David Bickerstaff
Ubiquity
1997
This project makes a connection between the experience of cyberspace and that of the immigrant. The visitor seems to cross into a realm where he/she is faced with choices of which he/she understands neither the meaning nor the scope. The number he/she receives upon entering gives him/her access to a strange, new territory. Obscure codes and the superimposed and quickly moving images soon provoke confusion, while the environment turns hostile. After exploring it for some time, the visitor gains familiarity with this space — much more mind scape than landscape. (Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Channel)

Matthijs de Bruijne
Analysis of an Unidentified Object
1997
This interactive project begins with the image of a strange object which is evocative enough to spark the imagination and jostle the visitors’ frame of reference. As if he were trying to understand it himself, the artist lays the image open to the attention and sensibility of each visitor. This vaguely mysterious object serves, in fact, as pretext for interaction, and for emphasizing individual imagination. Imbued with poetry and humor, it allows for different interpretations revealing parts of each participant’s universe. The work also alludes to the creative and transformative potential of images that new technologies make possible. Faced with their rapid development and subsequent disorientation, the artist counts on their positive aspects and on the possibility of engaging visitors in a process of exchange and creation that encourages action upon the world. (Code)

Dreamed
1996
Because it gathers dreams as they are given, without censure, this project allows for a fascinating incursion into inner life, not of any individual in particular, but of what we may call the collective unconscious. A collection of dreams that can be read in chronological order or from keywords entered by each participant, Dreamed builds a series of personal and intimate tales that end up no longer belonging to anyone. Strangely, in the process of reading, certain relationships are woven through the descriptions. Certain dreams are linked together by shared words, which in turn become charged with a distinct importance and meaning. Through its infinite potential, its capacity for initiating experiences and for linking people together, the project surprises us by its poetic force.

Reynald Drouhin
Alter-native
1997
This work consists in short animations which the visitor manipulates at will. One image of a man and a woman facing each other hovers over four small, vague images underneath. Moving the cursor over the images animates the two figures. They then lean toward each other, either yelling or smiling, thus producing a domestic scene that could suggest, for instance, either breakup and reconciliation. These simple manipulations, selected and repeated according to whim, give the visitor the impression of acting on the world of another. However, the limited possibilities of these transformations and the stereotypical expressions they produce quickly make him feel the limits of his/her power. This project brings to light the desire for exchange that characterizes use of the Internet, while also revealing the limitations of this type of communication with others. (École nationale des Beaux-Arts, in Paris and Rhizome)

Nicolas Frespech
Je suis ton ami(e)...tu peux me dire tes secrets
1997
Short messages scroll past, several of them rushing to the screen at once. They then disappear just as quickly to give way to another batch. The pace is sometimes quite fast. They are secrets made of unmentionable desires, of confessions about shameful or scandalous experiences. To begin with, they peak one’s curiosity, but as they accumulate, they quickly leave one perplex and gradually provoke discomfort. This repeated incursion into people’s privacy produces a kind of saturation, and the secrets start resembling sensationalist newspaper headlines. In this, the work underlines the sometimes artificial character of accessibility to the private world on the Internet.
(FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, CICV)

Pierre Giner
(ça dure un peu)
1998
Here the artist proposes to have a smoke, — an amusing and harmless enough proposal on the Web, since the real usage of tobacco is associated with strict regulations and many health hazards. So it is with a certain pleasure in freely partaking in an "illicit" activity that the visitor gets involved in the work. While each cigarette burns, a narrator tells a short story on a sinister sound track. The anecdotes concern tragic, sordid or strange deaths. A somewhat unwholesome fascination develops with the cigarette consumption, creating an interesting parallel with smoke addiction itself. Smoking a cigarette also suggests a certain relationship with time, not just because of the "fatal diseases" that it would imply, but because the activity itself gives a measure of time. Naturally, discomfort increases while listening to the stories, but also awakened in us is a consciousness of time passing, fleeing, it too being consumed.
(La Chambre blanche and Icono) (requires Shockwave)

Garnet Hertz
The Simulator
1997
The Simulator produces gestures associated with everyday activities. The participant is given choices, from when to get up to when to sleep. The project thus attempts to render life’s routine activities for the Internet. One quickly feels the gap between physical existence and its simulation, because the correspondence with time and the real experience of these actions is lacking. This project questions the potential of technologies such as virtual reality to offer a true simulation of the real. Furthermore, because the choices offer only little interest and freedom, they refer to stereotypical and often boring content. In addition, the work highlights, with much humor, the oppressive aspect of the everyday when it is reduced to repetitive actions. (Conceptlab)

Pascale Malaterre
Ex-Voto
In the manner of other interactive works, a part of this site allows the visitors to actively participate and to consult messages transmitted by others. Furthermore, it comprises a museum, a reference section and a visual data base of the kind made possible by the Internet. The project is founded on the notion of ex-voto, a popular and historical tradition consisting in a public offering of thanks. The testimony left in the chain, often quite moving, testifies to important links between individuals, and thereby establishes a real rapport with the visitor, concerned as he/she is by the messages. The museum, a sort of virtual gallery, shows ex-votos belonging to different periods and cultures, expressing the universality of the ex-voto and the act that it implies. Here too, naïve illustrations and collection of figurines suggesting religious or pagan beliefs contribute to the emotional power. (CICV)

Julie Méalin, Valérie Jodoin et Éric Mattson
Eugénie, Laboratoire Virtuel d’Insémination
1998
The title is borrowed from eugenics, that science of genetics that attempts to improve upon the human species. Eugénie offers the possibility of procreating in a virtual manner, by use of a donor bank, where sperm donations of about ten celebrities from various fields are kept and ranked according to quality. Everything is game: the choice of donor, the name of the mother, that of the child, visiting hours at the nursery, consultation of the donor’s genealogical tree, the profiles of half-sisters and half-brothers and of their mothers. Statistics from demographic studies are also presented. The project takes a whimsical approach to the touchy question of genetic manipulation. It highlights the more absurd aspects of such manipulations and gives them a purely virtual space, intended solely for the imagination. (SAT, Canadian Cultural Center)

John F. Simon Jr.
Every Icon
1997
32 squares down and across from a grid on which it is possible, each square painted either black or white, to create any image. Such is the artist’s assumption. In a binary system, on which all computer technology is based, all possibilities are thus presented on a grid that changes before our eyes. In practice, it would take over a year to see all the potential variations of a single line at a normal rate of a hundred icons per second! The project expresses a certain ambition of new technologies to outstrip human creation. However, the quite relative success of this exercise underscores the limitations of the new technology. The true interest of the project rests in its conceptual form, in its author. (Stadium)

| The CIAC's Electronic Art Magazine | Top of this page | Version française |