THE INTER-SOCIETY FOR THE ELECTRONIC ARTS
ISEA NEWSLETTER #93
ISSN 1488-3635 #93, Part 1, Part 2, June - July - August 2003
_______________________________________________________________
* CONTENTS *
* Editorial and ISEA News
* "InterSpace New Media Art Center" by Galina Dimitrova
* "Fragmentation space. A brief overview of media and art in Bosnia" by Seki Tatlic
* "Multimedia Institute - [mi2]" by Tomislav Medak
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Editorial & ISEA News
by Angela Plohman
Coordinating Director, ISEA HQ
**************************************************
Welcome to Part 2 of ISEA Newsletter #93, a special 2-part newsletter with a
focus on south eastern Europe, guest edited by Kristian Lukic from the New Media
Centre - kuda.org, Novi Sad. This second part of the newsletter features
contributions from Galina Dimitrova, project manager at Interspace Media Arts
Center in Sofia, Bulgaria, Seki Tatlic from Kolektiv, an organization in
Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Tomislav Medak from Zagreb, Croatia.
We would like to remind all ISEA members that we are always looking for guest
editors for the ISEA Newsletter. If you are interested in editing an upcoming
issue of the ISEA Newsletter focused on your region, please contact ISEA HQ.
-- ISEA News
DEADLINE EXTENDED - ISEA2004 Call for Proposals
ISEA2004 is currently inviting proposals for projects and papers for the
exhibitions, conferences and associated programs during ISEA2004. The deadline
has been extended to September 20, 2003. For more information on how to submit a
proposal for ISEA2004, please see their website at .
ISEA@ARS
There will be an ISEA Meeting at Ars Electronica on Wednesday, September 10th,
2003, 14.00-16.00, at the ARS Electronica Building, Linz, Austria.
Agenda: The aims and the future of the Inter-Society, update on ISEA -Discussion
of topical issues. Proposals from potential future ISEA symposia hosts are
welcome. Also, Amanda McDonald Crowley presents ISEA2004: August 14th - 22nd,
2004, Stockholm: Networked experience, Tallinn: Wearable experience, Helsinki:
Wireless Experience.
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InterSpace New Media Art Center
by Galina Dimitrova
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Since September 1999 Galina Dimitrova works as Curator and Project Coordinator
at InterSpace Media Art Center, Sofia. Since December 2000 works as Deputy
Editor in CULT.BG - Server for Art and Culture, project by Interspace MAC.
1994-1999 National Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria - MA in Theory and
History of Arts
***
InterSpace(1) is a New Media Art Center founded in1998 as a non-profit
organization that works for development of alternative means and possibilities
of artistic expression in new media technologies. Interspace involves mostly
young people (artists, curators, web designers and technical experts) with a
common interest in new media arts and culture that working together on
production and popularization of new media art projects. In terms of time we
managed to establish a good teamwork between artists and technical people
(software developers and hardware specialists), who are interested in creative
work with new technologies.
Before to continue with concrete activities of the center I would like briefly
to describe the contemporary art and cultural situation in Bulgaria. The main
difficulty that all art people in Bulgaria face is the lack of a well-developed
infrastructure in terms of cultural policy and support for the arts. The
Ministry of Culture has almost no budget to support the arts and other cultural
initiatives, which is a result of the deep economic crisis the country is still
experiencing. On the other hand the practice of private support and sponsorship
is not very popular in Bulgaria. The small numbers of private foundations or
sponsors support mostly traditional art practices or the so-called mainstream
art. Most of the galleries in Sofia show traditional/commercial art, and there
are just a few spaces where alternative art can be shown. Unfortunately, they
are very insufficient.
Therefore with its work Interspace tries to overcome this existing situation and
provide an alternative infrastructure and possibilities for people who want to
work in the area of new media arts in Bulgaria.
