This summer media artist Marko Peljhan from Lubljana/Slovenia will take part in several events in the framework of new media festival "Art + Communication" organized by RIXC in Latvia. One of these events - "Acoustic Space Lab" (Symposium for radio and satellite technologies) will take place in Irbene, where the radio telescope - short-wave antenna - dish (d=32m) of International Ventspils Radio Astronomy Centre is located. This formerly top-secret military object nowadays is available not only for scientists - radio astronoms and radio amateurs, but also for artists. However the context, in which artists use it for creative DIY (Do it yourself!) experiments is not sufficient, if one doesn't consider the wider context of developing technologies and their social implications.

1. Marko, you have continuous experience with radio and satellite technologies. You also have investigated military industrial complexes. For what purposes, you think, media artists could use this antenna? (or What could be the potential of this antenna for creative use by media artists?)

Well, such an array has enormous potential for tactical media work. It is very rare that one would get such infrastructural opportunities, hence we are forced to work with much smaller satellite and radio antennas, in my case, the largest functional parabolic dish to be operational in our context was a 3.1m antenna. It is maybe a bit strange talking about size, but size in this case matters to a certain level. It is directly connected to signal strength, and if signals are very week, the size suddenly becomes very important. Such an antenna, as I understand it was part of the soviet space tracking network, is an immense opportunity to discover and work with, since it is stearable and could be used to investigate the polar satellites, together with weaker signals on geostationary ones, although we are quite far north…it of course also depends on the receiving equipment installed on the antenna and the processing equipment we would use to work with the signals. But as far as the electromagnetic spectrum mapping is concerned, this is a first for the tactical media community and I think we can make most of it by establishing an elaborate plan of tracking, that would follow the orbits of satellites of our interest. Another dimension is of course the astronomical research that can be done with it. There, the opportunities are vast too, and limited only by the quality of the equipment and to a lesser extent by size. The universe of sounds that opens there is enormous and I think that the creative use of it could be a direct
consequence.

2. You have been radio fan long before you became an artist. How it created your perception of global communication technologies? When and what made you think about radio and satellite technologies in terms of how they are accessible or not accessible, secret or sophisticated, low or high tech? And how do you think these aspects have impact the relationship between the people and the communication technologies?

Well, I am a radio-amateur, my callsign now is S57NTS and I have been indeed working with radio since I was 11. I spent numerous nights on the short-wave band talking to people from all over the world, both east and west, north and south, and this definitely was a formatting experience. I like to say that we had an internet experience, with all its dilemmas, before internet….so that somehow prepared everything for what is happening with my creative work now. The radio-amateur community is a very enclosed social system, with its own sometimes very restriction rules and has thus always prompted me and I must say also many of my colleagues to break the rules. The sheer potential of transmission of information is so large, if you think only about the numerous radio transmitters at peoples homes p.e., that one starts to think that there must be something really wrong that this potential is not used and that it is left in its dormant state, usually waiting for some kind of accident or social catastrophe like war, to activate itself. But in the time before that, the function of the information producers and transmitters is left to larger systems of power. The accessibility is a non-issue in this community, since everyone that is part of it, has access to transmission potential, but a potential that is strictly ruled by telecommunications law. And this will probably never change. If you leave "in the spectrum" or "on the band" as we use to say, that of course you have the direct experience of what is happening on that band. You start recognising details, also very intrinsic ones, hidden ones, operational plans and modes, you start understanding how somebody or some larger system is using the spectrum. This is all very important later in the analysis period and also in the discussions of how this spectrum could be appropriated for tactical media use and what the consequences would be. Once you start working in there, all sorts of questions start arising, from legal and ethical to technical ones. The potentiality of the event horizon of the electromagnetic spectrum is maybe something that is taken for granted but much less understood than it is thought. And the radio-amateur community will probably change much slowly than others, because it is definitely a civil exception in the world that is ruled and controlled by governments, international treaties and last but not least, the capital. If you work in there, you must make sure you understand this basic facts. One element that is in my opinion the most important in the radio-amateur world is the drive towards development and experimentation, one of the basic charters is that "the radio amateur must foster and further the science and art of radio telecommunications". I think that this sentence contains all the elements with which we can feel much comfortable than before.

