[-empyre-] Johannes Birringer: Resolution for Digital Futures

[Timothy Murray]

A few years ago it seemed inevitable that digital 
culture and new media arts would
be based on interactivity and the paradigm 
changes implied by participatory play/ creativity 
and networking. The promise of a new aesthetics 
of interaction made me think that technically 
derived interface performances could adopt the 
digital into social processes that also taught us 
new techniques of behavior, new "acting" 
techniques. So over the past few years, my lab in 
Germany has been trying to publish a manifesto on 
"interaction" 
(http://interaktionslabor.de/manifesto.htm). 
While we try, we also become more disillusioned. 
In the new year, I want to examine why 
interactivity (the technical kind) is not 
working. And why the growth of virtual reality, 
gaming environments and second lives does not 
answer any social questions about how to care to 
act, how to give and how to receive.



(bio)

Johannes Birringer (UK)  is a choreographer and 
media artist. As artistic director of the 
Houston-based AlienNation 
Co.(www.aliennationcompany.com), he has created 
numerous dance-theatre works, video installations 
and digital projects in collaboration with 
artists in Europe, the Americas, and China. His 
most recent production, the digital oratorio 
Corpo, Carne e Espírito,  premiered in Brasil in 
2008. He is founder of Interaktionslabor 
Göttelborn in Germany 
(http://interaktionslabor.de) and director of 
DAP-Lab at Brunel University, West London, where 
he is a Professor of Performance Technologies in 
the School of Arts. His new book, Performance, 
Technology and Science, was released by PAJ 
Publications in 2008.

-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University