ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

Pau Alsina
Raquel Renn

Ya son veinte aos los que el Festival ArtFutura

ha ido desplegando en paralelo al avance de las
tecnologas de informacin y comunicacin (TIC)
en todos los mbitos de nuestra cultura y sociedad.
Ciertamente hoy podemos afirmar que las
tecnologas digitales son omnipresentes y han
cambiado radicalmente la forma en que vemos y
vivimos el mundo que nos rodea. Nunca antes
unas tecnologas de comunicacin se haban
implantado tan rpidamente en la cultura y la
historia del festival as lo atestigua. A lo largo de
todos estos aos, ArtFutura ha ido haciendo eco
de este impacto creciente de las tecnologas
digitales, reflexionando sobre los cambios
sucedidos y por suceder, augurando el futuro que
nos espera y las utopas, distopas o realidades
que nos acompaan en este apasionante trayecto.
Hoy, algunos de esos presagios o augurios que
se lanzaron en los aos noventa han sido
superados con creces, otros han fracasado
estrepitosamente, algunos se han cumplido a la
perfeccin, otros an esperan la llegada de un
momento propicio para materializarse. La voluntad
de futuro ha ido llenando las pginas de la historia
del festival con una carga de optimismo renovado
ao tras ao y que hoy, desde nuestra mirada
retrospectiva, nos permite dibujar tanto sus aciertos
como sus errores. Un observatorio de innovacin
y creatividad emergente que permite lanzar anlisis
y prospectivas sobre el pasado, el presente y el
porvenir.
Inscritas en esta voluntad de futuro encontramos
solapadas diferentes aproximaciones tecnoflicas
-donde las tecnologas digitales ejercen un papel
radicalmente revolucionario en la cultura y la
sociedad-, con aproximaciones ms realistas
donde el anlisis en tiempo real de los cambios
introducidos por las TIC corresponde a una
objetividad sosegada- as como con otras
aproximaciones tecnofbicas donde las TIC son
percibidas como un potencial peligro para la
humanidad y el mundo-. En su edicin de 1997,
el festival centr la atencin precisamente en
"El futuro del futuro", especulando sobre las
expectativas de crecimiento de Internet,
augurando un panorama en el que en 2000 habra
cuatrocientos millones de usuarios en Internet. La
realidad es que hoy, en el 2009, encontramos un
cuarto de la poblacin mundial, es decir 1,5 billones
de usuarios, conectados a Internet rompiendo la
prediccin ms optimista que se pudo hacer en
aquel momento.

18 19

Paul Virilio, profeta del tecnofatalismo ms crtico,

fue uno de los invitados de una edicin en la que
la esperanza de progreso y voluntad de futuro
convivan con la desconfianza antes los retos a
los que se enfrentaba la humanidad con las nuevas
tecnologas y ciencias reestructurando las
relaciones establecidas. Otros participantes de
la edicin, Arthur y Marilouise Kroker, afirmaban
que "La Red es el espejo digital que devuelve a
nuestros cuerpos nmadas el reflejo de su destino
a medida que ste se externaliza en un mundo
de inteligencia artificial, genes recombinantes, y
flujos de datos." Y, mientras, ese mismo ao 1997
se inauguraba en la ciudad alemana de Karlsrhe
la que con el tiempo se convertira en la joya de
la corona de los centros dedicados al arte y la
cultura digital de las siguientes dcadas, el Zentrum
fr Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), que junto
con el recin creado Ars Electronica Center, en la
ciudad austriaca de Linz, se convertiran en dos
de los centros de referencia indiscutible a nivel
internacional.
Dos dcadas de festival han hecho posible tratar
todo tipo de cuestiones relacionadas con las
transformaciones ocasionadas a raz de la
introduccin de las TIC en todos los mbitos de
la cultura y la sociedad. Han hecho posible
observar la popularizacin masiva de ciertas
tecnologas antes restringidas a crculos elitistas
muy reducidos. Han permitido constatar los
cambios epistemolgicos, antropolgicos,
sociolgicos y hasta ontolgicos que nos han
trado las innovaciones que han ido transformando
nuestra cotidianidad. Han ido observando el auge
y el decaimiento de unas tecnologas mientras
asistan a la consolidacin de otras tecnologas
con las que hoy en da nos sera prcticamente
imposible no contar. Han asistido a la
naturalizacin de ciertas tecnologas que hoy
se han vuelto invisibles -por ejemplo equiparando
el ordenador a una simple lavadora o a unas
sencillas gafas- cuando anteriormente eran
percibidas como sumamente artificiales.
ArtFutura es expresin y muestra de las
contradicciones latentes de nuestra cultura, unas
contradicciones que hoy percibimos que ya no lo
son en cuanto no estn hechas de polos opuestos
sino de zonas de confluencia y vecindad en un
rico y frtil continuum de manifestaciones culturales
de todo tipo. Quedaron atrs las frreas dicotomas
entre la cultura popular y la alta cultura, entre la
industria y la cultura, entre la cultura artsticohumanstica y la cultura tecnocientfica, entre el

entretenimiento y la experiencia significativa, entre

el consumidor pasivo y el creador activo, entre lo
comercial y lo alternativo e independiente, entre
tradicin e innovacin, entre tecnologa y cultura,
entre muchas posturas aparentemente enfrentadas
que, en el nuevo marco presente se encuentran
ya en un mismo plano, dentro de un mismo
ecosistema diverso, que las hace tremendamente
frtiles.
Mientras una nueva era se anunciaba con la
simblica cada del muro de Berln en 1989, John
Perry Barlow describa un ao despus el
ciberespacio como aquel lugar en el que ests
cuando hablas con alguien por telfono, y las
metforas cmo mente global, inteligencia
conectada o segunda piel que nos trajo
McLuhan se sucedan para intentar explicar y
comprender los adelantos que las TIC nos
prometan en el desarrollo incipiente de lo que iba
estructurando a la World Wide Web. Apenas haca
unos aos que se haba comenzado a producir la
eclosin masiva de los ordenadores personales
accesibles al conjunto de la poblacin. Las
interfaces grficas de usuario, con la metfora de
la oficina ordenando la informacin -que hoy
continuamos usando- estaban a la orden del da,
y la informtica grfica avanzaba a pasos de
gigante en paralelo al incremento de la potencia
de clculo de los ordenadores.
Sobre lo virtual y lo fsico
En este contexto, poblado por pioneros y
visionarios que construan nuevas herramientas
tecnolgicas en la medida en que imaginaban sus
nuevos usos posibles, se fragu el festival
ArtFutura, con el objetivo de propiciar nuevas
formas globales de entender el arte y la vida, y
nuevas vas de expresar nuestras visiones y
nuestras emociones tal y como declaraba su
director Montxo Algora en la primera edicin en
1990 dedicada a la Realidad Virtual. Era un
momento emocionante en el que se empezaba a
consolidar la exploracin sistemtica de las
posibilidades de creacin mediante computadoras,
desde las animaciones digitales hasta las primeras
instalaciones interactivas, tanto en el territorio del
arte vinculado a los centros de cultura
contempornea, como en el territorio de la industria
y el entretenimiento. Se pudieron ver desde las
primeras obras de pioneros como John
Lasseter/Pixar o William Latham hasta los
experimentos de Karl Sims o Masaki Fujihata y
su arte algortmico.

Now, it has been twenty years that the Festival

ArtFutura has been moving forward in parallel with
advances in information and communication
technologies (ICT) in all aspects of culture and
society. It is true that today we can affirm that the
digital technologies are omnipresent and have
radically changed the way in which we see and
live in the world around us. Never before has
communication technology become implanted so
quickly in our culture and the history of the festival
bears witness to this. Throughout these years,
ArtFutura has been echoing this growing impact
of digital technologies, reflecting on the changes
that have arrived and on those to come, foretelling
the future that is awaiting us and the utopias,
dystopias or realities that accompany us in this
passionate trajectory.
Today, some of those premonitions or predictions
that were launched in the nineties have become
more than true, others have been complete flops,
some have complied perfectly, others are still
waiting for the right moment to materialize. The
will of the future has been filling the pages of the
festivals history with a great deal of optimism that
has been renewed year after year and that today,
from our retrospective view, allows us to outline
as much predictions that have become reality as
those which were erroneous. An observatory of
innovation and emerging creativity that permits
us to launch analysis and prospective conclusions
on the past, present and future.
Deep down in this future will, we find different
overlapping technophilic approximations where
digital technology exercises a radically revolutionary
role in culture and society - with more realistic
approximations where the analysis in real time
of the changes introduced by ICT correspond to
a gentle objectivity in the same way as with other
technophobic approximations where the ICT are
perceived as a potential treat to humanity and the
world. In its edition of 1997, the festival centered
attention precisely on The future of the future,
speculating on the possibilities of the growth of
Internet predicting a panorama in which, in 2000,
there would be four hundred thousand users of
the network. The reality is that today, in 2009, we
find a quarter of the worlds population, which is
to say 1.5 billion users, connected to Internet
breaking the most optimistic prediction that could
have been made at that time.

