User:Andre Castro/2.1/semniar-2012-10-03-assignment

DO: Write list of keywords. Summarize key interests/processes used and link from previous to current/proposed work.

Keywords

Archive, access, appropriation, humor, unexpected, experimentation, questioning, infinitely reproducible.

Summary of interests and processes

archive

The archive has been an entity that I have recurrently explored in my work and that I still feel drawn to explore. My work has taken two angles on it. One where an existing archive is appropriated and explored, such as on Radio Liberté Egalité Beyoncé, where the archive's (sound)items were placed in a different context, in this case a mockup radio station. This approach attempted to serendipitously navigate the archive, in search of unexpected items, that laid beneath the surface. The second approach has focused on the creating small personal archives. As an example Data Factory, assembled a series of phone calls I did to direct marketing company; or Radio Fragments, where the silence of a radio emission are continuously stored, and with those archived items a composition is constructed. Currently I proposing to work with small book archives, personal digital libraries which brings me to term "access".

access

Access was a driving force of Radio LEB, to access to what lays beneath the visible surface of the archive. Now I find myself frustrated with electronic books, as there are plenty of them out there, but not accessible. This barrier is both present at 'institutional' level, with Google Books storing a vast quantity of book but not permitting access to them, but also on smaller scale, at which level I am not able to share my electronic bookshelf with friends. In either cases access is limited by others or by the lack of an infrastructure.

experimentation & humor

I do not expect to find a remedy for this blockage, however I can experiment with 'imaginary' solutions to the problem, which rather than answering pose questions. This was the approach undertaken in Data Factory, where instead of taking a militant approach against direct marketing and internet spam, I decide to take part in the game, and tried selling my consumer information, so I could be spammed more effectively.

appropriation

The appropriation of material, placing it under other contexts was already touched briefly when describing Radio LEB. What happens when an object is put in different context? Does it transform itself? Does it transform its provenance? I believe so, and in that transformation, as in the one that happens when an object is manipulated, and the two (original and transformed) similarly believable objects a put face-to-face, copy and original are indistinguishable. Here a process questioning process seems to begin which interrogates the authority and the original.