ENTER ACTION Digital Art Now
7 February – 26 April 2009
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
The most recent technology has pride of place, and the individual visitor is at the centre from 7 February, when ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum invites the public inside into a glittering world of digital art. 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 works of digital art. The exhibition ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now is part of the celebrations 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. Most of the 13 works in the exhibition have in common that they are interactive and centered on man the player – homo ludens. These works thus involve the individual guest: sensory, appealing, playful and insistent, ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now reflects the influence of technology on modern humanity in all of its facets and shows what art is also capable of today.
Man and machine
Visitors will meet the LEGO robot Moodles who – displaying his human features – raises the issue of the difference of having feelings and only pretending to. Thanks to its interactive technology and its touching presence, the robot, which has been developed by Jakob Fredslund from the Alexandra Institute A/S I cooperation with the Lego Lab in the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University, sets the basic tone in the exhibition: Human presence is combined with technology.
The Exhibition
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 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.
Digital Brush and Palette
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, sound installation, interactive installations, network art and even portrait art with its starting point in the motifs of the computer game. All the works have shared 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 (DE/AT), Ludic Society (AT), Marnix de Nijs (NL), Erik Olofsen (NL), Ben Rubin & Mark Hansen (US), Alexei Shulgin & Aristarkh Chernyshev (RU), Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau (AT/FR), Mari Velonaki (AU), Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org (IT), Mogens Jakobsen (DK).
Exploration of New Possibilities
ommon 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.
Examples from the Works:
“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 a world which communicates.
“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.
The Three Galleries
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 artists called the Ludic Society on February 7 invites the local citizens to participate in an urbane game, ToyGenoSonic. The exhibition ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now has been created in collaboration with the TEKNE Network for digital art & digital experiences and the Alexandra Institute A/S, Aarhus University.
Catalogue
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.
Photographs from the exhibition can be downloaded free of charge from www.aros.dk/presse. User name: 123 Code: 123.
Further information can be obtained from:
Bjarne Bækgaard.
Director of Communications
Telephone: +45 8730 6618
Mobile: +45 3066 5142
bb@aros.dk
