Jerusalem Post (Eng) - Alon Segev Gallery

24
BUSINESS
Minister
of design
In a first visit by a British
culture minister, Ed Vaizey
discovers the artistic side of hi-tech
and a bit of his own past
BY NIV ELIS
It was the soundwaves sculpture,
with its dense oscillations
and vibrant, glossy sheen, that
caught the British minister’s eye at
the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The sculpture is the work of
technological artist Eyal Gever,
who designs cutting-edge computer
graphics technology to recreate
events like nuclear explosions or
capture the sound of a volcanic
eruption, and translates their “sublime”
moments into sculptures
using a 3-D printer. It only seems
natural that Gever’s work would
appeal to Ed Vaizey.
As the British culture, communications
and creative industry minister,
Vaizey’s purview includes not
only the arts, but technological
communications and creative
industries such as film, television,
video games and fashion. Gever’s
art exemplifies Israel’s excellence
in those areas, both separately and
in combination.
Given Israel’s aptitude for arts
and technology, Vaizey assumed a
plethora of British culture ministers
had visited the Jewish state
before him, and is shocked to discover
he is mistaken. “If that’s the
case, I’m proud to be the first
one,” he tells The Jerusalem Post at
an interview on a sunny day at the
British ambassador’s residence in
Ramat Gan. “I’m delighted!”
Vaizey’s recent three-day visit,
sponsored by a slew of bilateral
ties institutions, is aimed at deepening
cultural and communications
ties between the UK and
Israel. The delegation, he explains,
“acts like a dating agency,” facilitating
relationships between
Israeli and British companies in
those fields.
“There’s a great deal of synergy,”
Vaizey says of the two countries.
“There’s a strong Jewish community
in the UK, which takes very
prominent part in our public life,
from Jacob Rothschild downwards.
We have a shared history,
obviously, and a connection that
goes back many years,” he says.
“Israel is a natural partner for us
to work with because of Israel’s
strong track record in technology.”
It’s not just talk – Israel is among
the handful of countries the UK is
focusing on to expand its technological
and creative ties. On the
priorities list, Israel sits alongside
economic powerhouses China and
India, which represent a third of
the world’s population between
them, South American development
miracle Brazil, and resourcerich
Gulf states. And Vaizey seems
smitten with it.
“Israel is a country in an ancient
landscape, so you think about this
part of the world as being rooted
in the beginnings of human civilization,
and yet Israel is also one
of the most advanced economies
in the world. Despite its small size,
it punches well above its weight in
patents, Nobel prizes and technological
advances,” he says.
But even Vaizey, who met with
Communications Minister Moshe
Kahlon and Culture Minister
Limor Livnat during his trip, didn’t
expect to find such fertile
ground for cooperation.
Although he was aware of Israel’s
reputation for technological
prowess, he was surprised by the
extent of its innovation. During
the visit, Vaizey learned of Israeli
success stories such as The Gifts
Project, a platform acquired by
eBay that allows friends to all
pitch in for one big online purchase,
and the Google-acquired
LabPixies, which was among the
first companies to produce widgets
for the search giant’s personalized
homepages.
“It surprised me how profound
that success is,” says Vaizey. “The
contribution of Israeli R&D to
global companies like Intel is
something I don’t think many
people know about, something I
certainly didn’t know about
before.”
Through all of the talk of business
and technology, Vaizey also
found a very personal connection
to Israel on his trip.
“My great-grandmother’s brother
was killed in the Holocaust with
his children,” he explains. That
man’s son moved from Poland to
Palestine in 1932, where he settled
down and had children. After
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APRIL 6 - 12, 2012
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BUSINESS 25
Vaizey’s official visit to Yad
Vashem – “an extraordinary
place” – he met his third cousins
for the first time. “That was very
moving.”
ONE OF the charms of working
with creative arts and technology
is that they are singularly focused
on advancing humanity, careening
forward into the future
despite the best attempts of present-day
politics to mire them
down in the muck.
“I’m always struck by the fact
that when you look at projects like
the large hadron collider in
Geneva, you will find, frankly,
Iranians and Israelis working
together to further the advancement
of the human race, and
that’s what the exchange of ideas
is about.”
But a little bit of political interference,
like death and taxes, is
inevitable. In the UK, especially in
the academic realm, calls for boycotting
Israel have been ubiquitous.
The British Union of Colleges and
Universities, representing 120,000
university academics, imposed a
boycott against Israeli academic
institutions in 2007, according to
the Israel Project.
The largest higher education
union, the University and
Colleges Union, voted in June
2010 to support a Boycott
Divestment Sanctions campaign
against Israel. More recently,
groups such as the Boycott Israel
Network and Jews for Boycotting
Israeli Goods sought to shut down
a music conferences until they
were satisfied no Israeli government
funding was involved.
