One step toward Community

Declan McCullagh

Although the .net category is open to nearly all categories of Web sites and Internet projects, the jury this year decided to highlight ones that encourage interaction in a way that could not take place without the Net. We looked for works that connect people in novel ways and encourage interactivity and collaboration. The winners highlight the evolving, organic nature of the Internet in a way that coincides with the theme of this year's Prix Ars Electronica competition. They also suggest the emergence of new social formations and social values-like open-source software and a near-universal dislike of unsolicited bulk e-mail-that are specific to network communications.


Linus Torvalds: Linux

Linux might appear to be an unlikely pick for a top prize in the .net category. After all, an operating system doesn't appear to neatly fall into the usual categories of art.

But Linux is an example of a work that advances the development of the Net in a novel way. The .net jury sought out pieces that are community building, self organizing, distributed, impossible without the Net, and have grown beyond the original design of the artist. During our deliberations, Linux emerged as an unparalleled example of a work that meets precisely those criteria: It has birthed an aesthetic showing how something can be built on the Net through an intentional, but not necessarily direct, description. As an open-source project, Linux relies on the contributions of thousands of volunteer programmers who collaborate online in a group effort that has created a remarkably robust operating system. The effort is steered-but not directed-by Linus Torvalds. We felt the community that has assembled around this anarchic effort demonstrates how strong an aesthetic can be in bringing a community, assets, ideas and attention together.

Willy Henshall / Matt Moller: Res Rocket

What creates new forms of expression that distinguish the Web from previous media? Simple: Works that can only exist in a networked environment that lets people collaborate and organize in unprecedented - and unpredictable - ways.

"Res Rocket", an application that allows musicians to jam live online, could not succeed without the Net. Previously musicians had to be physically together to create new music on the fly. With "Res Rocket", geographically dispersed artists can meet and play together, build on their compositions, and save the result at any level of quality desired, including studio-quality sound.

The system allows remote musicians to connect with others, who they may or may not already know, to improvise together. "Res Rocket"'s network opens up a vast new set of connective possibilities for a form of creation that is found everywhere humans are found. Dispersed musical talents have already begun to find like minds through the "Rocket" network, and a commercial CD has been produced. Thanks to "Res Rocket", musical collaboration is no longer limited by geography.

Jean-Marc Philippe: KEO

The breadth of this project is dizzying in scope. KEO is a work by French artist Jean-Marc Philippe that collects short text messages and encodes them onto CDs. Eventually they will be rocketed into space aboard a small satellite designed to circle the earth for 50,000 years. As the artist says on his Website, "It is also a distance in time that is so vertiginous and mind-boggling that it compels us to abandon our normal point of reference and puts us all on an equal footing, forcing us to reach down into our imaginations or deep convictions."

This kind of global collaboration could not easily have taken place without the Net. Anyone on the planet with a connection can simply add their 6,000-character text to the ever-growing database that's designed to exist over a time span best described as archeological. By reminding us of humanity's limitations, it brings us together in a way that few other Web sites can.

Mark Napier: Shredder

Since the early days of the Web, Web artists and designers have experimented with the inherent deconstructive capabilities of HTML. The Shredder automates this experimentation. Type in any Web address, and its source is automatically 'shredded' into form art. The Shredder serves as a kind of metaform art generator. It's fascinating to see a familiar commercial, government, or personal site indiscriminately exploded into its composite elements, arranged differently but still 'live' in its links. The Shredder reminds us that anyone can affect the networked media environment in ways that would be impossible with traditional media.

Help B92-Coalition: Free B92

The B92 radio station and Web site Free B92 is a a collaboration of institutions and individuals who share the belief that cultural and social dignity can survive as long as we have a free dialogue and understand the art of technology to create a virtual space for free voice. After NATO began bombing Belgrade in the spring of 1999, police commandeered the B92 studio and installed a puppet station manager. The original staff quit, and instead of B92's alternative programming, the state-controlled
station began to air Balkan folk music and Serbian state news.

The displaced journalists were forced to turn to the Web, which allowed their news to reach a global audience. "The 'shelter' which the Internet can provide for all of those whose communication with others has been hampered and restricted has proved to be an extremely important area for preserving freedom and creating room to fight for freedom," says Veran Matic, editor of B92.

Martin Wattenberg / Joon Yu: Map of the Market

Map of the Market is a Java-based Web site that's not just beautiful - it's also entirely functional. The site graphically illustrates recent changes in the US stock market through the use of color and shape. An all-green image is usually a welcome one: It means tthe values of the hundreds of included companies have gone up. Brighter images show a sharper increase, and bigger shapes represent higher valuations.

Fumio Matsumoto / Shohei Matsukawa: Ginga

If you've ever yearned for better ways to visualize data, "Ginga" may help. It stands for Global Information Network as Genomorphic Architecture, and provides a way to browse nine 3D worlds that let you navigate through Internet resources. Like other winners, this encourages collaboration. Participants can communicate with other avatars and exchange archives. Some of the variables that are visually represented using VRML and other browser plug-ins include density, depth, size, and the relationships between the information in the "Ginga" database. According to the "Ginga" site: "Web resources are
reconfigured with cyberspatial codes into "Ginga" and appear as any of the following nine main Worlds; Nebula, Ring, Network, Forest, Strata, Text, Image, Polyphony, and Cemetery. Users can explore these Worlds with avatars (incarnations) which are personalized and controlled by user's preferences."

Nick Philip: Nowhere.com

Anybody who's used the Net for more than a few days has furrowed his brow over spam, the always unsolicited and nearly always annoying practice of sending bulk commercial e-mail. But instead of hastily deleting it, why not celebrate it as a cultural phenomenon?

Nowhere.com does that by offering a visual representation of the growth of this Internet irritant. Many spammers use the "Nowhere.com" domain as a fake return address, to which irate recipients often reply. Now, when these e-mail messages flow into "nowhere.com"'s inbox, they are forwarded to 12 busy fax machines at Tokyo's Intercommunications Center. Below is an equal number of overflowing trash cans, an apt physical representation of the final digital destination. "Confronted with 57,000 feet of thermal garbage, Nowhere instantly lets you experience, touch, hear and smell a small part of this incredibly vast media landscape, at the same time making a tongue in cheek nod to the fact that the more things change the more they stay the same," creator Nick Philip says.

