How to get the Mao experience through Internet…
Title: How to get the Mao experience through Internet… Year of production: original 2014 (latest revision: 2020) Medium: Animated Gif / Network / Desktop Web Browser :: Description :: Artwork (2020 ver) (13.7 MB – site-specific for Internet network) Recalibrating the focus of its imagery, transitioning from representation to the material dimensions of the image, the work draws attention to the live performance of a thing in itself. The con-temporality of the work is emphasized by live network traffic and interactions between code, network protocols, computer memory, amongst others, producing unpredictable looping sequences and delayed intervals, as well as the dynamic reconstruction of grainy frames and montage as an animated gif. The work questions how the (live) GIF digital format reconfigures the experience of a public space and public figure such as Mao. In overall terms, the work explores Mao experience through an Internet screen that comes with different spatial-temporal and social-political happenings, networked events, medium specificities, as well as the lens of human and nonhuman entanglements. *a tribute to the brave. :: Description (2020b) :: 7 channels video projection – Recalibrating the focus of its imagery, transitioning from representation to the material dimensions of the image, the work draws attention to the live performance of a thing in itself via (de)construction. The work examines the notion of operative images, that is part of a changing and executing operation beyond static forms of representation. Such operation is emphasized by live network traffic and interactions between code, network protocols, computer memory, amongst others, producing unpredictable looping sequences, delayed intervals, as well as the dynamic reconstruction of montage images. The work questions how the liveness of digital operations reconfigures the experience of a public space and public figure such as Mao. In overall terms, the work explores Mao experience through an Internet screen that comes with different spatial-temporal and social-political happenings, networked events, medium specificities, as well as the lens of human and nonhuman entanglements. :: Review / Feedback / Press/ Publication ::
:: Exhibition Record(s) ::
:: Technical & Production :: Inspired by Matthew Britton earlier work “How to get the Mona Lisa experience through flickr…“(2012), this work follows Britton’s method to place the image frame — here I use Mao images gather from wider geopolitical platforms including Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo/Baido image search and the flickr platform — at the center for every image and to produce a collective (heavy) animated gif which can only run in a browser screen. By refreshing the screen through a lightweight script, a new image is generated upon every refresh time to avoid the same image cache. As such, each repetitive refresh is regarded as a new fetcher and new image reproduction and presentation through data transmission and processing. Requirement: Internet connection, a web browser full screen mode without the URL bar, recommended screen: 37” Plasma LCD (HD is not required but the 4:3 aspect ratio is needed) Image resolution size: 1280×960 px, produced with GIMP and ImageMagick library. For the version 2020b- video channel projections:
:: Acknowledgement :: * I have tried to contact the photo contributors but of course I am unable to find them all. But here I would like to say thanks to all the online contributors especially Jim, Adiong, Peggy, 新辰陳 and Roger. If you have found your image and would like me to take out from this piece of work, please email me. (This piece of artwork is not for sale). Thanks to Nynne Lucca who helps working on 2020b together, and Anders Visti for advices. :: More :: I have made a physical gif version based on the digital one – |