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Fred Forest - Retrospective
Sociologic art - Aesthetic of communication
Exhibition Generative art - November, 2000
Exhibition Biennale 3000 - Sao Paulo - 2006
PRESENTATION
EXHIBITION
REFLECTION
COLLOQUES
WHAT'S NEW
CONTACT
> Editorial
> Artworks/Actions
> Criticism
> Biography
> Bibliography
> Synthetic note
> Retrospective online
> Audio conference
> Videos

1 SOCIOLOGICAL ANIMATION / FAMILY PORTRAIT 1967
2 VIDEO ACTIONS, "LA CABINE TELEPHONIQUE/LE MUR D'ARLES" 1967
3 INTERROGATION 1969
4 SPACE - MEDIA 1972
5 THE GESTURES (LES GESTES) WITH THE THEORETICAL INVOLVEMENT OF VILEM FLUSSER 1972
6 MEETING WITH FRED FOREST 1972
7 LE CAPITOLE 1972
8 ARCHEOLOGY OF THE PRESENT 1973
9 VIDEO - THIRD AGE 1973
10 XIIe BIENNIAL OF SAO PAULO 1973
11 SOCIOLOGICAL WALK IN BROOKLYN 1973
12 THE SMALL MUSEUM ABOUT OF THE CONSUMPTION 1973
13 ELECTRONIC AUTOPERCEPTION 1974
14 VIDEO-PORTRAIT OF A COLLECTOR 1974
15 RESTANY LUNCH AT "LA COUPOLE" 1974
16 TV-SHOCK-TV-EXCHANGE 1975
17 NEW MEDIA N° 1 1975
18 I EXPOSE MADAME SOLEIL, LIVE 1975
19 BIENNIAL OF THE YEARS 2000 1975
20 THE FAMILY VIDEO 1976
21 THE VIEWER'S PHOTO 1976
22 THE ARTISTIC SQUARE METER 1977
23" LIBE " WORK OF ART 1979
24 THE TERRITORY 1980
25THE STOCK MARKET OF THE IMAGINARY 1982
26 AUTOPSY OF THE POLITICAL SPEECH 1983
27 HERE AND NOW 1983
28 THE COMMUNICATING SPACE 1983
29 THE CONFERENCE OF BABEL 1983
30 ELECTRONIC BLUE : HOMAGE TO YVES KLEIN 1984
31 LEARN TO WATCH THE TELEVISION WITH YOUR RADIO 1984
32 DOCTORATE IN LETTERS AND LIBERAL ARTS 1985
33 CELEBRATION OF THE PRESENT 1985
34 GLOBAL TELEPHONIC SCULPTURE 1985
35 THE TELEPHONIC RALLY 1986
36 THE TIME OF THE ELECTRONIC WRITING 1986
37 GOLD NUMBER AND FIELD OF FREQUENCY 14 000 HERTZ 1987
38 WANTED : JULIA MARGARET CAMERON 1988
39 ZENAIDE AND CHARLOTTE AT THE ASSAULT OF THE MEDIA 1988
40 JOGGING IN THE PARK 1989
41 TELEMATICS RITUALS FOR SLEEPLESS NIGHTS 1989
42 BALLAD FOR CHANGE OF REGIME 1989
43 HOMAGE TO MONDRIAN 1989
44 THE ELECTRONIC BIBLE AND THE GULF WAR 1991
45 FRED FOREST FOR PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL BULGARIAN T.V. 1991
46 THE TELEPHONIC FAUCET 1992
47 THE GLOBAL FAUCETS 1992
48 THE WATCHTOWERS OF THE PEACE 1993
49 THEATER MOVIES RADIO TELEVISION INTERNET 1995
50 TERRITORY OF THE NETWORKS 1996
51 PARCEL NETWORK 1996
52 I STOP THE TIME 1998
53 THE MACHINE TO WORK THE TIME 1999
54 TOUCH-ME 1999
55 THE TECHNO-WEDDING 1999
56 THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD 1999
57 AN APPLE CAN HIDE ANOTHER ONEƖ 1999
58 FEAST OF INTERNET 2000 2000
59 COLOUR - NETWORK 2000
60 Webnetmusum.org http://www.webnetmuseum.org 2001
60 Bis Sorite des Territoires/offrez votre pied 2001
61 TERRITORY OF THE BODY AND NETWORK BODY http://viande.fredforest.net
2002
62 GRENOBLE IN THE CENTRE OF THE WEB http://www.fredforest.org/fete/ 2003
63 "INTERNET A LA LOUPE" http://www.fredforest.org/loupe 2004
64 MEMORY-IMAGES http://www.fredorest.org/Ina 2005
65 DIGITAL STREET CORNER 2005
66 BIENNALE DE L'AN 3000 - MAC (Musée d'Art Contemporain) de Sao Paulo 2006
67 FRED FOREST RETROSPECTIVE - SLOUGHT FOUNDATION OF PHILADELPHIE 2007
68 THE SENTINEL AT WORLD'S END - 1ST BIENNIAL OF THE END OF THE WORLD 2007
69 THE WATCH TOWERS OF THE PEACE 15 YEARS AFTER - SARAJEVO, GALERIJA 10 m2 2007
70 EXPERIMENTAL CENTER OF THE TERRITORY-SECOND LIFE/PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS 2008
71 CREATION FRED FOREST SECOND LIFE 2008
72 CORRIDA ON SECOND LIFE BY FRED FOREST 2008
73 CENTRE EXPERIMENTAL DU TERRITOIRE ON SECOND LIFE, MAC SÃO PAULO 2009
74 EXHIBITION FRED FOREST UNESP 2009

