PIOTR

ZAWOJSKI

HYBRID ART –
A NEW CATEGORY
OF CYBERART
In 2014, after seven editions of the Golden Nica prize in the category of Hybrid Art
at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the competition organisers did not award
prizes in this field. The situation did not result from a lack of artistic proposals, but
rather from general changes in the organisation of the festival, and, more specif-
ically, in its most important part, namely the Prix Ars Electronica. The increasing
number of applications for the competition (in 2013 they exceeded 4000) made
the organisers revise the rules governing the organisation of the competition. It was
decided that the categories of Hybrid Art and Interactive Art, and Digital Music &
Sound Art and Digital Communities will be held alternately every two years, while
the Computer Animation/Film/F/X u19 CREATE YOUR WORLD and [the next Idea]
voestalpine Art and Technology Grant categories will continue to be staged every
year. This year a new category was also established — Visionary Pioneers of Media
Art — which is to be a special distinction granted to artists, or, more broadly, to
eminent representatives of the media world, whose pioneering achievements were
fundamental for media art. In this case, nominations can be submitted by all Gold-
en Nica winners since 1987. It is worth mentioning that this year’s winner was Roy
Ascott, and candidates leading in voting included, inter alia, Krzysztof Wodiczko,
Alvin Lucier, Jim Campbell, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Bill Viola, Stelarc, Peter Weibel,
Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, and Éliane Radigue and Zbigniew Rybczyński.
This moment seems to be a good opportunity to take stock of the previous editions

Piotr Zawojski
and to try to reconstruct the theoretical assumptions followed by the organisers
while proclaiming the new cyberart category. I would especially like to trace the
formation of thinking about the features which distinguish hybrid art from the phe-
nomena of contemporary (new) media art, and to see if the works classified in this
category are linked by more than a mere arbitrary gesture of the jury members
and — earlier — of the artists who submitted their works to the competition, to de-
termine whether it is possible to establish and formulate a general and more spe-
cific framework which would enable the phenomenon to be defined. In the context
of such phenomena of new media art as interactive art, net art, generative art,
bio art, sound art, telematic art, virtual art, robotic art, and computer animation
— whose boundaries and distinctive features are often also difficult to establish
— hybrid art even increases the complications. Although the previously mentioned
disciplines can be more precisely and clearly defined, as they use a unique medium
(sound in sound art or moving digital images in computer animation), in most of
these cases one could also talk about a higher or lower level of (material, media, or
aesthetic) “impurity” which is typical of hybrid art.
Therefore, before I proceed to a more detailed presentation of selected exam-
ples representing this new discipline of media art, I would like to reflect upon the
possibilities of defining it and locating it in the context of other artistic disciplines
which function within various artistic strategies, and which are a manifestation of
contemporary cyberculture. The need to distinguish this new category can be jus-
tified in at least two different ways. Firstly, attention should be paid to the general

113
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

trends of contemporary culture that can be described as a turn towards “impure”

genres, which are a derivative of such strategies of cultural creativity as multimedi-
alism, intermedialism, hypermedialism, transmedialism, but also as remix, reenact-
ment, mixed and augmented reality, and convergence. Secondly, the need refers to
the procedures of classifying new media art works into specific categories within the
Prix Ars Electronica — in recent years an increasing number of works and realisa-
tions were found difficult to classify into any categories proposed by the organisers
of the festival in Linz. I am not going to absolutise the choices of the organisers or
jury members they invited (every year a committee assessing and qualifying sub-
mitted works is comprised of five experts), yet their decisions may be treated as
a kind of practical attempt to establish the boundaries of the hybrid art field. I re-
call some names of the jury members, acknowledged new media practitioners and
theoreticians (in most cases, however, they are artists who are also concerned with
theoretical reflection): Jens Hauser (the only permanent member of the jury), Scott
deLahunta, Golan Levin, Michael Naimark, Sonia Cillari, Casey Reas, Dietmar Offen-
huber, Eduardo Kac and Oron Catts.
The decision to establish this new category was a kind of proposal to de-
scriptively grasp a certain number of works created over many years because — un-
like the various new media art forms whose birth can be linked to the advent of new
tools and media of artistic creation, such as video art (if we consider it a new media
Piotr Zawojski

art), net art or digital photography — hybrid works use various media forms, and
the essence of hybrid art is crossbreeding derived from biological processes and
phenomena, in the spirit of scientific and technological experimentation. Hybrid art
is therefore a sui generis representative of cyberart; with cyberart being an expres-
sion of cyberculture, which is the result of a syntopia of art, science and technology1.
It should be added that it would be possible to invoke a few other terms proposed in
the past to collectively define those artistic activities which result from close collab-
oration with scientists (and which make use of new technologies and media), such
as “technoscience art”2, but which, for various, reasons did not become popular. In-
terestingly, Stephen Wilson in his monumental work on “information arts”3 (which is
almost a thousand pages long) uses the notion of hybrid, hybridisation or hybridity
only incidentally — for example when he refers to kinetic or robotic art, to bionics, and
to a few specific works (by George Gessert, Edward Steichen, Hubert Duprat, Lou-
is-Philippe Demers, Bill Vorn or Eduardo Kac; Jaron Lanier is treated by Wilson as
“an exemplification of an artist and scientist hybrid”) — but, generally, this concept is
not particularly important in his presentation of phenomena emerging at the inter-
section of art, science and technology. Let us recall the “announcement” concerning

1
  See Piotr Zawojski, Cyberkultura. Syntopia sztuki, nauki i technologii, Poltex, Warsaw 2010.
2
  The term was introduced by Frank Popper in 1987. For more on this topic see: Piotr Zawojski, Sztuka
obrazu i obrazowania w epoce nowych mediów, Oficyna Naukowa, Warsaw 2012, pp. 228-230.
3
  See Stephen Wilson, Information Arts. Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press,
Cambridge-Massachusetts 2002.

