Interview with Jordan Crandall [excerpt]
by Tilman Baumgaertel

?: In your piece here at documenta the technology consists of a number
of video beamers that project light on the walls, with small mirrors
that reflect the light. […]

Crandall: Well, that's the hardware, but it refers to larger systems. I
am seeing it in a larger sense, in a sense of technologies of
representation, that initiate and encode certain kind of activities.

?: You've been standing in this room for two days now. Can you say how
this environment affects people's movements through the room?

Crandall: I was curious to know how it would be activated by groups of
people. A lot of times you find that people move about certain spaces in
a predictable way. Here it is very different. Some visitors have said
that it is like a public square. I was really happy about that.

?: There are these flickering interferences between the different light
sources that strike me as very "techno." Do you think that most people
have grown accustomed to this kind of "virtual light"?

Crandall: I don't know. I'm comfortable in here. This is a lot about
technological modifications that are almost surgical. I don't really see
them as alienating, because they have become a part of daily life so
much already. But I wanted to resist a visual overload, and instead
concentrate on movement and orientation.

?: There is this cordless mouse with which you can manouver yourself
through a VRML-space projected on one of the walls. Is this a way of
opening this physical space up to the "virtual space" of the internet?

Crandall: The VRML-site is dis-spaced, rendered. I wanted to generate a
sense of space that is cross-formated, that is multiplicitous and
unresolved.

?: What strikes me about these VRML spaces is that they are completely
based on the Renaissance perspective. Wherever you look in these
enviroments you always end up staring at the focal point…

Crandall: Yes, that's the problem with some VRML. I am actually working
with the renaissance perspective here by making references to
traditional kinds of wall paintings. You have the choice whether to
illusionistically extend the space, or to call attention to the space as
representation. The location of the viewpoint was a very political
issue. Entire communities were mobilized around the question where to
locate the viewpoint. The mirrored adjustment units in this environment
are references to the multiplicity of the visual orientations of the
viewer.

?: Is the web site on the documenta-Server an extension of this physical
space or a work in its own right?

Crandall: Both. On the website you are flipped back and forth between
space and figuration through the agency of the "rhythmic fittings."
There is also a book that has these figurations. These figurations are
psychological mechanisms. There are patterns of activities that are
artifacted. You cannot see them here.

What I hope to do with this is to show how these patterns and rhythms
affect our everyday life. Our language is increasingly incorporating
this kind of technological pace. In a recent interview in "Working
Mother" magazine, this woman was talking about "maximizing downtime."
It's like an excercise manual. Things that people do over and over
again are increasingly annexed to the paces of technological systems.
You can see it as a technological calculus. When you relate the things,
that you do over and over again, to code structures you see certain
relationships that I want to explore. It is a way of creating awareness
and resistance, because these are vectors of very powerful mechanisms
for producing a certain kind of behaviour in you.

[This interview was first published at www.telepolis.de.]