The Challenge of Ubiquity in Digital Culture
CHArt 27th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
|
|
The Challenge of Ubiquity in Digital Culture
|
Catherine Richards and Martin Snelgrove
Method and Apparatus: A Patent
This conference proposal presents an artwork, well beyond networks as simple conduits. It describes a convergence of wireless networks, viral programming, sensory receivers / actuators and data– mining as a blueprint for new kind of artwork.
This artwork exists as: a patent application correspondence process; an exhibited art work in contemporary art museums; published on the U.S. patent web site and finally, within the patent text itself, a description of a complex ‘artefact’, that is, complex devices. It engages issues of: originality in artistic terms and innovation in terms of intellectual property; the original versus viral ubiquity; the implications of real-time technologies for the creation, ownership and distribution of artworks and questions of aesthetic quality in this new terrain where other senses and structures are involved as much as the visual.
Creating an artwork as a patent had several important attractions. It implicated the discussion of intellectual property that is increasingly privatizing human activity. It created a new site for an artwork, as in some respects patents are similar to art galleries in that they maintain well-established boundaries between subject and object. It dictated an established form that offered an extraordinary opportunity to entwine both science and art as agents of desire. It created a web presence when posted (exhibited) on the U.S. patent web site and as such,‘gazes’ can be tracked (as opposed to museum paintings, for example, that may only keep rough track of visitor numbers). Finally as a site to describe our ‘invention’ we could directly engage with the friction between the art domain and the emergence of IT, interactive, networked personal devices that increasingly seem to impinge on artists’ territory.This patent was filed at the U.S. patent office, crossing the boundary between representation and actuality. We propose to present and discuss the attached patent including the correspondence with the patent office.