EXPERIMENTA: where creativity and technology meet

What are the issues that will be delighting and troubling artists and cultural activists working in media arts culture in the next 100 years?

It is hard not to let millennium panic and fervour pass us by without adding a spanner much less a spectacle to the works. In November 1999, Experimenta Media Arts presented MANIFESTO, a salute to new possibilities within Australian and International media arts culture and a celebration of the artworks and artists that have shaped the 20th Century.

MANIFESTO surveyed the legacy of 20th Century experimental film, video and digital media practice by launching a time capsule to the end of the 21st century.

Chromacodes - Steven Ball
Pure Folly - Steven Fallens
Contact - Mark O'Rourke

> View Manifesto

CD-ROM Exhibition
Arts Victoria Foyer Gallery:
Strange Cities (CD-ROM, Australia, 1998)
by Tatiana Pentes

Through the disclosure of evidence, Sacha dreams, discovers, remembers the exilic identity of her grandparents Xenia and Sergei Ermolaeff (a composer and orchestra leader) in fragments and traces of their music, memories, personal effects and photographs, in their struggle to survive the Russian and Chinese Communist Revolutions. The inspiration for the work is a tune of the same name - a musical illustration, an imaginary vision of old Shanghai, Chinese metropolis and International Settlement, conjuring mythic, filmic, musical and personal images of the city port.

CD-ROM Exhibition
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
The Good Cook (CD-ROM, Australia, 1998)
by Michael Buckley

Join the Cook in a night of ëInsomniaí and watch the phantoms of his past parade by. This is a random work but it does have an ending at 5am. "The end of the night is a little forest of up-turned chairs."

CD-ROM Exhibition
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Strange Cities (CD-ROM, Australia, 1998)
by Tatiana Pentes

CD-ROM Exhibition
Arts Victoria Foyer Gallery:
Voyageur (CD-ROM, Australia, 1997)
by Diana Janicki

Voyageur is built on the idea of colour as a metaphor for life, and takes you on a journey through the three primary colours. Follow the meanderings of a child that can only see in black and white and resensitise her to the symbology, mythology, and spirituality of colour. Transform her vision and yours in the process. Oh and just enjoy.

Gillian Dyson is an artist with an international reputation for her performance and video work. Gillian will present an outline of her work with Hull Time Based Arts in the UK, discuss current developments in UK funding, the cultural context of HTBAís projects and the impact of co-operative arts organisation. She will also reflect on her own art practice which explores issues of site, audience, gendered space and bodies.

On-line Exhibition
www.experimenta.org
Agenda by Mez (1999, Australia)
12 April - 14 May

CD-ROM Exhibition
Arts Victoria Foyer Gallery:
Creator (CD-ROM, Australia, 1997)
by Stellah de Ville

Creator explores elemental landscapes, playing with the idea of alchemy to effect change on the various environments. In many cultures there is a belief that the world was formed by the union between a serpent and an egg, symbols that are similar in form to the zygote and ovum that are part of our own creation. Within Creator the definitions between the Macro and the Micro become blurred... I present things in this way as a means of articulating the notion that everything in the universe is made up of the same elements ... everything is part of everything else.

Digital networks are not only opening the world of communications but also configuring global communities into those that are information rich and information poor. What is being done to alleviate this dichotomy and how does DIY media activism compete or challenge technological paradigms of power?

Speakers include:
Cameron Goold (IndigiNet Multimedia Services)
Bruce Shearer (Policy Researcher Communications Law Centre)
Paula Sheldrake (GreenNet)

CD-ROM Exhibition
Arts Victoria Foyer Gallery:
GOGZI (CD-ROM, Australia, 1998)
by Moira Corby

GOGZI invites the user to build their ideal female self, exploring the way history, mythology and media structure the representation of women. After constructing a face, pseudo identikit style, the user is launched into a variety of worlds which recreate physical aspects of the body. These include fairy stories such as Cinderella and ideas on plastic surgery and theories of the mutable body envelope. The interface design guides the user in and out of zones of familiarity with his/her own body. This leads to the construction of a wild assembly of body parts which can be printed or used as a digital avatar for representation on the Web.