Joanna Berzowska: Computational Expressionism

"Computational Expressionism" explores the process of using a computer to draw in a way that redefines the concepts of line and composition for the digital medium. It takes advantage of the Java programming language to create an interactive experience that lets participants explore concepts; the Web site responds to user inputs such as position, speed, direction, and order.

The work evolves as a combination of computergenerated images and human expression. "'Computational Expressionism' sustains the spirit of these artists by seeking out the natural expressive language of computers, to spawn an eloquent freedom, a vernacular of individual style and a level of visceral understanding of the medium," says the artist.

David P. Anderson: SETI

SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The theme of the recent box office hit, Contact, the SETI project has captured the hearts of people all over the world since it was conceived. The SETI project is an organization which scans the skies with radio telescopes in search of signals that might be the indication of intelligent life on other planets. This process involves the use of huge computers to analyze the tens of gigabytes of data which come streaming off of the radio telescopes each day.
Because of funding limitations SETI can not buy enough computer time to run in-depth analyses on all of this data.

Enter "SETI@home". The SETI@home project solves this mind-boggling task of analyzing the data by distributing small pieces of the data to volunteers via the Internet. The volunteers run a screen saver which crunches the data using the extra CPU power on their computers. This distributed effort has allowed the SETI project to collect the equivalent of an immense supercomputer to direct at this task. The screen saver is beautifully designed showing a graphical representation of the analysis taking place. The web page features an in depth explanation of the theory behind the analysis and the project, as well as a list of volunteers and the highest peaks found.

Various groups have used the idea of distributed processing in the past, but the SETI@home project wins the prize for its ability to allow anyone to participate directly in a project of such cosmic scale.

CAAD-Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule
Zürich: Phase(x)3

"Phase(x)3" is an open source experiment. It involves a large group of architecture students who form an author's collective. They interact and communicate through the exchange and the mutual reinterpretation of their 3D computer models. It is a project of CAAD, a department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. "Phase(x)3" shows the potential of collaborative workspaces. In "Phase(x)3 " the results of one phase and one author are taken as the starting point for the work in the next phase by a different author. As authors can choose which model they want to work with, the whole body of works can be viewed as an organism where, as in an evolutionary system, only the fittest works survive. "Phase(x)3" can explicitly replace single authorship with collective authorship, because all relations between works, authors and timeline are recorded in a database and can be rendered and evaluated. "Phase(x)3" thus
implies a new cultural model of distributed credits and copyrights, a precondition for networked society.

Daniel Julià Lundgren: ReAcT

The piece "ReAcT" from Daniel Julià Lundgren is a nice example of online instruments. By typing words and moving the position of the mouse, the music and animation will get more intense. The interface design is intuitive and appealing. "ReAcT" belongs to a growing genre on line which one could call "form art." By this we mean web art based on pure design or which exploits technical or symbolic possibilities inherent in the medium, for example playing with/ on features borrowed from icons, display sets or interfaces that have become quasi clichés of the medium. "ReAcT" is more fun than most (as well as being very nimble and passably interactive) in that it adds pertinent musical accompaniment to its fetching arabesques.

Christa Sommerer / Laurent Mignonneau: Verbarium

"Verbarium" is in line with previous, although not necessarily web-based work by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. It too, brings out the growth patterns of plants and organic simulations via the interactive behaviour of users. You type on the left side of the split screen a word or a sentence that will translate on the right side into a 3-D shape. Your words superpose themselves without erasing previously entered material. Running the mouse on the self-generating drawings can call up the words that have generated them. The attractiveness of this piece comes both from its design values and from the poetry of the relationships between words and shapes, meaning and feeling in a virtual but shared environment. The knot-based leitmotiv reminds us, of course, that we are dealing with an artpiece made for the networks.

Ramana Rao: Hyperbolic Java Tree

A navigation tool based on Ramana Rao's original Java application, the Hyperbolic Java Tree is a code and a script that allow keywords to be arranged in flexible configurations along complex branchings of tree structures, all available by click and drag in a smooth continuously dynamic display, all also acting as triggers to other actors and events on screen. Once again, there seems to be magic in store for the Web. The invention of the Hyperbolic Java Tree opens up truly exciting avenues not only for indexes and search engines, but also for interactive and connective design. The imagination of connectivity is beginning to set in and inspire architectures that are beautiful, whether they be classified as art or not. Hyperbolic Java Tree also brings to mind dreams of connectivity that allow concepts and conversations to organize themselves in smoothly accessible thematic arrangements. It is an example of the art of intelligence.

Eric Loyer: Lair of the Marrow Monkey

If multi-media is capable of poetic élan, Lair of the Marrow Monkey is an example of that. The words of the Lair are set to sound and type that respond to smooth interplay with the surfer. Design values are high, not only for visual but also for audio effects, which blend voice and sound in interesting and surprising combinations. An attractive and webworthy calligram, would Apollinaire say were he to be judge among us.

What exactly is Computer Animation? What are Visual Effects?

By Ines Hardtke

How are these different? How is excellence in these defined? Which pieces of computer graphics work best reflect these "definitions?" And how exactly does one compare work coming from a high-end production house to a six-week student project to an independent artist''s piece?

I have spent half of my life working with computers - always related to computer graphics (even if only in "intent") and always for the purpose of animation. "So what?," you ask (and "Rightfully so," I say).Well, I am 41.

Granted this additional, small piece of information isn''t interesting in itself either (unless you are a friend of my still young children and enjoy the thrill of imagining someone so "archaic") but, together with the first line, this changes the perspective on me and on my comments. It provides "context." It allows perhaps an openness, an understanding, thought possibilities that weren''t previously there. Half of 41 is 20 years (in integers). That''s a long time in the history of computers. There have been many changes.

I write all of that not because I think it''s important to know about me, but because I do believe that understanding the importance of "context" is essential. What is the Prix Ars Electronica? What are the categories? What are the works? How are they compared? How are they judged? What results are being presented here?

The Prix Ars Electronica was created to gather, acknowledge, honor and make accessible to others (through the Ars Electronica Festival and the Ars Electronica Center) the current state of digital media creativity. That''s a sentence packed with intent. Gathering work is in itself a huge job, but it is a worthy one as it is exactly through this collected body of work that the re-definition of the medium and the re-evaluation of excellence within that happens.

The methods and means of "computers" makes them at times a medium, at times a tool, at times a process and at times a result (and often all of the aforementioned rolled into one). That means that these "media" evolve continuously. As do the categories and judging criteria of the Prix Ars Electronica honoring the "top work."

