Mouth on the net

Videocreation net.art

Technique: programming, video, net.art

Dimensions: 65 x 160 cm

Variable speed and duration

Keywords: Variability, Modularity, Self-generation, Network structure.

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2009

Boca en la red is a net art video creation. The work consists of the projection of a female mouth that smiles and dances in a fluctuating movement. The scene is fragmented into seven parts, each moving independently.

By observing the work closely, the viewer can realise which is the melody that makes the piece dance. The fragments are scattered throughout the network and the video projection is being generated in real time as the data arrives through the internet, making the blood pulse of the network visible.

Boca en la red uses the difficulty of the internet to transmit information in real time, it uses this lack as an element of construction. Each of the fragments is hosted in a different place, different physical locations (geographical locations of the servers) and virtual locations (URL addresses on the internet) that are recomposed by the video projection as a unit on seven canvas frames that act as screens. The reproduction of each of these sequences depends on the downloading of its frames, and therefore on the transfer speed of the hosting where it is hosted, with each fragment having a different and variable speed.

The work shows the medium as a living entity dependent on the digital oxygenation of the flow of data through the network.

It uses the intrinsic qualities of the medium rather than emulating other media such as video or film and the result is a work in constant movement that never shows the same smile.

The media

It is legitimate in artistic creation to search for new aesthetic and formal approaches that bring awareness of the changing technological contemporaneity in which we are immersed on a creative level. These new constructions are inevitably related to the language and architecture in which they are developed, and the form and the medium that supports it can be conceived as a unit. Transferring aesthetic approaches originating in other media to the Internet is inadequate and unfruitful from an artistic point of view. The linearity of cinema or the reproduction of identical copies in photography can hardly be used to speak of the variability and transcoding inherent to the new media.

The possibility of constantly creating a different piece by using the structure of the internet means working with an aesthetic, a language and a poetics of its own.

Boca en la red is the result of an internet video system that is impossible to translate into another language because it not only makes the medium visible but also uses it in its discourse. This idea of “non-transparency of the medium” together with the mimesis that the work proposes between the internet and living organisms, as structures dependent on biological or digital oxygenation, are the authentic aesthetic and conceptual generators of a piece that aims to make the medium a visual poetry.

Installation in the hall

Boca en la red is shown as a visual animation designed to be exhibited by means of a projection on seven fabric screens. A computer connected to the internet picks up the signal and sends it to the projector so that it can be reproduced. The screens are made of wooden slats and cotton fabric, measuring a total of 160 x 65 cm. Their placement in the room does not require a dark room as long as the projector used has sufficient brightness and contrast.

Technical description

Seven hosts in different hostings support the fragments or modules that make up the work. Each module is composed of a chain of 358 frames in constant repetition with the peculiarity that each time it is reloaded, the file changes its name, preventing the computer from storing it in the cache memory. This mode of playback means that each of the seven modules is fed directly from the internet, creating independent timelines relative to the transmission speed of their hosting.

The work is hosted on the internet. Each module is placed in a different place on the network, so a reconstructor program is needed to call the seven hostings, placing each part in its corresponding place until the work is recomposed as a complete piece. The programme that performs this action behaves like a key, making the call to the different internet addresses and passing the signal to a digital projector that reproduces the variable sequence on the seven screens.

Web servers

Several servers in different geographical locations respond to the “Mouth on the Net” call by transmitting the images one at a time depending on the network transfer speed. The illusion of movement is produced through the continuous playback of frame chains that run independently of each other. It is a visual animation system generated by means of the structure of the Internet itself.