Review | "They say progress i...

Generated on 2022-10-13 22:11:13

Result #1

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night."-Mel Ziegler.The presence of electronic machines in the gallery is in marked contrast to, and might be considered a form of homage to, the great Minimalist architect, Joseph Cornell. The work of both uses the computer to perform an infinite recurrence of operations, and to reconstitute the timeless architectonic space of Minimalism. At its core, however, the two disciplines of technology—computer architecture and the sciences—are fundamentally different.In the arts, machines are figures of speech, with their own demands and functions, which are automated. In the sciences, they are instruments of discovery and measurement, and their use is regulated by engineers who select, test, and design them to function. We see them used in a variety of settings, from small laboratories to the research labs of the National Academy of Sciences. Machine vision, however, is not a simple matter; the analyst must know the situation, and can use these signals to alter or even destroy the machine in order to discover what it needs to do. The program is not an analysis of the machine. Its analysis is that the computer is being used as an instrument.Ziegler has been presenting machine vision as a work of art for many years. Her recent installation, A A.A.A.O.O.O.O.O.O., 2001, was a kind of science-art-fiction dance to the computer as a tool of knowledge, an instrument of control, and a medium of communication. The visual language of the machine became a language of sound and sound, a language that encoded the previously unseen. Through a two-way mirror placed at the entrance, one could see a person or a machine in motion. On the wall, a glasslike display case was suspended from a ceiling and held open by a crane. Inside the glass case were a series of twenty-two pairs of computers and a set of audio tapes.

Result #2

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." The utterance, recorded by a live-taped video of a doppelgänger and a stylized video camera, was written into the Wall Street window and carried by a video monitor as if to the telephone. A few moments later, a live call came in, and the person who had said that was just in the neighborhood. It was his idea, so he stepped out of the office and into the street, and the sound of his voice was amplified. The viewer was suddenly confronted with a happy-go-lucky guy who was answering a phone, and it was not the usual type of tech-savvy company to announce a willingness to answer. If I hear it, it may be that the video had been broadcast on all the computer screens in the office and that a few minutes later the desk was cleared so that the person who answered could watch the video on his iPad, which was turned on.The desk was a particular problem for the doppelgänger: the screen was not a computer but a desk, and the keyboard was not a keyboard but a tape recorder. The desk was a place of concentration and a place of a broken heart, both in a sense of a broken object and a sense of a broken situation. The video was the recording of a sad but necessary way of reconciling the two. The doppelgänger was a sign of how unequal the world is, how very close the stakes are. The video was the hope that the two might reach a common ground, a thought whose resolution would be the window.The odds were against him, though. The video showed the doppelgänger as the last person in the office. He was looking out at the window from a desk in the first room, and was filmed from the inside, where he heard his name and saw the doppelgänger. He played dead.

Result #3

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." Ralph J. Waldo Emerson once wrote, as the Berlin Wall fell, I felt as if I was going to fall. But instead, I stood on the edge of the abyss, as if I were on the edge of a very large, very good television screen. And as I looked down, I felt as if I was going to fall. It was a very special, very funny, very unexpected, very moving feeling. And that's what I remember about this show, and that's what I remember about art.Its good to be dead, or at least I hope to be, as some people say; and for some, the experience is still very much a game of chance. But for me, that game was a game. I never felt like I was really playing, but as a spectator, a participant, a part of the game, I was part of the game. And I loved it.It was like being part of a million-dollar real-estate game, with the stakes of the game being the stakes of my own life. In a way, the stakes were my own, and I could always play it safe. It was a game of chance, I thought. I was an outsider, a participant, a winner, a stakeholder, but I was also a winner. The stakes were, as always, the stakes of the game. The stakes were the stakes of my ability to make decisions. They were also the stakes of the price I had paid for my participation, as a viewer, as an artist, as a lover, as a consumer, as a voyeur.The stakes were obvious. But they were also hidden. In the process of making the decisions, I had been blind to the stakes. The stakes were there, but they were not yet my responsibility.I felt that I was participating in a game. And there were lots of possibilities in the game.

Result #4

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." — Ji "Noise" Reilly.Participating in the exhibition with the group Diaphragm was an incredibly rewarding experience. One had to witness the proliferation of consumerist activity, the opportunity to stand in line at a time when the main street in the city was filled with long lines and the popularity of the Apple Store? The fact that I was greeted by a body of computer enthusiasts who looked like walk-down shopping carts, that I felt I had met the very people who were desperately trying to get their hands on an Apple computer, that I was invited to the party, and that I was able to see all the computers on display together, and that I could watch them interact with each other on-screen. It was one of the best moments Ive ever had.I dont know how many people actually went to the party, but it was definitely the most interesting one. There were several groups of people who sat around a lot of junk: children, teenagers, parents, lawyers, executives. I saw a few very young people sitting around the desk, and they looked really happy and all of the sudden I thought, Wow, these are the kinds of people who actually make art and get paid. I dont know how many people actually got into the party, but they probably all had something to say. The show was filled with the kind of happy, enthusiastic work that is usually the opposite of the kind that ends up, as in a movie, with a tearful, sad-sack-of-celebration chorus line, but not a line as demanding as that of a guest-sessing the computer. You could see that these people had a lot of fun with the machines, and they were just happy that they could do something for each other.Everyone was kind of anxious about the computers. They had a lot of questions, and they wanted to know about the minimum of lag time to their work.

Result #5

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." A screaming camper, a camera, a sound, and then I go outside to the other end of town and see the lights. Theres a baby in a green, giant open cardboard box with a grape-yellow, snot-stained, human-size head. This is Olga Zobarski, our resident artist in residence, from the Baltic states. Ive never been so thoroughly impressed by an artist as her, a person who turns out to be a massive non-wallpaper.Ive never had so much fun with an artist. Its pretty much the opposite of doing a job. A group of 25 people are lined up outside the building, sitting in a circle in a lawn or on the lawn outside, chatting with the camera. Olga's voice starts to fill the frame, talking about her work, and, as the camera's steadily panning and zooming in, the conversation changes into a series of boisterous gesticulations: Youve got to listen! Youre part of the process! You're a part of it! She continues to speak, but soon her voice becomes hoarse: Oh, I love that voice! Well, you can say it! I want to hear it! It means a lot to me. I have a feeling we have a lot of fun with the people we work with. We all have, and we love to work with.It turns out that Olga's not a hired employee. She's just an artist who wants to do whatever she wants to do and do it well, and she's doing it all by herself. But its important to know that she's a professional, and thats how you feel about her. It's also important to know that Olga's been doing this work for over 20 years and that she has a wealth of experience. She's just a student, and her work seems to have been inspired by her experiences at a historically significant art school in Zurich.