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Presented
by University of Southern California and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In conjunction with University of California-Santa Barbara
and New York University
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Websites,
Net.art & Digital Photography
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to...
ALYSON
CORNYN & SUE JOHNSON
"Perspectives on the US Criminal Justice System"
This is a participatory examination of the U.S. Criminal Justice
system. 360degrees grew out of Cornyn & Johnson's concern about
the increasing numbers of incarcerated Americans. Since 1980,
the prison population has quadrupled-over two million Americans
(mostly Black or Hispanic and poor) are behind bars today. The
social policies that created and sustain our punitive system
are often based on fear and a lack of understanding. With 360degrees.org,
Cornyn and Johnson create a space where people with different
experiences can come together, share their stories and opinions,
and engage in a productive dialogue.
Through first-person stories and interactive data, the site
takes a critical look at who is in prison today and why. Inmates,
lawyers, parole officers, parents, victims, and others tell
their stories. Each story is told from the perspective of 5-6
people. While listening, the user can investigate each speaker's
personal space by navigating 360 degrees around prison cells,
judges' chambers, offices, and living rooms.
URL: http://www.360degrees.org
ELECTRONIC
DISTURBANCE THEATER
"The
Electronic Disturbance Theater Hacktivism TimeLine/2000"
TimeLine/2000 is a year-based selection of events that
led to a radical shift in the use of the Internet from
a space for communication and documentation, to a space
for non-violent direct action on-line.
This web art project is presented as a date-based portal
to the many links EDT built up 1994-2001. Access to a
Flash date selector is gained from the TimeLine/2000 background
page. Selecting a year opens a pop-up window to display
EDT's link list for that year. The pop-up windows create
a collage of layered information on the screen. Selecting
an event in EDT's list takes you out of the TimeLine/2000
website by opening a new window to display the selected
webpage.
Located there are notes, essays, software, memoirs, poems,
rants, newspaper reports and critiques, both personal
and objective, concerning the rise of the Digital Zapatismo
in 1994 through the net.actions against WTO (World Trade
Organization) in Seattle and eToys.com at the end of 1999.
Between these two points in time, the Electronic Disturbance
Theater responded to the call of the communities in Chiapas,
Mexico, to bear witness to the new global condition of
neo-liberalism.
URL:
http://www.xensei.com/users/pixelyze/edt_mit
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COLETTE
GAITER
"Unofficial
Communication"
Gaiter's website uses urban street writing and varied
suburban and rural unsponsored public messages as visual
raw material for thinking about public communication.
Scholars from many disciplines have studied graffiti and
its visual representation of a war over space, metaphorical
and literal. The site, an interactive visual database,
includes the ubiquitous graffiti, handwritten (unofficial)
signs, even brightly-colored spray-painted markings that
decorate streets and sidewalks with the private visual
language of utility companies. Occasional handmade rural
private advertisements that stand out on less traveled
two-lane roads are also documented.
In the midst of an overload of official and readable communication
in the landscape-road signs, billboards, and business
signs-where does unofficial communication register in
our consciousness? This project uses the symbolic language
of public writing as subject matter for experimenting
with different ways to understand and put into context
signs.
URL: http://www.digidiva.net/uc
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PHILIP
MALLORY JONES
"Concept
Visualizations for Doxology Opera"
Digital prints created in Photoshop, on a Macintosh computer,
using collage and paint techniques
Each image is a stand-alone allegorical narrative. Jones
used the ideas in the libretto simply to point his imagination
in certain directions. Understanding or interpreting the
images is not dependent on knowing anything about the
libretto (which was written by Paul Carter Harrison).
The narrative is about the physical, emotional, and spiritual
odyssey of a young Black "woman of the avenue", Doxy,
who is approached by a mysterious group of women, The
Sisters of Silence, and informed that she has been chosen
to join them in their ritual responsibility to ensure
the continuation of the race. Doxy is initially resistant,
but through a process of confrontation, cleansing, and
revelation, she morphs into one of the Sisters.
1.
"Crossing Over"
2.
" The Cleansing"
3.
"Invocation"
4.
"Dance for Absent Partners"
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ROSHINI
KEMPADOO
"Virtual
Exiles"
Roshini Kempadoo's digital images and Internet site explore
the experiences of individuals who have left their country
of origin and who are now at "home" in another. The reason
for and experience of leaving a homeland always varies,
but those having migrated are nearly always considered
"outsiders" or "foreigners." Kempadoo created this work
while investigating her own status as refugee/exile/expatriate/emigre
in relation to her own country of birth, England, and
her country of origin and upbringing, Guyana.
