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

  

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