Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Nowadays the problem of bringing together two different spaces is conceived
in much broader terms. Overlaying dynamic and contextualized data onto physical
space brings change, dynamism, interactivity and multimediality. That is, how to
introduce into an artwork those elements that characterize reality as the continuous
flow of states that we perceive as change. The contrast between site and non-site,
between the real and the virtual, between being here and there at the same time—
the ubiquity of objects and images, the relationship between physical space and
artworks—is a field widely explored by artists.
Every single place on Earth has coordinates that can be tracked technologically;
every single space can be surveilled. As Korzybski put it, the map is not the
territory—a concept later examined and developed by Bateson, though also explored
by Borges in his well-known short story
On Exactitude in Science
. Maps today—
spanning Google, GIS, GPS and the entire web itself, including games such as
Foursquare and social networks, which themselves publish content in the form
of maps, graphic data and infosthetics that are directly geolocalized, and hence
are forms of territorial representation—have become activities and practices of
socialization, interacting with social life. The result, as we have seen, is the illusion
of living within a technological Panopticon in which it is no longer possible to
dabble in any form of expression beyond control and outside of sovereignty: we
ourselves produce the data that fulfill the contemporary paradigm of surveillance
and control. By subjectifying the process of subjectification, biopolitics is self-
generating (Foucault
2004
). The technological Panopticon is an expression of
augmented power that pervades from the inside out, constructed as a series of
multiple power relationships. Through those power relationships, through the
invisibility of control, the biopolitics of social control is applied.
From an aesthetic point of view, contributing to the architectural construction
and maintenance of the network—the “social sculpture” of today quoting Beuys'
“extended definition of art,” later developed into the idea of “social sculpture” and
his thoughts on how and whether art should interfere with politics. —has led artists
to work in new fields that contain elements of new forms of participatory democracy.
One example of this process started with the Invisible Pavilion.
The Invisible Pavilion was an uninvited, experimental, hallucinatory experience
of augmentation, information and immersion in a specific context, involving the
unauthorized use of public space, which squatted in the exhibition spaces of the 54th
Venice Art Biennale (see Figs.
16.5
and
16.6
). It was a performance involving the
'flow' of digital-based works of art, which filled the whole Giardini concourse where
the national pavilions were located. Curated by Les Liens Invisibles and myself, the
main purpose of the project was to augment the spaces of the Biennale with a stream
of signs and symbols, in an attempt to emphasize how producing art is a state of
flow in the 'always-on' age. The format used for inviting artists to contribute to the
performance was also designed specially for the use of augmentation, information
and immersion. Artists were not asked for 'one' piece from a collection but for a
'stream' of pieces, since the idea was not to use the augmented space to reproduce
the same curatorial scheme as the visible Biennale. The Invisible Pavilion project
