Plan for 2010 performance and exhibition (The song of London)
1. 每天走不同的街道 walking in the streets
2.利用手機錄下街景與街道聲音 recording street scenes and noise via mobile phone
3.利用電腦紀錄經過的無線網路 recording Wi-Fi information along the streets
4.將無線轉成影像跟聲音 converting Wi-Fi information to music and film
5.混合街景以及無線網路的影像聲音 combining the audio and video by phone and by Wi-Fi
6.每天的記錄成為音樂中的一節 one day constitutes on one section
7.混合起來成為倫敦曲 the result will become the song of London
8.可能可以搭配拍照紀實 potential film and photograph documentary
9.此計畫不一定會實現 this plan may not be implemented.
When we walk in the city, we don’t only see the street view but also hear the sound from cars, pedestrians, broadcast in the underground, and the river beating the bankside. Because we usually daily routines, we may hear the same or similar sound every day. The sounds compose our personal theme songs. We share some common sounds and the they become our collective memory; at the same time, every song is distinctive and represents our life. Wi-Fi networks are popular in our cities and they are the silent sounds in our environments. I record the Wi-Fi access points I passed and transformed their identifier codes to notes. Because the black and white keys of piano are similar to the zero/one in digital world, I chose piano as the instrument to play the notes. My Wi-Fi songs are both contemporary and classical music to make sounds for the silent but salient urban infrastructures.
1. Why do you make art?
Before answering this question, we need to answer another question first, what is art? Actually, I would not like to answer this question; however, I want to define it. Art is the weapon to break the wall of traditional and existing concepts and thought. Art can be new born anytime as it can be the old traditions. Many artists applied their art to explore the unprecedented world no matter how crazy world they created. Medieval European artists described the unbelievable far east and Chinese artists imagined the minorities living in the wonderland. Cubists transform our familiar figures and street views to strange compositions. John Cage told us the music maybe impossible to be heard.
My idea is not easily understood or easily misunderstood. I wanted to make the invisible Wi-Fi networks visible as the street views. This is simple idea but it is a complicated work. If anyone says this project is easy and short duration, I think I maybe successful to create artwork beyond thy can imagine. If anyone thinks this is complicated, I must say thanks to them because they spent time to understand what I did.
What am I doing?
I am doing something special but most think it is ordinary. Why i make art because art makes me have the power to challenge the common sense in my way.
Although you can see the map of Manhattan seems like a grid system, the streets in New York are more complicated. The streets are not straight and they are affected by the occupations and ethnic background of residents and other historic/political/economic/
religious factors. You can imagine that you will be hard to find near
churches but Starbucks always provide Wi-Fi. And this is the reason why I focuses on the routes than the geographic map. I can find more Wi-Fi in the business area in New York as in London. Geographical space is important but I wanted to understand how it interact with the users than take it as a objective distribution.
Yes, it will be an independent project and I am trying different ways to represent it in a scale of longer time and more broad space. I am not interested in mapping the Wi-Fi locations but paint them in artistic way.
Media is a complicated issue. I like both digital and traditional art,
so I tried to bridge them with different media. I chose to print my works and displayed them in a metro station, because traditional
exhibition is easier accessed by the public, especially the elders; I
walked in the streets to collect Wi-Fi information rather than using the existing Wi-Fi database, because I wanted to paint the landscape what my naked eyes see as the traditional artists. I think the digital art and fine art are not the opposite and the collaboration of them can help us create more unprecedented and interesting artworks.
