guy♥waag.org (CK) and dusan♥idealnypartner.sk (DB) in conversation.

DB: To create a precise algorithm is to set up the computers and only let them communicate with each other.
CK: oh but we are not so much interested in precision. We are much more interested in how out of a soup we can let the machines identify patterns, relevant for its own operability. And this can be communicated with other machines over networks, wireless or not, and create something machinically new and therefore beautiful.
DB: Machine-to-machine interaction is not a well explored phenomenon in the arts..
CK: In a sense it has always been there from the beginning, just think of Von Neumann's cellular automata, and all the famous cybernetic paradigms... We don't want to suggest we are on the same line, we just play around with ideas, possibilities, hypothesis and see what turns up in the end.

DB: Dziga Vertov says: "the machine shows you the world as only it can see it." The role of machine artist in such a world is to not subject the machine to the individual, but learn how to listen to the machine.
CK: Well, in general, we tend to combine both within the technology we use, I mean normal people in ordinary life. And a machine nowadays is not so straightforward like a steam engine etc... We are used to call computers machines. And the learning curve is steep in using them. So both approaches have to be present. David Tudor made great music with modified electronic components in a network and feedback setup, only by listening to what the devices were already doing and then tweeking it a little into an unusual direction. That is the right attitude I guess.
DB: Isn't an impulse for listening to the machine only a poetic metaphor against humanization of our devices? Both the prehistoric tools and industrial machines are said to be built as the extensions of our senses. Does this change to you with the computer networks?
CK: It depends what you mean with poetic metaphor. Isn't all this back and forth discussing about the difference about computers and networks as either tools and media becoming a kind of metaphor: we tend to love our devices so much that we honour them with superhuman qualities almost. While they cannot escape their being locked in into mere devices that will always function in relationship to us, however independent they become. We like to perceive them in a very anthropomorphic way. What do you think?
DB: That this way of thinking is easy to misuse. Computer can be used as the third, unbiased 'person' taking over the responsibility rising up from 'his' decisions (in reality based on the random function). For instance in the lottery it generates the winning numbers (US Green Card): 'It's the computer who decided.' Also in the manipulation of elections it's software 'who' failed. Such a hypocracy can have a calming effect also on the scene of traditional capitalism - it's less tragic to have to work on computer rather than for employer. Extensions of our senses are then becoming the extensions of our responsibility (ability to respond).

DB: Did you learn anything from Walter Walter?
CK: Yes sure! The initial idea was to reinvent robotics from the point of view of artists, using off the shelf technology. It was a fast and dirty strapping together of a computer and some hardware. It could run around and perceive the world with 2 microphones and react to that like an insect. And be creative with the sound and images it sampled while driving around. We learned very quickly how people are fooling themselves if they think there is some kind of an intelligence behind what they see in the behavior of machines. But we got easily bored by it and that is why we wanted to change our agenda and investigate how machine collaboration on teh aesthetical level is possible. The flying artbot installation "thoughts go by air" is making it on top of that rather difficult: the balloons are very susceptible to external influences like draft, temperature, power, etc... They get very easily out of control, so now we are trying to make a system in which several units communicate and control themselves as a flock. Without human intervention. We are currently working at a new implementation. It will take some time though, much longer than the 3 weeks development time of roving walter walter. Another issue is the fact that we are currently looking into more ecological approaches to making artbots. We are a lot inspired by biorobotics. We are currently setting up a new network of people with a similar interest from Belgian, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK, but also Tsjech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, etc... Some people you can find in the Artbot exhibitions over the last years. So we are learning esp. that we are not alone in this world doing the things we want to achieve.

