Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3.1
Orators, rostrums, and propaganda stands by John Craig Freeman, Speaker's Square,
Singapore, 2013, Augmented reality public art
rostrums, and propaganda stands from 1922. Klucis was a pioneering member of
the Russian Constructivist avant-garde in the early twentieth century. As Russian
politics degenerated under the Stalin dictatorship in the 1920s and 1930s, Klucis
came under increasing pressure to devote his artwork to state propaganda. Despite
his loyal service to the Communist Party, Klucis was arrested in Moscow on January
17, 1938. His whereabouts remained a mystery until 1989, when it was discovered
that he had been executed by Stalin just after his arrest (Šatskih
2001
). Each of the
four virtual objects display a black and white animation from a contemporary mass
uprising: Tank Man near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989; the assassination
of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was gunned down in the streets of Tehran during the
2009 Iranian election protests; scenes from Tahrir Square in Cairo during the 2011
Arab Spring; and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street uprising. Each of these images
is juxtaposed, in montage, with frames from the Odessa Steps scene of Sergei
Eisenstein's historic
Battleship Potemkin
film. When touched, the virtual objects
play sound from the uprising. The stands call up both the resurgence and nostalgia
of current worldwide political idealism as they re-imagine the public square, now
augmented with the worldwide digital network.
3.2
Ubimage
The works included here are a sample of experiments testing a consulting
practice (konsult) native to electracy (the digital apparatus). The consultations
reference the EmerAgency, a virtual “egency”, promoting a fifth estate for a global
