ART FOR NETWORKS Fruitmarket 14 Feb-29 March 03. Artists Rachel Baker, Anna Best, Heath Bunting, Adam Chodzko, Ryosuke Cohen, Jeremy Deller, Jodi, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, Radioqualia, James Stevens, Technologies to the People, and Stephen Willats.
Curated by Simon Pope and Hannah Firth 'Art for Networks' looks at artists who produce or use networks through their practice. Artists included in this exhibition investigate, implement or critique these networks, often working at the intersection between them: (i) RADIOQUALIA In 1998, the artists Adam Hyde and Honor Harger formed the net radio project r a d i o q u a l i a. Primarily concerned with the networked streaming of data, their work exists within desktop computers, internet connections and the distribution of audio and video information through more traditional means such as AM/FM/UHF transmitters and in a gallery context Their current project, Free Radio Linux is an online and on-air radio station, transmitting a computerised reading of the Linux Kernel code, the basis for all versions of Linux operating systems. Each line of code is read by a computerised automated voice - a speech.bot built by r a d i o q u a l i a. The output is then encoded into an Ogg Vorbis audio stream and sent out live on the internet. A selection of FM, AM and Shortwave radio stations from around the world also relay the audio stream on various occasions. www.radioqualia.net/freeradiolinux (ii) TECHNOLOGIES TO THE PEOPLE Daniel Garcia Andujar works under the banner of Technologies to the People (TTTP), exploring virtuality, authenticity, copyright, sponsorship, media and power as new technology and the access to it spreads across the globe. Here, TTTP have created a new website for the exhibition, where users can join forums and chat rooms, explore the issues raised, propose new topics and links and provoke discussion. This opens up the exhibition to encourage participation and collaboration on a wider scale, developing ideas over time and geographical location as the tour progresses. www.artfornetworks.org (iii) JODI Logging onto JODI's website is like entering another world, where everything you have ever been told, or thought was right, seems to be wrong. Where once you had a user-friendly companion, you are faced with a screen full of fragments of computer code, flashing signs and the uncomfortable thought that the computer has crashed and your once organised world has disappeared into a swirling void. Whilst it may look like a counter-culture terrorist attack on your hard drive, playing along is addictive. Jodi forces the viewer to look beyond the screen savers, time-wasting websites and internet jokes, stripping them of all functionality, and viewing code as both aesthetic abrasive language, and hallucinogenic performance. www.jodi.org (iv) STEPHEN WILLATS Organic Exercise #1, Manual Variable Construction, (1962) invites us to alter the configuration of the 48 blocks, constructing a shared space for participation and negotiation. (v) ADAM CHODZKO Chodzko's first contribution to the exhibition, a tape slide projection entitled The Gorgies' Centre 2002, involves a small gypsy community which is being hounded off the land they own by a group of "posh racist elderly middle England Daily Mail readers". Chodzko invited mblc partners, an architectural practice in Manchester, to use the gypsy community and their caravans as 'show homes', complete with architectural plans, sketches and notes. Any approach from town planners, or anyone wishing to buy the land would have to visit the gypsies on their own patch. This unique approach adds to the status and notion of community that the gypsies already have. (vi) STEPHEN WILLATS Democratic Grid #10 (reconstructed) (October 1990) describes a matrix on which the potential interactions between neighbouring 'nodes' are subject to randomisation. (vii) RACHEL BAKER Baker's new work, Exit Strategy uses SMS text messaging. The use of the mobile is most noticeable on a train, where texting acquires an almost neurotic significance as a link to the outside world. The intention is to focus on specific train routes and create narrative scenarios using the mobile phone. Baker has created a booklet to be distributed to train travellers on the Eurostar, inviting them to register their participation in migrancy, via SMS. This creates not only dialogues between phone user, web user and rail network, but also between the UK and Europe as Baker is using the Channel Tunnel route. This project is a Chapter commission for 'Art for Networks'. (viii) NINA POPE & KAREN GUTHRIE An Artist's Impression, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie's work for 'Art for Networks' has its origins in text-based online gaming. These games connect multiple users who can chat, interact and travel around imagined landscapes and environments using a basic vocabulary of commands and instructions. Pope & Guthrie have constructed their own text game online, based around