I have been experiencing the practice equivalent of the butterfly’s wing over the last two weeks. I made what I thought was a relatively minor change in my practice when I began my current engagement with ‘writings: not for wimps’ back in September. However, I have found that this shift has altered significantly the cultural context of my current work. I have found myself dealing with issues of the artwork in space (configuration, usage, public access, ownership and institution influence). This is an intellectual landscape that is traditionally framed by the discourse of fine art (and public art in particular) rather than literary aesthetics. This is not a landscape with which I am familiar if I am honest. However, I have decided to embrace this unexpected turn of events (even though it has added an extra dozen texts to my reading list) as it has given me chance to embrace some welcome pieces of serendipity.

Firstly, I have been digging into the narratives of digital art. For example, I have been reading Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age by Margot Lovejoy and Digital Art by Christiane Paul. However, despite finding both these texts valuable (mainly because they introduce a galaxy of practice examples) I found that I needed to broaden my approach, to think through the relationship between the addressivity of the art and its space(s). One text that I found useful was ‘Public: Art: Space A Decade of Public Art Commissions Agency 1987-1997’. This brief history of the UK’s Public Art Commissions Agency contains some excellent descriptions of proposals by artists working with the agency. Most of these works are not ‘digital’ per se. However, I found that a number of them informed my growing concern with placing surveillance technology in an art space. For example the description of Moonlight (by Permisison) by Pierre Vivant in the early 1990s was very illuminating. I found the description’s of artist response to space particularly valuable. In Mel Gooding’s introduction he notes that Vivant was working in/with the University of Warwick’s Sculpture Court - "a space the artist had found prison-like and oppressive, and had noticed to be under constant surveillance by its own cameras”. Vivant responded to this situation by redeploying the offending surveillance equipment in his work about a single lunar cycle. He notes:

“As the natural moon passed through its eternal phases, lunar images were projected by lights aligned within the University campus surveillance cameras, visible in their entirety only by the cameras themselves, and seen by viewers at ground level only as fragments of light. These images were recomposed into a representation of the moon's cycle on six telemonitors"

This work was only available for a month so it is not possible to go and experience its particular affect. I wonder how visitors to the sculpture garden perceived it? How did it relate to the sculpture garden as a space with a preconceived role? Similarly, I can’t help wondering what the ‘authorities’ of the university made of this appropriation of the equipment? I think it important to experience this kind of work. Theory is fine (in theory, in fact) but theory/experience is better way to understand this kind of work.

Last year, for example, I had the privilege of being invited to the launch of Underscan by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in the East Midlands of England. When I had first read about this work I was very excited by what was proposed. I was also somewhat in awe of the budget for this piece. I have to say that I was impressed with what was accomplished technologically. I was also impressed by the scale and location of the work- in a series of large, somewhat windy civic spaces. However, I was underwelmed artistically. It did not do enough or address me in/with that space.

Similarly, I had a serendipitous engagement with a piece at Milton Keynes Shopping Centre yesterday that left me wanting more. As you can see from the images I took (taken today in daylight so the electronic gubbins were visible), this piece comprised of a detector and projector array hung overhead that detect the movements of the shoppers across the white display space on the floor. My daughter had a great time chasing down fairies (unsuccessfully), jumping on projected snow drifts and having fun. Other shoppers also came by and hopped, skipped and jumped in response to the addressivity of the piece. It was great fun and an unexpected find in a shopping centre; however, I can’t help feeling that it did not push its own boundaries much.

I feel like Scrooge saying bah humbug to these technological marvels. I also feel a bit like the Emperor with no clothes on because both of these pieces are technological in advance of anything that I have produced. However, I feel that I want to move beyond the ‘neatness’, the responsiveness of surveillance art. I want to question what that surveillance does (in its many faceted appreciations) to civic spaces such as the shopping centre or the windy town square.