New Media Art Timeline

Intermedia is a new phenomenon which is rooted in conceptual and new media art and includes all "artistic practices that use information technology, robotics, electronic networks, cybernetics, telepresence, virtual reality, multimedia and "extended body" in the creative process". This was the definition used by the Slovene Ministry of Culture when a special section for Intermedia arts was set up in 2001. On the Culture.si, however, we have been using new media art as terminus technicus.

The earliest protagonists were artists who had established their own creative infrastructures, including Marko Košnik (Egon March Institute), Marko Peljhan (Projekt Atol Institute), Igor Štromajer (Intima Virtual Base) and Janez Janša (Davide Grassi - Aksioma Institute). Other individual authors who broke ground at this time included Vuk Ćosić, Borut Savski, Luka Frelih, Darij Kreuh, Damijan Kracina, Jaka Železnikar and numerous emerging artists whose creativity was channelled through the technology and sought to explore its impact on society.

This overview outlines the timeline of mew media arts development, the sector's support infrastructure and funding, artists and art groups, production platforms, training, research and bibliography.

1986

From the mid 1980s Marko Košnik collaborated with several extreme alternative groups (like Junajtit Adis, Laibach, Cavis Negra, Most) in the role of creator of concepts, scripts, music, video and ambient performance projects. In 1986 he founded the Egon March Institute, a creative unit for theory, research and production in the field of new media. This was the organisational framework in which he was to realise most of his projects during the 1990s, including creative environments, open labs and media platforms, e.g. Stvar - Das Ding (The Thing, 1993), presented in Ljubljana, Hamburg and Dessau, Germany, and Cukrarna (1994, in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Mateja Bučar).

1992

In 1992 Marko Košnik co-operated with Mike Henz in the Project Van Gogh TV Piazza Virtuale at documenta IX in Kassel. The interactive TV programme was broadcast by Radio Študent (RŠ) and KUD France Prešeren Arts and Culture Association via the satellite programme 3Sat and on the Slovene TV station Kanal A.

In the same year Marko Peljhan founded Projekt Atol Institute, initially as a framework for performances, situations and visual arts works (e.g. Egorhythms staged at Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana in 1992 and in Giessen and Helsinki in 1993), but later on as the institutional, financial and logistical support frame for several intermedia projects and initiatives ranging from art production to scientific research and technology prototype development and production. PACT Systems (Projekt Atol Communication Technologies) was founded in 1995, while its flight operations branch, Projekt Atol Flight Operations, was founded in 1999 to support art and cultural activities in the atmosphere, in orbit and beyond.

1994

In 1994 Peljhan conceived the Makrolab project. A 3D animated film entitled Mikrolab, based on Kandinsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, was created by Marko Peljhan and Luka Frelih and projected in real time with music by Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec and Random Logic in the auditorium of the Slovenian Cinematheque, which by then was already becoming an important intermedia arts venue.

From 1994 a group of artists worked in the internet art: Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting and also Vuk Ćosić. Through A. Shulgin a term net.art (as a ready-made) is generally attributed to Ćosić.

1995

1995 saw the establishment of Ljudmila - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, the first independent non-profit cultural organisation in the field of intermedia arts, funded from 1995-2000 by the Open Society Institute Slovenia (Soros Foundation) and featuring the work of Marko Peljhan, Vuk Ćosić, Luka Frelih and Mitja Doma. Ljudmila contributed to the development of the sector by offering technical solutions and educational support to various art, cultural, educational and civil society projects, organisations and individuals, and last but not the least by offering a creative multimedia workspace, E-mail and Internet access to numerous non-governmental arts and civil society organisations. It has remained an important structural support for many different intermedia projects up to this day.

In the same year Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana, under its new curator, architect Jurij Krpan, launched a programme which addressed technology, science or corporeality through art, featuring intermedia installations and performances which focused on research, exploration and experimentation at the frontiers of artistic discourse and urban poetics. Among the first artists presented at Kapelica Gallery were Marko Košnik, Darij Kreuh and Damijan Kracina (Kracina TV, 1995).

In 1995 MKC Maribor Youth Culture Centre organised the first International Festival of Computer Arts (IFCA) which featured prominent artists such as Stelarc (with the performance Split Body/Voltage-in/Voltage-out).

1996

In 1996 a non-governmental private association for culture and education - KIBLA Multimedia Centre - was established as a joint project of Narodni dom Maribor and the Open Society Institute, Slovenia. Its mission was ‘focused on the new (contemporary) educational, cultural and artistic praxis, connecting education and research, culture and technology, arts and sciences, emancipating and demystifying new media as a creative tool in education and new forms of art’. With large-space facilities including a cyber cafe and gallery, KIBLA was the first presentation and production institution of its kind in Slovenia, dealing with intermedia arts in a year-long cultural programme. Towards end of the 1990s KIBLA co-initiated the idea of forming a non-formal network - originally called the Cultural Information Backbone but now structured as the M3c Multimedia Centres Network of Slovenia - that would connect organisations combining artistic production with digital and information technologies across Slovenia.