This statement discusses the "Computer Animation" and "Visual Effects" categories, submissions, jury and results. So, first and foremost, what exactly is computer animation? What are visual effects? How are they different? Which pieces of computer graphics work best reflect these "definitions?"

Although most of us have at least an intuitive response to these questions, a proposed redefinition of their answers is exactly what is asked for of the world at large when the annual Prix Ars Electronica competition is opened. It was also the wonderful task set before the jury serving both these categories, in the form of a large and widely ranging body of submitted work. These written words are in many ways a reflection of my view of the three day "conversation" that transpired within and through this body of work amongst jury members Maurice Benayoun (France), Rob Legato (USA), Barbara Robertson (USA) and myself, Ines Hardtke (Canada).

The definition of computer animation can be large, small or somewhere in between. For me (implicitly and explicitly on the "larger" end of things), "animation" remains "the art of giving life to something that would otherwise not have any". Adding the word "computer" to this obviously implies the use of a computer somewhere in this process of "animation." But, for a computer animation competition honoring top work in the field (as opposed to an animation festival doing "the same"), a computer must not only be implicated but must be an essential (and so irreplaceable) component of the achievement or manifestation of "result." Although "visual effects" are often animated, this category can loosely be defined as being driven by pre-determined (existent) "action" (as opposed to the "animation" category which determines "action"). Perhaps "adding" life as distinct from "giving" life. This definition moves the judging away from "content" and towards the more "technical" given that the effect itself and more so its integration into the action is what now, by definition, is "important". Notably, the word "computer", although not explicit in the title, is almost exclusively implicit to this "adding" - although there do remain some optical printers out there in the world, their numbers and use (sadly in many ways) are dwindling. The visual effects here are assumed to be digital.

Does this split of giving versus adding life, computer animation versus visual effects make sense? I suppose so. It is another way of "seeing" and comparing work in this very large computer graphics field. Do I think that this split will remain valid? Not likely. In computer graphics there will hopefully remain movement and evolution. There will always be trends. There will always be a mass of effort around the "limitations" as well as around the newly provided, boundary-breaking tools and methods. And, often our limitations are exactly our current day definitions, our understanding, our implementations, our ways of thinking and perceiving. Soon, with all of the work being done in the integration of sound and visual, the categories of "music" and "animation" will not be sufficient. With all that is happening in the "interactive" world we will soon be obliged to widen and re-define our notion of "life" I think. Let''s hope so.

For now though, the categories of Computer Animation and Visual Effects stand as they are. And we the jury screened almost 300 pieces in the former and 65 in the latter. We did move a couple of pieces between the categories based on the nature of the work.

What are the prizes for? What is the "result"?

The Prix Ars Electronica Computer Animation and Visual Effects category each have a top award/first prize - the Golden Nica, two second prizes and up to twelve honorable mentions possible. What, then, are these prizes for?

The prizes and honorary mentions are for excellence in the field, in the category. Period.

What is excellence? Well, excellence is certainly something that everyone has access to - conceptually, technically, through its application, through the content. And all of this together is in order to achieve excellence of result - the actual manifestation of the original idea or concept."Excellence" always (always!) is suited to context. And, any context can be mastered. Any context can have its boundaries pushed on. Any context can serve as a springboard for creativity (and for excellence within that).

What is the selection process?

So, how does one identify, determine, compare and ultimately judge "excellence" in this? For the jury we agreed that true excellence is one that begins with excellence of idea and is carried through to excellence of result. This is tough. It is certainly a tall order. And, no, perhaps contrary to popular belief, this notion of excellence is accessible to all. It is not limited or defined by "means." There actually is no such thing as excellence of "means" - excellent application within means yes, but not excellence of means. That necessarily implies, in order to rightfully compare a commercial product from a top production house to a six-week student project, that contexts of submissions cannot be judged and/but must be made "clear." And, if the idea was "wonderful" but the means were not there to manifest it then perhaps there was no excellence of idea in the first place.

What were the results?

Only "content" is not enough. Only "design" is not enough. Only "idea" is not enough. And, doing for the sake of doing, is not enough.

The idea has to be for some content - unless the idea is one of pure research (and even then it must be made accessible). Rendering or execution can be limited by "means" but not by care or manner. Anything that anyone does can be done well or not. This may sound simplistic but it obviously isn''t "simple" (otherwise more people would "do it").

The pieces that truly are excellent are - again - excellent in idea, in technique, in application of technique, in content, in presentation. The piece is integral with itself. It is consistent with itself. It starts, is carried through and ends "excellently."

Notably, some people drop the ball along the way (putting it bluntly). Notably, some people have ideas that don''t match the rendering, execution, means, ability and/or capacity. Notably, some execute well and present it not at all. Work can''t be narcissistic. People can''t stop and say "What this is so wonderful that everyone will obviously ''see''." Well, if it isn''t accessible, it can never be "obvious."

Notably, some do not have a sense of the history of the field. Although relatively young in itself, it is old enough now to have seen much innovation and creativity - many excellent ideas and manifestations thereof. I have never understood working in a void. I always want to know what has been done in order to go and do what hasn''t. Some people obviously don''t share this notion and at times throughout the screenings, redundancy of idea was obvious.

Notably, some assume - perhaps given that this appears to be a "visual" category - that sound or music are not important. This is wrong. They are important. They are actually essential. They must be integral to the piece.

And, most noteworthy, many did things "right" … resulting in wonderful discussions and debates around the submissions and, of course, an amazing list of prize winners and honorable mentions. For the computer animation category, the jury was actually able to get to the point where individual members "mattered." Differences in definitions, interests, aesthetics, understanding needed to be presented, explained, defended, and accepted. This results in the "appropriate" (correct?) range of pieces being selected as "winners". This results in the "correct" distribution of prizes. The list or prize order can never please only one person or even any person ("personally"). All jury members need to be able to live with it, to find it "fair", and to be proud of the whole. All people responsible for the pieces on the computer animation list truly can be proud.

For the Visual Effects category this unfortunately wasn''t the case. I in no way mean to take away from the prize winning and honorably mentioned submissions - which certainly deserve their merit - but, in general, the quality of the presentation of the submissions (more than the submissions themselves) was poor. People often, usually falsely, assumed understanding of context, of whole, of idea, of purpose, of method when it truly wasn''t apparent.

