LabforCulture – Etudes de cas: SHAREDSCAPES

Brève description
An experimental shared space, a platform for creativity, research and self-expression. It welcomes online submissions of texts, pictures and sounds that express a definition of the concept of landscape.
http://www.sharedscapes.net (http://www.sharedscapes.net)

Caractéristiques significatives
The primary aim of SHAREDSCAPES is to provide a discussion forum for points of view inspired by the concept of landscape. Through the technological translation of material published online, its secondary aim is to create a 3D space/sculpture in real time. This will crystallise that material, seeking to bring together computer-generated images, chaotic/generative modelling and a “virtual reality” space. Thus a virtual landscape will develop gradually. Its composition will not be subject to the physical constraints of a site (in concrete geographical terms) but to the technological exchanges of human beings virtually connected to each other. It is in the ambiguous relationship between landscape and information that the essence of this project exists.

Contexte & hypothèse
SHAREDSCAPES is designed as part of a story of digital arts. The process of using or defacing the Internet to offer generative projects and collaboration opportunities, as well as interartistic tele-communication has always been used in net.art. In the resulting works, artists seem to question their role as members of this information and globalisation-oriented society, but also to reveal properties that are specific to this new means of expression (i.e., changing and autonomous aesthetics permanently confronted with the
audience’s/spectators’ multiple visions and interpretations.) Also new, this concept of an unfinished masterpiece, rewritten and recreated at all times. The artist thus becomes the architect of an autonomous structure, developing itself according to time and space, and ending up by drifting away from the artist…
Description du projet
The target group of SHARESCAPES is mainly artists, landscape designers, architects and writers, but it is open to anyone who wants to share his definition of the concept of landscape. The project was financed by «individual aid for creation» DRAC Alsace, the French Ministry of Culture, and by personal funds.

WHAT IS THE REASON FOR THE COLLABORATION WITH EACH PARTNER?
« A project based on new technology, over the Internet, needs the collaboration of artists and engineers, programmers. But the techniques make the frontier between practices more and more fuzzy. It is interesting to go out of our box and understand the approach of other practices. The artist does some programming, the programmer gives some ideas and aesthetic visions. I think this is an important evolution of the artist’s status, which works more often in collectives or groups, with other artists or programmers. This is not only
due to technological and social evolutions, but perhaps also in reaction to the global political and ideological context. » (Grégoire Zabé)

WHY IS COOPERATION IMPORTANT?
« Working as an artist on the Internet makes cross-cultural cooperation a central idea. The contemporary world is built on computer connections, and artists have to use, transform, live and exist in this ‘central nervous system’, in order not to let it only to commercial activities, information floods, financial transactions and army communications. People are already expressing themselves and sharing their culture with blogs and forums, but artists may bring another dimension to this participative space. They may also keep a critical
position, warning about the limits of this freedom, the limits of the Internet access (digital divide), and the controls installed over the networks. » (Grégoire Zabé)

Acteurs principaux

http://www.nobox-lab.com

Grégoire Zabé
Stéphane Odon