At STWST48 a concave sand hole was filled in front of the STWST in September. This finally functioned as an antenna that bundled the hydrogen radiation of the universe. Starting from a view of media art, Franz Xaver explains the background to why an antenna can become art: FX against common sense, and about life as a host for information.

Personal history of media art

In order to understand the concept of media art in the context of the visual arts, we must go back a few decades, to a time when media technology became affordable for artists and could be used as new working material. The intervention in technology offered the possibility to include real-time processes in artistic works. Dynamic processes were an important topic in STWST from the very beginning, people wanted to live and work at the pulse of time. And so it was the media art of the 1980s that brought these prerequisites with it and to which the works of STWST can be assigned. The STWST was thus avant-garde and brought new positions. But with the computer came a digital technology that was able to store information. Afterwards, with the first „Internet browsers“ of the World Wide Web, it could be accessed more specifically than ever before.

In the new media art of the 1980s, most media were still analogous; information could only be obtained from books or through state electronic media. There were hardly any alternative information channels. With digital media, however, there was a major, technopolitical change - from the push media of analog technology to the pull media of digital technology. A situation that had already been lived and demanded years before by STWST with the STWST TV projects because of its political and social impact, for example with regard to the breaking up of state monopolies.

These „new media“ quickly became indispensable for users and artists. I consciously separate users from artists, because artists who want to actively involve media in their work should always question what and why they are doing something. Knowledge of technology is one of the most important criteria for knowing the possibilities of the media and being able to use them politically correctly. This knowledge of materials should always be available to all artists, especially if they want to work with them in the experimental field.

When the Internet hit society in the mid-90s, one immediately felt that a new era was beginning. Media art was replaced by net art in order not to have to deal with the old analogue technologies. This new genre became a shooting star overnight. During this time, Radio FRO and servus.at were founded in STWST as separate media associations. But the net art genre faded after only a decade. In an unstoppable process, net.art was dragged further and further into an abyss by a fast-developing technology, a missing intellectual position resulting from a lack of historical perspective, and the New Economy. And because every genre wanted to present itself in the media on the Internet, media art was no longer necessary. However, its existence before the Internet made it untouchable. With the information technology of the Internet, all art movements now fell into the domain of media art. For me, media art is only relevant in historical matters.

Media art became a cloak for „ everything and nothing “. Over the years one noticed that the positions in exhibitions became more and more conservative and the universities retreated to secure positions.

The public would actually be interested in something new, would also like to deal with something new, even look for it. But most of the time there is a loss of knowledge about the interrelationships, and in the end the art around digital media can only be consumed through sensory impressions and common sense.

It's like the black square by Kasimir Malevich, for some it's a milestone in the development of art, for others who see it with their common sense, it's a black patch of color that anyone can actually paint.

Yet it is precisely the knowledge of the background to developments that is important to the media. This knowledge would differentiate the user from the artist and thus create a new intellectual position in the information age. Information technologies have become very complex, each advance means more data for globally operating companies. Every kind of information becomes the ultimate power in the corporation. There is a lack of critical views on which ethics committees could perhaps be set up to monitor the development of information technology. The protection of the individual and discrimination against „persons acting differently“ must be avoided.

In Internet technology everything is allowed at the moment and the increasing complexity of developments has driven most intellectually thinking people into passive dependence. A small circle around the hacker community has survived longer, but they do not want to be positioned in a socio-cultural environment.

The Infolab of the STWST tries to promote critical positions in the information society.

Information becomes the ultimate power, but nobody knows what information really is. STWST's Infolab thinks about this, technology is only the basis. The topic is actually the information itself. Information always hits the heart of every individual, where the emotions of people are located. There, however, information is already present in the genes. Caution, there are now two types of information: rational information, resulting from the new technologies, meets emotional information from the history of evolution. Let's take fear and caution as an example, these are sometimes not consistent with the rational information of our machines. By our tendency to „herd“ we are led to see this external, „rational“ information as truth, because it is confirmed in general agreements.
Through this fear and caution one also increasingly hears warnings of a concentration of power of capital in the information society, which is about a global data analysis of an emotionally acting herd of sheep. Big Data as an emotional fear factor that has meanwhile reached the users. Unpleasant feelings which, however, are not sufficient against the apparently rational information of the „herd“.

The information age perhaps also originated in a general plan of evolution and the universe, because life is information. At this point the question arises again: Is evolution the driving force of information development or is information the cause of evolution? In this case, life on this planet would only be a host for information, and would therefore play a secondary role in the development of the universe.

* The sand hole - or why information technology decouples us from the evolution of nature. *

Let us first dedicate ourselves to a possible position of art in the information age. With historical arguments of visual media art we build sculptures in the media-historical field in order to be able to oppose the information society. We do not develop artistic positions in the sense of rational information, or from a useful added value, art is also about the acausal information of our dream worlds. For this reason, at this year's STWST Showcase Extravaganza STWST48, the Infolab of the STWST built a parabolic reflector in the form of a sand hole with which information from space could be received - information that existed in the Universe before the evolution of life was established. To better understand this, we must first divide the evolution of the universe into an extraterrestrial, space-physical and a terrestrial, biological evolution. The former begins with the Big Bang and continues as the universe that enabled a temporary organic evolution on Earth.

Biological evolution became possible because molecules began to store information. In this environment of self-organizing systems, information could develop to the present day.
Our sandhole is now an antenna. There an oscillation develops, which is connected with the space-physical evolution. It is an oscillation that was created before life as we know it. For the sculpture „Sandloch“ we do not need any electrical technology of biological evolution in the context of art. You can make this oscillation audible with electricity, but this is not absolutely necessary, because the sand hole becomes an antenna via its form - in an antenna a form becomes oscillation or oscillation becomes form. A static form becomes an oscillation, both are inseparably connected by their wavelength and the speed of light. In our case, we have adjusted the sand hole with the exciter in the focal point to the wavelength of the hydrogen. The sculpture thus oscillates directly with the hydrogen of the universe. And the size of the sand hole is directly related to the range. A diameter of twelve meters reaches several million light years into the universe, or into the past. Among other things, we also reached the star V538 in the constellation of the Carter. It emitted its radiation 40 years ago, at the time STWST was founded.

If this oscillation is amplified electrically, this signal of „physical information“ fits in well with the „digital physics“ that we had taken up as a working topic in the past STWST48 formats. It is becoming more and more certain through both approaches that „organic evolution“ is only the carrier of information in order to develop a purer „digital format“ so that the future is no longer dependent on nature.

But there were other reasons to dig a sand hole

In addition to exploring information and the media, another reason to make this sculpture a reality was a dream or a very old thought about the „nothing“ - the negative something. In the creation of nothingness, the border to the something is above all a challenge and is certainly worth a separate consideration. In this „dream“, artists silently dug a hole in the earth. This work was done without machines. Using a wheelbarrow and shovel, they spirally brought the „something“ to the „outside“ and thus created the „nothing“ inside. In this work, the artists had time to develop new thoughts. A concave hole offers a solution in the real world, because only with a parabolic hole does the ground never have to be propped up, it can be dug further for all times. I hope that this project will eventually be realized and I ask interested artists and gravel pit owners to contact me.

And the last, decisive reason was Tanja Brandmayr. When thinking about STWST48x5 she actually had the idea of digging a hole. During the festival she dug her hole in the basement of the house Kirchengasse 4.