So, that said, here are this year''s winners ...

The Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Computer Animation

"Bunny" directed by Chris Wedge and produced at Blue Sky Studios (USA)

The Prix Ars Electronica Computer Animation Awards of Distinction

"A Bug''s Life" directed by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, produced by Pixar (USA)

"Snack and Drink" directed by Bob Sabiston and Tommy Pallotta, produced by Flat Black Films (USA)

The Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mentions in Computer Animation

In the Computer Animation category, the jury chose to award all honorary mentions. Actually choosing to do this wasn''t difficult, given that we had more pieces that we wanted to honor than "mentions." We ended up coming up with quite an elaborate "system" to describe our choices, preferences and sense of import for the pieces allowing for a list of work that felt "fair" - meaning reflected each member''s participation and resulted in an overall "jury" list.

This year the honorary mentions go to ...

"Bad Night" directed by Emre and Lev Yilmaz of Protozoa (USA)

"Bike" directed by Dietmar Offenhuber of AEC Future- Lab (Austria)

"Bingo" directed by Chris Landreth of Alias|Wavefront (Canada)

"En D‚rive" directed by Patrice Mugnier/Heure Exquise (France, a student work)

"Fly Band!" directed by Seiji Shiota and Tohru Patrick Awa of Polygon Pictures

(Japan)

"Ghostcatching" directed by Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar and Bill T. Jones of Riverbed (USA)

"Polygon Family" directed by Jun Asakawa and Toshifumi Kawahara of Polygon Pictures (Japan)

"Ronin Romance Classics" directed by Bruce Pukema of Ronin Inc. (USA)

"Stationen" directed by Christian Sawade-Meyer (D)

"Tightrope" directed by Daniel Robichaud of Digital Domain (USA)

"Ultima Forsan" directed by William Le Henanff (France)

"Un Temps pour elle" directed by Erwin Charrier/Heure Exquise (a student work, France)


The Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Visual Effects


"What Dreams May Come" produced by Digital Domain, Mass.illusion and POP (USA)

The Prix Ars Electronica Visual Effects Awards of Distinction

"A viagem" by Alain Escalle (France)

"Guinness Surfer" by Computer-Film Company (GB)

The Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mentions in Visual Effects

This year the honorary mentions in the Prix Ars Electronica Visual Effects category were awarded to ...

Alaris "Aliens" by Juan Tominic Muller of Daiquiri Spainbox (Spain)

Lottery "Fantasy" by Manuel Horrillo Fernandez of Daiquiri Spainbox (Spain)

"Photoreal Digital Cars: Metal Desert and Metal City" by Ray Giarratana of Digital Domain (USA)

"No Way" by Geoffrey Guiot, Bruno Lard‚ and J‚r“me Maillot / Heure Exquise (France, a student work)


"Original Copies" by Miles/Murray/Sorrell of Fuel (GB)

"Virus" by Phil Tippett and Craig Hayes of Tippett Studios (USA)

In conclusion

If an idea is worth realizing, then it is worth realizing well. If you don''t know the work in the above list, please try and see it. These are ideas exceptionally well realized. Individually and together, they currently define computer animation and visual effects. They are our top-of-line present. They point towards our future. And they will become part of our wonderful history. It was an honor and a pleasure to have been on this year''s jury - to have had access to such a wonderful body of work; to sit, discuss, debate with my distinguished co-jurors; to have had the chance to meet firsthand the amazing group of people responsible for the Prix Ars Electronica competition. To all of you I say thank you and congratulations.

EARLY RETIREMENT FOR HOLLYWOOD’S DINOS ...
At high speed and with more or less original ideas, the under-19s are well on their way to the next level of electronic lifestyle.

The U19 entries included just about everything in the way of original productions that young minds can come up with to whip through a processor: the spectrum ranges from the digital children’s drawings by the 6 to 11-year-olds through school children’s first homepages and self-produced games all the way to sophisticated micro-mega productions by entire 3D teams and the comprehensively designed digital package by the outstanding winning crew.

Although the jury might have sometimes wished for more experimental daring and a bit more audacity, the award-winning products are certainly strongly indicative of the creative and expressive potential of young people in Austria. However, the fact that works were still entered primarily by boys is disturbing. The jury hopes that girls will have more courage to participate in the U19 competition in coming years.

Over the course of three days, the jury examined, tested and discussed a total of 600 freestyle computing productions in several runs. With this many entries, the competition is already at the top of the list of comparable competitions in the second year of its existence. The large number of participants shows that young people are taking advantage of opportunities for working digitally. In 1999 U19 is supported again by the Austrian Postal Bank (P.S.K.) and the Austrian Culture Service (öks). What the contents of the entries involves is a representation of the entrants’ own very personal worlds, satire, violence, a presentation of practical information, pure aesthetics, self-presentation or a documentation of school activities, although the latter sometimes showed more of the teacher’s hand than that of the young people who carried it out. It was notable that outstanding submissions were entered in the area of animation, which were created by young people between the ages of 15 and 19.The themes ranged from 3D animated construction plans to parodies and flamboyantly humorous adaptations of fairy tales, like The Tortoise and the Rabbit by Patrick Toifl (18).The 3D animation Good Morning by Alexander Kvasnicka (19) from Vienna is a parody of a complicated alarm At high speed and with more or less original ideas, the under-19s are well on their way to the next level of electronic lifestyle. clock machine for a sleepy head. Each of these two talented render-men was awarded an Honorary Mention.

In comparison with last year, there was an enormous increase in the number of entries in the music sector. One senses the positive influence of internationally recognized Austrian musicians in the experimental electronic and DJ scene.The funky Mio topo by Benedikt Schalk (16) and the kinky Drum ‘n Bass track Scream by Stefan Trischler (18) were also awarded Honorary Mentions for their quality.

Among the 6 to 11-year-olds, the exploration of the computer was mostly restricted to first attempts at graphics or simple experiments with Power Point. One outstanding product in this age group is the work by Sebastian Endt (10), who modeled his idea of a bright pink Schweineherd (“Pig Herd”) in a simple 3D program. Another Honorary Mention was awarded to 8-year-old Stefanie Mitter for her graphic work Clown.

With the exception of the especially distinguished project safe:reality, the Net sector is still in an early phase of development. Notable here is the entry SOS - Simple online Security by Armin Weihbold (15): encrypted HTML files can be decrypted online using his Java script. In this way, he addresses a topical problem that is important to Internet users and implements it in a way that is thoroughly adapted the Web.

