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Bit 1
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In spite of the insistent message from the current Australian local, state
and federal governments, digital media is not really all that 'new'. No more
can its active adoption by artists, writers, filmmakers and activists be
called new: the cultural and commercial demands of the industrialised
workplace and the interpersonal domain should long since have dispelled this
particular fantasy. Squarely examined, this (sub)urban social reality tends
to destabilise the conservative political rhetoric which so insistently
claims public disenfranchisement from a privileged techno-savvy,
information-rich élite. The truth is that our society's remarkable ability
to absorb technology -— to take it, wire it up, plug it in for our own ends -— is
fundamentally connected to our ability to make it part of our mundane world,
our everyday routines and spaces. And when something is familiar, it becomes
invisible. Occasionally, this invisibility is deliberately invoked in order
to mask deep ideological rifts. What does the Australian Prime Minister
John Howard make, I wonder, of the Victorian Liberal Premier's Website,
let alone the spin-off and parody sites that have sprung up alongside it?
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Bit 2
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I was thinking about some of these issues as I trundled along to Brisbane's
State Library Theatre for D.art 99, a screening of short film, video and
animation associated with MAAP99. MAAP99
(Multimedia Art Asia Pacific) is a festival showcase for so-called new or
digital media, and features a huge swag of events, openings, forums and
exhibitions. It's a busy time in Brisbane; the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial
of Contemporary Art has just opened at the
Queensland Art Gallery, incorporating a major conference, an on-line
component (the Virtual Triennial), and yet more events, screenings and
talkfests. Many of Brisbane's galleries and arts venues have scheduled
special events and exhibitions to coincide with these two major festivals,
including the Institute of Modern Art, Crafts
Queensland, Global Arts Link Ipswich, and the Royal
Australian Institute of Architects.
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Bit 3
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In the midst of this flurry of activity, D.art 99 promised much and
delivered some highly accomplished and thought-provoking material. An
initiative of the Sydney-based screen exhibitions and advocacy organisation
dLux media arts, the event was billed
as "Australia's premier annual showcase of inter/national experimental
digital film, digital video, computer animation and cd-rom art" (D.art
programme brochure). The screening session I attended was originally shown at
the 46th Sydney Film Festival in June this year, and was composed of a
selection of fifteen works submitted in response to an international call
for entries. dLux sought works that demonstrated a creative use of their
respective media, and ended up with an interesting mix of established and
emerging artists, including Peter Callas,
Michaela French, Ying Tan, Isabelle Hayeur (a founding member of
Canadian digital artists' group Perte de Signal) and Alex Voorhoeve.
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Bit 4
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Examining the artists' bios in the programme, the serpentine reach of digital
technologies rapidly became evident. The umbrella term 'screen culture',
under which this programme falls, is host to animators, film- and
documentary-makers, designers, installation and performance artists, video
directors and built environment specialists, among others. Not that this is
surprising. At the end of the 90s, we should be able to look back on more
than a decade of mature artistic practice in the digital arena, buttressed
by more than half a decade of experimental electronic arts. Yet given the
diversity of the programme and the artists' backgrounds, the reviewer is faced
with the problem of tracing a shared language between artists; of
translating/transmitting particular aesthetic, technological, or
socio-cultural memes into everyday meanings.
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This article may continue in two different directions:
Please click here for comments on the multimedia industry,
or
click here for comments on the multimedia aesthetic.
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![[image]](http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sinsite/dArt99/haig_L.jpg)