Description
of the author:
"Vectorial
Elevation was an interactive artwork designed to transform the Zócalo
square in Mexico City. Using a three dimen- sional 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 inter- face for people to have a direct impact on the
urban landscape through a vehicle that is nonrepresentational and
nonlinear. People from all over the country and the World will
take part in a telepresence
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event that emphasizes action, inter- dependence 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 public.
It was intended to interface the post-geographical
space of the Internet
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