75 GHERSWHIN HOTEL AND WHITE BOX NEW YORK

2009
76 EXHIBITION/ACTION/TALK FRED FOREST ACADEMIE LIBANAISE DES BEAUX ARTS 2010
77 LAUNCHING AGAIN THE BIENNALE 3000 2010
78 THE TRADERS BALL 2010
79 EGO CYBERSTAR 2010
80 A LIFE IN ONE HUNDRED PORTRAITS 2010
81 THE COMPANY FORUMS 2011
82 FRED FOREST ART BY TELEPHONE 2011
83 EBB AND FLOW, THE INTERNET CAVE 2011
84 AN EXTENSION OF EBB AND FLOW, THE INTERNET CAVE 2011
85 SOCIOLOGICAL WALK 2011
86 L'ŒUVRE SYSTEME INVISIBLE ET M2 INVISIBLE 2011
87 FROM SOIOLOGICAL ART TO THE AESTHETICS OF COMMUNICATION 2011
88 THE INVISIBLE M2 ARTISTIQUE 2011
89 THE CONVERSATION 2011

65

“The DIGITAL Street Corner”
MIAMI NOVEMBER 2005

A Massively Multi-Participant Networked Happening by Fred Forest

An interactive artwork and public performance created online by Fred Forest using Solipsis*, projected onto a large screen in real time and space, “The DIGITAL Street Corner” is a virtual environment with limitless possibilities that allows Internet users around the world to connect, hang out together, exchange information, and communicate.

* Reality exists only because you make it happen!

AUTHOR (concepteur, réalisateur, coordinateur, producteur)
Fred Forest, communication artist and theorist, author of the work.
forest@unice.fr

CONTRIBUTORS
Joaquin Keller Gonzalez, information science research engineer, creator of Solipsis, graciously made available by France Télécom
Stéphano, graphic designer
Gilbert Dutertre, project manager
Michael Leruth, translations and contacts
Rose-Marie Barrientos, agent logistics and communication
Catherine Ramus, graphic assistant

INTRODUCTION

“The DIGITAL Street Corner” is not the kind of artwork that one simply looks at on the wall of a gallery or a museum. It’s an interactive environment that one can enter and explore from anywhere in the world. It’s an open window to an artistic net/work co-created in real time by people on the Internet: a virtual happening in the midst of which the artist will take center stage to lead the participants’ avatars in a lively online dance, a small portion of which he will choreograph and “film” for all to see, in real time, on a giant screen set up along the exterior wall of the Bass Museum in Miami. The worldwide virtual happening and its inscription in physical space together make up the work known as “The DIGITAL Street Corner”.

PROJECT CONCEPT

Communication artist Fred Forest—the creator and developer of the artistic concept—and research engineer Joaquin Keller Gonzalez—the creator of the Solipsis software program and technical director for the project) team up to present a unique work of art at Art Basel Miami Beach, December 1-4, 2005. This work will be the first of its kind to be presented at a major international event in the field of contemporary art: a participative “happening” in which art lovers and members of the general public alike will be given the chance to come together and explore a unique virtual environment on a planetary scale. Different identity clusters will form on the basis of thematic prompts issued by the artist at the keyboard of his laptop, acting like the DJ of a networked dance, a portion of which he will also “film” as it happens live. Through their icons/avatars, the online participants will be turned into cyber-flâneurs, wandering about this “corner” of cyberspace in the virtual costumes the artist has prepared. Some of the movements will be utterly gratuitous: an erratic “drifting” in virtual space that can be seen as the present-day equivalent of the kind practiced the Surrealists and Situationists in their day. Others will be “choreographed” by the artist, who will issue specific instructions causing the participants to change places, exchange messages, and perform other actions that will be visible on the large screen. In order to foster hybridized forms of communication and play, the artist might introduce a second form of media (radio, TV, cell phones…) on top of France Telecom’s Solipsis platform.

