MESH
impact@6months.conf

Reload. Sydney, April this year. You're in a very big room and people are serving you pastries and coffee. There are lots of suits (I think I was wearing one) and boys who keep mispronouncing multimedia as multi-millionaire. Remember? you're at the AFC's third conference The Language of Interactivity (LI).

Another image. Polystyrene cups, cold lecture theatre, bad audio and lots of artists, theoreticians and influential colour jobs (I got one). You're at Contemporary Art and Technology's Digital Aesthetics - One (DA1) conference at the University of NSW.

OK, is it all flooding back now? Do you remember the make over shots of Fergie that Nicholas Zurgrub used as examples of a digital aesthetic at DA1? Do you remember the excruciating games analysis by Steve Pollack at LI? Come on, yes you do, he was the guy before the games panel that came to the conclusion that women don't play games because games are violent and that therefore there's no economic incentive to make them. No recall?

How about Mark (cultural theorist, critic, buy-my-latest-book) Dery's don't stop now critique of WIRED (DA1)? Or Sally (UTS lecturer, thinker, multimedia artist) Pryor's analogous paper on revolutions within communication and how we might approach narrative within interactivity through a comparative model of writing - figurative symbols becoming new semiotics (LI)?

At a time when there is so much (too much?) information, and one's worth to the digital tribe, Net junkies and big techno-cyber-sexo thingies is measured in how much information one has - useful, particular, sundry or otherwise, as long as it's DIGITAL - how are you rating?

Who or what still has impact on your information-overloaded brain? What did you get out of these two conferences? Here's a quick quiz.

easy section

1. Why does Sandy Stone do that thing with her hand? (DA1)
a) To say hello - she's waving.
b) To prove she is a living breathing example of how the body can be remapped (the creation of the corporeal identity, the dissolution of the material body and thus gender).
c) It's fun to simulate orgasm in front of 200 people, especially when one can ask them 'was it good for you?'.
d) Who is Sandy Stone?

2. What is Carnal Art? (DA1)
 a) Something to do with a chainsaw.
b) Something Orlan does 'without mutilation, harm or suffering' but with heaps of pethadine.
c) Something John Howard describes as 'the budget'.
d) Disturbing.

3. Why are 'games' always set up and defended as territory? (LI)
a) Because I'm a boy and I've been playing them since I was five years old and therefore I own them. So bugger off and leave me to my Nintendo.
b) Because when I say 'game', I really mean violent shoot-'em-up. Let's face it: a weapon is the only possible tool to solve a problem.
c) Because the current market is doing just fine without any of you boring adult types crying out for social responsibility in the face of a violent world. Besides, statistics have proven that violent games don't cause violent behaviour. Don't worry, we'll work with your market when we need some more cash.
d) Because there's a hierarchy of interactivity that says one can't be an artist with theoretical content and create gameplay. We all know that artists don't own anything!

4. Is marketing strategy a dirty term?
a) Yes, because we're artists and theorists who go on holiday in conference heaven where the real world will not be allowed to rear its ugly head for four whole days. Besides, we create, not sell - this question doesn't even apply (refer DA1).
b) No, because we want to create interesting work that is respected worldwide, even if we do sometimes have to resort to a formula and recoup our costs in the process (refer L1).
c) Maybe, because there's heaps of money in it (refer to conference lunch with someone who wanted to 'do' multimedia).
d) Absolutely not. If contemporary Australia is going to establish a truly independent industry that will support all areas of multimedia we need marketing strategies that will position the work we create in the international arena. We don't want to mimic film industry practice, where the success of the film schools and the film funding bodies in cultivating new talent is stymied by little independent investment creating an ever-growing drain on Australian cultural talent as individuals move to the USA to work big-time. This is not reducing digital works to 'content' but rather providing a context for digital creators to assess the nature of their work, whether it's placed in a gallery; situated at a highly competitive international games or education fair; or sucked into the other big interactive market, porn.

5. Is theory harder than copyright law?
a) Yes, particularly when listening to John Conomos without a recording device. In this situation, the traits of a 'culture of historical amnesia' become all too apparent.
b) No, particularly when Sally Pryor discusses Tunisian hieroglyphics.
c) Not when Mark Dery smacks it to you.
d) What has copyright law got to do with multimedia?