Having such a mission, InterSpace runs various activities that are directed to
fill the gaps of the art scene and the socio-cultural sphere in Bulgaria. One of
our main activities is the production and presentation of new media art
projects. The InterSpace media lab provides Bulgarian artists, working in the
field of new media and interdisciplinary projects, with an open access to
technologies, technical equipment and professional assistance. Thus we support
artists in the production of their projects, which is otherwise very difficult
and usually not affordable to them if they have to do it in commercial studios.
Another main direction in our activities is the organization of public events
like festivals, exhibitions, conferences, multimedia shows, etc. In this way we
try to popularize the new media arts to wider audiences. We also run some
educational activities like series of workshops and training courses that
recently are focused on open source solutions and free software. Thus we aim to
provide the interested people with various backgrounds with basic knowledge and
skills in these practices. We also created and maintain a Server for Arts and
Culture called CULT.BG aiming to overcome the lack of information about the
contemporary art scene in Bulgaria and abroad.
Developing our activities in many spheres, we managed to create a wide local and
international network, and to introduce wider Bulgarian audience with variety of
artistic and cultural practices in new media. During the five years of its
existence, InterSpace has developed international partnerships with many
organizations among which: Hull Time Based Arts (UK); IDEA, Manchester (UK), V2,
Rotterdam (NL); Bootlab (DE); Montevideo/TBA (NL), Institute of Contemporary
Arts, London (UK), New Media Centre Huddersfield (UK); as well as with many
Bulgarian organizations like The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate;
British Council, Goethe Institut Inter Nationes Sofia; American Center, Sofia;
Pro Helvetia Foundation, and many others.
Due to the limited volume of this article I can not present here many of
Interspace art projects so i will limit myself to a short overview of few of
Interspaces major and long terms projects, which are mostly in socio-cultural
sector instead of pure artistic activities.
I would like to start with CULT.BG (2), which is a portal site and cultural
server presenting Bulgarian contemporary arts. The site gives a complete
presentation of our contemporary cultural scene and maintains a systematic
archive (a database) with portfolios of Bulgarian artists and organizations
working in all sorts of the arts (visual and new media arts, music, theatre,
cinema, literature, etc.). Cult.bg also includes an audio and video archive. In
addition, the project has a virtual gallery, which presents net art projects or
documentation of real gallery-space exhibitions. Cult.bg provides a number of
free services like: free hosting for websites in the area of art and culture,
free email, forums, mailing list.
As I already mentioned, Cult.bg is one of InterSpace most important projects,
which we started three years ago and very soon it became the most popular and
informative web-site for contemporary arts and culture in Bulgaria. According to
statistics, (counter.search.bg) average attendance per day is approximately 450
visitors. A good example for this is also the fact that many journalists from
the mass media - among which are some leading TV channels, radio stations,
newspapers and magazines in Bulgaria use Cult.bg as information source for
their cultural programs. During its work Cult.bg has managed to involve most of
the cultural organizations in Bulgaria as well as a number of individuals who
actively collaborate to maintain daily the site.
Another project designed to reflect current socio-cultural issues is the
conference Net User which first edition we organized in October 2001. Net User
(3) was the first international conference in Bulgaria that explored the process
of collaboration between various activities taking place in the Internet, like
art, technologies and business. The platform for the conference arose with our
notion that for better or worse, the Internet is entering more and more the life
of the average Bulgarian. Bulgarian users already have well-developed portals,
impressive online art projects, big virtual communities and a great variety of
web pages. In the course of time there arose the necessity for a forum, which
would provide conditions for communication between artists, designers,
programmers, and developers. The Internet conference Net User was exactly such
kind of forum. Thus the mission of the project was to explore and present to
wider audiences how these creative people combine the artistic and the
commercial side of their Internet works. Net User brought together the various
points of view of participants from Bulgaria, Switzerland, Germany, Great
Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, and Yugoslavia. During the four days of the
conference program, the participants discussed the aesthetic, social and
economic issues of various questions provoked by the global network.
