The conditions of cinematographic art have changed radically over the past years. On the verge of a material revolution new possibilities of camera and production techniques have emerged that also allow new modes of narration and image languages. FUTURE CINEMA was the first major international exhibition of current art practice in the domain of video, film, computer and web based installations that embody and anticipate new cinematic techniques and modes of expression.

The exhibition premiered numerous new works, some specially commissioned for this exhibition, and a few actually produced at the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media. A strong curatorial emphasis was on installations that diverge from the conventional on the wall mounted and projected screen format and which explore more immersive and technologically innovative environments such as multi-screen, panoramic, dome projection, shared multi-user, and on-line configurations. Another central focus was set on works that explore creative approaches to the design of interactive non-linear narrative content.

Despite cinema's heritage of technological and creative diversity, it is Hollywood that has come to define its dominant forms of production and distribution, its technological apparatus and its narrative forms. This hegemony of movie making is about to be questioned by the more radically new potentialities of the digital media technologies, which is why the rise of the video, computer game and location based entertainment industries is such a significant phenomena. These new digital contexts are setting an appropriate platform for the further evolution of the traditions of independent, experimental and expanded avantgarde cinema. No commercial or industrial working teams а la Hollywood have been presented, but the individual efforts of artists who overcome or undermine the global standards of the cinema industry.

Though it is still early in the process, one can identify some of the focal features of this emergent domain of the digitally expanded cinema. The technologies of virtual environments point to a cinema that is an immersive narrative space wherein the interactive viewer assumes the role of both cameraperson and editor. And the technologies of computer games and the Internet point to a cinema of distributed virtual environments that are also social spaces, so that the persons present become protagonists in a set of narrative dislocations.

Cinema builds hyper realities, space time constructs that are conjoined to the presence of the spectator in the darkened magical space of the movie-theater. From Cinerama to 3D to Omnimax, the cinema has yearned to construe its fictions in a space of equivalence
with the real. The objective, as in many forms of art, is to bind the experience of being to such a place that induces a totality of engagement in the aesthetic and conceptual construct of the work. At the same time the digitally expanded online-cinema offers the convergence between PC, TV, www and the experience to be dis-located from a place and to make emotional and cognitive experience in various locations.

The intention is not a totalitarian spectacle that overwhelms and belittles the viewer, rather it is an inspiring manifestation that affirms each viewer's unique position and critical relationship to the representation. Furthermore the new networking technologies allow these cultural experiences to extend themselves into virtual social spaces that can constitute a further level of immersion.

The Future of Cinema can be delineated from two sources. One way is the expansion of existing cinematographic methods and codes into new areas. The other way is the convergence of cinema, TV and net. Especially new results are to be expected from multilocal and multiuser virtual environments, from massive parallel virtual worlds, which can be developed on the basis of the global net. The exhibition has given an overview of creative possibilities in these areas of cinematographic research - a laboratory, where scientists and artists can meet and a window into the future.

The presentation of Bernhard Serexhe, Head of ZKM | Museums Communication, will be accompanied by a large video documentary of the exhibit.

Further information on the exhibtion: http://www.zkm.de/futurecinema

FUTURE CINEMA
16 November 2002 - 30 March 2003
ZKM Karlsruhe

Curated by Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel


Future Cinema is a major international exhibition of current art practice in the domain of video, film and computer based installations that embody and anticipate new cinematic techniques and modes of expression. The exhibition offers the context for bringing together for the first time a large number of highly significant cinematic installation, multimedia and net based works that have been produced by both young and established international artists working
in this field over the last ten years. At the same time the exhibition will premier numerous new works, some specially commissioned for this exhibition, and many actually produced at the
ZKM. A strong curatorial emphasis will be on installations that diverge from the conventional wall mounted screen format and which explore more immersive and technologically innovative environments such as multi-screen, panoramic, dome projection, shared multi-user, and on-line configurations. Another central focus will be on works that explore creative approaches to the design of interactive non-linear narrative content.

Besides the installation works, the ZKM will use its Media Theater to present a number of performances and changing installations, as well as an opening conference of presentations and discussions by the exhibition artists. While the exhibition itself will focus on current
artistic practice in the field of digitally expanded cinema, a major catalogue will be published that documents the historical trajectory of those many and variegated cinematic experiments that prefigure, inform and contextualize our current cinematic condition.