6. Who did you regret missing at the conferences? (5 points each)
a) Chris Hales, artist and lecturer based in London, for his socially constructed overview of his interactive, The 12 Loveliest Things I Know.
b) Gloriana Davenport of the MIT Media Lab for her emphasis on research and developmental forms of interactivity; her Thinkie and Lurker agents that determine the next most likely options a 'player' might need; and her BIG, BIG 'I'm not an historian' gaff about Australians not being influenced by WW2!! (Did anybody clear this up with her?)
c) Michael Buckley, interactive artist and filmmaker, whose presentation of his 1994 work, Swear Club, proved that it is more than possible to have an emotionally engaging interactive experience.
d) Tim Gruchy, the human mouse, who showed what can be done with diligent experimentation and imagination in his Synthing interactive and captivated the audience with his sound performance.
e) Stelarc, international art celebrity, traversing the frontiers with his 'fractal flesh' over the Net.
f) Shiralee Saul, the human net, who inspired artists to overcome the contemporary dominant paradigm of artist = exploitation point.
h) Graham Harwood, London-based artist, collaborator and teacher, who spoke of the politics of ridicule and presented witty manipulations of Tory territory (including John Major as a dick-head) and rehearsed Memory, his interactive documentary.
i) All those in question 4.

7. What was your favourite exhibition and why?
a) Cybercultures at the Performance Space curated by Kathy Cleland and David Cranswick of Streetlevel Inc. because you loved stomping on Martine Corompt's Sorry installation and you've decided that if you're going to have a baby, Patricia Piccinini's Genetic Manipulation Simulator might just be the way to go. The exploration and extension of the notion of a digital aesthetic within the political structure of the evolution of technology itself was also of interest, particularly in the context of the seven represented artists (Patricia Piccinini, Martine Corompt, Leon Cmielewski, Josephine Stars, Troy Innocent, Elena Popa and Mariella Hatfield), creating possibilities and experiences of a digital world whilst questioning the associated social risks of technological change. For those newly initiated, the exhibition provided a small historical perspective on digital art in Australia.
b) Contemporary Art and Technology's curation at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery for a number of reasons. Mutley Media's Booth was great to sit in and the fridge magnet is still reminding you to contact James Verdon and contribute work. The projection of Graham Harwood's Rehearsal of Memory, an interactive recording the lives of maximum security patients and staff at the Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital (U.K.) for the 'criminally insane', was exceptional both on an aesthetic and ideas level and for exhibiting a single-point interactive to large numbers of people. As well as this, the digitally enshrined Orlan and ever-creating Stelarc were also represented.
c) Burning the Interface, curated by Mike Leggett for the Museum of Contemporary Art, because you would have thought it was brilliant if you had managed to interact with the works as opposed to peering over shoulders and attempting to wrestle mice. You heard from others that it was very good.

not so easy

8. What is a digital aesthetic?
a) A 'wickedly intellectual...tragically relevant' international symposium.
b) Sensory perception that's synaesthetic, as suggested by Jane Goodall, requiring more than the audio-visual and fingertip input currently accorded to CD-ROM.
b) Bad digital grammar, 4 pixels deep, known as the 'bevelled button' (as suggested by Peter Hennesy).
d) Don't know.

9. We have interactivity, we have narrative - do we have language?
a) No.
b) We might have if we sent Sally Pryor and Jonathon Delacourt away for a year to further explore their theories.
c) Yes, if you merge many filmic terms that structurally resemble elements of interactivity, throw in a good measure of WIRED type hype and stir vigorously with equal parts wetness and webness!
d) Not at the moment, but there are syllables, and even a few words (mostly drawn from the visual language of film we know so well) that are already evolving at a rapid rate. We might just have to wait for one or two more interactive generations before we check the Drosophila.

10. Where are you now?
a) Waiting for a big, strictly industry-only, meet to tell me what to do next.
b) On the Net, piecing it together in a curious, non-binary kind of way.
c) At home, creating an interactive.
d) At work, wondering how to pay for child care fees and a RAM upgrade.

© Gillian Morrison, 1996

SCORE

a) 5 points b) 10 points c) 15 points d) 20 points

0 You wanted to write a book on the digital age but you found out it had already been done and you went home.

>130 You're too clever for your own good, you attended DA1 and you're a big cyber-sexo-thingie Net junkie.

>130 You're an interactive creator or you're an administrator and you wanted the LI to be brilliant because it was well conceived and well organised but on the day it didn't really tell you anything you didn't know. You want to do it all again in a different format. You want to be a Net junkie but then there's cinema, food, love and all that other stuff that makes life sweet.

>250 you didn't attend either conference because you were too busy and now wish you had. You don't give a damn about techno digital tribes, hipno-hypno-whatever.

Thanks to Michael Hill, Conference Chair, and to the AFC staff who worked on The Language of Interactivity for providing a framework for current interactive issues; giving a meeting point for the traditional divisions of art, administration and industry; and for making it financially possible for all to participate.

Thanks to Werner Hammerstingl, Convener, Carolyn Deutsher, Co-convener and all of the volunteers from Contemporary Art and Technology for pushing the sensory overload button so exquisitely and, even with such a tight budget and so many international speakers, for making Digital Aesthetics - One affordable to attend.

Thanks to Moira Corby for her contribution.

MESH film/video/multimedia/art #10,MESH is the journal of Experimenta Media Arts