In 1996 the Urban Colonisation and Orientation Gear-144 project (UCOG-144), a street performance project by Projekt Atol, was realised within the Urbanaria project by SCCA-Ljubljana Centre for Contemporary Arts. A team equipped with personal Global Position Satellite units researched selected sections of the city while an Internet connection enabled their paths to be followed on the website, creating a psycho-geographical chart of Ljubljana. (See also: Urbanaria)

In Ljubljana the mid 1990s saw the inception of the Ministry of Experiment project. Marko Košnik, Borut Savski, Luka Frelih and Chiron Morpheus used Radio Študent (RŠ) as a framework for an open platform hosting various kinds of media research, mostly experimental radio and Internet projects, but also occasional live events across town. (See also: Ministry of Experiment)

1997

The next few years saw rapid development. Undoubtedly an important catalyst was the Nettime conference Beauty and the East organised by Ljudmila in Ljubljana in May 1997, which brought together the most important intermedia theoreticians, among them Heath Bunting, Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz, Alexei Shoulgin, and activists from all around the world to develop their art-political and socially-critical discourse.

In 1997 several intermedia projects were shown at various Ljubljana galleries: Kracina’s ZOO at the Škuc Gallery, Media in Media organised by SCCA-Ljubljana at the City Gallery, Ljubljana, Modra roka (Blue Hand), an annual May Salon featuring new media arts, and the 2nd U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Arts at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, curated by Peter Weibel.

The Makrolab Project conceived by Marko Peljhan and developed by his Projekt Atol Institute was first set up at the 1997 documenta X exhibition of modern and contemporary art in Kassel, Germany. This ongoing mobile laboratory and information base for the open and integral research and common work of artists, scientists and tactical media workers in the fields of telecommunications, migrations research, weather and climate, subsequently travelled to Western Australia (Rottnest Island), Slovenia (Veliki Kras), the Scottish Highlands (Atholl Estates) , the island of Campalto (Isola di Campalto), and in 2003 the Venice Lagoon as part of the Venice Bienniale. Vuk Ćosić later created the net.art project - a copy of documenta X website - thereby raising the issue of copyright in the digital age.

In 1997 Igor Štromajer established Intima Virtual Base, producing different creative media and forms of activity: contemporary performing arts, radio and sound projects, performance art theory, body-related theory and women’s studies, music, dance and choreography, philosophy, photography, video, design and computer graphics. Štromajer’s work 0.html was subsequently awarded First Prize at the Hamburger Kunsthalle Extension Competition. In the same year Jaka Železnikar published his web interactive poetry collection Interaktivalija, which explored art vectors of language expression. He subsequently collaborated with architect Aleksandra Globokar on a number of projects.

1998

In 1998 an inventive sound experiment Zeramulix was developed by the extended live radio and the Ministry of Experiment (Marko Košnik, Katarina Pejović, Andrej Savski), and presented at the Ars Electronica in Graz, marking the first occasion on which there had been a collaborative Slovene participation (cf also http://xchange.re-lab.net/).

In the same year Vuk Ćosić, together with Luka Frelih and Walter van der Cruijsen, established the ASCII Art Ensemble and developed projects employing ASCII symbol pictograms, including Instant ASCII Camera, ASCII History of Art for the Blind and ASCII History of Moving Images (see http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk).

Also in 1998, Marko Košnik presented the one-week performance Paparapapa, featuring synchronised actors located in Frankfurt, Paris and Ljubljana. As a polimedia artist, producer and creator he continues to create intermedia platforms and environments, extending from Germany to Mexico or Japan - see http://www.iflugs.hdk-berlin.de/emi.

1999

In 1999 Darij Kreuh in collaboration with Iztok Bajc and Rainer Linz created the project Bar Code – Immersion, and later a number of interactive and Internet-based installations, as well as sound installations and virtual reality projects which explored manipulation systems within digital technology. Together with Davide Grassi (Aksioma Institute) they developed the Brainscore project, based on the use of brain waves and eye movement for performing basic commands while defining a new digital discourse in virtual space. The project was presented at Zentrum fur Kunst and Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe.

2000

In the year 2000 the 3rd Manifesta International Biennial of Contemporary Arts took place in Ljubljana under the title Borderline Syndrom, curated by four international curators. Darij Kreuh was selected as the Slovene representative with his Bar Code (http://www.manifesta.org/manifesta3).

