ࡱ! jil!` :AWJ4030 .>>>4 h! *K  a  Kenneth Ian Brill Personal Vision Versus Destining: An Exploration of the Authorship of Hentschlger s ZEE As modern technology evolves, it shapes and impacts most if not every aspect of our lives. New opportunities arise that would have otherwise been unattainable. Defining the condition of our coexistence with technology is difficult. Increased life-expectancy due to improvements in modern medicine and cultural shifts brought on by social media are examples of how in the developed world, people's lives are rapidly changing. We are constantly coming to terms with a future that is increasingly unpredictable. Our immediate future grows less like the worlds that our ancestors knew. It is a natural role then, for artists, who in varying degrees, embrace the use of available tools to communicate and express their interests and concerns. New media artists are compelled to explore the full range of the impact that the rising influence of technology has on our lives, as well as our nature. As a result of the powerful tools and influence that technology has on the modern artist, it is increasingly difficult to parse or determine to what degree a work is the result of a personal vision as opposed to an actualization brought on by the larger precursive systems and events. When considering these notions, a particular Austrian-born, Chicago-based electronic artist, Kurt Hentschlger, comes to mind. In Hentschlger's "FEED," the audience is presented with an immersive, two stage performance. The first is a projected audiovisual performance consisting of the manipulation of faceless 3D animated figures, moving about in a gravity free space. The experience of seeing computer animated characters at a human scale suggests a comparison between them and the audience. When the work then goes into its second stage, it is impacted by such an intense, multifaceted light show that the audience feels like they have been themselves transported into a digital limbo. Through the use of artificial fog and strobe lights the artist creates an ambiguous, hallucinatory landscape. One of immersion into endless, aesthetically digital, yet organic imagery- one that is simultaneously a characterture and product of digital technology. FEED elicits an intense, intellectually engaging, emotional response. The performance unfolds in an overt manner, and yet, the impact of the fog and pulsing light, combined, catches the audience completely off guard. The implications of the work are open-ended, but the result is an established, critical awareness and severe association with both art and modern technology. In his next major installation project, Hentschlger demonstrates a further degree of mastery over this fog/pulse light medium, and presents a uniquely immersive, superficially ominous yet ultimately meditative work, "ZEE". I will describe to you the general experience: The audience walks into a waiting room where they are met by a representative of the gallery (a "guide") and debriefed, regarding what they about to experience- a hallucinatory, ambiguously digital/analog gesamtkunstwerk. Some come to experience ZEE because they are familiar with Hentschlger's other body of work, either solo or from his decade long participation in the duo,  Granular~Synthesis . Some people attend because the installation is part of a larger festival. Regardless of the setting, eventually people come because word spreads that there is something indescribable that should be seen. The  guide does their best to prepare the audience- to warn them of potential dangers attributed to strobe light, densely-thick fog, and an absolute lack of visibility. Despite having to provide an extensive list of warnings to the audience, and in some cases, having to collect signed "safety waivers" (absolving the artist and the venue from responsibility if the audience falls ill,) the guide still does their best to communicate that they are about to experience a contemplative, architectural landscape of light and sound. The audience is slowly led into the ZEE installation, single file, holding onto a rope as the person in front of them quickly vanishes behind a dense wall of fog. A glycol (alcohol) fog mist is so dense that there is no visibility beyond a foot. The size and the dimension of the space is completely unknown. There is a moment of pause as each individual realizes that to go any further in requires that they relinquish control. The fog tickles the throats of the audience members and the taste is sweet and tactile, almost like a mild cotton candy- like an aperitif before participating in an abyss of discourse. Suddenly, a flicker of dazzling lights occurs. The visual has been compared to walking up a mountain in a snow storm or the phenomenon of phosphenes- explosive  light-shows that occur when pressure is placed on one s eyes. The "techno canvas" of ZEE has unveiled it's seductive frame. Some of the audience will leave. Some share their reasons while others leave in a tight-lipped huff. There is no identifiable pattern regarding who will leave. The rest of the audience continues further down the rope, holding onto the memory of what the world once looked like outside, and their hope that this beautiful experience will continue to blossom before them. As they move further down the rope, the guide checks on them. At this point their diaphragms are being modulated by pressure caused by standing waves of sub bass. Eyelids no longer prevent the lights from enter the optic nerves of the audience. It merely colors the light show with pink and subsequently green after images. A phantom presence of circling surround sound anomalies and texture makes its presence and its purpose clearer, as various, dynamic sound sources intermingle and diverge, pulling away the viewers sense of space, like infinite layers of interwoven strips. The guide asks them if they are prepared to let go of the ropes or if they need assistance leaving. Those who stay are encouraged to let go of the ropes, and to explore blindly, a world with only the weight of one s own body assuring them of their own physical presence. As the performance goes on, a composition made of programmatic signals causes warm theatrical lights to swell and fade. Strobe lights flicker at various frequencies and tempos, and colored gels cast the room with unexpected blasts of varying tones. The total, hallucinatory, phosphenic experience causes the viewers to question the distinction between what they are individually imagining and what is ultimately affecting everyone else there. The aesthetic impact of the experience is suggestive of an  afterlife . Occasionally members of the audience bump into each other in the fog. Oncoming bodies seem as though they are surfacing through and infinite mass of organic pixels. The emotional impact of people discovering each other in such a compromising state is reminiscent of the meeting of souls in Sartre s  No Exit. The encapsulating, multi-sensory experience of ZEE is impossible to document. Arguably, the experience is truly interactive. Although the composition is preplanned, what the individual experiences in the saturated ocean of overstimulating elements is tempered by the behavior, placement, breathing, heart rate and mental response of the viewer. Upon leaving the performance/installation space each individual has their own, somewhat similar and overlapping perspective of what just occurred. One thing is commonly observed: Hentschlger's masterful mixture of various, commonly found dramaturgical technologies creates a