Fred Forest is confident that the inherent awkwardness of the first attempts at participation will soon give way to a collaborative style of play guided by an intuitive form of collective intelligence. The world’s Internet users won’t take long to make this system their own and create a meaningful planetary event.

PROJECT LOGISTICS AND OPERATION

• The original technical setup as well as the implementation of each of the subsequent phases of the operation will be coordinated by Joaquin Keller Gonzalez, creator of Solipsis. Individuals wishing to join in this game of exchange and circulation will be able to download the Solipsis/The DiIGITALstreet corner software free of charge over the Internet.
• A projector will be set up facing a giant screen along the outside wall of the Bass Museum so that spectators will be able to follow, in real time, all of the action (image manipulations, chat rooms, file exchanges) taking place on “The DIGITAL street corner” throughout the four-day duration of Art Basel Miami Beach 2005.
• From 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm on Friday, November 30, Fred Forest will take command of the system at the keyboard of his laptop, just like a DJ, for a special online performance. The DVD recording of this performance will constitute the material artwork. It will be available for purchase by an institution or a private individual. The definitive form and price of this document will be established at a later date.
• At a specially designated location inside the museum, or in some other public place in Miami, London, Milan, Berlin, Paris, or Tokyo, computers will be made available for members of the public who wish to experience the close encounters of the fifth kind that “The DIGITAL street corner” promises as active participants, or who may simply want to check out the event. The images generated by the participants will be projected non-stop on the outside wall of the museum and in the public access venues around the world.

ESTHETIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE PROJECT

The development of digital technologies and the Internet has profoundly altered the relationship between art and technology, and has opened up a vast new frontier for artistic experimentation. Given its unique spatial and temporal properties, the Internet represents an especially poignant case in point. On the Web, artists act as their own middlemen and have the power to reach a much wider audience. No less real because they inhabit cyberspace, works conceived specifically for the Web challenge conventional uses of the medium, not to mention art’s traditional means of creation and distribution. The interactive systems deployed in works of Net Art are helping to redefine the relationship between the artist, his/her work, and the public. More importantly, they are creating a new relational framework for the reception of artworks—something that has been at the center of Forest’s work since 1983, when he and Mario Costa co-founded the Esthetics of Communication movement. It is worth noting that this particular work, in the context in which it is to be presented at Art Basel Miami Beach, represents a radical departure prevailing esthetic norms, validated by the art market and cultural institutions. Its “difference” from the other works to be presented in the same venue, which can be explained primarily in terms of its immaterial nature, consummates art’s break with the esthetic paradigms of the 20th century, still applicable in the 21st. This revolution raises far-reaching questions about the nature of art itself, not to mention its adaptation to the information age. Positioning itself as an interface between two types of society, Fred Forest’s networked happening, THE DIGITAL Street Corner aims to change the way we look at art by bringing an immaterial work into the heart of the marketplace. However, the real uniqueness of THE DIGITAL Street Corner lies in its capacity to make something RELATIONAL happen in a space where there used to be only material objects on display. Destined to play a decisive role in the history of art, it is this revolution that Forest will celebrate in Miami.

TECHNICAL PARAMETERS OF THE PROJECT

Based on a technical architecture similar to that found in peer-to-peer file sharing systems, the virtual environment of Solipsis allows for total freedom. Solipsis is comprised solely of software programs that individual Internet users download and install on their own computers. Since it doesn’t rely on servers, it cannot be tracked, censured, or stopped. This freedom from servers has one further consequence: this software program developed by France Telecom Research and Development has virtually infinite capacity. Since the information resources (computer and Internet connection) of each individual participant become part of a collective pool, the computational power of the system automatically grows in proportion to rising demand. Moreover, the environment’s topology is configured so that the surface area expands with the number of participants. It’s like a two-dimensional torus, or an air chamber that expands as each new entity enters Solipsis. Its overall maximum capacity is 1073 entities (a “1” followed by 73 “0’s”)—the same as the total number of atoms in the entire universe. This unique technical architecture automatically leads to a number of questions of a philosophical nature. Since it is alive with the “spirits” of the entities—the virtual objects and beings—that make up its texture, it is the functional equivalent of an animistic universe. In other words, Solipsis does not exist in the mind of some omniscient god-server, but only the minds/computers of its individual constituents. In concrete terms, this means that it is never possible to tell who is in Solipsis at any given moment. The only way one can get to know Solipsis is to enter its universe, only the small portion of which—that which is in virtual proximity—is visible from any single vantage point. In this regard, Solipsis is not unlike the real world, in which we are able to perceive only that which surrounds us. In the world of THE DIGITAL Street Corner, there is no omniscient God, only the transcendent power of the collective imagination of thousands of participants, set into motion by the artist.

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