The exhibition of prints are digitally-manipulated images
produced using a combination of Kempadoo's contemporary
material, specific historical collections from the Pitt
Rivers Museum (Oxford), the Royal Anthropological Institute
(London), and the Museum voor Volkenkunde (Rotterdam),
and material drawn from private and official archives
in Guyana.
The interactive website is an ongoing, curated, Internet
show where individuals and groups are encouraged to contribute
their own artwork. Whether it is a sound, video or a multimedia
piece, or a series of images or text, the person is invited
to contribute his or her own experience of being "settled"
and "rooted" within one culture, yet having a deep sense
of belonging with another. Such contributions alongside
Kempadoo's own work are then presented as four separate
portfolios, each of which focuses on particular aspects
of the "exiled" experience.
Virtual Exiles is a partnership between ARTEC, Impressions,
Lighthouse Media Centre, Napier University (PFTV), New
Media Scotland, Street Level Photoworks, and the Watermans
Arts Centre. It has been additionally funded by the Arts
Council of England's New Media Projects Fund and the Scottish
Arts Council National Lottery Fund.
URL:
http://www.virtualexiles.org.uk
" Sweetness and Light"
Sweetness and Light was produced for the online
exhibition La Finca/The Homestead; it now includes
a series of digital exhibition prints as well. The work
explores the essence of the term "colonialism" through
the specific example of sugar plantations in the Caribbean
during the 15th century, examining some of the social
and psychological strategies created to sustain such a
successful economic entity as the manufacturing of sugar.
Simultaneously, the work makes an analogy between our
historical "reality" of this period and the futurist "virtual
space" or "cyberspace".
Like the historical geographical location of a sugar plantation,
cyberspace is rapidly being recognized as an economic
venture for making capital. The success of the plantation
and media/cyberspace was/is/will be due largely to the
complex hierarchy of power as it relates to race and class.
Sweetness and Light starts with the viewpoint of
someone whose ancestors were the "subjects" of the colonial
experience. As it is important to make (re)interpretations
of history, particularly from different perspectives,
so it is to recognize where similar structures are being
reproduced/reintroduced for future experiences.
URL:
http://www.rtvf.nwu.edu/Homestead/rkempadoo/rk-1.html
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MONGREL
"BlackLash"
According to Richard Pierre-Davis who created this web
project for the collective MONGREL, "BlackLash is the
game the streets have been waiting for!" Players are instructed
to choose between four stereotypical Black characters,
then slay their way to freedom through swarms of insectoid
cops and Nazis. According to Pierre-Davis, "The filth
is still in command of society and the streets, making
sure only the selected few can escape the shithole. The
authorities have unleashed their law enforcers to crack
down on the undesirables and maintain control of the streets
contaminating all areas with guns and drugs." Finally,
here is your chance to kick some ass and annihilate the
powers that be and smack them stupid. Wicked fun. Sound
effects from the Wu Tang Clan.
URL:
http://www.mongrelx.org/Project/Natural/BlackLash/
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PREMA
MURTHY
"Bindigirl"
According to Prema Murthy, Bindi is a girl born out of
the "exotic" and "erotic." She is the embodiment of desire
for and of the "other"-the desire of wanting to be known,
or to know on an intimate level, and at the same time
finding safety, even power, in distance, in being mysterious.
Liberation in not being easily categorized. Bindigirl
is the product of a colonialist mentality. She is aware
that she is being watched, and asks for something in return
for being looked at, to mimic the symbiotic relationship
that exists in the "real" world between the colonized
and the colonizer. Not only does a desire to conquer the
Other exist in colonialism, but a longing by the Other
for the conqueror and his or her (capitalist) ideals exists
as well. This pattern of desire and longing must be re-evaluated
before we can move on into a post-colonial territory.
Bindi is Murthy's avatar. Not only is she her alias in
the virtual world, but a play on the word, which in India
means an incarnation of a Hindu deity, the embodiment
of an archetype. In this case she is the embodiment of
the "goddess/whore" archetype which has historically been
used to simplify the identity of women and their roles
of power in society. Bindi is neither here nor there but
exists in screenal space. She is somewhere between a question
and an answer.
URL:
http://www.thing.net/~bindigrl |
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KEITH
& MENDI OBADIKE
"my
hands/wishful thinking"
my hands/wishful thinking is an Internet memorial
piece for Amadou Diallo who was killed by New York City
policemen on February 5, 1999. The four policemen involved
claimed that they thought Diallo's wallet was a gun and
fired 41 shots, hitting him 19 times. Most of the information
the Obadikes received about Diallo's death was mediated
by the Internet and filtered through the lens of the browser.
Consequently, they thought it was fitting to mourn and
make art about this tragedy in "public/private" digital
space.