Paul Virilio, the most critical of technofatalist

prophets, was one of the guests of an edition in
which the hope of progress and future will
coexisted with the distrust of the challenges which
humanity confronted with the new technologies
and sciences restructuring established
relationships. Other participates of that edition,
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, affirmed that The
Network is a digital mirror that returns to our
nomadic bodies the reflection of their destiny as
it externalizes in a world of artificial intelligence,
recombinant genes and data flow. And, while, in
this same year 1997, in the German city of
Karlsrhe the Zentrum fr Kunst und
Medientechnologie (ZKM) was opened which was
to become the jewel of the crown of the centers
dedicated to art and digital culture of the following
decades and which along with the recently created
Ars Electronic Center, in the Austrian city of Linz,
was to become one of the two indisputable centers
of reference on an international level.
Two decades of festivals have made it possible
to deal with all sorts of questions related to the
transformations caused as a result of the
introduction of ICT in all aspects of culture and
society. They have made it possible to observe
the massive popularization of certain technologies
which were previously limited to a highly reduced
elite. They have enabled us to evaluate
epistemological, anthropological, sociological and
even ontological changes that have brought us
the innovations that have been transforming our
daily lives. They have been observing the boom
and malaise of some technologies while attending
the consolidation of other technologies with which
today, it would be practically impossible to do
without. They have attended the naturalization
of certain technologies that today have become
invisible for example, bringing the computer into
line with a simple washing machine or simple
spectacles- when before, they were perceived as
something particularly artificial.
ArtFutura is an expression and display of the latent
contradictions of our culture, contradictions that
today, we do not necessarily perceive as being
so much from poles apart, but from zones of
confluence and neighborhood in a rich and fertile
continuum of cultural manifestations of all sorts.
That leaves the ferrous dichotomy between popular
culture and high culture, between industry and
culture, between artistic-humanistic culture and

the technoscientific culture, between entertainment

and a significant experience, between passive
consuming and active creation, between the
commercial and the alternative and independent,
between tradition and innovation, between
technology and culture, between a lot of apparently
confronted postures which, in the present new
framework, now find themselves on the same
plane, within the same diverse ecosystem that
makes them tremendously fertile.
While the new era was announced by the symbolic
fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, John Perry Barlow
described, a year later, cyberspace as being that
place in which you are when you speak to someone
on the telephone, and the metaphors such as
global mind, connected intelligence or second
skin that McLuhan brought us came about to try
to explain and understand the advances that the
ICT were promising us in the incipient development
of what was structuring the World Wide Web. It
was barely years ago when the massive boom in
personal computers accessible to all of the
population came about. The graphic interface of
the user with the metaphor of the office computer
the information which today we continue using
it was on the agenda, and the graphic capacities
advanced at giant steps in parallel to the increment
of the calculation potential of computers.
The virtual and the physical
In this context, populated by pioneers and
visionaries who created new technological tools
at the rhythm they imagined their new possible
uses, the ArtFutura festival came into being with
the objective of offering new global forms of
understanding art and life and new ways of
expressing our visions and emotions just as the
festivals director, Montxo Algora, declared at the
first edition in 1990 dedicated to Virtual Reality. It
was an emotive moment in which the systematic
exploration of the possibilities of computer-assisted
creation had started to become consolidated from
digital animation to the first interactive installations
as much in the territory of art linked to centers of
contemporary culture as in the territory of industry
and entertainment. This can be seen from the early
works by pioneers such as John Lasseter/Pixar
or William Latham to the experiments carried out
by Karl Sims or Masaki Fujihata and his algorithmic
art.

ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

Jaron Lanier acababa de acuar el trmino

Realidad Virtual (RV) - un oxmoron que alude
a las tecnologas de comunicacin que permiten
la interaccin con estmulos sintticos generados
en tiempo real - y contribua con ello decisivamente
a la popularizacin de sus posibilidades. Mientras,
escritores como William Gibson en su novela
Neuromancer (1984) continuaban especulando
sobre el significado social y cultural que todo ello
podra aportar a nuestra civilizacin. Esa primera
edicin del festival pudo precisamente contar con
la participacin de Gibson as como tambin con
un autntico pionero de la RV, Scott Fisher de la
NASA, miembro del equipo creador del primer
sistema hipermedia, el Aspen Movie Map (1978).
Artistas y cientficos juntos imaginando el futuro
an por trazar en el desarrollo del potencial creativo
de las tecnologas.
Rebeca Allen en el catlogo de 1990 escriba:
"Todas estas capacidades tcnicas nos dejan con
la responsabilidad de crear modelos de realidad
que proporcionen nuevos caminos para mejorar
la condicin humana. Debemos continuar
combinando la intuicin y la expresin artstica
con la compresin cientfica para que de este
modo podamos descubrir nuevas perspectivas
de la realidad". Pero el hecho es que hoy en da
la RV tiene un uso ms restringido a instalaciones
artsticas y aplicaciones industriales de simulacin
y acadmicas para la investigacin, y las promesas
iniciales se han reconducido hacia espacios de
interaccin ms asequibles, como los mismos
videojuegos o las nuevas posibilidades aparecidas
con la realidad aumentada (RA) que ms adelante
(2004) tambin fueron objeto de estudio del festival.
Se ha pasado de la desmaterializacin de la RV
a la rematerializacin de la RA y las posibilidades
de las TIC en la cultura, donde el mundo fsico
y el virtual no pueden entender ya como universos
inconexos (...) y el espacio urbano, el espacio
social, y el espacio ntimo se ven cada vez ms
complementados por el espacio de la informacin
tal como escriba el subdirector del Festival, Jos
Luis de Vicente, en aquella edicin.
Los lenguajes de programacin como el VRML y
posteriormente el X3D proponan por aquel
entonces una idea de mundo virtual que pronto

20 21

se vio superada por la pragmaticidad interactiva

de los videojuegos. Este hecho aport un claro
ejemplo de la idea que los entornos virtuales
devienen ms populares si se priorizan las
relaciones y la interaccin (con otros jugadores o
con las mquinas). Eso quedara patente con la
aparicin de Internet y los videojuegos distribuidos
online, convocando a la interaccin de miles de
usuarios repartidos por todo el mundo, y que fue
objeto temtico en la edicin del festival en el ao
2001. Los videojuegos, que rpidamente fueron
introducidos en la programacin de ArtFutura
como entorno privilegiado de experimentacin
con los nuevos medios, han aportando interaccin,
velocidad y eventos, es decir acciones con
objetivos marcados. Si en un principio el entorno
virtual que presentaban no era tan sofisticado
como la RV inmersiva pronto fueron evolucionado
y hoy podemos afirmar que llegan a influenciar
las narrativas y los temas del propio cine de accin.
Montxo Algora afirmaba ese ao 2001 que "los
videojuegos no slo se han convertido en la ms
poderosa de las industrias del entretenimiento.
Su innegable impacto sobre la cultura
contempornea y su capacidad para generar
paradigmas que luego son reproducidos y
reciclados por otras reas de la creacin digital
han consolidado a esta forma de expresin con
treinta aos de historia como un medio artstico
legtimo en el espacio comercial." En este sentido,
el festival ArtFutura siempre se ha distinguido por
el hecho de mezclar propuestas provenientes de
entornos artsticos y propuestas del mundo del
entretenimiento, haciendo posible observar la
evolucin de las problemticas de ambas en
trminos sociales, tecnolgicos y cognitivos,
As, en la edicin dedicada a la Realidad
Aumentada (2004), se planteaba el concepto como
sintetizador de un nuevo estadio en la historia de
la cultura digital: la rematerializacin progresiva
de lo digital en el espacio fsico. Una tecnologa
y un concepto que presenta un mundo virtual para
enriquecer, que no para eliminar, el mundo real.
Howard Rheingold, que aos atrs defendi con
total optimismo las posibilidades transformadoras
de la realidad virtual, defendi en la edicin de
2004 el triunfo del poder de las "multitudes
inteligentes" y la fusin entre informacin virtual
y espacio fsico. Rheingold afirmaba: "No puedo
decir con certeza si estos veinte aos han
mostrado que los cambios en nuestras mentes y
vidas posibilitados por los ordenadores es lo mejor

o lo peor que hemos hecho con la tecnologa del

microchip, pero s puedo decir con certeza que
esos amplificadores, herramientas y comunidades
han cambiado mi forma de pensar, aprender y
comunicarme."
Recordemos que ese fue el ao de la "noche de
los mviles", donde los ciudadanos espaoles, al
cambiar informacin rpidamente sobre la
desinformacin alrededor de los sucesos del 11M
incidieron directamente en los resultados de las
elecciones estatales en un trmino de 24 horas.
Desde la irrupcin de las primeras redes comunes
con el Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) que har
posible una red celular de mbito europeo (1992),
hasta el lanzamiento comercial de los mviles de
tercera generacin, o UMTS (2001), se ha ido
produciendo un avance espectacular de la
transmisin de informacin mediante las
telecomunicaciones inalmbricas. La fusin del
espacio virtual de informacin y el espacio fsico
donde nos movemos ya era una realidad
contrastada, y proyectos como "Can You See Me
Now", del colectivo Blast Theory, que participaron
en la edicin, atestiguan las posibilidades reales
para materializar esta realidad aumentada. Durante
esa edicin del festival ya no se habl tanto de
predicciones y perspectivas del futuro, sino del
hecho que la cultura digital empezaba a ser una
realidad popular, al margen de cualquier reducto
especializado.
Este impulso continuado de sumisin del espacio
virtual al espacio fsico, destinado a aumentar las
posibilidades de este ltimo, se inscriba muy
dentro de los mismos principios que persiguieron
muchos pioneros de las tecnologas de informacin
y comunicacin como Vanevar Bush o Douglas
Englebart. La humanizacin de las TIC pasaba
por su rematerializacin y rediseo en base a las
formas ms prximas de relacin con el mundo,
las cosas y los humanos. La realidad fue
"aumentada" adhirindole informacin ubicada
en el espacio virtual de informacin, los objetos
pasaron a contener ms informacin de la que en
principio apareca en el mismo objeto. La
popularizacin de los sistemas de GPS, sistemas
globales de posicionamiento, abra nuevas
posibilidades de relacin con el territorio que