Among the many school homepages that were entered, the site by Franz Berger (18) for the HTL (secondary technical school) Braunau was awarded an Honorary Mention by the jury for the up-to-date and service-oriented presence of the school.The site demonstrates a useful Net application by young people. In general, however, neither the extent nor the implementation of contents and graphics among the submitted Web sites met the jury’s expectations. In comparison with last year, there was a lack of innovative and humorous sites.There were unfortunately only a few entrants, who dared to go beyond private and fan homepages. Many of these sites left the jury with a somewhat isolated and reserved impression.

As a young talent, Markus Strahlhofer (19) is notably outstanding in the field of games. His continuing work, distinguished this year for the second time, indicates hope for more high quality games in the future. His VRML game Area 51 - Back to the Surface sets a high technical and graphical standard.

Among the many entries for interactive applications, the Matura CD-Rom from the classes 8a and 8b of the college preparatory school Akademiestrasse in Salzburg is remarkable for the reductive graphical design, text design and original navigation. Unlike many CD-Rom productions, of which the contents would be better placed on the Internet, the complete digital representation of a final year newspaper makes sense in this medium.

The driving force behind Unser Tag (“Our Day”), an interactive reading book, is Takuya Nimmerrichter (10).This is the second time that this young media freak has drawn attention to himself with a work that is remarkable for his age. Another of the 15 Honorary Mentions goes to Projekt Leben (“Project Life”) by Simon Oberhammer (18), as an outstanding hybrid between interaction and simulation. Very simple graphical signs representing living creatures are given the task of finding food and developing intelligence.


G o l d e n N i c a

(conspirat). On test flights through countless freestyle bytes, the jury repeatedly ran into this trademark of a young crew from Linz. The ten music tracks that were entered by this supposed band on CD set off the first rush of adrenaline on the second morning of the jury meeting: Digital Noise, it says on the CD cover. “An exciting mixture of digital interference noise and distorted voices— the Einstürzenden Neubauten of hard disks. At last, a digital act far removed from the technoconstruction- set principle,” was the tone of a statement from the jury. And wasn’t there this strange device, a kind of flow heater, which was quite conspicuous as the only hardware object in the competition at a first general survey of the submissions? As it turned out, this satirical sabotage device with the promising name “Fuse Killer” also comes from the development department of (conspirat).When the device was first secretly tested in the basement of the ORF building in Linz, it did indeed “kill” a large section of the electricity supply in the broadcasting building. Finally the kind of freestyle kick the jury had been hoping for. Creative minds, throwing away the manual and starting, in their own way, to mercilessly maltreat and alienate the computer and technology, yet very purposefully and skillfully “misusing” it for their own stories. That was only the beginning: the breakthrough finally came with the (conspirat). computer animation Personal Factory by Raimund Schumacher and the experimental digital video Bestanker on Tour by Jürgen Oman. Personal Factory, the most professional and aesthetically assured submission in the U19 category, would stand out even in the flood of VIVA clips. In the end, the jury was not even surprised that they also have a Web site to promote their “label” (www.besu.ch/Phantomschmerz). (conspirat).was a hit at every level: artistic, multimedia, experimental and, most especially, very independent.The jury came to the conclusion that the team as a whole, with its ability to cover so many facets without becoming the least dilettantish, clearly deserved the Golden Nica. Their overall concept of open teamwork corresponds to the working methods of new media workers and makes fantastic use of the synergies thus created.


A w a r d s o f D i s t i n c t i o n

In addition to the Golden Nica, two Awards of Distinction, in the form of a multimedia Pentium Notebook, were also awarded in the competition. Aside from the group (conspirat).

18-year-old Alexander Fischl and Gregor Koschicek were the closest runner-ups for the prestigious Golden Nica. His overwhelming computer animation Von Ignoranten, Betriebssystemen und Atomraketen (“Ignoramuses, Operating Systems and Atomic Missiles”) is outstanding for its nearly perfect depiction of a four-minute thriller about the Y2K bug, in other words the critical problem of changing the date in the year 2000.With this animation he met all the criteria that were especially important to the jury: original idea, humor, elements of surprise, power and use of individual components, and a strong feeling for his medium, the computer or computer networks respectively. In this case the criteria also included the high-quality sound design, the figurative language and the narrative strategy requiring no representation of persons and yet able to maintain the narrative tension until the very last moment. Equally persuasive were the adept use of the means available to him and the brilliant direction that gave the product as a whole its effectiveness. At the closing presentation, the quality of this complex 3D rendering project even impressed the computer animation and sound experts from California.

Among the many Web entries, safe:reality (www.cactis.org) by Philipp E. Haindl (18) emerged as a first-class work in terms of content and graphics and was deemed unequivocally worthy of an Award of Distinction.The high degree of “Webness” in his project is convincing, and thus it meets all the criteria that are important to the jury for an Internet work: the project can only be done on the net, in other words it is entirely designed for this medium, it involves the users and visualizes the users’ participation, its aesthetic is based on the functions and limitations of the Web, and it makes use of the advantages of being non-local.

Haindl was one of the few entrants who proved able to combine digital processes, reflection and style in one product. For example, scripts running on the server in the background generate graphic elements from the user statements in the background.

Like many complex Web sites, safe:reality is not easily comprehensible, but a closer look reveals that it is outstanding for a number of reasons, not only because of its political topicality. Philipp Haindl takes the war in Kosovo as a starting point for reflecting on perceptions of reality in an anonymized abstract space—the Web—and has created an Internet site, where people interested in discussion and passing Net tourists can leave a statement about the war. This results in a dialogue that is intended to open new perspectives by being disconnected from the actual location of the respective user.

Looking back again at the best products, it may well be said that Hollywood’s dinosaurs will have to come up with something good, if they want to avoid early retirement. The monopolies of the mainframes, expensive studios and mammoth companies are coming under increasingly determined attack.

Music from the Bedroom Studios
Kodwo Eshun

In 1996, the composer Bob Ostertag pointed to the paradox that had driven the Prix Ars Electronica for Computer Music to a point of crisis:"... as computers' presence in music has mushroomed from nearly invisible to downright unavoidable, so the range of music considered to be Computer Music has become increasingly fixed and rigid. Why this emergence of Computer Music, instead of an openness to all the musics which computers make possible?”

