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David, from marble to the virtual Olympus The body as a residue of past, present and future life.
Abstract
This paper examines the myths of the ancient Greek connecting with our present, myths that have been slowly becoming a reality. Those myths as predictions of the future. Through this works I am investigating the control of the body as a product that relates to humans directly with the creator. The line that separates us from being a subject to become in an object and vice versa.
The main aim of this research is to find out if we have hugely changed so much that we are not able to even recognize ourselves. If the specie has evolved so aesthetically that we have become androids, cyborgs or in a Second Life avatar. Check if the human being has improved its ability to create themselves. This concept seems to me as very remarkable point of reuse that the evolution does of the body. The use of Internet has destroyed the concept of socializing as physical presence are not involved or I should say, necessary anymore. Will this means that the body is converted in an absent material?
Full text:
- David, from marble to the virtual Olympus
I wanted to redefine my project to incorporate the work that I conducted in parallel to the Master. Having chosen the topic of spam as my proposal has taken me away from my work, so what I now intend to do is to link the master with the second project that I am introducing in this post.
My work focuses on two projects.
The first one I’ve called Cement eclypses, The human beign becomes part of the urban furniture, which consists of small figures made out of cement representing daily activities located in public spaces.
You can download a dossier about this project here.
Public swimming pool. Camberwell. London. May 2009.
The figures are of small dimensions (25 cm.) they are made with cement and they are duplicates through molds of silicone. The figures represent routine scenes, a purchase, a phone call, a long wait, etc. Scenes that contemplate puzzled the demolition and the reconstruction of everything that surrounds us. The cement is one of the materials that more betrays us in our relation with the environment that surrounds us. Is the footprint of the human Being in the nature scene, our more recognizable trace. A mark that make us to believe that nature is “that” that we see from a city to another. In the case Galicia (Spain), the place where I come from, the coast that is converted in the endless flat city. One of the points of reference to carry out these small figures were based on those stunning images of the attacks of the 11S in which many of the survivors for a moment became part of the furniture, filled with dust and surrounded by debris.
Cement eclipses from Isaac Cordal on Vimeo.
In London I have begun my intervation in the bus stops with my small cement figures attached to the roof. The site seems to me very interesting as users of the bus can see the pieces in their journey and its durability is the longest because there are less accessible for people and for the cleaning services. Gradually, the figures are disguised as part of the furniture.
The second one are installations in which intentional lighting models the shadows that are the central element. This is the kind of project that I want to develop for the final draft of the Master. It is based on the work that I produced for the exhibition Transition at Bargehouse, London.
Unidentified suspects triptych from Isaac Cordal on Vimeo.
The feature comprised of three visages (shaped from pieces of metallic grid mesh wire) hanging from a motorized cable spinning horizontally. At first these installations seem regular but by looking closer it becomes apparent there are small optical confusions caused by the form of the objects projected shadows. Through an LED light positioned a few feet away from the hanging features, the light passes through the wire mesh, constructing facial outlines that are cast out as its shadows are projected in a large window of wall space centrally located in the darkened room. The projections become an interesting drawing that recalls a 3 dimensional representation of a computer constructed model. The movement of the pieces confuses the human perspective due to its projection having concave and convex forms. This work I have tried to carry out of the simplest form to try to reduce to the maximum the use of technology.
My idea is to attempt an installation similar to this but the lights and engines will be more complex, creating abstract landscapes and figurative metallic grids which will be hidden and showing just the projection. Attempting to create a story. To control the lights maybe I can use the spam that arrives in an e-mail and communicate via Arduinoethernetshield.
You can download a dossier with more info of this kind of works here
Ubuweb has become one of the most important mediateque of art in Internet. In this archive you can find a lot of information related to the experimental sound and video. Ubuweb is an exciting project to share and disseminate the culture as a necessity. One of the last pieces of video that I´ve found related of some way with my project is Junktopia from Chris Maker.
Chris Marker, John Chapman & Frank Simeone (1981, 6 min)
One day, at the stroke of evening, on Emeryville beach in San Francisco, where unidentified artists, leave, without anyone knowing, sculptures manufactured with items that have washed ashore from the sea.
This includes a short introduction by arte, approx. 1:12 secs long, with the film being around 6 minutes itself....there are 2 intertitles in the film itself, giving the latitudanal and longitudanal co-ordinates of the beach. No subtitles required, but ill work on some anyways.
The tutorial that I had with Jonathan Kearney clarified my project to focus more in the concept, in the idea that I wanted to state more than in the use of the spam as material. The main idea of my project is to focus on the loss of social physical contact associated with the use of new technologies, not simply related to the possible deterioration in our social relations, but with a change of mentality in a new role in the way we interact with others which is characterized by progressive absence of individuals in the meeting places. Previously, I have written briefly about this particular subject in a post entitledThe new outdoors. I would like to highlight the difference between being connected and linked. We are all connected but we just have links to a few.
Internet suppose to be a shortcut to get home that many times take us to other places and widens our interpretation about our modern concept of the outside. The new outdoors are more acquainted with the cyberspace than with the cold in a winter day at the park. The exterior world now doesn’t depend on the sights that our buildings offers us. Our outdoors have powerful connections with synthetic spaces and less and less with what surrounds us in the neighbourhood.
This means that our relations face to face have changed. “Why on God’s earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?” written by Tom Hodgkinson. The Guardian, Monday 14 January 2008
Spam becomes to metaphor for our social relations. Spam is a type of reflection of this new form of communication and remote interaction that invade our privacy and blurred our private life, giving a plus to our virtual presence. We have just taken their promotional tactics, as I said in a recent post. We have adopted tactics to promote our products in a manner similar to how spam works. I think myspace is a good example of that comment. Many of the users utilize it to promote their music making "friends" with the only end of being able to expand their activity. On the one hand, it seems logical to me because it is one of the most positive qualities of myspace, but otherwise this has created a strange climate in the relations.
In relation to draft the first practical approach to what I wanted to make is the project The penelope suitors. where spam messages are automatically uploaded to the web. I have chosen the character of Penelope from the classical Greek mythology book The Odyssey of Homero.
The Penelope suitors focuses on the reinterpretation of the relationship that Penelope keeps with the pretenders that surrounded her. They really want her throne, not her love. For this project I have proposed to use the spam mail in order to show the impersonal content , automatic and with an commercial purposes. Spam messages are Penelope’s modern pretenders.
This version is only online but I would like to make a physical installation. I was very surprise when I found the work of Nick Philip entitled Nowhere, because it is very similar to what I had intended to do. I am going to try to carry out an installation with less references to the spam but related to the loss of physical contact. In this case perhaps I can arrange the project with my installations of shadows made in meshwire and the relation of colors can be manipulated from Internet. My intention would be to conduct a instalation which is a representation of a dinner. These wire sculptures are characterized by minimal physical presence and its dual personality when a light is projected. In that case could turn on the LED’s every time that key words such as viagra, winner, buy, penis, to appear in spam.
