INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Technological progress has always implied an innovation in the traditional forms of
artistic expression. What is the future of artistic languages in relation to new
technology and new media?
Answer
I think the first point that you mentioned is the notion of expression. I'm not
sure if artistic experience has to deal in the first instance with what you call
expression. I think you have to deal with a kind of image which you articulate or in which
you articulate your experience, your sight of the world. And I think art becomes more
conceptual, more constructive on that technical or technological level. I think expression
is what you have as an individual. Artists are individuals and they will always be
individuals as long as we have that social institution of art, which means that artists
work through their own experiences. If they use technological apparatus and media or not
or low media or high developed media, that is not the main point to regard, i.e. what is
art or not art. I think artistic expression has to do with some kind of what we call
enigma. It is an enigmatic point you have, that things seem to be strange and you have to
propose your own view in that kind of context and environment, which seems to be strange,
on a social level, on a technological level, on a scientific level. And you have to speak
in your own language as an artist. I think artists use some kind of new technology because
they are interested in the kind of apparatus and the work in that context of let's say
human labour and human experience. Artists have something against the hegemonic use of
technology. That is, they want to subvert this kind of power into an anarchistic point of
view which allows them to speak in their own language and they have to develop that
language. And I think that the point of using new technologies is that this is an
important influence on the language you can use when you articulate yourself. It has to do
with the crisis of traditional images. It's interesting in some notion like time,
time-developed images, sequences in which you can articulate new experiences. But
experiences are individual and they remain so far or so long as artists use that instance
of articulating that kind of language in society. That means art is some kind of social
communication which has to deal with that unknown place of new forms of communication and
then also new expression, but it's not a point of expression you observe. You have to
express what you think is the logic of the possibility of having machines and the
interface between that kind of machine and human beings.
Question 2
These days we often talk about new technological means as extensions of human being. On
the contrary, in the past, new machines were considered as extensions of human body. What
do you think about these two different ways of considering the relationship between man
and machine?
Answer
I think at first sight what you call human being deals with the brain. That is, I think
it's a metaphor to deal with technologies or new technologies as an extension of the
brain, because I know some of the new theories in neurolinguistics and neuromedicine.
There isn't anyone who can explain how the individual brain functions. I think there are
good reasons to acknowledge that the individual brain is more complex and more dense than
any simulation within the context of new technology. And, therefore, I think it's a pure
metaphor, it's a dream which has to do with some obsession with transcendence, which in a
Christian, perhaps logical, sense means that you want to leave your body. All the
discussion about extension of the brain has to do with some really bad feelings which
people have inside their own bodies. They want to be pure brain. What does that mean? They
want to be immortal. They don't want to die. The Web, international or universal or global
Net is some kind of hatred against that death of the body. I think that you don't have any
empirical reasons to say that the Internet or computers can really replace or extend
something of the human brain when you know that in science nobody can explain what an
image really is, how language really functions, how the synapses and the neural network
within an individual brain work. The theory frames are changing, but you do not really
impact on the issue when you say: OK that is the brain. It works like that and we can
simulate that. Try to simulate the brain and then you see that you have the capacity in
the apparatus to simulate only elementary stuff of what the individual brain does. What
I'm saying now is not in defence of individualism or untouchable insightedness of human
beings, but I think the problems are much wider than you can imagine, let's say,
contemporary, everyday communication about new sciences, which are some kind of poetics in
my opinion and are not hard science anymore. That is another problem because scientists
have to earn their money and they are looking for the nearest connection to artists
because artists make crazy things and scientists also want to do crazy things and they are
much better in consulting poetics than hard science. Let's say: OK we do not know how it
works.
Question 3
So do you think that machines are only an extension of the human body?
Answer
I'm not even sure about that. For me artificial intelligence always has or was a synonym
of social co-operation. Artificial to my intelligence is what my neighbour and the people
I work with are producing and they provoke me to reflect on things I didn't know before.
