On 19 September 2006, Zelko Wiener died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 53. He left behind his wife, Ursula Hentschläger, his sons Boris and Gregor, his family and many friends, as well as an important body of contemporary communication art.
Zelko Wiener was born Zeljko Grkninic in Banja Koviljaca in what is now Serbia on July 4 1953. From 1963 he lived in Austria. From 1982 he carried out media-art projects, including for the Biennale de Venezia and Ars Electronica in Linz. From 1986 he held a professorship for Communications Theory at what is now the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Zelko Wiener was a pioneer of media art, whose broad spectrum he called »cultura digitalis« as early as 1987. At the time, this form of art was called »computer art« for lack of a suitable term, something which Wiener saw as an »obstacle«. From the start, Zelko Wiener was aware of the problems involved in communicating art, especially technological art, and he always emphasised its immanent social significance: »I think,« said Wiener, »that the desire for social resonance entails a lot of work; it is not enough just to wait. I have decided that my work is relevant. That is the basis and the motivation behind my activities.«
Zelko Wiener worked both practically and theoretically on strategies and ideas aimed at breaking down the »imbalance between effect and demands, transcendence and transformation«. He saw this imbalance in the way creative technological work with art is confused with art that uses technology. He was also able to convey this aspect as a teacher, demanding: »Art FROM the computer … should be called: art INTO the computer.« Typical of Zelko Wiener were the empathy and patience that he showed when teaching his students about the then new media art, and his indefatigable efforts to explain all aspects of a matter calmly, objectively and comprehensibly. Friends and colleagues appreciated his level-headedness, circumspection and skill in interpersonal relations.
Later, in the work he carried out with Ursula Hentschläger, various artistic approaches were channelled together in the Web project »ZEITGENOSSEN«. This project turned into a universal art machine that presented, connected and represented »media/time/images«, knowledge and relevant information in a transcendental and poetic, and sometimes formally sophisticated way. As was the intention, this wonderfully hybrid concept consummately shows the dramaturgic use of image, animation, speech, text, writing and sound as an all-round event, vividly and sensually. As a hypertext format, the work reflects the fusion of perception, knowledge and thought, cultural and image technology, and serves as a platform for essays and guest commentaries from the fields of information theory, art and philosophy. The third and last part of the Web project, »Phantasma«, described by Wiener and Hentschläger as a »sensually presented generation of art and knowledge« forms a conceptually and philosophically structured, multi-layered discourse of many points of view and is about communication processes from ancient times to the present day. A modern cement ruin, itself an allegory of transitoriness, serves as a setting for thematic and formal presentations. In the work »Titanen« (at the Ars Electronica Center), Zelko Wiener dared to take a jump back to ancient times. Covering a range like this, in the sense of broad contexts of meaning, illustrates his endeavour to raise questions about the provenance of our (visual) culture and about new definitions regarding our existence and activities in this world.
Zelko Wiener and Ursula Hentschläger worked together in a special way. »We are passionate about comprehensive interactive, audiovisual experiences with a sensual connection of themes«, they once said. And indeed, their theoretical artistic work seems always to have been bound up with a lot of passion. Among their digital, visual (uni)verses, we find an interactive and variable poem, »Yatoo«. Variously configured texts can be called up by means of a constantly rotating star with a selection mechanism by mouseover contact. At one stage we hear in alternation the two saying to each other : »You, Are, The, Only, One …«
We have lost a friend, a pioneering mind, an artist, a digital poet, a spiritual and thoughtful person. We miss him greatly.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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