Vaizey saw antipathy to Israel up
close and personal when he
attended a performance by the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at
the Royal Albert Hall in
September. Pro-Palestinian protesters,
who had urged a boycott
of the event, disrupted the show
no fewer than six times, resulting
in the cancelation of its live radio
broadcast.
Attempts to isolate Israel academically
or culturally are “offensive,”
says Vaizey, and the British
government opposes them. “The
idea that you would punish Israeli
academics for the policies of a government
you may disagree with is
completely wrong,” he says. “It’s
complete anathema to what academic
freedom should be – the
exchange of ideas without politics
interfering,” he continues.
Vaizey likes to remind critics
that Israel is a vibrant democracy.
“The thing that defines Israel for
me is that you can be as rude
about Israel to me as you like, but
what you should remember is that
you could be as rude about Israel
as you like in a café in Tel Aviv,
and there’s no other country in
the Middle East that you could do
that [in].”
The boycott movement, which
in his view has failed to have a
serious impact, is self-defeating.
“I think it misses the point,
which is that you can criticize a
government for its policies, just as
our government is criticized, but
you shouldn’t criticize a people.”
Applying the same logic to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Vaizey
believes there is much work Israel
can do to improve life for the
Palestinians. The delegation visited
Ramallah, where it met representatives
from the largest
Palestinian private sector company,
Paltel, which provides the territories
with telephone, Internet
and cellular services.
“I think it’s really important that
we include the Palestinians in our
engagement in this region. I think
that the people of Israel know that
more needs to be done to support
the Palestinians in terms of economic
growth, so the more that
we can bring both Israelis and
Palestinians together in terms of
working together in business, and
if Britain can play a role in that
and be part of the equation, that’s
something I would strongly support
as well,” says Vaizey.
One of the problems is that
Palestinians have an image problem.
People “read the news and
hear the reports of the troubles, so
they don’t think about the West
Bank as a place where they can do
business,” he says. That is a perception
Britain would like to challenge,
in part by further engaging
with businesses in the territories,
and in part by asking Israel to help
facilitate business.
“It’s not my job to tell the Israeli
government how to behave,” says
Vaizey, but he points out that
Palestinian businesses could run
better if goods had an easier time
getting through customs. There’s
one story of a server being held up
in a warehouse for eight months.
Ramallah is keen to deploy 3G
‘Israel is a natural partner
for us to work with
because of Israel’s strong
track record in
technology,’ says British
culture minister Ed Vaizey.
(Courtesy photos: British Embassy)
services, he says, and Israel should
support that.
BACK AT the ambassador’s residence,
Vaizey considers the overlap
between technology and arts.
“The arts tend to be defensive,
they always think they’re an afterthought,
they’re not takes seriously,”
he says. But what is often
missed, he says, is that technology
depends on the arts. “You can have
all the technology advances that
you want, but unless you make it
human, unless people can interact
with it, it’s not going to work.”
Artists and creative people are
necessary to make it make it
human. “The entire success of
Apple is, I think, down to design,”
he says.
That’s the kind of synergy that
Israel and the UK can create by
working together. Britain is often
associated with its long history and
culture rather than its own technological
innovation.
“People like to visit to see castles
and museums – but more and
more people recognize that we’re
also a very advanced country in
terms of science.”
His message to Israeli companies,
which often look to America for
management, marketing and creativity,
is that there is an alternative
on this side of the Atlantic.
“All of those skills are on the
doorstep in London and they
should look there first.” ■
Making
(sound)waves
The artwork that caught British culture minister
Ed Vaizey’s eye is a sound sculpture by Eyal
Gever which is based on the song “Live with
Me” by Massive Attack (a top British DJ and trip-hop
duo from Bristol, England, consisting of Robert
“3D” Del Naja, Grant “Daddy G” Marshall and soul
legend Terry Callier).
“In my artwork, I try to create sublime moments.
The moment that fills a person with amazement,
awe, terror, astonishment and silence translates in
my work to moments of pure beauty,” says Gever.
“Through a thorough investigation of the moment
and the environmental situation that demarcates
the boundary between an event and its representation
I create sculptures that are based on a software
I’ve developed that allows you to see the world
through the eye of a high-speed 3-D simulated camera.
It provides us the ability to see something we
normally cannot see, the moment of suspension in
time. I provide a way for us to see this action as tangible
frozen-in-time objects. It is an in-between state,
a state where rest and motion can exist together.
“In these sound sculptures, I investigate the
unseen effect of sound-waves infusion into an
object, as in a digital environment audio input can
have a more obvious impact on the object and its
distortion than in reality.”
Although Vaizey and British Ambassador
Matthew Gould saw the sculpture at the Israel
Museum, Gever stresses that it is still a work in
progress and is not a part of the museum collection
or exhibition.
■
Above and opposite page: Part of the ‘Live with
Me’ sound sculptures, a work in progress.
(Courtesy: Eyal Gever)
THE SHEKEL
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* Bank of Israel rates for April 4
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