Hi all
thanks for the debate thus far... I'd like to steer us slightly away
from the questions of conservation/preservation of display equipment
(which are important questions i know!) and back towards the knotty
kernel of this month's topic - the issue of permanence in public space.
I suppose at first I had been thinking of public space as outdoors
(certainly out of the gallery) if not at least actual space (not the
virtual space of the web, which I agree of course is public).
I think what Matt has written about the airport commission is
fascinating, and we could unpack it further. They've created a kind of
platform, but moreover, an infrastructure. All too often curatorial
'platforms' are all about the front end and what it looks like and then
finding people/artists to fill in the content in the backend, without
considering how the two are connected or networked, which it seems like
this project addresses.
Do people on the list know of other examples of artists creating
permanent public systems/platforms/infrastructures for activation and
re-use? Iliyana Nedkova has been curating for a video wall in Perth I
do believe... and there were some instances of this at the Science
Museum in London (Hannah?) .... but this airport project seems like a
different beast altogether with the approach that "artists will specify
their own front-end technology" to the network that has been patched
together. It seems like a lot could be learned from the "re-use"
approach the Gorbet team have taken, and the Eyebeam lab's approach in
releasing how-to kits.
Jon described upkeeping the connection between the backend (the idea of
the work?) and the front end (how it is installed and shown) as like
gardening... and it seems that is the part that curators/commissioners
have the hardest time getting their heads around (which is why using
the variable media approach to assign behaviours to works, so that the
front end might change but the connection to the backend isn't lost, is
such a great idea).
I'd be interested to hear from our other list respondents as to how
they have undertaken public art commissions using technology and if the
challenges they encountered was in keeping these connections alive and
even visibly on the radar of the hosts (to mix my metaphors a bit).
On another note, Ben Rubin describes his piece thus:
>
"San Jose Semaphore" is a public artwork presented by Adobe Systems and
the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs. Located atop Adobe’s Almaden
tower in downtown San Jose, California, Semaphore consists of 4 large
illuminated circles that continually shift and turn to form an encoded
message. A low-power AM radio broadcast provides a soundtrack that can
be picked up locally within a radius of two or three blocks.
The content of the Semaphore’s message is known only to the artist;
deciphering Semaphore’s encryption technique and decoding the message
is posed as a challenge for the public. Ben Rubin will award a cash
prize (as well as bragging rights) to the first person or group to
successfully crack the code. Challenge details will be posted soon at
http://www.sanjosesemaphore.org.
Originally commissioned in 2003, Semaphore will begin its transmissions
in August 2006.
>
I think it is interesting that while this is a permanent work, it has a
(presumably) time constrained component -- the time it takes someone to
crack the code.
sarah
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