As we are working hard on the preparations for Digital Art Weeks 2013, which will take place in Singapore in May 2013, our new DAW Facebook page is now online at:

https://www.facebook.com/DigitalArtWeeks

The page contains lots of materials from previous DAWs. The featured picture above is from DAW 2007 in Zurich, with Computer Pioneer and Rebel at Work Joseph Weizenbaum, ETH Professor Jürg Gutknecht, Art Clay and me, during a panel at ETH Zurich’s VisDome.

Great news for our Digital Art Weeks: We have been awarded as finalists of the Swiss Art Awards 2012, and were given the opportunity to present our work at the Swiss Federal Office of Culture’s yearly exhibition at Art Basel 2012 (12 - 17 Jun 2012).

I am co-founder and scientific director of ETH Zurich’s Digital Art Weeks. The Digital Art Weeks, an annually recurring festival, are concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of a symposium, workshops and performances, the program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of the application of technology in the arts. In 2008 and 2010, a very successful version of Digital Art Weeks took place in Shanghai and Xi’an, China, and currently DAW'13 (early 2013) in Singapore is preparation…

https://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/

One of my personal highlights of the series of past Digital Art Weeks was the special opening day and the keynote of Joseph Weizenbaum (1923-2008) in 2007, as I have always admired his ambivalent position towards computer and information technology. At DAW07, we also screened the documentary ‘Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work.’ by Peter Haas and Silvia Holzinger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_LCLjqCTXs

Festival History

• 2013 - Singapore
• 2011 - Victoria, BC, Canada
• 2010 - Xi’an, China
• 2008 - Shanghai, China
• 2007 - Zurich, Switzerland
• 2006 - Zurich, Switzerland
• 2005 - Zurich, Switzerland

Stefan Arisona and Steve Gibson, since 2006

Introduction

EPI Redux is re-imagining of the psychedelic classic The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, created by Andy Warhol with the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s. Rather than literally interpreting the original Warhol event, EPI Redux seeks to update psychedelia for the new millennium. Using an excess of technology the project immerses viewers in an overload of the senses and in a Gesamtkunstwerk where sound, vision, space and time coincide.

The core concept behind EPI Redux resides in both its communal nature and in its long-form. The piece has been performed by as few as two performers and as many as eleven. As all the performers are expert in their mediums this reconfiguration allows for considerable amount of spontaneity, while at the same time calling on them to apply their analytical skills in real-time. The modularity of the piece similarly allows it to take several forms and keeps the content both loose and ever-evolving. In this way the Redux is similar to the Warhol original, even as it veers dramatically from the sound and visual world of the late 60s.

Synopsis of Work (by Luc Meier, Swissnex San Francisco)

Switzerland’s Stefan Arisona and Victoria, BC’s Steve Gibson are media artists who have established a strong footing in academia while keeping their fingers on the throbbing pulse of the club scene, DJ-ing and VJ-ing underground. Grounded in the history of audiovisual tinkering, they take creative hints from illustrious forebearers to push multimedia environments into the next realm.

Arisona and Gibson joined forces in 2006 to create a digital-age reenactment of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the boundary-breaking multimedia show conceived in the 1960’s by Andy Warhol with the complicity of Lou Reed and his cult rock act The Velvet Underground.

A full-blown sensorium featuring giant projections of Warhol’s films, The Velvet Underground at their most dazzlingly abrasive, and dancers let loose from Warhol’s New-Yorker Factory, the original Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966-1967) was, while it lasted, the most unique and effective discotheque environment prior to the advent of venues such as the Fillmore in San Francisco. In many ways, it remains a benchmark for all subsequent immersive multimedia shows.

Originated under the auspices of ETH Zurich’s “Digital Art Weeks” and Victoria’s “Interactive Futures”, Arisona and Gibson’s take on Warhol’s circus makes full use of digital technology and the free-flowing, associative thinking of the techno age. Armed with multiple projectors, a barrage of laptop computers and additional data-churning devices, the pair have already performed in Zurich, Victoria, Chicago, Vancouver and Shanghai.

