What are your current research/artistic projects?
At this moment, I am working in three different areas of the creative field: One is related to my research on Media Archaeology (especially in Latin America, and the Global South), and
it deals with the construction of functional prototypes of technologies that are currently non-existent or that are in disuse. When creative reconstructions of media technologies are implemented again, some of the characteristics of the original devices are back into operation. This
COMMUNICATION: You mentioned that language has a double function: one is to communicate, the other is to block communication in sophisticated ways, such as encryption. Do you think it’s easier or more difficult to communicate through the ubiquitous digital media?
In the context in which we
In our times, this discussion is meaningful in many ways because I understand our present times as characterized by the need to communicate and the need to
block communication.
At the moment, I am occupied with the relationship between language and computing that encompasses the negotiations between natural and formal languages. It is fascinating from a philosophical point of view, because it deals with different ontologies related to writing, codification, computation, processing, and it is near to many creative and critical fields. I am interested in the study of computer languages and their historical evolution. Computer languages are a form of writing, but they also have this performative turn in a very concrete sense given that the code is executed. I think it is a complex set at both practical and philosophical levels, and that can teach us a lot about how it is going unfolding the relationship between language and communication (and encryption) in our times.
ONLINE ARCHIVING: As a telecommunication artist and researcher, how do you take the ethical position of documenting data or using for art practices, when it’s involved in minor groups? And how do you see the role of disseminating these data online? What’s your idea of online archiving and online-exhibition?
The question about The Archive itself is a complex one, and the same is true for the questions about the Online Archive, I can't go as thick as I would like to about these topics, but let me mention some ideas.
The creation of online archives is a subject that interests me profoundly because of the cultural role they could play for contemporary society in terms of access, discussion, promotion, and research. Fields like Online History or Digital Humanities have proven that it is possible to create online experiences based on collections and items that are at the same time deep, critical, useful and well designed. This is possible because a significant part of the tools applied to organize and produce these archives are increasingly accessible, free and even open source. T
his is the case of devices such as ATOM or Omeka, which are able to facilitate sharing content based on relational databases that take into account users and access.
The ethical issues must be addressed before uploading anything online
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t is necessary to ask about it to the communities that may be interested, or even affected by the publication of such material. It is indeed desirable that there is interaction with the communities and that ethical questions are discussed with the actors of the network.
EXHIBITION: When it comes to exhibition design, as the chair and curator of SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Gallery, could you share with us what is the difference between ‘open call’ and ‘curation’? And what kind of message you want to call the audience’s attention through the exhibition?
Regarding exhibition design and curatorial practice, there are two paradigms that, although they are not contradictory, can be seen as opposed to how the content of an exhibition is selected and organized. On the one hand, there is the Open Call, a process in which there is a public call for artworks, and on the other is the
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uried process in which the curator selects the artworks directly. I have been able to run exhibitions using the two models and
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in some cases
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a combination of them. I believe that both have advantages and problematic points, the Open Call advocates for public participation, although it is not always effective because sometimes the call is just spread in some specific communities. The juried processes usually present exhibitions with concepts that can be articulated clearly, because is based on research and visits to studies, however, sometimes the decisions of the curator are seen as arbitrary.
In the case of the Art Gallery at Siggraph 2018 in Vancouver, it was a juried process, which I found interesting since some years before Siggraph Art Exhibition had been Open Call and now the idea was to explore the curatorial format. In this exhibition, I wanted to make a strong emphasis on three sources of artistic work with technology. The first one is the work of indigenous communities that were working with audiovisual and interactive technologies in Canada and the United States (examples of these artists are Skawennati, Shawn Hunt, Microsoft Garage, E Line Media Studios). Second, I was very interested in works that were linked to the origins of the community that works with art and technology and in particular in art and computing (examples are Ernest Edmonds and Daniel's work Cardoso) and on the other hand I was very interested in practices that were linked to the notion of origin from art and science as a theme in different media from robotics, installations, online art, interactive and immersive installations (examples are
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Marko Peljhan, Ruth West, Milton Sogabe, Nicole L'huillier, Ozge Samanci, Alex Beim, among others). I think this exhibition was an opportunity to articulate the work of some of the most interesting artists that I have had a chance to meet in my life, the strength of an exhibition is always based on the quality of the work of each of the artists and Careful selection made it possible for the articulation to make sense as a whole. It was also essential to include a component with the DAC community and create an online exhibition with the open call model that complemented what was shown in situ.
