Tate in Space

I know that I have blogged about outer-space before but for some reason I keep coming across space related works and this was too interesting not to share.

In finding this website I was very surprised to learn that the Tate had decided their next exhibition site was going be space. This seemed completely ludicrous and I was really fascinated but highly critical of the whole thing. According to the site, the central concept for the programme is to explore new ways in which 'Tate in Space can extend the visitor experience and engage existing and new audiences in a broad range of spatial experience.' From the website:

In order to fulfill their mission to extend access to British and International modern and contemporary art, the Tate Trustees have been considering for some time how they could find new dimensions to Tate's work. They have therefore determined that the next Tate site should be in space. At this stage a number of practical aspects of the project are being tested and an early pre-opening programme is being taken forward. This will clearly continue the Tate tradition of innovation and exploration, and provide a radical new location for the display of the Collection and for educational projects. We are very pleased to announce the launch online of our Tate in Space programme. (Sandy Nairne, Former Director of National Programmes, Tate 2002)

I took this site completely at face value initially, really thinking that although it seemed absurd the Tate was going to launch a space museum. When public institutions - especially museums which are in the service of educating the public - tell me something new, I am most probably always going to believe them in good faith. The Tate in Space site is presented like any other ordinary page from Tate Online, and the information presented in it does not hint at it being a ruse, other than some of it sounds far-fetched. But then again, so does a spacecraft landing on Mars. Eventually I found a link to the essay by Paul Bonaventura, Floating Worlds which exposed that Tate in Space is actually an Internet artwork, by artist Susan Collins.

Had I just been surfing the web without my critical thinking hat on, I wouldn't have picked up on this. In fact, to be honest, I went for days thinking that Tate is Space was real, it wasn't until I went back and couldn't find the site that I discovered it was a net art work. The original site for this project is not linked to from the Tate Online homepage, but it has now been indexed in the Net Art section of their site. http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/tateinspace/

The level to which Susan Collins has supported this ruse in trying to make it seem as believable as possible is certainly worth a mention. The site explains that in 2002 the Tate launched a satellite into space which orbits the earth "at a velocity of 7.67 km/sec approximately 400km from earth in a polar to polar low earth orbit." There is also a chart which informs visitors to the site of where and when one should look to see the satellite in the sky, and, there is apparently a webcam which plays footage captured from said satellite, which looks pretty BS to me, which is probably because it is. The information about how to use the webcam goes into such detail that in reading it you almost forget that this whole thing is a fiction - but is it really? I really can't figure it out, and because there is so much information on the sites, it's all quite confusing. Take a look for yourself.

World Offset: pledge to reduce your carbon footprint

Having a look through Rhizome's Artbase I came across this work that really caught my interest. I've been thinking a lot recently about how I can reduce my carbon footprint, and similarly some of my friends and family are becoming more aware of how greatly their daily routines negatively impact the environment and are now actively trying to reduce this through developing alternative behaviours such as not relying on their car as primary means of transport, composting food scraps, recycling more materials and turning off appliances when they are not in use. I try really hard to stick by this, and have to admit sometimes I do falter. I get the whole "climate-change is bigger than us, there's nothing we can really do, and my measly contribution means nothing" attitude once and a while and then I realise that's a completely stupid way to look at it - I'd feel horribly guilty if I didn't at least try to make an effort.

So I was very interested to find this web-art project that explores this very notion of the futility and necessity of an individual reducing their carbon emissions by conserving energy. World Offset is a project that asks people to make a conscious promise to change their behaviours and make their contribution to the environment by asking participants to abide by a series of eco-friendly statements. At the end a figure is generated of how many pounds of carbon a person will save if they abide by the promises made. An example of 2 promises -

• I promise to turn off and unplug my home computer when not in use this year. Savings: 250 lbs per year, 0.7 lbs per day. Source: stopglobalwarming.org
  
• I promise to take two minutes off my regular showering time [1-7] days this week. If you are able to take 2 minutes off of your daily hot shower then you can save 342 lbs of carbon per year. Assumes an average hot showering time of 8 minutes. Savings: 0.94 lbs per day. Source: thegreenguide.com