In the same year the annual Pixxelpoint International Festival of Computer Art was launched in Nova Gorica, presenting digital artworks (graphics, animations, interactive art and music) from around the world with the aim of transferring computer art into real space and linking artists from different backgrounds and territories.

In August-September 2000 Marko Košnik organised the HEXPO festival of self-organised cultural forms, a combination of festival, free academy and workshops, with the aim of stimulating self-organisation, original forms of production, the exchange of knowledge and interdisciplinary activity in the field of art, education, culture and civil society. Various synchonised hEXPO activities were performed at 12 cultural NGOs in Ljubljana, Maribor and Koper, and also connected to venues in Graz and Klagenfurt (Austria) and Trieste (Italy). This was the first initiative involving a cultural digital platform spread over all of the Slovene regions – see http://meta.iflugs.udk-berlin.de/hexpo.

At this time there was also an upsurge of sound events, presented in galleries or other public spaces. These began in 2000 with Marko Košnik’s project 5 Synesthesia for Sound and Moving Pictures and Klon.Art’s visual real-time sound production sessions at the Slovenian Cinematheque, Bitshift at Kapelica Gallery, RE-LAX in the Minimal Bar, Foo Bar at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana and Zarobotko at Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone, and from 2003 included ''Sound Explicit'', a series of projects exploring the medium of sound organised at P74 Centre and Gallery.

2001

In 2001 the computer cultural centre, laboratory and Internet café Cyberpipe - with its motto ‘all our code are belong to you’ (sic - a paraphrase of a quotation from a computer game and could be translated as 'we enable a free stream of information based on open code' in which grammar mistakes suggest the unpredictability and instability of computer technology) - was established as a part of the K6/4 Institute (which also includes Kapelica Gallery) at Kersnikova 4 in the centre of Ljubljana. Cyberpipe has since been an important catalyst for the Slovene cybernetic scene and fosters creative and critical approaches in the age of an information society. To this day it continues to be one of most vibrant and productive supporters of intermedia art and is successful in attracting younger generations both as audience and collaborators, fully deserving of its description as the ‘number two cyber centre in Europe’.

In 2001 Vuk Ćosić and Italian net activists 0100101110101101.org were presented at the Venice Biennial – for a net.art project to be presented at the Biennial proved quite a revolution. The Slovene representative at the Biennial in that same year was the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA) with its project Code:Red.

Also in 2001, Marko Peljhan and German conceptual artist and electronic musician Carsten Nicolai were awarded the Golden Nica Prix at Ars Electronica in Linz for their Polar project, which was inspired by Stanislav Lem and Andrei Tarkovski and created in collaboration with Japanese laboratory Canon Artlab. Participants (in pairs) entered a special room and used an interface device named POL which was developed for this project and enabled each participant to collect sensory information. Afterwards the information from each POL was analysed, and seven keywords (concepts) corresponding to the qualities of information through an algorithmic calculation were displayed on each of two monitors-interfaces placed in the room. Thus each participant was able individually to investigate the unknown and seamless environment and experience the data flow in global and local networks both sensuously and cognitively – see http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/polar.

In the same year Intima Virtual Base – Igor Štromajer in collaboration with Brane Zorman - set up a net ballet called Ballettikka Internettikka. This project was later transformed into the net guerilla performance at the Bolšoj Theatre (2002), the robot experimental invasion in Bergen, Norway (2003) and the remote-controlled invasion at the Milano Scala (2004).

Automata/CrossConverstationCut platform was established in November 2001 to produce collaborative projects by Zvonka Simčič and Tanja Vujinović as well as the initiatives of other artists and groups (video production, performance, digital photography, installations and sound projects). In 2006 the platform was divided into two units – EXSTAT, run by Vujinović, and CrossConversationCut run by Simčič.

2002

In 2002 Igor Štromajer and Davide Grassi (since 2007 his name being Janez Janša) presented their web portal Problemarket – Problem Stock Exchange at the Manifesta 4 European Biennial of European Arts in Frankfurt, Germany.

Also in 2002, KIBLA Multimedia Centre in Maribor launched the KIBLIX Linux IT Festival. Ljudmila - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, KIBLA Multimedia Centre and Cyberpipe have made a significant contribution to the popularisation of open-source and free software. In October 2003 Ljudmila developed and published SLIX 1.0, a Slovene Live GNU/Linux CDR on open code programme. SLIX 1.0 was publicly presented at INFOS 2003, the national Slovene Informatics Fair in Ljubljana, and subsequently at the KIBLIX Festival.

In 2002 Jaka Železnikar began publishing regular website news on Internet art and intermedia arts in the website of the Mladina journal. The Diskurzor: Umetnost section closed in December 2005, but since that time it has been possible to follow the news from this field at Ljudmilin informator or at the Cyberpipe website.