And for me that is kind of artificial because I do not produce that in a chemical way,
using my brain. I'm not sure that machines are that kind of extension of body. I know that
whole discussion including Freud, prosthesis, and my glasses are an extension of my eyes,
some kind of helpful instrument. But I do not think we can say it is an extension of the
body. It's interesting that in the Marshall McLuhan discourse, which invented that kind of
extension of body or organs of body, the much more important point is when he says that
that kind of extension through media is a metaphor to transform your own experiences in
communication of experience with other people. And I think that is the possibility to
extend communication, which does not mean that you understand better what you neighbour
says. It's some kind of constraint to discuss points you do not understand. I think the
artificiality and that kind has to do with that extension of social relationship but not
of your body. If you think your body is something as an object for medicine or
manipulation, OK you can do that. You are creating a picture out of your body, but you do
not have a feeling of extending your own body. You have a feeling of the extension of your
activity and the possibility to act or interact with others.
Question 4
Benjamin in an essay of 1936 talked about the technical repeatability of a work of
art. Nowadays, this repeatability, digital process is higher that ever. Do you think that
this has implied a loss of exactness of a work of art?
Answer
You mentioned Benjamin. I always think you have to mention also André Malraux with his musée
imaginaire. There the things are much more clear than in Benjamin, because Benjamin
had that dream of that 'auratic' uniqueness and
that was the confrontation with the traditional piece of art or the painting which is
located as unique, original stuff at a concrete place. And then you make your experiences
in meditating. And he thought that through reproduction of that image you lose that
'auratic' dimension but you have another dimension of acting with images. That means that
you can see the montage of the genesis of that work. And I think Malraux stressed that
very much when he said that Picasso didn't really paint, he generated images for
reproduction in earth with his work and that with some pictures you can compare them with
an individual kind of montage. Of course, the possibility of reproducing images, like
recycling or sampling or remaking, of using as a firm footage of already generated
material is interesting for artists. But if you really repeat, just if you try to repeat
identically something which was just done, you see that you produce - whether you like it
or not - the difference. That is, the pure reproduction on the same level within thoughts
of identity is not possible. And, therefore, I do not fear that kind of permanent
recycling. What I hate is that it's boring to always see the same stuff and other boring
things. But the level of intelligence has nothing to do with the possibility to reproduce
images and to use them. I think the dream of Benjamin was to regain at the place of
'auratic' experience that kind of knowledge of apparatus and montage for let's say an
enlightening of social knowledge; that is the problem. The name of Benjamin stands for
that problem. But in our days, I think what is really interesting are new issues, a new
generating of something you've never seen before, not because it's new in a normal way but
because it uses a difference and you learn to know much more about whatever was done
before. Reproduction means you build something or you construct some kind of difference to
see as new what seemed to you to be old. And I think that really is the most interesting
thing about the reproduction of images.
Question 5
Talking about art and new technologies, what do you think about technological artists? Are
they the artists of the future?
Answer
No, I wouldn't say that within that short term. It's a short question that provokes a
large command on the problems of the notions which appear in that question. I do not think
that artists could be defined by using technologies. I would think it's stupid to say that
an artist is somebody who uses colours or a pencil or a camera or a video camera or a
computer. That was never the point of defining art. But what you mean is that artists
produce something new within the context of technology. That is, you do not make
commercials. You do not think that every information is a communication. You aren't
interested in standardisation of codes and language and that kind of thing, which really
is a great danger that ASCII code within a multimedia context - one media is one standard.
You have to break the rules of that standard. I think that artists who are really
interested in new technologies as artists have an interest to realise their projects in a
way which enables them to program their own stuff. - the engineer-artist, which was a
dream of the Renaissance, of course. In the context of contemporary art, the artist of the
future is somebody who can cooperage with others to break technological standards to
develop new interesting questions. For me that is the artist of the future.
Question 6
Do you think that virtual reality can change the way of making art?
