Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

7.6: MULTI MEDIA ART ASIA PACI FIC (MAAP99) MAAPING A VI RTUAL GEOGRAPHY N i ranjan Rajah Abstract With reference to the ancient art of picture recitation, this paper first argues that history provides the basis for a universal theory of convergence - one that will transcend the present technocentric view, one that is more meaningful from an Asian and an Asia-Pacific perspective. It then examines the technological hegemonies, virtual boundaries, transgeographical strategies and the dissemination of radical information on the Internet. It looks at sacred 'sites', site specific 'installations', regional networking and warns of an emerging techno-orientalism. This paper presents two new sites - Postscript at - <http://neptune.spaceports.com/-ps/ > an online forum for institutional critique in the visual arts, and E-Art Asean Online at <http://www.freespeech.org/eartasean/index.html >, an interactive resource for electronic art in Southeast Asia. It will consist of a comprehensive database of new media art including profiles of artists and samples of artworks, a journal dealing with the historical development of electronic art in Southeast Asia, theoretical and critical issues related to the use of electronic media in the visual arts as well as reviews and analysis of electronic artworks. The site will also host an Internet discussion arena or forum as well as index links to related websites world-wide and, eventually, a webart space. This site is being developed at the Faculty of Applied And Creative Arts, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. Towards A Un iversal Theory Of Convergence Beginning with the inspired realisation that the computer's facility for numerical manipulation could be applied to expedite what we have come to refer to as 'word processing', all categories of representation have ceded to the digital domain. The differences which arose from the physical particularities of the various materials of analog representation have been levelled in the reductive and integrative logic of the silicon chip, which has introduced an unprecedented degree of integration and interpenetration in all arenas of human endeavour. Thus far this 'convergence' has been understood in terms of technological advancement. However, an excavation of precedents in the 'history of multimedia', m ight yield the basis for a more universal construction of the 'new' representational paradigm . Technology aside, the various discipl ines of the arts are in the process of merging. In the visual arts, for instance, the traditional categories of 'painting' and 'sculpture' have been extended to incorporate text, performance, video and an expanded range of media and approaches . In contemporary installation art, the space and architecture of the gallery or other site as well as the social , political, historical, theoretical and critical contexts of the work are all treated as objects of the presentation, while in contemporary performance art, a branch of the visual arts, l ive bodily gestures are employed to take form and concept, emotion and critique directly to the audience, outside the confines of the gallery and beyond the prosc · en i um arch ! Looking further back to the Chinese Pien Wen or 'transformation text' , Victor Mair reveals the global development of the ancient 'multi-media' tradition of story-tell ing. To 'perform' a Pien Wen, the narrator makes use of a 'transformation picture' or a 'turn ing transformation' (picture scroll). Mair's thesis is that this tradition originated in Ind ia, spread to East and West Asia and the Middle East and then on into Europe. 1 It is in this integration of 'painting and performance' - wayang beber in Java, par in Gujarat, etoki in Japan, parda-dar in I ran and so on, that we should locate the origins of mu ltimedia. Indeed , anyone accustomed to enunciating their ideas with the aid of 'PowerPoint' projections, will empathise with the argument that the Asian picture recitation is the primordial form of multimedia. Perhaps, it is in a reconsideration of this ancient trad ition as well as of other analog precedents that we will find the insight and perspective from which to comp rehend the wider implications of dig ital multimedia. Hegemonies And Boundaries In Cyberspace Today, as a consequence of increased computing power and high speed computer networks, 'multimedia' representations can be conveyed with unprecedented flu idity. Indeed, the near instantaneous connectivity of computer-mediated communications seems to have eliminated geographical distance as all 'points' on the Internet exist in virtual proximity. Surely, this must signal the end of geographically rooted notions of community, culture , economics, politics and even art. Indeed, the Internet is a new kind of terrain, one that transcends geography - a 1 1 8