Piotr Zawojski: Hybrid Art - A New Category of Cyberart

PIOTR ZAWOJSKI HYBRID ART – A NEW CATEGORY OF CYBERART 113 Piotr Zawojski In 2014, after seven editions of the Golden Nica prize in the category of Hybrid Art at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the competition organisers did not award prizes in this field. The situation did not result from a lack of artistic proposals, but rather from general changes in the organisation of the festival, and, more specifically, in its most important part, namely the Prix Ars Electronica. The increasing number of applications for the competition (in 2013 they exceeded 4000) made the organisers revise the rules governing the organisation of the competition. It was decided that the categories of Hybrid Art and Interactive Art, and Digital Music & Sound Art and Digital Communities will be held alternately every two years, while the Computer Animation/Film/F/X u19 CREATE YOUR WORLD and [the next Idea] voestalpine Art and Technology Grant categories will continue to be staged every year. This year a new category was also established — Visionary Pioneers of Media Art — which is to be a special distinction granted to artists, or, more broadly, to eminent representatives of the media world, whose pioneering achievements were fundamental for media art. In this case, nominations can be submitted by all Golden Nica winners since 1987. It is worth mentioning that this year’s winner was Roy Ascott, and candidates leading in voting included, inter alia, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Alvin Lucier, Jim Campbell, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Bill Viola, Stelarc, Peter Weibel, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, and Éliane Radigue and Zbigniew Rybczyński. This moment seems to be a good opportunity to take stock of the previous editions and to try to reconstruct the theoretical assumptions followed by the organisers while proclaiming the new cyberart category. I would especially like to trace the formation of thinking about the features which distinguish hybrid art from the phenomena of contemporary (new) media art, and to see if the works classified in this category are linked by more than a mere arbitrary gesture of the jury members and — earlier — of the artists who submitted their works to the competition, to determine whether it is possible to establish and formulate a general and more specific framework which would enable the phenomenon to be defined. In the context of such phenomena of new media art as interactive art, net art, generative art, bio art, sound art, telematic art, virtual art, robotic art, and computer animation — whose boundaries and distinctive features are often also difficult to establish — hybrid art even increases the complications. Although the previously mentioned disciplines can be more precisely and clearly defined, as they use a unique medium (sound in sound art or moving digital images in computer animation), in most of these cases one could also talk about a higher or lower level of (material, media, or aesthetic) “impurity” which is typical of hybrid art. Therefore, before I proceed to a more detailed presentation of selected examples representing this new discipline of media art, I would like to reflect upon the possibilities of defining it and locating it in the context of other artistic disciplines which function within various artistic strategies, and which are a manifestation of contemporary cyberculture. The need to distinguish this new category can be justified in at least two different ways. Firstly, attention should be paid to the general Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart trends of contemporary culture that can be described as a turn towards “impure” genres, which are a derivative of such strategies of cultural creativity as multimedialism, intermedialism, hypermedialism, transmedialism, but also as remix, reenactment, mixed and augmented reality, and convergence. Secondly, the need refers to the procedures of classifying new media art works into specific categories within the Prix Ars Electronica — in recent years an increasing number of works and realisations were found difficult to classify into any categories proposed by the organisers of the festival in Linz. I am not going to absolutise the choices of the organisers or jury members they invited (every year a committee assessing and qualifying submitted works is comprised of five experts), yet their decisions may be treated as a kind of practical attempt to establish the boundaries of the hybrid art field. I recall some names of the jury members, acknowledged new media practitioners and theoreticians (in most cases, however, they are artists who are also concerned with theoretical reflection): Jens Hauser (the only permanent member of the jury), Scott deLahunta, Golan Levin, Michael Naimark, Sonia Cillari, Casey Reas, Dietmar Offenhuber, Eduardo Kac and Oron Catts. The decision to establish this new category was a kind of proposal to descriptively grasp a certain number of works created over many years because — unlike the various new media art forms whose birth can be linked to the advent of new tools and media of artistic creation, such as video art (if we consider it a new media art), net art or digital photography — hybrid works use various media forms, and the essence of hybrid art is crossbreeding derived from biological processes and phenomena, in the spirit of scientific and technological experimentation. Hybrid art is therefore a sui generis representative of cyberart; with cyberart being an expression of cyberculture, which is the result of a syntopia of art, science and technology1. It should be added that it would be possible to invoke a few other terms proposed in the past to collectively define those artistic activities which result from close collaboration with scientists (and which make use of new technologies and media), such as “technoscience art”2, but which, for various, reasons did not become popular. Interestingly, Stephen Wilson in his monumental work on “information arts”3 (which is almost a thousand pages long) uses the notion of hybrid, hybridisation or hybridity only incidentally — for example when he refers to kinetic or robotic art, to bionics, and to a few specific works (by George Gessert, Edward Steichen, Hubert Duprat, Louis-Philippe Demers, Bill Vorn or Eduardo Kac; Jaron Lanier is treated by Wilson as “an exemplification of an artist and scientist hybrid”) — but, generally, this concept is not particularly important in his presentation of phenomena emerging at the intersection of art, science and technology. Let us recall the “announcement” concerning 1 2 3 See Piotr Zawojski, Cyberkultura. Syntopia sztuki, nauki i technologii, Poltex, Warsaw 2010. The term was introduced by Frank Popper in 1987. For more on this topic see: Piotr Zawojski, Sztuka obrazu i obrazowania w epoce nowych mediów, Oficyna Naukowa, Warsaw 2012, pp. 228-230. See Stephen Wilson, Information Arts. Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge-Massachusetts 2002. 