DB: Computer is one of the few artistic devices whose existence depends on corporate production. Open source hardware initiatives (openhardware.net, simputer.org) are starting to bring up the solutions. Do you think that ecocentric system of environmental ethics can be applied also to Turing-Church paradigm of programmable computing machine?
CK: First of all there was the academic development of the computer (whether it was for the military or not), then stepped in the industry. Same happened to the internet. So what we see now with open source software and hardware development is maybe a temporary reaction to the big sell out we saw over the last decades. Artists esp. are very vulnerable in a social-economical sense and technological artists esp. are facing a very difficult task of making art with very expensive devices. Just see the difference with painting: an older painter becomes more skilled and even can continue to work in the seclusion of the countryside far away from the world. We are not this kind of artists anymore, we have to learn every couple of years a new artificial language, we have to buy new expensive devices (the life-cycle of computers for instance is ridiculously short), and everytime we have to start from scratch almost. There is hardly building up of new skills. But somehow it should tie you to a real world you cannot escape, only criticize or comment. That is a choice of course and that is what we would identify the political dimension of our work. The state is finished and gone, after they sell out what we mostly situated as their most important role: responsibility over education, health care, culture, ... And now the paradox occurs: if we as involved and situated artists don't care about alternative emancipation and cultural matters, who will?

DB: By 'machine cent'red humanz' you mean Flusserian machine as a human heart (human being ‘programmed’ by machine’s categories) or Flusserian human inside a machine (functionary inside the apparat discovering new possibilities and widening the range of its output in an unprobable way)?
CK: The name mxHz.org describes our activities, individually and when working in a group. Nowadays most of us are so depending on machines to fulfill the most stupid tasks in life: phones, cd's, radios, tv's, computers, cars, etc... and since they become so close to us and part of our communication and creation, yes in a sense there is where our real heart is! but the sense of a human inside a machine we don't want to accept. We accept though that machines have their own operation, like humans have, and there is sometimes no possible direct communication possible.

DB: The code is linear only until it's executed. Computers function by multiprocessing the linearity, of the causal time in realtime. What did it change in your artistic perception?
CK: Nothing really, the things you talk about were long time ago implemented already in the way we were making music together. We never worked and will never work with standard sequencers for that reason. That is boring and totally hyped by a market-driven culture, like dj-vj'ng. And the idea of the linear and causality is largely exaggerated to tie us into conservative aesthetical agendas I guess.
DB: I was having in mind the new potential of instant networks. Flusser spoke about digital environment as quantitative, having quantum structure, and the linear text as causal..
CK: But does this difference have an impact on first the everyday things we do and also on the way we express ourselves in a creative way?
DB: You hesitate? Evolutionary idea of progress is facing the absorption by repetition. I mean, the 'profession' of being the artist as a person linearly developing his/her ouvre is becoming irrelevant. More than development of medium by shifting its boundaries, is interesting to use already existing forms in a communication. Artwork then becomes a program based on set of concepts. Concepts you don't need to 'believe' ('i switched to computers because painting is passe'), but only freely use them (Barney's Cremaster series, Cattelan's Permanent Food magazine). Of course, saying that this is new i'd go against it :) What is new is the potential of adaptation of instant networks in this context: make the process of creation social. Here the creative expression can cope with the 'everyday' impression.

DB: What's new about music in this century?
CK: Oops, really cannot tell. We tend to be particularly blind to evaluating the contexts we are into. Though with our pamphlets and writings we try.

DB: Tell me about your 2-way-radio project.
CK: That is simply a concept we constructed to explore different topological and content setups for doing streaming and connected performances. We added some statements by Brecht and Cage, to illustrate we are not the first to come up with this. Basically it tunes into the experimental network activities we were already doing before, just that we try to expand it into another setting to question the role and function of a technologically changed radio nowadays.

DB: I heard you once prepared the audio piece before the performance and on the stage you only ran the code and performed just by facial and hand gestures.
CK: No, this we would never do. What we often do, is we are setting up different streams that interact in a specific way and then we are starting the performance before the audience is there. But some of the software we made is running pretty much by itself: analysing audio and visual 'events' coming in, and synthesizing the counterpart. So if the code is written ok, we don't have to do much. But in other instances we change the calibration and even the code during the performance.
DB: So what are really your questions in deciding whether to use the form of connected performance or interactive installation? Do you find any differences between them?
CK: Mostly the environment will decide. And lately we are working differently at things, over longer periods of time. And we realize gradually more and more parts of it as we move along. To give an example: we are working with ultrasonics for half a year now. There were several performances in which I would use them, and also a couple of smaller installations and setups. We are heading for a kind of definitive setup by the end of the year. And then we bring the network in from time to time as an integral part of the installation or performance, as an instrument by itself. So it seems that the further we move from the traditional setup on stage or in a physical room, the network tends to take over the role of public address, but also instrument, even 'blind' interactor...

