2.2.4.1. Confronting motives: Art context
The intentional artistic provocation generates relevant study material for non-artists, in particular those who plan to collaborate with artists to generate new ideas or break conventional patterns. In the first instance, collisions may happen by accident, mainly due to a lack of knowledge about each other’s domains (and jargon) (see also 2.1.) or work method. Other occasions teach us about intentional collisions, where the artist acts as a provocateur. One should be aware that in addition to Wilson’s observations, the misunderstandings not only come from the lack of knowledge, but they are also rooted in artistic practice. The artistic, poetic or associative language adds diffusion and confusion when used in an expert (scientific) environment.
The intentional collision has its roots in the tradition of artist as commentator or protestor. In early mediated art practice in the 1970s the Raindance video initiative and the Radical Software magazine in the United States published the mission to free television broadcast from corporate control. They had the, now visionary, idea to open up the channels of television, by providing access to production and distribution tools to the audience.[124] In recent practice, the artist activist and hacker fulfil this role as media activists. Wilson[125] briefly refers to this as ‘deconstruction as art practice’, where artists become part of the technology development and from there continue their art practice as knowledgeable commentators. Arns[126] calls this phenomenon the generation of counter-discourse in society. Arns places this analytical deconstruction approach in the context of 20th century mediated art practices. She states that this critical attitude is partly rooted in the search for more democratic mass media platforms (and the work is often turned against the existing media power structures), and partly in political deconstruction and subversive activism. The artists who are here categorised under the heading of ‘social technologies’ work as media activists, emancipators (who intend to free society from the restrictions of technology and its related power structures) and those who want to raise awareness about socio- political issues. The work areas for cultural activism cover the ‘public domain’ and tactical media that are used for independent broadcasting, etc. Over the last years, special attention has been paid to security and privacy issues, exposure of the hidden power structures through analysis and interpretation of data traffic, and digital information streams and biotechnology. As mentioned by Arns, far away and deep down, artists working with or producing social technologies also represent somehow the dream or hope that art can change society, although this might be a very different approach than that envisioned by the engineers and scientists quoted earlier (Kluver, Ridley, Kuhn).
The intentional artistic collision and hacking, or repurposing of technology, relates also to the critical theory of Michel de Certeau. De Certeau proposes to make explicit (in language) the modus operandi of consumers, which, he claims, make a ‘culture’. He brings forward the intentional consumer’s tactics as a cultural activity. In ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’ [127] he contrasts his vision of the use of products with the assumed notion that the public is shaped by the use of the product. His argument for the consideration of the empowered user as a cultural phenomenon is highly relevant for the artist-activist and hacker of consumer technology. The notion of hacking and empowered consumerism can be conceived as both political acts and works of art, while in intentional collisions it becomes clear that the borderline between those two is blurred. The method, however, is similar: the work is created according to a hacker’s or DIY bottom-up approach. Over the years, artists have been re-engineering and repurposing technology both in software and hardware. Network games turned out to be of special interest because of their multi-user network components and the real-time visual aspects, in particular the popular the so-called ‘first-person shooter’ games, which represent a technical, political and artistic challenge. Intentional collisions are more or less the brand of the artist group Jodi, a collaboration between the Dutch / Belgian artists Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans.[128] Jodi and many others worked and re-engineered different game engines and repurposed technology to shock and confuse the user, and by doing so they also created their own new aesthetics. Among the most popular game engines for artistic collisions are the Quake[129] engine, originally written to power 1996s Quake, and the Unreal[130] engine.
Artists who re-appropriate the media channels and criticise current technology developments represent another stream of critical art practice. For example, the Critical Art Ensemble[131] (CAE) is a group of five artists from different disciplines, whose work focuses on the intersection between art, technology, politics and critical theory. The tactical use of mass media is a key aspect of their work. CAE uses mass media to reach their audience with their subversive actions and critique on the same media, political issues and power structures. The members of CAE [132] are considered to be cultural activists (known as artists), and their work is strongly related to critical discourse. Their practice is placed in a historical context of power structures and draws a parallel between net activism and the strength and mobility of nomads. In the context of 20th century art, they relate their work to Duchamp, Cabaret Voltaire and the Berlin-based Dadaists as forerunners for contemporary artistic activism. These movements have all worked upstream against the art establishment, with autonomy being an important ingredient for their operations. CAE further argues against the artist as revolutionary agent, as promoted by Andre Breton, due to its proposed idea of the poetic self as a privileged narrative and other variants which reduce activism to a resource merely for artistic exploitation. As does Arns, the CAE also refers to the Situationists International as a major source of inspiration for the cultural activist movement. In a larger context, they see cultural activism as a contemporary continuation of the avant-garde, and refer to electronic disturbance as a contemporary version of nomadic power in cyberspace with concerns about (disclosed) centralised information. The CAE authors mention[133] that the cultural activist usually operates outside and often against the official scientific institutions due to their political agendas and funding constraints, or in the eyes of the activist, debatable resources and goals.
Naimark[134] has written that ‘metaphor to some is violation to others’. He refers to the artists’ intentions to create ‘metaphor and poetry’. According to Naimark, the artistic approach to technology collides with the technical research objective, which is often to improve technology. The most common reference for improvement of technology is the interest for representation or literal recreation of realistic experiences, as discussed earlier (2.2.3.2.). This especially happens in the field of visualisation techniques such as those used in virtual reality. Artists are more interested in building ‘make believe’ experiences, or focusing instead on interaction and perception. Here we witness a collision of different objectives and attitudes towards technological innovation in general. Mulder and Post also bring the positive effects of the intentional collisions and misconceptions forward:
‘ … the rule here is that mis-understandings are the vehicle for the cultural transfer: other people will do something with your expertise you never intended it to do. Electronic art is the art of misconception; misconceptions that put every normality in disorder and make it turn against itself, with happy and illuminating results.’ (Mulder, Post)[135]
Mulder and Post underline that the effects of collisions is not always negative: the clash method sets processes in motion, shakes up, intervenes, exposes. The illuminating outcome of misconception or repurposing, as brought forward by Mulder and Post, varies from raising awareness to proposing a new aesthetics. In this context, these aesthetics are not limited to audiovisual components but are also embedded in the critique, the interaction design, the social interaction, the game structure and other ephemeral aspects of the work.