114 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart the proclamation of the new category of art, which was published on the website of the organisers of the competition in Linz, since it was the first attempt to establish the institutional framework for artists submitting their projects, but it was also a kind of manifesto which took experience into account, both in terms of the choice of the submitted works and the attempts at their conceptualisation and assessment with regard to a certain homogeneity (in heterogeneity) stemming from a specific nature which could be reduced to a formula — “hybrid works/projects/realisations”. The organisers defined the essence of activities within hybrid art in the following way: This is, of course, a very general outline of the idea of distinguishing a new category of new media art addressed primarily to artists submitting their works to the PAE competition, yet, at the same time, it is a certain indicator concerning the question of whether and how it would be possible to distinguish the notion of hybrid art as a new area of activities of the artists who work within the widely understood field of new media art. The presentation of particular forms of creative activity provides specification of the general invitation addressed to new media artists, although the often problematic names of the forms induce us to treat them as very initial propositions, not only in terms of terminology but also in terms of the nomenclature applied in the theoretical discourse on new media art questions, which is included here to a very limited extent. The detailed list formulated by the competition organisers includes the following forms of works: – autonomous installations and artworks – autonomous sculptures – performance and stageprojects – media architectures – media based interventions in public spaces – mechatronics, kinetics, robotics – location based and geospatial storytelling – multi-user environments – annotation software tools – artificial life – transgenic art – software art and generative art. 4 Hybrid Art, www.aec.at/prix/en/kategorien/hybrid-art, (accessed 25 November 2012). 115 Piotr Zawojski The Hybrid Art category is dedicated specifically to today’s hybrid and transdisciplinary projects and approaches to media art. Primary emphasis is on the process of fusing different media and genres into new forms of artistic expression as well as the act of transcending the boundaries between art and research, art and social/political activism, art and pop culture. Jury members will be looking very closely at how dynamically the submitted work defies classification in a single one of the Prix Ars Electronica categories of long standing.4 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart If we wanted to apply these very general guidelines to the plurality of activities of contemporary media artists working at the intersection of art, science and technology, we could paradoxically copy the chapter titles of the book by Wilson, who had generally categorized artists’ activities in the context of the latest scientific research and the more and more advanced technologies. The encyclopaedic dimension of his classification on the one hand allows for a wide typologisation of media art, yet, on the other hand, as was mentioned before, arbitrarily distances itself from the issue of hybridity, which, I believe, is a phenomenon underestimated by Wilson, and which characterises the specificity of not only new media art but of technoculture as well. The subsequent parts of his book revolve around biology (microbiology, animals and plants, ecology, medicine and the body), physics (non-linear systems, nanotechnology, geology, astronomy, space science, GPS and cosmology), algorithms (mathematics, fractals, genetic art and artificial life), kinetics, robotics and sound installations, telecommunication, digital information systems and computer tools. Most of these issues to a greater or lesser extent raise the matters of hybrids, hybridisation and hybridity, which may lead to the conclusion that various aspects of the functioning of cyberart in technoculture are inherently included in the fields of references marked by cultural phenomena which are multi-dimensional and ambiguous in terms of genre or type and emerge on the basis of hybrid reality. The activities of new media artists are, in fact, a special case of the broader processes which found cyberculture as a hybrid phenomenon par excellence. A variety of activities, practices, strategies and tactics within new media art in the context of the phenomenon of hybridity, which are discussed here, leads to the conclusion that the typologisation of hybrid art can be applied to many areas of contemporary activities which use not only different media but also various research and scientific explorations, and a variety of activities in the scope of design and application of new technologies, including information technologies in particular. Let us emphasise once again that even if hybrid art is not a notion which precisely designates a set of specific, strictly determined phenomena of new media art, it nevertheless seems to be a helpful term for distinguishing such activities, works, realisations and artefacts in the field of new media art which are distinct from other categories of new media art. It needs to be added that the particular achievements and artists winning awards within this category in the last seven editions of the Prix Ars Electronic, since the hybrid art category was introduced, demonstrate that it is precisely in this area that we can find works which are meaningful and significant from the point of view of the dynamics of development of the latest new media art. Over the seven-year period and from the perspective of dozens of works — which were appreciated by the jury members, as every year besides Golden Nica two other main prizes are awarded and a dozen works are given the opportunity to be presented at the festival, which comes to a total of over a hundred realisations — it may be concluded that hybrid art is a category which somehow gathers the works which cannot be classified as “traditional” activities of new media artists, such as interactive practices, animation/film/special effects, dig- 116 ital music/sound art or internet projects. The category includes a set of works which differ in almost every aspect, and which are completely heterogeneous and unique, and yet, at the same time, similar to each other. This similarity stems exactly from their uniqueness and the tendency to somehow create the world (of art) from scratch, to search for objects which are completely new and had been previously absent from art (let us name the material effects of artistic activities in this conventional manner), events and processes which valorise the aesthetic contexts of perceiving various phenomena, often seemingly distant from the world of previously known and recognised art. A multitude of different inspirations and borrowings, explorations in areas which have not been the domain of artists so far, and openness to impulses from the world of science and technology, are probably the distinctive features of artists creating hybrid works. It would be difficult, however, to state that the authors were intentionally creating works which would later be classified as hybrid works. A work is classified as an example of hybrid art rather ex post than ex ante. Therefore, there is no way to talk about any normative guidelines applicable to this type of artistic work — at most it is possible to point to a very wide range of references and inspirations, and a conscious integrative approach encompassing various media, materials, creative strategies, techniques and technologies, and creative procedures. Even some cursory research and characterisation of the hybrid art works presented in recent years enables an initial typologisation of the activities of artists representing this field of artistic creation. The fields of artistic interests include, inter alia: – genetics, bioengineering, stem cells, proteomics – the biological dimension of living systems: microorganisms, plants, animals, ecology – human biology: the body, bionics, body manipulation, brain and body processes, body imaging, medical problems – physical sciences: particle physics, nuclear energy, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, space science, nanotechnology, materials science – kinetics, electronics, robotics: physical computing, or constructing interactive physical systems that use hardware and software which can respond to the analogue world, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp, in other words), or the ubiquity of computer tools being present and accessible everywhere and for everyone in the space sensitive to the presence of the user (in other words: processing without borders), mixed reality – alternative interfaces: motion, gesture, touch, facial expression, speech, wearable computing, 3D sound, and virtual reality – code: algorithms, software art, genetic art, A-life, artificial intelligence – information systems: databases, surveillance, RFID/barcodes, information visualisation – telecommunications: telephone, radio, telepresence, web art, locative media, mobile phones5. 