The Internet as a virtual platform represents not
only a mere simulation of the physical world, but has structures
and rules of its-own. One essential represents special kinds of
communication and interaction. Different from the previous physical
Memorial project, the conception of the virtual project is adjusted
to the environment of Internet and its rules. Therefore the aims
are more general and are addressed to the entire global community,
i.e. people on all continents and countries, of all religions
and cultures, to subjects all people in the world could identify
with. The viewer/user has to be active, but the virtual
environment offers much more far-reaching possibilities to become
active. Interactivity on different levels addressed to two groups
of people.
1. Artists who can be directly actively involved
by joining and participating in the project as such and in collaborative
projects which are continuously organised with changing subjects.
2. the non-artist who uses the interaction created
by collaborative processes
Thus interaction is not reduced to usual website related interaction,
but an interaction which includes the whole database, not of the
project solely but the entire Internet, as well. On the other
hand, this networking aspect produces and enforces interactivity
by initiating processed between different levels of perception,
an exchange between inside and outside, between different real,
physical and virtual levels. Because the project represents a
highly developed multi-media environment, the options for initiating
or calling associations are continuously increasing.
The project uses the Internet as resource and database
in different concerns. There are an increasing number of links
to subject related websites and contents which serve as a basis
for creating associations and in the final result entire images
or the image of the project as such.The user can determine by
himself what kind of (external and internal images) he will initiate,
by visiting and using all the links and connected informations
or not. The ability to produce internal images is individually
differently developed, it depends on the experiences the user
has made, the ability of sensual perception and above all the
openness of the user which depends what kind of information he
filters in which way or not. It is the active user who determines
the spectrum of matter an image may consist of. This expanding
networking on different kinds of levels creates an expanding virtual
sculpture, comparable to what we know about the development of
the Universe since the big bang.
Although the thematic spectrum of A
Virtual Memorial is reduced to three central aspects,
i.e. Remembering, Repressing and Forgetting,
it includes, nevertheless all areas of human living, related to
Past, Present and Future. These three aspects mark the kind of
point of viewing or handling things.
A Living Memorial took
only a small (but anyway most important) slice of the cake connected
to humanity by regarding Nazi -Terror and Holocaust, which served
as an occasion to take the chance to reflect about life, about
human behaviour and humanity as such and in this way to reflect
about one's own position. The kind of becoming active was reduced
to moving around and by doing this initiating internal and external
processes intending to initiate an open image or Memorial inside.
The physical environment created certain space which enforced
initiating processes through the artistic installation.
The viewer did not become active in the sense to take influence
on the work. The user of the virtual platform takes this influence
in different ways.
A Virtual Memorial represents
in this way a kind of framework consisting of collective memory,
the definition of space which represents collective memory as
such.
Was the space created by the physical project (even
if it was a large one), a rather intimate environment where the
visitor could move through and communicate intimately, the virtual
space offers a large scale of identification with the situation.
Sitting lonely in front of the monitor of his PC represents a
strong element of intimacy on one hand, and the consciousness
of moving within an nearly endless environment of the Internet
enforces the feeling of being anonymously connected with the global
community which is sitting online at the same moment. Thus, intimacy
and distance simultaneously, physically and emotionally.
A Virtual Memorial offers
many perspectives for an artist to become involved and thus to
become active. "Collaborative art working" represents
the magic word. In a collaborative art works the artist submits
himself to a higher purpose of the work to be created. Such a
work can have a lot of power by composing and melting the artistic
experiences to the unity of a whole. For the user, such works
offer a lot of associative capabilities because he is confronted
with a variety of different aspects around a certain theme or
subject. This works in the sense of the aims of the Memorial project
to create and initiate, for example: tolerance and variety.
A Living Memorial was
with no doubt the work of a single artist, even if also here 'variety'
represented a central aspect. Although the authorship of A Virtual
Memorial is also without any doubt clear, going deeper in the
subject matter this authorship and thus the individuality of the
creator looses clearness and sharpness.The creation of the project
includes a permanent play between the authoring artist and the
collaborative and non-collaborative user: what is real and what
is unreal or virtual. The fast increasing volume of the project
makes it nearly impossible to judge what comes exclusively from
the author and what are collaborative elements and what is definitely
the work of an external participant.
In both projects, the continuous changes play the
relevant role. This is certainly more difficult concerning a physical
art object than making any changes to files sitting on one's computer.
The changes have a lot of effects: the object remains interesting
or actual and invites the visitor to view it again and again,
and it represents the aspect of the not yet finished, of an ongoing
process the viewer is participating in, thus a contradiction to
the conventional understanding of what an object of art represents.
In principle, change represent the most normal
thing since the natural processes of life represent change. Change
is the only ever lasting thing. Why should art, which often enough
is identified with life, be different from life and represent
the most unnatural thing, a final result? This seems to be more
an invention of art critics in order to create non-existing scientific
judgeable structures.
Anyway, the Internet and its rules actually demand
applications which can be updated and thus change regularly. A
website which does not find visitors has no sense at all. The
sense of a website is to visit it again and again, but only a
website will provoke continuous interest of the user, if there
are continuously changes/updates on different levels.
The really successful sites fulfil these purposes.
An art project in Internet has to act the same way, although this
can be a difficult task to find one's visitors. Because a web-based
work can honestly not displaced to the physical environment, because
it would loose its identity and thus the right to exist, the artist
as well as any other people have to create an environment
which is of interest of any kind of visitors, who visit the respective
site or work again and again. It represents a part of an
artistic work to create that kind of structures without loosing
the purpose of the project and the meaning of what art represents,
as such.
Networking or installing networks represents another
essential of any Internet work. Networking to be created means
that participating parties depend on each other. A
Virtual Memorial uses this aspect consequently in
different concerns, to mention only a few aspects: Creating a
kind of open community through memberships on a complete voluntarily
basis, to organise competitions in order to create collaborative
works by involving participants of different kind and binding
these people to the Memorial through actions of different kind,
a kind of magazine (, for example: the main project of the year
2001, entitled: "Features of the Month") presents monthly
changing subjects with new multi-media works of artists (or mainly
the authoring artist?), and collections of subject related links
to any area of the Internet and there is a comprehensive expanding
link section connected to subjects which are related to the aims
and purposes of the Memorial project, or not at all.
By regarding that the installation of a network
is not restricted to external areas, but is extending also over
internal levels of reflecting, emotions etc and all this connected
to the people who is involved online or offline in the project
then it becomes clear that a multi-dimensional networking construction
is developing comparable to structures of a brain or as mentioned
before, the Universe.
The difference between the physical and the virtual
project manifests itself in the different dimensions of the intended
Memorial to be produced: A Living Memorial Spaces
of Art to initiate a very personal, individual and
intimate Memorial inside of the viewer as a kind of living moral
instance. A Virtual Memorial going far
above that to create both the intimate moral instance and the
environment in which this moral instance is embedded in.
Both projects complete each other, both represent
ongoing processes, both represent a model of the world in their
own way.
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