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Lisa Jevbratt
I work from the premise that:
1, Messages are invoked, transmitted, sent back, expelled, drawn in,
given this or that scenario depending on different tastes and
situations, and whatever form they take, the messages revolve around
receptors, which are now located at the center (in contrast to the image
presented by the mass media).
2, The established differences between author and reader, performer and
spectator, creator and interpreter become blurred and give way to a
reading-writing continuum that extends from the designers of technology
and networks to the final recipient, each one contributing to the
activity of the other (disappearance of the signature).
3, The divisions that separate the messages or works, which appear as
microterritories attributed to authors tend to become obliterated. Each
and every representation may be subject to sampling, mixing,
re-utilization, and so forth. According to the emergent pragmatism of
creation and communication, nomadic distribution of information fluctuate
in an immense deterritorialized semiotic backdrop. It is therefore
natural that the creative effort is shifting away from the messages
towards the devices, the processes and languages, the dynamic
architectures and environments. 1( Pierre Levy, The Art of cyberspace in
Electronic Culture Technology and Visual Representation. ed. Timothy
Druckrey, Aperture, New York, 1996. Translation Karin Lundell.
Originally published in L'Intelligence collective. Pour une
anthropologie du cyberspace, La Decouverte, Paris, 1994 ) The task of
defining the artist's role is within this context infinitely rich,
multifaceted and challenging and has thus, paired with an examination
of how information technologies influence and change our societies,
become my main endeavor as an artist.
BIO
Lisa Jevbratt was born
1967 in Vaxholm, Sweden. Lives in San Jose, CA, USA.
Education:
91/92 - 93/94 Malmoe School of Fine Arts - Forum, Malmoe Sweden.
94/95 - Fall 97 Computers In Fine Art (MFA), CADRE, San Jose State
University, San Jose USA.
EXHIBITIONS AND ART-EVENTS/SYSTEMS/SOFTWARE/SITES:
Disturbance; Four Artists/Photographers on issues of gender and
representation curated by Annika Ohrner, Riksutstallningar (Swedish
traveling exhibitions), exhibited in galleries and art museums in the
Nordic and the Baltic countries 1993 to 1995.
Hej Gud; A Performance and Installation in Internet news groups
(alt.religion.christian, alt.paranet.ufo, alt.alien.visitors and
alt.pagan ) and the Art Department, San Jose State University,
November/December 1994.
PAT; A collaboration between Ben Eakins, Mark Erikson and Lisa Jevbratt.
PAT was a software agent residing on the
CADRE institute web server monitoring, interpreting and responding to
the navigation of the users of that web site, Spring 1995.
Sign Detection,
Interpretation and Surveillance; A Surveillance/Web project. Fall
1995. Since summer 1997 it hosts the parasite-art project
"Stillman".
Virtual Void;
A virtual reality system installation exhibited at gallery 5, San Jose
State University, November 4-7 1996.
Iron Artist; A performance/game-show in which teams of artists competed
for the Iron Artist title. Organized and directed by Anne-Marie Schleiner
and Lisa Jevbratt. Works Gallery, San Jose CA., April 97.
Area 210/Area 5 Ñ
landscape painting as counter-surveillance, and related events; A
collaborative project/event. Exhibition: Area 51 Research Center, Rachel,
Nevada. April-June 1997.
Cadre-Net; An ongoing
collaborative project investigating communication on the borderline of
virtual and real communities, and self-organizing systems as art. Started
in February of 1997.
The Stillman Projects; A parasitic art-system using The New Media Art
Journal of The CADRE Institute of The School of Art and Design at San
Jose State University Ñ
Switch, as it first host on the
World Wide Web. A collaboration between Jan Ekenberg and Lisa Jevbratt.
August 1997.
YOUR SITE HERE/YOU ARE HERE
"Your Site Here/You Are" Here is a Stillman Project. The
Stillman Projects is an ongoing collaboration between Jan Ekenberg and
Lisa Jevbratt that dates back to the Spring of '96 when the idea was
first implemented as a non-networked demo. The project was a response to
the merging of reading and writing in hypertextual systems. The main
idea was to be able to follow another user through the text or slip on
frequently, or infrequently, used links and create trails through a
hypertext. The name Stillman is borrowed from Paul Auster's City of
Glass where Daniel Quinn is paid to follow Peter Stillman Senior through
the streets of New York City. At first Quinn is focusing on Stillman's
behavior on a street scale level; mainly what kind of junk he is picking
up from the ground. After a number of days Quinn becomes increasingly
hopeless when Stillman's doings still seem random and meaningless and
tries something new; he start sketching the movements of Stillman from a
birds eye perspective. Each day's walk seems to have spelled a letter,
mapped out by the grid system of the streets of Manhattan. And the
letters seem to spell out words. Only when Quinn maps his information
differently does it become meaningful.
The Stillman Projects is a parasitic art-system for leaving and/or
following trails or paths (French trace, Swedish spŒr) in hypertexts.
It is a system that encourages being lost, with the text trails as a
safety or navigational help. It utilizes the World Wide Web as a network
with memory, showing signs of habitation by, at the same time builders
and spectators of (THE T)OWER OF BAB(EL).
Switch, the new media art journal of the CADRE Institute of the School
of Art and Design at San Jose State University was the site to first
host a Stillman Project on the World Wide Web in August of 1997. Your
Site Here/You Are Here is a first attempt to implement a Stillman
project on a larger scale. |
