Cyberspace is for artists to explore. In this new millennium, a new
frontier, –a new age–, presents itself for artists to create novel
expressions. The internet has opened a world that brings artists from
all corners of this earth together, one on one, to exchange sentiments
and ideas, and to directly and openly converse visually through distant
space, free from the restricted barriers of museums, galleries, and mass
media. It is a new world for Art.
E-Banggaan, or Interaction-E, pioneers this new artistic horizon. It
seeks to learn about the workings and the limitations of the internet.
Going beyond mere passing of images through the net, the artists of
E-Banggaan confront one another’s individual visual expressions and
transform these into collaborative efforts, images resulting from
interaction and “collisions” (banggaan) with others in another part of
the world who may even harbor very different sensibilities. The language
of computer graphics is the medium with which the various artists
interact, but traditional art media can also readily come into play.
Images can be printed out, reworked in tradiional media, and scanned.
You might compare E-Banggaan to a jazz session, where various musicians
are given full play to bring in their own improvizations in solo
passages while integrating with the basic “beat” or theme of the music.
It is art as a collaborative effort as opposed to art as exclusively one
individual’s creation. The notion is not really anathema to art
practices, for after all architecture involves a team effort of various
individuals with various skills, and music is performed by various
musician playing various instruments; theater and film are decidedly the
products of group effort. In the Philippines, interaction painting was
introduced by Alfredo Roces and a group of artists known as the Saturday
Group (or the Taza de Oro Group) in 1971 at the Solidaridad Galleries.
Since then, Interaction has been an ongoing Philippine art form.
Interaction readily transforms to Banggaan sa email, because artists
naturally bring to the internet imaginative visual form. Seeing these
original creations retransformed by another artist brings a new
dimension into art making. The solutions more often than not take the
original artist by surprise. His work has taken a life of its own, with
others modifying, altering and changing the image into something
different and yet something of the original artist remains, while
reaching out to untravelled lands. At least that is what should happen
in a successful collaborative collision between artists. The spirit of
fun is our moving spirit. Where will Banggaan go? What form will
electronic art ultimately take? What is the final destination of an art
image sent through cyberspace?
Banggaan began in October 1999 with a hand placed on a scanner by
Alfredo Roces in Sydney Australia, the image sent to fellow artists for
them to interact. The Banggaan-E artists are: Glenn Bautista in Imus
Cavite, photographer Ben Razon, artist Bencab in Baguio,Tiny Nuyda and
Pandy Aviado, in the Philippines; Rodolfo Samonte in Los Angeles
California, USA, and Claro in Singapore. E-Banggaan dares to take art
“where no man has gone before”. -AR (submitted by Glenn A. Bautista) Archivist /
Historian of E-Bangaan Group, Philippines