We are linking the new focus of Net User conference with activities of another
big international project that Interspace is recently involved in. Its exStream
project (4) a two-year collaborative project in which five media art
organisations from around Europe work together to create a common platform for
the creation and distribution of art projects based of streaming and using open-
source software tools. This we realize through the exchange of organizational,
artistic and technological resources between the partners, including research
and analysis, and training program for the artists. exStream is funded by the
European Community's Culture 2000 programme. The collaborators in the projects
are Hull Time Based Arts (Hull, UK), V2 (Rotterdam, NL), InterSpace Media Art
Centre (Sofia, BG), Bootlab (Berlin, DE) and Ubermorgen (Vienna, AT). Each of
the project partners is specialized in at least one of the technical areas
relating to the project, like computer programming, video art production,
artistic software development, systems operation and artistic practice on the
Internet.
The project implementation includes research, software development, artistic
residencies and production, presentation of the new projects in international
exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and publications of the results.
Now we are in phase of workshops and at the end of May we ran a exStream
workshop and seminar in Sofia called Streaming for Artists and Curators. The
technical workshop took place in InterSpace lab and trained participants how to
use StreamStudio - a complete solution for audio and video streaming, including
production software and server solution. StreamStudio (5) is an open source
software, which is distributed free. The workshop was led by Stoyan Kostadinov
and Petar Slavov from InterSpace Media Art Center. It was targeted to artists
experienced in work with new media as aim to give them the opportunity to
realize their ideas for projects based on streaming.
The theoretical seminar Artistic and Curatorial Practices based on Streaming
Technologies was targeted to artists and curators interested in new media arts.
In it program Honor Harger from Tate Modern, London talked about museum
experience in work with curatorial and artistic projects based on streaming;
Thomax Kaulmann from Bootlab Association, Berlin; Brigit Lichtenegger and Thijn
van de Schoot from V2_ Lab, Rotterdam presented their streaming projects;
Petko Dourmana talked about the local context for project exStream, and at the
end Stoyan Kostadinov demonstrated StreamStudio - Bulgarian plaftorm for audio
and video streaming.
Notes:
1 - InterSpace New Media Art Center: www.i-space.org
2 - CULT.BG Serve for Art and Culture: www.cult.bg
3 - Net User Internet Conference: www.netuser.cc
4 - exStream project: www.ex-stream.net
5 - StreamStudio: http://streamstudio.cult.bg
Credits to some InterSpace art projects:
Urban Cycles - interactive video installation in public space
www.i-space.org/urbancycles - Sofia 2000
www.idea.orr.uk/urban - Manchester 2002
Macrovideo public video installation, Sofia 2001
www.i-space.org/makrovideo
Schizoid Architecture open network project, 2000 in progress
www.i-space.org/schizoid
M.A.P.:case study.02 :: Mini Festival for Media Art, 2002
http://www.i-space.org/map/
**************************************************
Fragmentation space
A brief overview of media and art in Bosnia
by Seki Tatlic
**************************************************
Sefik Seki Tatlic (1976 Bihac, Bosnia Herzegovina)
Institutional education - Faculty of political sciences Sarajevo, High School of
Journalism Media Plan, journalistic experience in written and online journalism.
Tactical - Co-founder and program manager of Multimedial Initiative Kolektiv
NGO.
(organisational work for more then 60 concerts, art/video instalations and
exhibitions, and new media center presentations, digital graphic design/layout/press preparation) 2000-
Musical fanzine Neuro editor, graphic designer, journalist 1999-
Radio show Sound Sucide editor/journalist/Radio 3, BH Radio 1, Sarajevo) 1998-2003
Author and producer of "Culture of Delay" documentary movie. 2003
Program coordinator Media Center Sarajevo - Kosnica network, Sarajevo. 2003-
***
"Symbolical meaning of a societies cultural identity is not contained in a
artistic or aesthetical values, but in an effort to become a part of a narration
which blends object and a viewer in a mutual belief system."
Eric Kluitenberg
Presentation of media and art scene in Bosnia Herzegovina can be done under two
basic preconditions: one is, not to use post-war optics which is already, from
its economical aspect, used from both media and art actors mostly as an alibi
for a variety incompetence, and the second one is... Not to call it a scene.
