Virtual Space, Ancillary Space

The exhibition project for LABcyberspaces came about as the outcome of an intense dialogue between the curatorial team and the architects commissioned with the design.

Bearing in mind the concurrency of various exhibitions at the Centre, the heterogeneousness of the ten works chosen and the multiple experiences these generate in the visitor, we consciously adopted an understated subordinate role with respect to the exhibition project.

With the understanding, as the title suggests, that the whole exhibition is conceived to generate virtual spaces, programmed and interactive microcosms, the physical space of the exhibition itself becomes ancillary, a mere invisible support.

Rather than manipulating the space a priori so that the works then have to accommodate to it, our idea was to establish an almost imperceptible, underlying unifying order primarily focussed on three aspects: the territorial definition of the show within the context of the LABoral (limits), a coherent distribution of the works (order) and the design of multimedia modules for each piece (information).

An Excursion from Interaction to Contemplation

Despite the multiplicity of forms taken by multimedia and telemedia art, they generally share a digital channelling of data using a computer device (software plus hardware) which then generates a perceptible virtual or physical output.

Nonetheless, there exists a huge diversity of inputs or driving engines for processing data, whether in closed, controlled circuits or in open, reciprocal and unpredictable circuits.

We understand a visit to the exhibition as a possibility to involve the visitor in an exploratory excursion from interactive art to contemplative art, passing through ten works based on new technologies.

UUsing this catch-all classification of the works, the curators and architects decided to located the more interactive pieces, those reacting to variable external inputs (Internet connections, physical movement…) plus the largest piece on show (The Sheep Market) in the first hall

This ensures that the initial perceptive impact on the visitor becomes an open arena of movement, sound, and mutant arabesques.

On the other hand, the works with a lesser degree of reciprocity (closed semantic circuits) or transmitting a more concise and well-defined message plus an interactive work requiring specific lighting conditions (Deconstructed Music) are given separate spaces or occupy the interstitial space between them.

Animal Farm

After much thought Snowball declared that the Seven Commandments could in effect be reduced to a single maxim, namely: "Four legs good, two legs bad." This, he said, contained the essential principle of Animalism.

Animal Farm (extract), George Orwell

A network of four-legged objects (both "familied" and "familiable") are dotted throughout the various rooms of the exhibition. These everyday yet at once strange mobile plinths. Not unlike a number of little animals from a single species but of different stock, these vary in composition, length and height depending on the work they are paired with.

In general, in their interior they discreetly host the computer devices and playing systems while integrating the sensorial interfaces like the mouse and screen on the surface.

These bodies, inspired by animals and everyday urban objects, act like the physical and visible vortexes of a vast net of virtual and fluctuating data, providing the gene pool of the LABcyberspaces exhibition