010

Authors:

 Artengine

Title:

 Future Ruins - an interactive robotic intervention mapping social space.

Keywords:

 Robotics - Architecture - Internet - Telepresence - Social space

Abstract:

 '"This palace is a fabrication of the gods," I thought at the beginning.
I explored the uninhabited corridors and corrected myself:
"The gods who built it have died." I noted its peculiarities and said:
"The gods who built it were mad".'

The Immortal, Jorge Luis Borges

Future Ruins offers an opportunity to closely examine our methodology in manufacturing 'social space'. The project consists of two interlinked parts: a robotic drawing machine and an interactive Web site. The site's Java Applet will let Internet users create a blueprint online with the help of a basic CAD program. The 'blueprint' will be saved, added to other similar user created plans and then executed by the drawing robot on the physical site using pitch line marking fluid, thus creating life size plans.

Issues of territoriality, mapping, memory and the relationships between ritual and artifact are all inherent in the site chosen, the Lebreton Flats in Ottawa, Canada. As a fictional building site, its history is a rich combination of 'wilderness', disaster zone, toxic dump, official pastoral visions and tightly knit urban community. All of these elements are chronicled in the very earth itself, but also in maps, images, government documents and personal memories. These issues underlie the project's obsession with our technological age's fascination with the new, planned obsolescence and that uneasy interrelationship between the virtual and material worlds.

Future Ruins is bringing together artists, engineers, historians, architects and programmers. Subjects of inquiry during the presentation would include questions arising from the collaboration on the project, questions specific to the technological choices made and the specific artistic aims of the project. Aims such as how artists' use of technology can evoke the way a given site's meaning is produced, and, how a fundamentally non site-specific medium can bring to play issues of site-specificity and rootedness. Also, the presentation would focus on how historical, architectural and theoretical findings presented on the Internet can contextualize the experience of the user. We also propose to investigate how telepresence can lead to an heightened awareness of the social issues raised through the project.
Artengine acastonguay@artengine.ca http://www.artengine.ca Carleton University, Dept. of Engineering CHIN (Canadian Heritage Information Network) Corel Computers A Canadian Internet based organization for artists Castonguay, Alexandre; Gooding, William; Weir, Scott; Southern, Jen.

Castonguay, Alexandre. acastonguay@artengine.ca Alexandre Castonguay's art practice is based in electronic and photographic media. His art is concerned with the exploration of the parameters of technology, and the opportunities and limitations they place upon the user and producer alike. From the University of Ottawa, Castonguay obtained a B.F.A. in 1992 and a B.A. in art history and art theory in 1993. Courses in electronics resulted in the construction of a first robot in 1996 with painter John Barkley. He participated in Ed Bennett's robotics workshop at Chicago's ISEA 1997. Castonguay is the co-founder of Artengine, a new media based artists centre which aims to play a catalytic role in bringing new means of creation and diffusion of art to Ottawa's artistic community. Le Dessin des Passions is a collaborative project undertaken with programmer Mathieu Bouchard. The interactive and photo based installation culminated in the photographic piece's inclusion in Interface, Encounters with New Technology at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) in 1998. His works were included in the group shows Artifice, by the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montréal and Stop, at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile.Castonguay has received grants from the Canada Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Centre de production Daimon and SAW Video. His works are in the collection of the CMCP and the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. Upcoming exhibitions in 1999 include an exhibition at the Galerie Vidéographe, Montréal and participation in "Ghost in the Shell" at the LA County Museum of Art.
Gooding, William. http://www.artengine.ca William Gooding began working for the Canadian Heritage Information Network in April 1998 as a Careeredge Intern. As an intern, he played a significant role in coordinating a number of virtual exhibitions, including a pan-American exhibit entitled Festivals of the Living and the Dead in the Americas and another exhibit based on the variety of butterflies in Canada and Peru. Both of these exhibits will form the foundation for the Virtual Museum of the Americas, an online museum which will house exhibits and collections from South, Central and North America. Mr. Gooding played a significant role in establishing appropriate contacts, translating, seeking funds and generally coordinating both these exhibitions. He is the primary person responsible for the Future Ruins project at CHIN. He graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and History and has subsequently taken courses at the School of Social Work at Carleton University. His English studies focused on contemporary British and Canadian literature; his history studies concentrated on contemporary Asian, including Indian, Chinese, Southeast Asian and Japanese, and Canadian history. His work experience includes being an employment counselor for immigrants and he has extensive experience in the field of AIDS education and counseling with AIDS Vancouver and YouthCO AIDS Society. He is presently volunteering at Oasis, a group which serves both the IV drug using community and sex-trade workers in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Southern, Jen. acastonguay@artengine.ca Jen Southern has worked in Europe and Canada with the Kit collaboration since 1990. Kit have exhibited collaborative installations in the UK, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany and Holland. Their work ranges from site specific public installations to websites, CD Roms and bookworks. Their approach to digital technology is informed by the ways in which computerised systems are embedded and inherent within our current cultural framework and the ways in which these systems interweave with and effect the concrete realities of everyday life. Their work often focuses on the ruptures and fractures within this relationship with technology. More recent work begins to investigate the potential for collaboration at a distance that the Internet offers, resulting in work which is realised in both digital and physical space. Working through the fabric of a collective means the role of material is stretched by multiple hands; being pulled out of shape represents and embraces the conflicts and contradictions inherent within collaboration, giving the body of work produced in the name of kit a schizophrenic history rather than the expected one which is both cohesive and linear. In the final gasp of the twentieth century, such an identity seems to be anomalous to the sound bitten, vision flashed fracturing of metropolitan existence. Kit embraces the conflict and contradiction inevitable within collaboration, it is in conflicting contexts that the act of collaboration functions to offer a reflective rupture within the work for the audience to be an active participant in the construction of a narrative.

Weir, Scott. http://www.artengine.ca Scott Weir is an architect living and working in Ottawa, Canada. While he has worked professionally in the industry, his interests have more recently been explored through academic and installation work. He has been formally trained in biblical scholarship, music, art and preservation, and holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree. He is due to complete his post-professional Master's degree in Architecture within a few months. His most recent past project entitled QUINTOPOLIS examines ideas of pilgrimage, place making and nationhood through the medium of the gay community. This project continues a body of work begun in the early nineties which has taken on this particular subculture through architectural design, collage, drawing, poetry, academic essays and fiction. The work centres on myth making, and how this might inform the creation of a set of subcultural customs (ritual) and their associated spaces (artifact). A secondary thread running through this work is a fascination with architectural theory of the mid-ninteenth century and the neo-gothic architecture which emerged out of this period. Weir has lectured on the above topics at Carleton University and the Learneds. His work has appeared in architectural journals, books examining subcultures and space, and has been shown at the Wexner Center for Art and Architecture. He is currently interned with Artengine, collaborating on the Future Ruins project which examines relationships between physical and cyberspace. This internship has been funded by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN).