A lecture by Miklós Peternák


The appearance of technical media in every field of life caused major changes in art and culture as well. The followings will not aspire to provide any general analysis of this fact, rather I intend to present here two local initiative, both dedicated to the art and new technologies, from the perspective of the net.art, or let’s say from the point-of-view of a specific historical period, that is the mid-1990’s.

The Intermedia Department of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts has been in existence since 1990. Intermedia undertakes to extend artist training to cover art forms and artistic techniques that had made their first appearance in the 20th century, such as photokinetic and electronic arts, multimedia art, installation, environment and action art, new communication technologies, interdisciplinarity.

This is an art faculty, in the context of “fine arts” and provides MA in a five-years curriculum. The primary objective of the training is to enable students to realize the potential of their individual personalities so that they may develop an active and creative presence in the cultural spheres of the information society. The skill to be acquired is the simultaneous comprehension of the various techniques, tools, methods and functions of artistic expression and, within this sphere, the artistically significant practical application of one or more traditional techniques of the visual arts.




C“: Center for Culture & Communication Foundation is a not for profit institution, a space for innovative experiments related to communication and culture. C“ accomplishes research and developmental activities in the intermedial and interdisciplinary domains of art, science, media and visual culture. Since its foundation in 1996, C“ has focused its energies on fostering the integration of new technologies in the social and cultural tradition. The main objectives are: Production, presentation, dissemination and preservation of electronic media arts and culture (Interactive installations, experimental multimedia, net-art); Contemporary (media) art collection, archive, documentation; Research: new interfaces, new forms of communication, artistic applications of the new technologies.



At the Intermedia (http://www.intermedia.c3.hu) the internet became part of the curriculum before the Academy could have got an internet access so the first conferences, like the Metaforum series, were organized and the first artworks were created in such a – literally speaking – virtual environment.




In the early nineties, regarding internet access, there were very limited possibilities in Hungary, only some academic institutions, universities, libraries were faciliated and this was one of the main goals why the C“ program was created, to fasten the internet development, provide access, bandwidth, disseminate the use and the knowledge in Hungary. Besides, C“ during its first three years initiated an international artist-in-residence program and in the frame of this important net artworks were created by artists like Olia Lialina, JODI, or Alexei Shulgin and became accessible via C“ collection.

Illustrations:


1. C3 website, 2000 http://www.c3.hu/log/


2. Alexei Shulgin: Form (1996/97) http://www.c3.hu/collection/agatha/


3. Szegedy-Maszák Zoltán - Fernezelyi Márton: Demedusator (1998) http://demedusator.c3.hu/


4. Olia Lialina: Agatha appears (1997) http://www.c3.hu/collection/agatha/


5. Vécsei Júlia: Juligraph (2000/2001) http://www.c3.hu/~rub/juligraph/juligraph.html