Shine02.org

Website: http://www.shine02.org/

Reviewed by Luisa Paraguai Donati
Department of Multimedia
Institute of Arts, Unicamp, Brazil
luisa@iar.unicamp.br

The website Shine02‚ is presented by Amnesty International USA, curated by Downtown Arts Projects and designed by Doublespace. Based on theme of light, it celebrates Amnesty International’s 40 years of commitment to human rights. The 12 artists presented on the website created individual digital projects on the theme, some of which emphasised the Web’s collaborative modes of creation and operation. These possibilities of actions reflected a vision of a community based on common interests which are no longer limited and dependent on physical frontiers. This potential for international networking is raised by Amnesty International, in its endeavour to ensure that its activism is supported by people around the world.

Consequently the website was designed to emphasise the artistic aspects of the works creating a specific area for them as well as linking to other web pages. As part of this design, a constant horizontal movement presents all the artists and projects and becomes a visual externalisation of the flux of actions involved: artists‚ proposes, users‚ interventions, and institution’s participation. Users can define the velocity of this scrolling according to the location of their mouse on the screen, making for an interesting and an uncommon form of control. The use of pastel colours and the opportunity to open new windows creates an environment that is able to display and contain all the works without visual conflicts.

The website brings together many interesting proposals most of which show the artists using the potential of users’ interactions as possible interferences and disruptions in the works content and form. Of the twelve, the few listed below seem to most exemplify the objectives of the project.

Maciej Wisniewski, for example, is an artist and a programmer, who understands the Internet as a flux of distributed applications, and who has developed his artistic works as aesthetic tools‚ to empower users to explore and use the information in different contexts. Wisniewski and netomat inc. with the piece Streaming Conscience‚ created an opportunity for users to choose a stream of information and to implement it in their own Web site. The information is delivered within the size of a banner unit, which is elaborated by a conscientious use of different layers of texts, colours, and movements, so enabling the message to be spread on the Web.

Similarly, Shu Lea Cheang’s work, called Stop plays with the possibility of users’ mouse to interfere and control a graphical animation comprising white lines and texts on a black background. Users can determine movements and speed of these graphics, so creating their time for reading and thinking about human conflicts, and also to evoke a moment for stopping.

In contrast, Gary Simons, in his work called Wake, reverses the users’ procedure of erasing as the possibility of (re) occupying different spaces defined by images presented. Initially, users have a white page only, but the more intense the movement of their mouse on the screen, the more the space is gradually revealed. This process of revelation takes place over the time, being impossible to have the whole image at once. Then, users can visually experience the vestige of ‘someone’s presence’ maybe occupying the ‘empty spaces’ showed by their memories. The sound used, male and female voice humming songs, brings tactile references to the perception of the non-presence and comprehension of loss.

Finally, Leo Villareal, working with sequenced light, proposed Sequencer 1.0 establishing a direct connection between users‚ interactions on the Web and a physical space - The Sandra Gering Gallery in New York. Users are invited to play with pulsing lights and to create different patterns of behaviours, which could be uploaded to ‘Strobe Matrix’ in the windows of the gallery. So, participants on the Web had their actions as visual interferences in the gallery transforming viewers’ space and according to the artist, ‘becoming active members in a system’.

The potential of the Web for extending an international community organised around a specific theme of the defence of human rights, was emphasised by other artists and projects based on the possibility of non-metaphorical individual actions. Personally, I found this website an interesting space to be visited and would recommend it as a place to see innovative artistic production on the World Wide Web.