m/e/m/e 2.0 by Danja Vasiliev
I'm using Linux/GNU as a raw model/base for my experiments and trying to tie together the digital and meat spaces of our existence. Critical to pervasive cybogination while working with same technologies I'm looking for balance between the two worlds.
Participants (users) of "m/e/m/e 2.0" are invited to navigate through a maze of physical hard wired pages of electro-mechanical website. The content of the pages is what we commonly know as the virtual platform of "Web 2.0". Because a user can find his or her way in a very physical sense, they begin to understand the interconnection of the hardware and the immaterial, because they have to operate this mechanical server through a regular Internet browser application and see it unfold in front of them. An interface allows someone at the click of a mouse to execute functions and processes that are well known to an Internet user. Such as: (submit) (click here) (agree) (commit) (buy). M/e/m/e 2.0 makes transparent these labyrinthine processes at play, each time a user clicks- the machine exposes another layer of itself. The machine is built using misc computer parts, mostly CDROM drives (28), and represents an ultimate recycling effort in contemporary hardware art. media industry gets to show us the guts of the technology it enslaves, be it physical or illusionary. "m/e/m/e 2.0" mixes up the positions taken by the media devices - CDROMs? become files, files turn into circuit boards - after the decade of web fetishism comes the age of postinteractive materializm. traveling between venues and exhibitions "m/e/m/e 2.0" changes its IP address and power source but the message it carries remains the same - bring machines into the world of people instead of living second lifes in the world of machines.
drawers of CDROMs? open and close being controlled via the self-contained interface laid out on the plates that are held inside the drives. each plate is a unique web page parodying contemporary web 2.0 style with all its consumerist centered flavor. buy, agree, submit, get and buy are the keywords of the Internet for masses, while in real represent completely virtual values or actions.
See movies, pictures and source code on the homepage of the work:
tech:
Linux/GNU, Apache, Python, arduino, PC-hardware.
