[ISEA2002] Artists Statement: Guy Van Belle & Akihiro Kubota – society of algorithm: translocal mutations

Artists Statement

The belief that art and culture are essentially social phenomena, has provided a range of practices that were essentially fostered by former post-modernism. Within that over-attention for the creation of a situated art, sometimes the historical avant-garde was forgotten to accommodate for the more traditional oriented western-american-european obsession for narrativity and figurative audio and visual works.

models for art and creativity
The effects of more than 50 years of computer programming are readily to be found in all common creative tools we are using – from image editors to software synthesizers. This leads to the assumption that an important feature in global communication and culture is essentially a techno-scientific one. Not only the pairing of models found in computer programming and systems. Engineering with an artistic sensibity and affective point-of-view, is leading to a new phenomenon, a techno-aesthetic model. It can only become as such, when there is also a communicative protocol available, as an essential part of that model. The algorithm becomes the driver for any expression.

across backgrounds and cultures
There are a number of ways to deal with different cultures, but apart from looking for differences and parallels, a common experimentation and the joint generation of new forms and artifacts in the genetical and linguistic sense, seems to us a more appealing direction. With mutual influences and visions the emergence of new form and content is possible.

making a jump into another century
Nowadays we see a renewed interest in abstract artforms, supported by a younger generation of artists unspoiled by a formal training in the traditional artistic disciplines, making unknown references to earlier radical pioneers of electronic art. On top of that, the outcome of the popularisation of electronic music and the proliferation of global networks added a kind of new attitude towards collaboration: audiovisual, experimental, dynamic, distributed, materialistic, algorithmic and .. totally digitalismic.
Let’s draw a line on a picture and make it move!

  • Guy Van Belle has been prominently involved in the use and development of multimedia for artistic purposes since 1990. He is working as an educator and media technologist at the electronic music studios IPEM at Ghent University, and at the media lab at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts Antwerp. As an independent techno-scientific artist he has organized many collaborative and international projects.
  • Akihiro Kubota is a designerlartist in the age of digitalism, whose main interests include sound design/art, information/software/network/art, interfacelinteraction design. He is now investigating the possibilities of the computer as a material (digital materialism). His main publications are “Kieyuku Computer” (Vanishing Computer, lwanami Shoten 1999), “Post-Techno(logy) Music” (Oomura Shoten 2001), and others. Currently he is working as an associate professor in the Department of Information Design, Tama Art University, Japan. He received his Dr. Eng. degree from the University of Tokyo in 1989.