BANGKOK BYTE FEST - Thailand New Media Arts Festival 2004

By Tom Brecelic

Koh Samet, an island in the Gulf of Thailand, surely doesn't look this bizarre, but there's a virtual-reality version of the resort island in Bangkok this month that's one of over 100 individual works from 30 countries displayed at Thailand’s Second New Media Festival (MAF-04) from March 20-28.

“The increasing use of communications technology in Thailand, combined with the unique Thai lifestyle and culture, is an excellent environment for exciting media art to emerge and fertilize the global art scene” says Festival director Francis Wittenberger, an Israeli who has spent the last ten years in top media labs in Europe.

“This year's success was attributed to sponsorship from various institutions who provided venues and the possibility of over 30 visiting artists to arrive” (that includes the German and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lost In Space UK, Kunstpunkt Berlin, Fonds BKVB, The Flemish community’s cultural fund and local partner-venues as the Srinakarinwirot University, Alliance Française of Bangkok, The Goethe Institut Bangkok, The British Council Thailand, Banrie Café, Media Shaker Siam Co. and Oddyssee) says, Francis, a media artist himself who started the Thailand’s First New Media Art Festival last year, in the northern resort town, Chiang Mai. Thirty-three international artists participated this year compared with twelve in MAF-03.

“I also wanted to tap into institutions that may not actually have supported these kinds of creative expressions,” says Wittenberger. . “So much has been written about the political perspective of Israel in the mass media that people are not aware of the cultural and social dimensions of the country. Taking this into context, the Israeli embassy extended its support to facilitate Israeli artists and institutions for the festival.”

“The same goes for Srinakarinwirot University, the main venue sponsor of the event,” says Mr. Wittenberger, “where there are no media courses in the Faculty of Fine Arts, let alone the incentive to support a New Media Event.”

But Mr. Wittenberger isn’t deterred. He believes that Thailand is a new media haven that just needs a bit of nurturing through festivals like this. “You find teenagers at night-markets sitting on carton boxes cracking the code of the latest picture phones. These kids are potentially electronic artists.”

Mr. Wittenberger set up a platform for cross-cultural exchange in 2001, the “International Cultural Exchange Computer Activities” (ICECA), a volunteer initiative that was set up to foster cross-cultural activities in the new media field in Thailand. after being invited to participate in the “Chiang Mai Social Installation 2001”, titled “Eu-ka-Buek” where he exhibited Oman Robot, a thinking and feeling robot that was programmed to communicate in several languages as well as Thai. “Thais are innovative and ‘auto-bridge’ the gap between their traditional culture and modern lifestyle,” says Mr. Wittenberger who offered free of charge computer-related courses at Chiang Mai University Art Museum, where the inaugural festival was established in 2003. ( http://iceca.chiangmai.ac.th/events/ )

The festival official opening was at the Goethe Institute Bangkok, where Benoit Maubrey presented “Performances with Electro-acoustic Clothes” (1985-2004). The togs did the talking in this startling concoction by Berlin’s Audio Gruppe, of which Maubrey is the director.

“Via movement sensors they can also trigger electronic sounds that are subsequently choreographed --or "orchestrated"-- into musical compositions as an "audio ballet" (YAMAHA choreography)” said Maubrey of Performances with Electro-acoustic Clothes.

He also uses a variety of other electronic instruments --mini-computers, samplers, contact microphones, cassette and CD players, and radio receivers-- that allow them to work with the sounds, surfaces, and topographies of the space around them in a variety of solo or group choreographies.

"I was particularly interested in working with local Thai dancers and integrating some of my equipment into their costumes and Thai classical dance," says Maubrey, who has done this site-specific work in other countries-- AUDIO GEISHA/Japan, AUDIO CYCLISTS/France, AUDIO HANBOK/Korea, AUDIO BALLERINAS/ Bolshoi Dance St. Petersburg) --- reflecting local customs, themes and traditions.

At the Alliance Françoise, South Korean artist Jung Chul Hur screened her video art “New Territory/A Beautiful Dream”. These computer-edited digital films about a Thai island, Koh Samet, depicted Bangkokians’ favorite getaway as a strange, aggressive place where anonymous man could be a metaphor for life. The video has been seen at Canada’s Images Festival 2003, the Most Significant Bytes 2003 gathering in the Midwest US and Breakthroughs: New Experimental Films from Asia at Washington’s Smithsonian Institute.

At the British Council, German artist Hermelinde Hergenhahn displayed her video installation, “Day in Day Out.” With the aid of a mirror, a segment of a street and sidewalk are filmed from above for one hour each day, and then the footage is projected via the same mirror onto the exact spot. Like a security camera made visible, the video shows the “remains of the day”, creating a mix of past and present.

Lydia Ayers, the co-author of “Cooking with Csound”: “Woodwind and Brass Recipes”, a CD-ROM package which gives wavetable synthesis designs for wind instruments, demonstrated in a workshop at the British Council how to solve tuning and compositional, using demos of flute harmonics, Tuvan throat singing and synthesizing a bassoon tone. Then she compared the synthesized examples of traditional Chinese music with live demos of the same pieces at the workshop.

Inspector London, (www.inspector-london.com), from the UK, a project sited on eBay, was set up as a response to new possibilities emerging through new technologies and the virtual marketplace. Inspector takes looks at how “these developments have redefined our interaction with the product and transformed the notion of manufacturing itself.” they gave a lecture on the implications of shopping culture. And eBay recently pulled the sockets out of their online piece due to its irreverent approach to consumer society…

"The holy tree, the Banyan was where Buddha received enlightenment," writes Berlin based artist, Alfred Banze of the Banyan Project, which started in January 2004: on route to Tahiti and Thailand - to coincide with the Festival- and other South East Asian countries that have a cultural heritage with the Banyan tree. The Banyan Project only requires a generator, a projector and a laptop, that is the technical basis of the project and is exhibited in the proximity of the Night markets, temple areas and rendezvous points, ceremonial sites and arterial roads of the metropolises and jungle locations.

"The project uses the infrastructure for the baking packman individual tourism. That is called inexpensive Guesthouses, the public transportation network and Internet cafe," explains Alfred Banze of the Banyan Project. The Banyan project was presented during MAF-04 at several occasions: screening and performance at Alliance Française of Bangkok, and screenings at the Banrie Café.

The JavaMuseum - a forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art-launched it’s "I-Ocean // Netart from all Asia & Pacific area", kicked off at Festival here in Bangkok as part of the [R] [R] [R] 2004 (v.2) (www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/index.html) project, an experimental New Media art project by media artist and New Media curator Agricola de Cologne. This is a completely online project developed as a global networking project during 2004 and 2005. The Agricola de Cologne who was originally meant to attend the Festival and due to an injury did not make it physically carried out a lecture over the Internet to audience at the British Council Bangkok.

The local media showered the event with accolades. “New Media has arrived, and Mr. Wittenberger has been hailed as the techno-guru,” wrote the Bangkok Post. “Next year’s Festival MAF-05 will be a new media project in itself” says Mr. Wittenberger “I plan to generate software to automatically allow creation of new media related festivals”

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Originally written for Rhizome.org by Tom Brecelic © 2004