3. Significant part of your projects pays attention to continuity of processes and durable continuations. Makrolab (http://makrolab.ljudmila.org) in this sense is the most extended one of your projects. You have planned it to continue for ten years (from 1997 - 2007). Makrolab deals with such global subject matter as telecommunications, meteorology and electromagnetic fields, migration and navigation. Makrolab was first set up in documenta X in Kasel, Germany in 1997.
During "Makrolab" in documenta X you were not only scanning the ether, but also investigating the legal frameworks of telecommunications interception, privacy and encryption, as well as questions on politics and ethics, related to these issues. Can you tell more about how "Makrolab" is continuing to solve these questions and what are the current priorities for the project?

Currently, Makrolab is undergoing it second overhaul period and we are integrating some more energy support in the complex, together with more radio transmission/reception technologies and a larger array of sensors. As you have already said, the three main fields of research within Makrolab are three global, constantly changing dynamic systems, which present and enormous challenge to both the arts and sciences of observation, processing, prediction and modelling. The telecommunications field is the one that Makrolab was most active in at documenta X and also to a certain extent at the second durational process on Rottnest Island in Australia, but as the project grows and as the human resources become more available, we are adding the other two fields to the focus. This year we will specifically work on cross border migrations in all senses, since Makrolab will be placed near the Slovene-Italian border….we also plan to install a doppler radar for this purposes but also for purposes of bird migration mapping, and we plan to integrate our work with the bird observation society of Slovenia. I would like that the complex becomes a comfortable working base for professionals from the arts and sciences and that it would function within the basic demarcations and the initial isolation/insulation strategy put forward in some of the early program texts for the project. This strategy is based on the thesis that a small number of individuals, working in an enclosed time/space, can produce more evolutionary code than larger social systems. The enclosed time/space is in this case the Makrolab, but one would argue that Makrolab is connected to the extent, that it is impossible to talk about enclosure. Well, I think that the enclosure is a mental state and that it must be reflected upon. The sensors of course must be there, either they are passive or active, they connect the processes to the objects and subjects of its interests and are in this sense indispensable.
So the enclosed space/time is actually a very connected environment. Makrolab has a 10 year life span, and after that, we plan to move and adapted structure, the Makrolab mark V to the Antarctic, where it will be stationed as a permanent art/science station and will further the work done in this initial phase. This bringing of two cultures together in the real sense is much more of an operation than it might seem. Once you claim the process of transforming and translating immaterial worlds into material experience, the battle for the ideological prestige starts raging.
That's where we are now. If I would sum up the Makrolab priorities for 2001-2002-2003, I would say, that we will be in the phase of tuning up the project in the sensor and life-support sense, establishing a constant and permanent sensor and processing base and gather experience for long duration, extreme research conditions. Of course, Makrolab will continue to be, also with its spin-offs, a permanent outpost for tactical media work.

4. Such huge projects require good teamwork. Who are the people (artists, hackers, scientists, programmers) that you work with and what is "Project Atol"?

Makrolab is in many senses and open project and calls for proposals are online all the time. We are still looking for people, since it the capital base of the project is low and we cannot afford to hire them by paying them more than the capitalist competition. But we can use other strategies and in this sense, the project is still more rooted in the arts and sciences of art than in the arts and sciences of science and technology. The list of people working on the Makrolab is very large and you can get it online, there are now more than 30 people who have worked on the Makrolab, and many many more have visited, even stayed there for a day or two. As for Projekt Atol it is an arts organisation that I have established in 1992, it manages Makrolab but also many other projects and initiatives and is a very loose organism. I have founded it, so I am in a way responsible for anything that happens with it, but as and organism, it is a perfect example of stealth and dynamics with all the limitations and strengths of such a system. The main goal of Projekt Atol was described in a manifesto from 1993 entitled "In search of a new condition", but things are moving along. Projekt Atol is now managing three large initiatives and besides Makrolab we work on the Insular Technologies and the Transhab-01 projects, develop new technologies and solutions within the PACT (Projekt Atol Communication Technologies) branch and coordinate experimental art/science work in micro gravity with the Flight Operations branch, now also in the context of the international MIR (Micro gravity Interdisciplinary Research) initiative… Of course, none of this would have been possible without the help and support of many collaborators and co-workers.