Changing the Prix Category from Computer Music to Digital Musics acknowledges this "openness to all the musics which computers make possible.” Focusing on digital innovation, the 1999 Jury embarked on a mission to immerse itself in the soundworlds of 720 entries. We listened eagerly for new ways of listening. Nothing would have pleased us more than to hear the new Todd Dockstader or the new Bernard Parmegiani, but the vast bulk of electroacoustic and acousmatic entries showed no such iconoclasm. As the judge and composer Laetitia Sonami said, "There's a certain arrogance that comes with the language which says that to be recognised you have to follow that language and nobody questions it. There's no self regeneration. Because it's an academic world , it can live on its own. In this case, there's no commercial imperative, so you can keep this kind of bubble going.”

Like a Cavalier king only too aware of the new dispensation, the ancien regime of electroacoustic music has automatically assumed a noblesse oblige for itself, awarding itself an undeserved authority at the cost of cultural irrelevance. But Sonami's argument applies across the board; there was just as much formulaic music produced outside academia as inside. Today, graphical software packages such as GRM Tools or SoundHack with their menu upon menu of options enthrall producers, generating a situation where the track and the composition become a predictable outcome of programmes like SuperCollider.

This year's Jury included the producer-engineers Jim O'Rourke and Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, both of whom were especially attuned to digital transparency where signature sounds are directly attributable to particular software. Many entries, for example relied on digital signal processing. The gorgeous shuttling, tumbling, shingling sound of GRM Shuffler VST mode was heard repeatedly. "I'm getting allergic to people processing things just because they can,” O'Rourke complained more than once. "It doesn't matter what they put in at point A because it's just the sound of the process.” On the one hand the proliferation of software has a democratizing effect. Because the late 90s minimal techno producer uses the same software in his bedroom studio as an acousmatic composer at her university studio, both become digital musicians, Powerbook composers. On the other hand, the latest GRM upgrade matters less than a distinctive sonic thought process. So the approaches to the virtual studio become even more crucial and the clash between ways of hearing becomes a battle between the noises of art and the musics of sound.

In its gleeful glide between horror n' humour, its split second slide between a grin and a groan, the Jury recognised a new digital aesthetic in the music video "Come to Daddy", unanimously awarding the Golden Nica to its English video director Chris Cunningham and the influential English electronic producer Richard James/Aphex Twin. Filmed on Thamesmead Estate in South East London where Stanley Kubrick shot "Clockwork Orange", "Come to Daddy" is the first in Cunningham's classic trilogy of videos, followed by 1998's superkinetic "Squarepusher" video C'mon my Selector and 1999's ultralascivious "Windowlicker" video, again for Aphex Twin. The Cunningham-James collaboration is characterised by what composer-conductor Naut Humon calls a sound driven aesthetic of extreme digital mutation, one which speaks to the artificial in us, as it veers from micro engineered rapid-edit rhythms to brutalizing psychotic music with a visceral virtuosity.

When programmes become immediately recognisable, it's easy to hear how the software is manipulating its user. A key approach in 90s digital music obstructs this tendency by amplifying the point of breakdown into a new digital irritainment, an immanent disobedience that maximises the moment when the CPU reaches 100% and your Powerbook crashes. Back in the 60s, Hendrix exploited the immanent potential of the guitar feeding back through the amps, turning the noise of destruction into art. Today's Powerbook composers are doing the same as they turn electronic catastrophe into music, training us to enjoy the sound of failure and the art of the accident.

"What I like is when digital doesn't work, ”says Robin Rimbaud. Across the audio-spectrum, producers are arranging digital error into new granular synthetic tones, turning accidents into new texturhythms, opening all the sound files until the graphic user interface gives up the ghost.

This tendency was pioneered by Aphex Twin and by the winners of the 1999 Distinction: Vienna's Mego label. Rather than splitting the prize between the two Mego entries: Christian Fennesz's "Hotel Parall.lel" and Pita aka Peter Rehberg's "Seven Tons for Free Remaster Version 1.2", the Jury broke with Ars Electronica convention, agreeing with O' Rourke's suggestion that the Distinction should be awarded to the Mego label as a whole. Sonically speaking Rehberg's "Seven Tons for Free Remaster Ver.1.2" consists of pulsing, hissing, flapping sinewave tones, arranged on an early 8 bit 520 Powerbook. In the "Hotel Paral.lel" CD you hear a micro-pulsing variation where sounds transform in and out of recognition, pulling you in and out of perceptual focus. A tinny guitar becomes a scratch which blurts into an ear shredding sinewave that modulates into high pitched whines that become a new kind of brand new improved tinnitus. Since the mid 90s, Mego has defined what O'Rourke calls a "brand new punk computer music, a punk aesthetic, like do it yourself, press your own records, get your own distribution going.”

They achieved this firstly by mutating the real-time sinewave synthesis strategies familiar from academic computer music, and secondly "by taking it out of the context of art music as O' Rourke argued, a move "that should be recognised just as much as the music.” As Robin Rimbaud explained, "There's a recognition
of a wider world, where I get the feeling with electroacoustic music that there's nothing outside it.”

The second Distinction unanimously went to the veteran New York based Japanese composer Ikue Mori for "Birth Days", her stunning 3 part Alesis drum machine suite. Performed live, Mori's virtuosity enables her to draw cross- and counter polyrhythmelodies from the most basic factory presets, arranging these into an enchanting audiomaze of a composition. Mori's rhythmatic wizardry underlined the extent to which rhythm remains the next frontier for Ars Electronica in 2000 and beyond.

Approaching producers from the overlapping worlds of turntabilization, hiphop, and electronica for the 1999 Prix, the judges encountered a spectrum of resistance ranging from indifference to antagonism. Years of insularity have created the sense that Prix Ars Electronica was no different from the Bourges Festival, another elite competition in which composers award prizes to other composers.

And so an influential duo like Autechre would not be moved, insisting there was nothing special about what they did. Such extreme self-deprecation contrasted with the majority of entries where, inadvertently or deliberately, compositional statements often became an alibi for underwhelming music. Complex explanations detailing how MetaSynth software scanned visual data to generate audio often raised hopes which their music failed to satisfy. O'Rourke spoke for the Jury when he noted that "If somebody makes a big deal about where they're coming from and then I don't hear it then I'm gonna hold it against them.” Separated from its program, much acousmatic music sounded indistinguishable from Hollywood sound design but drained of the drama of, for example, John Frizzell's music for Alien Resurrection.

