Arte y Electricidad

Based on a paper presented at ISEA 2002, 11th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Nagoya, Japan, 2-31 October 2002.

The work of Fundación Rodríguez <www.fundacionrdz.com> explores the possibilities offered by the network itself—using “network” to mean not only that based in the Internet but also including cellular phones, faxes or other types of nets based on the most intimate human relationships. Fundación Rodríguez, understanding its work as networked labor in its broadest sense, has focused mainly on new formulas for selecting, curating, producing and interacting (understood as intercommunication). Our projects have their basis in remote work and proceed from an understanding of the network as a system of relations and links among authors and projects.

The Arte y Electricidad (A&E) project [1] <www.arteyelectricidad.net> is a multiform proposal that suggests the adaptation of its product to the circumstances of a given moment. A&E can thus be a music session, a video work or a music video; it could even be a debate. It could be novel situations designed to occur on the Net, a personalized vision for the screen, the public projection of a series of audiovisual proposals, or a series of games. A&E, which has been conceived as a self-defining/presenting trademark, may thus occur in the form of a launch party.

A&E has been developed through four main lines of activity:

• • A double CD-ROM for PC, Macintosh or audio CD player in Spanish, English and Basque [2], including projects and texts designed specifically for the CDs as support and links to projects on the Internet involving over 20 young Spanish authors

• • A web site with complete information about the project and all the activities related to it, as well as Net proposals produced specifically for A&E

• • A 60-minute video program featuring video works by Lucia Onzain, Mauro Entrialgo, Ibón Saez de Olazagoitia, Manu Arregui, María Cañas, Gorka Aguado and Juan Fco. Romero

• • Live presentations, including lectures at ISEA 2002, Nagoya, Japan; “Music ex machine,” the Music & Electronic Art Festival, Bilbao, Spain; the Space for Contemporary Art, Castellón, Spain, 2002 (see Fig. 2); and sound and video DJ shows and live performances in Madrid, Barcelona and at the International Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor, Slovenia, 2003.

Fig. 2.

Live presentation of Arte y Electricidad project in the EACC, Space for Contemporary Art of Castellón, Spain. In the photograph are Iñigo Barandiaran (audio intervention) and Ibon Saez de Olazagoitia (VJ).

© Fundación Rodríguez. Photo © Inaki Marquínez

We are therefore talking about art, the work and the artist in a connected environment—an environment sustained by electricity; an environment constituted by the telematic network, but also by the media, political and economic networks. Thus, like J. Bosma [3], we distinguish the terms network and networked environment, using network to mean the Net and networked environment to mean the scene of the connection, which undoubtedly could also apply with equal validity to a pre-Internet moment.

The most important capital in the A&E project consists of the participating artists and of the diversity of their proposals and the group they form. We stress this diversity and the versatility of the artists as a fundamental criterion in the selection and direction we have exercised for the A&E workshop-project.

The Net—our idea of the Net, one that proposes creative communication—is already operating for those of us who have taken part in the project. This is our principal success, beyond that of achieving recognition within the mainstream art ambit. The process begun in the past months of work has meant, to some extent, the invention of a way of working and its validation [4].