MAXI-REDES CUBE STOMPER

Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper (Surgical Makeover)

by Luzia Ornelas and Anne-Marie Schleiner

http://maxi.blogetery.com/

The Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper is a collection of strategic and economical designs using prefab easily obtained components and web software in innovative combinations resolving many serious dilemmas of the web world vs. gallery conundrum. Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper implements the playful spirit of net art in physical and spatial ways. These ideas are bridging the web and the gallery, simultaneously flattening techno-elitism and the white cube and giving a “ludic” experience to the visitor. Here are the two kits done in the MediaLab Prado. http://medialab-prado.es/ http://medialab-prado.es/inclusiva-net

Kit-1 Web Cam Vacu-bot A web cam (vacuum) is a sculptural image-hacking robot that has a web camera mounted on a wireless vacuum. It moves in different directions or circles around the gallery, (keeping things tidy in the process). It performs the tele-present function of projecting live video to a website, thus broadening the viewing public to anywhere in the world with Internet access.

Kit-2 Presence Enhancement through Performance Perform for yourself in a live interactive piece in the gallery. The piece will add visceral qualities, freshness and presence. The piece will have multiple projections overlapping images, such as Google Maps or any online projects that use location/navigation systems for individual experiences. It will bring more topographic sense into the gallery or other public physical space while eliminating the pitfalls of the mouse on the pedestal. It will not require keyboards; instead, motion sensors will absorb movements of the body in order to trigger the sounds or other images. A single exhibit may show more than one project in the same room such as:Una Ciudad Mejor (1CM) / A Better City by Flavio Escribano & Ana G. Angulo http://www.inclusiva-net.es/unaciudadmejor Security vs. Liberty: Hobbes vs. Locke by Miguel Angel Lastra Cobo http://www.inclusiva-net.es/

We would like to thank the friendly MediaLab Prado crew who made the 2nd Inclusiva-Net a wonderful professional and inspirational environment. We want to thank Daniel Pietrosemoli for the technological support and Juan Antonio Fabian who gave practical suggestions for our hallucinogic ideas; Sadhna Jain and Cristina “portuguesinha” for great constructive reflections; Carlos Paneco Zurbriggen for doing great sketches; Layla Gaye, Julian Olivier and “Pix” Steven Pickles for the orientation and feedbacks and finally all the flaming participants who fired up the cool Madrid nights.

We have designed the Maxi-Red Cube Stomper (a surgical yet sensible stretch makeover) to address some thus far badly reconciled dilemmas between net art and the gallery world. The most fundamental dilemma, (and mother of most other problematics), is multi-faceted elitism. First generation net artists in the 1990’s rebelled against the art world elite of privileged curators, white cubes and wealthy collectors by creating ephemeral, iconoclastic net art available to anyone anywhere online. Yet their avant-garde net art indulged in a different flavor of elitism. It was often inaccessible to those did not know about hitting the view source code button on the browser or could not readily mouth a definition of an IP address. (Perhaps, like any new art medium, it was a bit hypnotized with itself.) It was often inaccessible to older generations lacking basic computer literacy.

Net art is also completely inaccessible to large swathes of the world population who live in places where we sometimes live like Mexico and Brazil, places where fancy cell phones and iPods are much more common, (even when you live without indoor plumbing), than slow and expensive internet cafés. In these locales in Latin America, Africa and other portions of the second and third world, the digital cathedral is replaced by massive fluid open street bazaars of digital software, game and movie piracy passing through distant mafias from Moscow to Mexico City. A gallery or museum in these conditions, when implementing (or pirating) Maxi Red Cube Stomper type techniques, can provide public access to internet culture otherwise outside of reach.

But how to bring net art into the white cube? Common failures include the mouse on the white pedestal, which is then commandeered by the geekiest in the crowd, and the rest are converted to passive techno- intimidated spectators. Is the only solution to create non-interactive higher resolution video documentations of pieces, as do NY based artist collaborative MTAA who thoughtfully redesign net art works from scratch for gallery spaces?

Another common misstep is museum and gallery exhibitors misguided attempts to generate “aura” by isolating net art pieces from the internet so they only run on local computers, thus severing the pieces from their life force, (the Web). Or hiding the browser with special software which inevitably lead to link dead ends, (with no back button), and require constant monitoring. But if some sort of isolation and control is absent gallery visitors check their email, chat and pay no attention to THE ART. (We must confess to having occasionally indulged in the naughty thrill of figuring out how to access email on art designated computers.)

Can the intimate solitary experience of following links, for example a poetic sexually abusive hypertext net art piece by Francesca Di Rimini, be translated to the public viewing cube space? Does not a certain hollow soullessness result from the translation, a lack of presence? And is there not a certain impatience with gadgetry in the social body space of the gallery, especially during the drunken sweaty opening, (although art during openings is usually absorbed in a state of distraction anyway).