new, immersive, ephemeral, sensory experience. One that lingers in the viewer, haunting them with its challenges and its charms. The use of modern technology as a tool to present sublime experiences is not unusual. Whether if it s through the organic tapestries caused by industrial fan-blown styrofoam pellets in Lawrence Malstaf s  Nemo or the spanning, immersive variance of decentralized audiovisual data represented in Telcosystem s  12_Series , the role of technology in achieving otherwise unattainable and impressive results, through clever, technological means is not new. While it is clear that Hentschlger's research and technological prowess hits a nerve, one might question how much of the impact of the work can be attributed to the keystroking of a programmer or the button pushing of a psychologist, rather than the impassioned vision of an artist. In either case, the work seems to stem from not only from a creative vision but also from a scientific exploration and utilization of technology, a topic of distinction that Heidegger has considered extensibly. Heidegger discusses the manner with which new technology is revealed as the result of a process of "bringing forth" into a "standing reserve": "Bringing-forth propriates only insofar as something concealed comes into unconcealment. This coming rests and moves freely within what we call revealing" (Heidegger, par.20). This strikes me as a commonality to technicians and artists. He then goes on to define technology in relation to revealing: "We are questioning concerning technology, and we have arrived now at aletheia, at revealing. What has the essence of technology to do with revealing? The answer: everything. For every bringing-forth is grounded in revealing. Bringing- forth, indeed, gathers within itself the four modes of occasioning causality and rules them throughout. Within its domain belong end and means as well as instrumentality. Instrumentality is considered to be the fundamental characteristic of technology. If we inquire step by step into what technology, represented as means, actually is, then we shall arrive at revealing. The possibility of all productive manufacturing lies in revealing. (Heidegger, par.21) Unlike much new media art which focuses on critiquing contemporary technology's instrumentality and its potential miss-use in society, Hentschlger s work explores how technology s instrumentality can be used to create new sensory experiences, moving the work towards the revelatory experience about which Heidegger writes. While less direct in its presentation of causality than much new media work, Hentschlger s work uses technology to create an immersive, somatic experience of causality that reveals new sensory possibilities.  Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth." (Heidegger, par.22) If technology is a means of revealing, then surely all art is a form of technology? This idea seems logical in a cold, practical way, but as an artist I meet it with resistance, because it downplays if not abolishes the notion of free will. As much as I dislike these implications, I have a difficult time time distinguishing the creation of a "standard reserve" of modern technology with the creation of art in general. Heidegger then addresses the etymological relationship between art and technology: "This prospect strikes us as strange. Indeed, it should do so, as persistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will fi-nally take seriously the simple question of what the name "technology" means. The word stems from the Greek. Technikon means that which belongs to techne. We must observe two things with respect to the meaning of this word. One is that techne is the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic." (Heidegger, par.23) If I were to assume that Heidegger's speculations regarding technology are sound, then at this point I would have to consider art within the same system. I would have to assume that the process of enframing that isolates and inspires content, as well as the ordering that leads to a finished work, are the result of history and systems preceding the attainable reach of a creative mind. However, he then quotes the poet Holderlin: "But where danger is, grows The saving power also," suggesting that within danger lies reciprocal potential for being saved. Intuitively, I view this as a paradox. If technology is evolving through us in a destined manner, then any potential for being saved is an illusion, existing only to maintain recursion- thus perpetuating the execution of an established program. Like "Chinese finger traps," any effort to circumvent the course of technology would merely increase its fuel, its dietary range. Heidegger continues to expand on the notion of "saving power": "The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already afflicted man in his essence. The rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth." (Heidegger, par.63) As much as I am fearful and reluctant to concede to his view on the destining of technology, I find myself calmed by the notion that there is potentially at least an apple held out in front of the "carriage-horse". "Thus the essential unfolding of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible rise of the saving power. Everything, then, depends upon this: that we ponder this rising and that, recollecting, we watch over it. How can this happen? Above all through our catching sight of the essential unfolding in technology, instead of merely gaping at the technological. So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain transfixed in the will to master it. We press on past the essence of technology." (Heidegger, par.76) This seems to resonate with my appreciation for Hentschlger's work. Despite his ability to work with technology, he has chosen to work with various forms of technology, up until the point of creating new, phenomenological mashups and then moving on. Perhaps in this manner, he is capable of coming closer to addressing our role of interactivity with technology. "When, however, we ask how the instrumental unfolds essentially as a kind of causality, then we experience this essential unfolding as the destining of a revealing. When we consider, finally, that the essential unfolding of the essence of technology propriates in the granting that needs and uses man so that he may share in revealing, then the following becomes clear: The essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth." (Heidegger, par.77) With this statement it becomes clearer to me what I find so refreshing and valuable in Hentschlger s work, and in particular ZEE. It seems as though this work truly uses technology as an instrument toward a vision. While there was clearly an discovery component that can be contributed to FEED, ZEE s message is subtle, meditative, and despite its overwhelming, electronic, digital aesthetic it seems to sincerely pursuit a spiritual presence. While the technology was clearly informed from the development and experience leading up to FEED, ZEE comes across as far more of an expressive and less didactic experience. In conclusion, I feel that if there is no real distinction between technical skill and art beyond the differences that we attribute to it for intellectual purposes, then it would be in our interest to pursue the dream of saving power through challenging works that not only add to a standing-reserve, but also expand our ability to transcend the known limitations of the world we understand and know. References: Heidegger, M. 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