an island and childhood memories of where they lived. Running parallel with the development of the game, the artists have constructed a 'real' model of the island, complete with the railways, houses and shops that are constructed online. Seeing the model after visiting the site is a strange experience as you see the road you travelled, or where you chatted to a friend. By interpreting the game sculpturally in the gallery, a relationship is made between both the physical and digital experience. www.somewhere.org.uk (ix) ANNA BEST Ice Cream Van Convention (Phase 2), sees Best undertaking research towards the possibility of holding a nationwide ice cream van convention in the UK. The potential public art project would be a unique event, with over 100 ice cream vans meeting up. Best has met with ice cream van owners (or 'mobilers' as they're known), conducted interviews, filmed them on their rounds, built up a series of interconnected relationships across the UK. With the ice cream trade being a hotbed of history, politics, feuding and family connections trust is essential, as Best explores a unique community with an aim towards a spectacular and complex event. The exhibition and subsequent tour provides Best with an opportunity to build an archive of information, such as video footage and documentation which is shown in an 'ice cream van', with new information being added as the research and tour continues. This project is a Chapter commission for 'Art for Networks'. (x) HEATH BUNTING For 'Art for Networks', Bunting has bypassed the traditional postal networks of Cardiff, to provide a new network of personal courier services, with deliveries and journeys co-ordinated by the artist through his expansive website. The main function of this service is to match travellers who are prepared to carry parcels against people who have things that need to go to the same place. If you are about to make a journey and are willing to carry some objects, such as books, leaflets or 'special packages' then you simply add your journey to the website. If you need something moving, access the journeys list and search for destinations, before emailing to make arrangements. http://www.irational.org/cgi-bin/courier2/courier2.pl (xi) RYOSUKE COHEN Anybody who has even dipped into the world of mail art will realise that it is a creative network, with thousands of subscribers across the world. Ryosuke Cohen's art may tap into a more old fashioned way of communicating, but it is no less complicated or advanced than any other system used in 'Art for Networks'. In mail art, the network expands from A to B, B to C, C to A and so on, with millions of variations. Collaboration is taken as a given, with different artists' ideas being added to, deleted, copied and forwarded, constructing a series of complex cells, which are created in a non-linear order. Cohen's project, Brain Cell, has been soliciting new entries since June 1985. Today there are more than 5,000 contributors from eighty nations, and Braincell's contribution to this particular exhibition will expand over the course of the show. http://www.artepostal.org.mx/artistas/brain_cell.html (xii) JAMES STEVENS Steven's practice is stretched across the web in a wide and diverse range of networks. His current projects merge into each other as well being part of his umbrella organisation SPC.org Projected on the wall is BLINK, a direct media access channel on the 'Frequency Clock' scheduling system that invites engagement and interference in the co-ordination of streaming media archives and live event links. OWN, the Open Wireless Network, is a zine about WLAN, ownership, the assertion of rights and the celebration of autonomy. The first edition is planned in October. Consume.net establishes a new free network node in each of the galleries on the 'Art for Network' tour. It provides an extension of each gallery network using 2.4ghz wireless equipment, and where possible, the identification of similar resources in each area. http://dek.spc.org/blink; http://own.spc.org; http://consume.net (xiii) ADAM CHODZKO Product Recall, 1994 reveals a community drawn together by their common ownership of a particular style of Vivienne Westwood jacket. The invisible consumer network is revealed when Chodzko videos a party of proud wearers. (xiv) STEPHEN WILLATS In 'Walking Together For The First Time', (August/September 1993) Berlin's Alexanderplatz provides the formal setting for six people as they walk together, building relationships between each other to form a social group. (xv) JEREMY DELLER Deller is in the process of developing an offsite project with inmates at Cardiff Prison, the progress of will be presented shortly in Cardiff Central Library. For details of the project's development go to www.artfornetworks.org. This project is a Chapter commission for 'Art for Networks'. ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] archive: http://www.mediascot.org/ambit info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
