Kunstradio Celebrates Anniversary

pop~event report

RECYCLING THE FUTURE: ON-AIR ON-LINE ON-SITE, 4 - 7 December, 1997

The 10 year anniversary of Kunstradio in Austria, was a mix of new and old technologies. Widely recognized for webcasting, Kunstradio is the most innovative department of the Austrian Broadcasting Company. Heidi Grundmann, the intervening force behind the first 10 years, has been single handledly responsible for the innovative ideas and international creative partnerships, which came together during this 4 day celebration.

RECYCLING THE FUTURE: ON-AIR ON-LINE ON-SITE thing.at/orfkunstradio

The concept for Recycling the Future could also have been: Hybrid Media - a mix of real space, real audio, radio room and web room. It was an overview of the interdisciplinary development of audio projects and working methods for artists and technology. The production of the event was a collaboration between the AEC (Ars Electronica Center , Linz, Austria) and the Kunstradio-Radiokunst program of the ORF (Austrian Broadcast Company). Because of their common support (the ORF), the event used the close relations between the collaborators to full benefit.

From the 4th to the 7th of December, the ten year anniversary event took place in the former Funkhaus (Broadcasting House), which is now called the Radio Kulture House Austria. "Kunstradio" is a regular weekly radio show on O1, Austria's first radio station. Until 1997, Austrian broadcasting was restricted to only four radio programs nationally, and is one of the last remaining monopoly broadcasting systems in Europe. Kunstradio is not only a radio show on culture, but it was conceptualized by Heidi Grundmann, the program director and founder, to be much more than this. Kunstradio is a platform for trans-disciplinary and international acoustic media experiments.

KUNSTRADIO-RADIOKUNST-MEDIA KUNST

Kunstradio was the first autonomous space for experimental acoustic signals within the monopoly of the broadcast environment in Austria. The weekly broadcast of Kunstradio was not only the exception inside the ORF, but it had international recognition, as well. In 1987, Heidi Grundmann introduced the idea to ORF, to use airtime for artists who use the radio medium itself as a tool for their art. The openness of her concept became clear through the years of practice, especially in the context of the expanding international media art scene, and as well for the pirate radio scene in Vienna.

At Recycling the Future, the historic Kunstradio "family" met to celebrate a decade. Guests from Canada, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, America, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Yugoslavia, who have on-air traditions with Kunstradio, participated live. Robert Adrian X, a Vienna based Canadian media artist and experimental communication pioneer, a "regular" since the beginning, is responsible for bringing the program online, and for establishing the first Website presence for the ORF, in 1995.

The personal contacts and overlapping history between the participants at Recycling the Future became evident during the online part of the event. Adrian was reunited with Jupiter J. Larson of San Francisco, and Sergio Messina of Milan. Also recycled was the (former) Kunstradio acoustic artist Gerfried Stocker, who is now artistic head of the AEC (Ars Electronica Center, Linz), who gave a presentation about radio and acoustic work.

The technical and server duties for Recycling the Future were supported by the AEC "Futurelab" boys and girls, who collaborated with Bob Adrian on the Website updates and for the live, RealAudio streaming of the symposium. From the links between different methods/strategies the pioneering position of Kunstradio inside the broadcasting system can be understood.

In the final discussion, all the activities and coming together was caused by the personal engagement of Heidi Grundmann. Although there is a lot of speculation, nobody knows yet, what will happen after the era Grundmann, and who will follow in the footsteps of this grand dame of the Austrian media scene.

ON AIR ON LINE SYMPOSIUM

For three days, a symposium took place during the day, to focused on radio art, the rediscovering of a medium, the art of noise, as well as how technology reshapes the subject (self identity). At the symposium, the main theoretician of the Kunstradio family was Marie-Luise Angerer. A former employee of Kunstradio, she now teaches media theory, and reflects on media culture and conditions of the cyborg metaphor in exhibitions, texts and lectures. In the topic "When Technology Reshapes the Subject", Angerer perceived this sentence in relation to the effects of the data_set and body changes in the online environment.

In her presentation, Angerer described the new media as a total convergence of all different media and communications systems, as well as a convergence of nature and the machine world. She says this occurs because of biotechnology, and ends up in the image of the cyborg (which by the way, is a term developed when the space programs first evolved in the 50s). The cyborg--in this instance--serves as a metaphor for hybrid identities, and for a multiple view of different genders and realities. Angerer declared that the decentralized subject can be seen either as an escapist fantasy, or as the true becoming of post-structuralism, philosophical disembodiment ideas.

The presentation of Angerer created a hot topic for discussion. Her views of self identity, especially her feminist reading of them, was attacked by the German media theoretician Dr. Friedrich Kittler, who accused her of building up mythologies on escapism into cyberspace. Kittler did not agree on the method and content used as a mental model to explain social and gender related developments in electronic culture.

Angerer, who reflected on the image and metaphor of the Haraway cyborg in relation to the psychological understanding of identity, responded to the mention of "I" as identity, by quoting Spinoza. Concerning the term "cyberfeminism", Angerer answered that old rhetoric is often used without considering new contextual meanings in terms of technology and social relations.

ON SITE PERFORMANCE

Among the handful of performance works that were broadcast live, and webcast with RealAudio, was ADRIFT by Helene Thorington. It was also a VRML performance that did not give a positive impression of the qualities of this new 3D standard for the Net.

Strangely, there was an overabundance of early video-like images, in the style of the 70s and 80s, in RGB colors. The online websurface was a split screen, one side for an IRC chat and on the other, for a VRML window. Using only half of the "performance screen" might have been a technical decision, because the polygon rendering necessary for VRML does not permit quick real-time performance. In the real space, the chat was accompanied by a Saxophone player, who performed live, on the stage at the ORF. It was not clear if these events were connected artistically, or not.

More impressive was the performance BLANKING, by Bernhard Loibner and Tom Sherman. The digital sound piece was an aesthetic encounter, experienced in a hermetic sensibility, and engaged the real and virtual audience totally.