5 See Hybrid Art, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_arts (accessed 28 November 2014). 117 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart The jury members of the first edition of the hybrid art competition in 2007 recalled that the Ars Electronica Festival organisers’ interest in hybridity was reflected in the 2005 edition, whose motto was Hybrid – Living in Paradox. In the introduction to the festival catalogue, the artistic directors of the festival — Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf — wrote that “the hybrid is the signature of our age”6. At the same time they argued that the dilution of the interactive art category7, which was criticised by many theorists and participants of the festival, forced them to rethink the understanding of what interactive art was. This resulted in some sort of return to the concept of interactive activities understood as real-time practices relating to direct interaction between users and the work, and to a re-evaluation of the concept of interface. It should be recalled that in 2004 the competition jury suggested “an expanded definition of interactivity” which included three elements, encapsulated in the following statements: mediation by means of a computer is not required, the categories of “real time” and direct interaction of the user of interactive work are actually irrelevant, and a kind of passive interaction is possible8. In 2007, over 450 submitted projects became the basis for a critical discussion on the eligibility criteria for the competition works, and the basis for reflection upon the way the artists themselves understood the “hybridity” of their works. In numerous projects the jury members noticed a trend which they defined “as data translation art”9. The trend was visible in many works that were a form of artistic processing of data derived from various sources in order to create works which would be heterogeneous in terms of media, yet conceptionally and constructionally coherent. What were thus the dominant trends in the first contest? The jury members identified a significant number of works referring to mechatronics (as well as to animatronics), which can be found in projects as diverse as Cloaca (Wim Delvoye) and Robotic Chair (Raffaello d’Andrea, Max Dean, Matt Donovan). In 2006 this latter work received an honorary mention within the category of interactive art. This is a very good example of the way in which, only a year earlier, such valuable and innovative works were placed in the previously established categories, despite their definitely problematic “genre” affiliation. A different group of works was constituted by realisations which appealed to other senses than the two basic senses of sight and hearing, and, therefore, entered the area beyond the audiovisual experience of recipients by engaging the senses of smell or touch. These multisensory stimulants of the recipients’ experience seem to be an important direction of the artistic explorations of authors who apply various 6 7 8 9 Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, Hybrid - Living in Paradox [in:] Hybridity – Living in Paradox, eds. G. Stocker and Ch. Schöpf, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfidern-Ruit 2005, p. 10. See Erkki Huhtamo, Trouble at the Interface 2.0, www.neme.org/591/trouble-at-the-interface-2 (accessed 21 November 2014). For more on this topic in my other text. See: Piotr Zawojski, Cyberkultura..., pp. 150-190. Scott deLahunta, Jens Hauser, Golan Levin, Sandrine von Klot, Elanie Ng, Hybridity – The Signature of our Age [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. Cyberarts 2007, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2007, p. 102. 118 media in order to broaden the spectrum of recipients’ experience. At the same time, such strategies are characteristic of activities which consciously refer to transgressing the boundaries within new media art and which, as a result, find expression in hybrid works. Another significant group of works submitted to the competition were the works located in the area of performance practices, understood in a variety of ways. It needs to be added that defining certain actions as “performance” is nowadays often highly problematic, sometimes the word is used as a cliché or as a convenient — although not very precise — concept classifying certain artistic events which, referring to performance strategies, have little in common with traditionally defined performance10. However, the most important activities of the artists identified with the hybrid art category is the group of works which encompasses the transgression of the boundaries between art and science, in the context of the use of new technologies. In the words of the jury members: “If we can make one generalisation about the new Hybrid Art category, it is a shift in the interests of new media artists, beyond the information technologies of the networked computer, and towards materials technologies — biological, chemical, mechanical, and (undoubtedly soon) nanotechnological”11. Operational activities stretched between animate and inanimate systems, and bio-techno-logical connections developed in various contexts, constitute another field of activity of the artists who consciously think about creating hybrid works. When concluding their remarks on defining hybrid art, the jury members of the first edition of the competition stated that the winning artworks “draw from the original etymological meaning of the term «hybrid», while simultaneously producing new cultural experiences and ontological understandings through rematerialisation, deimage-ing, performativity and hybrid intermediality”.12 The list of works which won awards in 2007, which includes artists who create in very diverse areas of (new) media art, and more than that, may constitute a kind of a harbinger of the future choices of jury members, and also of the way in which artists and the recent media art observers understand what hybrid art is and what it might be in the future. It is then worth recalling some of the award-winning works. Their diversity, the wide range of issues they addressed, the variety of media used by the artists, and the aspect of transgressing all the boundaries of genre and type in the scope of artistic activities, as well as multi-and interdisciplinarity in the approach to issues of art, science and technology — in a way determined the perspectives for the future. The artists’ unique openness and declared transdisciplinarity was already a good omen for future years at the very moment of announcing this new category of cyberart. And this was the case because the subsequent editions of the competition 10 11 12 I mean performance as an artistic situation in which the performer’s body is both the object and subject of a particular activity in real time in front of the audience. Scott deLahunta, Jens Hauser, Golan Levin, Sandrine von Klot, Elanie Ng, Hybridity..., p. 105. Ibidem. 