Autumn 1998: classes begin in the Studienbereich Neue Medien, SNM (Department New Media) at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, HGKZ (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Zurich, School of Art and Design Zurich). Educational opportunities in Switzerland in the field of new media are limited: indeed, there are a number of Swiss schools of design and art offering training in the "old” new medium of video as an artform, as well as introductory courses in screen design in the field of visual communications. Nevertheless, with the exception of the Hyperstudio/Hyperwerk—significantly, a department at a technical college in Muttenz (near Basel)—there is no other institution offering training that deals with computers and networks as media in their own right.
Summer 2003: what a change in available educational opportunities! Two new developments are evident:
1. In the meantime, an extensive network of institutions of higher education has been set up throughout Switzerland to offer instruction in the field of digital media.
2. Swiss academies of design and art are prepared, on one hand, to compete by offering a variety of educational curricula and majors, and, on the other hand, to collaborate with one another as well.
Metaworx 2003 marks an important stage in this process of development.
From the Beginnings of the SNM ...
The point of departure in developing the curriculum put together by technologist Walter Stulzer (faculty associate until 2000), media artists Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler (known collectively as Knowbotic Research) and Margarete Jahrmann, as well as Giaco Schiesser, a scientist of cultural and media studies, was the conviction that computers and networks are not only tools with which we all work nowadays but also media (like film, photography and literature) with their own special, inherent creative and expressive potential that is an appropriate subject of study. As our publication for prospective students put it in early 2002:
"You are all familiar with works of literature, the fine arts, photography, music, film and video. >From your everyday experience—whether as specialists or laymen—you are aware that each one of these media has something about it that is essentially its own. What can be written in literature is something different than what can be shown on film. What a photograph captures differs from what a piece of music expresses.
All these media possess different possibilities and limitations that make them unique and inimitable by any other. In technical terminology, this is referred to as the Eigensinn (literally: willful obstinacy) of a medium. And for each of these media, there is a series of specific aesthetics that have emerged over the course of centuries in some cases, over several decades in others.
In light of these experiences with media and the history of the various aesthetics, the Department of New Media set up in 1998 has attempted to accomplish something unique in Europe: to educate students who are working in and with computers and networks as media, who are seeking the Eigensinn of the computerized medium, and who want to find out what can be done with this new medium. After all, despite all the uncertainties of contemporary society, one thing is absolutely clear: the society of the future will be an Information Society or a Knowledge Society, and its foundation will be the ‘digital culture’ that is, in turn, based on digitization, computers and network linkage.”
... to the Present
Needless to say, that curriculum has continually been updated and refined on the basis of experience gained by students and professors. Nevertheless, we have never abandoned our original concept, which, as we see it, has been confirmed by intervening social developments.
Today, the framework, content and objectives of a course of study at the SNM can be formulated in terms of the following three fundamental precepts:
1. Training in individual and collective media authorship
2. Working at and with the Eigensinn of computers and networks as media
3. Art as process, art as method
Due to space limitations, I can only go into these key concepts very briefly here .
<Training in individual and collective media authorship> means that students ought to pursue their own themes, interests and issues, which they are then to execute in a way that is appropriate to the medium in which they are working. An advantage of the concept of media authorship is that it avoids establishing a fruitless distinction between artistic and applied works. Whether students go on to careers as artists or in private enterprise—either as employees or entrepreneurs—is their decision. The key factor here is that students do not assume the role of an operator who executes prescribed assignments; rather, they act as producers who, with independence and media competence, process content and realize it as a finished project or product.
<Working at and with the Eigensinn of computers and networks as media> proceeds under the assumption that computers and networks have their own individually specific potentials, structures and limitations. Without working on and with this Eigensinn, it is impossible to attain media authorship that exhibits originality, radicality and promise.
<Art as process, art as method> refers to the fact that it is only by means of project-oriented education and ongoing artistic experimentation—the process of incessantly going deeper into a subject, of going against the grain and of subverting or getting away from conventional, commonplace uses of media—that new and innovative artistic and design projects, and thus new possibilities of perception and insight, can be conceived, executed and experienced.
On the Eigensinn of Computers and Networks as Media
What does the Eigensinn of computerized and networked media actually consist of? That which is subsumed by the terms <digital spheres of agency>, <connective interfaces> and <collaborative environments>. If one takes the human-machine relationship to be of seminal significance for work with computers and networks as media, then there are three conceivable approaches: the primacy of the human being, the primacy of the machine, or no primacy at all.
If one proceeds on the basis of the primacy of the human being, then the consequence of this is that the machine is of interest only as a tool. Accordingly, the author sits before his computer and utilizes his ThinkPad as a device to compose the text you are reading just now. This human-machine relationship plays an essential, indispensable role in our society.
If one proceeds on the basis of the primacy of the machine—for which we can take Artificial Intelligence research of the first and second order as a proxy here—primary interest shifts to the development of (neuronal) networks that can evolve on their own. Interaction with human beings is limited to their initial input at best.
There is, finally, the third position: seeking to ascribe absolute determinacy to neither element in the interactive relationship, and focusing on the reciprocal inputs and outputs and their processual nature. This point is the essence of the SNM’s educational concept.
<Spheres of digital agency> means that the interaction between human beings and machines is of interest as a domain in which activity (i.e. inputs from human beings, activities of machines, output to machines and human beings) takes place. Data are processed, modified, reassembled, etc.
<Collaborative environments> refers to the fact that human beings collaborate in such interactive relationships—human beings who may be dispersed at different locations and do not necessarily work together simultaneously, human beings who use computers that are likewise employed trans-locally, trans-temporally and linked together in networks.
<Connective interfaces> are those that make it possible for these dispersed human beings to work together with one another. In going about this, these interfaces are not mere technologically determined navigational tools, as is widely assumed, but rather cultural artifacts that can be opened and modified through individual and group usage. They pervade and exert a lasting effect upon our being as subjects and our existence in this world—through the collective generation of knowledge, for instance.
Text first published in:
Association MetaWorx (Ed.): Metaworx. Approaches to Interactivity, Basel: Birkhäuser 2003.
www.metaworx.info