5. You have worked a lot into direction to show the essence of the technologies, to make transparent the unknown, invisible side of it, which is not familiar to consumer. In your installations, for instance, during the exhibition "World-information.org", you projected video image, that in real time transmitted the information sent for the dispatchers at Frankfurt am Main airport. Are you, by doing that, trying to help the others to see, what is behind the "user-friendly interface"?

The world of telecommunications and networks is many times referred to as a "closed space", a space for those, who have access and are "taken" and accepted into this community. Nothing new or irrational about this, we see it all the time in many different fields, the contemporary art world and especially the capital exchange within it being a clear example of this kind of enclosed community with very little social evolutionary potential…the same could be said of the radio amateur world, which I have talked about previously. All this worlds have their initiation rituals, either exams or acceptance procedures, and only after that the "secrets" can be accessed well, my aim is to change that, at least within my own work and operations. Although limited by legal constraints on many levels, it is very important to move and challenge the boundaries that are many times placed in unacceptable places from the social point of view. The other side of this work is also simple education and promotion. The computer was still a not very widely used tool 10 years ago, people were afraid of it, it was too challenging to use for daily life, now all this is slowly changing. During socialist rule p.e., it was very difficult for us to import a computer, the prices for the duties were enormous and we could not afford to pay them. The world of young computer programmers and enthusiasts (talking about a pre-hacker period of course) was an enclosed underground, tightly connected with the social underground and the move for social change and democratisation. The first to use computers after the kids of course were professionals from the publishing field and of course the sciences…it is very interesting to note, that some of the first companies in Slovenia, that were run by the opposition or at least semi-opposition figures were companies that imported and assembled computers…this was in the second half of the eighties…a very peculiar time and not much analysis has been done on the topic. This structure has of course changed and those companies do not exist any more. But the knowledge about the potential of and the use of this technological tools is still low. There is still need to make people understand that the spectrum is material, that it has an enormous incalculable value and that in the last extent, it should not be controlled by anybody. But that is not the case. It is owned, sold and controlled. We should only look at the impossible prices the phone companies are prepared to pay for frequency spectrum allocation licenses…This is direct consequence of the materiality of the ether. And some of my projects show the structure, fragility and deep internal logic of these networks. That is what I am most interested in. In the case of the project that you mentioned, I have worked with the German flight control service, the DFS, and with their help installed one part of the STANLY (statistical and analysis) system for air traffic management. The project started in Duisburg, where only traffic above the Ruhr area was displayed, in Brussels the focus was on the whole Northern Europe area…what the visitor could see was the "closed" view of an air traffic controller or manager. A very specific sight, produced by a complex array of sensors and integrated into a common display. I would call this and hope it was and "educative" situation.

6. Your project "Insular technologies" (International Networking System for Universal Long distance Advanced Radio) (<http://www.insular.net>) intended to develop autonomous, decentralized data and sound long distance radio net, which would be free to access, low-cost and easy to use for users. Can you tell about concept behind this project? Why did it seem important to you to develop such autonomous communication network system and what could be advantages of it?

The idea behind INSULAR is very simple. It is deeply rooted in the way the electromagnetic spectrum is divided and ruled and the rationale behind it is that you can only command autonomy and total independence if you also control your infrastructural transfer of information. In contemporary information warfare theory, the information resources are divided into containers, transporters, sensors, recorders and processors. In this structure, there are many weak links, and when small tactical work becomes strategic or peoples lives are connected with the weak links in this resources and their connections, then you are in trouble. The INSULAR initiative takes a rather simple approach to this problem by trying to establish and independent network of information resources with strong, encrypted links, stealth of frequency and rather slow speed, because it uses the high frequency (HF) spectrum. The slow speed forces the users to transmit and use the system for basic and important information exchange. It is distributed in structure and every node functions as the central node in the system if needed. All the nodes have the same information and exchange it when needed and requested by the users. The project is an infrastructural one and very difficult to develop and manage and this not from the technical point of view, not at all, but from the political. Many new media centres that were approached liked the "fancy" idea, but then saw no use for it in their work, no direct use, and would not invest in it, even though the money involved is minimal. This situation is in my opinion prompted by the fact that the new media centres are more concerned in producing content and semi content and not challenge the basic parameters of the networked world they operate in. I think and believe that has to change. The INSULAR initiative is just the first bold step in this direction of the appropriation of information transmission resources in the spectrum and uses the "ionospheric" exchange as its base medium. The global dimension of every node is crucial and very material, not filtered. And that is very important. The current networks can be very quickly physically damaged and corrupted, but movable, portable, global extent radio links cannot. Of course, this can be seen as an "post Armageddon" tool and a product of post cold-war paranoia, but I think that the command of infrastructure is critical and that we should continue these processes of knowledge exchange and autonomy establishment. Only by mastering the tools we will be able to control the information resources on all the above mentioned level in case of a critical information battle…