119 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart became a field for artists working at the intersection of multiple media and scientific disciplines, but also for those engaged in various explorations in the field of new technologies. The 2007 Golden Nica was awarded to The Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory SymbioticA from the University of Western Australia in Perth. SymbioticA was established in 2000 by a biologist, Miranda Grounds, a neuroscientist, Stuart Bunt (the scientific director), and Oron Catts (the artistic director). The latter, together with Ionat Zurr, created an art collective — Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) — functioning in the framework of the research and artistic residence in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia since 1996. TC&A is one of the most renowned representatives of bio art, becoming famous for such realisations as Pig Wings (2000-2001), Semi-Living Worry Dolls (2000), Semi-Living Steak (2000), Victimless Leather (2004), Extra Ear - ¼ Scale (2003) in collaboration with Stelarc, and NoArk (2007-2008). In 2009, Catts was recognised by “Icon Magazine” (United Kingdom) as one of the 20 top designers “making the future and transforming the way we work”. On the TC&A website one may read a very short manifesto, which is worth quoting: Piotr Zawojski The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) was set to explore the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression. We are investigating our relationships with the different gradients of life through the construction/growth of a new class of object/being – that of the Semi-Living. These are parts of complex organisms which are sustained alive outside of the body and coerced to grow in predetermined shapes. These evocative objects are a tangible example that brings into question deep rooted perceptions of life and identity, concept of self, and the position of the human in regard to other living beings and the environment. We are interested in the new discourses and new ethics/epistemologies that surround issueos f partial life and the contestable future scenarios they are offering us.13 Some contemporary cyberculture observers are likely to argue that the artistic and scientific interests of the SymbioticA laboratory is closely connected with bio-art, therefore locating the SymbioticA artists and scientists’ activities in the context of hybrid art is a mere classificatory measure which does not add any relevant information for determining the nature of their work. It might also be worth searching for new categories in the artists and scientists’ innovative activities which could organise the ever-changing landscape of new media art, and — in this case — of the biomedia environment. Since its beginnings, SymbioticA has implemented research and scientific activities, and critically reflected upon science, especially biology. It was the first research facility to enable artists to cooperate with scientists not only in the scope of biological arts or, in broader terms, moistmedia art (Roy Ascott’s term) or wet biology art, but also in the scope of neuroscience, plant biology, anatomy, tissue engineering, physics, bioengineering, mycology, anthropology and molecular biology. Its founders emphasised that what they did was also a kind of “philosophy in 13 See The Tissue Culture & Art Project, www.tcaproject.org/about/ (accessed 7 December 2014). 120 action” because the area of research practice was closely connected with theoretical reflection, for example in terms of bioethics. In this way, SymbioticA has become a sort of reference point and model for many worldwide institutions which emerged later, such as Ectopia (Experimental Art Laboratory) in Lisbon, or the BioArts Initiative at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy (United States). The laboratory also became an important symbol of the shifts within new media art, departing from the plug-and-play strategy towards a fascination with widely understood computer technologies treated as a primary workshop of new media artists and annexation of new spaces, forms and materials not necessarily related to information and digital technologies. Another work which received distinction from the jury members and which they described as “both technically and conceptually, a masterpiece of hybrid art on all levels”14 is the organo-kinetic installation Cloaca by Wim Delvoye. It is also a “generative” work, in a sense (in a perverse sense of the word which is not connected with the contemporary understanding of, for example, generative art) because it generates the production of human excrement. It is a spectacularly huge machine-human hybrid that is a specific copy of the human digestive system, whose aim is the production of excrement. However, to achieve the aim, the hybrid must be fed twice a day – as a result Cloaca becomes a “shitting machine”, at the same time being a great sculpture, a posthuman icon. The technologically copied human digestive system (mouth - stomach - intestines - anus) here takes a cyborg or machine form, and it also becomes a laboratory where life is simulated. Yet, the construction itself does not serve any purpose, it creates a kind of closed, automated circulation and thereby its “operating philosophy” starts to resemble that of a modern corporation, but it also functions like a production line. This simplified description indicates only a few elements related to the work of Wim Delvoye, which has been developing since the mid-1990s. Its subsequent versions also show, in a metaphorical manner, the rules governing the art market in which the Belgian artist is forced to produce new “personal” and “unique” works. In this remarkable work the complex and multifaceted nature of hybrid art, which is present everywhere, from the technical level to conceptual assumptions, is clearly visible. Biological, chemical, technological, kinetic and visual, as well as olfactory elements, were integrated here in a way which elicits extraordinary sensations and emotions. Biological Habitat: Breeding Space Technology, Made in Space by Zbigniew Oksiuta must impress with its scale and the manner of approaching its subject. At the same time, the artist himself draws attention to an important feature of hybrid art: Hybrid by definition means cross-breeding between different species of animals or plants, but in cultural terms we also talk about the hybridity of phenomena in the sense of mixing and interdisciplinary links. My research would be impossible without transgressing those boundaries: I am not a scientist but I cooperate with scientists, I studied architecture and 14 Ibidem, p. 107. 121 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Piotr Zawojski I take part in exhibitions as an artist. I think that the most important thing for my work is that I have actually never decided who I am: I am in between. It is a very difficult but at the same time good position.15 This significant statement, which can be applicable to the whole of hybrid art as “being in between”, is a special feature of the artists and works presented in this essay. It is not about the beauty or imaging, as Oksiuta adds, but about cognition, about art as an epistemological practice which is performed at the level of research experiments carried out in laboratories in collaboration with scientists representing various branches of knowledge. In his works Oksiuta refers to the issues connected with the emergence of new forms of future biological life, both in the biosphere and in space. The organic forms he creates take the form of sculptures or perhaps rather unique objects, as in the case of polymeric habitats (Spatium Gelatum), which are frozen liquid. Using biological polymers such as gelatine or agar (Lane Kluski Technology, or Poached Dumpling Technology, or liquid formwork technology, i.e. creating a polymer mass floating under water) he creates amorphous, yet at the same time, architectural forms in the aquatic environment. In the catalogue the artist himself draws attention to two fields which constitute his experimental area: the microcosm (the world of molecules, genes and chromosomes) and the macrocosm (the space of oceans, planets and stars). “The project Made in the Biosphere & Made in Space envisages the use of DNA as a universal code of the cosmos and foresees the use of DNA strains embedded in biological reactors that would autonomously develop into new forms of life in the biosphere and in outer space. These technologies are based on the following principles: • The creation of spatial forms in the state of weightlessness – isopycnic systems16. • The use of biological polymers as construction material – spatium gelatum. • The generation of forms as a pneu-biological containment.17 • The creation of containment on a different scale: of a cell, a pill, a fruit, a shelter, a universe. 