The main aim of the "Art Electronics" project is to bridge the distance that separates the various artists and cultural operators. As well as filling the gaps between research art developed at the academies and its diffusion, between the confinement of art in traditional exhibition centres, museums and art galleries, and daily art practice. The area of electronic art is especially suited for the purpose, in facts it enjoys the privilege of ubiquity: it can travel rapidly thanks to low-cost technology, it can be endlessly reproduced; its provisional "virtual" image, which lasts only as long as the electronic equipment is switched on, absorbs the world, is an immensely large virtual field, which at one and the same time is subjective, alive, progressive, free form the constraints of objectivity, or rather, creates a new kind of objectivity: it is marked by immeasurable thinking power, an information flow made up of millions of bytes, all encapsulated in an extremely small objective body: the disk.

The electronic area, being marked by extremely rapid media, can carry the revolution of the object to its farthest consequences, by expanding the object's field of action and size, thanks to the limitless transformations available within the network, as Tozzi pointed out, thus a new era opens, which I would like to define not so much as virtual but as the era of a new concept of the object and of time and space relations, which are opposed to the aesthetic revivals of the sublime. The electrothings (electronic "things") obtain, thanks to their being reproducible and ubiquitous, a materialistic immateriality and lasting fleetingness.

The second aim of Art Electronics is to avoid one of the dangers in which conflicting poetic movements flounder; that is the danger of being reduced to a subordinate cultural role, of being confined to a marginal placement, or to be reduced to a colourful, more or less virtual happening, only susceptible to sociological scrutiny.

This work, on the contrary, is a powerful statement of a relevant, mainstream social-cultural point of view. The relevance of contents is affirmed; it creatively takes into account the point of view of the public (as is done by Waliczy, a computer artist, winner of the festival, who, in his animation brings together the point of view of the viewed object, of the subject, and of the observer; thus the equal standing of observer and observed, of work of art and spectator, is achieved as a structural component of the work itself).

In order to ensure stimulating and fruitful debates, some of the greatest art critics and thinkers in Italy who deal with literary avant-garde, electronic art and performance art will participate in the conferences.

The debate on literature is also open, cyclically subject to the fight between the supporters and the detractors of the periodical revivals of various neo avant-garde movements, between those who defend and those who attack visual and multimedia contamination, which is often reduced to the reading of a linear text accompanied by a sound/image background, or to the introduction of 'not substantial' graphic elements.

On the other hand, an interesting line of debate around literature concerns the issue of multi-sensorial development; thus new technology might offer to poetry not only a chance of survival but also open new pats with the creation of new structures (for instance, the hypertext). It might be useful to review Pignotti's intuition of plurisensorial poetry in order to insert it in the flow of the thousand electronic variations on performance art; we should remember that today rapid technological innovation allow us to create powerfull syneshesic works of art.

I would like to underline the role of electronic art research as the ability to summarise and re-affirm the contrast between art as an object, a corpse which is exhibited in conventional places and sold, and the "metaphysical" fleetingness of the electronic image, which is ephemeral, while also being reproducible and thus in a way eternal, both real and un-real. The electronic image always offers multiple points of view on reality, both thanks to its medium and to its electronic materiality; at the same time, our response to it has been modified.

Caterina Davinio (1994)

Art Electronics and Other Writings 1995

The meeting concludes the itinerant festival

"Art Electronics and Other Writings" which, from November 1994 to Mars 1995, was in:

Florence, Bologna, Milan, Turin, Padova, Rome

THE GARDEN / STUDIES FOR THE GARDEN, DER WALD (HUNGARY)

TECNICHE BLU (FORLI) USMIS (UDINE) KLONARIS - THOMADAKI (FRANCE)

MARCELLO MERCADO (ARGENTINA) JOCHEN SCHMIDT (GERMANY), VOLKER SCHREINER (GERMANY) NICHOLAS WISHART (AUSTRALIA)

MICHEL CHION (FRANCE) POST ARRIVALIST (AUSTRALIA)

JENNIFER BOZICK (USA) KEVIN MC COY (USA)

ANTONIO REZZA - FLAVIA MASTRELLA (ROME) FABIO IAQUONE-ALBERTO D'AMICO (ROME) DADA-EMME (FLORENCE)

ALESSANDRO AMADUCCI (TURIN) GIACOMO VERDE-LELLO VOCE (TREVISO) CLAUDIO PALETTO (TURIN)

VALENTINA CIOFFRESE (MILAN) MANUELA CORTI (BOLOGNA)

FLORENT VIEILLEUX (CANADA) EERO MARKUKSELA (FINLAND)

ULLA VAATAINEN-LISA KARVONEN, (FINLAND) ANTUNES-MOREAU-CATUNDA-MISTRORIGO, (BRAZIL) KEITH STUTTER (UK)

ANTOLIANO NIETO (CANADA) CESAR MENGHETTI (BRAZIL) PEDRO RIZ A PORTA (SWITZERLAND) GRUPPO ANDA (TURIN) VALERY GRANCHER (FRANCE)

BIANCHINI-DI CINTIO (FLORENCE) LUCIANA BRUSCHI (FORLÌ) ELISABETTA FILOCAMO (MILAN) CARLO ISOLA (FLORENCE) RUGGERO MAGGI (MILAN)

MAGGI-DIOTALLEVI-ROFFI-BENFENATI (BOLOGNA) GIUSEPPE RIDOLFI (FLORENCE) SERGIO SMERIERI (MODENA) GIUSEPPE ZIMMARDI, (PALERMO)

CHONDROS-KATSIANI, SELFPORTRAIT, VIDEOPERFORMANCE, GREEKLAND, ANGELA MELITOPULOS, TRANSFER, VIDEO, FRANCE, GIORGIO LONGO, EVENTI ONIRICI, VIDEO, ITALY, DON RITTER, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, VIDEO, CANADA, CATERINA DAVINIO, DIALOGÌE AL METROQUADRO, COMPUTERVIDEO, ITALY, SERGIO RUBINO, MA DON GIOVANNI E' ANCORA QUI?, VIDEO, ITALY

Don Ritter, multimedia installation in video, Canada

Angela Melitopulos, Transfer, video, France

Italy:

Giorgio Longo, Eventi onirici, video

Massimo Mori, live performance

Claudio Parrini, hypertext

Fabio Polvani, installation

Potame Busento, manifesto sonoro

Gianni Toti, Originedit, videopoem

Caterina Davinio, Dialogìe al metroquadro, computervideo