The key exception here was Montreal based artists collective The User. Their manifesto succinctly explained how their "Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers" reshapes "ambient technology” into a "musical structure that” doubles as "a critique of technology” in the form of a parody of an archetypal office unit. Architect Thomas Macintosh and composer Emanuel Maden's Symphony for "Dot Matrix Printers" impressed the Jury enough to earn an Honorary Mention. "Dot matrix printers,” they explain, "are turned into musical 'instruments' while a computer network system, typical of a contemporary office becomes the 'orchestra' used to play them. The orchestra is 'conducted' by a network server which reads from a composed 'score'.” Not only did their ideas amplify their project; more importantly their installation overcame the decontextualizing effect of the video player, an effect which fatally drained all the other pieces of their site specific impact. Late 90s digital music tends towards the pragmatic rather than programmatic. Programmatic statements are disguised; a misspelling like Mego group Farmers Manual album title "fsck" or Mouse on Mars compositions such as "X-Flies" or "Tamagnocchi" says as much as any manifesto. In fact a misspelling that makes you disbelieve your eyes is an entire manifesto, one compressed and abbreviated, encrypted and delivered under the Trojan Horse of derision and sarcasm.

Of the 12 Honorary Mentions, the Jury was especially pleased to award an Honorary Mention to Berlin producer Stefan Betke for his "Pole" project. "Pole" uses the simple Waldorf filter to generate the mesmerising pop, crackle and snap of his "Pole 2" CD. The implied rhythm of its enwombing bass skank acknowledges and extends the massively influential technodub continuum pioneered by Berlin's Basic Channel/ Chain Reaction label throughout the 90s. Cologne duo Mouse on Mars — electronic composers Jan St Werner and Andi Toma — earned an Honorary Mention for the bewitching micro-engineered texturhythms of their sumptuous 1997 album "Autoditacker". Emotionally, Mouse on Mars exemplify the joy of a toy, what another Honorary Mention, the electroacoustic composer Rose Dodd termed "kinderspel", the animistic life of toys in a child's playroom. Their melodies spangled and twinkled, wriggled and burst. Like the younger hypermelodic sister to "Hotel Paral.lel", "Autoditacker's" restless variation reveled in insectile complexity. Running too much information through the inputs produces the bursting effect of frictional forms in ceaseless life.

German producer Bernhard Günter's suite "The Ant Moves/The Black and Yellow Carcass/ A little Closer" was another popular choice for an Honorary Mention. As Robin Rimbaud pointed out, "He influenced an awful lot of compositions that have happened in the last 5 or 6 years. "The extreme quietness of Günter's microsonic pieces demanded an extreme concentration to the processed natural sounds occurring at the far edge of hearing. Listening to the act of listening, your attention zoomed into the electronics of everyday life, the hums of radiators, the tock of clocks. At micro-perceptible levels, the borders between silence and accident became porous. At one point O'Rourke asked Naut Humon to turn off his Power Book and the sonic events obscured by the machine's hum loomed audibly into earshot.

At the other extreme, composer Zbiegniew Karkowski's and Masami Akita's (Merzbow) Metabolic Speed Perception used the granular Internet sounds of Dialup Connection to generate a riverrun of harmonic overtones in the noise tradition of Merzbow and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Like many composers, Karkowski and Akita used the internal sounds of software, but unlike them, knowing this only added to the fascination of their music. Digital processes generate new kinds of chaos; music organizes this into what Felix Guattari termed a chaosmos. 1999 was the year in which the Prix Ars Electronica heard the chaosmos, the year in which danger and unknowing returned to the unstable media of digital musics.

Are We Still Enjoying Interactivity?
Machiko Kusahara

Is interactive art still too young? Possibly, as the paint and brush we use in this genre of art are still changing every year. But that is part of the fun. Certainly technical development is closely related to what artists can realize in interactive art, as John Markoff stated in last year’s jury statement Moore’s Law Applied to Digital Art? In fact the CAVE has indeed become a standard environment for virtual reality. CD-ROM and WWW have become standard environments for almost any interactive artists. The history of technical improvement and its reflection in the making of art is quite visible in the history of this young category of Prix Ars Electronica.

A major trend in this category in 97 and 98 was the development of more convincing and comprehensive virtual environments. In 97’s "Music Play Images x Images Play Music" by Toshio Iwai and Ryuichi Sakamoto, interaction between images and music brought an artistic and at the same time entertaining experience to the audience, while interaction between the participants from the Net and the famous musician/composer on the stage also took place. The work made a new possibility of multimedia as a form of art visible to us. Paul Garrin and David Rokeby’s "Border Patrol" was a virtual environment with quite a different theme, but also integrating image and sound. Maurice Benayoun and Jean-Baptiste Barièrre’s "World Skin", the winner of 98, was a powerful virtual experience made by the collaboration of visual artist and sound artist. Visitors wander in the CAVE among cut-outs of soldiers, sufferers and war machines taken from photos of WW I and Bosnia in the almost monochrome battlefield that continues endlessly. The sound of camera shutters gradually turn into horrifying screams and sounds of gunshots as visitors use the camera to take photos. The role of media is questioned by using the most advanced media technology. Christian Möller’s "Audio Grove" provided visitors with a much more peaceful experience. A space filled with steel posts creates an ever changing symphony of sound, light and shadow as visitors touch or caress the poles.

Altogether, the realization of multimedia / multimodal interaction for users was another strong element. The extension of virtual reality and developing more natural, easy-to-use interfaces, which has been a key issue in technology, seemed to be the basso continuo in interactive art as well.

This year, a change was to be observed. It was not easy to make a selection from more than 360 works entered in this category this year, but the strongest pieces were not those which tried to realize a virtual environment integrating visual and sound experiences with the maximum interactivity. In fact while there were quite a few CAVE pieces, but none of them made it to a prize after all. Among the pieces we selected, interactivity is applied more for questioning the relationship between real space (where the users are) and another space, which is not necessarily virtual. The relationship is not linear as it used to be, or it often employs multiple layers. In some works the notion of interactivity itself is the theme. Also, words such as memories, traces, landscape, dispersion were frequently seen among the titles of works we found interesting.