Jaron Lanier had just coined the term Virtual

Reality (VR) an oxymoron that alludes to the
communication technologies that allow interaction
with synthetic stimuli created in real time and
contributed decisively to the popularization of its
possibilities. Meanwhile, writers such as William
Gibson in his novel Neuromancer (1984)
continued to speculate on the social and cultural
significance of what it could all bring to our
civilization. That first Edition of the festival was
able to count on precisely the participation of
Gibson as well as with an authentic pioneer of VR,
Scott Fisher from NASA, member of the team that
created the first hypermedia system, the Aspen
Movie Map (1978). Artists and scientists working
together imagining a future yet to be outlined in
the development of the creative potential of the
technologies.
Rebecca Allen, in the 1990 catalogue, wrote, All
of these technical capacities leave us with the
responsibility of creating models of realities that
bring new paths to improve the human condition.
We should continue to combine intuition and
artistic expression with scientific compression in
order to be able to discover new perspectives of
reality. However, the fact is that nowadays VR
has a use more limited to artistic installations,
industrial applications for simulation and academic
investigation, and the initial promises have been
redirected towards more accessible spaces of
interaction such as videogames or the newly
appeared possibilities of Enhanced Reality (ER)
and the possibilities of ICT in culture, where the
physical and virtual worlds cannot now be
understood as unconnected universes () and
urban space, social space, and intimate space
are becoming to be seen more and more
complemented by information space as wrote
the Festivals assistant director, Jos Luis de
Vicente, in that edition.
Programming languages such as VRML and later
X3D proposed for that time an idea of a virtual
world that would soon see itself exceeded by the

interactive pragmaticity of videogames. This was

a clear example that the virtual environments
would become more popular if relationships and
interaction (with other players or with other
machines) were prioritized. This became evident
with the appearance of Internet and videogames
distributed online which convoked the interaction
of thousands of users from all around the world
and was a major theme at the 2001 edition of the
festival. Videogames, which quickly became
introduced in the program of ArtFutura as a
privileged environment for experimentation with
the new mediums, have offered interaction, speed
and events which is to say, actions with marked
objectives. If, in the beginning, the virtual
environment that they represented was not as
sophisticated as immersive VR, they soon evolved
and today, we can affirm that they even influence
the narratives and the themes of action cinema
itself.
Montxo Algora stated that 2001 that videogames
had not only become the most powerful of the
entertainment industries, but that their
unquestionable impact on contemporary culture
and their capacity to create paradigms which are
later reproduced and recycled by other areas of
digital creation have consolidated this form of
expression with thirty years of history into a
legitimate artistic medium within the commercial
world. In this way, the festival ArtFutura has
always stood out because of the way in which it
mixes proposals that come from artistic
backgrounds and proposals from the world of
entertainment making it possible to observe the
evolution of the difficulties of both in social,
technological and cognitive terms.
In this way, in the edition dedicated to Enhanced
Reality (2004), the concept as synthesizer of a
new arena in the history of digital culture was
raised: the progressive rematerialization of the
digital in physical space. A technology and a
concept that presents a virtual world to enrich,
and not to eliminate, the real world. Howard
Rheingold, who years before had defended with
complete optimism the transforming possibilities
of virtual reality, defended, in the 2004 edition, the
triumph of the power of the intelligent multitudes
and the fusion between virtual information and
physical space. Rheingold stated, I cannot say
with certainty if these twenty years have
demonstrated that the changes in our minds and
lives made possible by computers is the best or

the worst that we have done with the technology

of the microchip, but I can say with certainty that
those amplifiers, tools and communities have
changed my way of thinking, learning and
communicating.
Lets remember that it was the year of the night
of the mobiles, in which Spanish citizens, upon
exchanging information at high speed on the
disinformation concerning the events of March
11, directly influenced the results of the general
elections that were to take place 24 hours later.
Since the irruption of the first common networks
with the Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) that would
make a European cellular network possible (1992),
to the commercial launch of third generation mobile
telephones, or UMTS (2001), there has been a
spectacular advance of the transmission of
information by means of cordless
telecommunications. The fusion of virtual
information space and physical space in which
we move around was a reality contrasted and
projects such as Can you see me now, from the
collective Blast Theory, which participated in the
edition, bore witness to the real possibilities of
materializing this enhanced reality. During this
edition of the festival, there was not so much talk
about predictions and future perspectives, but
about the fact that digital culture was starting to
become a popular reality outside the restrictions
of any limiting specialization.
This continued impulse of submission of virtual
space to physical space, destined to enhance the
possibilities of this last one, was inscribed well
within the same principals that pursued many
pioneers of information and communication
technology such as Vanevar Bush and Douglas
Englebart. The humanization of the ICT went from
their rematerialization and redesign in base to
forms that were closer and more able to relate to
the world, things and humans. Reality was
enhanced by adding information placed in the
virtual space of information, the objects went on
to contain more information than that which in
principal appeared in the same object. The
popularization of the GPS systems, global
positioning systems, opened new possible ways
of relating to the territory that was becoming

ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

devena globalmente informatizado. A su vez,

comenzaron a utilizarse ms tecnologas como
los identificadores por radiofrecuencia, los RFID,
un sistema de almacenamiento y recuperacin de
datos remotos que usa etiquetas con el objetivo
de transmitir la identidad de un objeto (similar a
un nmero de serie nico) mediante ondas de
radio.
La edicin de 2005 del festival tuvo como tema
estos "Objetos Vivos, Espacios Sensibles", y parta
del hecho que "la experiencia del ciudadano
contemporneo, adems de las calles que pisa y
las construcciones que habita, depende cada vez
en mayor medida de las frecuencias
electromagnticas que le dan cobijo y a las que
tiene acceso. Esta dimensin invisible, el espacio
hertziano, ha pasado de ser slo una preocupacin
de ingenieros de telecomunicaciones y organismos
reguladores a convertirse en un rico terreno de
anlisis cultural, de tensiones polticas, y de
exploracin artstica." tal como anunciaba Jos
Luis de Vicente. Uno de los invitados de la edicin
fue el escritor y "visionario del diseo" Bruce
Sterling, que describa la forma en que el espacio
y los objetos empezaban a poseer caractersticas
"inteligentes" que les conferan nuevas formas,
materias e incluso movilidad. De la misma manera,
se presentaban propuestas que pretendan dar
forma fsica a la materia incorprea de la red, los
bits, la energa bsica de las mquinas. Tambin
estuvieron presentes los proyectos de la ILM
(Industrial Art & Magic) que enseaban la evolucin
histrica de los efectos visuales para producciones
de cine y vdeo. Y en el otro extremo, en el diseo
orgnico y funcional de objetos que pretendan
transmitir "vida", se pudo contar con la intervencin
del artista Theo Jansen con sus Strandbeests,
sus bestias de la arena o criaturas absolutamente
artificiales que se integran al paisaje natural como
unas ms y evolucionan a partir de estudios sobre
sus comportamientos que empiezan con los
algoritmos y terminan en las playas de Holanda.

22 23

Sobre los medios y la sociedad

Pero paralelamente a este viaje que nos ha llevado
de la Realidad Virtual a la Realidad Aumentada,
de la virtualizacin de la realidad al aumento de
la realidad mediante tecnologas virtuales, nos
encontramos con otros aspectos como el papel
de los medios de comunicacin en la sociedad y
la cultura. No es casual que la segunda edicin
del festival (1991) se centrara en el concepto de
Cibermedia, focalizando la atencin en las
posibilidades que los nuevos soportes mediticos
podan ofrecer, principalmente a partir de lo que
se llamaba la "Mquina Universal de las imgenes".
Antoni Mercader, participante en esa edicin,
afirmaba entonces que "el advenimiento de la
Mquina Universal de las imgenes (ordenador +
vdeo) y la complejificacin de los media han
contribuido a la aceleracin del conflicto y a la
agudizacin de la inflacin. Conflicto hecho de
combate, de oposicin prolongada, de inquietud.
Inflacin, opuesta a ponderacin, hecha de
proporciones excesivas y de calidades sobradas,
de aumento del potencial. Ahora ya no son
relevantes ni la imprenta, ni la fotografa, ni el cine;
ni lo son tampoco los monasterios, las ediciones
de estampas, la prensa ilustrada: ahora, lo
relevante es la Mquina Universal (ms que la
rueda, ms que el pincel) y los media (ms que el
tren, ms que el avin). De ellos deriva la
amplificacin de los conflictos y la progresin del
radio de accin y el impacto de las imgenes."
En el ao 1991, Tim Berners-Lee anunciaba la
creacin de la World Wide Web, un proyecto del
CERN que permita interconectar varias redes a
nivel global, facilitando la difusin y expansin
que sucedera en los prximos aos, hasta la
eclosin producida entre 1996 y 1997. Este
crecimiento exponencial se debi a la ausencia
de administracin central, as como de la
naturaleza no propietaria de los protocolos de
Internet, que posibilita la interoperatividad abierta
as como la imposibilidad de un control
monopolstico desmedido. Segn estimaciones
actuales a principios de 2009 Internet contaba
con 1,5 billones de usuarios, la implantacin en
nuestra cultura y sociedad ha sido en este sentido
espectacular, con progresiones tan impresionantes
que en el ao 1991 eran absolutamente
impensables, y toda prediccin se qued
insuficiente.

En la edicin del festival dedicada a los

CiberMedia, tericos y artistas como Derrick de
Kerckhove, Perry Hoberman o Laurie Anderson
especularon sobre el futuro de los medios de
comunicacin bajo el impacto de las TIC.
Resonaban por todas partes las palabras de
Marshall McLuhan afirmando que "en esta era
electrnica nos vemos traducidos cada vez ms
en informacin, acercndonos a la extensin
tecnolgica de la consciencia". Derrick de
Kerckhove nos recordaba otras palabras de
McLuhan "introduciendo nuestros cuerpos fsicos
en nuestros sistemas nerviosos extendidos, con
los media elctricos hemos establecido una
dinmica mediante la cual todas las tecnologas
anteriores, que son meras extensiones de las
manos, los pies, los dientes y la temperatura
corporal (controles), todas esas extensiones de
nuestros cuerpos, incluyendo ciudades, sern
trasladadas a sistemas de informacin".
Las transformaciones ocasionadas por los nuevos
medios avanzaban a nivel social tambin y en su
primer ao Internet ya contaba con 25.000
ordenadores conectados. La mente global o el
pensamiento colectivo dejaban de ser una idea
utpica, para convertirse en una propuesta con
cara y forma definida: la web. As, instituciones
como el Whitney Museum comenzaban a otorgar
relevancia a las prcticas artsticas digitales
adquiriendo por primera vez una obra de net.art
para su coleccin, The World First Collaborative
Sentence de Douglas Davis, no casualmente,
una obra colaborativa que combinaba distintos
medios y discursos, algo que la web haca posible.
La progresiva socializacin de los nuevos medios
como Internet y los ordenadores llev a centrar
la edicin de 1995 en las Comunidades Virtuales.
Aunque las comunidades virtuales ya existan
desde el 1978 con las BBS (y ms tarde con
FidoNET, etc.) con el surgimiento de la Internet la
expansin de las posibilidades de interconexin
permiti una mayor conexin con la sociedad. Se
crearon redes virtuales a todos los niveles, desde
lo ms especfico hasta lo que se ha llamado
posteriormente de social media.

