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15 Years of Ars Electronica: the interactive journey through the history of this legendary festival, incl. more than 4 hours of video, animations, performances and interviews with the pioneers.
 

The CD-ROM "Surfing on Electronic Surfaces – 15 Years of Ars Electronic" is an interactive digital database containing 640 megabytes of multimedia information. Special attention is given to the transformation of art previously presented in linear fashion, such as that distributed in the form of catalogs, into a multimedia sensory world networked with many "arteries" - an electronic biotope, a landscape of Station Rose art and the enormous river of data from 15 years of Ars Electronica. The user can skim over this landscape of icons, samples, morphs, quicktimes, sounds, text, interview samples, scripts and anis as desired, actively researching, and linger over concepts such as Art, Music, Cyberspace, Performance, Sound and Image Databases, Pioneers, Endo/Nano, Art in Progress, Installations, Art in Networks, Pop and Psychedelic Culture, Hi-Lo-Tech, Mind Children, Robotics, Multimedia, Prix Ars Electronica, Technoculture, Interface Design, Terminal Art, MIDI, Video Art, Global Village.

en detail:

Interactive timetables conform to intelligent structures. This means that an event, a lecture, a subject area or an artist can be found in the following way:

* By calling the level where the festival programs are waiting for the mouse click. These levels are arranged chronologically. For traditional, quick browsing, so to speak.
* By "playing the CD-ROM through". Interactive buttons provide the red threads (arteries) which intersect with other sensory correlations. The red thread is also provided in the form of music: connections can be found through various remixes of the same piece of music.
* By clicking the desired subject area or artist in the hypermedia dictionary, which is divided into 3 large areas: Art, Technology, Society.


Just as the first music computers, e.g. the Fairlight, became prototypes for a new kind of musical production, and finally, home recording initiated pop culture and influenced mass culture through pop music, the interplay of music and graphic computers are having similar effects: Virtual realities are being produced. The unit of measure is no longer B.P.M. (beats per minute), but R.P.M. (realities per minute).

Providing a list of the new electronic "TOOLS" is another important function of the Ars Electronica dictionary on the CD-ROM. Nanotechnology provides a look into the world of atoms and tempts the artist to create virtual atoms. In the end, these virtual, digital realities will take on an individual existence through Artificial Life and mutate to mind children.

Until that time, the renunciation of verbal language will remain in effect, and for that reason, some concluding words:

We are replacing verbal language with one of a more complex nature, namely multimedia language. Verbal language has done its duty; it has interpreted information in a makeshift way and divides peoples from one another through a lack of understanding. Above all, its boring appearance consisting of black and white hieroglyphics has understimulated our brains in spite of the stylistic devices of grammar as definitive l'art pour l'art.

* Wires and chips are a girl's and a boy's best friends!!!!!!!!!!

With the "ULTIMATE TOOL", the computer as the philosopher's stone, it is now possible to turn our mega gigabytes full of digital worlds consisting of sounds, images, animation, morphs, 'toons, beats, screenshots, icons, loops, samples, e-mails, up and downloads, gophers, user ids, MUDs, otakus and hyperfunheads which are born in artist's studios around the globe every night as A-Life, as a digital product (namely a CD-ROM), into digital products, and therefore put them into a networked world of data, namely cyberspace, thereby making them accessible to the public. The prehistory of this development can be found in the 15 years of Ars Electronica as digitally retrievable infotainment which will serve as a database in future networks, everywhere and beginning now.

Cyberspace artists with CD-ROMs, superhighways and data networks will break with the past in order to create a new era for art, technology and society and mutate to mind children in realtime. There is neither right and nor wrong, neither in nor out; everything is in digital abundance in a dangerous electronic jungle.

Don't forget:
"Think for yourself, question authority"
-> see CD-ROM surface "Philosophers"
From whom was this sentence sampled?
Multiple choice:
* bazon brock
* bruce sterling
* timothy leary
* gene youngblood
Surfing on Electronic Surfaces!

(c) Station Rose, 1993