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MAAP in Singapore: GRAVITY

Oct 22-Nov 17


 Da Contents H2

October 22 2004
MAAP in Singapore 2004 - Gravity: Introduction
Keith Gallasch

GRAVITY - MAAP in Singapore
November 30 -1
A museum of accidents
Virginia Baxter

GRAVITY: Kim Kichul, Sound Drawing
An eye for sound
Gail Priest

SCAN: Asia Art Archive at The Substation
Archiving history face to face
Keith Gallasch talks to Angela Seng

GRAVITY: Tsunamii.net, alpha3.5crush
Computer juice
Gail Priest

GRAVITY, Singapore Art Museum
Conceptual leaps
Gail Priest

Symposium: GRAVITY
November 30 -1
Every available space
Virginia Baxter

-+-(negative plus negative)
Living the in-between
Keith Gallasch

MAAP artists' talk
Material boys
Keith Gallasch

Katawán, Satti
The body between: an interview/review
Keith Gallasch talks to Fatima Lasay

New Video Art From Australia
The inevitable body
Michael Lee Hong Hwee

-+-(negative plus negative)
November 30 -1
The pause that refreshes
Virginia Baxter

The Gravities of Sound Audio Tunnel/GRAVITY extended
The weight of public spaces
Gail Priest

New Video Art From Australia
The wild ones
Ho Tzu Nyen

GRAVITY, Singapore Art Museum
When words flail you
Gail Priest

 

Computer juice

Gail Priest


tsunamii.net, alpha3.5crush tsunamii.net, alpha3.5crush
More artwork should have an odour. alpha3.5crush, the work of Singapore collective tsunamii.net has the smell of fried electronics—the scent of sizzling circuitries and flash-zap ozone. While not strong, it is what draws me closer to the ruin of equipment placed on a low plinth near the doorway of the gallery. Sniffing my way around a flattened Dell computer I am attracted to the mille feuille of materials, wavy lead-like sheets sandwiched between black metallic drive and beige plastic screen; a fine dusting of glass shyly glittering around the edges; wiry entrails just visible through the cracked casing. Above the object there are 2 accompanying projections. The first shows a browser window identifying itself as the webserver–IP address 195.195.81.5–and an accelerated countdown. As zero approaches the browser flicks to an error message–"This page cannot be found."

The other screen displays what can eventually be detected as a glass chamber containing a computer—black hard drive, beige monitor displaying the browser window with countdown. The footage has also been accelerated. At zero, a massive piston below the drive rises up and compacts the computer. The footage continues, showing the reflection of the audience in the London Millbank Gallery (Sep 5-12, 2002) peering at the shattered machine.

Frequently sceptical of the documentation of an artwork being recycled into another artwork in itself, I am surprised at how satisfying I find both the video evidence and the artefact of the event that took place in the London. This is perhaps due to the conceptual completeness of the piece. It has a nihilistic beauty like a circle made from a snake eating its own tail. It's even more satisfying when I read in the catalogue (notes in the gallery are minimal) that the computer in the compression chamber not only ran the server but also the press which caused its demise. The machine was programmed to commit suicide. Interestingly this honourable death is witnessed in 2 ways: its spectacular squishing in front of the gallery audience and the deletion of its virtual identity—the web presence run by server 195.195.81.5.
tsunamii.net, alpha3.5crush tsunamii.net, alpha3.5crush
There is a niggling discomfort in the knowledge that the 2 projections are not synchronous—the countdowns operate at different speeds so that the crunching happens independently of the deletion of the web presence. Similarly the focus on the reflection of the audience in the actual gallery event dissipates the power of the work. Perhaps these are deliberate attempts to undercut the sense of spectacle and linear narrativity.

The catalogue notes indicate that tsunamii.net requested that the London Institute, owner of the IP address, purchase and keep the website in this 'contentless' form, however this never came to pass. Had it been granted it would have made MAAP artistic director Kim Machan very happy. It would have been the ultimate virtual manifestation of Yves Klein's Le Vide (an empty gallery) that Machan had on exhibition in the Singapore Art Museum for a month prior to the current show. But is "This page not found" more akin to a "Gallery Closed" sign? Even without the artefact of the remaining URL (currently http://195.195.81.5 brings up a connection failure), alpha3.5crush is a vivid and rewarding realisation of both a past work and a re-visioned piece within itself, challenging notions of real and virtual presence and absence.


Tsunamii.net, alpha3.5crush, GRAVITY, Singapore Art Museum, curator Kim Machan, 27 Oct - 28 Nov; MAAP in Singapore—GRAVITY, Oct 11-Nov 30

RealTime issue #64 Dec-Jan 2004

© Gail Priest; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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