connections

 

Mediatic shifts made of different reading supports. They are artistic works (of diverse natures) that expand and redirect the objetual meaning of the book and its forms of reading.

 

Tafel. Fran Fietzek (1993/94)

A monitor is placed on an old black board of 4 meters width. The monitor is between two tracks and connected to a computer. The horizontal monitor can be moved vertically and horizontally. On the black board, phrases on the relations had been written, with chalk, and extinguished. These phrases concerned to memoty/text/representation. They had been photographed and digitalized before being erased. When the monitor is placed on a point where before it had something written, the phrases reappear, however reorganized by the computer.

Legible City   Jeffrey Shaw (1991)

In the work of Jeffrey Shaw the city is legible through its sky line and the speeches of its city planners. The reading support created by the artist is a strange device that connects bicycles, screens  and virtual reality programs.  They are the vehicle of a trip in the city discourse  and its space, operating an urbanism of the city as text and interactive cinema.

On Transalation - The Internet Project. Antonii Muntadas (1994-1997)

Here translation appears as emblem of the difference. One same phrase was translated into 22 languages, in a spiral movement. That is, the translations had been made always from the last version. The diverse versions reiterate the original text sent to translation: "Communication systems provide the possibility of developing to better understanding between people: in which language? "

City of Bits William J. Mitchell (1995)

City of Bits was the first book published simultaneously in  printed format and on line. The on line version, updated constantly, besides containing interactive areas, has an exclusive chapter: " Text Unbound " that became a classic of hypertextuality.

Beyond Pages Masaki Fujihata (1995)

For Fujihata the reading pleasure carries through in fullness in the book. This pleasure  is directly associated to a gesture: to turn the page. It is our will to know what it is beyond the page what explains the success of the book. With this mote, he created a multimedia installation  where all the interativity between the reader and the environment is based on the act of turning the page. In synthesis, it is presented here, with all pomp and the honor, the book as interface.

alien space. Marcos Novak. (1998)

Novak is an architect. He could have transformed the book in an architectural piece. But this would be previsible. What he transformed into substance  was the text itself, deconstructed in a system for virtual navigation in three-dimensional spaces.

The Tulse Luper Suitcase Peter Greenaway (1999)

If you want to understand the next work to Peter Greenaway, hold on. One of the keys of the film crosses this site, where would be stored the stories that will be commented in the film.

Writer’s Block. Sheryl Oring (1999)

In May 10th of 1933, approximately 40.000 people had participated of a gigantic book burning promoted by the nazists in the Babelplaz, in Berlin. "Depraved" works by Berthold Brecht and Nelly Sachs, among many others, had been destroyed in a monument to the terror. In May 10th of 1999, Oring, journalist and German cultural producer, installed a cage in the same square, full of typewriters of the 20's and 30's. Other cages, of different sizes, had been spread around the city, resulting in a quiet and poetical libel against the censorship. In the project web site, it is possible to send records on book burning and to get information on books and authors banished in nazi Germany.

Phone:me. Mark Amerika (1999)

Phone:me is an audiobook, comissioned by Gallery 9, of the Walker Arts Center de Minneapolis, available also in CD. Sewing commentaries of personages of the digital world (like the web to designer and the marketing manager of a software for on line video ) Amerika produces communication gaps. Tied up, paradoxicalally, they restore the link of the voice with the body, corrupted by the telecommunications systems.

In time: Any search  in the Internet for   " phone:me " will point to long lists of addresses of "live" sex  (chats, web spycams, etc.)  and ads  to promote dates.

Last updated in September 1999