mi2mama...silent.observer

silent * observers...
... Flaneurial Practice in Streaming Media Art / / / /

Work-in-progress: Natalie, Wolfgang & LastClock

• FLANEUR What's a flaneur? Webster defines it simply as "an idle man-about-town," one of those fin-de-sicle dandies who ambled through the crowds of European cities in search of bustle, gossip, and beauty.

Short summary of the project:
Project silent*obeservers is international art project produced by Multimedia Institute - Zagreb (partnering with: Art Workshop Lazareti - Dubrovnik and TheTHING - NY), with support in international network of Open Sorce Streaming Alliance (memebers in Nederlands, USA, Australia, UK, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia). silent*obeservers is conceptualised and organized by NatalieJeremijenko, WolfgangStaehle and ZeljkoBlace, initiated in winter 2003 in order to exibit, produce and present a specific aesthetic, social and political approach to the streaming media practice of long-term streaming chanells. Results of the project will be an exhibition and presentation of works, which includs also public discussion on the topic of different potentials (artistic & activistic) of streaming media as a part of different events organised both in Croatia and US.

background:
During the mid 90ties terms "streaming media" and "netcasting" were introduced among advanced internet users. In the form of either net.radio stations or video conferencing events streaming media practice soon became the new tech-phenomena that was familiar to wider web audience. With development of more efficient technologies, these practices were take upon by mainstream content producers as major broadcasting corporations joined in (... MTV, NBC, CNN and BBC). While it widely expanded into the popular culture of consuming - very little of streaming media was actually produced on the user end, mostly due to high treshold of bandwith requierements. Predominant image imposed by comercial sector to present internet as shopping and entertainment here was even more exposed. On-line/virtual sex/porn industry bloosomed on the wave of streaming technologies advancement in real-time as technology was accessible to small businesses and market willing to rapidly expand. Only handfull of audio artists enjoyed permanent access to streaming oriented audience and had fascilities to program their work in second part of nineties.

context:
Somehow there was a general fealing that artistic content was lacking. Was this due to unpopular "elitism" that was originating from to "high" entry level technical requierments or just that very political net pioneers saw this as a bandwith distribution/waste issue? Some went event so far to fight against streaming practices as being politicly-incorect to support software/hardware industry by requiering more and more resources on user. Little experiments that were done in this period mostly replicated early concepts of satelite-video works produced over 20 years ago by Nam June Pike, Douglas Davis and Joseph Beuys. Some have howevere connected their work primarly to the digital music (sometimes club) scene as well known Austrian art-duo pioneers Station Rose. Only very recently (since 2000) more advanced and sofisticated projects were developted. Some of the prominent media-casting projects from early part of the 90ties like Van Gogh TV and later SuperFlex have adapted their work in new web modes (like Superchannel). Networks for schedualing and announcing events were established (like eXchange) and even first steps to infrastructural support for stream delivery is being setup by OSSA. Tactiacal use of video streams (indymedia) made this media technology an important part of info-desimination toolset. In-between these practices a number of easthetical approaches were created by media artists who work in both socialy engaging spheres of net-media and aesteheticly explore this situations.

work:
Both NYC based artists use thair web-cameras to gaze at corporate America and use the aesthetics of both disturbing and grand stillnes. Wolfgangs's corporate buildings and documentation of September 11th attack and Natalies's SanFrancisco suicide box are interesting to be presented in same context, though their origin is totally unrelated.

add text on LastClock here...

Asaide from few event-based projects there hasn't been a known attempts into curating streaming media projects in public spaces, so the whole project will be unique and chalanging in technological, artistic and curatorial work.
As a continuity of their previous work Natalie Jeremijenko and Wolfgang Staehle will adapt their concepts of using web cammeras for local situation in the Cities of Dubrovnik and Pula in Croatia. Thay will chose a local setup and penatrate local socio-cultural context with their critique of the glocal and transloacal situation.

timeframe:
Project will be produced over a period of two years as a research, artwork production, exhibition in Dubrovnik/?Weimar/?Koeln, public lectures and presentations, to be acompanied by publication which will document the whole proces. Project will be presented in the different forms in accordance to level of development and access to infrastructure.