MEXICO
"SANDBOX", 2010 (USA)
(Relational Architecture | Infrared surveillance cameras, infrared
illuminators, computers, DV cameras, 4 projectors, milagritos and
plastic rakes)
ARTIST'S MATERIAL:
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[ENGLISH]
Sandbox is a large-scale interactive installation created originally for Glow Santa Monica. The piece consists of two small sandboxes where one can see tiny projections of people who are at the beach. As participants reach out to touch these small ghosts, a camera detects their hands and relays them live to two of the world's brightest projectors, which hang from a boom lift and which project the hands over 8,000 square feet of beach. In this way people share three scales: the tiny sandbox images, the real human scale and the monstrous scale of special effects. The project uses ominous infrared surveillance equipment not unlike what might be found at the US-Mexico border to track illegal immigrants, or at a shopping mall to track teenagers. These images are amplified by digital cinema projectors which create an animated topology over the beach, making tangible the power asymmetry inherent in technologies of amplification.
[BIO]
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967. In 1989 he received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. Electronic artist, develops interactive installations that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art. His main interest is in creating platforms for public participation, by perverting technologies such as robotics, computerized surveillance or telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival and animatronics, his light and shadow works are “antimonuments for alien agency”. His work has been commissioned for events such as the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Cultural Capital of Europe in Rotterdam (2001), the UN World Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the opening of the YCAM Center in Japan (2003), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the memorial for the Tlatelolco Student Massacre in Mexico City (2008), the 50th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2009) and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (2010). His kinetic sculptures, responsive environments, video installations and photographs have been shown in museums in four dozen countries. In 2007 he was the first artist to officially represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel. He has also shown at Art Biennials in Sydney, Liverpool, Shanghai, Istanbul, Seville, Seoul, Havana and New Orleans. His work is in private and public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Jumex collection in Mexico, the Museum of 21st Century Art in Kanazawa, the Daros Foundation in Zürich and TATE in London.
He has received two BAFTA British Academy Awards for Interactive Art in London, a Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, a distinction at the SFMOMA Webby Awards in San Francisco, "Artist of the year" Rave Award in Wired Magazine, a Rockefeller fellowship, the Trophée des Lumières in Lyon and an International Bauhaus Award in Dessau. He has given many workshops and conferences, among them at Goldsmiths college, the Bartlett school, Princeton, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Cooper Union, MIT MediaLab, Guggenheim Museum, LA MOCA, Netherlands Architecture Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago. His writing has been published in Kunstforum (Germany), Leonardo (USA), Performance Research (UK), Telepolis (Germany), Movimiento Actual (Mexico), Archis (Netherlands), Aztlán (USA) and other art and media publications. (Fonte: Site do artista)
[CURATORSHIP TEXT'S EXTRACT]
The relationship between the occupation of public space, bodies and monitoring technology are represented in Sandbox (2010), an interactive installation developed by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer for the Glow Santa Monica festival in California, USA. Installed on the beach like a large fairground attraction or open air cinema, the work consists of two boxes of sand that allow the public to participate in three dimensions: a miniature projection, a human scale and an amplified projection on a huge scale. The images feedback in a virtuous cycle: the smaller figures place themselves in a game with giant figures, producing a circularity of projections that capture and recapture images. By creating what he calls “relational architecture” Lozano-Hemmer appropriates video-surveillance as an element capable of potentializing the sharing of space, transforming the asymmetrical relation between the watchers and the watched into the prime material for a new kind of shadow theatre. As the artist himself describes, the equipment used in Sandbox refers to that which is used on the North American – Mexican border tracking illegal immigrants; just as video circuits in shopping centres track adolescents. However by turning a space under surveillance into an area of play, performance and stage, Lozano-Hemmer reverts the dispositif, creating an environment where people are connected, as opposed to a space of suspicion and segregation.
[TRECHO DO TXT-CURADORIA]
A relação entre a ocupação do espaço público, os corpos e as tecnologias de monitoramento reapresentam-se em Sandbox (2010), instalação interativa que Rafael Lozano-Hemmer desenvolveu para o festival Glow Santa Monica, na California. Montada na praia como uma grande diversão de feira, ou um cinema ao ar livre, a obra consiste em duas caixas de areia que permitem ao visitante a participação em três dimensões: a projeção miniaturizada, a escala humana, e a grande escala da projeção amplificada. Em um ciclo virtuoso as imagens se retroalimentam: as figuras reduzidas se põem em jogo com as figuras gigantes, produzindo uma circularidade de projeções e apreensões que capturam e recapturam as imagens. Ao criar o que chama de “arquitetura relacional” Lozano-Hemmer apropria a video-vigilância como elemento capaz de potencializar o compartilhamento do espaço, transformando a relação assimétrica entre vigias e vigiados em matéria prima para um novo teatro de sombras. Conforme a descrição do artista, os equipamentos utilizados em Sandbox remetem aqueles que atuam na fronteira do Mexico com os EUA, rastreando imigrantes ilegais; assim como os circuitos que vigiam adolescentes nos shopping centers. Mas ao fazer do espaço vigiado um espaço de jogo, performance e palco Lozano reverte o dispositivo, criando um ambiente de conexão entre pessoas, em vez de um espaço de suspeita e segregação.