globally computerized. In turn, more technologies

started being used such as radio-frequency
identification, RFID tags, a system of storing and
processing information by the use of tags with the
objective of transmitting the identity of an object
(similar to a number in a unique series) by means
of radio waves.
The 2005 edition of the festival had as its theme
these living Objects, Sensitive Spaces and was
based on the fact that the experience of the
contemporary citizen, in addition to the streets
they walk and the buildings they inhabit, depends
to an increasing extent on the electromagnetic
frequencies to which they give shelter and to which
they have access. This invisible dimension, the
hertzian space, has gone from being nothing more
than a preoccupation for telecommunication
engineers and regulating bodies to become rich
terrain for cultural analysis, of political tensions,
and artistic exploration, as announced by Jos
Luis de Vicente. One of the guests at that edition
was the writer and visionary of design Bruce
Sterling, who described the form in which space
and objects started to possess intelligent
characteristics which gave them new forms,
materials and even mobility. In the same way,
proposals were presented that intended to give
physical form to the incorporeal material of the
network, the bits, the basic energy of the machines.
Also present were the projects of the ILM (Industrial
Art & Magic) that showed the historic evolution of
visual effects for film and video productions. And,
in the other extreme, in the organic and functional
design of objects that were intended to transmit
life, we were able to enjoy the intervention by
the artist Theo Jansen with his Strandbeests, his
beasts from the beach are absolutely artificial
creatures that integrate into the natural landscape
as one more and that evolve based on studies of
their behavior that begin with the algorithm and
finish on the beaches of Holland.

Means and society

However, along with this journey that has taken
us from Virtual Reality to Enhanced Reality, from
the virtualization of reality to the enhancement of
reality by virtual technological means, we find
ourselves with other things to consider such as
the role of the media in society and culture. It was
by no simple chance that the second edition of
the festival (1991) centered on the concept of
Cybermedia and focused attention on the
possibilities that the new media supports could
offer, principally based on what was called the
Universal Image Machine. Antoni Mercade,
participant in this edition then stated that the
coming of the Universal Image Machine (computer
+ video) and the complexitization of the media
have contributed to the acceleration of the conflict
and to the intensification of the inflation. A conflict
created by combat, by prolonged opposition, by
uncertainty. Inflation, opposed to consideration,
based on excessive proportions and throwaway
qualities of an enhanced potential. Now, printing,
photography and cinema are no longer relevant
nor are monasteries, editions of cards, the
illustrated press: now, it is the Universal Machine
(more than the wheel, more than the paintbrush)
and the media (more than the train, more than the
airplane). From these come the amplification of
the conflicts and the increase in the circle of action
and the impact of the images.
In 1991, Tim Bernes-Lee announced the creation
of the World Wide Web, a project from CERN that
would permit the interconnection of various
networks on a global level and facilitate the
diffusion and expansion that would take place
over the following years until it flourished between
1996 and 1997. This snowball effect was due to
the absence of central administration along with
the ownership-free nature of Internet protocols
which made open interoperability possible along
with the impossibility of an excessive monopolistic
control. According to present estimations, at the
beginning of 2009, 1.5 billion users were connected
to Internet. Its implantation in our society has been
spectacular in this sense with such impressive
progressions that would have been unthinkable
in 1991 when all predictions made fell short.

In the edition of the festival dedicated to

Cybermedia, theorists and artists such as Derrick
de Kerckhove, Perry Hoberman and Laurie
Anderson speculated on the future of the media
under the impact of the ICT. The words of Marshall
McLuhan resounded all around when he stated
that in this electronic age, we see ourselves more
and more translated into information that leads
us to the technological extension of
consciousness. Derrick de Kerckhove reminded
us of some other words from McLuhan introducing
our physical bodies in our extended nervous
systems, with the electric media we have
established dynamics by which all of the
technologies of before, which are merely extensions
of our hands, feet, teeth and corporal temperature
(controls), all of these extensions of our bodies,
including cities, will be translated to information
systems.
The transformation occasioned by the new
mediums advanced at a social level as well and
in its first year, 25,000 computers were connected
to Internet. The global mind or collective thought
ceased to be a utopian idea to become a proposal
in a defined form: the web. As a result, institutions
such as the Whitney Museum started to give
relevance to digital artistic practices by acquiring,
for the first time, a work of net.art for its collection,
The Worlds First Collective Sentence by Douglas
Davis, and not by chance, a collaborative piece
that combined different mediums and discourse,
something the web made possible. The progressive
socialization of the new mediums such as Internet
and computers led to centering the 1995 edition
in the Virtual Communities. Although virtual
communities have existed since 1978 with BBS
(and later with FidoNET, etc.) with the arrival of
Internet, the expansion of the possibilities of
interconnection permitted greater connection with
society. Virtual networks were created at all levels
from the most specific to that later called social
media.

ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

Aos ms tarde, cuando Internet estaba

consolidndose como medio revolucionario en
muchas partes del mundo, posibilitando nuevos
canales giles de distribucin de la informacin
a nivel planetario, el festival explor las ideas que
quedaron latentes en 1991, para centrar la temtica
del festival en "La Segunda Piel" (1998). La
segunda piel se presentaba como un concepto
desarrollado por Marshal McLuhan, quien afirmaba
que la red elctrica estaba presente en el mundo
pero tambin en el cuerpo humano. Segn el
autor, "la electricidad funciona como el tacto. Si
los medios son extensiones de nuestro cuerpo,
las redes amplan los sentidos". Esta segunda piel
planteaba la importancia de las emociones en la
comunicacin con las mquinas, mientras a su
vez exploraba la interconexin profunda existente
entre los medios de comunicacin y los humanos
y su cosmovisin.
Al ao siguiente (1999), la reflexin sobre la forma
en que estos nuevos medios de comunicacin
cambiaran las pautas de conducta de los hombres
llev a centrar la temtica del festival en "El Ocio
Digital". Las profundas transformaciones que
estaban sucediendo en las industrias creativas a
raz de la irrupcin de las TIC auguraban cambios
radicales en los sistemas de creacin, produccin
y distribucin, as como en el sistema de recepcin,
es decir el comportamiento de los humanos en
relacin a los medios. Surgan preguntas acerca
de si las personas estaran dispuestas a salir de
su casa, con sus televisores de alta definicin y
"hipnotizadas por 500 canales de TV" para visitar
los tradicionales sitios de entretenimiento como
los parques temticos o los museos, por ejemplo.
Las distopas del ocio digital ensimismado en el
hogar domstico no contaron con la aparicin y
rpida consolidacin de las tecnologas ubicuas
que posibilitaban una mayor integracin entre
espacio virtual y espacio fsico. Algunos aos
antes, la "guru" del marketing y tendencias de
comportamiento de los consumidores Faith
Popcorn previ que las personas iban a vivir en
sus casas, con los ms modernos aparatos
multimedia, como recluidos en una concha
ensimismada y aislada del mundo exterior. Hoy
en da, los nuevos aparatos tecnolgicos permiten

24 25

una movilidad que combinan la conexin y la

experiencia fuera de las casas. Ya no es necesario
elegir entre casa (interacciones virtuales) y calle
(interacciones "reales"). Una vez ms el desarrollo
de las tecnologas sigue el camino de adaptarse
a la vida social "no-digital", pero al mismo tiempo
cambindola drsticamente. Dos aos ms tarde
Apple lanzaba el iPod como dispositivo porttil
de almacenamiento y reproduccin de msica
digital, que entre noviembre y finales de diciembre
del 2001, ya haba vendido 125 mil unidades en
todo el mundo siguiendo una progresin
espectacular que contribuy a acelerar los cambios
en las formas de consumo musical.
Sobre la consciencia y la vida
Otro de los grandes temas de ArtFutura a lo largo
de estos aos ha sido los cambios sucedidos en
el mbito de la consciencia, as como en la vida
misma, a raz de las nuevas posibilidades
cognitivas y perceptivas que nos aportan las
nuevas tecnologas. Ya en el ao 1992 el festival
fij su atencin en la idea de una Mente Global,
centrndose en las nuevas redes telemticas de
comunicacin global. El foco de inters estaba
en las relaciones entre el individuo y la red global
de informacin, partiendo de las nuevas
posibilidades que se anunciaban con la conexin
simultnea de ordenadores y la velocidad de
transmisin de informacin facilitada por las nuevas
tecnologas. El investigador Roy Ascott present
sus estudios sobre redes mentales colectivas y
Terence McKenna habl de los rituales
chamansticos y la relacin con otra idea de
temporalidad. Tecnologa, literatura de ciencia
ficcin, rituales msticos de expansin de la
conciencia, biotecnologa eran el punto de partida
para una reflexin sobre la nueva concepcin de
mente como memoria colectiva.
En esta edicin Terence McKenna defina la mente
global con una acertada metfora: "Las dunas
tienen la interesante particularidad de que se
asemejan a su fuerza creadora, el viento. Cada
uno de sus granos de arena podra ser comparado
a los bits de un ordenador. El viento sera entonces
el input que dispone los granos de arena hasta
convertirlos en una plantilla a menor escala
dimensional de un fenmeno superior, en este
caso el propio viento. Ello no tiene nada de mgico
y ha sido bien explicado: el viento, una fuerza
variable en el tiempo, moldea la forma de la duna,
una estructura variable en el espacio."

