Annie Abrahams
being human
1998
being human questions issues of communication on the Internet, in particular the nature of correspondence via email. Utilizing text as a means of expression and taking advantage of the diverse ways of visually manipulating it, the artist questions one's desire to enter into contact with the other. Individual differences, and the possibility of establishing a veritable exchange on the Internet are played with. The artist exploits diverse ways of visually intervening in order to express the nature of these exchanges: the choice of colours for the text and the screen; the dimensions of the characters; superimpositions and fragmentations of words; and the appearance and disappearance of words; all aim at revealing different states in the quality and intensity of these exchanges. The Web project, thus, brings to the fore the desire to communicate - it's possibilities and limitations. It focuses a perspicacious gaze on something that concerns us all, this fundamentally human desire to bond.
(requires Netscape 4.0)
S.P.
Natalie Bookchin
The Intruder
1999
Natalie Bookchin’s The Intruder is based on a story by Jorge Luis Borges told in a series of 10 games. The story is that of two brothers, Christan (the elder) and Eduardo (the younger) who fall in love with the same woman, Juliana. They decide to share her and negotiate an almost impossible relationship until Christian finally kills Juliana so that the brothers may live in peace once again. The series of ten interactive sequences used as visual and textual elaborations are depicted through various games, many of the more violent type, which activate the reading-out-loud of the story by a warm Spanish accented woman. The viewer is invited to: catch falling words; kill spaceships; bounce a woman back and forth in a game of pong; play football; watch objects fall from a woman’s vagina; and participate in a good old fashioned cowboy shoot out. What the Intruder succeeds to do is combine the competitive and playful nature of video games, which are still more popular with boys, with the disastrous competitiveness of grown men for the love of a woman.
(requires Shockwave)
V.L.
Heath Bunting and Olia Lialina
Identity Swap Database
1999
This project offers the possibility of participating in the construction of a data base (grouping together identities) and to seek an identity from within this repertory. A registration form, written in numerous languages, gives an international flavour to the project, permitting one to imagine a vast quantity of participants. Yet, the unexpected nature of certain informations asked quickly gives the project it's ironic tone. As well, the bogus results that are obtained during one's search for a new identity have little in common with those requested. This Web project brings one to reflect on the limits of data base systems which categorize individuals and are arbitrators of human desires. It unmasks the illusion which upholds the belief of exhaustive possibilities on the Internet. In this manner, by questioning the creation of oneself and the quest for an identity on the Internet, Identity Swap Database takes part in, while also critiquing, this wide-spreading phenomenon.
(Irational.org and Teleportacia)
S.P
Critical Art Ensemble
Flesh Machine
1997
During the course of their numerous projects, the Critical Art Ensemble collective has developed a critical discourse around new technologies and its impact on our individual and social conscience. Be it in their performances, projects on CD-ROM or the Web, and in their critical texts, they have elaborated projects which have revolved around these questions. Flesh Machine is concerned more specifically with the relationship between reproduction technology and it's impact in the political and social sphere. The image of an idealized male body, taken straight out of a fashion advertisement, acts as the entry point for the work and signals the desire for physical perfection present in the collective imagination. A series of images and affirmations reveal what lurks behind this ideal: the human organ market; the control of genetic code in each individual; the invasion of privacy. The point of view posited by the CAE on this phenomenon puts into evidence the capitalist ideology which, in its pervasiveness, reappropriates everything, including the bodies of individuals and their desire for perfection.
S.P.
Alicia Felberbaum
Holes-Linings-Threads
1998
Alicia FelberBaum's Holes-Linings-Threads Web project is based on visual and theoretical explorations that take as a departure point the writings of cyberfeminist theorist Sadie Plant. It traces the connections between women's labour in the textile industry and the birth of the computer. Ada Lovelace, a pioneer in computer programming of the 1840s (considered by many to be the first computer programmer) plays a seminal role in the development of this site both theoretically and visually. Holes-Linings-Threads makes use of a grid of images culled from Batley in West Yorkshire, England which have been coupled with archived materials (such as documents) from it's industrial revolution past. Quotes from Sadie Plant's book "Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and The New Technoculture" are interwoven with images of the town and its disaffected industrial buildings, recreating a meta-history of women's participation in the textile industry.
(requires Shockwave)
V.L.
