bitforms gallery

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER
NEW YORK GALLERY DEBUT OF “1000 PLATITUDES” AND “33 QUESTIONS PER MINUTE”
SHOW DATES: 4 3 03 – 5 10 03 OPENING RECEPTION: 4 5 03, 6-8PM
For the past twelve years Lozano-Hemmer has been developing interactive art installations that seek to create connective, social and performative experiences. Contrary to most multimedia work, which is designed for individual participation, his pieces are normally conceived for group interaction, establishing new relationships between local or remote participants. This is his first show in a commercial NYC gallery.

His work involves the concept of “relational space”, which seeks to materialize data in our real corporeal/architectural space rather than presenting virtual simulations that exclude the body and the immediate local context. The best example of this kind of space was described in Adolfo Bioy Casares 1941 novel “Morel’s Invention” where a postphotographic device can capture three dimensional presence and project it back onto the world, what we would refer to now as a “holographic projection”. Lozano-Hemmer’s “Relational Architecture” series of large-scale installations in public spaces has deployed new technologies and custom-made physical and virtual interfaces to transform urban environments. Using robotics, real-time computer graphics, film projections, positional sound, internet links, cell phone interfaces, video and ultrasonic sensors, LED screens, and other devices, my relational architecture installations aim to reconnect the public sphere with an increasingly alienating urban condition.

“1000 Platitudes”: A photomontage project featuring words commonly used to describe the generic globalized city. Each letter of the alphabet was projected on a different building using the World’s most powerful projector (with 100,000 ANSI lumen intensity and images measuring up to 250×250 feet). Public housing projects, shopping malls, government buildings, industrial wastelands and corporate headquarters were transformed by fast tactical projections, under the radar of potential regulators. This project was made during Lozano-Hemmer’s “Huge and Mobile” (HUMO) Workshop in Linz, Austria,in early 2003.

“33 Questions per Minute, Relational Architecture 5”: Consists of a computer program that uses grammatical rules to combine random words from the dictionary, automatically generating 55 billion unique questions at a speed of 33 per minute. The software has been programmed to avoid repeating the same question, and will take over 3 thousand years to present all the possible word combinations.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967. In 1989 he received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. His work has been shown in two dozen countries, including the Liverpool Biennial (UK), the Itau Cultural (Brazil), the Istanbul Biennial (Turkey), the Cultural Capital of Europe Festival (Holland), the ARCO art fair (Spain), Bienal de la Habana (Cuba), Architecture and Media Biennale (Austria), Museo de Monterrey (México), the Musée des Beaux Arts (Montréal), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan), Mediaterra (Greece), European Media Art Festival (Germany), Ars Electronica Festival (Austria), SIGGRAPH’93 (USA) and others. In 1998, he was commissioned to develop a monumental interactive artwork in the Zócalo Square in Mexico City for the Millennium Celebrations. He was just recently awarded the Rave Award 2003 from Wired Magazine and an International Bauhaus Award in Dessau, Germany. Images, video and more info at www.lozano-hemmer.com