Pero si en 1992 el tema fue la Mente Global, en

1993 las utopas y realidades de la Vida Artificial
centraron la edicin, justo el ao en que otro
festival de referencia, Ars Electronica trataba el
tema igualmente impactado por los recientes
desarrollos en esas tecnologas. La creacin de
organismos que simulasen organismos vivos traa
a primera lnea de discusin las tensiones entre
tecnologa y naturaleza, una discusin muy
arraigada en el imaginario cultural, especialmente
en boga en el siglo XIX, cuando la evolucin de
las mquinas abra la posibilidad de soar con un
futuro donde el hombre dominara totalmente la
naturaleza. Este arte gentico que promulgaba la
Vida Artificial obligaba a nuevos planteamientos,
y causaba sorpresa y hasta incomodidad, pero
tal como deca William Latham "siento que es
irnico que alguien pueda poner una aspiradora
en una peana o colocar una cabeza de cabra en
un recipiente de cristal y llamarlo arte; sin embargo
cuando se utiliza un ordenador para crear arte, la
gente cuestiona la definicin."
La euforia sobre las posibilidades que se
anunciaban desde las nuevas tecnologas de
animacin generativa hasta las biotecnologas era
clara en aqul momento, y de hecho, 3 aos ms
tarde nacera Dolly, la oveja clonada que impactara
en la opinin pblica del mundo entero. Hablar
de criaturas artificiales implica pensar en la
concepcin de naturaleza, hombre y sus posibles
relaciones. Los monstruos presentes en la cultura
popular son la combinacin de opuestos
(hombre+lobo, vivo+muerto, hombre+insecto) que
se salen del orden que garantiza que somos
elementos distintos y el hombre, sin lugar a dudas,
superior. Stelarc, uno de los artistas invitados a
esta edicin nos enseaba lo contrario, sus
performances que evidencian la fragilidad del
cuerpo humano y su falta de preparacin para
vivir y adaptarse en los nuevos ambientes, como
por ejemplo el universo extraterrenal. Stelarc
llevaba as a las ltimas consecuencias la misma
relacin con la tecnologa al transformar su propio
cuerpo en receptculo de dispositivos electrnicos
que utilizan sus msculos como fuerte de energa
y sus pulsiones cerebrales, la tecnologa
parasitando su propio cuerpo.

Years later, when Internet was consolidating itself

as a revolutionary medium in many parts of the
world allowing new agile channels for the
distribution of information at a planetary level to
be introduced, the festival explored the ideas that
had been left behind in 1991 to center the festivals
thematic in The Second Skin (1998). The second
skin was presented as a concept developed by
Marsal McLuhan, who stated that the electric
network was present in the world, but also in the
human body. According to the author, electricity
functions like touch. If the mediums are an
extension of our body, the networks amplify our
senses. This second skin suggested the
importance of our emotions in our communication
with machines while, at the same time, it explored
the deep interconnection that exists between the
media and humans and their view of the world.
The following year (1999), the reflection on the
way in which these new means of communication
would change mans general conduct led to
centering the festivals theme in Digital Leisure.
The profound transformations that are taking place
in the creative industry as a result of the irruption
of the ICTs are bringing about radical changes in
the creation, production and distribution systems
as well as in the reception system, which is to say
the behavior of humans in relationship to these
means. Questions arise such as will people be
prepared to leave their homes and their high
definition televisions with which they are
hypnotized by 500 TV channels in order to visit
the traditional venues of entertainment such as
theme parks or museums, for example.
The dystopias of digital leisure absorbed in the
home did not count on the appearance and speedy
consolidation of the ubiquitous technologies that
made a greater integration between virtual space
and physical space possible. Some years earlier,
the guru of marketing and consumer behavioral
tendencies Faith Popcorn predicted that people
were going to live in their houses with the most
modern multimedia appliances like recluses
engrossed in a shell and isolated from the exterior
world. Nowadays, the new technological apparatus

permits a mobility that combines the connection

and the experience out of the house. Now, it is
unnecessary to choose between home (virtual
interactions) and the street (real interactions).
Once again, technological development adapts
to existing (non-digital) social life, but, at the same
time, changes it drastically. Two years later, Apple
launched the iPod as a portable device for storing
and reproducing digital music. Between November
and the end of December, 2001, 125 thousand
units had been sold in the world following a
spectacular progression that contributed to
accelerating the changes in the ways of consuming
music.
Consciousness and life
Another of ArtFuturas important themes over the
years has been the successive changes in the
area of consciousness, including within life itself,
as a result of the new cognitive and perceptive
possibilities that the new technologies have brought
us. In 1992, the festival fixed its attention on the
idea of a Global Mind and centered on the new
telematic networks of global communication. The
focus point of interest was in the relationships
between the individual and the global information
network stemming from the new possibilities that
were announced with the simultaneous connection
of computers and the velocity of the transmission
of information facilitated by the new technologies.
The investigator, Roy Ascott, presented his studies
on collective mental networks and Terence
McKenna talked about shamanistic rituals and
their relationship with another idea of temporality.
Technology, science fiction literature, mystic
consciousness expanding rituals, biotechnology
were the starting point for reflection on the new
concept of the mind as collective memory.
In this edition, Terence McKenna defined the global
mind with an acute metaphor, The dunes have
the interesting peculiarity of resembling their
creating force, the wind. Every grain of sand could
be compared to the bits of a computer. The wind
would be, therefore, the input that the grains fulfill
until they are converted into a screen on a minor
scale dimension of a superior phenomenon which,
in this case, is the wind itself. There is no magic
involved and it has been well explained: the wind,
a variable force in time, models the form of the
dunes, a variable structure in space.

However, if in 1992, the theme was Global Mind,

in 1993 the utopias and realities of Artificial Life
were the center of the edition, just the year in
which another festival of reference, Ars Electronica,
dealt with the theme because of the recent
impacting developments in technologies related
to the area. The creation of organisms that
simulated living organisms brought to the front
line of discussion the tensions between technology
and nature, a debate deeply rooted in cultural
fantasy and that was especially in fashion in the
19th century when the evolution of machines made
way for the possibility of dreaming of a future in
which man completely dominated nature. This
genetic art that promulgated Artificial Life obliged
the creation of new approaches and caused
surprise and even discomfort, but as William
Latham said, I feel that it is ironic that someone
can put a vacuum cleaner on a pedestal or place
a goats head in a glass jar and call it art; however,
when a computer is used to create art, the public
question its definition.
The euphoria about the possibilities that were
announced as of the new generative animation
technologies to the biotechnological was clear in
that moment, and, in fact, three years later, Dolly
was born, the cloned sheep that impacted public
opinion all over the world. To talk about artificial
creatures implies thinking about the conception
of nature, man and their possible relationships.
The monsters present in popular culture are a
combination of opposites (man+wolf, life+death,
man+insect) that come out in an order that
guarantees that we are different elements and that
man, without a doubt, is superior. Stelarc, one of
the artists invited to this edition, showed us the
contrary. His performances made the fragility of
the human body and its lack of preparation to live
and adapt to new environments, such as, for
example, extraterrestrial space, evident. In this
way, Stelarc took the same relationship with
technology to its ultimate consequences by
transforming his own body into a receptacle of
electronic devices which used his muscles and
brain pulsations as a source of energy, technology
as a parasite on his own body.

ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

Partiendo de los sueos y realidades aportadas

por las tecnologas de vida artificial, aos ms
tarde, el festival pas a centrarse en las viejas y
renovadas utopas de creacin de un hombre
artificial. En 1996 la temtica escogida fue la de
"Robots & Knowbots" donde se discutieron los
avances en torno a los intentos de creacin de
un hombre artificial, o la figura del hbrido hombremquina, presente en el imaginario social mucho
antes de las tecnologas que hicieron posible los
primeros robots. Tambin se trataron los knowbots,
un concepto que se aplicaba a los robots sin
cuerpo fsico, presentes en la web, rastreando
fuentes de informacin generadoras de
conocimiento. Adems se presentaron diferentes
debates sobre las nuevas propuestas tecnolgicas
como la Televirtualidad, la banda ancha y la
convergencia de distintos medias (telfono, TV,
etc.) en la red. En esa edicin Hans Moravec
afirmaba que "al utilizar los recursos ms
eficientemente, un ciberespacio maduro del futuro
lejano ser efectivamente ms grande que el
universo fsico presente. Mientras que solamente
una fraccin infinitesimal de la materia y espacio
existentes realiza un trabajo interesante, en un
ciberespacio bien desarrollado cada bit estar
archivando un dato til o ser parte de una
computacin relevante."
Las utopas y distopas de los robots fueron
tratadas en aquella edicin con invitados como
Bruce Blumberg, Knowbotic Research, Alex
Adriaansens o Chico MacMurtrie entre otros.
Desde las fantasas de un Frankestein de Mary
Shelley hasta los cyborgs de la NASA, cada
aproximacin a los humanos artificiales ha
representado la actualizacin de los conocimientos
tecnolgicos de cada poca. El aumento de las
capacidades de los humanos es de alguna manera
el fin ltimo de los esfuerzos por construir un robot
a semejanza de los humanos. La idea de red como
extensin del pensamiento es lo que la transforma
en un Cyborg nuestra parte maqunica de la mente.
Una mente cuya conciencia es mltiple y global
que fue objeto de la edicin de 2000 centrada en
la idea de "Internet como Cyborg".
Al mismo tiempo, en este momento se discuta la
convergencia de los medios en el entorno digital.
Xavier Berenguer afirmaba que "la segunda edad
del ciberespacio, en la que ahora nos encontramos,