These preconditions in reading of the situation are not necessarily as mere
preconditions, but also a chrono-political context in which these,
unfortunately, extremely divided, polarities function. Constatation of a
division between media and art might seem a bit peculiar at a moment, but after
taking a look at a content criteria parametric and production output context, it
should not be so.
Before mentioning any media and electronic culture initiatives in an country
administratively divided in two ethnically centered entities (Federation of
Bosnia Herzegovina - dominantly Bosniac / Croat and Republic of Srpska -
dominantly Serbs) with four levels of power and maybe biggest administrative
apparatus in Europe, we will take a brief look at the media/art mainstream
scene, or at someone which is by Bosnian public opinion seen as a serious scene.
So, taking a look at mainstream electronic and printed media in Bosnia
Herzegovina shows a wide constellation of stations, according to Communication
Regulatory Agency register, February 2003. Report, 35 TV stations, 140 Radio
stations and 3 TV and 3 Radio public service TV stations are currently
functioning in a 3.7 Mill. populated country.
After focusing further to a content level, it is visible that commercially
successful daily newspapers like Dnevni Avaz (right winged - populist), and
Osloboenje (left winged - populist), are one of the main players in a printed
scene.
Some weekly magazines like BHDani, which are considered leftist, urban newspaper
and Slobodna Bosna with the similar reputation create a another, ad-driven,
small distribution counterpod. These news magazines, while being in a, through
daily politics investigator journalism, struggle against three nationalistic
parties (who have parliament majorities) did not manage to upgrade their
production level further from public discussions about them being independent
media on a standpoint toward dependant media. This, of course, creates a foggy
circle filled with frequent relooping of important issues bypass.
Television broadcasting companies are consisted of Public Broadcast Service on a
level of Bosnia Herzegovina which broadcasts just Headline News and sports
events, entity TV channels (Federal Television and Television of Republic of
Srpska) and a number of local, commercial TV stations, based mostly in capital
Sarajevo.
Program content in all cases varies from pure reporting, "mailbox" journalism
style to couple of investigative TV shows dealing with political events. To
avoid opening these topics, it is to say that neither does not have any impact
or "post-news" buzz in public. Artistically prefixed content which is to say
more about is reduced to, approximately one monthly, one-hour term on entity
televisions and local televisions, covering mostly no-edge painting art
exhibitions and installations.
Online content is offering sites like sarajevo-x.com which is presenting a wide
variety of, mostly entertainment industry information and publishing soccer
league charts, while perceived by urban audience as an "Good, urban and
alternative" site!!
Besides frequencies of appearances, dynamics of art content on broadcast media
is strongly connected to patriarchal, ethno-centrically and conservative culture
of mass majority of population. This is primarily exposed in an elitist, "Opera"
perception of culture as the only important cultural modality, which is the only
modality financial, supported by responsible Ministries of... culture.
To present a situation in art in Bosnia Herzegovina, two perspectives must be
consulted, productional and expository. Productional aspect, while raping the
meaning of the term, is reduced to already mentioned Opera interface containg
huge money inputs for reinstallations of classic pieces, respected by
mediocretic, older audiences, like everywhere else and big international
festival containing the same copy and paste aesthetics.
On the other side, cultural initiatives, connected with a pile of mainstream
NGOs (mostly with politically correct programs and "youth" prefixes), are very
alive and (media - financially) supported are in this sector. These kind of
events, with so called "urban" nature, targeting younger population function as
an exposure of above mentioned conservative circles. Examples would be,
Sarajevo University student unions and World University Service activities
messing with cultural events (youth centers like, Access, StudentEfm Radio,
Sarajevska Zima (Sarajevo Winter) festival and similar events.
So, as an opener for something which should be some kind of tactical media
platform, or an effort to create a sub-culture(s) which would critically
rearticulate an informational society problematic, It I important to recall a
Manuel Castells's analog of a "Space of a place" where experience is based on
Here and "Space of streams" like a global network of information blended into
styles. Of course, while reducing this analogy to basic socio-political buzz,
and knowing that the second alienates the first we come to a threshold of
today's Bosnia's Initiative problematic. Castells's "Space of Streams" is
stigmatized by Bosnians historical identity, which, when adopted by an critical
mass for emergence of Initiative squeezes the production space to "Space of a
place".
