Commissioned for exhibition in Shock of the View
presented by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
To think about networks with spatial analogies is highly problematic.
This C5 project suggests that the intersection of data agencies and data
attributes forms a network topography. Mingling, the perturbance of an
information topography by a network identity (IP address), results in
the emergence of new data alliances.
The 16 Sessions project applies data agencies and data attributes
generated from Not to See a Thing,
an installation by Joel Slayton featured in Alternating Currents: American Art
in the Age of Technology at the San Jose Museum of Art, to a proprietary Mesh
database of validated http IP addresses under development at C5. The data has been reduced
and Mingling algorithms have been developed so the users network identity
can generate "feelers" into potential information relations. Such relations can then
be collapsed into structural couplings which are both arbitrary and contextual.
Mingling requires a pragmatic contemplation of its own topological limits.
Shock of the View
Shock of the View, is a collaboration organized by the Walker Art
Center with the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, San
Jose Museum of Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University,
and Rhizome. A series of on-line exhibitions pair works of art or events
with digital works of art or events.
"Shock of the View is fundamentally an attempt to generate discussion
about the relation of digital media to contemporary museum practice--and
vice versa. We are treating the net as "real" exhibition space, not
just as an information conduit for real exhibition space. One
implicit message of pairing a museum object or event with a virtual
object or event is that the virtual is real, so to speak."
- Steve Dietz, Director of New Media Initiatives at the Walker Art Center.