114
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

the proclamation of the new category of art, which was published on the website of
the organisers of the competition in Linz, since it was the first attempt to establish
the institutional framework for artists submitting their projects, but it was also a kind
of manifesto which took experience into account, both in terms of the choice of the
submitted works and the attempts at their conceptualisation and assessment with
regard to a certain homogeneity (in heterogeneity) stemming from a specific nature
which could be reduced to a formula — “hybrid works/projects/realisations”. The or-
ganisers defined the essence of activities within hybrid art in the following way:

The Hybrid Art category is dedicated specifically to today’s hybrid and transdisciplinary
projects and approaches to media art. Primary emphasis is on the process of fusing dif-
ferent media and genres into new forms of artistic expression as well as the act of tran-
scending the boundaries between art and research, art and social/political activism, art
and pop culture. Jury members will be looking very closely at how dynamically the sub-
mitted work defies classification in a single one of the Prix Ars Electronica categories of
long standing.4

This is, of course, a very general outline of the idea of distinguishing a new cat-
egory of new media art addressed primarily to artists submitting their works to the
PAE competition, yet, at the same time, it is a certain indicator concerning the ques-
tion of whether and how it would be possible to distinguish the notion of hybrid art
as a new area of activities of the artists who work within the widely understood field

Piotr Zawojski
of new media art.
The presentation of particular forms of creative activity provides specification of
the general invitation addressed to new media artists, although the often problematic
names of the forms induce us to treat them as very initial propositions, not only in
terms of terminology but also in terms of the nomenclature applied in the theoretical
discourse on new media art questions, which is included here to a very limited
extent. The detailed list formulated by the competition organisers includes the following
forms of works:
– autonomous installations and artworks
– autonomous sculptures
– performance and stageprojects
– media architectures
– media based interventions in public spaces
– mechatronics, kinetics, robotics
– location based and geospatial storytelling
– multi-user environments
– annotation software tools
– artificial life
– transgenic art
– software art and generative art.

  Hybrid Art, www.aec.at/prix/en/kategorien/hybrid-art, (accessed 25 November 2012).

4

115
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

If we wanted to apply these very general guidelines to the plurality of activi-

ties of contemporary media artists working at the intersection of art, science and
technology, we could paradoxically copy the chapter titles of the book by Wilson,
who had generally categorized artists’ activities in the context of the latest scien-
tific research and the more and more advanced technologies. The encyclopaedic
dimension of his classification on the one hand allows for a wide typologisation of
media art, yet, on the other hand, as was mentioned before, arbitrarily distances
itself from the issue of hybridity, which, I believe, is a phenomenon underestimated
by Wilson, and which characterises the specificity of not only new media art but of
technoculture as well. The subsequent parts of his book revolve around biology (mi-
crobiology, animals and plants, ecology, medicine and the body), physics (non-linear
systems, nanotechnology, geology, astronomy, space science, GPS and cosmology),
algorithms (mathematics, fractals, genetic art and artificial life), kinetics, robotics
and sound installations, telecommunication, digital information systems and com-
puter tools. Most of these issues to a greater or lesser extent raise the matters of
hybrids, hybridisation and hybridity, which may lead to the conclusion that various
aspects of the functioning of cyberart in technoculture are inherently included in
the fields of references marked by cultural phenomena which are multi-dimensional
and ambiguous in terms of genre or type and emerge on the basis of hybrid reality.
The activities of new media artists are, in fact, a special case of the broader pro-
Piotr Zawojski

cesses which found cyberculture as a hybrid phenomenon par excellence.

A variety of activities, practices, strategies and tactics within new media art in
the context of the phenomenon of hybridity, which are discussed here, leads to the
conclusion that the typologisation of hybrid art can be applied to many areas of con-
temporary activities which use not only different media but also various research and
scientific explorations, and a variety of activities in the scope of design and application
of new technologies, including information technologies in particular. Let us empha-
sise once again that even if hybrid art is not a notion which precisely designates a set
of specific, strictly determined phenomena of new media art, it nevertheless seems to
be a helpful term for distinguishing such activities, works, realisations and artefacts in
the field of new media art which are distinct from other categories of new media art. It
needs to be added that the particular achievements and artists winning awards with-
in this category in the last seven editions of the Prix Ars Electronic, since the hybrid art
category was introduced, demonstrate that it is precisely in this area that we can find
works which are meaningful and significant from the point of view of the dynamics of
development of the latest new media art. Over the seven-year period and from the
perspective of dozens of works — which were appreciated by the jury members, as ev-
ery year besides Golden Nica two other main prizes are awarded and a dozen works
are given the opportunity to be presented at the festival, which comes to a total of
over a hundred realisations — it may be concluded that hybrid art is a category which
somehow gathers the works which cannot be classified as “traditional” activities of
new media artists, such as interactive practices, animation/film/special effects, dig-

116
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

ital music/sound art or internet projects. The category includes a set of works which
differ in almost every aspect, and which are completely heterogeneous and unique,
and yet, at the same time, similar to each other. This similarity stems exactly from their
uniqueness and the tendency to somehow create the world (of art) from scratch, to
search for objects which are completely new and had been previously absent from
art (let us name the material effects of artistic activities in this conventional manner),
events and processes which valorise the aesthetic contexts of perceiving various phe-
nomena, often seemingly distant from the world of previously known and recognised
art. A multitude of different inspirations and borrowings, explorations in areas which
have not been the domain of artists so far, and openness to impulses from the world
of science and technology, are probably the distinctive features of artists creating hy-
brid works. It would be difficult, however, to state that the authors were intentionally
creating works which would later be classified as hybrid works. A work is classified as
an example of hybrid art rather ex post than ex ante. Therefore, there is no way to talk
about any normative guidelines applicable to this type of artistic work — at most it is
possible to point to a very wide range of references and inspirations, and a conscious
integrative approach encompassing various media, materials, creative strategies,
techniques and technologies, and creative procedures. Even some cursory research
and characterisation of the hybrid art works presented in recent years enables an ini-
tial typologisation of the activities of artists representing this field of artistic creation.

Piotr Zawojski
The fields of artistic interests include, inter alia:
– genetics, bioengineering, stem cells, proteomics
– the biological dimension of living systems: microorganisms, plants, animals, ecology
– human biology: the body, bionics, body manipulation, brain and body pro-
cesses, body imaging, medical problems
– physical sciences: particle physics, nuclear energy, geology, physics, chemis-
try, astronomy, space science, nanotechnology, materials science
– kinetics, electronics, robotics: physical computing, or constructing interac-
tive physical systems that use hardware and software which can respond to
the analogue world, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp, in other words), or the
ubiquity of computer tools being present and accessible everywhere and for
everyone in the space sensitive to the presence of the user (in other words:
processing without borders), mixed reality
– alternative interfaces: motion, gesture, touch, facial expression, speech,
wearable computing, 3D sound, and virtual reality
– code: algorithms, software art, genetic art, A-life, artificial intelligence
– information systems: databases, surveillance, RFID/barcodes, information
visualisation
– telecommunications: telephone, radio, telepresence, web art, locative media,
mobile phones5.

  See Hybrid Art, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_arts (accessed 28 November 2014).

