Friday, May 12, 2006

.....and yet more Wash U. images




We'd like to thank both Ronald Leax, head of Sculpture at Washington University and BJ Vogt for inviting us to do our interactive project through Washington University in St. Louis. BJ recently graduated from Wash U. with an MFA in sculpture. There he taught a workshop in interactive and performative art. BJ is currently the Assistant Preparator of Exhibitions at Laumeier Sculpture Park and will be doing many other things besides, in the future.

It is Nosey Parker's goal to allow for the evolution of the Temporary Autonomous Zones Project and in doing so we seek new sites for deployment in the hope that the TAZ relates both conceptually and structurally to a new environment. Wash U had presented the opportunity to lecture about our project, extend the structural construct of the TAZ space and adapt the technology by suggesting that we program an additional TAZ site.

In the begining we had TAZ A and TAZ B and now there are three. TAZ C involves the ability, through a two channel switch, to manipulate and record video and audio communication between TAZ A and B. TAZ A and B could have knowledge or may be unaware of anothers perception and documentation of their transmissions. By enabling this tertiary component we enable a true vouyer or surveillance station and perhaps construct a model of communication that is mirrored in a society at odds with autonomy, freedom of speech, etc. This is a bag of worms and not necessarily the point though it makes for a strong parallel.

Another factor in customizing the TAZ according to site-specificty was the structure itself. Until this project the TAZ architecture was represented as a self contained, easily constructed/deconstructed and moveable space made of sustainable materials. At Wash U. we altered the actual architecture of room 102 at Lewis Center by partitioning the space into TAZ A and B. We did so by building a T-shaped wall that mimiced the origional design and materials of room 102 and thus incorperated traditional building materials such as dry wall, stick walls, mudd, tape and interior white latex paint. We tied into the actual ceiling joists to emphasize the permanency of our TAZ and brought forward the idea of art as architecture or vise versa. TAZ C was represented by an indoor installation of the original TAZ architecture and located 30' outside of rm 102.

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