7. We feel close to your idea about "small group of people being much more effective for social development than large mass movements"*. Your projects and activities are a part of new media culture, aren't it? You have developed "Project Atol" (1992) as independent organization and platform for experimental and innovative activities, and you also have been involved in the "Ljudmila" media lab. What do you consider as most urgent issues of new media culture today? (And what can you say about development of socially dynamic space of the networked media?)

Our media culture has developed tremendously in the last ten years. From a small "enclosed world" it definitely has become a transcultural global movement in this time, with its own reflection mechanisms and structures. This can be clearly seen in many "institutions" that this world developed, mailing lists like "nettime", "exchange", "cyber-society" and many others. In the East of Europe, a lot of this development was supported by the Open Society foundations, but now the situation is changing and many of these organizations have to restructure if they want to survive. Time has come for prioritising, I can speak this directly from the experience of what has happened and is happening now with the restructuring of Ljudmila as the main independent information server and one of the few leading independent media labs in the country. This restructuring has taken tool on the content producing side of the work, but on the other hand, the services that the lab offers have improved. In 1997 we have organised with our colleagues in my opinion one of the most interesting conferences of the last years, the Beauty and the East event and this was I could say superb content producing, but those times have for now for Ljudmila passed and I think that this problems are different everywhere and that no large parallels can be drawn, except those, which clearly demarcate the line between the movement of large capital in the new media field and the independent content and solution producing laboratories. This is a political question of a larger magnitude, which is reflected in the initiative like the European Cultural Backbone. As low-key or at disorganized as they may be, they are definitely needed, if the whole culture wants to continue working in a progressive manner and direction. As you said, this social spaces are dynamic, as dynamic as the networks they are co-creating and I believe that the reflection and understanding as well as accommodation of this dynamism is of crucial importance for the survival and further development of them. But again, this is a difficult world, not simple at all, and I think that with the further radicalisation of the societal conditions, the surface surfing will not be possible anymore. People in the field will have to go deeper, because the stratification is constantly changing and capital does not stop in its abstract drive with material consequences. It has in a way co-created this networks and this is a fact that many ignore. I think that the basic vocabulary has to be set or if you want, just an acronym list so that we start talking to each other for real and exchanging crucial information. Personal strategies are in this sense something very differing, but the goal I believe, in most cases, the same.

8. September 8th, 2001 in Riga there will be a performance SIGNAL-SEVER, which you will build up and perform together with Project Atol-Random Logic and Raster-Noton and guests. The signal units for SIGNAL-SEVER were developed as a part of "Makrolab" and "World-information.org" projects. Please tell more about your plans regarding this performance in Riga.

The Signal-Sever! performance is the continuation of the work Solar that we have performed together with this group of people at Ars Electronica in 1998. It is an open air event, that lasts from dusk until dawn. The basic conceptual plan of the work is to follow the events in the electromagnetic spectrum according to daily changes in the ionosphere which have a lot to do with sun activity and present this immateriality as a acoustic and performative experience. The Signal-Sever! machine is a sensor array and a processing unit which receives radio waves, processes, transforms them and sends them back in many different directions and forms. The systems we use are standard systems we have used and developed for Makrolab and the World-Information.org EMM console, but this year we will also use the new EMM-1001 unit that I am just developing at the moment. This is a tactical-radio unit, and Latvia will be the official premiere for it….We will definitely be agreeing with Nikola Tesla who stated, that the magnetosphere of the earth behaves very similarly to that of a small metal sphere… And hopefully, we will be able to use the large array at Ventspils for this purposes. The collaborators of the project are mainly musicians, and I will try to invite more guests in the coming months. The 8-10 hours are a long period of time and a lot of manpower has to be invested to make such a machine work. Signal-Sever! will combine many of the resources that Projekt Atol and associated projects have gathered in the last 9 years…and hopefully, we will come out as good translators. But we are dealing with dynamic and chance, so anything might happen.