5

117
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

The jury members of the first edition of the hybrid art competition in 2007 re-
called that the Ars Electronica Festival organisers’ interest in hybridity was reflected
in the 2005 edition, whose motto was Hybrid – Living in Paradox. In the introduction
to the festival catalogue, the artistic directors of the festival — Gerfried Stocker and
Christine Schöpf — wrote that “the hybrid is the signature of our age”6. At the same
time they argued that the dilution of the interactive art category7, which was criti-
cised by many theorists and participants of the festival, forced them to rethink the
understanding of what interactive art was. This resulted in some sort of return to
the concept of interactive activities understood as real-time practices relating to di-
rect interaction between users and the work, and to a re-evaluation of the concept
of interface. It should be recalled that in 2004 the competition jury suggested “an
expanded definition of interactivity” which included three elements, encapsulated
in the following statements: mediation by means of a computer is not required, the
categories of “real time” and direct interaction of the user of interactive work are
actually irrelevant, and a kind of passive interaction is possible8.
In 2007, over 450 submitted projects became the basis for a critical discus-
sion on the eligibility criteria for the competition works, and the basis for reflection
upon the way the artists themselves understood the “hybridity” of their works. In
numerous projects the jury members noticed a trend which they defined “as data
translation art”9. The trend was visible in many works that were a form of artis-
Piotr Zawojski

tic processing of data derived from various sources in order to create works which
would be heterogeneous in terms of media, yet conceptionally and constructionally
coherent. What were thus the dominant trends in the first contest? The jury mem-
bers identified a significant number of works referring to mechatronics (as well as to
animatronics), which can be found in projects as diverse as Cloaca (Wim Delvoye)
and Robotic Chair (Raffaello d’Andrea, Max Dean, Matt Donovan). In 2006 this lat-
ter work received an honorary mention within the category of interactive art. This
is a very good example of the way in which, only a year earlier, such valuable and
innovative works were placed in the previously established categories, despite their
definitely problematic “genre” affiliation.
A different group of works was constituted by realisations which appealed to
other senses than the two basic senses of sight and hearing, and, therefore, entered
the area beyond the audiovisual experience of recipients by engaging the senses of
smell or touch. These multisensory stimulants of the recipients’ experience seem to
be an important direction of the artistic explorations of authors who apply various

6
  Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, Hybrid - Living in Paradox [in:] Hybridity – Living in Paradox,
eds. G. Stocker and Ch. Schöpf, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfidern-Ruit 2005, p. 10.
7
  See Erkki Huhtamo, Trouble at the Interface 2.0, www.neme.org/591/trouble-at-the-interface-2
(accessed 21 November 2014).
8
  For more on this topic in my other text. See: Piotr Zawojski, Cyberkultura..., pp. 150-190.
9
  Scott deLahunta, Jens Hauser, Golan Levin, Sandrine von Klot, Elanie Ng, Hybridity – The Sig-
nature of our Age [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. Cyberarts 2007, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf,
G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2007, p. 102.

118
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

media in order to broaden the spectrum of recipients’ experience. At the same time,
such strategies are characteristic of activities which consciously refer to transgress-
ing the boundaries within new media art and which, as a result, find expression in
hybrid works.
Another significant group of works submitted to the competition were the works
located in the area of performance practices, understood in a variety of ways. It
needs to be added that defining certain actions as “performance” is nowadays of-
ten highly problematic, sometimes the word is used as a cliché or as a convenient
— although not very precise — concept classifying certain artistic events which, re-
ferring to performance strategies, have little in common with traditionally defined
performance10. However, the most important activities of the artists identified with
the hybrid art category is the group of works which encompasses the transgression
of the boundaries between art and science, in the context of the use of new technol-
ogies. In the words of the jury members: “If we can make one generalisation about
the new Hybrid Art category, it is a shift in the interests of new media artists, beyond
the information technologies of the networked computer, and towards materials
technologies — biological, chemical, mechanical, and (undoubtedly soon) nanotech-
nological”11.
Operational activities stretched between animate and inanimate systems, and
bio-techno-logical connections developed in various contexts, constitute anoth-

Piotr Zawojski
er field of activity of the artists who consciously think about creating hybrid works.
When concluding their remarks on defining hybrid art, the jury members of the first
edition of the competition stated that the winning artworks “draw from the origi-
nal etymological meaning of the term «hybrid», while simultaneously producing new
cultural experiences and ontological understandings through rematerialisation, de-
image-ing, performativity and hybrid intermediality”.12 The list of works which won
awards in 2007, which includes artists who create in very diverse areas of (new)
media art, and more than that, may constitute a kind of a harbinger of the future
choices of jury members, and also of the way in which artists and the recent media
art observers understand what hybrid art is and what it might be in the future.
It is then worth recalling some of the award-winning works. Their diversity, the
wide range of issues they addressed, the variety of media used by the artists, and
the aspect of transgressing all the boundaries of genre and type in the scope of
artistic activities, as well as multi-and interdisciplinarity in the approach to issues of
art, science and technology — in a way determined the perspectives for the future.
The artists’ unique openness and declared transdisciplinarity was already a good
omen for future years at the very moment of announcing this new category of cy-
berart. And this was the case because the subsequent editions of the competition

10
  I mean performance as an artistic situation in which the performer’s body is both the object and
subject of a particular activity in real time in front of the audience.
11
  Scott deLahunta, Jens Hauser, Golan Levin, Sandrine von Klot, Elanie Ng, Hybridity..., p. 105.
12
  Ibidem.

119
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

became a field for artists working at the intersection of multiple media and scientific
disciplines, but also for those engaged in various explorations in the field of new
technologies. The 2007 Golden Nica was awarded to The Art and Science Collabo-
rative Research Laboratory SymbioticA from the University of Western Australia in
Perth. SymbioticA was established in 2000 by a biologist, Miranda Grounds, a neu-
roscientist, Stuart Bunt (the scientific director), and Oron Catts (the artistic director).
The latter, together with Ionat Zurr, created an art collective — Tissue Culture
and Art Project (TC&A) — functioning in the framework of the research and artistic
residence in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of West-
ern Australia since 1996. TC&A is one of the most renowned representatives of bio
art, becoming famous for such realisations as Pig Wings (2000-2001), Semi-Living
Worry Dolls (2000), Semi-Living Steak (2000), Victimless Leather (2004), Extra Ear
- ¼ Scale (2003) in collaboration with Stelarc, and NoArk (2007-2008). In 2009,
Catts was recognised by “Icon Magazine” (United Kingdom) as one of the 20 top de-
signers “making the future and transforming the way we work”. On the TC&A website
one may read a very short manifesto, which is worth quoting:

The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) was set to explore the use of tissue technologies
as a medium for artistic expression. We are investigating our relationships with the differ-
ent gradients of life through the construction/growth of a new class of object/being – that
Piotr Zawojski

of the Semi-Living. These are parts of complex organisms which are sustained alive out-
side of the body and coerced to grow in predetermined shapes. These evocative objects
are a tangible example that brings into question deep rooted perceptions of life and iden-
tity, concept of self, and the position of the human in regard to other living beings and the
environment. We are interested in the new discourses and new ethics/epistemologies that
surround issueos f partial life and the contestable future scenarios they are offering us.13

Some contemporary cyberculture observers are likely to argue that the artistic and
scientific interests of the SymbioticA laboratory is closely connected with bio-art,
therefore locating the SymbioticA artists and scientists’ activities in the context
of hybrid art is a mere classificatory measure which does not add any relevant in-
formation for determining the nature of their work. It might also be worth searching
for new categories in the artists and scientists’ innovative activities which could or-
ganise the ever-changing landscape of new media art, and — in this case — of the
biomedia environment. Since its beginnings, SymbioticA has implemented research
and scientific activities, and critically reflected upon science, especially biology. It
was the first research facility to enable artists to cooperate with scientists not only in
the scope of biological arts or, in broader terms, moistmedia art (Roy Ascott’s term)
or wet biology art, but also in the scope of neuroscience, plant biology, anatomy,
tissue engineering, physics, bioengineering, mycology, anthropology and molecular
biology. Its founders emphasised that what they did was also a kind of “philosophy in

  See The Tissue Culture & Art Project, www.tcaproject.org/about/ (accessed 7 December 2014).
13

120
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

action” because the area of research practice was closely connected with theoreti-
cal reflection, for example in terms of bioethics. In this way, SymbioticA has become
a sort of reference point and model for many worldwide institutions which emerged
later, such as Ectopia (Experimental Art Laboratory) in Lisbon, or the BioArts Initia-
tive at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy (United States). The laboratory also
became an important symbol of the shifts within new media art, departing from
the plug-and-play strategy towards a fascination with widely understood computer
technologies treated as a primary workshop of new media artists and annexation of
new spaces, forms and materials not necessarily related to information and digital
technologies.
Another work which received distinction from the jury members and which they
described as “both technically and conceptually, a masterpiece of hybrid art on all
levels”14 is the organo-kinetic installation Cloaca by Wim Delvoye. It is also a “gener-
ative” work, in a sense (in a perverse sense of the word which is not connected with
the contemporary understanding of, for example, generative art) because it gen-
erates the production of human excrement. It is a spectacularly huge machine-hu-
man hybrid that is a specific copy of the human digestive system, whose aim is the
production of excrement. However, to achieve the aim, the hybrid must be fed twice
a day – as a result Cloaca becomes a “shitting machine”, at the same time being
a great sculpture, a posthuman icon. The technologically copied human digestive

Piotr Zawojski
system (mouth - stomach - intestines - anus) here takes a cyborg or machine form,
and it also becomes a laboratory where life is simulated. Yet, the construction itself
does not serve any purpose, it creates a kind of closed, automated circulation and
thereby its “operating philosophy” starts to resemble that of a modern corporation,
but it also functions like a production line. This simplified description indicates only
a few elements related to the work of Wim Delvoye, which has been developing since
the mid-1990s. Its subsequent versions also show, in a metaphorical manner, the
rules governing the art market in which the Belgian artist is forced to produce new
“personal” and “unique” works. In this remarkable work the complex and multifac-
eted nature of hybrid art, which is present everywhere, from the technical level to
conceptual assumptions, is clearly visible. Biological, chemical, technological, kinetic
and visual, as well as olfactory elements, were integrated here in a way which elicits
extraordinary sensations and emotions.
Biological Habitat: Breeding Space Technology, Made in Space by Zbigniew Ok-
siuta must impress with its scale and the manner of approaching its subject. At the
same time, the artist himself draws attention to an important feature of hybrid art:

Hybrid by definition means cross-breeding between different species of animals or plants,

but in cultural terms we also talk about the hybridity of phenomena in the sense of mixing
and interdisciplinary links. My research would be impossible without transgressing those
boundaries: I am not a scientist but I cooperate with scientists, I studied architecture and

  Ibidem, p. 107.
14

121
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

I take part in exhibitions as an artist. I think that the most important thing for my work is
that I have actually never decided who I am: I am in between. It is a very difficult but at the
same time good position.15

This significant statement, which can be applicable to the whole of hybrid art
as “being in between”, is a special feature of the artists and works presented in this
essay. It is not about the beauty or imaging, as Oksiuta adds, but about cognition,
about art as an epistemological practice which is performed at the level of research
experiments carried out in laboratories in collaboration with scientists representing
various branches of knowledge. In his works Oksiuta refers to the issues connected
with the emergence of new forms of future biological life, both in the biosphere and
in space. The organic forms he creates take the form of sculptures or perhaps rath-
er unique objects, as in the case of polymeric habitats (Spatium Gelatum), which
are frozen liquid. Using biological polymers such as gelatine or agar (Lane Kluski
Technology, or Poached Dumpling Technology, or liquid formwork technology, i.e.
creating a polymer mass floating under water) he creates amorphous, yet at the
same time, architectural forms in the aquatic environment. In the catalogue the art-
ist himself draws attention to two fields which constitute his experimental area: the
microcosm (the world of molecules, genes and chromosomes) and the macrocosm
(the space of oceans, planets and stars). “The project Made in the Biosphere & Made
Piotr Zawojski

in Space envisages the use of DNA as a universal code of the cosmos and foresees
the use of DNA strains embedded in biological reactors that would autonomously
develop into new forms of life in the biosphere and in outer space. These technolo-
gies are based on the following principles:
• The creation of spatial forms in the state of weightlessness – isopycnic sys-
tems16.
• The use of biological polymers as construction material – spatium gelatum.
• The generation of forms as a pneu-biological containment.17
• The creation of containment on a different scale: of a cell, a pill, a fruit, a shel-
ter, a universe.