15 16 17 Monika Bakke, Życie poza statkiem kosmicznym Ziemia. Monika Bakke’s interview with Zbigniew Oksiuta, www.oksiuta.de/PDFTexte/Obieg.pdf (accessed 3 December 2014). “If we pour one liquid into another, they mix (in case the liquids are dissolved in each other) and then a homogenous solution comes into being. If the liquids are not soluble, they will be subjected to the force of gravity: the heavier liquid with more density (density - the ratio of weight to volume) will fall to the bottom and the lighter will raise to the top, as in the example of water and oil or water and paraffin. In physics an interesting state occurs when both liquids have the same density. The state is called isopycnic (from Greek: iso - equal, the same; pykne - density) or neutral buoyancy”. Zbigniew Oksiuta, Spatium Gelatum. „Architektura & Biznes” 2004, no 1, pp. 58-59. Pneu is, as Oksiuta explains, “a pneumatic structure” which came into being as a result of the “poached dumplings” technology using biological polymers of plant (agar) and animal (gelatine) origin as building materials for architectonic forms consciously referring to utopian ideas but also to very specific biological research focused around the question related to the growth of organisms, “with a particular emphasis on studying a living cell as an ideal habitat”. Zbigniew Oksiuta, Spatium…, p. 60. 122 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart • Breeding spaces as bioreactors for the genetic development of new life in the biosphere”18. Zbigniew Oksiuta’s visionary concepts and projects may be surprising but, at the same time, they are an excellent example of activities which transgress any boundaries between artistic and scientific projects. They are very expressive realisations of the SciArt (Science + Art) trend which constitutes a significant part of hybrid activities. The idea of a chamber as future biological architecture is one of the latest projects which, while being a form of speculation devoted to, inter alia, autopoietic systems, again surprises with its audacity and the attempt to look far into the future. The vision of a breakdown of global order and building a dwelling place, a personal biosphere for a single “chamber-dweller” must arouse controversy, but it is also puzzling. Another project recognised by the jury in 2007 is Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, which I wrote about in detail elsewhere20. The project, carried out for several years, was created in cooperation with research laboratories in Germany, Japan, Russia and Belgium, and its primary aim was to use the phenomenon of sonoluminescence (cold light) which is a physical process of emitting light waves at the time of implosion of gas bubbles propagated in liquid under the influence of sound pressure (this phenomenon is known as acoustic cavitation). This form of sound imaging is not about the visualisation of sound, creating its visual transposition, but about the possibility of seeing sound in its pure form. Flashes of light produced as a result of generating sound processes (ultrasound, to be more precise) can be observed by viewers in particular conditions in a “light chamber”. Visitors need to adapt to see the performance, during which they can see the sound in a tangible way, thus they wait for a long time in complete darkness before it begins. Its image, or visibility, is dependent on the sound material “entered” into the chamber, therefore it takes on forms differing from one another in a subtle way, which can be discerned in the records presented on a DVD published in 2007. This work is a notable example of the intermedia and transmedia strategies which are another characteristic of hybrid art. Transcending not only the boundaries which have until recently separated the work of artists from the work of scientists, 18 19 20 Zbigniew Oksiuta, Biological Habitat: Breeding Space Technology, Made in Space [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. Cyber Arts 2007, p. 123. Zbigniew Oksiuta, Ja, komornik. [in:] Bio-techno-logiczny świat. Bio art oraz sztuka technonaukowa w czasach posthumanizmu i transhumanizmu, ed. P. Zawojski, Klub 13 Muz. Szczecin 2014, p. 266. See Piotr Zawojski, Obrazy sonoluminescencyjne. “Camera Lucida” Eveliny Domnitch i Dmitrija Gelfanda [in:] Piotr Zawojski, Sztuka obrazu..., pp. 222-251. 123 Piotr Zawojski My project of a personal chamber - Oksiuta writes - presents a vision of biological architecture. This chamber is a new biosphere, a biological reactor fulfilling the function of a home, a three-dimensional spherical space, a self-sufficient household. The interior of the chamber is a place for living and farming, and its film walls are a substitute for soil, allowing a new form of breeding.19 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart but also demonstrating a completely new attitude to media art or, in other words, searching for completely new media which rely on chemical or physical materials (or immaterials) is the domain of hybrid art whose representatives par excellence are Domnitch and Gelfand. Let us just add that in subsequent years each of their new projects (and in their case this is a well-founded wording as each experiment is actually an example of a work in progress, constantly being perfected and recomposed) won the appreciation of the Ars Electronica jury members. In 2009, the artists presented Sonolevitation, and in 2011 - Mucilaginous Omniverse, further works in the area of technoscience art, which became a defining characteristic of this duo of artists very consciously working at the intersection of art and techno(science). Masaki Fujihata is an artist who can be considered a classic of the new media art. In his works he employs diverse poetics and media. This time he presented a work exploring issues related to augmented reality. The work, using specially designed glasses, in a way erases the consciousness of using them, which is one of the basic problems of the various systems of augmented reality. Unreflective Mirror is an extended version of a regular mirror, using a virtual reality system based on a 3D tracking system. The “unreflective mirror” convincingly presents two identical worlds: in one of them the viewer is present, and in the other the viewer’s presence is erased. This work is a reference to earlier interactive projects by Fujihata, but it also poses new questions about the possibility of confirming (or not) one’s presence. Being tracked by a system which is able to make us disappear from view is an extraordinary situation. We thus see that we have ceased to be present, in a sense we have ceased to exist, as the mirror which is supposed to confirm our existence rather testifies to our non-existence. Paradoxically, this finds confirmation on the monitor, which is part of the extra furnishing of the room in which the perverse work is being done. Thus it is yet another hybrid art strategy, this time using virtual reality to erase our corporeality, which is lost in this odd mirror. And it is only the monitor reflected in the mirror, found on the wall opposite, that confirms that we have not disappeared completely, that we have not been lost in virtual reality. This is yet another presentation of thinking about the hybrid nature of both the art of media and the possibilities of questioning the simple way of confirming our existence thanks to media technologies, in order to question taking it for granted. Julien Maire is the creator of an unusual project (which can be classified as a live cinema work) entitled Demi-pas (2002), presented, among others, during the Future Cinema exhibition in 2003, which took place in the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechologie in Karlsruhe and which also received the Ars Electronica award (in 2004). Timothy Druckrey wrote that: “Demi-pas transforms the image machine into a time machine by evoking both mechanical and physical movements”21. This relatively short “film”, lasting about 30 minutes, about one day in 21 Timothy Druckrey, Julien Maire. „Demi-Pas” [in:] Future Cinema. The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, eds. J. Shaw, P. Weibel, ZKM Karlsruhe, MIT Press, Cambridge-London 2003, p. 447. 