Generative media installation
16 synchronised arrivals at the library from 16 directions using Google Earth.
Flight distance: 111 km (distance between two degrees of latitude), flight duration 6 minutes, altitude 200 metres above the ground.
Arrival uses Google Earth to fly to the library synchronously from 16 directions, analogue to the orientation of the 16 screens in gallery b. The Stuttgart City Library thus becomes the centre of the world, to which – as proverbially to Rome – all roads now lead. Of course, this work – and this doubles the detournement – also echoes Duchamp’s readymade, in that Marc Lee simply repurposes a found corporate product as art.
And the reference to Duchamp can be taken even further. Duchamp’s Redymades were an attempt to get out of the concept of art. As he said, he wanted to ‘create works that are no longer works of art’.
Duchamp’s position is radicalised even further in a legend about how and why he gave up making art in 1912. According to the story, Marcel Duchamp watched an aeroplane exhibition in silence in 1912, only to say at the end: ‘Art is over. Who can make something better than these propellers?’ Only to play chess from then on. So the legend goes.
Marc Lee takes a more hands-on approach here and doesn’t allow himself to be boxed in by technical equipment. No, he boldly approaches the propeller, throws it on, climbs into the aeroplane and forces it in his direction. An approach directly to the site of his exhibition…
Text: Johannes Auer
Introduction: Johannes Auer
Einführung: Johannes Auer
Exhibition opening gallery b, 05.10.2012
Marc Lee:
3 works: Arrival – Headlines – Places
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to welcome you to the exhibition 3 Arbeiten: Arrival – Headlines – Places by Marc Lee, whom I would also like to welcome here.
As the title suggests, this second major net art exhibition at Galerie b is dedicated to 3 works by Marc Lee. Marc is one of the most important and internationally recognised net artists from Switzerland. His work has been and continues to be shown at major media art exhibitions worldwide. And we are delighted that we have succeeded in securing him for an exhibition here at Galerie b.
Marc Lee experiments with information and communication technologies and audiovisualises data streams from the Internet. In doing so, he achieves a perfect balance between show value and conceptual clarity, something that characterises his art in particular.
Finding this balance is one of the major problems and challenges of net art. The media theorist Friedrich Kittler is credited with the saying that ‘hackers are the real artists these days’. What he actually said was: ‘Under computer conditions, art (is) replaced by a magic that no longer conjures up omnipotence, but reality’ (…).
‘Artists are simply excluded from this power over the real, unless they themselves become engineers or programmers.’ And he is referring to a reality that can only be calculated by computers, such as bullet trajectories and atomic explosions. If we take the whole thing one size smaller, we can certainly state with Kittler that our digital usage habits – for example, our day-to-day dealings with so-called social networks and Web 2.0 – firstly, that these digital habits do indeed create a reality, and secondly, that this digital reality is, in the nature of things, an environment calculated by computers, an environment created by the company’s own algorithms. Is the artist, in Kittler’s words, really in the predicament of having to compete with the corporate programmers of Facebook, Google and the like in order to retain any creative power over this real, this digital reality? With respect, Kittler’s approach, although often and gladly quoted, in my opinion leads very much into the one-dimensional, takes us down a mighty digital wrong path.
Since the art revolution at the beginning of the last century, art has developed a sophisticated set of instruments to avoid being overwhelmed by spectacular representational power, and even to utilise it for its own purposes through appropriation and rededication. The best-known examples of this are the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, who simply declared industrial finished products to be art, and the Detournement of the Situationists. Detournement: the misappropriation of found objects for other uses. For example, the misappropriation of advertising and comic images through new text, the misappropriation of film sequences through new editing.
Detournement, the misappropriation of found objects, is thus an artistic principle of re-appropriation.
It is not surprising that detournement has experienced a great renaissance in net art. Media theorist and exhibition organiser Inke Arns even speaks of a detournement of social technology, a reappropriation of the Internet as a medium through artistic misappropriation!
And we experience such a detournement – such a grandiose misappropriation – in Marc Lee’s Arrival. This work uses Google Earth to create a synchronised arrival to the library from 16 directions in relation to the orientation of the 16 screens in Gallery b. The Stuttgart City Library thus becomes the centre of the world here, to which – as proverbially to Rome – all roads now lead. Of course, this work – and this doubles the detournement – also echoes Duchamp’s readymade, in that Marc Lee simply repurposes a found corporate product as art. And the reference to Duchamp can be taken even further. Duchamp’s Redymades were an attempt to get out of the concept of art. As he said, he wanted to ‘create works that are no longer works of art’. Duchamp’s position is radicalised even further in a legend about how and why he gave up making art in 1912. According to the story, Marcel Duchamp watched an aeroplane exhibition in silence in 1912, only to say at the end: ‘Art is over. Who can make something better than these propellers?’ Only to play chess from then on. So the legend goes. Marc Lee takes a more hands-on approach here and doesn’t allow himself to be boxed in by technical equipment. No, he boldly approaches the propeller, throws it on, climbs into the aeroplane and forces it in his direction. An approach directly to the site of his exhibition. Finally, it should be noted that this work relates to space, i.e. it is three-dimensional.
The second work that we will see in this exhibition is entitled ‘Headlines’. At this point it should be briefly noted that the 3 works in the exhibition will alternate daily. Tonight, however, you will of course have the opportunity to see all 3 works by Marc Lee. ‘Headlines’ generates a virtual carpet of headlines based on a keyword that you as the audience can set yourself at any time. For this purpose, news aggregators on the web are queried in real time on the basis of the specified keyword and the headlines found are assembled into a headline collage on the screen using a digital cut-up process.
In 1920, Tristan Tzara proposed a method for creating a Dadaist poem:
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are — an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
In the early 1960s, William Burroughs developed this ironically introduced Dadaist method further into his very serious cut-up technique. Burroughs saw people as being controlled by the texts of the mass media, which in his opinion could infect people as a linguistic virus and in this way condition and manipulate them. By literally cutting up these texts and recombining them, Burroughs believed that he had found a means, called cut-up, to break through this conditioning and manipulation.
If we look at our information practices on the Internet today, we encounter an interesting paradox. On the one hand, we theoretically have countless sources of information at our disposal, on the other hand, digital information agents, which we use consciously or unconsciously, try to help us in our search by learning from our previous search queries.
In other words, through our use and our preferences, we restrict the limitless information resource of the internet to our use and our preferences. In other words, we become conditioners and manipulators of our own world view.
In short -they are all certainly more than ripe for a comprehensive and liberating cut-up. Preferably from Marc Lee’s headlines. And with that, I prescribe a 3-day deconditioning programme to be repeated for the duration of the exhibition.
Finally, it should be noted that this work relates to the surface, i.e. it is two-dimensional.
Places – the third and final work in this exhibition shows 16 places in the world in superimposed images from webcams. A very beautiful, meditative work that finds a wonderful metaphor for how the Internet has brought the world closer together. And as quiet as the work is, silence is also the acoustic feature of this work. As with John Cage, the silence is also composed as sound. The third supporting moment of ‘Places’ is the experience of time. We see images superimposed from the course of the seasons. By engaging with this work, our lifetime is inscribed in the natural time of the seasons and we literally come to rest in the global on site. Finally, it should be noted that this work relates to space and time, i.e. it is four-dimensional.
At this point, there is only one last dimension left for me: the one-dimensional: the dot. And therefore the dot.