15
  Monika Bakke, Życie poza statkiem kosmicznym Ziemia. Monika Bakke’s interview with Zbigniew
Oksiuta, www.oksiuta.de/PDFTexte/Obieg.pdf (accessed 3 December 2014).
16
  “If we pour one liquid into another, they mix (in case the liquids are dissolved in each other) and
then a homogenous solution comes into being. If the liquids are not soluble, they will be subjected
to the force of gravity: the heavier liquid with more density (density - the ratio of weight to volume)
will fall to the bottom and the lighter will raise to the top, as in the example of water and oil or water
and paraffin. In physics an interesting state occurs when both liquids have the same density. The
state is called isopycnic (from Greek: iso - equal, the same; pykne - density) or neutral buoyancy”.
Zbigniew Oksiuta, Spatium Gelatum. „Architektura & Biznes” 2004, no 1, pp. 58-59.
17
  Pneu is, as Oksiuta explains, “a pneumatic structure” which came into being as a result of the
“poached dumplings” technology using biological polymers of plant (agar) and animal (gelatine)
origin as building materials for architectonic forms consciously referring to utopian ideas but also
to very specific biological research focused around the question related to the growth of organ-
isms, “with a particular emphasis on studying a living cell as an ideal habitat”. Zbigniew Oksiuta,
Spatium…, p. 60.

122
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

• Breeding spaces as bioreactors for the genetic development of new life in the
biosphere”18.
Zbigniew Oksiuta’s visionary concepts and projects may be surprising but, at the
same time, they are an excellent example of activities which transgress any bound-
aries between artistic and scientific projects. They are very expressive realisations of
the SciArt (Science + Art) trend which constitutes a significant part of hybrid activities.
The idea of a chamber as future biological architecture is one of the latest projects
which, while being a form of speculation devoted to, inter alia, autopoietic systems,
again surprises with its audacity and the attempt to look far into the future. The vision
of a breakdown of global order and building a dwelling place, a personal biosphere for
a single “chamber-dweller” must arouse controversy, but it is also puzzling.

My project of a personal chamber - Oksiuta writes - presents a vision of biological ar-

chitecture. This chamber is a new biosphere, a biological reactor fulfilling the function of
a home, a three-dimensional spherical space, a self-sufficient household. The interior of
the chamber is a place for living and farming, and its film walls are a substitute for soil,
allowing a new form of breeding.19

Another project recognised by the jury in 2007 is Camera Lucida: Sonochemical

Observatory by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, which I wrote about in detail
elsewhere20. The project, carried out for several years, was created in cooperation

Piotr Zawojski
with research laboratories in Germany, Japan, Russia and Belgium, and its primary
aim was to use the phenomenon of sonoluminescence (cold light) which is a physical
process of emitting light waves at the time of implosion of gas bubbles propagated in
liquid under the influence of sound pressure (this phenomenon is known as acoustic
cavitation). This form of sound imaging is not about the visualisation of sound, creat-
ing its visual transposition, but about the possibility of seeing sound in its pure form.
Flashes of light produced as a result of generating sound processes (ultrasound, to be
more precise) can be observed by viewers in particular conditions in a “light chamber”.
Visitors need to adapt to see the performance, during which they can see the sound
in a tangible way, thus they wait for a long time in complete darkness before it begins.
Its image, or visibility, is dependent on the sound material “entered” into the chamber,
therefore it takes on forms differing from one another in a subtle way, which can be
discerned in the records presented on a DVD published in 2007.
This work is a notable example of the intermedia and transmedia strategies
which are another characteristic of hybrid art. Transcending not only the boundaries
which have until recently separated the work of artists from the work of scientists,

18
  Zbigniew Oksiuta, Biological Habitat: Breeding Space Technology, Made in Space [in:] Prix Ars
Electronica. Cyber Arts 2007, p. 123.
19
  Zbigniew Oksiuta, Ja, komornik. [in:] Bio-techno-logiczny świat. Bio art oraz sztuka technonaukowa
w czasach posthumanizmu i transhumanizmu, ed. P. Zawojski, Klub 13 Muz. Szczecin 2014, p. 266.
20
  See Piotr Zawojski, Obrazy sonoluminescencyjne. “Camera Lucida” Eveliny Domnitch i Dmitrija
Gelfanda [in:] Piotr Zawojski, Sztuka obrazu..., pp. 222-251.

123
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

but also demonstrating a completely new attitude to media art or, in other words,
searching for completely new media which rely on chemical or physical materials
(or immaterials) is the domain of hybrid art whose representatives par excellence
are Domnitch and Gelfand. Let us just add that in subsequent years each of their
new projects (and in their case this is a well-founded wording as each experiment is
actually an example of a work in progress, constantly being perfected and recom-
posed) won the appreciation of the Ars Electronica jury members. In 2009, the art-
ists presented Sonolevitation, and in 2011 - Mucilaginous Omniverse, further works
in the area of technoscience art, which became a defining characteristic of this duo
of artists very consciously working at the intersection of art and techno(science).
Masaki Fujihata is an artist who can be considered a classic of the new me-
dia art. In his works he employs diverse poetics and media. This time he present-
ed a work exploring issues related to augmented reality. The work, using specially
designed glasses, in a way erases the consciousness of using them, which is one of
the basic problems of the various systems of augmented reality. Unreflective Mirror
is an extended version of a regular mirror, using a virtual reality system based on
a 3D tracking system. The “unreflective mirror” convincingly presents two identical
worlds: in one of them the viewer is present, and in the other the viewer’s presence
is erased. This work is a reference to earlier interactive projects by Fujihata, but it
also poses new questions about the possibility of confirming (or not) one’s presence.
Piotr Zawojski

Being tracked by a system which is able to make us disappear from view is an ex-
traordinary situation. We thus see that we have ceased to be present, in a sense we
have ceased to exist, as the mirror which is supposed to confirm our existence rather
testifies to our non-existence. Paradoxically, this finds confirmation on the monitor,
which is part of the extra furnishing of the room in which the perverse work is being
done. Thus it is yet another hybrid art strategy, this time using virtual reality to erase
our corporeality, which is lost in this odd mirror. And it is only the monitor reflected in
the mirror, found on the wall opposite, that confirms that we have not disappeared
completely, that we have not been lost in virtual reality. This is yet another presenta-
tion of thinking about the hybrid nature of both the art of media and the possibilities
of questioning the simple way of confirming our existence thanks to media technol-
ogies, in order to question taking it for granted.
Julien Maire is the creator of an unusual project (which can be classified as
a live cinema work) entitled Demi-pas (2002), presented, among others, during
the Future Cinema exhibition in 2003, which took place in the Zentrum für Kunst
und Medientechologie in Karlsruhe and which also received the Ars Electronica
award (in 2004). Timothy Druckrey wrote that: “Demi-pas transforms the image
machine into a time machine by evoking both mechanical and physical move-
ments”21. This relatively short “film”, lasting about 30 minutes, about one day in

  Timothy Druckrey, Julien Maire. „Demi-Pas” [in:] Future Cinema. The Cinematic Imaginary after
21

Film, eds. J. Shaw, P. Weibel, ZKM Karlsruhe, MIT Press, Cambridge-London 2003, p. 447.