Tina LaPorta
Future Body
1999
The Future Body Web project foregrounds the relationship between the female subjective body and technological interface. A perfectly rendered wireframe female body floats in space and can be access though various entry points (ear, torso, derriere, hand, thigh). We navigate through each of these points to arrive at a deconstructed and shifting image of the female body in a disturbingly arrested motions and environments. Here sexuality is represented in the form of a disembodied, dislocated subject where the female wireframe model is a container of transferable information and code. The Future Body questions presence, and the role of a specifically female identity as well as individuality, within constructed communications technology.
(requires Shockwave)
V.L.
Debra Solomon
The living
1997-1999
Debra Solomon's The_living project consists of creating a continuous on-line one year digital performance. The artists makes use of live CU-SeeMe reflectors as well as chat lines to upload her daily activities during which she will undertake a pilgrimage to the birthplaces of digital mythology. There she will interact with both the real world and the virtual public where the public will be encouraged to suggest further possibilities for her pilgrimage. Thus creating an interactive exchange between real world and cyberspace. The performances are often focused on physical situations where the artist finds herself in such places as: the bottom of a swimming pool; pedaling on a boat; and riding a bicycle; all the while accompanied of her laptop. The aim is to generate a narrative for a continually unfolding on-line performance, a working chronicle of digi-culture taking place in both the physical and digital worlds. The artist attempts to live in a reality where a constructed image of the future is projected into the present in a dream of total connectivity.
(requires Shockwave)
V.L.
Æ (Gisèle Trudel, Stéphane Claude and Florian Wüst)
Sylva
1999
Sylva examines the conflictual and harmonious relationship that can exist between technology and nature. A QTVR image serves as the entry point to an ensemble of representations proposing hidden paths which manifest the ways we conceal our desire to unite with, and/or conquer nature. During the proposed course, the visitor is confronted with: an idealized vision of nature; it's use for commercial means; the fear experienced in front of an uncontrollable natural force; the efforts unfurled in order to master it; and the technological innovations inspired from the intelligence of the natural world. The strength of this work lies in the relationship established between the forest (sylva in Latin) - an emblematically natural site expressing the unknown, the hidden and the mysterious - and cyberspace, a space also endowed with these characteristics.
(requires Quicktime 3.0 and Real Player)
S.P.
Victoria Vesna
Bodies Incorporated
1996-
Bodies INC is based on a company model where the corporate ontology is at once criticized and reproduced. A global community participates in the building of customized individualized 3-D body where the body parts sold by Bodies INC through a process of share buying. The more shares the user accrues, the more parts s/he can buy, and the more complex and particular the body may be. The site is divided into three main sections: LIMBO INCorporated, providing information about inert bodies that have been put on hold, abandoned or neglected; NECROPOLIS INCorporated, where owners can choose how their bodies will die; and SHOWPLACE111 INCorporated where members participate in a forum and display themselves. This Web project brings to the fore the politics of identity and the relationship between physical identities as inseparable from the corporeal. Thus, the shaping of the body = shaping of identity. The heavily corporate and institutional tone of the site - with its b of body parts and the paperwork involved in death & creation - critiques capitalist culture while also being self-conscious of its use of the form.
m
(Necessitates Netscape 4.0+, RealAudio 3.0, a VRML 2.0)
Produced by: Viewpoint Data Labs, Netscape, Al;ias/Wavefront, Silicon Graphics, Meta Tools, The David Bermant Foundation, SIGGRAPH, Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, San Francisco Art Institute, Cactus R&D, RAIN, UC Santa Barbara.
V.L.
virgil
Genochoice
1999
Genochoice has the appearances of a veritable Web site for a firm specializing in the field of biotechnology. The image of perfect babies placed next to a genetics doctor greets the visitor in an atmosphere of confidence and truth. A similar publicity banner supports this esthetic. Little by little, the site digresses, leaving place to all the possible fantasies within this domain - creating a clone of oneself, a progenitor created from any possibility of partners... Under the seduction of these new possibilities the visitor is caught into an increasingly absurd game. Here one may determine not only the sex and physical qualities of his/her child but may also upgrade it's chances of having an ideal behaviour in the future and be protected from illnesses that the child could be predisposed to depending on the genetic code of the donor. A substantial invoice accompanies all of these desired changes, and an email message informs the happy parent(s) of the proper development of their "creation" over the course of the coming months. This Web project delineates a progressive and critical trend, showing how behind the desire to procreate a healthy individual is often hidden the high and almost ridiculous expectations of its progenitors. It reveals the monstrous characteristics that can embody this desire and puts into evidence the commercial aims of those who benefit from these.
S.P.
Reviews by Valérie Lamontagne and Sylvie Parent
