Hi Susan, all,
On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 01:19:43PM +0000, susan collins wrote:
> A work that I (first) made in 1997 (which I think is one of the reasons
> MariaLaura invited me to participate in this debate) was a piece called
> 'In Conversation' [http://www.inconversation.com]. It was a work which
> connected the public space of the street with the 'public' space of the
> internet
In the context of this discussion, I thought it would be useful to add
something of my experience of this piece.
I watched the street in Berlin 2001 via my web browser on a borrowed
JANET connection for a few hours, and even used it to conduct a short
and amusingly broken conversation with you, Susan, while you were
troubleshooting the installation.
The piece struck me as problematic in lots of ways, although I could
also appreciate that those problems seemed artistically intentional and
came with the bricolage-like use of the technological artefacts you
mentioned, with their linguistic/cultural specificity (US accented
English pronunciation only), as well as the somewhat surveillant impulse
that drew me in to gawp at the piece.
Being an enthusiastic amateur programmer, I coded up a critical clone of
your web interface to the piece that allowed viewers to submit text to a
form that would first translate the text via babelfish's famously
bonkers automated English->German translation system, and then submit it
to your original web form, which would then speak garbled, mispronounced
German straight onto the street in Berlin.
Then I think I posted it to some IRC channels and mailing lists I was
on, along with a link to the piece, and some fairly puerile hilarity and
some interesting discussion ensued.
Nonetheless, I think my activity was something like art criticism or
connoisseurship - which took a form that was consistent with the piece,
and was inseparable from its contemporary technological/cultural milieu.
Cheers,
Saul.
--
mob: +44(0)7941255210 / @saul
sip: +44(0)2071007915 / skype:saulalbert
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