26 27

se distingue por la emergencia de los programas

interactivos, o sea de programas que intermedian
en el libramiento de contenidos. El gran impulso
de estos programas es la red, una red que ahora
no es ms que una infraestructura para la
produccin, la gestin y la transmisin econmicas,
pero que acabar mediatizando la mayora de
actividades humanas, entre ellas el entretenimiento
y el arte." Pero En qu medida este proceso
realmente propone una novedad en trminos de
procesos y produccin cultural? Los hackers, los
tekkies, sern responsables por subvertir y hacer
un uso ms amplio y consciente de la informacin
o el poder de las imgenes seguir fascinando y
controlando, generando nada ms que formas
ms sofisticadas de hipnosis e idolatra?
Todas estas cuestiones y muchas ms fueron
tratadas en la edicin de 2008, centrada en
"Maquinas y Almas" y la interaccin entre las
tecnologas y las artes, una edicin que
previamente fue desarrollada en una exposicin
en el MNCARS en la que se mostraban destacadas
piezas de gneros de arte digital de todo tipo,
desde el Software Art, net.art, manipulacin de
imgenes, Biotecnologa, Vida Artificial, Robtica,
Realidad Virtual, Visualizacin de Datos, todos
estos trminos que dejan entrever los caminos
por donde las artes y las ciencias han confluido
y confluyen.
Sobre la cultura y la tecnologa
Las TIC han transformado la cultura y la sociedad,
y en su progresiva implantacin han ido
transformando los procesos de creacin,
produccin, difusin, distribucin y recepcin de
todos y cada uno de los sectores culturales. Solo
hace falta observar los cambios radicales que han
sucedido en la industria musical o la industria
audiovisual, o el incremento exponencial de la
industria de los videojuegos y su presencia en
sociedad. Lo que hoy se nos muestra como dato
evidente en 1994 pareca autntica ciencia ficcin
mientras ArtFutura centraba la atencin en la
recin aparecida Cibercultura, de la mano de
pioneros como Kevin Kelly o Peter Rubin.
Entonces ya se empezaba a utilizar el concepto
de red como idea de las conexiones entre las
diversas actividades individuales y colectivas en
la "noosfera". Msica electrnica, vdeos, fotos,
animaciones digitales, videojuegos comenzaban
a ser menos difciles de producir y compartir y ya

penetraban cada vez ms en el tejido cultural de

la sociedad en general. En este ao se haba
lanzado oficialmente el navegador Netscape, y
Yahoo (que cabe recordar que significaba "Yet
Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.") presentaba
su primera versin, mientras Sony revolucionaba
el mercado de los videojuegos con la consola
Playstation. Invariablemente la preocupacin
latente en todo ello era la pregunta sobre quienes
seran los que tendran el derecho de participar
en esta Cibercultura, y en qu medida la cantidad
cada vez ms grande de informacin disponible
se podra compartir libremente al margen de las
propiedades privadas de las grandes
corporaciones. La defensa de la libertad de la
informacin, en lnea con las ideas defendidas
por los ciberpunks y hackers, dejaba de ser una
idea para un futuro ficcional y empezaba a ser
considerada como una problemtica actual y
urgente a tratar.
El director del Festival, Montxo Algora, escriba
entonces con optimismo "La cibercultura est
entre nosotros. Es el ltimo movimiento del siglo
XX. Sus simpatizantes son los primeros nmadas
del ciberespacio: un grupo heterogneo de
cientficos visionarios, hackers, msicos, fanticos
de la informtica y artistas de imgenes digitales.
Sus temas de inters van de la alta tecnologa a
los juegos virtuales, del hipertexto a las bebidas
inteligentes, de la literatura cyberpunk al internet
y a los implantes cerebrales. Su eslogan: "La
informacin ha de ser libre". Y es que hay algo
que empezamos a vislumbrar al final del milenio:
al igual que en un nuevo sistema-neuronalnervioso-electrnico, todo el saber humano surcar
pronto las redes digitales."
Con el boom de Internet y la popularizacin de
los ordenadores como mquinas de creacin,
trabajo y ocio, se fue explorando progresivamente
una de las potencialidades ms especficas de
las TIC: la participacin y creacin colectiva. Si
ya en 1994 aparecieron las primeras obras de
net.art -como la pionera Handshake de Barbara
Aselmeier y Joachim Blank, o File Room de Antoni
Muntadas- con el tiempo el potencial de
participacin fue dando lugar a nuevas e
interesantes exploraciones, que llevaron desde la

Based on the dreams and realities brought to us

by the technologies of artificial life, years later, the
festival came to center itself on the old and
renovated utopias of the creation of an artificial
man. In 1996, the theme chosen was Robots &
Knowbots in which the advances around the
attempts to create an artificial man, or the figure
of the hybrid man-machine, present in social
fantasy long before technology made the first
robots, was discussed. Also, knowbots were dealt
with, a concept that is applied to robots without
physical body and that are present on the web
where they drag sources of information and are
creators of knowledge. In addition, there were
various debates on the new technological
proposals such as Televirtuality, broadband and
the convergence of different mediums (telephone,
TV, etc.) on the net. In this edition, Hans Moravec
stated that on using the most efficient resources,
a mature cyberspace of a distant future would
evidently be larger than the present physical
universe. While just one infinitesimal fraction of
the existing matter and space would be necessary
to carry out an interesting job, in a cyberspace
well developed, each bit would be filing useful
data or would form part of a relevant computation.
The utopias and dystopias of the robots were dealt
with in that edition by guests such as Bruce
Blumberg, Knowbotic Research, Alex Adriaansens
and Chico MacMurtrie among others. From the
fantasies of Mary Shelleys Frankestein to the
NASAs cyborgs, every approximation to artificial
humans has represented the actualization of the
technological knowledge of each period. The
increase of human capacity has, in some ways,
as its main aim the construction of a robot in
human likeness. The idea of network as an
extension of thought is what transforms our minds
into Cyborg. A mind whose consciousness is
multiple and global and that was the object of the
2000 edition centered on the idea of Internet as
Cyborg.
At the same time, at this moment the convergence
of the mediums in the digital environment is being
debated. Xavier Berenguer stated that the second
age of cyberspace, in which we now all find

ourselves, stands out because of the emergence

of interactive programs, or rather, programs that
intermediate in the release of content. The great
impulse of these programs is the net, a net that
is now no more than an infrastructure for
production, management and financial
transmission, but that will end up mediating the
majority of human activity among which will be
entertainment and art. However, to what extent
will this process really propose a novelty in terms
of processes and cultural production? The hackers,
the trekkies will be responsible for subverting and
making a more ample conscious use of the
information or the power of the images will continue
to fascinate and control and to create nothing
more than more sophisticated ways of hypnosis
and idolatry.
All of these questions and many more were dealt
with in the 2008 edition centered on Souls and
Machines and the interaction between technology
and art, an edition that was previously developed
in an exhibition in MNCARS in which outstanding
pieces of digital art of all kinds was shown from
Software Art, net.art, manipulation of images,
Biotechnology, Artificial Life, Robotics, Virtual
Reality, Data Visualization. All of these terms that
leave a trace of the paths on which art and science
have come together and are coming together.
Culture and technology
The ICT have transformed our culture and society
and along with their progressive implantation they
have transformed the processes of creation,
production, diffusion, distribution and reception
in each and every one of our cultural sectors. It is
only necessary to look at the radical changes that
have taken place in the music and audiovisual
industries or the exponential development of the
videogame industry and its presence in society.
What we see today as being evident, seemed to
be authentic science fiction in 1994 when ArtFutura
centered its attention on the recently emerged
Cyberculture, under the inspiration of pioneers
such as Kevin Kelly and Peter Rubin.
It was then that using the concept of the network
as an idea of connections between different
individuals and collective activities in the
noosphere started. Electronic music, videos,
photos, digital animations, videogames started to
be less difficult to produce and share and were

beginning to penetrate deeper and deeper into

our culture and society in general. In that year, the
browser Netscape had been officially launched
and Yahoo (and it should be remembered that it
means "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle")
presented their first version while Sony
revolutionized the videogame market with the
console, Playstation. Invariably, the latent
preoccupation of all of this was the question about
who would be the ones who would have the right
to participate in this Cyberculture and to what
extent the growing quantity of available information
would be freely shared away from the private
properties of the large corporations. The defense
of freedom of information, in line with ideas
defended by cyberpunks and hackers, ceased to
be an idea for a fictitious future and started to be
considered a present-day problem to be dealt
with urgently.
The director of the festival, Montxo Algora,
optimistically wrote at that time that Cyberculture
is amongst us. It is the last movement of the 20th
century. Its sympathizers are the first nomads of
cyberspace: a heterogeneous group of visionary
scientists, hackers, musicians, information fanatics
and digital image artists. Their themes of interest
run from high technology to virtual games, from
hypertext to intelligent drinks, from cyberpunk
literature to Internet and to brain implants. Their
slogan: Information has to be free. And there is
something we are just starting to see at the end
of this millennium: just like a new electronic-neuralnervous system, all of human knowledge will soon
be ploughed into digital networks.
With the boom of Internet and the popularization
of computers as machines for creation, work and
leisure, one of the most specific and strongest
aspects of the ICT was progressively explored:
collective participation and creation. If the first
works of net.art - such as the pioneer Handshake
by Barbara Aselmeier and Joachim Blank, or File
Room by Antoni Muntadas - appeared in 1994,
with time, the potential for participation made
possible new and interesting explorations that

ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

creacin colectiva a las comunidades virtuales,

que fue tema de la edicin de 1995 tal y como
comentamos con anterioridad. Poco a poco, la
sociedad tomaba consciencia de las posibilidades
reales de las TIC en la medida en que su
implantacin se extenda a todos los niveles de
actuacin.
Esa dinmica tan esencial a la cultura digital volvi
a tratarse en la edicin de 2001 bajo el tema de
"Arte Colectivo, de la Inteligencia Distribuida a los
Juegos en Red". Ese fue el ao del ataque a las
torres gemelas de Nueva York, con la
omnipresencia de los media en la tragedia y la
incertidumbre en relacin al futuro de la paz
mundial estaban presentes en al ambiente general.
La red de redes se mostr como una herramienta
indispensable para la difusin de informacin de
todo tipo ante la catstrofe colosal. Mientras, el
festival presentaba una seleccin de trabajos
artsticos, de diseo, animacin y publicidad,
creados en red y de modo colectivo. El principal
tema de fondo que se trataba era la cuestin del
proceso de creacin colaborativo como algo que
obviamente no haba empezado con Internet, sino
que se vea incrementado con los nuevos modos
de creacin en la web, facilitando su propio
desarrollo as como nuevos usos.
Esta dinmica colaborativa en el contexto de la
cultura digital parta del mismo modus operandi
que desde sus inicios persigui la cultura hacker
de programacin en colectivo. Los concursos de
Demos (demostracin de juegos o aplicaciones
informticas) desde el principio cobraron especial
relevancia como ejemplo de producto de creacin
y uso colectivo que puede ser comprendido tanto
como arte en los nuevos media como producto
comercializable en el mercado. La edicin de 2001
dio especial importancia al panorama de los
videojuegos y los juegos en red, mientras contaba
tambin con uno de los desarrolladores del
videojuego SIMS (Jamie Doornbois) que en el ao
anterior haba sido nmero uno en ventas. Sims,
como es sabido, propona un modo distinto de
narrativa y formato de juego, que adems, con su
posterior lanzamiento como versin en red ese
mismo ao, cambiara a la vez los patrones de la
interaccin en los juegos online.

