[-empyre-] The Dubliners

["chris caines" <chris@madeupstuff.com>]

Hi Lucio,

>I do not know if it interests you or not - after all it would be
another >proposition - but I wonder if you ever imagined such a strategy
using >historical events. For example, take the nowadays Joyce´s
Bloomsday >commemmorations. What would be your opinion about a "wireless
map" like >this for the Joycean Dublin? I propose it just as a question,
for >curiosity, so it does not mean I think it could be a "good" or
"bad" use >for tecnology...
>Best
>Lucio Agra
>Brazil

I have done site specific projects in the past that use the history of
locations. These techniques using wireless in one form or another often
seem to me to be suited to making work about making the invisible
visible, whether the invisible things are fictions, histories or just
the wireless soup we live in. 

Zinas' project works like this for me, making visible the tip of the
wireless iceberg that runs an airport. There is a hill overlooking the
airport near where I live, you can see the planes being pulled in "on
the wire" via tight radio beams from four directions at once, lined up
behind one another. There's a romance in the remote control poetics of
it.

I think the wireless Ulysses is a great idea, its kind of a walking
story anyhow. Kind of wish all spaces were able to be annotated like
this, a wireless graffiti.


Zina,

>:- if the public art of today a fiction situated in a reality, then in
what 
>way are art institutions such as acmi the ones responsible for drawing
the 
>frame /border / aesthetic line that alerts the public that this is art
? 
>how do they hang on to these fragmentary actions  -  is is worth 
>documenting them ?

>what would chris' work be like if, like monica's , there was a gallery 
>attendant sitting outside every space that is a character in the work.
a 
>grey shirted woman waits patiently next to the photobooth with 2004
flyers 
>and a video camera. someone sits down inside with a handset and the 
>attendant takes footage of their knees under the threadbare curtain....

Would be quite wonderful, I'd love to have all that video footage, 3mths
worth of different people reading. I think holding onto projects like
this in the context of an art or cultural event/institution is about
extending the umbrella to facilitate an audience traveling offsite while
still feeling part of the "show". This may end up being more challenging
for curators than integrating various new media forms into galleries has
been in the past decade as it kind of sidelines the big building aspect
of the museum, as an art housing barn anyhow.

Chris