INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Benjamin Britton, you are professor of electronic arts at the University of Cincinnati.
What does electronic art mean for you?
Answer
Electronic art means to me the creation of new art material, new projects using the tools
of electronics. In other words, it could be video, it could be, well, anything made with
electricity. There's a fun word called electrosphere, and it means the world of ideas and
imagination that is contained and stored or transmitted with anything to do with
electricity. So electronic arts is transmitting ideas, communicating, creating new art
using the tools of electronics.
Question2
You have reproduced in virtual reality the prehistoric Lascaux Cave with all the paintings
inside. Why did you choose to do this?
Answer
Well, in 1990 I felt it would be important and necessary for our time to connect our
tradition today to the traditions of humankind through all ages, from the most distant
past to the distant future. So I wanted to recreate a paleolithic sanctuary in order to
bring people into an understanding of what we share - values, ideas, techniques - with the
people of all time, to understand that our culture is a part of this human tradition. I
decided to do the cave of Lascaux because it's the most beautiful and it's the most famous
and well-known of the caves. And in order to activate the imagination of the public I
wanted to bring them into the piece through a means that they would know and understand.
And Lascaux is so familiar, so gorgeous that, there's no better cave in the world.
Question 3
How long did the work take and how is it possible to see it now?
Answer
Virtual reality would be the best technical solution. So I've worked now for five years
and I'm happy to say that the project has already been installed in Korea at the
International Biennale. We have two virtual reality stations there, eight video
projectors, 35 video monitors, a gallery filled with light and colors and sound, over two
million visitors. I showed the project in Paris for one week in a show called "Voyage
virtuel" and I just had a great time because it was a chance to show the project to
the public in France and I was very gratified by the presentation at the gallery. They did
a wonderful job and I was able to talk with the public all day for a week. So the project
has been premiered but there are certain little refinements and details that I want to
complete. In the spring I will be doing the US premier. I'll show it at the Contemporary
Art Center in Cincinnati for 8 weeks and I hope also to show it again many times in Europe
and my long-term hope for the project is that we can find a permanent home for it
somewhere in France.
Question 4
But I know that the real Lascaux cave is sometimes closed to the public because the
visitors can provoke damage to the paintings. So in the future will the historical memory
be virtual?
Answer
You know there's a magnificent replica of Lascaux down the hillside about 100 yards away.
And for those who really must see the cave, a poet who knows that they must receive the
inspiration that only the cave can bring, a researcher into hydrology or geology who needs
to understand something, it's possible. The conservator is there and he can make
arrangements, he can bring you for an exceptional visit. But it is closed for casual
visits. The question of will the cultural memory be virtual, that I think is a fascinating
question and really it cuts to the very essence of some of the questions that we've been
dealing with today, questions of ontology versus realism, the idea versus the fact. And I
believe personally that to be real, something has to have a virtual aspect and a physical
aspect, and when it has both of these things, then it becomes real. Then it must be
remembered and then it becomes real. Only when it's remembered then it becomes real. So,
now, how do we know of Lascaux now? We maybe never have seen an installation because of
books, photographs, you know, a magnificent work, so my hope is that I can add to the
oeuvre, that collection of information about this absolute illusion, which is what Lascaux
really is. This fact, this existence of a world underground where images of animals run
together on the walls of the cave.
Question 5
But Lascaux is not only a reproduction of reality, it's an interpretation. And visiting
the cave is an interactive experience.
Answer
Yes, indeed. The question of interactivity and artistic interpretation is an extremely
important one when we speak of the participation of people today in the presentation to
the public of elements of our cultural heritage. There is a myth of objectivity which is
impossible to absolutely obtain. You cannot be objective. We are mortal human beings, we
have a sense of perceptions that are limited. Therefore, when we give to the world our
best intentions to create an absolute verisimilitude, some standard of scientific
accuracy, we can only attain it more or less but never absolutely. And so we're left with
a representation that we can pretend or we can claim is true. I swear to God it looks like
that. Or we can accept and understand and communicate that this is an illusion, that this
is a representation, that this is an interpretation. And then we can use that as a
compositional tool to participate in the cultural tradition itself and thereby bring the
tradition to life. And that is the purpose and the reason for some of the interactive
elements in Lascaux.I'll tell a little story. There's a table which rises through the
waves in the water in the virtual cave. Why is the table there? Well, sadly to say, a
gentleman, one of the discoverers of the cave, recently passed away but he was the
guardian of the cave for many years and it happened that despite rules and regulations
against this kind of thing on occasion, special occasions only, they would have very
elegant, formal dinner parties in the cave. People from the village would visit the cave
and they would come together as a community, they would share in the repast and they would
experience the space and commune with the space, so this is people coming together and
that's what the reason for the table is. It's allegorical, it's a little bit historical;
it's really about people coming together, that's what the whole cave is about. With these
new technologies it is possible to create a new form of communication and perhaps to
extend our means of communication today.
Question 6
Are you involved in any new projects now?
Answer
That cave has been such a fulfilling thing to work on. There's no words for me to tell how
deeply I enjoyed creating this project and I'm a little sad that I'm so close to
completion. Although sometimes I look at it and I say, I could work the rest of my life on
this. Certainly the people who painted the original worked so long to do magnificent work
in there. But the public needs the project to come into the world and I am close to the
point now where my work will be done and it will be time to hand it off for permanent
display. I want to listen to the public, I want to study the responses of the public, to
listen to what is the spirit of our time today in 1995 as we begin approaching 1996 and
then perhaps a new artistic project will formulate itself in my mind. For the moment, my
work involves completing this cave and assisting researchers in France in the
reconstruction of another paleolithic sanctuary called the Cosquer cave discovered by
Enrique Cosquer underwater off the coast of Marseille and impossible to visit, obviously,
which needs to be shared with the public and so through virtual reality that becomes
possible. So my hope is that from the grace of their having helped me to create the
Lascaux project I can return the assistance by helping them develop tools for the
production of virtual reality projects for their scientific work. And perhaps the Cosquer
cave will be less personal because my personality is very much in the Lascaux project. And
with the Cosquer cave I've simply wanted to assist the scientists. I want to transmit the
knowledge, diffuse the capacity to create virtual reality to them and help them get that
project done. For myself, I have no idea what the next Benjamin project will be. I don't
know yet.
Question 7
Can you tell us something about artificial intelligence?
Answer
I spoke with Marvin Minsky when I was at Disneyworld about AI and I said, Professor
Minsky, I am embarrassed because when I talk to my students about AI, I don't know what
the difference is between real AI and the kind of AI that I do, which is just sort of like
making the machines imitate intelligence, so with the real definition. And he turned to me
over his scampi and he said, No one rules. And he explained to me that it doesn't matter.
As long as you're doing something, you can call it whatever you want. There's no
definition for it. So what it is, is a method of making something seem as though the
computer is alive, that it's intelligent, that it's responding to you. So from that I
decided to take the road less travelled. There's a beautiful poem by Robert Frost which
describes the need for us to do that. So everyone else is researching AI and so I decided
to go a different route and strive to create artificial stupidity. And I discovered that
events like to cluster themselves. I built a project with every intent to have no
intention, and at every juncture where I decided that I was composing a piece I would step
back and say, Well, I'll just do it, I won't figure out how. And I found from all of that
that it clustered itself into pieces and the pieces would be connected by thin little
threads and then there would be clumps like that. Events like to cluster but they like to
be strung together. And that is what I have found through artificial stupidity. I'm quite
amazed, but it's true.
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