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| Table of Contents |
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10
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Foreword and acknowledgements |
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28
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Introduction
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer |
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48
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Interview by Geert Lovink |
| Essays |
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Historical Relationships |
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77
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Spectral Architectures
Daniel Canogar |
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99
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Re:Positioning Vectorial Elevation, Media archaeological considerations
Erkki Huhtamo |
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115
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Fire-Control and Human-Computer Interaction, Towards a History of the Computer Mouse (1940-1965)
Axel Roch |
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Theoretical Relationships |
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133
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Postcoloniality in the Spotlight
María Fernández |
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165
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Public Spheres and Network Interfaces
Andreas Broeckmann |
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183
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Expressing Connection, Relational Architecture
Brian Massumi |
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Practical Relationships |
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209
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The Zócalo and the Siglo
José Luis Paredes |
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223
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The Zócalo, Ephemeral Interventions
Mónica Mayer |
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241
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Millennial Light
Erik Davis |
| Archive |
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260
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Comments and User Pages |
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302
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Author Biographies |
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306
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Developer Biographies |
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310
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Artist Biography |
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322
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Selected Works |
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326
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Bilbliography |
Lozano-Hemmer responds to the fact that the Internet allows us to participate in events at a far remove. He demonstrates that barriers between digital and physical realities are not always immutable. The beams themselves are ephemeral, and thus the play of lights offers a monumental representation of our electronic connectedness.
-- SFMOMA Webby Jury, USA
What is definitive is the artistic energy that Rafael Lozano-Hemmer unfolds in his work: the force of spatial suggestion, the play of reality and projection, his poetic capability to evoke a place without a site.
-- José Jiménez, El Mundo, Spain
The combination of a high-level of conceptualization and amazing technical expertise beautifully tie the "real" and "virtual" worlds together with a presentiment of the internet's role in the exhibition of an individual's creativity to an unprejudiced society. The gift of a dream.
-- Masaya Fujita, CG-ARTS Society, Japan
This piece is interesting as a work of public art, as a sophisticated but simple user interface, and as a highly successful collaborative work. It was also interesting in its reappropriation of fascist lighting themes in a celebration of egalitarian access to public artistic expression.
-- Ars Electronica Jury, Austria
Truly exceptional. Any art that competes with the Super Bowl merits special attention!
-- Erik Adigard. MA Design, USA
Lozano-Hemmer seeks to provide and provoke a contemporary re-reading of distinctive historical and urban features, while using the internet to open onto a planetary audience of spectators and "interactors", and to build an environment of active critical discussion and reflection.
-- Sally Jane Norman, ELIA Journal, France
The effect is a light show, but the cause is an architecture of connectivity. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s approach falls into the ephemeral, instant architecture, entirely based on networks from conception to realization and sustenance. Vectorial Elevation’s results are spectacular and also metaphorical. They provide us with a radically new understanding of an esthetics of networks proper. The projected patterns are creating an epiphany-making manifest in a visible mode the coherence and beauty of invisible connections across the planet.
-- Derrick de Kerckhove, Director, McLuhan Program, U. of Toronto, Canada
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Vectorial Elevation
Relational Architecture No. 4
Editor:
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Publisher:
Conaculta and Ediciones San Jorge, Mexico City
Characteristics:
Paperback, Spanish-English bilingual edition, 346 pages, 233 color illustrations. Dimensions: 16 x 23 cm. First edition November 2000. ISBN 970-18-5553-1 and ISBN 968-5379-00-9. Printed in Mexico.
Synopsis:
With the arrival of the year 2000, Mexico City's Zócalo Square was transformed by immense light sculptures created by participants on the Internet using a virtual reality program. This book documents the interactive art project Vectorial Elevation, which allowed thousands of people from 89 countries to control 18 robotic searchlights with 126,000 watts of power and link Cyberspace with Mexico's most emblematic urban landscape. Prominent artists and critics analyze the historical, aesthetic and technological impact of this massive “Relational Architecture” intervention.
Contributors:
Andreas Broeckmann (Germany) studied art history, sociology and media studies and has been working as a project manager at V2_Organisation Rotterdam, Institute for the Unstable Media, since 1995. Currently he is the Director of the Transmediale in Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin-based media association mikro, and of the "European Cultural Backbone".
Daniel Canogar (Spain) is a Madrid-based artist and author. He has a Masters in Fine Arts from New York University. In 1992 he published the book Ciudades Efimeras, a study of the architecture of spectacle in world expositions. He has taught numerous courses, seminars and workshops on art and new technologies. His works have been shown in galleries and museums in Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Canada, Venezuela and United States.
Erik Davis (USA) is a San Franciso-based writer and culture critic. His book TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information was released by Harmony Books in 1998. Davis is currently a contributing writer for Wired, and writes a column for the online magazine Feed. Davis has also contributed articles and essays to ArtByte, Spin, Mediamatic, Lingua Franca, the Village Voice, Gnosis and 21C.
María Fernández (Nicaragua / USA) is an art historian (Ph.D. Columbia, 1993) who, for the last ten years, has focused on the intersection of Latin American art, postcolonial theory and electronic media theory. She has taught at diverse institutions including Columbia University (NY), Carnegie Mellon University (PA), the University of Pittsburgh (PA) and the University of Connecticut.
Erkki Huhtamo (Finland) is a media scholar, writer, curator and television director. His writings on media archaeology and media art have been published in twelve languages. He has lectured worldwide and curated several media art exhibitions, most recently Alien Intelligence (Kiasma, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, 2000). He has also directed television programs about media culture. Currently Mr. Huhtamo works as a visiting professor at UCLA, Dept. of Design (Los Angeles).
Geert Lovink (Netherlands / Australia) media theorist, author and activist. A member of the media association Adilkno, he is a former editor of Mediamatic Magazine. He has established a number of media labs and electronic workshops in several countries including one at Documenta X. He co-founded the international “nettime” circle <www.nettime.org> which is both a multilingual mailinglist and a series of meetings and publications.
Brian Massumi (USA) is the author of A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia and First and Last Emperors (with Kenneth Dean). He is the editor of The Politics of Everyday Fear, and co-editor of the University of Minnesota Press book series “Theory Out of Bounds.” His translations from the French include Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. His work in progress on sensation, virtuality, and modes of cultural expression is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. He teaches in the English Department at the State University of New York-Albany.
Mónica Mayer (Mexico) is a visual artist. She works with drawing, digital graphics and performance art. In 1983 she founded the feminist art group “Polvo de Gallina Negra,” with Maris Bustamante, and in 1989 the conceptual space “Pinto mi Raya” with Victor Lerma. She is a frequent contributor of the newspaper “El Universal.”
José Luis Paredes “Pacho” (Mexico) Graduate and researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History. He has written for several national and international publications, including counter-cultural magazines and urban and digital fanzines. He is the author of the book Mexican Rock: Sounds from the Street (Aguirre Beltrán, 1992). Since 1986 he has been the drummer for the rock band Maldita Vecindad y Los Hijos del 5º Patio. He writes a weekly cultural column in Reforma newspaper.
Axel Roch (Germany) studied Cultural Science and Philosophy in Berlin with a focus on media theory. Since 1999 he has been part of the artistic and scientific staff in Art and Media Studies at the Academy of Media Art in Cologne, Germany. Previously, he was a teaching assistant at the Seminar for Aesthetics at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He was also Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. |