124 the life of a man, is presented in the form of a performance during which Maire brings real objects and photographic material (slides) into a (computer-assisted) projector and subjects them to live manipulation, thus producing a sort of live-created narrative. Pre-cinematographic practices are associated with the Diorama technique, showing also animation activities — activities which rely on the idea of the “reverse camera”. I mention this project as the work Exploding Camera presented by Julien Maire in 2007 is, in some sense, a continuation of the explorations related to audiovisual performance in which the camera/projector are not only a tool to create images but also become a very important element of the work. All the more since the work refers to a historical event. On September 9th, 2001 the most popular of Afghan guerrilla commanders and the last great enemy of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Ahmad Szah Massud, with whom Arabs had been seeking audience for weeks, died in a suicide bombing. The assassination was planned in such a way that two suicide bombers pretending to be journalists brought a camera for the interview and the camera exploded killing Massud. The story has been all but forgotten as what happened two days later in New York made this event fall into oblivion. Maire decided to recall it in a special way - with the use of video cameras connected to an electronic projector, emitting light and causing some sort of light explosions. The camera records the image in real time, projects it onto the screen and, simultaneously, the spectators become witnesses of a live audiovisual performance. This time, however, there is no artist behind the performance, but rather a designed system which works automatically. This reconstructed video system reinterprets historical events by creating some sort of a film studio whose operation can be observed by the spectators. Video images created live, in an endless loop of image production, document (but also reinterpret and remix) the film material, which is only a starting point for a constantly changing film produced and projected alive. In a unique way, the installation hybridises various forms of audiovisual activities, creates a completely new type of moving image art, outside the traditionally understood categories of film, video and cinema. It is worth recalling yet another project by artists who received a distinction not for a particular work but for their long-term activity and the influence it exerted on audiovisual culture. @c, that is Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudel, have been, for many years, creating projects which combined the elements of sound art and electronic music. The projects were based on three basic elements: algorithmic compositions, particular sounds (i.e. registered natural sounds) and improvisation. The main area of the artistic explorations of @c during their performances has been the specific role attributed to improvisation, viewed as a kind of dialogue or discussion. Lia is an artist who has been working since the mid 90s in the area of digital technologies. She is one of the most distinctive characters of software art, net art and the art of code. She creates visualisations for many spectacular musical endeavours presented all around the world, installations, interactive and sonic works, as well as works referred to as ‘Phone arts’. The cooperation of these artists draws attention 125 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart to other hybrid activities which, taking the form of audiovisual performances generated live, refer to generative and software algorithmic procedures. The traditions of visual music, or experiments exploring the relations between the visual and the auditory, lead to the shaping of completely new audiovisual aesthetics. A specific type of mutual interaction between visual and auditory elements is an example of a formal synergy but also evidence of deep relationships between different media which support each other. It is further evidence of the hybrid nature of modern artistic practices which consciously pursue the blurring of boundaries between the historically shaped strategies of particular media of art, and which today strive to emphasise their relations with other media rather than to decisively build their own distinctness resulting from their material, formal or aesthetic quality. In addition to the works presented above, let me just add that the award-winning realisations presented in 2007 at Ars Electronica included works by such artists as Paul Vanouse, Nurit Bar-Shai and the Blast Theory collective, which testified to the unusual diversity of artistic proposals submitted by the creators for competition within the hybrid art category. This was just a preview of what was to appear in subsequent years of the functioning of this category. Clearly, however, even this brief review makes us realise the extent to which the works we are confronted with under the hybrid art category vary in terms of the form, media and material. Over the following years, Prix Ars Electronica jury members, invited by the organisers, tried to make the hybrid art category more precise, as it was naturally viewed as an area still under construction. At the same time, in 2008, the transdisciplinarity of the submitted projects and their consistency with the post-digital paradigm were pointed out22. References to the old Fluxus tradition and the pioneering proclamations of Dick Higgins, who had introduced the concept of intermedia into theoretical discourse and to artistic practices, pointed to both the historical conditioning of hybrid art and its biological connections. References to hybrids and hybridity in relation to cultural phenomena is derived from research in biology, recalling Brian Stross, to whom jury members referred, quoting his notion of ‘hybrid energy’ which may be applied to cultural phenomena. Stross also sketched a scheme of a diachronic process which he called the “hybridic cycle”, i.e. “a cycle that goes from ‘hybrid’ forms, this ‘pure’ form, is a ‘hybrid’ form; from relative heterogeneity, homogeneity is, and then back again to heterogeneity”23. It would probably be interesting to make an attempt at applying such a cyclic model to the interpretation of modern new media art, in which these types of processes most likely take place. Crossing the boundaries between art and research practices, as well as between art and social and political activism, became more important at this time than seeking mul22 23 See Tim Edler, Yan Gong, Jens Hauser, Richard Kriesche, Michael Naimark, Pervasive Intermedia – Searching and Finding Criteria in the Open Space of Hybrid Art [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2008, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag. Ostfildern 2008, p. 96. Brian Stross, The Hybrid Metaphor. From Biology to Culture. “The Journal of American Folklore” 1999, vol. 112, no 445, p. 265. 