124
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

the life of a man, is presented in the form of a performance during which Maire
brings real objects and photographic material (slides) into a (computer-assisted)
projector and subjects them to live manipulation, thus producing a sort of live-cre-
ated narrative. Pre-cinematographic practices are associated with the Diorama
technique, showing also animation activities — activities which rely on the idea of
the “reverse camera”. I mention this project as the work Exploding Camera pre-
sented by Julien Maire in 2007 is, in some sense, a continuation of the explorations
related to audiovisual performance in which the camera/projector are not only
a tool to create images but also become a very important element of the work. All
the more since the work refers to a historical event. On September 9th, 2001 the
most popular of Afghan guerrilla commanders and the last great enemy of the
Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Ahmad Szah Massud, with whom Arabs had been seeking
audience for weeks, died in a suicide bombing. The assassination was planned in
such a way that two suicide bombers pretending to be journalists brought a cam-
era for the interview and the camera exploded killing Massud. The story has been
all but forgotten as what happened two days later in New York made this event
fall into oblivion. Maire decided to recall it in a special way - with the use of video
cameras connected to an electronic projector, emitting light and causing some
sort of light explosions. The camera records the image in real time, projects it onto
the screen and, simultaneously, the spectators become witnesses of a live audio-

Piotr Zawojski
visual performance. This time, however, there is no artist behind the performance,
but rather a designed system which works automatically. This reconstructed video
system reinterprets historical events by creating some sort of a film studio whose
operation can be observed by the spectators. Video images created live, in an
endless loop of image production, document (but also reinterpret and remix) the
film material, which is only a starting point for a constantly changing film produced
and projected alive. In a unique way, the installation hybridises various forms of
audiovisual activities, creates a completely new type of moving image art, outside
the traditionally understood categories of film, video and cinema.
It is worth recalling yet another project by artists who received a distinction not
for a particular work but for their long-term activity and the influence it exerted on
audiovisual culture. @c, that is Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudel, have been, for
many years, creating projects which combined the elements of sound art and elec-
tronic music. The projects were based on three basic elements: algorithmic com-
positions, particular sounds (i.e. registered natural sounds) and improvisation. The
main area of the artistic explorations of @c during their performances has been the
specific role attributed to improvisation, viewed as a kind of dialogue or discussion.
Lia is an artist who has been working since the mid 90s in the area of digital tech-
nologies. She is one of the most distinctive characters of software art, net art and
the art of code. She creates visualisations for many spectacular musical endeavours
presented all around the world, installations, interactive and sonic works, as well as
works referred to as ‘Phone arts’. The cooperation of these artists draws attention

125
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

to other hybrid activities which, taking the form of audiovisual performances gen-
erated live, refer to generative and software algorithmic procedures. The traditions
of visual music, or experiments exploring the relations between the visual and the
auditory, lead to the shaping of completely new audiovisual aesthetics. A specific
type of mutual interaction between visual and auditory elements is an example of
a formal synergy but also evidence of deep relationships between different media
which support each other. It is further evidence of the hybrid nature of modern ar-
tistic practices which consciously pursue the blurring of boundaries between the
historically shaped strategies of particular media of art, and which today strive to
emphasise their relations with other media rather than to decisively build their own
distinctness resulting from their material, formal or aesthetic quality.
In addition to the works presented above, let me just add that the award-win-
ning realisations presented in 2007 at Ars Electronica included works by such artists
as Paul Vanouse, Nurit Bar-Shai and the Blast Theory collective, which testified to
the unusual diversity of artistic proposals submitted by the creators for competition
within the hybrid art category. This was just a preview of what was to appear in sub-
sequent years of the functioning of this category. Clearly, however, even this brief
review makes us realise the extent to which the works we are confronted with under
the hybrid art category vary in terms of the form, media and material.
Over the following years, Prix Ars Electronica jury members, invited by the or-
Piotr Zawojski

ganisers, tried to make the hybrid art category more precise, as it was naturally
viewed as an area still under construction. At the same time, in 2008, the transdis-
ciplinarity of the submitted projects and their consistency with the post-digital par-
adigm were pointed out22. References to the old Fluxus tradition and the pioneering
proclamations of Dick Higgins, who had introduced the concept of intermedia into
theoretical discourse and to artistic practices, pointed to both the historical condi-
tioning of hybrid art and its biological connections. References to hybrids and hy-
bridity in relation to cultural phenomena is derived from research in biology, recalling
Brian Stross, to whom jury members referred, quoting his notion of ‘hybrid energy’
which may be applied to cultural phenomena. Stross also sketched a scheme of
a diachronic process which he called the “hybridic cycle”, i.e. “a cycle that goes from
‘hybrid’ forms, this ‘pure’ form, is a ‘hybrid’ form; from relative heterogeneity, homo-
geneity is, and then back again to heterogeneity”23. It would probably be interesting
to make an attempt at applying such a cyclic model to the interpretation of modern
new media art, in which these types of processes most likely take place. Crossing
the boundaries between art and research practices, as well as between art and
social and political activism, became more important at this time than seeking mul-

22
  See Tim Edler, Yan Gong, Jens Hauser, Richard Kriesche, Michael Naimark, Pervasive Intermedia –
Searching and Finding Criteria in the Open Space of Hybrid Art [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts
2008, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag. Ostfildern 2008, p. 96.
23
  Brian Stross, The Hybrid Metaphor. From Biology to Culture. “The Journal of American Folklore”
1999, vol. 112, no 445, p. 265.