The goal of the project is to make people aware that buying ecologically friendly products isn't enough to make a significant impact against climate change, and in fact making a conscious decision to reduce energy consumption produces a real carbon offset that can make a difference. The website informs that "the average American generates about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year from personal transportation, home energy use and from the energy used to produce all of the products and services used." So the projects aim is to have enough people pledged to the cause to offset the carbon emissions of at least one American, which seems like an absolutely futile amount seeing as there are over 303,000,000 citizens in America. Although, so far the website has only 102 pledgers and 20, 2344.93 pounds of carbon saved. In the face of futility the project advocates [http://worldoffset.org/futility/]:

We must work toward a wider, societal transition to a low carbon economy, while
simultaneously taking direst responsibility for reducing our personal emissions.

I totally agree! The project invites individuals who have decided to make a difference to calculate their personal offset and then engages then into a community of other people who have made the same pledge in order to see, with their powers combined (GO PLANET!), just what kind of difference they can make together. The website extols the 20, 2344.93 pounds saved have been pledged by "good people" who have made personal sacrifices for a greater good.

The project itself was launched at the opening of the EcoAesthetics exhibition at the TAG centre in The Hague in March 2008. This exhibition challenged visitors to consider eco-related issues "in different and inspiring ways." The displayed works showed alternatives and solutions by "fusing visionary art and technology."

The World Offset project contributed a digital visualisation of designed by the project's mastermind Tiffany Holmes. She terms it an 'eco-visualization', which the website describes as "the creative practice of making numeric environmental data visible and understandable through imaging, sound or animation." Holmes' stated goal for the eco-visualization is the promotion of environmental awareness and to make the data that indicates and charts this awareness accessible to a wider audience.


The visualisation is a moving collage of spinning discs that are made up of photos of every-day technologies that are designed to enhance our lives that consume energy, such as hair-dryers, cars and aeroplanes. The World Offset sites explains that when the first 75,000 of carbon are promised trees will replace the hair dyers. The 15, 000 pound mark was met on March 22, during the exhibition opening. It further states that "more than half a million pounds of carbon must be offset to fully “green” [out] the animation."

The visualisation was projected onto a large screen monitor from the Internet where is in perpetual motion. This project asks people to come together and make real life promises in order to enact any kind of significant change. This project will only work if one abides by the promises they make. If they cheat, they are not only cheating themselves but also the community they have become involved in, and the world affected by climate change. If the participant starts wavering from their commitment they can go to the website to see how many more people have pledged which may re-invigorate their interest and make them potentially pledge more promises. The visualisation acts as a visual metaphor to convey exactly how much their commitment to the cause makes a real-life impact. Being able to see results in this way and knowing that other people are also joining in may just make an individuals choice to do what they can seem a little less futile.

THE POWER IS YOURS!

[It occurs to me know that the reliance on energy-sucking technologies, such as Internet-linked computers, and high-def flat screen monitors to convey this message may be a little ironic, but there is a sort of disclaimer on the website which states "...you cannot unplug my computer and I cannot unplug yours but maybe there is a compromise and it begins now. Promise for real to cut your carbon footprint by some tiny amount then look here". The project wouldn't be able to exist without relying on some sort of link to energy consuming technology, so - does the altruism of the project outweigh the negative impact it creates through a reliance upon technology upon the environment? I think an expression of concern is warranted and it needs to be put out there in some manner, just remember to turn your computer off at night.]

Carlo Zanni - "The Possible Ties Between Illness And Success"

For my first essay I explored the relationship that exists between conceptual art and Internet art, looking specifically at how Internet artist Casey Reas appropriated Sol LeWitt's wall drawing instructions and translated them into a computational code for implementation in software. Reas' was interested in LeWitt's theory that the idea or concept behind the work should be the artists primary concern. In each manifestation of the wall drawing instructions the outcome will differ, depending upon a number of variables; the size of the wall, the paints used, the nature of the wall and the skill of the artist. Reas saw this effect also translated into his Software Structures project. The browser type, the Internet speed, the size of the screen, the power of the computer's processor and the type of software used all mediate the artwork's concept. The concept of the artwork, however, remains the same throughout every implementation. Thus, in LeWitt's terms, "the idea becomes the machine that makes art."*