126 timediality (resp. intermediality) at all costs. For “what counted more has been their quality of appropriate intermediality and their ability to condense their complexity into intriguing trompe-l’oeil ‘oneliners’ — between operationality and symbolism — in which mediated experiences become tangible”24. This was evidenced by a set of works presented during the 2008 edition which featured distinct realisations by Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (Pollstream), Yann Marussich (Bleu Remix), Julius Popp (micro.flow), Harun Farocki (Deep Play), Mark Formanek (Standard Time), Alexandra Ponomareva (Wave[Delay]) and Mikko Hynninen (Theatre#). In 2009 another motif appeared in the reflection of the jury members: hybridity may be viewed as some sort of antidote to the deepening specialisation and fragmentation of knowledge, which in effect leads to atomic thinking. A counterpart movement to such tendencies may be a “re-materialisation of a systems thinking”25. This is why we talk about a ‘holistic turn’ in new media art and about decisively going beyond the framework of the categories used so far. The amplification of the tendency to transgress the boundaries of the art world leads towards activities which have a social and political dimension, as well as activities concerning global problems of humans and the planet. Many of the 316 submitted projects were related to particular types of environment (for example, Second Life) or technique (such as geolocalisation or Wi-Fi art). Awarding the Golden Nica to Eduardo Kac for the project Natural History of the Enigma in 2009 was a great event, although the project’s Edunia, the outcome of the biotechnological project that had been developed for several years and implemented together with, inter alia, Neil Olszewski from the University of Minnesota (Department of Plant Biology) could only be admired on photographs and in a film. This was due to the fact that the genetically modified plantimal did not arrive in Linz owing to difficulties with obtaining the necessary permits to present a transgenic plant in the gallery, which is a wider problem concerning presenting and documenting biological media art (that is bio-art, genetic art, transgenic art and biotech art)26. Other realisations include bios [bible] by Matthias Gommel, Martin Haitz and Jan Zappe from the robotlab group, Common Flowers – Flower Commons by George Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara, Mortal Engine by the Chunky Move collective, Sonolevitation by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, The Kinetic Sculpture by ART+COM and EarthStar by David Haines and Joyce Hinterding. In 2010, in a short explication of their preferences, jury members pointed out that hybrid art should explore hybridity in a particular way, as a feature defining ontological inbetweenness, 24 25 26 Tim Edler, Yan Gong, Jens Hauser, Richard Kriesche, Michael Naimark, Pervasive Intermedia..., p. 98. Jens Hauser, Melinda Rackham, Sonia Cilliari, Casey Reas, Joachim Baur, Hybrid: Holism 2.0. [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2009, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2009, p. 96. See Monika Bakke, Biologiczne media i niepokojąca rola dokumentacji. “Sztuka i Dokumentacja” 2011, no 6, pp. 29-32. 127 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart asking questions about the very nature of art. “We prioritized works that required physical engagement with substance, texture and material beyond the underlying virtual or conceptual driving forces. In these works we found strong elements of live-ness’27. Stelarc and his Ear on Arm, which received the Golden Nica award, meets the criteria perfectly, whereas other realisations presented in 2010 once again confirmed the broad range of interests of contemporary artists. It suffices to recall such works as Men in Grey by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasilieva, Ocular Revision by Paul Vanouse and capacity for (urban eden, human terror) by Allison Kudla or Measuring Angst by Jonathan Schipper — using diverse materials and media — to become aware of the amazing variety and uniqueness of the works created by artists for whom moving ‘between’ is a type of aesthetic strategy. However, what particularly distinguishes the explorations of artists creating hybrid works is, according to the jury, their turn towards the material and the physical. In their extremely concise summary of the competition in 2011, jury members this time paid particular attention to the research projects which had been implemented over a long period of time. Such was the case of the Golden Nica-winning May the Horse Live in Me by Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoît Mangin, who have been creating as Art Oriente Objet since 1991. Seeking “unknown aesthetic objects”, but also looking backwards and into the future in order to redefine humanity in the “techno-ecological” environment — these are the tasks faced not only by artists. The questions of the body and corporeality have become an important aspect of hybrid activities, and the transdisciplinary crossings make them one of the most important areas of the search for new means of artistic and aesthetic expression. At the same time, a wide posthumanist context and deep reflection concerning the dominance of the anthropocentric view of life is becoming more important. When an animal element (blood) literally enters the human body — this perspective has to change. In 2011, as many as 420 applications were received and, as in previous years, they concerned diverse areas of artistic activity. Nevertheless, the jury members paid particular attention (and granted recognition) to a project successfully pursuing the idea of hybrid art and, at the same time, referring to the strategies of bio-art (let us recall that so far the main prize had also been awarded to SymbioticaA, Eduardo Kac, Stelarc). This surely results from the fact that it is in this area that projects 27 Bronac Ferran, Jens Hauser, Eduardo Kac, Jurij V. Krpan, Koert van Mensvoort, Rematerializations, [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2010, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Chr. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, p. 114. “Liveness” is a special quality of being alive but it is also a term used in computer science with reference to the so called distributed computing, i.e. a situation when Internet users make computing power of their computers available for scientific purposes. One of the most famous examples of distributed computing is the LHC@Home project, which uses work performed by volunteers from all over the world who analyse the behaviour of proton beams at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The usage of the term by the jury directs our attention to characteristic features of distributed systems where perhaps something good may happen. 128 which are the most visible expression of the ideas of collaboration between artists, scientists and researchers are created. The works by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitrij Gelfand (Mucilaginous Omniverse), who had been using their research laboratory as workshop for years, were again awarded a distinction. All of their projects are created at the intersection of science and aesthetic strategies. Other interesting projects which are worth mentioning include STiMULiNE by Julien Clauss and Lynn Pook, Is There a Horizon in the Deep Water by HeHe (Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen), Continuization Loop by Wim Janssen and Center for PostNatural History, Pigeon d’Or by Tuur Van Balen. The year 2012, according to jury members, brought many realisations (472 projects were submitted) which in no way met the criteria defined for other cyberart categories but at the same time pursued some ideas present in media art since the 1960s — ideas which explored the areas of inter-, trans- and multimediality28. Jury members once again noted the works which used biomedia and the main prize was awarded to Joe Davis for Bacterial Radio. Davis is a research affiliate in the Department of Biology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Department of Genetics of the Harvard Medical School. He has been conducting research in molecular biology and bioinformatics for years, while also creating sculpture installations and teleoperation laser systems. Bacterial Radio, as jury members put it, is a type of a “retro-futuristic manifesto” combining experiments using genetically-modified bacteria, which serve as elements stimulating the electrical circuit of an anachronic radio emission using amplitude modulation (the so-called AM). Many of the award-winning and presented projects used strategies which — well-known from interactive art — referred to forms of mobilisation of the viewer/ user who can be called