[ISEA95] Panel: Herve Fischer — Les nouvelles technologies et le retour au “primitivisme” de l’art

Panel Statement

Panel: Electronic Art and Audience

The digital revolution is the most radical and rapid that humanity has ever known. Interactive electronic art successfully responds to the aspirations of the dominant middle class. The reconciliation between art and society recalls more and more the function of art in so-called “primitive” societies. The chasm which imbedded itself into the system of fine arts beginning with the Renaissance, and still further intensified by the paroxysms of the avant-garde of the 1970’s, is now overwhelmed. Television images and computer icons evoke a modern variation of African masks, and multimedia works are rediscovering the “primitive” pleasures of the multisensorial: visual, dance, music, olfactory and tactile are mixed together. The “Gutenberg Galaxy” is drawing to a close.

  • Herve Fischer (Canada) is an artist and theorist. He is co-president and founder of Cite des Arts et des Nouvelles Technologies de Montreal. He is director general of M.I.M. (Marche International Multimedia de Montreal) and of the International Scientific Film Festival of Quebec.