28 29

Al ao siguiente, el festival continu tratando de

forma ms directa los cambios de las relaciones
entre cultura y tecnologa. La transformacin de
la cultura a manos de las nuevas posibilidades
que abran las tecnologas tomaba forma mientras
aparecan pantallas con un contraste tan bueno
como el papel, y en Europa, 70 millones de
usuarios estaban conectados a la Internet. En
Espaa se creaba entonces el MediaLab Madrid,
con el objetivo de ser un centro de formacin,
produccin y difusin del arte y cultura digital,
que, aunque nada tena que ver en su forma y
orientacin, si recordaba en bucle al pionero Centro
de Clculo de Madrid que en los aos 1970 produjo
las primeras obras de Computer Art en el Estado.
Aquel mismo ao en Estados Unidos tena lugar
la primera gran exposicin organizada por una
institucin como el San Francisco MOMA, no
especializada en arte digital: "010101 Art in
Technological Times" comisariada por Steve Dietz.
Y el museo norteamericano Whitney lanzaba
Artport, un portal comisariado por Christiane Paul
dedicado a las obras de net.art y arte digital en
general.
Era un momento dulce para el arte y la cultura
digital que se vea reconocida, y legitimada de
alguna manera, por algunas de las instituciones
ms representativas de la cultura contempornea.
Por esta razn, la edicin de 2002 de ArtFutura
propona el tema de "La Red como Lienzo"
planteando de forma explcita la relacin entre el
arte contemporneo y el arte digital. El concepto
de lienzo como espacio donde se propone,
produce y expone la obra es la metfora para el
espacio digital. Desde el punto de vista de la
organizacin, este modo de ver la creacin en lo
digital permite expandir las problemticas tpicas
de las artes, haciendo posibles nuevos caminos
a partir de la interactividad y de la distribucin
masiva. Del mismo modo invita a reflexionar sobre
los parmetros de la esttica en la creacin digital,
las fronteras entre arte y diseo, el papel del artista
y de este nuevo pblico que es individual y
colectivo a la vez. Si el arte ya no es lo mismo, el
artista tampoco. Los nuevos medios de produccin
y distribucin generan directamente nuevas
cuestiones relativas a los derechos de autor que
en aqul ao se hara ms visible con la creacin
de las licencias de Creative Commons, como
alternativa flexibilizadora de las tradicionales y
rgidas licencias de propiedad intelectual,

incapaces de adaptarse a la nueva cultura que

artistas y tericos como Cory Arcangel y Pablo
Soto, participantes en esa edicin, se encargaron
de defender y argumentar.
La importancia del momento histrico en curso,
en el que la cotidianidad de las tecnologas digitales
invitaba a una hibridacin total de mundos -on y
off line, digitales y analgicos, culturales y
tecnolgicos- llev a continuar incidiendo en la
relaciones entre contemporaneidad y digitalidad
de la cultura. En el 2003 se lanzaron las "pinturas
electrnicas" como producto para el pblico en
general y el nmero de PCs vendidos fue entonces
de 160 millones, mostrando de esta manera hasta
qu punto los productos cien por cien tecnolgicos
digitales se convierten en parte fundamental de
la vida familiar. En ese contexto, el festival toma
como tema la "Pintura Estirada" avanzando en la
discusin sobre las relaciones entre las artes
tradicionales y las digitales, ahora en un tono ms
crtico. Unos de los invitados de la edicin, Lev
Manovich, lanzaba estas palabras: "Si existe un
mbito social cuya lgica sea similar a la lgica
del arte digital, o arte de los nuevos medios
en general, en mi opinin este mbito no es el
arte contemporneo, ni el arte moderno ni el
diseo, sino la informtica". De forma inevitable
surgan preguntas sobre la rigidez de las
instituciones artsticas (museos, galeras, mercado),
as como la conveniencia o no de cambiar las
dinmicas establecidas por otras nuevas
adecuadas al nuevo contexto.
Los blogs, que emergieron con fuerza, proponan
mientras tanto nuevas formas de escritura, se
trataba de un nuevo modo de comunicar
informacin? Qued claro que rpidamente se
erigieron como un autntico contrapoder a los
medios de comunicacin estndar, y con el tiempo
fueron consolidndose: hoy ya hay ms de 71
millones de ellos segn datos de Technorati. Pronto
surgieron casos de xito de organizacin
ciudadana a partir de ideas difundidas en los
blogs, la figura del blogger ya empezaba a ser
socialmente reconocida y en los debates se invit
a gente del calibre de Meg Hourihan (co-creadora
del servicio Blogger), Anil Dash (parte del equipo
Movable Type) y Xeni Jardin (editora de Boing
Boing).

ranged from collective creation to virtual

communities, which was the theme of the 1995
edition as we have previously mentioned. Little
by little, society was becoming conscious of the
real possibilities of the ICT as their implantation
extended to all aspects of our lives.
Those dynamics so essential to digital culture
were once again dealt with in the 2001 edition in
the theme Collective Art, from Distributed
Intelligence to Games Online. This was the year
of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York with
the omnipresence of the media in the tragedy and
the uncertainness of the future for world peace
being present in the general atmosphere. The
network of networks showed itself to be an
indispensable tool for the diffusion of information
of all sorts during a colossal catastrophe.
Meanwhile, the festival presented a selection of
artistic works, design, animation and publicity
created on networks and of a collective nature.
The main underlying theme dealt with was the
question of the process of collaborative creation
as something that obviously had not started with
Internet, but that had been seen to be developing
with the new forms of creation on the web
facilitating its own development as well as new
uses.
This collaborative dynamic in the context of digital
culture stemmed from the same modus operandi
that the hacker culture of collective programming
had pursued since its beginnings. The Demo
competitions (game demonstrations or computer
applications) from the beginning took on special
relevance as an example of a product of creation
and collective use that could be understood as
much as art in the new media as commercializable
product on the market. The 2001 edition gave
special importance to the panorama of videogames
and games online and also featured one of the
developers of the videogame SIMS (Jamie
Doornbois) that had been number one in sells in
previous years. Sims, as is known, proposed a
different form of narrative and game format, which
in addition, with its later launch as online version
that same year, would change the very nature of
interaction in online games.

The following year, the festival continued to deal

with the changes in the relationships between
culture and technology in a direct way. The
transformation of culture by the new possibilities
that the technologies opened were taking shape
while new screens with a contrast as good as
paper were appearing in Europe, 70 million users
were connected to Internet. In Spain, at that time,
MediaLad Madrid was created with the objective
of being a center of information, production and
diffusion of art and digital culture, which, although
had nothing to do with it in form or orientation
reminded us in a way of the pioneer Centro de
Clculo, Madrid that in the 70s produced the first
works of Computer Art in the State. That same
year in the USA, the first large exhibition organized
by an institution such as the San Francisco MOMA,
not specialized in digital art, took place: "010101
Art in Technological Times" curated by Steve Diet.
And the North American museum Whitney
launched Artport, a portal curated by Christiane
Paul dedicated to works of net.art and digital art
in general.
It was a good moment for art and digital culture
that found itself recognized and legitimatized in
some way by some of the most representative
institutions of contemporary culture. For this
reason, the 2002 edition of ArtFutura proposed
the theme The Network as a Canvas presenting
in an explicit way the relationship between
contemporary art and digital art. The concept of
a canvas as a space in which to propose, produce
and exhibit the work is the metaphor for the digital
space. From the point of view of organization, this
way of seeing digital creation allows us to expand
on some of the typical problems of the arts and
to make new forms based on interactivity and
massive distribution possible. In the same way,
this invites us to reflect on the parameters of the
aesthetics in digital creation, the frontiers between
art and design, the role of the artist and of this
new public which is individual and collective at
the same time. If art is no longer the same, the
artist is not either. The new means of production
and distribution create new questions concerning
copyrights that, in that year, became more visible
with the creation of the Creative Commons licenses
as being alternative and more flexible than the
rigid and traditional copyright licenses that are

incapable of adapting to the new culture that

artists and theorists such as Cory Arcangel and
Pablo Soto, participants in that edition, took on
to defend and debate.
The importance of the historic moment being lived
in which the everyday of the digital technologies
invited us into hybridations of worlds -- on and
off line, digital and analogical, cultural and
technological led us to continue insisting in the
relationship between the contemporariness and
digitalness of our culture. In 2003, electronic
paintings were launched as a product for the
public in general and the number of PCs sold was
then 160 million which shows in this way to what
point products that were 100 per cent digital
technology became, to a certain extent,
fundamental to family life. In that context, the
festival adopted as its theme Stretched Paint
and advanced in the debate on the relationships
between traditional and digital arts now in a more
critical tone. One of the guests at the edition, Lev
Manovich, proposed these words: If there is one
social field whose logic is similar to the logic of
digital art, or new media art in general, in my
view this field is not contemporary art, modern
art, or design, but computer science. Inevitably,
there were questions about the rigidness of the
artistic institutions (museums, galleries, market)
as well as the convenience of changing the
established dynamics for other newer forms more
suitable for the new context.
Blogs, which emerged with strength, meanwhile
proposed new ways of writing. Are they a new
way of communicating information? It quickly
became clear that they would stand up as an
authentic counterweight to the standard means
of communication and with time, they consolidated
themselves: Today there are more than 71 million
of them according to Technorati. Soon cases of
successful citizen organization came about as a
result of ideas diffused in blogs. The figure of the
blogger started to be socially recognized and to
the debates guests of the caliber of Meg Hourihan
(co-creator of the service Blogger), Anil Dash
(member of the team Movable Type) and Xeni
Jardin (editor of Boing Boing) were invited.