It seems that Reas isn't the only net artist to be influenced by the above maxim. Italian born artist Carlo Zanni is also interested in concepts being the central and necessary mechanisms behind the production of works of art. His works attempt "...to reflect my sense of the times we are living in. These works confront themes such as real time/real life; fiction/information; social economy/special effects; isolation/public identity."* One such work is Zanni's cinematic production The Possible Ties Between Illness And Success (2006). The work is a one-minute video that plays over the Internet - in fact the nature of the Internet is a very necessary and important component that literally helps to create the work. The amount of people viewing The Possible Ties at any one time and each of those peoples IP addresses, locations, and date and time of access is turned into data to be run through a software programme which works to subtly change aspects of the film. All of the variants created in the process of accessing the work online contribute to the final appearance of the work, in a similar way experienced by Reas and LeWitt's works. So, the movie is transformed and manipulated by it's Internet audience, who become important collaborators in the realisation of the piece.

The narrative of the short film is set in a bedroom and is centered around a young man who is sick and lying in bed, and a woman who enters the room to comfort him. When the site is visited by any Internet user, their individual data is collected by Google Analytics and sent to the server that hosts the film. The data is then used as a tool to fill the body of the young sick man with dots that look like a rash. The nature and location of the rash on the body depends upon the number of visitors and the location from where they are accessing the site.

In the act of a viewer accessing and watching the movie the data provided by their computer is gathered and stored, and then used in the re-editing of the film. The new version of the film (in which the narrative remains the same, but the character's degree of sickness changes) is then uploaded so the next viewers can watch the movie, which will differ in appearance depending on the data collected by the server. The interactive nature of this work is pretty amazing and like the Radio Astronomy project (talked about in an earlier blog) distorts one's concept of space and time. That I can sit at home and look at the site, thereby changing the nature of the film in a very specific and unique way is something that can only be facilitated by the Internet, and this is a work that is completely aware of and depends on this ability - the work is characterised by this necessary co-dependency.

The movie is no longer in production - the last manipulation was made on July 2007. Up until then, two versions were stored every day, but only one was archived per week. You can still download these older versions to view for those who are interested in the history of the project.

The title of the work refers to the Zanni's manic-depressive disorder, yet his success as an artist, and is directly influenced by the book Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and The Artistic Temperament by Psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison. I am really interested in the title as a statement and the works underlying concept (not unlike a set of instructions for a wall drawing). It occurs to me now that the works' success fundamentally relies upon a viewer's choice to access and view it online; a decision which in turn impacts upon the well-being of the male character, thereby providing another 'possible tie' between success and illness. Perhaps it is not immediately obvious to the viewer that in an eerie kind of way, we are what's wrong with the male character - it is the viewers "who provide the closing element of the story: the illness itself."* In this sense, the statement and concept 'the possible ties of success and illness' is, as in Sol LeWitt's terms, "the machine that makes the art." It's complex and tricky work and I like it.

Texts used:
* LeWitt, Sol ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’ in Artforum Summer 1967, Special Issue, Vol. V, No. 10, pp. 79-83, June 1967, New York
* 'Bio' : http://www.zanni.org/
* Waelder, Pau The Possible Ties Between Illness And Success [March 2007]

'Ten Myths About Internet Art'

(plus a whole lot of digression)

Ten Myths about Internet Art
Myth 1: A miniature medium
Myth 2: An arcane subculture
Myth 3: Expensive & esoteric
Myth 4: The Digital Divide
Myth 5: Internet art=Web art
Myth 6: A form of Web design
Myth 7: A form of innovation
Myth 8: Uncollectible
Myth 9: No economic value

Myth 10: A solitary experience
[From essay Ten Myths About Internet Art by John Ippolito - 2002]

John F. Simon Unfolding Object (2002)

I've just discovered that the Guggenheim Museum website has an Internet art page that hosts commissioned net art projects. On this page there is also an interesting essay which discusses what author John Ippolito states are the myths about Internet art. Firstly, this website is peculiar because it seems to only host 4 works, the most recent being from 2002. I've just gone back to the main Guggenheim exhibitions homepage to see if I can find perhaps any other pages with more recent net art-works but I've had no luck. Actually, I had real difficulty re-finding the initial Internet art page I was looking at, because there are not prominent links to it from the homepage. I wonder why that is? Have they given up on commissioning Internet art and subsequently relegated this page deep into the hierarchy of the site? I wonder why?

