Online / Offline. Encoding Everyday Life
for Vorspeil Transmediale.
22nd - 28th of January
Opening 22nd of January, 19:00
Performances start at 19:00
With:
Constant Dullaart, Jodi, Nuria Güell, Sophia Le Fraga, Lindsay Lawson, Eilis Macdonald,
Sam Smith and Kandis Williams.
Performances:
Lindsay Lawson
Sophia Lefraga
Curated by Lorenzo Sandoval
***
In
the recently abundant texts about cartography, we sometimes find references to
the tale Borges´ Del
Rigor de la Ciencia which narrates the
past existence of a map, which scale was 1:1 with the Empire. We would like to
propose as a reflecting element to this story another fiction by the same
author: Funes the Memorist, which outlines a map in the same scale, not of the land but of
the memory. It speaks of a map of time, which simultaneously serves as an
(quasi) infinite archive of variations and possibilities. The main character
takes a whole day to remember a day in its totality. Furthermore, he is able to
enunciate, applying a game of association, every remembrance he has. In effect, Funes not only remembered
every leaf from every tree from every hill, but each time he had perceived or
imagined them.
***
Instead of the term “surf” used in the
Anglo-Saxon world, in Spanish one started to apply “navigate” as a verb for
describing the circulation trough the Internet. In spite of its aquatic
relation, this different perspective appeared when the Internet became popular in
the Spanish-speaking world, where the first widely used browser was Netscape Navigator. It lost the browser battle when Microsoft introduced the Internet Explorer, since the latter was always included in the operative system
commonly used at the time. Later, Netscape liberated the code, which led to the
emergence of Mozilla.
***
This
inaccurate Spanish translation, stemming from the term “to navigate” instead of
“to surf”, places the net hopelessly in a metaphoric position that brings it
together with the idea of the cartography by way of navigation. If the term “to
explore” had become popular due to the Microsoft browser, it could have
generated a similar correlation. In fact, the internet is commonly represented
in the form of a map. One could say, that there is a continuity within the
history of maps and their usage. Therefore, their logic goes far beyond the
mere circulation through the sources of information, the net creates a
continued extension of the domain;
a colonization of life´s spaces.
This
can be observed in the areas of use, which exceed the personal and the work
space: email, social networks, desktop
in the cloud, pornography, dating
sites, maps, video servers and a large etcetera that amplifies, dominates and
codifies the spheres of communication, emotion and action. And beyond this doppelgänger we find the physical reality: mobile devices, cable networks that
cross the oceans and the applicable legal environment specific to each of the countries in which they are
located.
This
set of techniques composes a digital
skin over the space and the body,
constituting a virtual and physical infrastructure of control, but also of
affect, an emotional bureaucracy built of technological prostheses.
***
This project proposes an
analysis of how those technologies are introduced in the everyday life, change
the configuration of relationships and encode our perception of the world.