And what about net art viewing lounges, often to be found in the dingy basement of a museum, (such as Rhizome’s location in the old New museum in Soho), or the entryway to a gallery, and oftentimes conceived of as “just links” and thereby avoiding paying artists commissions or even informing them of the exhibition of their art. (Quite a surprise sometimes to attend a show with no idea that one is included.) Exhibitors may need to establish a strategic zone for the digital machine that will accommodate the visitor, creating a comfortable environment. Yet spatially hierarchizing “real” art over net art is problematic.

And finally, a wiggly can of worms, how to insert ephemeral, infinitely replicable, net art pieces which may only run on last year’s browser version, into the object-based art world of aging collectors , commercial galleries and art fairs from Miami to Madrid? Is the only solution that first offered by NY based Bit-Streams Gallery to sell an entire computer with the software art piece?

Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper is conscientious of the physical, aesthetic and socio-political dimensions of net art in public exhibition spaces. This involves the study of the human-machine interface and different spectator responses in relation to age, gender, and education levels. Maxi-Redes broader aim is multi-planar improvement on communication between art and society and the Maxi-Redes system may be applied to any type of art, not only digital. Contemporary museums should update themselves. They have the mission to promote exchange and educate the public with provocative and innovative art forms that include interactive digital artwork. One of the artist’s main challenges is to keep exploring new territories, highlighting contemporary issues, and discovering new ways to communicate them.

Components of the Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper (Surgical Makeover):

The Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper is a collection of strategic and economical designs using prefab easily obtained components and web software in innovative combinations (following the DIY modular approach exhibited on informational websites such as hack-a-day or IKEA hackers). While resolving many of the aforementioned serious dilemmas of the net art vs. gallery conundrum Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper implements the playful spirit of net art in more physical and spatial ways, bridging the web, the gallery and the street, simultaneously flattening techo-elitism and the white cube.

Web Cam Vacu-bot

A web cam (vacuum)robot which projects video from art openings and the gallery to a website. The vacuum bot would have 2-5 web cameras mounted on it pointing in different directions. Circling itself around the gallery, (also conveniently keeping things tidy), it would perform the tele-present function of projecting live video to a website with split screens for each camera, thus broadening the viewing public of, say a show in a gallery in San Paulo to anywhere in the world with internet access. Such vacuum cleaners may now be purchased at any big chain store, run quietly, and automatically recharge their batteries at scheduled intervals. Step by Step instructions for camera mounting and web cam software implementation will be included in the Maxi-Redes Cube Stomper.

Medium Translation Kits:

Medium Translation Kits are algorithms for medium translation. Each kit contains step by step instructions for how to convert online net art piece into a format more impactful in gallery space or other public kinds of physical space. A single exhibit may want to implement various kits as appropriate to individual works.

Kit A: How to translate your net art piece into a fine quality(limited edition commodifiable) HD video.

Kit B: How to translate your net art piece into situationist street art (Here we owe much to Museo de la Calle, Francis Alys, and other Latin American public art)

Kit C: Presence enhancement through performance. Perform yourself or hire somebody else to perform a live performance aspect to your piece in the gallery. It will add visceral qualities, freshness and presence to your work. Be sure to project the piece with the Web Cam Vacu-Bot.

Kit D: How to translate your net art piece to a mobile phone or other small mobile formats.

Kit E: How to translate your net art piece into a (commodifiable) sculptural object.

Kit F. Create a special collector’s edition of a net art or software piece with Kit A, large scale prints and special packaging.

Maxi Translation Kit:

This is a more extensive smart conversion of the gallery space, a more challenging alternative to the passivity of Kit A: high quality video but avoiding the pitfalls of the mouse on the pedestal. The Maxi Transformation Kit provides GROUP interactivity. Multiple projections screens, perhaps overlapping and non-cubic, (beyond the black box) display artworks that people interact with not through a mouse but through SPATIAL navigation of gallery space absorbed by motion sensors. (Modified Wiis) Thus gallery viewers are not required to use any type of gadgets though clickers may be used instead of motion sensors. As with all Maxi-Redes std components, step by step instructions, including Wii and clicker modification, are included.

Gallery built unique Artist Designed Displays:

Galleries should engage more in designing sculptural (but non precious) display methods for digital pieces. One of the advantages of net art it is can easily be copied and sent to galleries around the world. However shipping of display components can be impractical. Providing the gallery with a blueprint (perhaps for an arcade-like interactive game sculpture or a triangular projection screen) in an easily constructed way is a useful practice.

Wireless Headphone Audio Tour:

This is not a new invention but should be used more in galleries and not just old musty museums with plumaged antiquities like the Reichs museum in Berlin. The educational and informative mp3 audio tour can provide some of those inside techy details or personal biographical stories that illuminate understanding of digital works, but which sound annoying and boring when a live person (like a gallery intern) tries to explain them to you or they are displayed as long curatorial texts on the wall.
Opening Party Party Site Component (Useful for net and non-net art)

Sometimes in a big city it is hard to choose which openings to go to, especially when you only have enough money for a taxi ride to one neighborhood. Some have more or higher quality tequila or mescal but others have better art. The Opening Party Party is a website that receives simple (and inexpensive to send) sms text messages and parses simple scores from them in relation to the art vs. party value of an opening.