'Computer programs are what we generally understand by the term - `software', and Germans too now use the word `update' to describe the bringing up to date of programs. Our title `Update 2.0' is clearly based on the assumption that the expression is no less appropriate for a programme of media art, and implies that its predecessor `Current Media Art' is a successful working model that new input - or software - will equip even better to meet the demands of the present. The release number 2.0 is a playful hint that future updates are not ruled out.

Update 2.0, 2. l, 3.0? The logic of full replacement, something accepted unquestioningly by a computer world compelled to comply with economic necessities, need not necessarily apply to programmes based on content. For us, it is a somewhat unsettling fact that an update always anticipates a subsequent revision and by its name alone owns up to the presence of flaws and omissions. Our next programme package is no exception in that it will neither deliver a valid definition of media art in general nor claim to coherently And comprehensively reflect all aspects of the contemporary scene in Germany. The range of current approaches is too contradictory, too multifarious. Even if artists' video has now attained a well-nigh historical dimension, interactive multimedia projects are only beginning to explore their boundary conditions in regard to artistic media production. A wide field has opened out between conceptual art and playful entertainment, between slow-motion and upbeat rapidity, and the range is more easily comprehensible if viewed as international rather than national.

Being up-to-date is not just a matter of accounting for recurring fashions and trends, however, but also of anticipating the different social and artistic contexts the programme packages will encounter in the course of a world tour. While the video medium is booming on the US art market, the potential of multimedia applications and Internet software is what fascinates artists in Russia, for instance, or in India or China. Low- or hi-tech is not the issue in any of these countries - the artists are keen to find out which medium they can best use to break through the ideological and economic surface structures in their respective societies. In highly technologized societies such as the US or Germany, cheap; grimy and rough surfaces will always be more interesting than in developing countries, where restricted access to new production means makes the latter all the more attractive.'