[ISEA94] Artists Talk: KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH – Dialogue with the Knowbotic South

Artists Statement

DWTKS: Dialogue with the Knowbotic South- strategies for a changing view on nature concepts; a map of a dynamic information-landscape providing a form of interaction with multi-local/present datafields in electronic networks.

Following the example of the manneristic representations of 4 Continents as ‘Kunst und Wunderkammern’ by the Antwerp painter Jan van Kessel (1627-1679), Knowbotic Research (KR+cF) devises a knowledge space, a model of a Computer Aided Antarctica.  In his series of four paintings, Jan van Kessel portrayed cultural knowledge representations of the four continents known in his day. KR+cF in its DWKTS installation, limits the material to the available computer-processed information on current antarctic research as it appears in public data networks. The immaterial character of these virtual antarctic ‘substance’ can only develop meaning and effectiveness (much as in the 17th century) if these items are developed in independent constructs, which never the less remain in distance but related to their antarctic reference subjects. As the given empirical facts are both real and fictitious, the data space give rise to phenomena which are difficult to conceptualize – a Computer Aided Reality. We still lack the denotative tools to describe the development process leading from the real-world extraction of data to the emancipated operationality of these virtual spacecapes. KR+cF designs knowbots, devices operating as spatially and temporally dynamic interfaces for the observer’s interactive navigation through the information landscape. These databodies incorporate data sets of current antarctic research projects, which symbolize direct real-time links to the reference subjects occurring in scientific research and the underlying natural events at the South Pole. local computed model of the DTWKS environment at ISEA. Connected to a World Wide Web Server, the visitor, equipped with a virtual eye, can dial himself at a mobile terminal into the DWTKS project. He/she enters the territory of a ‘virtual antarctica’. . This dynamic data map visualizes the effectiveness of data environments, and specifically the multifunctionality of the ‘order imposing’ knowbots, by transporting it from the immaterial data space of the Internet into the real space of the installation in Helsinki. DTWKS – Installation offers the simultaneous interaction inside and outside of the dynamic data map with multi-present knowbots. The visitor navigates parallel in a global area in the Internet as well as in a local computed model of the DTWKS environment at ISEA. Connected to a World Wide Web Server, the visitor, equipped with a virtual eye, can dial himself at a mobile terminal into the DWTKS project. He/she enters the territory of a ‘virtual antarctica’. . This dynamic data map visualizes the effectiveness of data environments, and specifically the multifunctionality of the ‘order imposing’ knowbots, by transporting it from the immaterial data space of the Internet into the real space of the installation in Helsinki.

  • Knowbotic Research KR+cF: Media Art Group, started 91, participants of internat. Media Festivals and Exhibitions (i.e. Videonale Bonn, Mediale Hamburg, Ars Electronica Linz,  Interactive Media Festival Los Angeles, SIGGRAPH Orlando) Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Huebler, Alexander Tuchacek in collaboration with the Academy of Media  Art: Michael Hoch, Detlev Schwabe and GMD Bonn: Michael Pietsch supported by: Curator of BMUK Austria,  Bundes- and Kunsthalle Bonn, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum Hagen, Kulturamt Steiermark, Institute for New Media Frankfurt, Eurocreation Paris, Kulturbehrde Hamburg.