Beschreibung des Autoren:

"Vectorial Elevation was an interactive artwork designed to transform the Zócalo square in Mexico City. Using a three dimensional interface the web site allowed you to design a light sculpture with 18 robotic searchlights located around the Plaza. A web page was made for each participant with photos from 3 webcams. The piece was unplugged on the 7th of January, 2000, after receiving hundreds of thousands of visits from 89 countries and all the regions of Mexico. Its main objective is to allow public control of the spectacular lighting possible with searchlights, which normally follow a preprogrammed sequence of movements. Vectorial Elevation is a piece that tries to stay away from didactic, historicist or monologic forms. Instead it offers an interface for people to have a direct impact on the urban landscape through a vehicle that is non- representational and non-linear. People from all over the country and the World

 

will take part in a telepresence event that emphasizes action, interdependence and feedback. While Mexico's two million net users may find it easy to access the site, a large number of free public access terminals have been deployed around the country so that more people may have access to the piece readily (and to the internet in general!)
The Zócalo's monumental size makes the human scale seem insignificant, an observation that has been noted by some Mexican scholars as an emblem of a rigid, monolithic and homogenizing environment. Searchlights themselves have been associated with authoritarian regimes, in part due to the military precedent of anti-aircraft surveillance. Indeed, the Internet itself is the legacy of a military desire for distributed operations control. By ensuring that participants were an integral part of the artwork, Vectorial Elevation attempted to establish new creative relationships between control technologies, ominous urban landscapes and a local and remote