At the same time using the contemporary media/art scenes streams as a mere
clipboard, while not updating it.
Initiatives in media and communication field, are, in 2003, fascinated with
informational technologies, society and what ever else comes in the package,
which makes it pretty hard to differ the exact interest or strategy, but not
the competence which is lacking in every case.
Maybe the freshest example would be a Second University of Communications,
seminar organized by Media Plan Institute from Sarajevo, a populist set of round
tables and debates "popularizing" informational society culture through primal
presentation of numbers of PCs, cell phones, journalistic presentations of
importance of online journalism.
Artistic Initiatives vary from numerous DJ organizations organizing drum'n'bass-
house parties with no consistency of artistic production to organizations like
Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Arts (SCCA) whose artistic output still
glorifies and copies pop-artism/Andy Warhol postulates and whose perception on
New Media Culture still has 80's pseudo rebellious feeling for action in art,
while heavily cooperating with conservative elements in mainstream art and
media.
Nonexistence of critical approach, localization factor which comes from
subliminal consciousness of production worth, hermetic standpoint towards
anything which might become an Initiative are just one fourth of an effort to
try to describe current, mostly exposed Initiative and more importantly, social
structures from which they emerge. Production profile, as one of the most
important things we are dealing with here and in case of mentioned Initiatives,
is still very much coming from a collective sense of "mutual" cultural history
which had it times, and forms, in dealing with totalitarian political-media-art
systems, but the same form which probably functioned sometimes ago is far from
applicable today in a multipolar, multiplied production capitalist form global
social network, whose comprehension is still much weaker then the mutual belief
in an mental system in which all kinds of media and art strategies are just red
blocks in a really fragmented hard drive.
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Multimedia Institute - [mi2]
by Tomislav Medak
**************************************************
Philosopher,
program coordinator in Multimeda Institute Mi2, Zagreb
editor of past:forward edition
www.mi2.hr
www.pastforward.org
***
[mi2] sprang up in 1999 from the spinned-off Internet program of Open Society
Institute Croatia. Entering the up to that moment locally unchartered territory
between social and cultural action and new technological developments, [mi2]
brought together an emerging generation of civil activists, media practitioners,
urban culture actors and social and media theorists who set out to pursue two
principle tasks: to promote and educate in media and technological practices
relevant for functioning and development of social and cultural sector, and; to
promote and develop socially inflected approaches to new technologies,
especially as investments in the local emerging market gradually increased the
penetration of new media and introduced the domination of commercial standards.
In terms of activities, [mi2] is running following major projects:
- net.culture club [mama] - a public space providing Internet access,
operational, presentational and educational facilities freely accessible to
local civil initiatives and cultural scene actors. Since its opening in 2000,
[mama] has become a major reference point for activists, artists, new media
practitioners and theorists both locally and internationally.
- mi2lab - a media lab where local and international developers work on web and
free software projects. Under its auspices, a comprehensive new solution for web
collaboration and publishing is being developed - TamTam. mi2lab is hosting a
residency program where software developers from East Europe, Asia and Western
countries work together on developing social software. mi2lab also provides
local artists and practitioners with facilities necessary for audio and video
production.
- egoboo.bits - a digital publishing and educational project dedicated to
advocating alternatives to the existing intellectual property rights regime -
alternatives such as GNU General Public License and public domain dedication.
egoboo.bits activities include a very successful free music label, educations in
music, video and hypertext production, and public domain advocacy activities.
- annual computer art exhibition - for last three year [mi2] has been organizing
annual computer art exhibitions reflecting on particular historical and
contemporary instances of interaction between technologies, cultural innovation
and social change: "I'm Still Alive" (2000), "re:con" (2001), "GenArt" (2002).
This year's exhibition - "System:Hack" will deal with the issue of hacking the
systems - technological systems, but also social systems, systems of control,
legal systems, etc.
