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]