2003-2004

In 2003 intermedia artists from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design and the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana established ArtNetLab and became co-producers of the Maribor International Festival of Computer Arts. In 2004 Narvika Bovcon and Aleš Vaupotič created the project Solaris: archive and interface.

In 2004 too, a major step forward took place when the idea for infrastructure of the Cultural Information Backbone development was supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. The initial network of nine Slovene multimedia centres obtained funding (via the Ministry of Culture) from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Its aim has been to network with existing and emerging intermedia initiatives in all of the Slovene regions, to further develop the infrastructural and information-supportive environment in relation to information technology and digital culture and to encourage international co-operation. The network was later renamed M3c Multimedia Centres Network of Slovenia. Up to 2007 m3c has grown into a network of 15 multimedia centres from all regions of Slovenia.

At this time Luka Frelih developed his bike-mounted wireless network surveying project-in-development called FRIDA (Free Ride Data Acquisition Vehicle), an initiative by Ljudmila - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab and the V_2 organisation, Rotterdam. FRIDA V was presented at the DEAF04 – Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, at LMCC Swing Space in New York City following a residency organised by The Thing, and subsequently in San Francisco, Munich, Zagreb and Bergen – for history and further development see http://twiki.ljudmila.org/bin/view/Luka/FridaV.

2005

In 2005 Slovenia was represented at the Venice Biennial by Vadim Fiškin and his installation Another Speedy Day - in a room with a window one could experience the change from morning light to evening darkness in the course of just a few minutes. The project was an artist's homage to Albert Einstein and the 100th anniversary of the Theory of Relativity. Fiškin has lived in Ljubljana since 1992 (coming from Moscow for Dragan Živadinov’s set designs) and his art – usually taking the form of participatory installations – unites the themes of utopia, cosmogony and aeronautics, with personal poetics addressing the ephemeral and metaphysical.

Also in 2005, Teo Spiller, who has worked on net.art for two decades focusing on so-called tangible net.art, created the high-tech tool X-lam - a different media for watching images - in collaboration with Tadej Komavec, see http://x-lam.com and http://www.s-p-i-l-l-e-r.com.

The exhibition Territories, Identities, Nets: Slovene Art 1995-2005 was the third part of an extensive exhibition project at Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana which examined the developments in Slovene art and the tendencies in artistic production during the last three decades. The curator Igor Zabel (1958-2005) stated that "[the art of] the last decade has expanded into the social space, making use of, and critically reflecting on, the new media and available technologies", thus putting Intermedia arts at the forefront of interest.

2006

In June 2006 an international Crash Test Dummy event took place in Ljubljana, linked to similar events in Budapest, Prague and Munich. Organised by the Projekt Atol Institute, it presented Evolution of Open Control - Civil Counter Reconnaissance as a tactical urban counter-reconnaissance system for remotely-piloted UAV – see http://www.crashtestdummy.net and http://s-77ccr.org.

In September 2006 a conceptual LJU COSINUS BRX Gallery was established on the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the premises of Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research in Brussels. The programme featured works of art based on topical issues in science and technology. The opening project Umbot Noordung by Dunja Zupančič and Dragan Živadinov was followed by Modux 2004-2006 by BridA collective and Recycling Strategies by Sašo Sedlaček.

Late 2006 saw the 5th U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Arts at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, curated by Jurij Krpan. The exhibition presented 11 selected art projects, displayed in separate compartments as 11 solo exhibitions featuring Viktor Bernik, BridA, Srečo Dragan, Iztok Holc, Andrej Kamnik and Daan Roosegaarde, Nika Oblak and Primož Novak in collaboration with Stefan Doepner, Mark Požlep, Franc Purg and Sara Heitlinger, Sašo Sedlaček, Polona Tratnik, and Metka Zupanič. Other modules at U3 2006 included a presentation of good practices, a presentation of art works, an analysis of the 20th-century production situation, public presentations, panel discussions, talks and performances. Several representatives of international art institutions, centres, organisations and networks presented their artist-in-residence programmes.

2007

In 2007 Marko Peljhan was the first intermedia artist to win the Prešeren Award. His project Makrolab had already garnered several prizes before this, including a prize for special achievements in new media and technologies awarded by the German television SWR and the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and a UNESCO prize for art and digital media awarded in Helsinki in 2004. In 2007 Makrolab began its final journey to the autonomous territory of Nunavut in Canada and to Queen Maud Land in Antarctica. Makrolab has made a great breakthrough in art-science communication – it has succeeded in becoming part of the International Polar Year 2007-2008, an international programme of co-ordinated, interdisciplinary scientific research and observations in the Earth's polar regions.

Compiled by Marko Brumen