Eduardo Kac
Short Description: Web interactive installation that allows onlineparticipants to send light from eight areas of the world to a single seedplanted in a physical gallery. Click hereto see a diagram. The plant depends on light sent by Web participantsto be able to do photosynthesis and grow in a completely dark room. Thiswork uses the notion of teleportation of particles (photons) to createthe metaphor of the Internet as a life-supporting system.
How light is transmitted to the plant: Web participants finda 9-image grid online. This grid has a live image of the video projectionover the earth in the middle and black rectangles around it. Clickingon each of the eight rectangles retrieves its corresponding image (a livewebcam view from the corresponding city showing its sky). The imageis at once seen on the Web and projected over the plant in the gallery.
Screen shot showing light from Isummerit (Greenland) projectedover the plant
in the Austin Museum of Art Austin, Texas (November 10,2001; 12:14 pm CST).
This presentation of Teleporting an Unknown Statewas part of the travelling
exibition "Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace",organized by Independent
Curators International (ICI), New York, and curated bySteve Dietz.
Interaction: The default state of this work is a central imagesurrounded by black rectangles (which are filled with live images whenrequested by the participant). Once selected by the Web participant, animage remains active (online and in the gallery) for a few minutes, unlessit is replaced by another request. After this period it is replaced bya black rectangle with the name of the corresponding city, to enable incomingparticipants to make their own choices.
The process: The central image (showing the webcam views projectedover the plant) is captured and uploaded automatically with a self-containedcamera server. The eight surrounding images are retrieved interactivelyfrom webcams around the world when the Web participant clicks on the correspondingblack rectangle.
The gallery: Please click hereto see a photograph and diagrams of the piece.
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