THE 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge—or 01SJ for short—is not one of those harebrained schemes to “put San Jose on the map,” or yet another attempt to alleviate San Jose’s inferiority complex. The festival isn’t taking place in San Jose just because Vancouver, Venice and São Paulo all have world-renowned cultural biennials and we don’t. The festival is happening here because, plain and simple, it must happen here. This is San Jose and Silicon Valley’s identity, or at least one of its identities. If there exists a definitive North American cultural locale where high-tech engineers collaborate with installation artists, where open-source enthusiasts trade ideas with painters, where graphic designers pool resources with environmental researchers and where PhotoShop geeks mingle with outlaw electronics tinkerers at art receptions—Silicon Valley should be that place. “It’s not a question of ‘Why here?’” says Steve Dietz, the artistic director for 01SJ. “It’s like, ‘Yeah. Damn. This makes sense.’ “And I hope it works.”
In 2006, 01SJ debuted under a slightly different moniker, ZeroOne San Jose, and ran in conjunction with ISEA 2006, the 13th International Symposium on Electronic Arts, a migratory academic conference where scholars, cultural producers, curators and media theorists congregate and yak about the latest ideas and practices involving art, science and emerging technologies. Previous ISEAs have taken place all over the world, and a team of local folks proposed to bring the conference to San Jose as a foundation to launch the first 01SJ Festival.
This year, the major difference is that the ISEA Conference won’t be here—it’s in Singapore this time—so all the emphasis is on 01SJ itself, meaning more festival visibility, more world premieres, more commissions, more local and global outreach and more projects expanding beyond just the five-day festival.
In addition to all the works that you can physically view and/or participate in, artists are here in residence, collaborating with folks from the high-tech industry. Elementary schoolkids are working with digital-media programs on a global scale. International digital artists are coming here to work with youth in at-risk neighborhoods. And some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including Adobe and Cisco, are sponsoring the events. (Full Disclosure: Metro is one of the media sponsors of the festival.)
“Two years ago, everyone said, ‘What the hell is ZeroOne?’ There were a lot of [answers] like, ‘Well, you just have to come see it,’” says Dietz. “But I swear—and this is true—this year, the only people asking me ‘What is it?’ are the press. Everyone else is asking me, ‘Which is the best day to come?’ I think we really had an impact in 2006. ... What happened is exactly what we thought was going to happen—if you come, you will see something that really amazes you and you’ll want to come back.”
01SJ Global Festival of Art of the Edge takes place June 4–8 in downtown San Jose. See http://www.01sj.org or the program insert in this issue for complete details.The 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge is a convergence of vision, technology and creativity that could really only come from Silicon Valley
NOTE: An extended version of this column can be found on the Metro site here.
