Inês Moreira kindly invited me for this project as an resident artist to develope The Technical Unconscious website. Later at the final exhibition the website was displayed in the form of an interactive installation in the exhibition hall of the Museum at Cooperativa dos Pedreiros.
«The Technical Unconscious is a cultural and multidisciplinary research project developed at the Fine Art School of the University of Porto, reactivating the post-industrial spaces of the Cooperativa dos Operários Pedreiros do Porto (Stone Masons Cooperative) in its Centenary, directed by Gonçalo Leite Velho and curated by Inês Moreira.» Website not available anymore.
As I stated for my project,
«The Technical Unconscious website uses as the website's background the video streaming from surveillance cameras in the city of Porto. The viewer has the following options in the menu: to navigate the website selecting some of porto urban landscapes streaming in the background (streets, traffic, squares, beaches, etc); to surf it with the viewer's own webcam streaming himself in the background; or with no video streaming at all. I aim to add a close and unexpected dynamic to the relation of the Technical Unconscious project with its city, or to the relation of the resident artists with the project, with the city, or with themselves. The interpretations are obvious and wide and walk hand in hand with technical constraints.»
The logo was a hipster parody, a temporary puppet logo made in 15 min to fill the gap while the real logo didn't popped up. But everybody liked it and it began making sense; it was fitting great in the overall composition.
The website was scripted by mad4ideas.
The interactive instalation is a video circuit in which a surveillance camera is shooting this semi abandoned museum corridor and his streaming is been projected in a screen inside his own shot, acting in a sort of a two mirror facing each other relation in an theoretically infinite video feedback. As you walk through the corridor towards the screen you see yourself from the back walking away from you as you walk. The corridor in the screen never ends and you can never reach yourself even with the video delay.
Some kid, my kid, peeping the surveillence camera knowing that he would appear gigantic in the screen.
They are the best public for this kind of installation.
[Nicole Tsangaris photos]
