"...the netscene wants to stay ascii..."


Station Rose are Elisa Rose and Gary Danner. They are what could be
called a multimedia group, mainly doing live performance and webcasts.
They have been doing that for a long time now, so it seemed time to ask
them a little bit about their motives and conclusions after 10 years of
indulgement in network culture. I received a book and a cd, for my
enjoyment and as press material. The music is not my cup of tea mostly,
but: the cd's first song "mini hub and baby hub" is on my list of personal
favorits of 1999: it is an eerie sing-along for me and my six year-old.
For the rest the amount of condensed work in the book is overwhelming.


 JB: You just published a book about your history. It reads like a
     mixture of an 'archive' and a memory piece. Is it your first
     book, and did it influence the way you see yourselves and your
     work?

Gary Danner: Yes, it is the first book we did completely on our own.
Before that, texts from us were included in various publications, always
on a certain topic. And yes, it changed the way we see ourselves and our
work. In the first place, it raised our self esteem. It showed us,
that we never went wrong with our visions. But it also showed that we
often neglected the commercial/financial side in our work. Quite a few
people involved in STR over the years became rich after they had learned
from us, and had started to do their safe and commercial little version
of one aspect of our work.
Working on the book and being confronted with our own history also
told us to be a little bit more patient in the future. We have been too
fast (and impatient) for most people in the past. Also it told us that
it can be very dangerous to rely on somebody. That´s why we are a tough
little unit of 2 persons today, very different to the "old days" in the
late eighties, where we operated as a team of at least 8-10 persons.

Elisa Rose: Before this first book we made contributions to some
art-publications/catalogues, together with exhibitions. There was
the <red station rose catalogue> (gallery Gawlik & Schorm, Vienna) in
'89, which is a collectors item in the meantime. It had the size of a
discette and came in a limited edition with a discette, where the grafix
of the exhibited neon shop window displays could be found on. And we did
write some articles for books. But basically we did not have that much
interest in printed material, cause we more believed in the floating art
of cdroms & the net instead of static/frozen material like books.

When we had to confront us with the 10 years of Station Rose art, the
idea of the book was suddenly here. It was a big moment beginning of 98,
when we realized that we were the first media-art project/band that had
survived. Before us were only ponton/van gogh tv, but they gave up in the
middle of the 90-ies.

We are still very content with the book. It brought us into a special
situation: we were confronted with the history of the 90-ies, ourselves
& naturally with what had happend in the art-/music/mediascene
parallel to our own development. We were forced to timetravel in the
90-ies throughout ´98. This is an important point. When you take a look
at the musicscene - they do recycle decade for decade. So they did the
60-ies, the 70-ies, and have now arrived in the 80-ies. Only the 90-ies
are not touched so far. And concerning the artworld - they are even a bit
slower. They were into pop (a forbidden world not long ago), and are now
into clubculture meets white cube. They recognized the net as a place
only on from '95/'96. They hated the net before, as well as clubs. On
the other hand the netscene wants to stay ascii, having problems with
visuals/icons.

So all in all the book influenced us in the way that the acceptance of
all scenes is more given now than it was before. People can read about
Station Rose. They can see it as a bilderbuch as well. For us personally
it meant to free our bio-mainframe : the 1st decade is in the book now,
so we don't have to upload all the details any more. We were tired of
repeating: hey, we did that already years ago,... now the story is
written, is material, is here. It is important for the younger
generation to confront them with this as well, cause many of them think,
sampling culture started with them, which is wrong.

 Q: You are both artists and organisors. What came first and how do
    the two relate? Don't they 'bite' eachother?

G.D.: Of course the artist came first. But when we finished our studies
of art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, it was simply a
necessity to organize, to be able to do your thing. "Hypermedia,
networking, techno or clubbing" were no common terms for the art scene
in the late eighties !
Then, when we lived in Cairo 1988/89, the local artists/actors/media
people, after being confronted with our concepts and art, called us
business men, as Station Rose does not act, play in a band, paint or
write poetry.

Yes, the artist and the organizer bite each other sometimes, especially
when there is too much organizing to be done, and you only get to work
on a composition on from 2 a.m. On the other hand, we lost too much
time with persons pretending/trying to be managers, so we do it on our
own. Certain segments are now handled by professionals outside STR of
course, like the distribution of our audio products, or being present
at art fairs.