Answer
I'm not sure, because virtual reality involves theories of perception. What does virtual
reality mean? We know from the gestalt theory of the 1920s that perception is organising
mental concepts. You do not have an outer sight possibility. You can't watch yourself
doing hallucinations of perceptions and, therefore, I think what in the context of virtual
reality becomes much more clear is quite a normal problem of normal perception that you do
not have the possibility to go out of yourself and see if your semantics are real in that
way. Therefore, all you try to do is real as virtuality on the level of perception. What
you mean by technologies like cyberspace or the Internet deal with some kind of
communication forms and interactivity. I think it's important that artists deal with that
experiment and solve their own sight of views. But I see also the danger that virtuality
becomes some kind of a mass pleasure park or something like that. And you know when you go
to Luna Park and you enjoy that pleasure, enjoying pleasure always means it is real to you
even if you know that the hallucinations are virtual. I think the force of virtual is
reality of that virtual kind of stuff. Therefore, I do not think that we can define
virtual reality technology as a new kind of art. But it's a new field which invites
artists to act on.
Question 7
Some people believe that when a person visits a virtual museum, the person feels
compelled to go subsequently to visit the real museum. Do you think that this is really
going to happen or on the contrary do you think that everybody will forget material
museums?
Answer
Not at all. That is not possible. But you have to differentiate between different types of
museums. If you think about a technology museum, the question is quite different from an
art museum. Nobody can say that museums of art will be abolished through the use of new
technologies like CD-ROM or something like that. Digitally produced information is useful
at the level of scientific research or at the level of discourse of the classification of
what is inside the museum. But I do not think they replace visiting the museum and I do
not think that they can better prepare you for visiting a museum, because visiting the
museum means you have really the interest to go to a singular place and to perceive that
singular place with objects inside. I do not think that has to deal with anything of
mediation of information about that stuff of the museum. What could be useful from the
point of view of the museum is that you open the digital world to scientific research.
That makes more sense because of what is hidden in the archives of the museum or in the
brain of the scientist. But I think going to a museum is some kind of anthropological
interest in our culture that doesn't mean natural anthropology but anthropology in the
cultural sense. You go there because it has some kind of prestige to visit Villa Borghese
- if it's not being restored, it's always being restored, so you go to other places. I do
not think that has to do with cultural attitude or with some means of getting informed. I
think it is an overstressed school situation if you think we can prepare people by using
CD-ROMs or touch-screen stuff to play with to get a better understanding of what is going
in on museums. Museums are institutions of archives and scientific research and they get
their money because they do a mise en scéne for the public. But that is all.
Question 8
Do you think that a CD-ROM can give something more than a book to a student who wants to
study the history of art for instance?
Answer
The joke is unavoidable. I prefer the city of Rome to the CD-ROM in the context of a
museum. But let's talk seriously about that. I do not know. Most of the CD-ROMS I've ever
seen were very boring and they weren't as informative as a book, but I do not know if it's
a question of a CD-ROM or a question of the monitor or a combination of the typewriter and
the monitor, which we call computer, which really is strange, because you have that design
of typewriter and monitor. But I do not think it's interesting to read a text on a
monitor. Then when you have got to print it out, you do not have the layout or the
professional design of a book. I do not know if you really can have material or stuff on a
CD-ROM that you do not get in a book - because you have in a book a work that deals with
the interpretation of things and not a collection of documents, for instance - then it can
be interesting. But it's, again, a question of scientific research. As an aesthetic form I
do not think the CD-ROM has anything to do with a book and therefore it can't replace a
book. A book isn't better than a CD-ROM. A CD-ROM you use for other purposes because you
can use a CD-ROM also with quick-time movies and that kind of moving images and you have
another kind of image. I can't really say it's on the same level, a book or a CD-ROM. For
me it would be much more interesting to have a CD-ROM on a scientific level rather than as
some kind of entertainment. I think it's a romantic dream to think that people use
intelligent CD-ROMs just as they listen to audio stuff on the Diskman or Walkman. And that
I think is a dream on the backdrop of that when you say people do not read books but they
could get their information through a CD-ROM. But I think nowadays it's not the point to
say that. This could be possible within the next years because the culture gap between
cognitive experience and entertainment is much too big to say we prefer a CD-ROM to a book
or we find great amusement in museums. Then you get all the digital stuff like
technological knowledge or artistic images, which you prefer to see on the CD-ROM and not
to read about in a book. I do not think that this has to deal with that kind of
technological or cultural development. Let's say book readership doesn't increase but it's
not a loss of people who read books. If you can re-educate people to get knowledge that is
written in a book by looking at the CD-ROM instead, I think it's a humanistic vision which
is really too conservative about that. And I think it's not a question of whether the
CD-ROM could replace books or which you prefer, but I think it makes no sense to sell
people a CD-ROM when you have all the pictures in the museum. And then they go home and
see the pictures on a normal, small screen, where you do not see anything of what really
is in the pictures. That is not the way to do it.
