ArtFutura 1992
Global Mind
1 – 5 April / Palau Sant Jordi, Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona
Brian Eno, Roy Ascott, Kevin Kelly , Sherry Turkle, Rupert Sheldrake, Michael Talbot, Terence McKenna, Monika Fleischmann, Zbig Rybczynski, Ars Electronica
Under the suggestive title of Global Mind the festival articulated a debate on the new telematic networks. Among the participants were Kevin Kelly (head editor of the magazine Wired), author Sherry Turkle (“The Other Self”), Rupert Sheldrake (creator of the hypothesis of morphogenetic fields) and Terence McKenna (“Food of the Gods”). It was an historic moment: the World Wide Web, as we know it today, still didn’t exist, but visionaries such as Kevin Kelly lucidly advanced the future that was about to arrive.
The activities took place in the Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica which also accommodated an installation by the artist Brian Eno, who was to give a peculiar conference titled “The Future will be like perfume”. Matt Mullican presented his digital environments and Monica Fleishmann describes his projects in Virtual Reality in the German Institute ART+COM.
In the audiovisual section, ArtFutura presented the premier of Zbig Rybzynski’s latest work, produced in high definition video, titled “Manhattan”. And the directors Sally Rosenthal (Siggraph Electronic Theater) and Christine Schöpf (Ars Electronica) presented the best works of their respective events.
At the same time, the exhibition “Art Inclasificat”, with works by Alain Fleisher, Miquel Jordá, Xavier Hurtado, Franc Aleu, Xavela Vargas, Sergi Caballero and Enric Les Palau, was shown. A performance by Macromassa and a seminar directed by Roy Ascott, also took place.
That year’s edition was particularly marked by Expo 92 in Seville: ArtFutura was commissioned by the Spanish Pavilion to produce a project related to Virtual Reality.
The result was “Memory Palace” an audiovisual spectacle based on an original text by William Gibson and directed by Montxo Algora and which included musical production by John Paul Jones and music by Peter Gabriel, Gringos and Jumo. Participants in the visual section were Karl Sims, Rebecca Allen, Mark Neale, Julia Heyward and Mark Pellington. Pep Gatell, from La Fura dels Baus, was the director of dramatization.
The spectacle, which was previewed during ArtFutura in Barcelona, was shown in video in Seville. However, many of its images reemerged on the screens of U2’s following tour.
“Twenty-thousand years from nomadic hunting and gathering to cybernetics and spaceflight. And we are still accelerating. There are yet more spirals to come. From the Model-T Ford to the starship. One hundred years. From the fastest man on earth being able to move thirty miles per hour to the fastest man moving nine miles per second.“
Terence McKenna
“The global mind is only now acquiring a body. As TV signals become digital, the global mind acquires eyes. As data banks fill up with textual knowledge, it gains verbal skills“.
Kevin Kelly
“Put another way, quasars, coffee cups, and oak trees do not exist objectively. They are only holograms we create inside our heads, for “out there” is just a frequency domain, a flowing and kaleidoscopic ocean of energy and vibration“.
Michael Talbot