126
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

timediality (resp. intermediality) at all costs. For “what counted more has been their
quality of appropriate intermediality and their ability to condense their complexi-
ty into intriguing trompe-l’oeil ‘oneliners’ — between operationality and symbolism
— in which mediated experiences become tangible”24. This was evidenced by a set
of works presented during the 2008 edition which featured distinct realisations by
Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (Pollstream), Yann Marussich (Bleu Remix), Julius
Popp (micro.flow), Harun Farocki (Deep Play), Mark Formanek (Standard Time), Al-
exandra Ponomareva (Wave[Delay]) and Mikko Hynninen (Theatre#).
In 2009 another motif appeared in the reflection of the jury members: hybrid-
ity may be viewed as some sort of antidote to the deepening specialisation and
fragmentation of knowledge, which in effect leads to atomic thinking. A counterpart
movement to such tendencies may be a “re-materialisation of a systems thinking”25.
This is why we talk about a ‘holistic turn’ in new media art and about decisively going
beyond the framework of the categories used so far. The amplification of the ten-
dency to transgress the boundaries of the art world leads towards activities which
have a social and political dimension, as well as activities concerning global prob-
lems of humans and the planet. Many of the 316 submitted projects were related
to particular types of environment (for example, Second Life) or technique (such as
geolocalisation or Wi-Fi art).
Awarding the Golden Nica to Eduardo Kac for the project Natural History of the

Piotr Zawojski
Enigma in 2009 was a great event, although the project’s Edunia, the outcome of
the biotechnological project that had been developed for several years and imple-
mented together with, inter alia, Neil Olszewski from the University of Minnesota
(Department of Plant Biology) could only be admired on photographs and in a film.
This was due to the fact that the genetically modified plantimal did not arrive in
Linz owing to difficulties with obtaining the necessary permits to present a trans-
genic plant in the gallery, which is a wider problem concerning presenting and doc-
umenting biological media art (that is bio-art, genetic art, transgenic art and bio-
tech art)26. Other realisations include bios [bible] by Matthias Gommel, Martin Haitz
and Jan Zappe from the robotlab group, Common Flowers – Flower Commons by
George Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara, Mortal Engine by the Chunky Move collective,
Sonolevitation by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, The Kinetic Sculpture by
ART+COM and EarthStar by David Haines and Joyce Hinterding. In 2010, in a short
explication of their preferences, jury members pointed out that hybrid art should ex-
plore hybridity in a particular way, as a feature defining ontological inbetweenness,

24
  Tim Edler, Yan Gong, Jens Hauser, Richard Kriesche, Michael Naimark, Pervasive Intermedia...,
p. 98.
25
  Jens Hauser, Melinda Rackham, Sonia Cilliari, Casey Reas, Joachim Baur, Hybrid: Holism 2.0. [in:]
Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2009, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz
Verlag, Ostfildern 2009, p. 96.
26
  See Monika Bakke, Biologiczne media i niepokojąca rola dokumentacji. “Sztuka i Dokumentacja”
2011, no 6, pp. 29-32.

127
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

asking questions about the very nature of art. “We prioritized works that required
physical engagement with substance, texture and material beyond the underlying
virtual or conceptual driving forces. In these works we found strong elements of
live-ness’27.
Stelarc and his Ear on Arm, which received the Golden Nica award, meets the
criteria perfectly, whereas other realisations presented in 2010 once again con-
firmed the broad range of interests of contemporary artists. It suffices to recall such
works as Men in Grey by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasilieva, Ocular Revision by Paul
Vanouse and capacity for (urban eden, human terror) by Allison Kudla or Measur-
ing Angst by Jonathan Schipper — using diverse materials and media — to become
aware of the amazing variety and uniqueness of the works created by artists for
whom moving ‘between’ is a type of aesthetic strategy. However, what particularly
distinguishes the explorations of artists creating hybrid works is, according to the
jury, their turn towards the material and the physical.
In their extremely concise summary of the competition in 2011, jury members
this time paid particular attention to the research projects which had been imple-
mented over a long period of time. Such was the case of the Golden Nica-winning
May the Horse Live in Me by Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoît Mangin, who have
been creating as Art Oriente Objet since 1991. Seeking “unknown aesthetic objects”,
but also looking backwards and into the future in order to redefine humanity in the
Piotr Zawojski

“techno-ecological” environment — these are the tasks faced not only by artists. The
questions of the body and corporeality have become an important aspect of hybrid
activities, and the transdisciplinary crossings make them one of the most important
areas of the search for new means of artistic and aesthetic expression. At the same
time, a wide posthumanist context and deep reflection concerning the dominance
of the anthropocentric view of life is becoming more important. When an animal
element (blood) literally enters the human body — this perspective has to change.
In 2011, as many as 420 applications were received and, as in previous years,
they concerned diverse areas of artistic activity. Nevertheless, the jury members
paid particular attention (and granted recognition) to a project successfully pursu-
ing the idea of hybrid art and, at the same time, referring to the strategies of bio-art
(let us recall that so far the main prize had also been awarded to SymbioticaA, Edu-
ardo Kac, Stelarc). This surely results from the fact that it is in this area that projects

  Bronac Ferran, Jens Hauser, Eduardo Kac, Jurij V. Krpan, Koert van Mensvoort, Rematerializa-
27

tions, [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2010, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Chr. Schöpf, G. Stocker,
Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, p. 114. “Liveness” is a special quality of being alive but it is
also a term used in computer science with reference to the so called distributed computing, i.e.
a situation when Internet users make computing power of their computers available for scientific
purposes. One of the most famous examples of distributed computing is the LHC@Home project,
which uses work performed by volunteers from all over the world who analyse the behaviour of
proton beams at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The usage of the term by the jury directs our
attention to characteristic features of distributed systems where perhaps something good may
happen.

128
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

which are the most visible expression of the ideas of collaboration between artists,
scientists and researchers are created. The works by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitrij
Gelfand (Mucilaginous Omniverse), who had been using their research laboratory
as workshop for years, were again awarded a distinction. All of their projects are
created at the intersection of science and aesthetic strategies. Other interesting
projects which are worth mentioning include STiMULiNE by Julien Clauss and Lynn
Pook, Is There a Horizon in the Deep Water by HeHe (Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen),
Continuization Loop by Wim Janssen and Center for PostNatural History, Pigeon
d’Or by Tuur Van Balen.
The year 2012, according to jury members, brought many realisations (472 proj-
ects were submitted) which in no way met the criteria defined for other cyberart
categories but at the same time pursued some ideas present in media art since the
1960s — ideas which explored the areas of inter-, trans- and multimediality28. Jury
members once again noted the works which used biomedia and the main prize was
awarded to Joe Davis for Bacterial Radio. Davis is a research affiliate in the Depart-
ment of Biology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Depart-
ment of Genetics of the Harvard Medical School. He has been conducting research
in molecular biology and bioinformatics for years, while also creating sculpture in-
stallations and teleoperation laser systems. Bacterial Radio, as jury members put
it, is a type of a “retro-futuristic manifesto” combining experiments using genetical-