ArtFutura: el presente del futuro

ArtFutura: the present of the future

Pero al anlisis de las transformaciones de la

cultura a raz de las TIC, pronto se le sumaron las
nuevas formas de analizar la cultura gracias a las
posibilidades de tratamiento informativo que
aportaban las tecnologas digitales. Nunca antes
el ser humano haba podido procesar tanta
cantidad de informacin para convertirla en
conocimiento significativo. La cuantificacin de
la cultura, la capacidad de recoger, almacenar y
procesar cantidades ingentes de datos abra
nuevas posibilidades para el anlisis y el
conocimiento de la cultura misma. La edicin de
2006 trat precisamente del potencial cognitivo
de las visualizaciones de datos, la "Esttica de
Datos" centr el tema del festival aquel ao, con
intervenciones decisivas de agentes destacados
como Andrew Vande Moere, editor de Information
Aesthetics. Justo cuando se empezaba a hablar
de las web 2.0, con su plyade de definiciones y
aplicaciones, se mostraba necesario salir del
dominio de la interfaz ms bsica -la imagen
puramente visual- para pasar a pensar en los
datos y el cdigo como posibilidades creativas y
estticas. Ya no se trataba ms de ensear
imgenes y contar historias, sino de interrelacionar
informacin, tarea nada fcil y que per se ya
demanda un tipo de arquitectura tanto tecnolgica
como de creacin conceptual muy sofisticada.
Mientras se instalaba popularmente la idea de la
comprensin de la vida como sistema de
informacin y se perfeccionaban las tcnicas de
clonacin, en el mbito de los videojuegos, las
consolas como la XBox 360 ya haban sido
lanzadas al mercado y se esperaba la PS3 con
muchas expectativas. El revolucionario mando de
control de la Wii de Nintendo, que remita a un
juego ms hptico y kintico, fue lanzado ese
mismo ao, revolucionado el mundo de los
videojuegos y los modos de interaccin, sacando
el usuario de la silla y la consola de la mesa.
Paralelamente el desarrollador de videojuegos
Kawakubo invitado a esa edicin -y figura clave
del momento- se defina a s mismo como alguien
ms interesado en dar nuevos usos a la tecnologa
existente que en descubrir nuevas tecnologas.

30 31

De esta forma, las nuevas visiones de la cultura

y la sociedad que aportaban las nuevas
herramientas hacen posible nuevas
interpretaciones ms complejas. La relacin de
las tecnologas digitales con el mbito cultural
dej definitivamente de centrarse en la ciencia
ficcin, las prospectivas y el deseo de futuro, para
devenir presente continuo y cotidiano. Al inicio
del 2007 se inauguraba en Gijn el centro de arte
Laboral, que se intitulaba un Centro de Arte y
Creacin Industrial, de proporciones ambiciosas,
en un proyecto totalmente destinado a las
producciones en las nuevas tecnologas, algo que
hubiera sido imposible imaginar algunos pocos
aos antes. El texto de introduccin del festival
de 2007, "La Prxima Web" empez afirmando
que "lo cotidiano ha ganado la partida a lo
visionario". La realidad muestra la forma en que
las iniciativas individuales han tenido ms impacto
en el tejido social que las grandes promesas de
tecnologa de punta. Lo que la red ha permitido
es la apropiacin de estas iniciativas por parte de
una comunidad global, con una diversidad de
agentes diferenciados, constitutiva de su riqueza
y fortaleza. Steve Johnson especulaba entonces
diciendo que la Red est dejando de ser una
biblioteca internacional de pginas vinculadas
para convertirse en un ecosistema de informacin,
en el que los datos circulan como nutrientes en
un bosque tropical." Esta inteligencia colectiva
de la que tanto se hablaba era ahora quien decida
lo que iba a cobrar relevancia, en una verdadera
estructura bottom-up.

Una conclusin no conclusiva

De "dunas" a "bosque tropical", de "cerebro" a
"segunda piel", las metforas que han ido
proponiendo tericos y artistas a lo largo de estos
aos nos permiten percibir que el universo de la
informacin tecnolgica, que durante tanto tiempo
ha sido sinnimo de artificialidad, se ha mostrado
tan natural y permeable al contexto fsico como
los sistemas sociales "no-informticos". Cognicin
y comunicacin, conceptos definitorios de lo que
se comprende como humano ya no pueden ser
estudiados fuera de la tecnologa. La coproduccin
de los estratos sociales, cognitivos, comunicativos
y tecnolgicos debe ser tenida en cuenta de forma
interrelacionada en la constatacin de su
interdependencia.
Veinte aos del festival ArtFutura trazan un itinerario
que ha ido de la realidad virtual a las redes sociales.
De la llamada web 2.0 a fenmenos masivos como
Facebook muestran la concrecin de algo que ya
se anunciaba desde hace dos dcadas, la
tecnologa est socialmente construida tanto como
lo social esta tecnolgicamente sostenido. Desde
el mismo momento de creacin de una tecnologa
ha habido tericos que vean la muerte del media
anterior. El cine no ha matado el teatro, ni la
televisin al cine, y aunque los modos de escritura
han cambiado tambin es cierto que el libro
electrnico no ha matado al libro, ni las redes
sociales han destruido las relaciones
interpersonales. ArtFutura ha tenido el acierto de
proponer ideas de futuro en las ltimas dos
dcadas sin tener que elegir entre real y virtual.
Ya sabemos que no se trata de una eleccin o/o,
sino de una combinatoria que exige que tanto
mundo fsico como virtual se transformen
mutuamente, aumentndose en reciprocidad. De
esta forma, en su pulsin por intentar prever el
futuro, a lo largo de dos dcadas el festival
ArtFutura ha permitido comprender el presente
de la realidad que se crea frente a nuestra mirada.

However, to the analysis of the cultural

transformations due to ICT soon were to be added
new ways of analyzing culture thanks to the
possibilities of information treatment that the digital
technologies brought. Never before had the human
being been able to process such a quantity of
information and convert it into significant
information. The quantification of culture, the
capacity of gathering, storing and processing
enormous quantities of data opened new
possibilities for the analysis and knowledge of
culture itself. The 2006 edition precisely dealt with
the cognitive potential of the visualization of data,
Data Aesthetics was the center of the festivals
theme that year with decisive interventions from
outstanding agents such as Andrew Van de Moere,
editor of Information Aesthetics. Just when
everyone was starting to talk about the web 2.0
with its multiple definitions and applications it
became clearly necessary that we would have to
move away from the dominion of the basic interface
the purely visual image in order to move on to
think about the data and codes as creative
aesthetic possibilities. It was no longer a question
of showing images and telling stories, but of
interrelating information which is far from being
an easy task and which per se demands a type
of highly sophisticated architecture from as much
a technological as conceptual creative point of
view.
While the idea of the comprehension of life as an
information system was becoming popularly
accepted and the techniques of cloning perfected,
in the field of videogames, consoles such as the
Xbox 360 had been launched onto the market and
the PS3 was awaited with great expectation. The
revolutionary control of the Wii from Nintendo that
made it a more lively kinetic game was launched
in the same year and revolutionized the world of
videogames and the forms of interaction getting
the users our of their chairs and away from the
table console. Along with this, the videogame
developer Kawakubo, guest at this edition and
key figure of the moment defined himself as
someone more interested in giving new uses to
existing technology than discovering new
technologies.

In this way, the new visions of culture and society

that bring us the new tools make new more
complex interpretations possible. The relationship
of the digital technologies with the cultural field
has definitively stopped centering itself in science
fiction and a desire of future to content itself in
the present continuous and the everyday. At the
beginning of 2007, the center of art Laboral was
opened in Gijon and called a Center of Art and
Industrial Creation. It is a project of ambitious
proportions and totally destined to the productions
of the new technologies which is something that
would have been impossible to imagine not many
years ago. The introductory text of the 2007 festival,
The Next Web started by stating that the
everyday has won the match against the visionary.
Reality shows the way in which individual initiatives
have had more impact on social structure than
the grand promises of the latest technology. What
Internet has permitted is the appropriation of these
initiatives by a global community with a diversity
of differentiated agents making up its richness
and strength. Steve Johnson speculated then by
saying that Internet is no longer an international
library of linked pages, but an ecosystem of
information in which data circulates like nutrients
in a tropical forest. This collective intelligence of
which so much has been said is now who decides
what will be relevant in a true bottom-up structure.

An inconclusive conclusion
From dunes to tropical forest, from brain to
second skin, the metaphors that theorists and
artists have proposed over these years allow us
to perceive that the universe of information
technology, which for so long has been a synonym
of artificialness, has shown itself as natural and
permeable to the physical context as the social
systems non-computerized. Cognition and
communication, defining concepts that are
understood by a human cannot be studied away
from technology. The co-production of social
stratus, cognitive, communicative and
technological should be taken into account in a
way interrelated to the discovery of its
interdependency.
For twenty years the ArtFutura festivals have
marked an itinerary that has gone from virtual
reality to the social networks. Everything from the
so called web 2.0 to the massive phenomena
Facebook show the buildup of what was
announced two decades ago that technology is
as socially built as the social is technologically
sustained. From the very moment of the creation
of a technology there have been theorists that
have foreseen the death of the previous medium.
Cinema has not killed theater, nor has television
the cinema and, although forms of writing have
changed, it is also certain that the electronic book
has not killed the book, nor have social networks
destroyed interpersonal relationships. ArtFutura
has been correct in proposing ideas of the future
over the last two decades without having chosen
between the real and virtual. We now know that
it is not a question of an election o/o, but of a
combination that demands that the physical world
as much as the virtual mutually transform and
augment in reciprocity. In this way, in its pulsation
and intent to foresee the future, over two decades
the festival, ArtFutura, has enabled us to
understand the present of our reality which is
created in front of our eyes.