Another interesting phenomenon we observed this year was the number of entries using circular screens or projections. The idea is not new. Certainly a circle of light is optically the most natural and the oldest form of projection. If we think of the beginning of the history of imaging art, magic lanterns cast circular light and glass slides themselves were often prepared circularly. It was only after certain technical developments of the light source that full wall-size rectangular projection became popular. Cinema adopted a rectangular screen, and so did television and computer displays. Now circular screens seem to attract the attention of interactive artists.

What do these phenomena signify? Are we already becoming nostalgic? It seems that artists are exploring the next step of interactive art. To make it more interactive? Not necessarily. Interactive technology itself has still much to develop before notions such as ubiquitous computing or smart home may be realized in every household, not to mention the question of whether we really want this kind of life. But the nature of art (and its role, from a social or historical aspect) is not to demonstrate technical improvements. Artists foresee - and at the same time look back at - what is beyond or behind the technical issue, visualizing the real meanings of technology.

Actually this was already seen with World Skin. It was by the conscious choice of the artists to limit the degree of reality in virtual space or interaction that the strong concept of the piece could be realized.We have had other artists using this kind of aspect as well, but they were rather a minority when the technological development was still far from sufficient.

This year the interactive jury selected Lynn Hershman’s "Difference Engine #3" for the Golden Nica. The piece is not one of the visually spectacular works we have seen in this category in recent years. It is not an easy piece to enjoy either. The piece connects real space and the virtual world, allowing Net users to virtually fly through the real space using avatars, and to chat with the people in the real space. However, it is not a happy CUSeeMe kind of project, even though visitors can enjoy the experience and communicate with others. On the contrary, it depicts an increasing anxiety about the blurring boundary between the real world and the virtual and life in cyberspace, literally. Today, cyberspace is no longer a wonderland on the Net. Serious matters of real life such as transaction or identification are all moving onto the Net. The work is a well thought, strongly conceptual piece which integrates important issues we are facing in terms of relationships between real space and the virtual world. It deals with themes such as voyeurism, notions of self and others, the "life" of avatars, and coded identity on the Net.

Needless to say, Lynn Hershman is one of the pioneers in interactive art, but even before that she was always dealing with issues such as voyeurism and virtual identity in interactive ways. In her well known project Roberta, the identity of a virtual persona was created through social systems (including the reactions of people who were users of information that Hershman issued). The artificial data of the virtual woman was processed to virtually create a real woman in society. In "Difference Engine #3" the information regarding a real person is processed in the system she has created, to become the entity of an avatar which will live its own life cycle apart from that of the original real person, and remain on the Net (numbered literally on its face) forever. The piece elegantly visualizes the relationship between the real world and the virtual world, as well as the meaning of virtual life on the Net. The relationship between real space and virtual space has changed. Enjoying exploring a virtual environment and having spontaneous interaction with its inhabitants is no longer a novelty. Creative multimedia environments can now be seen on the Net as well, with the advent of recent effective image and sound compression technology.

It might not be a coincidence that the three artists who won prizes this year are all well known, established artists who have been active in the field of interactive art with unique approaches. (However, it was also a pity that most of the interesting works are done by already recognized artists. We wished to find young talents.) It is understandable that since these artists have been using the technology for many years they are aware of the issues ahead of others. Also, the right use of technology to visualize these kinds of themes requires expertise.


Distinctions

Perry Hoberman raises such questions with a "nonanswer" situation. The artist has provided us with a chaotic, confusing situation where three different phases of reality and virtuality overlap as they are displayed on a single monitor. It is only by manipulating it that one can recognize what he/she is manipulating. It is up to you how to deal with it, the artist says. It is a piece which (as in the case of Lynn Hershman’s) strongly reflects the artist’s continuous approach to the relationship between real and virtual, as well as to interactivity. His much earlier pieces using stereoview or shadow already reflect the artist’s interest in the theme before he started using virtual reality. Playful irony and visual fun are also observed in Hoberman’s other works. Even though the piece is supported by a very highly technical platform, the way Hoberman uses the technology is totally different from a demonstration.

Luc Courchesne’s "Landscape One" brings up the question of directorship in interactive art. The piece can be considered as an interactive cinema, which consists of four screens to give a virtually 360 degree view to the users. Users can communicate with the people (and a dog) who arrive from different directions by making a choice from sentences that appear on the panel, as in his earlier works. But the artist does not try to bring the users into the immersive experience in the virtual world. It is different from exploring a fantasy world in the CAVE. A visitor will remain aware that he/she is in the real space and still talking with a character in the film, while observing what is happening in the space on the other side of the screen. It is a limited and predecided interactivity, which might have been regarded as "insufficient interactivity" in the short history of interactive art. But it is such a carefully designed interactivity that the high quality of the experience (i.e. being in an interactive cinema) becomes possible in this piece. This piece makes us think about the role of interactivity in a narrative story.


Honorary Mentions

Works selected for Honorary Mention represent examples of different possibilities in interactive art or original approaches to bridging art, science and technology. Some of the works included are equally as interesting as the award winning pieces in many ways.

"Robots Avatars Dealing with Virtual Illusions" by F.A.B.R.I.CATORS is another example of dealing with the complexity of the relationship between the real world and the virtual world. Avatars in the virtual world can be manipulated by controlling physical robots in the real world. There is a unique visualization of the increasing membranes of communication we see in our world.

In Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau’s "Haze Express", a night train experience is realized in a compartment with settings taken from a real train. Numerous crystal-like objects float outside the window like the passing street lights one sees on a foggy night. One can change the speed and direction of the train by slipping one’s hand over the window. By virtually touching the crystal pieces one likes through the window, similar shapes will circulate more often because of a genetic algorithm. But a feature like this does not seem to belong to the essence of a dream-like experience on a night train. It is more about going back to childhood memory (I remembered a phrase from Antoine Saint-Exupéry). When we remember that only a few years ago we saw quite a few pieces dealing with the concept of "Alife" in a straight manner, including those by the artists of "Haze Express", it is interesting to see that "Alife" has nearly retreated into the background.

It is a part of what we see this year—technology may now finally be mature enough to be less visible, behind the scene of artistic questions and expressions. Certainly the way artists see interactive technology is changing. Maybe we are finally becoming sceptical of the myth of ever-progressing technical development. Or at least we have finally come to the point where interactive technology is stable enough to let us stop for a moment and look around. What we see this year — stronger concepts involving the nature of interactivity and virtuality — may partly be a reflection of the deceleration of technical development. What will we see in the year 2000?