Piotr Zawojski
ly-modified bacteria, which serve as elements stimulating the electrical circuit of an
anachronic radio emission using amplitude modulation (the so-called AM).
Many of the award-winning and presented projects used strategies which —
well-known from interactive art — referred to forms of mobilisation of the viewer/
user who can be called a viewser (“visitor/user”) or prosumer (“professional/con-
sumer”). These types of activities are also a clear turn towards performatics, or giv-
ing artistic projects a form which transforms the “visitor/user” or the “professional/
consumer” into a performer who consciously uses tools made available by artists
who can be seen as designers of performances. This could be observed in such real-
isations as Game Order by Jun Fujiki or Maquila Región 4 (MR4) by Amor Muñoz. The
Body is a Big Place by Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor, The Great Work of the Metal
Lover by Adam Brown, Un Résau Translucide by Prue Lang, and People Staring at
Computers by Kyle McDonald — are all works which deserve particular attention
among the set of projects presented in 2012 within the framework of the hybrid art
category.
Technoculture is an area of natural encounters of new media with new types
of artistic expression, the basis for which becomes the continuous crossing of the
boundaries between aesthetic practices and research and cognitive activity. For
this reason, works submitted for the competition within the hybrid art category are

  Ursula Damm, Jens Hauser, Dietmar Offenhuber, Karin Ohlenschläger, Benjamin Weil, Meta/
28

Media/Narrativity. [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2012, eds. H. Leopoldseder, Ch. Schöpf,
G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2012, p. 102.

129
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

often treated as works which cannot be classified as belonging to one particular

artistic discipline, although it is possible to attempt to identify some key tendencies
which emerge from the multiplicity of explorations and artistic strategies present-
ed in Linz. In 2013 jury members decided to identify the tendencies which were the
clearest and most symptomatic of contemporary cyberart29.
The first of them is the constant interest of the artists in the problems of life in all
of its aspects30. Biology — or rather biotechnology — has nowadays become an area
defining the present and the future of man, a fact which is being recognised not only
by artists working with biomaterials. The very term ‘bio art’ may seem insufficient to
describe many works presented at Ars Electronica, clear evidence of which is The
Cosmopolitan Chicken Project by the Golden Nica winner, Koen Vanmechelen. The
chicken of the seventeenth generation (the project had been developing since 1999)
presented by the artist goes beyond the formula of bio art meaning art using living
(or semi-living) objects, entering instead into the area of symbiotic interconnections
between art, science, politics and ethics.
Another distinct tendency which can be observed is the “return to the analog”,
a specific kind of re-analogisation which expresses itself in the return to vinyl plates
as carrier, which had been doomed to oblivion and today is enjoying a renaissance.
But it is also the increasing interest in kinetic objects, mechanical sources of sound
(or noise), drawing machines and text machines. This is a kind of “reversed evolution”
Piotr Zawojski

in which low-tech is used as some type of a defensive reaction to the increasing

importance of the role of new digital technologies and their determining influence
on reality and people. This group includes, for instance, such realisations as: Five
Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause by Tania Candiani or Breathing
Bike by Mat Hope.
Another tendency is the dynamically growing visualisation of data which may,
on the one hand, be associated with cultural analytics and the visualisation of media
by Lev Manovich, and on the other, with various attempts at the visualisation and
sonication of processes and phenomena explored by scientists both in the macro-
cosm and microcosm dimensions. Once again reference can be made to the work
of Evelina Domnitch and Dmirty Gelfand (this time to Memory Vapor), who since the
year 2009 have been active members of the Synergetica Laboratory operating in
Amsterdam, or to the work of Paul Vanouse — Suspect Inversion Center.
The fourth trend identified by jury members is the technological uncanny —
a term which refers to the notion of uncanny valley, used for the first time by Ma-
sahiro Mori. It was related to a situation in which, for example, a robot which has

29
  See Andrea Grover, Jens Hauser, Jurij Krpan, Artur I. Miller, Karin Ohlenschläger, Undisciplined
Art: From Low Tech to High Breed [in:] Prix Ars Electronica. CyberArts 2013, eds. H. Leopoldseder,
Ch. Schöpf, G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2013, pp. 112- 114.
30
  The jury members use the English term (a)liveness which may mean different forms of biological
life but it also refers to the concept of Artificial Life (ALife). See Andrea Grover, Jens Hauser, Jurij
Krpan, Artur I. Miller, Karin Ohlenschläger, Undisciplined Art..., p. 113.

130
 Hybrid art – a new category of cyberart

the appearance similar to a man and acts like a man begins to make (real human)
observers feel anxious. A good example illustrating the tendency seems to be the
work of Louis-Philippe Demers — The Blind Robot.
The fifth and last of the tendencies presented by the jury members in 2013 is
the act of translating the language of one medium into the language of another
medium. Examples include transforming a word into data (or the other way round)
as well as practices of cyberpoetry (poetry generated by codes or algorithms), or
various ways of transposing movements, gestures, body dynamics into (audio)vi-
sual forms. As is the case of the dance performance Hidden Fields organised by
a group of artists, led by the scientist, philosopher and inventor David Glowacki. His
main idea is that the algorithms and mathematical forms adapted from quantum
dynamics are types of patterns and schemes determining the movement of danc-
ers. A room was designed for dancers (“Spectroscopes”), using pioneering hardware
and software, and this enables the creation of a unique performance made live, in
real-time. The movement of the dancers, followed by a set of 3D cameras, is entered
into a specially designed computer to be processed with the use of special software
interpreting movement as energy fields. In real-time this “human energy” is reflect-
ed in the form of avatar displays on a large screen.
The category of Hybrid Art defined and redefined by numerous Ars Electron-
ica jury members may be a kind of reconnaissance of the activities performed by

Piotr Zawojski
new media artists which go beyond the somewhat tame categories and types of
cyberart and enter areas which demand to be described and interpreted. I made
a brief review of the speeches made by jury members and works presented within
the category of hybrid art. It documents the shaping of theoretical awareness con-
cerning ambiguous phenomena which go beyond established categorisations and
typologies of the activities of artists who use new media and the most modern tech-
nologies in their work31. Even if the category of hybrid art proposed by organisers of
Ars Electronica does not seem to be a fully convincing way of defining certain types
of works classified as cyberart, several years of practice of documenting such ac-
tivities as well as theoretical and critical reflection enabled attention to be directed
towards the shaping of tendencies within new media art which, by transgressing the
typology created earlier, document the main tendencies of modern culture. These
are: working with hybrid objects, using the processes of hybridisation as creative
and research strategies, and viewing hybridity as a distinctive feature of modern
technoculture.

  In my previous footnotes I quoted paper versions of catalogues published annually by Ars Elec-
31

tronica. The catalogues present both the jury members’ statements and descriptions of award-
ed works from the Hybrid Art category. The materials can also be found at the website with the
archives of the festival and competition editions, and other events being an integral part of the
festival. See: www.archive.aec.at/print/ (accessed 28 December 2014).

131