E.R.: Sure the artist comes first. This is our profession. To be an
organiser was always a strategy to survive in the elctronic jungle. We
accept it, cause it has to be, but we have to be  very severe in our
time schedule. If we wouldn´t, the 2 would bite eachother, no question.
What we try to stick to is something like that: so and so many hours a
day for the organisation, gives so and so many hours for the
artproduction in the night. When we started with webcasting in 1/99 on
a regular basis, we made that even better: on the 2days of the webcasts
there is very little organisation, and a lot of concentration on art,
the other days are sometimes the other way round. All in all we tried
a lot of different models during the years, had different assistants as
well as managers, but nothing really worked. So we came back to STR-
the duo as the tough little unit that cooperates with different partners,
like the ditributors of our cds, like galleries...

One main problem in the media world today is that there is a lot of talk
about art meets music and so on, but basically the scenes didn't connect
at all during the 90-ies. They are still very seperate. Which means if
there is a dj at an opening of an exhibition, the scenes don't merge only
because of that. The dj is only a party attribute you can book. The
gallerist doesn't have to deal with that person, this is not part of that
business. The same goes for the music scene: a video is good for a
band/electronic music project- which again can be ordered, but the
videoartist mustn't be sold, the music is sold.

So when we looked for a manager for Station Rose, we very soon found out
that this person always gets problems on a social level, cause he either
speaks the language of the music or the artscene. So he only was accepted
in 1 scene at a time; instead of being supported by that person, Gary
and me had less time than before. Making a simultanous translation
between the different codes of 2 scenes was too much. we were not
interested, stopped that sort of thing. These days we talk to both
scenes ourselves, and later try to delegate.
We always have to keep enough time for art.

 Q: What do you want to reach, do you have a goal?

E.R.: We want to always have enough time to produce art, which is so
deep and intense. When we dive into a session, we than see how much
concentration it demands. We have to sell more & more Station Rose art,
we produce a lot.
We still believe 100% in the value of art. If there wouldnt be art, life
would be a horror scenario - a world out of washing powder sold by slick
advertisers. A big shopping mall as Bruce Sterling said in ´90. The
importance of art is higher than ever before. Art plays a key role.
There is nothing that could be instead of art. Art is the most important
thing. Theory, criticism, politics - it all comes after.

We try to live multimedia art as a next language created out of soundz &
visuals. We want to be one of the biggest avantgarde webcast stations as
well as keeping making cd's, vinyls, cdroms, exhibitions, performances,
tours, being on the road playing live as well as @home. The aspect of
performing inside media-art is important. These realtime-moments are in
between material-immaterial. It takes hours to build virtual rooms, to
bring them to life and they are gone & will never come back the same way
as soon as the (analogue) lights are switched on.


 Q: Are audio and video your favorit media? Connected to this: could
    you tell me who and what have been influences in your audio and
     video work?

G.D.: We have very strict rules in creating our art: Lisa is responsible
for everything visible, and I am responsible for everything audible. We
*never* cross over the other´s territory. As our workstations are
connected (over MIDI), and we produce in the same room just 1 meter away
from each other, we interact all the time. Speaking is forbidden while
creating, because words are prone to mess up the flow. During composing,
or after the piece is finished, the concept can be put to paper, but
never before.

Audio is one of my favorite media, also because it is possible to make
money by selling CDs and vinyls, but there is also webcasting. Webcasting
is like an ongoing training for performing live, twice a week. Influences
in my music have been punk, when I started to become something like a
professional musician, and after that Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey,
Acid House in the late eighties, and the facets of electronic music that
emerged from that.

E.R.: Audio and video together are our favourite media. They come in so
many different ways, which is important. Composing live together in what
we call <multimedia jam sessions> is the key here. We play together,
very often connected over MIDI, which makes us synched 100%, create a
new piece, later record it digitally on DV-tapes. This can become a vinyl
as well as a cdrom or a video or an installation or a webcast or
whatever we will need for a certain project. Recently we composed very
often in realtime during a webcast. So we either record it on the fly,
or do it later the same evening. Composing in cyberspace in realtime is
extreme. I love that. Because it is all digital, we recently bring in
analogue stuff as well, as an oppostion, to make it more gunafa (like
Gary plays bass & guitar & samples that and me bringing in vocals/lyrics.)
This new tendancy is not calculation, it just happend during the summer
webcasts.

