ONLINE PLATFORM AS > TIME-BASED
4.2.2. The Offsite Component
The migration offsite of 128kbps objects concerned my curatorial work rather than the exhibition itself. My approach had to adapt to an online platform for broadcast, thus with different functions and modes of production, display and distribution than those of or-bits-dot-com.
The basic.fm platform not only demanded that I work with new parameters but also that I adopt the open source software, AirTime Pro, as a means of
production for the exhibition (see fig.39). AirTime Pro became my tool of curation, very much impacting my role and the organisation of artistic content.
The architectural framework of 128kbps objects was given by the successive arrangement of the sound pieces. To generate a flow, a pattern of engagement, Fonti’s jingle was used as an interval and as a motif for introducing the radio
Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 4: Curatorial Practice: Curating Web-based Exhibitions and Offsite Projects with or-bits-dot-com
announcements, which provided information about each of the artworks on show.
Figure 39: or-bits-dot-com: 128kbps objects radio schedule, 2012. Screenshot of AirTime Pro software. © basic.fm and or-bits-dot-com, 2015.
To aid the engagement with a completely non-visual display, the basic.fm blog became a placeholder for the contextual information and in-depth descriptions of the artworks. Each blog entry, which was imageless, consisted of: the title of the work, the date and duration of the piece, the date and time of the broadcast, the description of the artwork and the artist biography with link to her/his
website.
With the curator’s brief the invited artists were given broad technical
specifications outlining the type of digital files and the options for the broadcast:
Contributions can be in the form of a one-off submission, or a series of sound files to be broadcasted at specific times and for more than one time a day or the week. They can be sound works, music, readings or live streaming from specific location, and they can be presented in the format of a radio slot or as intermezzo, e.g. radio announcements or ads, etc. (Ghidini, 2012b)
Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 4: Curatorial Practice: Curating Web-based Exhibitions and Offsite Projects with or-bits-dot-com
Figure 40: or-bits-dot-com: 128kbps objects on basic.fm, 2012, 2012.
Screenshot of basic.fm radio player. © basic.fm and or-bits-dot-com, 2015.
The seven main artist’s commissions covered a wide range of formats and themes, from Jamie Allen’s series of Internet Radio Fluxus Scores, Is This Thing On?, to be presented at different times on the first day of the broadcast, to the processed-based work exploring the materiality of objects through sound by Andre Avelãs and the story-telling piece by Sara Nunes Fernandes, The sideways boy… Most of the artists already featured on or-bits-dot-com
produced a new work for the exhibition because the sonic display appealed to them as a context for new artistic explorations, a fact that provided material for reflecting upon the transition of artworks from an online visual platform to a sonic one. For instance, Irini Karayannopoulou proposed the sound of the video, Immaterial, which was featured in the exhibition On-looking in 2011 and Patrick Coyle did a reading of a work produced for the same exhibition,
Simplicity, Empty Grey Squares (2010), re-titled Empty Grey Squares (Registration) (2011) for this occasion.
Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 4: Curatorial Practice: Curating Web-based Exhibitions and Offsite Projects with or-bits-dot-com
The audience interacted with the show—and amongst themselves—through the basic.fm live chat (see fig.40) and social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Facebook was particularly functional for continuous promotion, in that the listeners used the project’s event page as a sort of discussion board, reminding others to listen to a specific piece or promoting their work. Both basic.fm staff and I used it to keep audience engagement going. Due to the density and length of the programme, a radio schedule pamphlet designed by Studio Hato was available as a downloadable PDF on the or-bits-dot-com and basic.fm websites, as well as in printed form for local distribution (see fig.41).
128kbps objects became a durational sonic mosaic, contrasting with the strong visual inputs often found in web-based and digital production.
Figure 41: or-bits-dot-com: 128kbps objects radio schedule, 2012. A3 newspaper pamphlet. © or-bits-dot-com, 2015.
Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 4: Curatorial Practice: Curating Web-based Exhibitions and Offsite Projects with or-bits-dot-com
4.2.3. Migration: Structure, Patterns and Function
128kbps objects is the outcome of migrating an approach to curating from a dateless, visual and interactive website to a time-based, imageless and linear sonic stream. It was strongly impacted by the functions allowed by a given tool of curation, AirTime Pro, which put forward a series of limitations, as well as new and distinctive curatorial tasks. If the architecture of the or-bits-dot-com website operated as a container for the artworks, determining their
arrangement, in 128kbps objects it was the grid-like timeline given by the software for broadcast that determined the organisation of artistic and
contextual content (see fig.39). With its own specific workings, AirTime Pro did not allow the functions of copying and pasting, for example, making the
uploading of artworks an intensive and meticulous task. The presentation of works like Adam Rompel’s Same Old Song, which was one-minute long and broadcast multiple times throughout the show, became a very time-consuming work of inputting. My role became akin of that of a DJ who created an exhibition by shuffling content around and then putting it together, requiring the skills of a data entry clerk. The software mediated the curation.
While organising the project it became evident that more specialised figures were required, both in terms of production—the inputting and uploading work mentioned above—and post-production of the artistic material. If for the web-based exhibitions of or-bits-dot-com the production of artworks happened through my mediation between the artists’ ideas and the execution by the web designer, the sound exhibition required a sound technician and a lab for the basic collation of material for broadcast.
As I said above, some of the web-based artworks already featured on or-bits-dot-com migrated to the radio broadcast. They underwent a process of translation, becoming an imageless sonic scape in the case of Irini
Karayannopoulou and a performative reading of an online text-based work in the instance of Patrick Coyle.
Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 4: Curatorial Practice: Curating Web-based Exhibitions and Offsite Projects with or-bits-dot-com
While programming the exhibition, it was difficult to envisage how the audience would have perceived the show as a whole, especially because the narrative was spread over a long period of time and was constructed to unfold throughout the week and be completed at the end of it—conceptually with Graham
Harman’s essay “The Third Table” (2012). The radio schedule, by adopting the format of a pamphlet in print and PDF (see fig.41), functioned as a guide for this narrative. Conversely, the basic.fm blog functioned as an aggregator without a centre, in that it required users to access the information about each piece on separate windows, failing to provide cohesion especially for listeners who were on-the-go using mobile devices. The broadcast reached a great number of listeners who would tune-in and out the show on a daily basis to listen to parts of the programme, showing that the broadcast was experienced in fragments21.
128kbps objects conformed to the one-way communication of the standard radio broadcast, missing the opportunity—because of time and budget restrictions—to exploit some of the interactive properties of the live audio
streaming. A discursive element was proposed by the Sound Writing workshop, organised by Daniela Cascella, which, despite not paralleling the online
broadcast, touched upon its critical framework, offering another example of mediating sonic material for an audience offline.
As to this day the exhibition is not archived in its original form, its documentation is offered by the radio schedule and the blog entries on the basic.fm blog.
However, it was re-presented a few months later in an edited version, 128kbps objects EDITED, which was broadcast for eight hours on basic.fm while it played live, through a bespoke listening station, at the Metre Room Gallery in Coventry.
128kbps objects shows, by way of comparison, the differences between a web-based exhibition and a time-web-based radio exhibition on an online radio station, as well as how the latter and its content are inherently prone to morph for a variety
21 The number of listeners reached one thousand and seven hundred national and international people, with an average listening time of sixteen minutes.
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of other contexts of display and distribution. Another example of working with the analogies and differences between online and offline curatorial and artistic production is the exhibition (On) Accordance, which achieved this through creating parallel and simultaneous displays of commissioned artworks.
Figure 42: or-bits-dot-com: Sound Writing workshop, 2012. Image of event. © or-bits-dot-com and The Northern Charter, 2015.
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4.3. (On) Accordance
Figure 43: or-bits-dot-com: (On) Accordance, 2012. Summary table.
(Further details, including Curator’s Editorial, Analysis table and Gallery
Material, in Appendix A.3.4, and Interviews with the curators in Appendix A.4.2 and A.4.3)
4.3.1. Context and Main Characteristics
(On) Accordance was a collaborative exhibition project between or-bits-dot-com and the gallery Grand Union. It was a curatorial experiment in “exploring the possibilities of working across sites of production and distribution through the presentation of new online commissions and offline versions of web-based artworks” (Ghidini and Jones, 2012). With this project I set out to stretch my previous thinking about the interaction between artistic content on a website KEYWORDS CURATOR’S VIEW AS… an exhibition, lost all the properties of the online