a viewser (“visitor/user”) or prosumer (“professional/consumer”). These types of activities are also a clear turn towards performatics, or giving artistic projects a form which transforms the “visitor/user” or the “professional/ consumer” into a performer who consciously uses tools made available by artists who can be seen as designers of performances. This could be observed in such realisations as Game Order by Jun Fujiki or Maquila Región 4 (MR4) by Amor Muñoz. The Body is a Big Place by Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor, The Great Work of the Metal Lover by Adam Brown, Un Résau Translucide by Prue Lang, and People Staring at Computers by Kyle McDonald — are all works which deserve particular attention among the set of projects presented in 2012 within the framework of the hybrid art category. Technoculture is an area of natural encounters of new media with new types of artistic expression, the basis for which becomes the continuous crossing of the boundaries between aesthetic practices and research and cognitive activity. For this reason, works submitted for the competition within the hybrid art category are 28 Ursula Damm, Jens Hauser, Dietmar Offenhuber, Karin Ohlenschläger, Benjamin Weil, Meta/ Media/Narrativity. [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2012, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2012, p. 102. 129 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart often treated as works which cannot be classified as belonging to one particular artistic discipline, although it is possible to attempt to identify some key tendencies which emerge from the multiplicity of explorations and artistic strategies presented in Linz. In 2013 jury members decided to identify the tendencies which were the clearest and most symptomatic of contemporary cyberart29. The first of them is the constant interest of the artists in the problems of life in all of its aspects30. Biology — or rather biotechnology — has nowadays become an area defining the present and the future of man, a fact which is being recognised not only by artists working with biomaterials. The very term ‘bio art’ may seem insufficient to describe many works presented at Ars Electronica, clear evidence of which is The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project by the Golden Nica winner, Koen Vanmechelen. The chicken of the seventeenth generation (the project had been developing since 1999) presented by the artist goes beyond the formula of bio art meaning art using living (or semi-living) objects, entering instead into the area of symbiotic interconnections between art, science, politics and ethics. Another distinct tendency which can be observed is the “return to the analog”, a specific kind of re-analogisation which expresses itself in the return to vinyl plates as carrier, which had been doomed to oblivion and today is enjoying a renaissance. But it is also the increasing interest in kinetic objects, mechanical sources of sound (or noise), drawing machines and text machines. This is a kind of “reversed evolution” in which low-tech is used as some type of a defensive reaction to the increasing importance of the role of new digital technologies and their determining influence on reality and people. This group includes, for instance, such realisations as: Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause by Tania Candiani or Breathing Bike by Mat Hope. Another tendency is the dynamically growing visualisation of data which may, on the one hand, be associated with cultural analytics and the visualisation of media by Lev Manovich, and on the other, with various attempts at the visualisation and sonication of processes and phenomena explored by scientists both in the macrocosm and microcosm dimensions. Once again reference can be made to the work of Evelina Domnitch and Dmirty Gelfand (this time to Memory Vapor), who since the year 2009 have been active members of the Synergetica Laboratory operating in Amsterdam, or to the work of Paul Vanouse — Suspect Inversion Center. The fourth trend identified by jury members is the technological uncanny — a term which refers to the notion of uncanny valley, used for the first time by Masahiro Mori. It was related to a situation in which, for example, a robot which has 29 30 See Andrea Grover, Jens Hauser, Jurij Krpan, Artur I. Miller, Karin Ohlenschläger, Undisciplined Art: From Low Tech to High Breed [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2013, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2013, pp. 112- 114. The jury members use the English term (a)liveness which may mean different forms of biological life but it also refers to the concept of Artificial Life (ALife). See Andrea Grover, Jens Hauser, Jurij Krpan, Artur I. Miller, Karin Ohlenschläger, Undisciplined Art..., p. 113. 130 the appearance similar to a man and acts like a man begins to make (real human) observers feel anxious. A good example illustrating the tendency seems to be the work of Louis-Philippe Demers — The Blind Robot. The fifth and last of the tendencies presented by the jury members in 2013 is the act of translating the language of one medium into the language of another medium. Examples include transforming a word into data (or the other way round) as well as practices of cyberpoetry (poetry generated by codes or algorithms), or various ways of transposing movements, gestures, body dynamics into (audio)visual forms. As is the case of the dance performance Hidden Fields organised by a group of artists, led by the scientist, philosopher and inventor David Glowacki. His main idea is that the algorithms and mathematical forms adapted from quantum dynamics are types of patterns and schemes determining the movement of dancers. A room was designed for dancers (“Spectroscopes”), using pioneering hardware and software, and this enables the creation of a unique performance made live, in real-time. The movement of the dancers, followed by a set of 3D cameras, is entered into a specially designed computer to be processed with the use of special software interpreting movement as energy fields. In real-time this “human energy” is reflected in the form of avatar displays on a large screen. The category of Hybrid Art defined and redefined by numerous Ars Electronica jury members may be a kind of reconnaissance of the activities performed by new media artists which go beyond the somewhat tame categories and types of cyberart and enter areas which demand to be described and interpreted. I made a brief review of the speeches made by jury members and works presented within the category of hybrid art. It documents the shaping of theoretical awareness concerning ambiguous phenomena which go beyond established categorisations and typologies of the activities of artists who use new media and the most modern technologies in their work31. Even if the category of hybrid art proposed by organisers of Ars Electronica does not seem to be a fully convincing way of defining certain types of works classified as cyberart, several years of practice of documenting such activities as well as theoretical and critical reflection enabled attention to be directed towards the shaping of tendencies within new media art which, by transgressing the typology created earlier, document the main tendencies of modern culture. These are: working with hybrid objects, using the processes of hybridisation as creative and research strategies, and viewing hybridity as a distinctive feature of modern technoculture. 31 In my previous footnotes I quoted paper versions of catalogues published annually by Ars Electronica. The catalogues present both the jury members’ statements and descriptions of awarded works from the Hybrid Art category. The materials can also be found at the website with the archives of the festival and competition editions, and other events being an integral part of the festival. See: www.archive.aec.at/print/ (accessed 28 December 2014). 131 Piotr Zawojski Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart