Martin (XPUB)-project proposal

What do you want to make?

I want to suggest a physical experience of the Web by creating an IRL exhibition space, conceived on the model of a user Web window interface ( SpaceWidth & SpaceHeight = WindowWidth & Windowheight). Comparably as a cursor, the spectator can freely move inside and resize the space by pushing or pulling a movable wall (SpectatorX / SpectatorY = MouseX / MouseY). Altering the size (of the exhibition space will simutaneously and unpredictably affects various potential display factors such as the lighting, sound, projection format, information(s) layout, etc. In this work, the space(s) is/are the main subject(s) to reflect on and experience.

How do you plan to make it?

While working with Arduino and Rasperry Pi, my strategy is to start from the smallest and most simple prototype, and gradually increase the scale and technicality until reaching human scale (see: prototyping). By creating movable wall(s) fixed on rails and attached to distance sensors and Wi-fi transmitters (see schema), I am creating an elastic space that will react in a more or less predictable way to the alterations engaged by the User/spectator and its own movments within this space. (see: simulation)

What is your timetable?

• 1st semester Prototyping with Arduino all long, getting started with Raspery, and finding a space to set up

1. 1st prototype: mini arduio + light sensor (understanding arduino) link
2. 2nd prototype: arduino uno + utlrasonic sensor (working with sonic sensors) link
3. 3rd prototype: arduino uno + utlrasonic sensor + LCD screen (working with values display) link
4. 4th prototype: arduino uno + utlrasonic sensor + 2 LEDS (working with distance range values detection) link
5. 5th prototype: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + 12 LEDS (mapping range values detection in a grid and giving signals with LEDS) link

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1. Upcoming: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + 1 buzzer (replacing LEDS signals by different tones)
2. Upcoming: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + 5V Relay + Lamp (controlling a lamp with arduino)
3. Upcoming: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + ESP8266 (WIFI) + Rasperry Pi (Self hosted website) (transmit value from arduino to computer and vice versa)
4. Upcoming: small room + arduino uno + 18 utlrasonic sensor + ESP8266 (WIFI) + Rasperry Pi (getting closer from human scale by setting up in a small room (Ask Leslie))

• 2nd semester: Find what will be graduation space and translate the installation to human/spectator scale.

1. Show prototype and schemas of the wall to wood and metal workshops in order to get advices until final validation to build
2. Search, find and validate what will be the space used for the installation during the graduation.
3. Start building of the movable wall by considering the characteristic of the space used for graduation.
4. Implement the sensors inside the movable wall, and the other devices in the fixed space

Why do you want to make it?

In its early ages, the Web borrowed themes and objects from the physical world in order to make its own concepts more familiar to the users. Now largely democratized and widely spread our physical reality, I would like reverse the process and get inspired by the concepts of the interfaces in order to suggest a singular experience of the exhibition space. This experience aims to facilitate our understanding of the exhibition space, and conceive it as an exhibiting device, and also increase our consideration of the role and influence of the exhibiting displays on our experience of art. By creating confusion between these spaces and their respectives properties, I want to make them reflect on each others and the users/spectators to reflect on them. The choice of the exhibition space instead of the physical world is because I want to focus on the nature of representation, everything we see through the online interface are representation, as well as in an exhibition space. In that sense, conceiving the exhibition space as a Web interface and the spectator as a user is also about puting together two worlds that are too often clearly seperated as two distinct realities(IRL VS Online). This is about experiencing their ambiguities, similarities, and differences. (see: Reversing the desktop metaphor) More generally, it is about reflecting on media themselvess, and try to deal with the medium paradox ( see: Mediatizing the media). This paradox make me want to give spectators more occasions to focus on what is containing, surrounding, holding or hosting what is supposed to be contemplated. By suggesting a flexible a space, my goal is to suggest a diffracted viewing context in physical exhibition spaces.

Who can help you?

• About the overall project

1. Stephane Pichard, ex-teacher and ex-tutor in France
2. Emmanuel Cyriaque: my ex-teacher and tutor, curating exhibition

• About Arduino

1. Arduino Group (Lousia and other people interested into sharing knowledge and experiments about Arduino)
2. Dennis de Bel who introduced me to Arduino and willing to answer to my questions
3. Aymeric Mansoux is apparently a Arduino Wizard

• About Rasperry Pi

1. XPUB2 students (Jacopo, Camillo, Federico)

• About creating the physical elements:

1. Wood station (for movable walls)
2. Metal station (for rails)
3. Interaction station (for arduino/rasperyPi assistance)

• About theory/writting practice:

1. Rosa Zangenberg: ex-student in history art and media at Leiden Universtity.
2. Yael: friend and philosopher, curating exhibition and writting about the challenges of the exhibition space

• About finding an exhibiting space:

1. Leslie Robbins

Relation to previous practice

During the first part of my studies, I have been gradually questionning the tools, formats and langage I was simply supposed to use but not necessarily supposed to reflect on through my work. As part of my gradution, I wanted to reflect on the status of networked writing and reading, by programming my thesis in the form of Web to Print website. Subsequently, this website became translated in the physical space as a printed book, a set of flags, and a series of installations displayed in exhibition rooms that were following the distributed structure of my online thesis (home page, index, part 1-2-3-4). As a first year student of Experimental Publishing, I have been continuing to work in that direction by eventually creating a meta-website, a geocaching game triggering unconsidered Web events, and a Web oscillator reacting the user screen-size.

Relation to a larger context

More broadly, I wish to question the modern conception of the physical exhibition space as an institutionalized, presivable and unalterable device. In that sense, I feel my project connect to the practice of institutional critique exposed by Hal Foster in After the White Cube; where she compares the museum as a mausoleum, the white cube with a form of art consumerism or entertainment of art.

References

• Stéphanie Moser, 2010. THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: MUSEUM - Displays and the Creation of Knowledge. 1st ed. Southampton, England

• Alexander R. Galloway - The Interface Effect 1st ed. Malden, USA: Polity Press.

• Jonas Lund, 2012. What you see is what you get

• Shilpa Gupta, 2009 - 2010. Speaking Wall

• Frederick Kiesler, 1925, City of space