Question 9
One of the more interesting opportunities of the new technology of communication is
multimediality. So how could you define a multimedia work of art? Do you think it's
something like an exchange between the artist and the audience?
Answer
Yes, I think that is the most important part of multimedia and I have also had some
problems with that notion of multimedia, because in the computer world there is
standardisation and it's a monomedial situation. It's not multimedia. But you can use the
computer as part of an installation just like robotics research does or some other
interesting groups of people, and then, of course, you have that kind of interaction with
an audience, which is quite novel. I think it's like in the open work of art - opera
aperta as Umberto Eco wrote in his book in the 1960s - where the audience is a moment of
developing a composition or in reception of perception of an image. And multimedia has to
deal with that participation and then of course you can use different media. And the main
point is as an image of the artist, we talked about the engineer and I think the most
important point is what Lévi-Strauss called the "bricoleur", the person who
deals that kind of stuff and makes hybrids with several media, a room, a projection, a
text, sound and music also involving virtual reality, the Internet and so on. I think that
is a great experience for people - what you create has artistic meaning - or expression of
art has to do with your own activities but not as a formal arrangement or a formal
environment but a density of participating. But I think that art will remain the domain of
people who really define what they want to do and not let the process of art be produced
by an audience They want the audience to see what they have produced or hear what they
have produced and that is it. There are two possibilities. But for artists who are
interested in experience with action of public and audience, it is very interesting to use
multimedia installations and environment at concrete places at a concrete time involving a
computer, a video and so on. But on the other hand there will be artists like Bruce
Naumann. It's not important if anyone acts in those rooms; it doesn't change, it's not
interactive. It's a multimedia installation; it has it's own density and it's own
expression. You even do not say it's important to have an audience as a leading
performance of the work of art.
Question 10
You are a professor of art history in the context of new media. How would you improve art
history teaching - for example, in schools - using media.
Answer
I have to specify that I'm a professor of art history in a media context, not in a new
media context. I do not have much experience in using new media. What could be interesting
is that you produce not just comments on, let's say, some work of art with what you call
new media. But I think it's traditional that you read books, you talk, you teach, you show
pictures. I go to a museum, which makes much more sense than to project slides, which are
some kind of citations of quotations of pictures; they are not the pictures themselves.
Perhaps it could be a project for a CD-ROM to really develop a kind of history of art
within a media context and use a CD-ROM to link some levels and some layers of complexity.
Unfortunately, it's not yet the time to develop that, but I have some thoughts about that
and I think that it could be very useful to produce something like that on a scientific
level or on the level of research and a mise en scéne of that research could be
interesting to replace the traditional history of art by using talk and explaining and by
some kind of montage within the different layers.
Question 11
Do you think that artistic culture in general will be able to create a new relation
between man and computer, between man and man through the computer?
Answer
Yes, I hope so because art has always produced some new relations between human beings and
their contexts, their environment: society, technology, science, but also everyday life. I
think that is the main point of art. The necessity of art is to define some new places of
better understanding, the use, for instance, of technology and science in a fast way on a
developed level. I think that is the major task for the future.
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