Beyond Number Crunching

"What do you see?" Petr Svarosky, a 32-year-old student artist at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), asks. "For some people it's an angel; for some it's rockets. For some it's not a real art project at all, but more like a hallucination or the flashes you get behind your eyelids when you close your eyes."

Surrounded by the bright light streaming through the huge windows of the top-floor atelier of the academy, Svarosky stares into the sunshine and insists he has a vision of the future. On the screen in front of him is his video art form "Cradle." Intense flashes of yellow ebb and flow to a background accompaniment of low-level white noise, creating a futuristic atmosphere in sharp contrast to the peeling walls of the studio.

He is a leading student in one of the newest and most controversial departments at the traditional 100-year-old academy. The institution is now being thrust into the last decade of the 20th century by the charismatic Michael Bielicky, 41. He founded the media department at AVU in 1990, when he returned to Prague after 22 years in Germany.

"Media art" is created with the aid of computers. It involves video, sound, lights, lasers and virtual reality, and ranges from the simple to the bewilderingly complex, the banal to the esoteric.

"Art is changing completely," says Bielicky dramatically. Media art has a higher profile in the United States because the computer is rapidly becoming more acceptable there as an art tool. But it is still rarely employed here.

The AVU department was the country's first academic department dedicated to media art; a second was later opened in Brno. But interest in the subject has existed since the '70s, fueled by TV, says Keiko Sei, a writer on and curator of media art who has been researching the field in this region since 1988.

Bielicky has just returned from Israel, where he says his project "Exodus" was a success. "It is a virtual tele-performance on the Internet," says Bielicky. He traveled through the deserts of Israel by jeep in an attempt to re-create the biblical journey of Moses. Using a cellular phone attached to a modem, he transmitted his movements to a tracking satellite, which then beamed images to a computer. Now anyone anywhere in the world can log onto the Internet via computer and "see" Bielicky's journey.

The Internet has its roots in military technology. In simple terms, it is a network of computer networks. There are at least 18,000 networks, with millions of computers on each network, so the system is vast. The president of The Internet Society (ISOC) suggests that the Internet might reach 1 billion people in the not-too-distant future.

It hasn't quite reached those proportions here yet. "In the States, the Internet is in common usage, but here it is still a very rare thing. Anyone who has access to a university can use the Internet for free, but the private sector here is shamelessly expensive," says Bielicky. "In the U.S.A., it is $20 [about 520 Kc] a month to use, here it is $40. So university people, Americans and companies are really the only users of the Internet here in Prague. Regular people cannot afford it."

But the cost hasn't prevented a burgeoning new art scene in Prague. Andreas Strohl, coordinator of the cultural program at the Goethe Institute, says that the development of the new media in this country has been astonishing, considering the long absence of modern technology here. "I've seen one very interesting thing here in the four years I have been here. There is a wonderful scene of new artists developing, and this is due to Michael Bielicky."

The number of people becoming interested in media art may be increasing in Prague, but it doesn't mean that everyone is embracing the computer as the next great art movement.

Bielicky sighs as he talks about the skepticism of the more traditional departments at AVU. "There is still the concept of the traditional 19th-century art school that exists throughout Europe, but times are changing and art schools must change, too. I believe even traditional artists can be inspired by new media."

"It follows a well-worn historical pattern. The same thing was said about Cubism or Impressionism, there's always opposition to anything new," says Svarosky, speaking of some people's reactions to his art.

Svarosky says the new art form can be compared to music. "I'm in a group called Silver. There are three of us, a software engineer, sound engineer and me. So it's like a rock group or film producing. One of us on the bass, one singing. If you did it by yourself, it wouldn't be the same."

He's done two sound installations, which require a complex synthesis of ideas, philosophy and technical expertise. His 1994 project, "Amnesty," consisted of 8 infrared sensors connected to loudspeakers and computers. As people moved into the hall, they activated the sensors, which in turn activated the computers, which were programmed with the sounds of 12 bells recorded in Prague churches.

"The point is that the music has really no beginning and no end. I'm exploring how man moves within the structure of sound. If you go to a classical music concert, it ends after two hours, but this is unlimited," explains Svarosky.

Media art is not just a highbrow version of MTV. Svarosky insists that his current project - a virtual creature that will respond to the human voice - is very complex. He will create an image of a creature on the computer and place it in a container with a window. The image will respond to the human voice as if it were actually alive. "It's complex," smiles Svarosky. "It involves a lot of math."

"There are certain parallels to Renaissance painting, certainly," says Strohl. "The Renaissance was a paradigm shift in the visual arts because of perspective. It was the first time people wanted to look at their own heads. They were challenging God. There's something very similar about media art."

This philosophical attitude is what distinguishes media art from MTV. Bielicky has close ties to the Goethe Institute and the Soros Center for Contemporary Art. They will jointly organize a December symposium and exhibition dubbed The New Media and Visual Arts. Representatives from the Goethe and Soros organizations say that these activities demonstrate Prague is becoming an important center for the discussion of the new media.

Bielicky says that the anonymity of the Internet offers the freedom to be or do anything you want. "It's an anarchist construction," says Bielicky.

And it is this element of fantasy that makes media art so attractive to Czech artists and gives it its unique flavor, explains Keiko Sei. Whereas in the States, the medium is largely political, here that element is almost entirely absent.

"It's an escape from reality," Sei says.