Siggraph 2018 Art Gallery was announced in the following way: "Original Narratives: Building upon an exciting and eclectic selection of creative practices mediated through technologies that represent the sophistication of our times, the SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Gallery will embrace the narratives of the indigenous communities near Vancouver and throughout Canada as a source of inspiration. The exhibition will feature contemporary media artworks, art pieces by indigenous communities, and other traces of technologically mediated ludic practices. The exhibition aims to articulate myth and technology, science and art, the deep past and the computational present, and will coalesce around the theme of Origins. Media and technological creative expressions will explore principles such as the origins of cosmos, the origins of life, the origins of human presence on the planet, the origins of people that occupy the territories of the Americas, and the origins of people who are still living in the vast territories of the Arctic. Additionally, the venue intends to rekindle the original spark that ignited the collaborative spirit in the community of engineers, scientists, and artists who came together to create the first SIGGRAPH conference in the early 1970s.2
PRESERVATION: How do you document your art works and research projects online and offline? As an interdisciplinary art practitioner, you made many interactive installations to engage people, such as: ‘MSCRI’ (2009) and ‘Imagining Macondo’ (2015). How do you preserve those interactive experiences? How do you see the value of the site-specific interactive art in the ages of digital media?
Practically, all the work I have done at the creative level, like the installations, have relatively little time spans. I was aware from the beginning of such condition and in other cases, such as the net.art works, it is a surprise to discover the short time of operation given the technological transformations.
In the case of Imagining Macondo , hosted by the Bogota International B ook Fair in Colombia, it was known from the first moment that it was a massive installation that would last for two weeks only. 3 That means several types of documentation were produced, we had one team responsible for producing audiovisual documentation of the exhibition permanently. I t turns out at the end there was a lot of material that is not necessarily ideal because it is demanding to go through all the material to publish some documentation.
In contrast, some of the projects I created in the nineties on the Internet, ended up being ephemeral to my regret because many of these works have actually disappeared over time, due to changes in the servers, and in the media technologies. In some cases that is somehow poetic and fascinating because let's say they do fulfill a function at a particular time and then they disappeared. However, there are others in which it was not possible to make appropriate documentation because the focus was on the production process. T hat I think is a severe problem because I do not have documentation of several projects that historically are important today. Additionally, a few projects have been documented more than ten years ago, when it was not common in High Definition video, and it turns out that the video for the present standards is a deficient definition.
INSPIRATION: Many works of you have strong connection with nature and landscape, such as "The New Dun
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tes" (2009) and "RGB Stratospheric Camerena" (2013). We are curious about how you approach nature through technologies? What is your inspiration to initiate a new project?
In fact, an essential part of the projects that I developed have to do with the dialogue with and the investigation of the surrounding natural spaces and "The New Dunites" is a significant example of it.4 In fact, we were trying to connect with the history of cinematography in California, because I was living in that time there and I wanted to do something related to this territory and with its history. The history of the audiovisual industry in California is rich and I found this place where the largest cinema set was built so far, and it was an ancient Egyptian city. Today this space exists in the coastal area near the Pacific Ocean, in a territory as vast as three soccer fields, where fragments of the set are buried. The idea was to explore what is buried with technologies in particular with GPR, Ground Penetrating Radar, and with cameras attached to balloons (including infrared cameras). That gave us information of what was hidden, which was impressive because those remains are covered by dunes, and with time, the dynamics of the wind move the most superficial layer uncovering in the long term some parts of the fragments and remains that were buried.
For a person like me, who is in love the fieldwork practices, it is imperative to establish a dialogue with the spaces and the structures that surround us, to connect with the objects to create and propose something from there. In general terms, I am not a person who considers the issue of creation based on white paper. Instead, I am always looking to put myself in situations: geographical, mental, physical, or technological in which I can eventually ask questions. That question is usually related to an art-technology or art-science problem.
Thank you very much.
20 Feb 2019, Interview by Hua-Chun Fan (Fionn).
1 This was a project done with Dr. Esteban Garcia, from Purdue University, for ISEA2013 which was directed by Andrea Polli. americanindian.si.edu/education/codetalkers/html/chapter4.html
2 https://s2018.siggraph.org/conference/conference-overview/art-gallery/
3 Created with Angus Forbes and George Legrady in the framework of a more massive project coordinated by Santiago Caicedo, Laura Villegas and me. www.evl.uic.edu/documents/forbes_macondo_cga2015.pdf
4 https://vimeo.com/user11019921