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Auriea Harvey&Michael Samyn, Entropy8Zuper!
The catalyst for this physical space installation of our web project was when we were asked to present it at the 2000 Whitney Biennial. It was then that we began to wonder what could be a sucessful adaptation from web space to physical space. This issue was for us an interesting one because we don't really belive it is possible. The best place to view work made for the Internet is one person, one computer on the network, with the physical context being a private space on a familiar computer with the rest of the net surrounding you and your email program handy. For works created for this environment it is hard to imagine transfering the work to another server or having a formal showing, projection, or having the experience of the site controlled by a single person for an audience taking away interactivity, exploration, control and curiosity from the mix. We decided against showing in the Whitney's galleries in favor of taking a chance on experiementation with the idea of showing skinonskinonskin as an installation of its own.
From the beginning skinonskinonskin has been a way for us to take risks online. It began as a form of secret communication DHTMLove over the ocean. A place for us to take refuge and to make real the fantasies that were rooted in our cheating hearts. Page by page we built the site and then released it as a pay-per-view experience to guard its personal content. Limiting viewing to just those on the net who really had a burning desire to see what had been going on behind closed doors.
If you go to the Postmasters gallery you will see the two 'net boxes' containing computers with connections to the release version of skinonskinonskin. We do have plans of reposting the site publicly online in the near future but for now this is the only place on earth you can access it. Other elements of the installation include printouts covering the walls of emails, chat sessions and other ephemera from the time period. An ambient audio track plays in the boxes of couples arguing about their relationships to underscore the banality of the love affair which prompts us to make skinonskinonskin in the first place... How common, how rare is love and betrayal.
As part of the installation we recreated our "Office" for public use. This precursor to our Wirefire project is a chat box where we would meet daily, this felt after a time to be a space more real than real and just as physical as being in the same room with one another. Now when you go there you can see and chat with those visiting the installation or others connected to the page at the time.
After a time we did meet. Our skins touched. We could hear each others heart beat. The story goes on... |