I have to emphasize the importance of the live moment. Playing live is
the most intense thing. So the only decision before starting is, whether
we want to record the session, or just play it once & never see/hear it
again. With already over 70 webacsts it would be too much material to
keep. We are not the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Company) to archive
that way, cause then we again we would need a person to do that job.
Influences are diverse visual artists, club culture early 90-ies,
video-art, almost not at all TV.

 Q: As you are one of the few and rare longtime net.audio experimentors,
    can you tell me what it is like to live through the different
    developments, to deal with both newcomers and technology 'updates'?

E.R.: We -are- longtime net.audio+net.video experimentors.
To deal with newcomers is always a weird situation, sometimes boring.
But we try to stay nice. Basically if we told people (who weren´t
online) about our online experience & projects in the early 90-ies,
they just didn't understand what we were talking about. So a
converstation was not possible on that topic. When later the same
people finally went online, they were so excited about that fact, that
they weren't in the mode for communication either. So for us it was
much more effective to be with people online that were early cyberspace
settlers as well.

But sure this is not possible that often. When we went online in '91
it was almost exclusively the WELL people we had contact to. The reason
was: besides 2 or 3 europeans there were no others from this continent.
It was really so much more a californian movement. When we talked to
onliners that came in in '95 and they were in an exstatic mood about
their new situation, we had already a daily online contact with the WELL
community going for 5 years. Sometimes I get the impression that the
european art (net/critique) scene is anti-california, cause they are
jealous and know they missed the early years. I can understand that.
It would drive me mad, if I had missed those years. I was the driving
force inside STR to go online, couldn´t wait any longer. What a strange
technical situation- an amiga 500 plus a 2400 baud modem. We stayed
online since then. We will do so in the future.

I try to do as much as I can in the net- I really do not want to deal
with a situation like that in a few years : we could have done
something in '99 not to make it a pure shopping mall... I feel a
responsibility here. I was trained by the first <onliners> from the
WELL. They have a strong feeling for community. They taught me to have
that, too. I am basically not a good follower, try to think about things
myself, but I know the roots. The good thing about the net now is that
so many people are here in the meantime we deal & communicate with,
that they can be reached fast & they can reach us fast.

A project like webcasting today is already working as good as making a
homepage in '95, which is great. We can do all the technical stuff,
programming & sending from home. Technology updates- means spending much
time updating. No way around that.

 Q: Also you appear to have a style and way of working that has a
    positivim that seems almost inappropriate, and which seems to be on
    the edge of Californian dreaming ("Cyberspace is our land").
    Are you serious?

E.R.: Some of the answers have already been answered before. "Cyberspace
is our land" is meant seriously. We are talking here as austrians living
in exile, as europeans living in the middle of europe, and as artists who
found their <new home> online. Concerning positivism: I think being
<critical> today is often too easy. It is much easier to criticise than
say: I believe in this, cause then you have to fight for it.

STR-positivism has been developed over years, it is hard training on a
daily basis. The californian dreaming is all explained above. It has
these 60-ies roots with community consciousness that spread into
cyberspace. Europe shouldn´t be too jealous, just accept the facts.
And do you know what turbo-capitalism made out of Californian dreaming ?
SF is like frankfurt in the meantime, only money counts. Money, money,
money, make more, faster, have more employees, a bigger car, house,
office. California is really beta-testing extreme capitalism now. They
had the community movement throughout the 90-ies, and now have to deal
with the opposite.

G.D.: Of course we are serious! Positivism/California Dreaming is such a
powerful weapon in the entertainment/art business. This for the first
time came to my mind in the Punk times when I realized in the late
seventies that it was more shocking to say "I dig Paul McCartney" than
saying "I want to have sexual intercourse with an animal". When it is so
easy to cause trouble, why not stick to it? Besides that, I really dig
the Beatles ;-)



----------------------------------------------------
STATION ROSE hypermedia (Elisa Rose & Gary Danner)
Frankfurt  - Vienna - Cyberspace.
* Webcastings on a regular basis. realtime -20sec.
  <http://www.stationrose.com>
* homepage <http://www.well.com/www/gunafa/>
* STR-Community: the Frankfurt Conference <http://www.minds.com>
*  Gunafa Label "Playing Now" CD, "live @home" VINYL out now;
   "PN-world tour" starting > Oct'99
* "1st decade" (1988-98) - Das BUCH. edition selene.
  ISBN: 3-85266-082-3
-----------------------------------------------------




*




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