ANAT: News #38

Login:
immersive residencies for artists in mid take off

ANAT is currently developing a central Login: web site where all of the work now underway through this project will be accessible. To date, two residencies have been completed and one is nearing completion.

Lisa Bielby’s residency with 24Hr Art in Darwin concluded earlier this year, and she has continued to test the site, with assistance from Martin Thompson - ANAT’s inimitable Web and Technical officer - on the ANAT web site, which is now operational. Lisa has developed a highly poetic web site, incorporating sound and moving image.

Anita Kocsis’ residency project was launched in studio 12 on the first floor of 200 Gertrude Street where she has been undertaking the residency, on 6 August. The exhibition will run till 28 August. For the duration of the exhibition Anita will be available by appointment on Fridays to discuss the project with visitors.
Her project, Neonverte, is a web based installation, built as a Garden. The installation component of the project will feature elements from the site as well as a VRML glide-through of areas of Neonverte. This web/garden will be tended to by the artist during the exhibition period.

Dysfunctional, unpredictable and rapidly growing, the internet is drawn into the funnelweb of Kocsis’ garden site. As Anita has stated, “ To climb to the top of a tree is no easy task. The kids in Enid Blytons ‘Folk of the Faraway Tree’ knew it. They had to contend with interruptions. Yet they still climbed to see what new land had arrived. As far as I can recall some of the lands were shockers, like the ‘land of smacks’. The minute they got there they wanted to get out. Yet it was never so easy.”

“Essentially Neonverte is built on the same principle. The tree, like the network, hosts possible changes to the site on arrival. Pockets of sites selling their information anxiety; entertainment and shopfront sites; sounds and various tended lots of datafields radiating. Some become old friends but after the visits I return to tend my own plot.”

“Sometimes a neon evergreen, sometimes a fluorescent terrarium, and other times a thorny k-Mart-meets-Las Vegas’ undergrowth, the plot is sewn with organic structure. Neonverte is perishable. Dependant on the forces of electronic nature. Neonverte is not a ‘Secret Garden’ but more of a backyard garden. Stuff grows and dies, gets used and discarded. I tend to weed, restore, defrag, reload, plant and graft. A compost of interconnections has begun through working online.”

“As I work the dataground, I am reminded of a comment an artist once said to me about how connection is dependant on laying so many fibre optic cables across the globe. We are slowly wrapping it in glass. As I develop this dataterrarium, I am party to the process of spinning the planet into a living fossil of silicon. The site Neonverte is a Website, and Enid Blyton’s book a story, but the vehicles for imagination continue to flourish.”

Michael Barac’s residency is being undertaken in collaboration with Canberra Contemporary Art Space. He is developing an interactive project where viewers are invited to make their own new flag for Australia. He is currently investigating the possibility of having the web server automatically create image files (GIF) on the fly. This will mean that once you have created your flag you can submit it via a form button in Netscape and it is automatically added to a web page. He says, “It’s my hope to monitor votes from visitors to the site and have a program generate a flag in a quasi-democratic way. Either votes are collected or you add the details of the flag that you made to a grand pool of details where the most popular characteristics generate a collective flag.”