Blog – Art in Odd Places

Name:

Jeff Stark

Title:

Free Desk

Free Desk. Image courtesy of artist.

What does “FREE” mean to you?

Someone once said that New York is a great city if you are very rich or very poor. I always thought they said that because there are so many great things we get for free — like mariachis on the subway and Central Park in the fall. We like all this free stuff. Everyone does. Even rich people. The thing is, a lot of free stuff isn’t free; you get what you pay for; there are strings attached. We all know these cliches. And yet how can we pass up a free night at the museum? A shot of tequila? Or a free email account? So we take, take, take all this free stuff, even though we suspect we probably shouldn’t. Even though it usually comes at a cost.

Why is 14th Street a compelling site for creative response?

14th Street is as compelling as any street in New York. It’s Manhattan’s great crosstown parade, and the long-held line between uptown and downtown. Maybe that rampart doesn’t mean as much as it once did, but do the shoe shoppers and skaters really care? What about the students and the tourists? They don’t. 14th Street is too busy. If you stop to think about it too long the whole city will just pass you by.

What reactions are you hoping to draw from the public?

I’m going to be out on the street for two days because I want to engage. That’s one of the things you get to do with interventions like Art in Odd Places. You talk to the people you might never talk to on any other weekend.

Name:

Emilio Vavarella and Daniel Belquer

Title:

MNEMODRONE

Emilio Vavarella and Daniel Belquer, MNEMODRONE, 2014-in progress. Mixed media, multiple locations.

What does “FREE” mean to you?

EMILIO: It means everything, but it can easily be reduced to an illusion. Sometimes I ask myself if, in fact, people are not terribly afraid of being free. But our project mostly deals with the possibility of freedom and the fear of the unknown. In the case of MNEMODRONE we developed a project that engages these issues from different perspectives. We are offering to the public a particular situation and only a vague guidance, this means that the public will decide freely how and if to interact with MNEMODRONE.

DANIEL: Free is the maximum amount of balance between restraints (social, physical, emotional, chemical, biological, etc.) and the sensation of being able to act.

Why is 14th Street a compelling site for creative response?

EMILIO: Let’s think about New York’s environment, the structure, the architecture, the cars, the trains, and the technology behind it and how that has shaped the humans that inhabit that particular space. The urban environment has been transformed constantly by technological innovations, which always impact the public sphere. The advent of drones will change it again, probably in a drastic way. It makes perfectly sense to work on the interaction between humans and drones in the center of one of the most urbanized places of the Planet. Our project intends to investigate possible future developments in a speculative way, but its approach is deeply rooted in the specific social reality to which it refers.

DANIEL: Because is a perfect portrait of New York’s cosmopolitan character.

What reactions are you hoping to draw from the public?

EMILIO: While awareness is an important aspect, we’re not looking for any specific way to interact or take part in our project. Every kind of interaction, or non interaction, has for us the same importance. We’re more interested in observing and only then draw, if possible, some conclusion, or more probably pose new questions. These are a few questions on which we’re focusing while involved in this project, and that are directly related to how the public will engage with our project:

Is it possible for a machine to act based on collective memories? What kind of memories are people willing to share with a machine? Are we ready to believe that a machine can develop a personality? What’s the difference between memory, personality and consciousness? Is it possible to develop a consciousness based on collective memories? Can consciousness be artificially developed? What’s the relationship between memory and consciousness? What kind of relationship between humans and machines can emerge from the drone-collected data? What makes people start or stop collaborating with machines? Will people experience the project as a new invasion of their precarious privacy? Will people think of it as a scientific experiment, an event, a game or all of these things in various combinations? Will people refuse to take part in it? And what can that tell us about humans? Are we able to share memories with a machine in the same way we share memories with a real person? Is the Bergsonian idea that memory contains a living dynamic automatism applicable to machines?

DANIEL: Awareness.

Please feel free to refer to the page of the project ,where we put together not only a short background on the project, but also our ideas on how to continue developing it after the Festival. The participation in AIOP is the first step of a longer project.

AiOP 2014: FREE Sneak Peek! Jeff Stark “Free Desk”

AiOP 2014: FREE Sneak Peek! Emilio Vavarella and Daniel Belquer “MNEMODRONE”