DB: Also i heard you telling you don't work with the noise, the random, error, and sampling. Radical, but what's left?
CK: Leave out the error and you are fine! Haha! Yes over the years we accepted certain poetics in our patches: no random generators but rather analysis of incoming data (audio, visual, streams), no noise generators but rather generate discrete waves that interact, no ready-made or neatly recorded and sampled soundfiles but rather make the sound on the fly with computer synthesis. Look there are so many things in audio and visual synthesis that we rather analyse a sound and physically model it as close as possible, and then play around with the different synthesis parameters. We tend also to avoid clicks and cuts, and like we said before 1-clock based sequencing. One of the pieces we did was a model of cricket sounds, generated by the computer, but basically a bunch of crickets is a great chaotic sequencer producing all these intricate rhythms! But you are wrong about error: error is an important concept to us. We hardly try to correct errors, rather we try to take it in as a necessary feedback mechanism and a trigger for evoking change.
DB: Being wrong about error?
CK: No no, just because you suggested we were avoiding errors, good we are making them all the time, haha!

DB: You performed at the Multiplace festival two times. Yes, it doesn't have a glitter of Ars Electronica and shimmering of Transmediale, but do you think it realizes the potential of computer art manifestation in the post-eastern European context?
CK: We have to ask ourselves if the idea of "post-eastern Europa" isn't as a myth getting counter-reproductive. We are more questioning new structures in which an innovative creativity can occur and develop in an unexpected and radical way. And for us it is certainly more inspiring to work in places like Bratislava, Budapest, Minsk, or Moscow. We want to keep alert, and hate an 'we-have-been-there' attitude in post-western european countries. One remark, since we hardly just perform, we create something where we go, and most of the time in collaboration with people who live there. We are giving free workshops in addition to the performances and presentations we do, not in a preaching and teaching way, but rather to explore together possibilities for connected and collaborative performances. It is an important part of the way we see creativity in a changing society.
DB: You decided to move to Bratislava this fall (partly reason for making this interview as an entrance examination) leaving Berlin, which has been conquered by artists a few years ago. What's the atmosphere there now? Is the constant state of freedom still relevant for fighting for ideals? Are the ideals still possible? Do you find consensus on creativity stimulative?
CK: Maybe Berlin and Bratislava are not that much different. You find very independent groups and then a whole bunch of people who want to be in the spotlight with what they do. Like the futurists 100 years ago we are against any competition, since we don't believe in the fact that it is making anything in the world better. Kropotkin describes this as well in his 'Mutual Aid'. And whatver I do - not only in a creative sense - will be against capitalism and neoliberalism, privatisation and individualisation, against the agenda to undo 200 years of emancipation into a fair society. So, about ideals, mxHz.org are very utopian, naive, and idealistic. And it is the right antidotum against all the pragmatic changes everyone is telling us to make to our work, technical as well as artistic. The moment someone of us is going against this, we dissolve mxHz.org and start something more effective. For the time being it still works. (Did I pass this test, and can I come to BA now?)
(DB: Only under a condition of dissemination of new utopias there :)

