<nettime> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Rerelease_of_=5Fpause_by_Garrett_Lynch_and_Micha?

[Garrett Lynch <lists@asquare.org>]

Collaboration for artists can be one of the most productive endevours. 

It produces work by the artists involved which would have unlikely been
produced individually and also obliges the artists to make conceptual
compromises they might not usually have to.  It frees up the creative
spirit as each artist realises at a point that they have to let go of
their single vision to accommodate the thinking of the other.  The
OTHER is the crucial element in collaboration, it not alone designates
the other artist but also implicates the unseen, inexperienced,
unknowable, unthinkable and inconceivable of the former

Under this framework Garrett Lynch and Micha=EBl Sellam would like to
announce the rerelease of a net.art work entitled _pause.

---------------------------------------------------------------

_pause
http://www.asquare.org/project/_pause/

"_Pause" was a work initiated as part of the "Atelier de recherche
interactive" (interactive research studio) at Ensad, Paris France.  Its

initial purpose was to explain an object to an audience that did not
have access to the object itself and to use any interactive medium
(website, cd-rom, dvd etc) to explain in ways more than simple
photographs could do.

It was decided to create a website, a distribution medium that would be

accessible to the widest audience possible yet still in complete
control of its creators.  Instead of creating something visual and
interactive which would sit in the browser and function we wanted to
create a work which would include the browser and use the browser as
part of the work.  Simple things, such as seperate windows defining
different sections of the object/site, these sections/windows being
placed in order, appearing or disappearing when necessary and in
general performing certain functions when used, much as the original
objects parts do.

The choosen object was a coffee maker.  When the user connects to the
site their internet connection becomes this virtual coffee makers
power, its electricity.  Photographic representation of the complete
object is not used apart from the last page when interaction with the
site is complete, instead the site and browser combine to become the
object which the user has to interact with to understand.  The process
is started by clicking on the three squares on the first page which
launch three seperate windows.  Each window is entitled 'read', 'act'
and 'wait' which indicates how to proceed.  The first window leads the
user through a series of simple interactions via the style of an
instruction manual and familiarises them with the object.  Once the
process is finished in window one it unloads and loads the second
section in window two.  Each window has a different series of
interactions to perform, window by window, each getting more complex,
visually and aurally to help the user build up an impression of what
the object is.  On completion all windows close and the user is given a
non interactive application to download, a metaphorical coffee, a pause
from what they are doing which their computer can consume or be
consumed by.

While there is a surface simplicity to this work it is an approach
towards more complex issues.  Questions asked include, how do you take
a physical object and represent/reconstruct  it in a virtual space?
Does such an object in a virtual space become a transcription of the
original or a new 'object'.  If for example we envisage inhabiting
virtual spaces sometime in the future, how do we expect to do this? How
do we transfere the objects we need and use in reality to a virtual
space?  Will necessity for objects be superseeded?  What will be the
result on materalism?  Will in fact these new 'spaces' be used as an
escape from both people and object overcrowded spaces?

_pause has previously been shown as part of the Jouable series of
exhibitions (http://www.jouable.net/) in Geneva, Kyoto and Paris and
online in the Rhizome Artbase.

Requirements:
Please make sure your browser has popups enabled and the shockwave
player installed which can be downloaded here -
http://sdc.shockwave.com/shockwave/download/

a+
gar
__________________
Garrett@asquare.org
http://www.asquare.org/


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net