Amodal Suspension (Art Review)

Spac_e, Glow_e, Digi_Art in Japan
by: JanedaPain


Amodal Suspension Yamaguchi, Japan is beaming with active, creative public art. This unique art is live and originates from around the world. The Amodal Suspension project started as a relatively simple idea, but grew into an international digital experience. A digital experience that could be seen from space! Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's installation, Amodal Suspension, collects messages and signals from cell phones and e-mails around the world and transmits them into flashes of light. These flashes of light are signaled into the night sky upon huge steel towers located around the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM). The digital information is broken down from sound (words) via mathematical logarithms in to pulses of light. æThe lights pulse in different rhythms depending of whether it is Japanese or English. Although the main event was November 1st æ24th, 2003, it is still active. During the November extravaganza, the signals and rhythms of light were seen from space. The Astronauts on the International Space Station were the first to send a message and then see it from space. There are twenty light towers, and up to ten messages can signal at once, each with a distinctive rhythm. The rhythmic signal must then be grabbed by the addressee, who reads the signal. The signal then disappears as quickly as it appeared. This artistic installation is digital as well as collaborative. Over the last decade Digital art has taken on a new form, public art combined with community participation. Amodal Suspension required the public to participate for it to work. Over 58 countries and 150,000 people participated in this unique community event in November. Since then people from 94 countries have participated. A current trend in digital media is to produce collaborative artwork through free public networks. But is this really a new trend? People have been connecting through media for centuries, digitally since the first microchip. People feed and drive each other to new ideas and creative risks that often have ground-breaking results. Although technology, itself, is bred through collective creative risk takers, the irony is that these networks dwindle due to corporate and bureaucratic policies concerning Internet and communication infrastructure. Laws are being passed to limit those open sources and public spaces, and/or the content in which they can exist. Interest in digital communities has been growing since the early nineties when desktop computers became affordable for the average consumer. There are whole communities for people to participate in. Public networks and open source collective spaces active and available. These public and collaborative spaces are the future place of digital historical events like Amodal Suspension and others. Check it out for your self. You can see pictures of lights as they display the messages. You can read messages in real time. It combines art and communication in a visual way we normally don't get to see. The URL is http://www.amodal.net.