NikesSitesPipes (Version 9)

A treason that today imposes itself vigorously by the conceptual confusion between interface and surface. A basic and essential conflict. Something like not understand the differences between nikes and sites.

But, nikes and sites are very different... Nikes are surfaces only. Sites are interfaces.

Nikes are objects that occupy a place in the space. Sites specific are "net specific". There is not a there in there.

Obvious? Not so much. The RR world (Real Reality) demonstrates it in acts, some times naive, others by strength in institucional environments and museologic contexts and its not subtle links to the artbiz (a kind of erudite upgrade in the world of the showbiz in the new economy times).

The NetArt sector of 25th Biennial of São Paulo is a good scenario and a point of departure for this debate, since it evidences that confusion which Magritte's pipes signify, in spite of all the efforts of the curator of that sector, Christine Mello.

Ceci n'est pas un nike was created for that exhibition. More than created especially for this edition of the SP Biennial, it was inspired by it and molded in according to the needs of adaptating to the difficulties the institution rules and concepts expressed about the Web and particularly to that we define as webart (art conceived to be experienced on line).

Given the crossings that all those rules and concepts have with corporative demands, strategies of marketing and the increasing fashionism and its machine of creation of hypes, the debate suggests some unfoldings.

The dicussion seems to be necessary because its most important issues are related not only to the SP Biennial, but to the ways of incorporation of web art to the circuits of the cultural market and its institutions.

Counting on the theoretical fragility of its creators and the weakness of a critical thought, that in most cases, stresses the e-business values, that process consolidates the surface (the screen) and the machine (the computer) roles and canonize of the visual language of the dot com webdesign (clear in the banalization of the swf format_ flash _ and the homemogeinity of usability laws).

A lack of conceptual and ideological debate about those issues points towards a very old and traditional art world of the art for the art, pardoxically in the scope where it becomes more corrosively hybrid: the digital media context.

Ceci n'est pas un nike challenges the passive seeing that identify the computer screen monitor as the space of artistic intervention.

Because of this I used superposed layers (layers superece of fishes), in detriment of frames (juxtaposed and sequential), programs of image warping that are Java applets and not photographic softwares, that allows interferences in the icon of the design through incursions in its informative code (the coordinates and points that compose the digital picture) and not in the screen properly said.

Finally, the option for a technology of production of the text (Wiki) was made because it seem to be able to embody a true electronic palimpses, where the reflections of this project can be revalidated and complemented by other creators.

(Just click in Edit (above) and Save. Your comments will be automatically published and incorporated to this matrix.)

At the same time it will generated a version of the previous content (see History) and another one with all the marks of its changes.

Since the beginning, as it was already said, Ceci n'est pas un nike was inspired by the working conditions postulated by the host institution (the SP Biennial of SP) and those conditons became the anchors of the dialogue on the conflict between interface and surface, suggested by Magritte's pipes.

In short, those working conditions had been motivated by attitudes and institucional positions, that seem to:

She said in an interview for Trópico magazine:

"I think everyone working on the Web is creating for a global audience. There are projects out there that are "national" in their focus, but in terms of content, not distribution. When artists create this type of work, they know that it will be available to the rest of the world once it has been uploaded. And if artists are dealing with conditions in one particular country or society, they know that the statement they are making is going to be presented in a global context. That's why we have the term "netizens" -- people on the net subscribe to its superstructure and don't necessarily define themselves in terms of nationalities as such."

If, in fact, they by any means those web art pieces would be "located" in a non-place _ they are not in the computers of the the web art sector__ they NEVER would say that the web sites are expected to be confined " inside " of the Internet and " in those " computers that are available in the beautiful building of the SP Biennial.

Not by chance, the site produced for the event hides the URLs of the artists' sites, suppressing the navigation bars and showing the content in full screens.

Some projects in fact demand this format, but others are created dealing with the browser tools. To hide or not to hide the browser is, in this sense a decision that should be made by each creator.

However, from an institucional point of view, it gives the idea, to the visitor that he is facing an unit, a conventional exhibition closed in a limited space framed by the screen, in a window wiht no exit.

By doing so, it imposes a model of controlable Internet and web art organized in a way so that the publishing order can not be suverted by the free options the user has when he browse the Web.

It is possible to everybody to leave the Biennial website and to go anytime to other sites, without opening another browser. However all the exist of this cosmetic surface lead only to one place: the channels of the sponsor (in this case, Terra Lycos Network, of the Telefonica group).

To move freely is necessary, therefore, to close the Biennial official web site. In synthesis, for experts this is always borring, for more naive users, a dirty trick, that makes believable that is possible to consider on line art conceived as objects neutralized by the window frame.

Those staments are presented here to incorporate other points of view that can, at least, to circumscribe some parameters for the relation of web art with the institutions and its never ending demand for " physical presence " of the websites in the exhibition places.

This is not one nike. This is a Wiki .

This is not inside your computer, nor on this screen that you see, but is is accessible by the web and this makes all the difference.

All the commentaries, addends and remarks are, therefore, welcome. Delete, insert, cut and paste. Just of it .