1 000 042. ART'S BIRTHDAY
A WIENCOUVER Project
Art's Project Birthday is celebrated every year in memory of Robert Filliou who on January 17, 1963, declared that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years earlier when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water.
After Filliou's death in 1987 some artists began to celebrate Art's Birthday with mail-art, fax and slow scan tv events in the spirit of his concept of "The Eternal Network" and "La Fete permanente." Since 1994, the Internet in one form or another has virtually taken over as the main means of connecting partners and facilitating communication. Every year artists are asked to give Art the kind of birthday presents that can be shared via the network with all participants.
This year, as in previous years, Art's Birthday celebrations were initiated for the most part by Peter Courtemanche and the artist-run center Western Front Society (http://www.front.bc.ca) in Vancouver, Canada. For 2005 Courtemanche and a small group of Western Front artists in residence developed “Reverie: Noise City” – a hybrid virtual urban landscape, which was inspired in part by Alien City by the Austrian artists Martin Breindl, Norbert Math, and Andrea Sodomka (together alien productions).
All network nodes in Arts Birthday celebration 2005 are invited to find a niche in this urban landscape.
EBU Ars Acustica Special Evening
On January 16 from 8 p.m. till midnight the Ars Acustica Group (http://www.arsacustica.net) of the European Broadcasting Union will be joining the Art's Birthday celebrations for the first time. The Ars Acustica Group is made up of producers and editors of radio art at public radio stations in Europe, Canada, and Australia. The celebrations at the radio stations in Madrid, Stockholm, Prague, and Vienna will take place at a variety of different venues, e.g. at the university in Stockholm and in the broadcasting studios themselves. The Ars Acustica partners will be linked via EBU satellite, ISDN lines, and the Internet to artists, art institutions, and non-commercial radio stations in Vancouver, Tokyo, London, Baltimore, and Maastricht. The Special Evening won't just be broadcast live by the active partners of the network but processed and remixed by others as well, e.g. the SüdWestRundfunk in Baden-Baden and the Norwegian Radio Station in Oslo
Permanent Creation – on air – on line – on site
Not only will Kunstradio be coordinating the live network of the Special Evening, but also celebrating Art's birthday in Vienna.
From 10 p.m. – 12 p.m. You can listen to it on the radio, where it will be on air on Ö1, or in 5.1 format via the Astra satellite; or from 8 p.m. – 12 p.m. tune in on line at http://kunstradio.at under Permanent Creation or join the festivities on site at the ORF Funkhaus, Studio 3.
In Studio 3 at the ORF Funkhaus alien productions (Martin Breindl, Andrea Sodomka, Norbert Math) and the Institute for Transacoustic Research (Matthias Meinharter, Jörg Piringer and Ernst Reitermaier in Vienna, Nikolaus Gansterer in Maastricht) will jam with the network artists and stage instructions with the other partners of the network as part of the Permanent Creation project.
You can submit your instructions for Permanent Creation at http://www.kunstradio.at/AB2005/interact.php.