CK: The more multidisciplinary we seem to become over the years the more sub and subdisciplines we seem to invent (just look at the collection at http://userwww.sfsu.edu/%7Einfoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html), and the less overview we keep of the arts as a whole... why? Is it the obsession with databases and catalogisation? If not why this fragmentation?
DB: The advance of the databases as pure memory of digital media storing the numbers coming first to my mind is an instant access to information. Too large in a scope, categorisation is an useful navigator for the person searching (website DNS domains for searching data on remote harddisks). Obsession with the categories is then obsession with the navigation ('browsing the web' rather than looking for answers). If we make an analogy between categorisation of numbers into databases and categorisation of thoughts into language, better word for obsession would be 'acquiring' (language/databases), resulting for instance in the skill of 'googling'. But i agree, whole happens when we know what we want to say; and if we see only fragments, we stay schematic.
CK: Are there political, social and cultural benefits in doing that? For whom? Do artists not want to escape/tresspass their own categorisation? Is there actually something like media/ technological/information arts as a separate category different than the other arts?
DB: Categories can be useful in a way that we don't do the same things over and over again. Why not see the moment being categorised as a catalysator of change?

CK: What is the role of the bigger festivals (aec, transmediale, ...) in the stimulation of innovation in the arts through technological development. Is it still valuable in the 21st century or is it an old concept? what could be an alternative? are there new needs to be addresses and thus new forms of presentation to be invented?
DB: I don't know. I visited several big festivals to find out that if i would not want to be a tourist here, i'd need to be invited as a traditional artist or theorist with at least a prototype of a product in my hands. By a bit of detachment the desire for constant growth driven by fear of change can be replaced by an active interference with an unpredictable network, leaving the question of temporarity versus fixation behind. The platforms built for these purposes are then art and science related not necessarily smallscale collectives that vision their festival not as a circus programmed by media art market, but as a special occassion for a joint creativity. Not bringing a product into a play here then expects working with presentation and the thing presented (form and content) as one thing.

CK: In a subtle way our current globalized neoliberal economy is luring us into a competitive and individualistic culture, intended to create stability and neutralizing experiments and change that could break up historical concepts, familiar art forms, product driven art, in a society-friendly presentation. Is there resistance possible? Can we fight pop with pop or with noise and silence?
DB: In the vocabulary of pop, all words mean 'pop'. Fighting pop is romantic ignorance of the fact that pop is not rational - it does not want, it does not stand for anything. In attention-driven culture, any attempt to fight pop will end up being recycled by it. Take yBa, Merzbow or 'indie' people working for corporations. Look at 'terrorism'. Media are starting to realize that their recyclation of images of brutality is used by 'terrorists' as a weapon, memetic nuclear bomb. A charming way would be to get off the merry-go-round.
Creativity got marketed and standardized before internet era (ie. pop art) and we were lured to competition even before we went global. The choice of a creative activity instead of acceptance of (today multi-) tasks is not really a new challenge.

CK: Only concept and tool together can lead to innovation, what is happening in that direction? What is new to you? The ways in which people organize themselves to learn and get skilled? The new instruments they are using (computers and networks)?
DB: We set up Burundi hub because concept plus (physical) tool is not powerful enough, we understood we need a media (if it's a blog or an nongov organisation). It seems, that communication in a responsive environment today is conditioned by a continuous presence in a medium. We knew that being connected is necessary even if not still obvious in the art and science context. As an interface we were using physical location in urban space, the website, online social networks (kyberia.sk, buryzone.info mailing list) and multivalency of 'new media' concept. In the projects we were implicitly interested in participation on dissolution of stability of categories of author, user, presentation, distribution of information, and so called 'public art'. By diversity of our backgrounds (architecture-, art history-, fine arts-, information technologies-, library sciences-, literature-educated being among us) we avoided specialization of lonely elitarians.

CK: How do we continue and why do artists still want to be independent from a society they belong to?
DB: There is a big debate around issues of copyright and ownership of the rights over things. If there is a connection between object and its maker, exclusivity of original as a not-yet-copyrighted product can be expressed in packaging the person into an individual. Being independent is then being cut off the true intentions. Understanding subjectivity and objectivity as the abstractions necessary to operate tools can help us to see what is happening when we are creating. Can be sitting behind computer social? It's not machines that separate us.

http://www.mxhz.org/
http://www.mxhz.org/societyofalgoritm/
http://www.okno.be/

august 2005
for 3/4 #19, february 2006