Along with these projects, [mi2] has a number of other long-standing projects
such as its theory department past:forward, a publishing program, a media
archive, etc.
In its work, [mi2] is working in many partner and networking projects, many of
whom were initiated by working in and around [mi2]. Most prominent are:
- Clubture - a program exchange and financing platform run by organizations and
initiatives active in different aspects of independent, non-institutional, club-
based, alternative, new media, non-institutional knowledge culture in Croatia.
- a.network - a program exchange and collaboration network of new media
initiatives in the region: KUDA.org from Novi Sad (Serbia and Montenegro),
Ljudmila from Ljubljana (Slovenia), Pro.ba from Sarajevo (Bosnia and
Hercegovina) and Multimedia Institute from Zagreb.
- policy-forum - an initiative bringing together prominent organizations and
individual actors in the non-institutional culture scene working on the advocacy
and policy issues. It received a mandate by the New Media Culture Committee of
Ministry of Culture to propose a policy paper covering the domain of non-
institutional culture.
- Otokultivator - annual summer camp at the island of Vis - organized together
with Association for Cultural Development, European Association of Students of
Architecture Croatia offering participant from the regions different educational
activities under the mentoring of local and international educators.
- Zagreb - Cultural Capital of Europe 3000 - a two year partnership project by
four organizations from Zagreb with four very different scopes of engagement:
Center for Drama Arts, urbanist initiative Platforma 9.81, curatorial group
What, How and for Whom and [mi2]. Project should create a more structured
articulation of existing tightly-knit collaboration between the partners and
should counteract Zagreb's official candidature to become a cultural capital of
Europe. It will address issues of economic regulation of cultural capital and
public domain, collectivity in cultural production and different spatial
intelligences
- ICT-NGOs - a network of a half of dozen of Croatian NGOs working on social
issues in ICT (Croatian Linux Users Association - Zagreb, Metamedia - Pula,
Monte Paradiso Hacklab - Pula , Art Workshop Lazareti - Dubrovnik, CIMA - Hvar,
Zamir - Zagreb and [mi2] - Zagreb) that should foster a common platform for
insure participation in official decision and policies making processes
regulating the ICT domain and access to the academic broadband network.
Over the last two years, [mi2] is becoming increasingly involved in activities
of local, regional and international cooperation, and activities that work
towards strengthening the cultural scene, activities that advocate the public
domain and work against the hegemony of intellectual property regime. It is
working towards initiating structural changes in a wide range of areas: non-
institutional culture, informal education, technology, intellectual property
rights, access to public resources.
As Croatia is drawing nearer to its end of the year deadline for application for
EU membership and entering other commitments resulting from international
associations, the information and communication domain seems to become
increasingly enclosed by international regulations leaving less and less room
for public interests and more and more room for overreaching of capital into
public resources. Best example is the new intellectual property legislation
that, adapting to international regulatory standards, sees no room for any other
option than copyright protection, and will probably leave far-reaching
consequences on the public domain. So, in this situation of enclosure [mi2]
considers as one of foremost tasks, particularly within the hybrid field where
things are neither clearly private nor clearly public, is to (create alliances
and systemic solutions that) strengthen and protect public interactions.
Another circumstance of great importance, for Croatian but also regional
context, is gradual withdrawing of international non-governmental funders from
the region, leaving a huge gap in funding of non-institutional culture.
Therefore, [mi2] is advocating and working on alternative models of funding and
self-regulated models of funds allocation for the non-institutional culture
(such as the one already actualized in the Clubture platform) both in Croatia
and in region.
Part 1
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ISEA Newsletter Contributors: Kristian Lukic (Guest Editor), Galina Dimitrova,
Seki Tatlic, Tomislav Medak and Angela Plohman.
ISEA Board Members:
Peter Anders, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Nina Czegledy, Gunalan Nadarajan, Anne
Nigten, Julianne Pierce, Wim van der Plas, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Mark Tribe.
ISEA HQ:
Angela Plohman, Coordinating Director
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