TORE NILSSON and PETER HAGDAHL at CRAC Photo: Kristofer Samuelsson

A couple of artists came up with the idea of sharing the costs of an expensive set of equipment for digital video editing. This developed into a project called CRAC. Today CRAC - Creative Room for Art & Computing - is situated at spacious premises in Kungsholmen in Stockholm. A remarkable number of interesting digital works of art, which have been exhibited both in Sweden and at international events, can be traced back to CRAC. Art Orbit talks to Peter Hagdahl, president of the association SKODOK which maintains CRAC, and Tore Nilsson, who is responsible for CRAC´s technical equipment. by Annika Hansson, Art Orbit

On a tiny white label glued to the mailbox it says CRAC. No big deal. But inside the doors of Igeldammsgatan 30 A, Stockholm, most of the high quality digital pieces of art work that have ever been shown in Sweden are produced. CRAC is an association which enables artists to plan and carry out digital projects at a very low cost. Here they are able to work with almost anything within the realm of digital art projects - ranging from video and sound editing to two- or three- dimensional rendering of images. Night and day. And the fee is next to nothing - a symbolic sum of ten swedish crowns per hour for moving about among pixels and megabytes. CRAC is not an institution for education, but for members who master the techniques and equipment themselves.     But help and advice is of course available if someone loses their track in the digital jungle - but is mostly provided by the artist´s colleagues. Together they form an valuable source of knowledge themselves, which everyone can dig into, as long as any of the others are willing to help. New ideas are mainly created through this informal exchange of knowledge and experiences in between the artists. To catch a glimpse of what a colleague at the next workstation is doing often generates interest for a new program or technique to be used within their own project.     However, one should not mistake CRAC for a cosy digital-based artists colony. On the contrary, the artists´ independence towards CRAC itself is particularly highlighted by Peter Hagdahl, president of the association SKODOK which maintains CRAC, as being a professor of Painting at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm. Museum of Temporary Art at Association for Temporary Art - www.art.a.se - a project carried out at CRAC Peter Hagdahl (PH): CRAC is and should just be a place where the art is produced. We don´t arrange any exhibitions or present ourselves as a group. If you´re interested in any art work that is produced here you have to contact the individual artist. But as Peter Hagdahl adds, CRAC is of course interested in collaborations with other groups or projects. Contacts have already been established with the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the huge telephone company Ericsson. And CRAC is open for many more collaborations. Art Orbit: However, one might ask oneself, what about the climate for digital works of art in Sweden and abroad? PH: Bill Gate owns a big collection of artists´ video productions. And that is a good sign. Peter Hagdahl points out that a new situation has emerged within the art world concerning "non-object" art works, which includes the realm of digital art. PH: This counts for all forms of art not dealing with objects - that is to say all forms of installations. At a much larger extent the digital projects are now financed by museums, exhibition halls and galleries, instead of purchasing complete works. In that way the digital art are mimicing the sector of employees. Tore Nilsson (TN): And it is precisly this non-object form of art which often is the reason for artist to work by means of digital media. The technical part is still a problem for many museums and exhibition spaces in Sweden. And that is somewhat surprising. More than one exhibition of digital art, during last year, has exposed blue screens when the video loop had stopped hours ago. Or due to another technical hitch ignored by the organisers. Art Orbit: How can this be perceived as anything other than an attitude of nonchalance towards the artists as well as the medium itself and not least towards the audience? Peter Hagdahl hopes though that most institutions by now have had their eyes opened to the technical demands inherent in digital exhibitions.     In Sweden CRAC is the only workshop of its kind for digital art. Artists from other Nordic countries and the Baltic States are also drawn to CRAC. A remarkable amount of all the digital art projects, which have been presented by means of the orange spots representing Stockholm - the Cultural Capital of Europe ´98, have been produced at CRAC by individual artists.     At CRAC no art work is subject to any assessment and there are no artistic criteria for the projects produced here. The members are free to do and create whatever they like. The only requirement is that everone has to pass as approved members - that is to say as active artists - and to pay the membership fee and the small sum for every working hour at CRAC. By now there are around 250 members and twenty workstations. Until now CRAC is has not been short of space or workstations but every visitor is required to book in advance.     Every member gets a card to the barred door that separates the social area from the workarea. Inside the door people are working intensively and quietly in front of the computers. Here all the technical equipment is attached to advanced machinery which is continuously expanding, according to the needs of the artists. Tore Nilsson guides as at home among screens and cables. He explains that CRAC is a well guarded place thanks to the artists who work there night and day. The same day as Art Orbit visits CRAC the so called VR-cube is inaugurated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It is the Swedish king has declared the opening of the world´s first six- sided Virtual Reality environment.     Peter Hagdahl welcomes the VR-cube, but is stressing the importance of broadening artistic knowledge and the use of VR. And he argues that this is hardly possible in a monster which costs many millions and where the art projects have to compete with industries like SAAB, Volvo and others. At CRAC there are plans for a small VR-environment where the artists can more easily try out the medium. PH: It´s an enormous obstacle that the artists has to surmount to really get interested in programming. And because of that fact it´s not the projects having the highest artistic quality or content which are presented in the VR-environment.The knowledge has to widen so that many more artists can absorb and understand the technique. It´s not until then that it is possible to present a really interesting content in an VR-enviroment. I do put content first, I do believe that "content is king".~