The Nervous Surface Verses

A project proposal for Ssamzie Space, Seoul, Korea.

Materials:

Electronic: CRT Monitors, other display technology, video projection, computers, internet.

Hybrid: Digital photography, Large-scale printing

Print: Photography, Offset print, Photocopy, Computer printout.

Digital Sound.

Proposal

Continuing my work in the evolution of cross-media creative strategies (see website:http://www.kimgottlieb.com/collection/bruceeg/demo.html/)(from privatesphere to consumer- to mass-) this project focusses on the nature of surface. Reducing the video display to its essence as a projection window feed, a sort of animated stained glass lit by electron beam, contrasting the older, ‘reflective’ print media, I will investigate new expressive hybriding strategies, articulating the themes of identity and individuality.

Project:

a) for a room.

An earlier version of this project (http://www.deberlinisation.de/indexbg.html) will be realised at the Dak’art Biennale in May of this year.(link)

There is a pattern which informs all aspects of this work…The pattern is derived from a photo of friends.

PRINT: The moment of friendly intimacy is formed into a repeatable, striking tapestry-like pattern and postered around town with information about the website with a more evolved evocation of the project and information relating to the events, special activities and opening times of the room.

The pattern should be projected on the building housing the room.

THE ROOM: may be of any size up to 30 sq meters. It is coated on all sides with the pattern. It has at least two internet terminals. There should be some loungy furniture there to encourage visitors to dally and reflect, the furniture will ideally be upholstered with the pattern. Two ‘windows’ will be cut out into the ‘outside’. Other video screens will play a soothing, repetitive video loop (created with videoartist Jinran Kim), used also as lighting for the room…

sound- An electric eye counts the number of people in the room, feeds the information to a computer which plays gentle legato melodies with intensifying richness of timbre relative to the population of the room.

ONE CRITICAL ARTICULATION:

The miniaturization of electronics and the concurrent growth in computing power has disrupted human sense of scale in our oral and visual traditions. In this pre-cyborg stage, much artistic production has acquired a singularly mournful quality, archives of our humanness for the projected hybrid beings of the future. Young artists tend to create vociferous and aggressive works fuelled by the hope that their freshness of vision amplified through the latest technology will transform reality into a pleasure dome. The generation gap is nothing new, its polarization is only perhaps semantically exacerbated by the incredible growth in new terminology and in new industrial processes transgressing every social sphere. This work aims at creating a prototype temporary space where the electronic buzz may dissipate and one is encouraged to re-place oneself as an individual in a place with a slightly firmer ground, made of media.

WORK PLAN:

This project will take three months, the last six weeks will be enacted in the art space.

Weeks 1&2 building relationships…curator, gallery workers, making connections to sympathetic media organizations, printers, industrial partners, government collaborators.

Week 3 building the web site: beginning image harvest, communicating with artists and interested parties through the web site. The website will chronicle the building of this work and the evolution and implementation history (live case study) of this work. Journals, documentation, press and networking, co-branding, etc.

Weeks 4&5 will be creating the imagery used for the print material, the pattern in its various guises, will be delivered to the various entities who will realize hard copy. Video loop will be created (possibly with Jinran Kim).

Week 6 building the room and installation. Postering, announcements, etc.

Week 7 vernissage. PR, troubleshooting

Week 7 to Week 12 Activities, workshops in and connected with the space announced in all available media, coordinated through the website.

Submitted January 23, 2002 Seoul

Baruch Gottlieb

Baruchgottlieb@hotmail.com

This document can be found online at:

http://www.vociferous.org/projects/ssamzie/begin.htm/