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 as a user Web window interface.

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. By creating movable wall(s) fixed on rails and attached to distance sensors and Wi-fi transmitters, I am creating an elastic space that will react in a more or less predictable way to the alterations engaged by the User/spectator. These interactions will affect factors such as the lighting or the sound in the space.

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)
2. 2nd prototype: arduino uno + utlrasonic sensor (working with sonic sensors)
3. 3rd prototype: arduino uno + utlrasonic sensor + LCD screen (working with values display)
4. 3rd prototype: arduino uno + utlrasonic sensor + 2 LEDS (working with distance range values detection)
5. 4th prototype: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + 12 LEDS (mapping range values detection in a grid and giving signals with LEDS)
6. Upcoming: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + 1 buzzer (replacing LEDS signals my different tones)
7. Upcoming: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + 5V Relay + Lamp (controlling a lamp with arduino)
8. Upcoming: arduino uno + 3 utlrasonic sensor + ESP8266 (WIFI) + Rasperry Pi (Self hosted website) (transmit value from arduino to computer and vice versa)
9. 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: Start conception of the movale wall(s), improve prototype

1. Show prototype and schemas to wood and metal workshops in order until getting validation to build

Why do you want to make it?

Use concepts from the Web in order to facilitate our understanding of the exhibition spaces, and consider their influence in the nature our experience. 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 separeted as two distinct entities(IRL vs Online). This is about experiencing their ambiguities. (see: Reversing the desktop metaphor) More generally, it is overall about reflecting on media themselfs, 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.

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, my interest has been gradually driven by references, questions and practices that directly concerned the tools, formats and langages I was dealing with as a visual and graphic design student. I believe that the better is a medium at "mediating", the more invisible, misunderstood and misconsidered it gets. This interesting paradox puts me in the position to focus on what is containing, supporting or hosting the subject that is supposed to be experienced. That is how I started to hijack some media and wished to transform them as the subjects of my works, in what could be eventually called 'meta-works'. During my last graduation, I started reflecting on the status of networked writing and reading by programming my thesis in the form of Web to Print website, subsequently translated in physical world as a printed book, a set of flags, and a series of installations. Finally and until now, I am getting gradually interested by the differences and ambiguities between physical exhibition spaces and web interfaces. Either curated or programmed, both are meant to influence our user/spectator behaviour in space and orientate our way to consume contents. However, while the exhibition space is quiet rigid and institutionalised, the web is more variable and unpredicatble.

After making a scenography willing to translate in a physical space; the texts, images from my previous online thesis under some sort of ‘physical interface’, I wish this time to consider the physical space as an elastic space, similar to a Web window, that could be resized by the spectator, affecting the display of the content and sort of diffracting the range of technological contexts and perspective in which are all experiencing as Web users.

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