CD-ROM Exhibition
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Voyageur (CD-ROM, Australia, 1997)
by Diana Janicki

Immersion (multi-channel surround sound screening event)
Curated by Philip Samartzis
Cinemedia Treasury Theatre
Curated by Philip Samartzis

Immersion is a multi-channel surround sound event. The program consists of three sound performances based on the presentation of compositions encoded with Dolby surround sound and presented within a multi-channel Cinema environment. The three performances comprise of 18 specially commissioned works gathering a broad spectrum of composers who are equally concerned with the spatialisation of sound as they are with form, structure and tonality.

Artists in the program include: Anne-Sophie Brabant (France); Dave Brown (Australia); Philip Brophy (Australia); Tim Catlin (Australia); Thomas Cousiner (France); Bernhard Guntler (Germany); Alan Lamb (Australia); Bernard Parmegiani (France); Arno Peeters (The Netherlands); Paul Schultze (Australia); Jennifer Sochackyj (Australia); Line Tjornhoj-Thomsen (Denmark ); Darrin Verhagen (Australia); Hildegard Westerkamp (Canada) and Christian Zanesi (France).

On-line Exhibition
www.experimenta.org
Banarama 2000
by Tracey Benson (Australia 1999)

Banarama 2000 is a portrait of a nation giddy with expectation for the 2000 Olympics. Made as an animated gif of 10-15 frames, the work is a short but powerful narrative description of this widely anticipated event.

Big Banana Time Inc. is an ongoing site-specific body of work dedicated to exploring the vital role of cultural tourism to the Australian economy.

This is achieved by utilising the vast number of 'Big Things' such as the Big Pineapple, the Big Banana and the Big Cow as the primary subject for this playful look at Australia's cultural condition.

Agender promotes, dissects and convolutes armies of genderfic[a]tions and socialisations known to those of us of the fair-err or mean-err sex [& those who dwell in between].

Select a playa or a vict.him or her, add a touch[e] of variables & a relevant situations and see wot transpires..

This work is inspired by the artist's observations of life in tidal rockpools and the various survival strategies evolved by its colonists.

The online site is an interpretation of nature's minutiae, singularities and iterations against the universality of events.

Dodgem
A driveable surround-sound space from Martine Corompt and Philip Samartzis (Australia).

Dodg'em is an irresistible collaboration between installation artist Martine Corompt and sound artist Philip Samartzis, featured two adult sized pedal cars in an invisible sonic landscape. Participants are invited to drive themselves around the "empty" gallery space, triggering a spatial soundscape of an unseen terrain as they go. As drivers negotiate the sonically suggested obstacles they can map out a mental construction of the spatial landscape, and are able to anticipate through memory the various peculiar characteristics of this invisible realm.

Some of the most innovative performance projects at the threshold of the next century incorporates a fusion of technologies and attitude within one piece. Where is this dynamic area of performance heading and what are the implications of this interdisciplinary arts practice?

Speakers include:
Rose Myers (Artistic Director, Arena Theatre Company)
Peter Eckersall (Performer and Lecturer, VCA)
John Power (Artists and Lecturer, AIM Centre, RMIT)

Wonderlust is a journey of pixillated worlds, dilapidated houses, art world fantasies gone wrong, visionary London bus trips, American anti soaps, European road jaunts and surreal romps by naked men. A program of recent film and video from major screen artists from the US, Germany, Norway, Canada, Australia and the UK, Wonderlust explores life at home (when your house falls down) what it is like to be half donkey/half man, persecuted and with a bad hair style. A travelogue with attitude, this international fest of visionary cinema moves from the rural and domestic to the abstract and philosophical netherworld of wanderlust.

