Panel Statement

The aim of WILL is to examine the likely future impacts on Australian technology-based art and artists of 1) New technologies, and 2) Australia’s re-orientation from that of a colonial European culture, to becoming part of a new geo-politic reality — ‘Asia’. This ‘future’ speculation will be grounded in an analysis of the current situation.

WILL speculate on the role Australian artists and designers can play in an Asia of rapid economic growth, particularly in regards the current trend of a shift in state support from heavy industry to a high-tech ‘clean’ industries by those Asian countries with a growing ‘envi-ronmentally-aware’ middle class. WILL posit the appearance of an Asian junk-tech culture, and what this might look like. WILL consider future notions of nationalism, with particular reference to the impact of new communications technologies e.g. fibre-optics, and satellite technology on national boundaries” Wila operate on a number of different levels and will move between a rigorous, analytic. mode, to something more in the realm of the imaginary a poetics.

• Linda Wallace, Sydney, Australia