https://refikanadol.com/works/melting-memories/
Category: Visual Research
Maria Wrang-Rasmussen
/ Art Practice 4 (2020-2021)[YR]
Hands into mountains – exploration with visuals for White Mountain
https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/I_Robot,_You_Jane
In this episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow’s scans an ancient book, in which a demon is trapped. This releases the demon into the computer and the demon now flows thorugh the internet, and get his minions to build him a body and a lot of stuff happens, such as the introduction of the schools computer teacher, who later is revealed as a self-identifying Technopagan. The demon uses the net to control and manitulate people, as well as watch over everything, hacking surveillance cameras, web-cams, digitized records.
Some say (including many a youtuber reviewers) this is one of the worst episodes of Buffy, but I strongly dissagree. This episode both presents an excelent green robot demon, as well as captures the energy of chaotic optimisim around the dot-com boom in the late 90’s . It makes me think of the 2009 documentary We Live In Public which follows the rise and fall of tech ghoul and performance artist Josh Harris, and his projects like Quiet: We Live in Public, a no-privacy underground capture hotel where every participant was filmed at all times and could tune into different “tv stations” to watch each other, and weliveinpublic.com, where the idea of the digital self was fetichised to the extremes as Harris live-streamed him and his girlfriend for several months 24h/7 on an online website. (Harris lives in Las Vegas now, no longer a millionare, convinced that the FBI is investigating him because of his involvment with Gelitin’s 2001 The B-Thing, a strange and possibly fake art installation of a wodden balcony on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center)
There is a sort of infantile energy that comes with late 90’s computer and net talk. The possibilities of internet-companies being viewed as this endless growth paradigm, before the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001. The internet could do anything, share anything, create everything, so why not a net-demon?
As the weird computer kid says in the opening sequence of I_Robot,_You_Jane:
https://www.sitegallery.org/exhibition/rafael-rozendaal-websites/
“I make websites-as-artworks. They are concise moving images, generative, random, colorful, moody.. I hope.
I started making websites in 1999. The internet was a great place then, the early days before the web became corporate.
It was an optimistic time full of promise. It was very exciting.
My idea was simple: I did not want to make a website that showed “IRL” documentation, I wanted to make websites that take advantage of the possibilities of the browser. These works are generative moving images. They are not videos or animations. They are code based algorithms. They behave like a fountain or waterfall, always doing the same thing but never repeating itself.
Since 1999, I’ve made about 120 websites, each in their own domain name (.com)
The domain name is the title of the work, and at the same time it’s the location of the work. Domain names are easy to remember, so whenever you want to see one of my works, all you have to do is remember a domain name.
I have exhibited my websites in physical space. Sometimes in galleries or museums, and sometimes on digital billboards in public space. I think websites should behave like gas: they can fill up any potential space. Whether you are seeing my work on a smartwatch or on a 200 meter billboard, each instance of the work is an authentic viewing experience. The work exists in infinite multitudes, any place, any time, as long as you have an internet connection.
For the exhibition “websites” which will launch at Site Gallery in September 2021, I am making a new group of concise moving images. The exhibition was supposed to launch in 2020, but Covid…
Ironically, my work has always suited a locked down life. Now that we spend much more time at home, it seemed like a good idea to launch the works on the web first, and show them later in installation form at Site Gallery.
These works are dead ends. There are no links, there is no information, there is only movement. You are presented with these works and once you are there, all you can do is stare.”