Hus
Directed by Inger Lise Hansen
video, colour, sound, 7.30mins, 1998, Norway/US

Donkeyhead
Directed by Andrew Kotting and Andrew Lindsay
video, colour, sound, 4mins, 1998, UK

Bridge of Hesitation
Directed by Alan Schacher and Gravity Feed
video, colour, sound, 5mins, 1997, AUSTRALIA

Drive all your cares away
Directed by Honey Brothers
video, colour, sound, 7mins, 1998, UK

All Smiles and Sadness
Directed by Annie McGuire
video, B/W, sound, 7 mins, 1999, US

Cosmos
Directed by Saskia Olde Wolbers
video, colour, sound, 5.30mins, 1998, UK

Time Passes
Directed by Nelson Henricks
video, B/W, sound, 6.30mins, 1998, CANADA

Ship of Fools
Directed by Tony Allard
video, colour, sound, 18mins, 1998, US

23 (BO)
Directed by Oliver Blomeier and Marco Olbrich
video, colour, sound, 4.30mins, 1997, GERMANY

The work in this program is distributed by The Lux - Centre for Film, Video and Digital Arts

The Witching Hour features a selection of recent Australian experimental films, video and digital media works that are concerned with an abstract and morphed cinema and the materiality of film. This program profiles work by major Australian artists who experiment with film and digital media and by filmmakers who are concerned with examining the world through an obscure lens. The Witching Hour contains alchemical delights by internationally renowned figures of Australian experimental cinema and performance such as Paul Winkler, Marcus Bergner and Margie Medlin and the acclaimed digital media activists, retArded Eye.

Angledozer
Directed by Marcus Bergner
16mm, colour, sound, 16mins, 1997, VIC

Minds Eye
Directed by Gregory Godhard
16mm, colour, sound, 5 mins, 1998, NSW

Trick or Treat
Directed by Ian Haig
Video, colour, sound, 1.40mins, 1998, VIC

Superpermanence
Directed by retArded Eye
Video, b/w & colour, sound, 5 mins, 1997, WA

At Five In The Afternoon
Directed by Lee Smith
Super 8, colour, sound, 13 mins, VIC

Mobility In An Artificial City
Directed by Margie Medlin
BetaSP video, B/W, sound, B/W, 26 mins, VIC

Cheap Blonde
Directed by Janet Merewether
16mm, colour, sound, 1998, 5 mins, NSW

The concept for this project was formulated during one of their trips taking photos of the city at night. Many of the street signs were open to reinterpretation and could be used as an indictment of life in the nineties.

Tamara and Mailinh studied together and completed the Electronic Design and Interactive Media course at RMIT in 1998.

For their final year research they embarked on a joint multimedia project called 'Transgression'. This was exhibited in the E-Media CD-ROM gallery at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in May 1999.

(co-presented with Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)
Australian Centre of Contemporary Art
Dallas Brookes Drive, South Yarra

'25 Songs' is a collaborative project involving Melbourne-based Swiss artist Joe Felber working with Melbourne dancer and choreographer Lucy Guerin and Sydney composer Elliott Gyger. The starting point is Ad Reinhardt's Black Paintings, the undifferentiated monochromes from the 50s, alongside which Reinhardt made his infamous statements about the definition of art. Felber, Gyger and Guerin each respond in their own way to

visual art, music and dance. Together they build a faceted, complex picture of the core themes in Reinhardt's work - 'negation', 'nothingness' and 'transcendence' - as they apply to all the arts.

Baudrillard told us that the Gulf War didnít happen and yet Baghdad was bombed again in 1998 and 1999. More recently digital technologies have contributed to defence and information provision strategies to all sides of the Balkans War. So how does the simulation culture of cyber war and virtual reality transform our belief of what is real and what is fiction?

speakers:
Dr Robert Rowe (Multimedia Developer, Telstra Research Laboratories)
Dr Alan Dorin (Electronic Artist/Lecturer, Monash University)
Dr Matthew Warren (Department of Computers and Mathematics, Deakin University)
Presented as part of the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts