Estonian Media Artists featured at Edmonton’s “The Works Art & Design Festival”.
Eda McClung and Dave Kiil
Estonia regained her independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then the nation has embraced new technologies, reflecting and affecting rapid cultural changes.
Their fascination with new technologies was demonstrated by five members of the Estonian Media Artists’ Union in Edmonton for the Works Festival last summer. They participated in several media events, including a panel discussion, an exhibit reception, CBC interviews, as well as being the focus of articles in the Edmonton Journal.
We caught up with two of the Estonian multimedia artists-Eve Arpo and Riin Kranna-Rõõs- in the Works Festival Big Tent in Churchill Square to find out more about their ‘A day without a Mobile Phone’ presentation. Interested cell-phone owners were asked to surrender their phones for 24 hours and used to present a sound-and-light show.
The Edmonton installation attracted about 25 cell-phones, somewhat below the expectations of the two artists. The phones were suspended from a spider-like construction of pipes and wires in a corner of the Big Tent. In part at least, the modest response answers the question: What does the cell-phone mean to you? It means that Edmontonians think twice about surrendering their cell-phones, even for 24 hours.
The two media artists explained that Estonians are very attached to their cell-phones; in many households, mobile phones have replaced the traditional desk phones. This attachment to cell-phones led Eve and Riin to think about what it would be like to spend 24 hours without them. To find out, they hung 40 borrowed phones from a tree in Tallinn’s Freedom Square. The artists and participants alike discovered how much they depended on their cell-phones. While Estonians use more cell-phones per capita than Albertans, both groups consider them important for work and perhaps even more for sending and receiving text messages or for making calls; in other words, it’s like a wallet for many people.
During the Soviet era, Estonians often had to wait for years to get a regular phone line installed. As a result, they have embraced cell-phone technology with a passion, and enjoy seamless coverage of wireless service throughout the country. The project is one way of doing this in a playful fashion.
Biographical sketches of the artists: Eve Arpo: Architect; member of the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Riin Kranna-Rõõs: Master of Arts in Interactive New Media, Estonian Academy of Arts.