Using custom software, live vocals, keyboards and live video processing risona and Gibson create an immersive audio-visual experience which mimics the psychedelic atmosphere of the original EPI event, while at the same time updating the audio-visual language to the 21st Century.

Resources

Photos, videos and sounds at the Exploding, Plastic & Inevitable site: https://www.telebody.ws/Exploding/

Initiators and main artists: Stefan Arisona & Steve Gibson
Guest artists: Jackson 2bears, Randy Adams, Agitpop, babel, Dyz, I send data live, Tom Kuo, Love&Olson, Marcellus, Nuthre, Scheinwerfer, Sho-b, Adam Tindale

Event History

• Oct 20 2016 - Rolex Center, EPFL, Switzerland
• Mar 17 2012 - Velvet Underground, Zouk Club, Singapore
• Nov 12 2011 - NeOn Festival Closing Party, The Reading Rooms, Dundee, UK
• Sep 5-8 2010 - DRHA 2010, Brunel University, London, UK
• Jul 3, 2010 - Digital Art Weeks 2010, Xian, China
• Nov 17 and 19, 2009 - Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre, Launch Events, Leicester, UK
• Oct 17 2009 - The Institute for Converging Arts and Sciences, Launch Event, Greenwich University, London, UK
• May 29 2009 - Computational Aesthetics at the Delta Ocean Pointe Hotel, Victoria, Canada
• May 12 2009 - Cantos Society, Calgary, Canada
• Sep 18 2008 - Santa Barbara Nights Closing Party, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
• Aug 21, 2008 - Transdisciplinary Digital Art Canadian Book Launch, Open Space, Victoria, Canada
• Aug 1, 2008 - Swissnex San Francisco, Swiss National Day Celebrations, San Francisco, CA, USA
• May 31 2008 - ELO Visionary Landscapes Conference, Northbank Artists Gallery, Vancouver, WA, USA
• May 22 2008 - Digital Art Weeks +, Shelter Club Shanghai, Shanghai, China
• Apr 24 2008 - Conaway Centre, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
• Nov 17 2007 - Interactive Futures, Open Space, Victoria, Canada.
• Jul 14 2007 - Digital Art Weeks, Zurich, Switzerland
• Oct 21 2006 - Open Space, Victoria, Canada

Corebounce, in collaboration with Heinrich Lüber and Art Clay, 2006

“Almost Lost” was a performative audio-visual installation of Corebounce in collaboration with artists Art Clay and Heinrich Lüber: Streams of spoken words are deformed by interactive technology.

In der Performance spreche ich über zwei Stunden endlose Wortketten und projiziere diese gewissermassen von Innen an eine meinen Kopf umgebende Sphère. Die sich selbst dekonstruierende Sprache wird durch eine interaktive Technologie umgeformt und in Lichtform auf die Sphère und den Umgebungsraum zurückgeworfen. Die Projektionen zeigt eine Virtualität im Sinne einer “plastischen” Verformung in Möglichkeitsräume hinein. Das die Figur umgebende Halbrund bildet eine Andeutung einer zweiten Schicht dieses dynamischen Raumsystems, die begehbar ist und worin der Zuschauer sich als formender/aktiver Mitspieler in diesem System erleben kann. (Heinrich Lüber)

During the two hours of performance, I speak ceaseless streams of words and virtually project them from the inside onto the sphere surrounding my head. The self-deconstructing language is deformed by interactive technology and reflected in terms of lights and shapes onto the sphere and the ambiance. The projections show a virtuality in terms of “malleable” deformations into alternative spaces. The semicircle surrounding the character constitutes an adumbration of a secondary layer of that dynamic space. It is accessible to the spectator, who can experience herself / himself as a forming and active participant in this space system. (Heinrich Lüber)

The project was officially supported by Kultur Basel-Stadt and Kulturelles Basel-Land. Heinrich Lüber’s Homepage: https://www.heinrichlueber.ch/

https://youtu.be/frTtp-L80p8

Event: Digital Art Weeks 2006
Location: ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Date: Jul 12 2006
Concept: Art Clay and Stefan Arisona
Programming: Stefan Arisona
Performance: Heinrich Lüber and Corebounce Art Collective