Report
on Centro + Media, Mexico City: second installment in a series of five.
Centro+Media was a special event organized to inaugurate Centro,
a brand new art and design center in Mexico City, focusing on
Design, TV and film.
The curators of the event were Arcangel
Constantini and Ivan Abreu. The
exhibition was up for August 19 - 22. It included online and offline
installations, graphic prints presented on elegant lightboxes
throughout three floors
of the building, experimental videos that were screened continually on
eight LCD screens, live sound performances, and an online webpage battle.
For a full list of artists, please look at the first installment published
on Tuesday, August 24, 2004, as I will not be able to comment on much
of the material, this way at least you will learn who participated
in the
exhibition.
The opening of
the event happened on Thursday
the 19th. The Press
covered the opening of the Design school really well. On Wednesday
(the day before)
there
was a press
conference where journalists had the opportunity to ask specific
questions to the curators and administrators. The journalists also
looked at the installations
that were already up, and asked the artists a few questions about their art
projects. During the opening on Thursday, there were TV cameras going
around filming art
projects and interviewing the organizers and artists; and on Saturday there
was a review in the Universal, one of the major newspapers in Mexico
City. There
were two other events that happened in conjunction with the Centro+Media exhibition, one at Centro
de Arte Alameda and the other at the
Rufino Tamayo Museum. I
will write about these events in the days to come. This time I will
focus on the opening
event.
Some of the online and offline installations included works by Santiago
Ortiz, Ricardo Rendon, Christian
Oyarzun, Gustavo Romano, Brian
Mackern, Tlaolli
Arguello and me (Eduardo Navas).
Ortiz presented Cropofalia, an installation
of a virtual stomach which digested texts typed by the audience. These were also combined
with literary works considered
important in Latin America. The stomach expanded as it consumed more and more
words and eventually it would shrink to start all over. Rendon presented Espacio
Critico, a flash
interface of the world map. The user could create hyperlinks
reminscing airline routes. Once the user finalized her set of travel, the interface
took over providing a quick overview of the top pages in Google that were related
to the cities of travel. The pages loaded and unloaded very fast in a set of
random frames, leaving the user with an overall visual idea of how one could
travel the web at high speed from country to country. Oyarzun projected CRC/CW a graphic that was dependent
on sensors placed inside and outside the gallery
space to create an abstract animation, consisting of an RGB color wheel rotating
rapidly or slowly according to the number of visitors. Gustavo Romano presented
Cyberzoo, along with a photo installation consisting of the ground of a public
street installed at the entrance of the building. Cyberzoo is a website where
it is safe to play with viruses. Here the users can learn about computer viruses
and also "create" one themselves without worrying about contaminating
their own computers. Brian Mackern presented Cultiviuum, an
installation where
users can create their own combinations of virtual cells that can be recombined
by other users on an ongoing basis. Mackern also exhibited his online project
Net Art Latino.Taolli Aguello presented IO
AMO MI CI U _DA, a game interface
to be played when sitting in a sports car seat. One is able to navigate or "drive" through
a map and parking lot as well as other metaphorical interventions on gaming.
And I presented Net
Art World 1.0 which is an online
project combining flags
and maps of the world along with images related to globalization and online projects
by net artists.
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The
performance during the opening at Centro consisted of sound/visual
performances and an
Infomera duel between Subculture and Muserna.
The audio-visual artists included VJs and noise/sound performers, who
are called "Ruidistas" (noise-makers).
Some of the performers I saw were Ricardo Rendon, Antonio
Dominguez, Ivan
Abreu, Brian Mackern,
and Jorge
Castro. There were other performers that
unfortunately I missed (including Constantini's) because I also had to
oversee my own installation (Net Art World 1.0).
The sounds and visuals by Rendon and Dominguez and their partners
were abstract, delivered through layers of beats and graphic
interfaces that
did not always
follow a consistent pattern--sometimes an actual beat was absent, and "melodic
noise" became the closest way of describing the sound. The graphics also
followed this aesthetic. (Rendon and Dominguez did not perform together; the
comment is on their overall performance).
In
General, the sound compositions were dependent on loops so complex
in their patterns that the audience was pushed to listen carefully
and create relationships
with the visual material, which for the most part was abstract, or if figurative,
very open-ended for interpretation. It was more like digital noise, although
the performances by Ivan Abreau and Brian Mackern referenced electronic
dub and post-trip-hop sounds respectively. Abreu's
performance was the
most transparent of all because he showed his Max interface as he improvised
his rhythms. The audience saw his real-time manipulation of sound. Mackern played a few short pieces that were quite soothing for the eyes and ears
while strategically relying on noise to disrupt what at times could have
been considered straight ahead ambient image and sound. Jorge
Castro closed
the evening with a short set of minimal compositions that were carefully
complemented with visual material. He controlled sound and image simultaneously,
and unlike much of the work throughout the night, which was mainly improvisational
sessions between two or more performers, Castro presented music and visuals
that had a predetermined relationship, yet he was able to improvise and
flow with the reaction of the crowd. Unfortunately his set was too short,
and the audience was left craving for more. No worries on this as he would
have a chance to present his work once more at Laboratorio
Arte Alameda,
the evening after.
The “Mano a Mano” between Subculture and Muserna took
place in a special room, where they battled
inside a boxing ring especially built for the event. There were three screens,
the two on the sides presented subculture and Muserna's personal websites while
the one in the middle showed the updates made
to the Infomera website. Here, the heavyweights in web art went
at it for over
four
hours, both uploading to the Infomera website. Every few minutes a new
page was uploaded in reaction to the previous one, often appropriating the
visuals
and/or aesthetics of the opponent. The performance started out with playful
comments that towards the end turned into bold statements of grandiosity and
supremacy
of web art by both parties, while also keeping great respect toward the opponent.
Both Muserna and Subculture seemed to have enjoyed the process of making ephemeral
webpages, which the online community could also enjoy by visiting the Infomera
site. To this day, people who saw the event are debating who won, and Subculture
playfully claims that he won! Following the spirits of an actual boxing match.
The creative juices ran high during the opening. The artists were very happy
at the end of the night, which ended at a really great casual restaurant
called the Kaliman. This energy would once again find its way to two more
important events at Centro de Arte Alameda and Rufino Tamayo Museum.
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