Re: hardware limitations

[Armin Medosch <ame@tp.heise.de>]

Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> 
> Here's a piece of info that shows that there are problems with the hardware
> for media art in many places:
> 
> Date: 7.26.96
> From: Hari Kunzru (hari@wired.co.uk)
> Subject: Re: The weather
> 
> I phoned SGI and it's important to stress that this isn't their *fault*.
> It's not like they are refusing to support art. But they don't have the
> budget to do it and apparently there simply aren't enough machines in the
> UK.

Last year I organized the exhibition and conference Telepolis in Luxembourg. 
There we also needed som SGI´s. As Luxembourg is a very small country there is 
not even a SGI office there. The German branch also couldn´t give us the 
machines, but they forwarded me to the European headquarter in Neuchatel, 
Switzerland. The person there is John Parry (I hope I spell the name right, I 
just spoke on the phone with him). When it came to solve the actual logistics 
I corresponded with Patrice Gumny patriceg@neu.sgi.com 
Not always but sometimes they lend some hardware for art projects. It is not 
totally cost free since they charge for transport costs and logistics which 
can add up to 5000 Dollars for an Onyx. The problem in our case was, that for 
a very long time they neither said "yes" or "no" and in the very last moment 
they told us that we could have an Onyx and two Indies. So this makes any 
planning very difficult. Also the machine came with not much software 
installed. You need a real professional who has software and can install it.  
  
So it may not be SGI UK´s fault that you couldn´t show that work but they 
could have connected you with the European headquarter as the people in Munich 
did. 
By the way, when I was in contact with them, they had questions that are 
relatively unusual for art projects, like "how many people will attend the 
show" or "what kind of audience do you expect". Be prepared for that. 
 
I just returned from Siggraph. There you had Onyxes like elsewhere pocket 
calculators. But besides a project of Sommerer/Mignannaeu the projects for 
which that machines were used I wouldn´t call art. At Siggraph anybody who 
does 2 D or 3D design for entertainment purposes is called artist. To my 
opinion most of the things shown at Siggraph are even anti-art, you know, that 
Hollywood kind of entertainment stuff,
yours
armin medosch