Keith Obadike’s wallet, seen in the image, was purchased
on 125th street in Harlem where Amadou Diallo worked as
a vendor. In this piece there is one thought to counteract
each bullet fired. The words are meant to be "wishful
thinking in the present tense". Mendi Obadike comments,
"These thoughts reject the negative forces directed against
us, the survivors, African people in the United States.
Making this work is an enactment of our will to survive."
URL:
http://Obadike.tripod.com/Adiallo.html
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ALEX
RIVERA
"Invisible
America"
Invisible America is a corporation, a nation, a
sovereign Internet territory where people and points of
view ignored by mainstream and alternative media come
to life. The articles, videos, and links of Invisible
America mesh fiction and truth to revitialize progressive
political media making. Invisible America is the
home of "Satirical Realism."
URL:
http://invisibleamerica.com
"Cybracero.com"
Cybracero.com
aspires to bring manual labor from the Third World to
the First, using the Internet and tele-robotics. Is it
a bold Internet startup, an edgy political satire, or
an artistic meditation on labor, technology, and the destruction
of distance? All of the above.
URL:
http://cybracero.com
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REGGIE
WOOLERY
"Keep
Your Handsa Off the Park: A Role-Playing Game in Real
and Virtual Worlds" (1997)
Reggie Woolery's Keep Your Handsa Off the Park
is tri-elemental in nature that can be played as a board
game and/or on the Internet. The game is framed within
the circumnavigation of urban spaces-in this instance,
Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan-infamous after the 1988
Tompkins Square Police Riot. In the game, the mayor of
New York City has decided to privatize the maintenance
of Tompkins Square Park. Three groups express interest
in the job, and game players decide if they want to be
members of big business, small business, or the community
(local residents and the homeless). There are also two
variables involved, government and the press, who act
as information facilitators and sources. For four weeks
using a game board, the Internet, and physical spaces
in the local community, the members of each group role-play
and strategize to come up with an ultimate narrative of
why their team should control the park. The game brings
community land issues down to a level where individuals,
business leaders, and politicians can learn from one another.
It offers an opportunity to reinfuse the democratic public
sphere with unbiased participation, suggesting an end
to both corporate special interests and community apathy.
Interested in issues of urban economics and democracy
playing out on the World Wide Web, Woolery merged his
interests in access, urban renewal policy, and digital
multimedia spaces to create an exercise about democracy.
By allocating bonus points for application of the game's
strategies to real-world spaces, Woolery allowed players
an opportunity to realize that their efforts in cyberspace
could translate into cultural and political change in
the "real" world.
URL:
http://mail.ross.org/~rwoolery/handsa.html
"World Wide Web/Million Man March" (1997)
World Wide Web/Million Man March juxtaposes two
identity/community formations: (1) the backlash against
Black male masculinity centered around the 1995 Million
Man March in Washington, DC, and the first O.J. Simpson
verdict, and (2) the vocal opposition to the Internet
due to issues of pornography. Woolery witnessed a sense
of paranoia and utopia around these two identity formations
and wanted to place them in tandem. Back from the March
and realizing the popular media had defined the critical
space within which he could talk about his experiences,
Woolery attempted to speak to that experience through
the voices of others, refusing to present a closure or
solitary definition.
URL:
http://mail.ross.org/~rwoolery/translocations.html
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HARLEMLIVE.ORG
"HarlemLive"
HarlemLive, a technology-based journalism program,
began in early 1996 at the beginning of the Internet revolution.
From its inception, their unique activities began broadening
the lives of Harlem youth by teaching them multiple skills
and connecting them with opportunities in their community
as well as the larger world.
Over the past five years HarlemLive has trained
hundreds of teens throughout New York City as journalists,
web designers, photographers, administrators, and public
speakers. HarlemLive has consistently observed
a rise in their students’ expectations in terms
of what is possible for their personal growth and career
aspirations. Students participate in the HarlemLive program
for one or more years, building their tech skills and
increasing their self confidence.
URL:
http://www.harlemlive.org |
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ONRAMPARTS.ORG
"Turning From the Millennium, An OnRamp Arts online
project"
Lodged beneath a gloss of euphoria and amnesia referred
to as the "Southland," is an urban structure constructed
of a complex history of race, class, and economic upheaval.
Turning from the Millennium is a reawakening of
this history found in two forgotten neighborhoods of Central
Los Angeles-South Central and Echo Park.
Through a unique collaboration with designers, artists,
writers, and urban theorists, students from Manual Arts
and Belmont High Schools in Central Los Angeles have unearthed
hard facts and urban mythologies that determine their
experience of Los Angeles. Through their findings and
creations concurrent with new technologies, these young
artists have forged a new description and determination
of their space, their neighborhood-the Turning from
the Millennium.
URL:
http://www.onramparts.org/turn2000 |
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