Ars Electronica

 

Ars Electronica 2008 Poster

 

 

 

I returned from Ars Electronica on Wednesday, after a Friday arrival.  Over the course of the intervening days I learned a number of things, not all related to Ars or Electronica.

Thing #1: That is a bad logo/poster (see above).

I don’t know what this style of illustration is called but I don’t like it.  It makes me think of 14 year old girls in Japan.

Thing #2: Linz has a bizarre demographic distribution.

I was immediately struck by the fact that, other than the other people visiting for the festival, there appeared to be no one my age in this city.  During the day the banks of the river would be covered in what appeared to be 16-20 year olds, drinking beer and shooting the breeze.  During the night (at least on Friday and Saturday) these same people would be drinking themselves into oblivion in a pedestrian area of the city filthy with bars.  It felt like these kids had taken over the city.

It was also here that I saw my first fight since arriving in Europe two months ago.  And I must say I enjoyed it.  Both participants were so comically drunk that inflicting any sort of damage on one another was out of the question.  Every time they made an attempt to throw a punch they lost their balance so completely you could only worry about them falling and cracking their heads on the cobblestones.

Thing #3: I don’t have the patience to be a programmer.

I worked a bunch with openFrameworks while at the festival.  openFrameworks describes itself as “a C++ library for creative coding.”  Basically, it is like Processing but built upon the more powerful (lower level, as they say) C++ language instead of Java.  And both of these are essentially attempts to make it a bit easier to use code to make audiovisual “stuff.”  

So, great.  But what kills me is when you get stuck – which happened a lot to me – just because you don’t know how to describe what you want to do correctly in the programming language.  It’s like trying to do a math equation but for some reason you can’t figure out how to write the number 3, so nothing works and you can’t do anything even though you know exactly what you want to do and how it would theoretically work.  I think the only way I could enjoy programming would be if I had a programming expert sitting next to me who would help me figure out how to “write the number 3” every time I got stuck.

Thing #4: A lot of this stuff is a colossal waste of time.

By “waste of time” I do not mean my time – if I don’t like something it only takes a few moments to realize it – but a waste of the person’s time who made the work.  There were a lot of pieces that fell into this category – for example the two stuffed pseudo-eagles that were both hooked up to complex mechanical devices that automatically made them flap their wings a bit and go up and down.  And keep in mind that this description sounds way more interesting than the actual thing.

I talked about it to someone else and we agreed that a lot of the problem lies in the fact that someone who is technically proficient is often not the same person who has interesting ideas for art pieces.  You rarely see the director stepping in front of the camera and acting in a movie because they realize that the movie will be better if they separate these roles.  Many of the Ars Electronica “artists” (and remember, this is supposedly the best of new media and interactive art) would be doing themselves a favor if they extended this analogy to themselves.

And then there are some people who are neither technically proficient nor have good ideas for interesting art.  These people are the worst, but the best at filling out grants.

Thing #5: Fight for your Rights!

On my connecting flight from Zurich to Vienna I was about to board the plane when I was informed that I was going to have to check one of my bags.  I had my video camera bag on my back – which is the maximum allowable dimensions for hand luggage – and a tiny blue backpack in my hand.  

At first I didn’t understand what she was talking about, then I assumed that I was just getting admonished for stretching the rules, and then I realized that she was actually printing up a tag to check one of my bags.  These were the reasons this pushed my buttons:

1. This was a connecting flight – so I had already flown on the same airline with exactly the same complement of hand luggage with no problems.  If they are going to bust you for hand luggage, do it at the initial check in.  
2. Lots of people had second bags with them – for example a briefcase or a bag of alcohol from duty free.  I guess there are exceptions for these “bags,” but, seeing as my bag was the same size or smaller than these “bags,” who gives a shit?
3. Who gives a shit?

When the lady started grabbing my bag to put a check-in label on it I explained that this wasn’t going to work because I had expensive electronics and hard drives in both bags (which was in fact true) which the airline will NOT replace if broken (also true).  At this point I was trying to be good natured about the whole thing, but that quickly changed as she adopted a very firm “policy is policy” attitude.  I fucking HATE that attitude.

So I told her I was getting on the plane with both of my bags whether it was against policy or not, and started walking down the ramp to the plane.  She caught up to me just as I was at the door to the aircraft and took my boarding ticket out of my hand and told me I could not get on the plane with two bags.  I assured her that I very well could get on the plane with two bags, then turned around and, without looking back, got on the plane, walked past the stewardesses and headed directly to seat 25C (luckily I had remembered it from my boarding ticket).

Once I sat down I opened a book and began reading, half-expecting the ticket lady to come down the aisle with security.  She didn’t.  Which I have to admit I was glad about.  I wasn’t really looking to take my civil disobedience to the next level.  And I also have to admit that I feel a bit bad for the lady – this probably turned another day at the airport into a BAD day for her.  Perhaps she had a lot of self worth tied up in doing her job “perfectly,” and I kind of fucked that up.  But I can’t feel too sorry for her.  She really was being ridiculous.