Curatorial commentary on the exhibition by Jeffrey Shaw:

The history of the cinema is a history of technological experiment, of spectator-spectacle relations, and of production, distribution and presentation mechanisms that yoke the cinema to economic, political and ideological conditions. Above all it is a history of creative exploration of the uniquely variegated expressive capabilities of this remarkable contemporary medium. Despite cinema's heritage of technological and creative diversity, it is Hollywood that has come to define its dominant forms of production and distribution, its technological apparatus and its narrative forms. But the current hegemony of the Hollywood model of movie making is about to be relegated by the more radically new potentialities of the digital
media technologies, which is why the rise of the video game and location based entertainment industries is such a significant phenomena. These new digital contexts are setting an appropriate platform for the further evolution of the traditions of independent,
experimental and expanded cinema.

Though it is still early in the process, one can identify some of the focal features of this emergent domain of the digitally expanded cinema. The technologies of virtual environments point to a cinema that is an immersive narrative space wherein the interactive viewer assumes the role of both cameraperson and editor. And the technologies of video games and the Internet point to a cinema of distributed virtual environments that are also social spaces, so that the persons present becomes protagonists in a set of narrative dis-locations.

The digital domain is above all distinguished by it variegated range of new interaction modalities. Needless to say all traditional forms of expression are also interactive to the extent that they are must be interpreted and reconstructed in the process of apprehension, but digital interactivity offers a new direct dimension of user control and involvement in the creative proceedings. The traditional cinema's compulsive spectacle-spectacle relationship will be transformed as the growing spectrum of input-output technologies and algorithmic
production techniques are applied to the digitally expanded cinema.

Cinema builds hyper realities, space time constructs that are conjoined to the presence of the spectator in the darkened magical space of the movie-theater. From Cinerama to 3D to Omnimax, the cinema has yearned to construe its fictions in a space of equivalence with the real. The objective, as in many forms of art, is the experience of being in that place that induces a totality of engagement in the aesthetic and conceptual construct of the work.

The intention is not a totalitarian spectacle that overwhelms and belittles the viewer, rather it is an inspiring manifestation that affirms each viewer's unique position and critical relationship to the representation. Furthermore the new networking technologies allow these cultural experiences to extend themselves into virtual social spaces that can constitute a further level of immersion.

The accomplished Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz has criticized the compulsive attributes of the central conflict theory in the Hollywood cinema ("Poetics of Cinema", 1995), and calls for strategies whereby the autocracy of the director and his subjugating optical apparatus can be shifted towards the notion of a cinema that is located in the personally discoverable periphery. How exactly to achieve this is a very pertinent challenge, and solutions are being offered by new methods of visualization and utilization.

The biggest challenge for the digitally extended cinema is the conception and design of new narrative techniques that allow the interactive and emergent features of that medium to be fulfillingly embodied. Going beyond the triteness of branching plot options and video game mazes, one approach is to develop modular structures of narrative content which permit an indeterminate yet meaningful numbers of permutations. Another approach involves the algorithmic design of content characterizations that would permit the automatic generation of narrative sequences that could be modulated by the user, for instance by using a genetic model of selection. And perhaps the consummate venture is the notion of a digitally extended cinema that is actually inhabited by its audience who then becomes agents of and protagonists in its narrative development.
 
Curatorial commentary on the exhibition by Peter Weibel:

The Future of Cinema can be delineated from two sources. One way is the expansion of existing cinematographic methods and codes into new areas. The other way is the convergence of cinema, TV and net. The classical cinema can be defined as collective experience of one fixed stable projector projecting a moving image on one screen in one room.
Therefore each change of one of these factors, for example multiple screens, panorama screens, moving projections, different rooms, are already expansions of the contemporary practises of cinema.

On the level of the material display of the image are also many new techniques in development. Smart materials are developed which can be new sources of light and colour. New lenses are developed which contain information as a temporal code. In general there is a change from refractive optics to diffractive optics.

Especially new results are to expect from multilocal and multiuser virtual environments, from massive parallel virtual worlds, which can be developed on the basis of the global net. These new communication channels of the net in combination with GPS-Systems, satellite transmission and WAP mobile phones are allowing new forms of interactive personal and collective cinema on a digital basis.

The exhibition will give an overview about future possibilities in this three areas of cinematographic research through selected prototyps. The show will be a laboratorium, where scientists and artists meet, a window into the future.

Bernhard Serexhe
Abteilungsleiter / Head of Department

Museumskommunikation / Museums Communications / Education Department
/////// / |< ||| | Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe
/////// / |< ||| | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
/////// / |< ||| | Centre d'Art et de Technologie des Medias de Karlsruhe

Lorenzstrasse 19
D - 76135 Karlsruhe

email: serexhe@zkm.de
Tel. +49 721 81 00 1991
Fax. +49 721 8100 1999

Sekretariat Mrs. Womack
Tel. + 49 721 8100 1990

http://www.zkm.de

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