scope onto the field of the city architecture Novigrad-Cittanova, a small but old town in Istria, serve as a good example for discussions about and the production of art works (workshops, lectures, screenings, exhibition, performances) that examine the influences of new architectonic developments in the old city centre. These works of art will aim to confront such developments with the critical points of view of the artists.

"per (mutations)"

The present-day digital era created the technical preconditions for the conception, editing, archiving and the output of hitherto separate areas of artistic production on the basis of a common code. Artistic goals are always positioned at the limits of available technologies. The boundaries of the possible have grown significantly wider, placing the longing for the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art, into focus again. On the other hand, the perils of arbitrariness are lurking, of linking of everything with everything else, of the "white noise", the senselessness of the information overflow. But also new ways of discourse, of work and interaction, already announced years ago by the media enthusiasts, appear at the horizon. Crossover art forms are emerging.

Secret channels have always existed between the spheres of visual art, technical innovations and experimental music. Though the forms of expression seem to differ at first sight, they represent variations of the reflection on one and the same reality. Synaesthesiae, relations between the media, have always interested scientists and artists, and numerous attempts were undertaken in the early years of the past century to couple various media - like at the Bauhaus stage. Movements in the visual arts, such as the Fluxus, the happening and the expanded cinema in the sixties, experimented with new approaches. Combinations of images and music have become very popular at the latest with the appearance of music videos at the beginning of the eighties - putting the question of their meaning aside for the moment. History does not pass us without leaving a trace: "all that emerges (is) a part of the social process of life, the consequence of certain facts, which then influences the emerging intentions. Based on the emerging, an ideology is created, a certain way of looking at things, an interpretation and a relation which in turn influence the emerging" (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy).

Parallel views were expressed also in the field of music. As Arnold Schönberg put it in a letter to his publisher Hertzka concerning the planned filming of his musical drama The Lucky Hand: "Just as music never drags a meaning around with it, at least not in the form in which it manifests itself, even though meaning is inherent to its essence, so too this should simply be like sounds for the eye, and as far as I am concerned everyone should think or feel something similar to what he thinks or feels while hearing music."

The turbulences created since the dynamisation of music 100 years ago still resonate today. It will be interesting to observe how the images and the sounds of the future will slowly turn from a closed unity to modular parameters, which the viewer/user may manage and freely manipulate. In the future audiovisual data will certainly not contain and transfer the entire information but only its definitions, vectors and coordinates, which will again be converted to images and sounds with the help of a processor. But hold on! Does this not sound as a comprehensive notation for some future optophonetics?

Heiko Daxl / Ingeborg Fülepp