Mark Napier's net.flag (2002)

Anyway, the two lonely most recent works that are on the site are the sort that necessitate your interaction for their full realisation - these are John F. Simon's Unfolding Object, and Mark Napier's net.flag. I really enjoyed net.flag, which is a programme wherein you can design a flag by copying and pasting different parts of world flags - my creation this one on the left. While Simon and Napier's works are interesting, I have to say they are both pretty dated - but then again we have advanced technologically in terms of software quality quite a bit since 2002. I can't help but feel that the Guggenheim Museum has kind of let itself down here, I mean there's a lot of awesome net artist out there doing great stuff, and a number of contemporary art museums have inaugurated net-portals for net artists to submit their works. Take for instance the Whitney Museum's ARTPORT- which incidentally is very easily found from the homepage. But again, I've just been looking at that, and while there are a few more than a handful of works their latest commissioned work Screening Circle by Andy Deck was launched more than 2 years ago on March 22nd 2006!

The Tate also has a net art portal, it's latest work is Watercouleur Park by French artists group Qubo Gas, launched in March 2007 - so still a year ago. By the way, this work is totally RAD! Still, I wonder why there hasn't been any new commissions for over a year. I wonder if Rhizome's ArtBase has filled that need for net artists to have an online venue or forum to host their works and prefer that to a museum's site? This warrants further investigation I think.

When I sat down this evening to blog I didn't intend to rant on like I have - I really just wanted to share the Ippolito's Ten Myths essay which I found quite enlightening. Ippolito has explained in detail, for those interested, the history of Internet art (as he sees it) and tried to distill any misconceptions of misgivings people might have about Internet art. I found it useful to read as it explains and discusses in easy language theories and opinions on Internet art. I'm sure some of it could be contested, but so can any writing about any type/style or indeed history of art.

I was interested to read about the range of different types of Internet art, created by the exploitation of many different types of online protocol, such as "email art, peer-to-peer instant messengering, video-conference software, MP3 audio files, and text-only environments like MUDs and MOOS." Just reading about this has lead me to think more broadly about net-art practice which helps me in trying to figure out the types of art works I want to include in my curatorial project.

Finally, something interesting I just found under Myth # 8 Uncollectible:

"...the Guggenheim is bringing a particularly long-term vision to collecting online art, acquiring commissions directly into its permanent collection alongside painting and sculpture rather than into ancillary special Internet art collections as other museums have done."

The section further explains that this approach has seen the Guggenheim put net art works into something they call the Variable Media Initiative - put together to in preparation for "the obsolescence of ephemeral technology by encouraging artists to envision the possible acceptable forms their work might take in the future." The initiative enables this by working to pair artists with museum and media consultants (not sure what they are) to "provoke comparison of artworks created in ephemeral mediums." For example, this comparison, which I think is slightly tenuous and warrants sharing: Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Public Opinion) & Napier's net.flag project from above. I know comparison they are trying to make is less about similarity in appearance and more about their ephemeral nature, but they do look quite strange next to each other.



I've had a look at this site just in case the site makes mention of any other net artists working as a part of this interesting initiative, but it seems pretty evident to me that there's been no new activity since 2004. It doesn't seem to be a terribly proactive campaign - maybe they thought they were getting a bit a head of themselves in 2004 with worrying about the obsolescence of ephemeral technology. Who knows, I could be completely wrong, but you'd think it there was initiative was still initiating they'd keep their website up to date with all the exciting new things they are doing. I'll have to keep a watch on it - no RSS feed on this site.

Ceci n'est pas une Magritte

Check out this choice painting my friend Sophie made about 7 years ago for my 18th birthday - I thought it'd be cool to show you in reference to my last blog. The choice of banana has meaning, it's a long story that doesn't really need to be told, but it does involve me, the 6th form after-ball, my first serious encounter with Bacardi and my predisposition for obsessiveness.