The Competence Center (mur.at) Due to the demand and need, a temporary, ever-changing competence center (CC) for net art was established additionally to the artistic and cultural network of mur.at. Competence also understood in the sense of distribution of software, ideas, and as a permanent internet-worklab. This center does not claim permanent housing, but available rooms should be strategically used according to possibilities and demand. The importance of computer media today and in the future does not have to be highlighted any more. The CC wants to convey qualification which enables users not only to make passive use of new media, but also creatively make internet by themselves, especially for the purpose of creating net-art. That means, that besides internet competence, internet performance should be established - a competence which not only teaches to handle the information flood, but encourages active participation in the net discourse. The internet-worklab wants to encourage the development of serious internet projects; it's not meant as a place only for experimenting. It's goal is to enable the conception and production of high-level internet art by the means of stable, network-capable software. Furthermore, it is necessary to make use of unconventional techniques and work with the structure and design of the internet as a medium (net art), and not only with its content (art in the net). The development of public interfaces is also a major factor to consider.
The ESC at the LAB The ESC was founded in 1993 by artists living and working in Graz and has its home at the LAB in Graz, Jakoministraße 16. The ESC is administrating the LAB as a venue for production and events, which is also open for external artists and institutions. The ESC is a cultural initiative which initiates and operates art/projects in the context of new cultural technologies, where cultural technologies means - contrary to the cultural technique of for example writing - complex systems which develop techniques (like writing) to interactive communication by the means of faster information transfer. The basis for such systems - again just like in writing - are artistic techniques. The ESC is a media-art institution - its artistic activities are determined by understanding art as being a part of the corporate and social reality; the important media aspect derives from the designation of this reality by new cultural technologies (so-called new media). This attempt bases on the experience of artistic strategies and strategies of communicating art more and more being developed under equal circumstances. Programmatic focuses of the ESC as a cultural and artistic initiative are aesthetical, sociopolitical, and scientific implications of the technological determinants of our culture, with focus on feministic practice and theory and their artistic analogies. Facing new developments, the ESC prefers the new, unexperienced, and insecure, taking part of the risk.
The IEM - Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics
The challenges of the Institute of Electronic Music and Acousticsare are located in the areas of research and development, in the artistic production and education
- Research and development: The institute deals with research and development in the area of creation, processing and reproduction of sound in acoustics and music. The institute is editor of the publication series Contributions to Electronic Music.
- Education: The basic aim is to bring closer the possibilities and techniques of computer music to the students, and to enable them to work with a computer-music system.
- Artistic production: For the realization of electroacoustic compositions, a production studio has been established at IEM. Besides several harddisc-recording systems and computers for the creation and processing of sound, the studio equipment includes hard- and software for video processing. For concerts, the IEM CUBE has been set up - a concert room with 120 m^2 and a heigth of 4,5 m, which is equipped with a 50-channel PA with more than 80 speakers. The IEM CUBE is not only a multifunctional concert- and recording-room, but also a sonic theater, for which it is possible to compose just like for a musical instrument.
- Library: In the library of the IEM, literature about musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, studio technology, electronic music, computer music, new media, aesthetics, digital signal processing can be found as well as recordings of about 1200 pieces of electronic music and computer music. Since 1998, the Institute is the Austrian affiliate institution of the International Archive of Electroacoustic Music (IDEAMA)
- Services: The IEM services contain events, general information about the IEM, online studio reservation, data about the library content, and a website plus mailing list concerning Pure Data.
The medien.KUNSTLABOR (MKL; Media Art Lab)
The medien.KUNSTLABOR is located in the building of the Kunsthaus Graz. Its aim is artistic research and development in the areas of media and net art. Art under the influence of contemporary media, mainly in the area of net art in a technical and culture-theoretical context: Developing the artistic and techno-social experiments of the late 20th century, the medien.KUNSTLABOR provides a permanent laboratory situation for interdisciplinary and process-orientated corporation. Basic research in practice and theory, evaluation of methods and tools, and the provided infrastructure shall contribute to the creation of visionary and future-building projects. A first step has been realized with a locker system which provides free broadband internet access for people working in the area of information technology. Technical and economic ....... have been a major hurdle in the development of artistic experiments, which particularly demand bandwidth and high-level server resources. The medien.KUNSTLABOR with its locker system aims at making it possible to work in a provider-free information world. The locker system provides space for 60 servers with a guaranteed bandwidth of 2 Mbps. The technical service and phsyical access i spossible during the regular opening times of the Kunsthaus Graz. The structure of the locker system cannot be described through the well-known, worn-out metaphers of internet (art) portals and curatoric selection processes. Keeping in mind the internet communities, a non-discriminating access for a broad spectrum of projects is provided. Besides this locker system for servers, the clients of the medien.KUNSTLABOR are informed about recent developments in this area of arts through different events (exhibitions, lectures).
mur.at
The net-art platform mur.at exists since 1998 as a community of artistic initiatives and artists from Graz, for the purpose of building up an electronic network. mur.at enables the cross-linking of different arttistic and cultural initiatives in one virtual room. Like the university networks for scientific purposes, mur.at builds up an infrastructure for the arts. mur.at is a virtual net-sculpture, distributed over 14 physical network knots and over 150 members. The members of mur.at are server administrators themselves - so a widely spun net is developed. There's also a competence center for net art, encoraging the treatment of new media and technologies. mur.at not only makes possible new net-art projects, but also allows the creation of a community of artists and recipients. mur.at's goals are the net expansion through adding new network knots, encouraging art in electronic networks, documentation and archiving of art in electronic networks, community-building in the area of net art, development of new technologies for the arts, realization of the austrian cultural backbone, cross-linking all around Austria, public access, building of public interfaces