It has been years and years since members of De Hoeksteen team have been
participating in Arts Electron
ica, the media festival organised in Linz.
It is interesting, exiting and, in a way, unique. It would be great if
there were more of these festivals and that "video festivals" would
begin to include digital technology as one of their permanent features
.
There is however an issue that is often discussed in the digital art iner circles and that is that manifestations like Ars Electronica give
priority to the "high end of the market" works developed with expensive
computers that only the industry (adve
r
tisment, design, architecture, etc.)
can afford. There are many that believe that it is also important to give some
coverage to those that concentrate and make a point of using
consumer facilities only: Apple Macintosh, Amiga (believe it or not) and
P
Cs.
Not everything in the digital arts has to be high tech, on the contrary,
"masterworks" can also be developed with very simple means. An example of this
is the statemenet by German visual artist Ulay: "Aesthetics without ethics" are
cosmetics" that was
pu
blished by Desk Top Television in Amsterdam in 1994 and
that created riots.. Everybody understands that keeping taps on the hi-end of
technology but, many belive, that it is also important to cover the
developments in the field of consumer (user one should say) technology, but it is also wise to consider a new category that covers work developed with consumer technology too. This is just a suggestion, hoor!!