Erik Olofson, Drives, 2006 from ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now.
Marnix de Nijs, Run Motherfucker Run 2, from ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now.
Manu Luksch, Faceless, from ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now.
Mari Valoniki, Fish-Bird, from ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now.
Wowpod, from ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Room, from ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now. |
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ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
Aros Allé 2
+45 8730 6600
Århus
ENTER ACTION –
Digital Art Now
7 February-26 April 2009
The most recent technology has pride of place, but the individual visitor is at the center inside this glittering world of high technological art experience. Interactive installations, sound works and robotic art are only a few of the various experiences awaiting the public when the museum presents a spectacular media show of international digital art. ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now is part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Aarhus Kunstmuseum, which will be marked in ARoS throughout 2009. While the museum’s jubilee exhibition Aarhus Kunstmuseum anno 1859 in the West Gallery points back in time, ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now erects a milepost for artists’ abilities in the year 2009, when digital art and mankind are united to form a whole. All 14 interactive installations in the exhibition are centered on man the player — homo ludens. The works involve the individual viewer: sensory, appealing, playful and insistent, ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now reflects the influence of technology on modern humanity and shows what art is also capable of today.
Visitors are involved already on their arrival at the exhibition: Guests are thus received by a small robot, Dr. Watson, who moves his eyes, eyebrows and mouth all in accordance with the visitor’s facial expression. Thanks to its interactive technology and its touching presence, the robot, developed by Lego Lab in the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University, sets the basic tone in the exhibition: Human presence is combined with the latest technology.
Digital art is no longer a niche in the world of art. On the contrary, it is very much on the advance in major museums all over the world — for instance at ARoS, which with ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now is mounting the first major exhibition of its kind in Denmark. For this exhibition it has been possible to acquire major works by the most progressive digital artists for instance from the San José Museum of Art in the USA. The array of international artists from a large number of countries in Europe, the USA, Central America and Australia, all of whom have agreed to take part in the exhibition, represents the finest work in the realm of digital art.
For all the participating artists in ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now, the computer constitutes their brush and palette. This produces such different works as robot art, 3D films, interactive installations, network art and even painting with its starting point in the motifs of the computer game. All the works have share the common factor that they challenge the usual framework of the work of art and create quite new experiences, which are often based on interaction between the individual and the work of art. For ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now is not only about art. The exhibition equally thematises the relationship between human beings and technology and it also focuses on the sensuousness arising from this relationship. The participating artists are: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MX/CA), Manu Luksch (UK), Kaffe Matthews (UK), Knowbotic Research (D/CH), Ludic Society (A), Marnix de Nijs (NL), Erik Olofson (NL), Ben Rubin & Mark Hansen (USA), Alexei Schulgin (RU), Marie Sester (F/USA), Christa Sommerer & Laurant Mignonneau (F/A), Mari Velonaki (AU), 0100101110101101.org (IT), Mogens Jakobsen (DK).
Common to all the artists in the exhibition is their exploration of the new aesthetic possibilities made available by computer technology. This enables the creation of completely new ways for visitors to the museum to experience and find their way. With a focus on respectively our technological reality, the body and interaction, the exhibition helps to open up our human senses and through art to link us to our fellow human beings and the world around us.
As the title ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now suggests, the visitor to the museum can expect a different, active experience of art, as many of the works exhibited invite physical contact with the individual person in order to complete the artistic impression. In other words, the works only act when someone interacts with them. ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now is thus an exhibition which, with a high experience value for guests of all ages exists for the individual, is about the individual — and is brought to life by the individual. By involving the visitor to the museum, the cold, inhuman technologies are used as tools to activate and reinforce our human senses.
Pulse Room: One of the principal works in ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now is the large-scale interactive installation entitled Pulse Room by the Mexican/Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. This work consists of 300 incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling. In front of the bulbs there is a floor-mounted hand sensor that registers the visitor’s pulse when touched. The pulse rhythm is reproduced as a light pulse in one of the incandescent bulbs. This beautiful installation shows the heart rhythms of the last 300 persons interacting with it, as each bulb responds to a single guest and a single pulse.
The special character of the work is a reproduction of the essence of a human life, that is to say the rhythm of the heart. With that in mind, the cool technology of the work takes on a poetical form via the living body of the individual visitor to the museum.
Listening Post: The work entitled Listening Post consists of 231 small digital displays hanging up in a grid so as to form a beautiful tapestry. The screens are linked to an online computer, which combs through various chat rooms and billboards on the Internet, in which selected words and sentences are translated visually on to the screens. In this work, the American artist duo Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen examine the thousands of public forums offered by the Internet and they give us a sense of the extent to which computer technology pervades modern communication. As witnesses to the work, we experience fragments of correspondences in the world which in reality are a material we ourselves help to create.
Run Motherfucker Run is the cry of the Dutch artist Marnix de Nijs in the work by the same name. By means of physical activity on a long treadmill, the visitor to the museum sets in motion a living image on a gigantic screen. The faster the movement on the treadmill, the sharper the film emerges on the screen. As a comment on technological reality today, it demands a high pulse rate and determination to keep up with developments. The visitor’s participation in art thus gives rise to the total art experience: no running on the treadmill, no live image on the screen. The physical presence and the digital technology go hand in hand and together produce a new meaning and a new synergy.
ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now extends over three galleries: in the Special Exhibition Gallery in ARoS, on the Internet in the form of a specially designed website and out in the city, where the group of players called the Ludic Society are to transform the centre into an interactive game board for the citizens of Århus. The exhibition ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now has been created in collaboration with the TEKNE Network for digital art & digital experiences by Alexandra Instituttet A/S, Aarhus University.
To accompany the exhibition, ARoS Aarus Kunstmuseum is publishing a large, richly illustrated catalogue with 18 experts in digital art as the authors.
Visiting curators are Anne Sophie Warberg Løssing and Anne Sophie Spanner Witzke.
Those responsible for the exhibition in ARoS are Gitte Ørskou, senior curator, and Pernille Taagaard Dinesen, assistant curator. |
