Beam Me Up_Project India
Curated by Gitanjali Dang
This
project is supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council
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Contributors
Artists:
Vishal Rawlley
Abhishek Hazra
Essays:
Nilanjana S Roy
Anand Vivek Taneja
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Beam Me Up_Project India goes live on Saturday, March 20, 2010.
Vishal’s project will be live online till April 20, 2010.
On March 20, Abhishek will do a collaborative online performance from 14.00 hrs – 16.00 hrs
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A Quick
Overview
knock. knock.
who’s there?
scotty.
scotty, who?
scotty. disembodied scotty. for tim berners-lee’s
sake. *rolls eyes* for sir timothy john ‘tim’
berners-lee’s sake. open
up. let this not be 404 error.
if you are the true child of popular culture then you ought to
have uttered the words, beam me up, scotty!, on more than one occasion. we have all variously opened the door to scotty and happily
let him in. because in the bigger picture that flashes on the lcd, with backlight led, we are the servers and the
clients. and that really is why we have congressed
here in cyberspace seeking interface by way of virtuality.
the computer and its extensions such as the www and the internet
have quickly transmogrified into the fulcrum of epistemological debate. through human–computer interaction, net art projects, such
as those encompassed by beam me up, tackle enigmatic riddles vis-à-vis cyberspace,
artificial intelligence, endophysics and the like. in this vastly vast virtual, representation and
communication exist purely within the framework of snaking networks. through protracted exposures to this charged domain of
electromagnetics, both abhishek hazra
and vishal rawlley have familiarised themselves with the crinkles the big iron can
steam out, and those it thus far hasn’t.
abhishek and vishal combine the
performative and the conceptual in #cloudrumble56 and hauz-i-shamsi, their net art for beam me up_project
india. in order to do so,
they employ seemingly new fangled hardware and
software, from automated attendants to microblogging.
but let yourself not get caught up in the farcical provisionality of the new. despite
the employment of certain thingamajigs both the artists return full circle to
linger on the key notions of representation and communication.
excerpted from gitanjali dang’s
essay
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Project: Hauz-i-Shamsi,
Artist: Vishal Rawlley
Link to Contribution
Hauz-i-Shamsi, a
water reservoir, built by Iltumish – who ruled Delhi
in the 13th century – still holds water in Mehrauli.
Legend has it that it was in a dream that Prophet Muhammad revealed where Iltumish should build the reservoir. On inspecting the
site, Iltumish is said to have found a hoof print of
Muhammad’s horse (Burak); around this he erected the
reservoir. Hauz-i-Shamsi
will now be presented online via webcam. A mobile sculpture of Burak will float on it waters and visitors, in the vicinity
and online, will be able to interact with the Burak
through phone or web.
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Project: #cloudrumble
Artist: Abhishek Hazra
i am yet to be a tweet – but i hope to
pop on your timeline soon. you can find me and my first, second and other n order
tweet-cousins by searching for #cloudrumble56 on http://hashtags.org/ or on http://twitter.com. if you want
to participate in generating me, please ping me at cloudrumble.livetweet@gmail.com
if all goes well, i should have a data connection to an artists’ performance
this saturday, march 20th. as part of the performance, cantordust
will try to conjecture on dr. cloudrumble saha’s tenure at delhi’s
legendary ionization chamber from 1952 to 1956. during
these years dr.cloudrumble, who was otherwise famous
for sticking a thermometer into the sun’s belly, demonstrated to the august
members of the ionization chamber, the planned way to swim through a river in
full spate. cantordust
might rehearse some of saha’s moves while weaving an
asymptotic life jacket for himself and his participant-observer-livetweetmakers.