Ursula Endlicher, Light and Dark Networks, 2011.
The Whitney’s Sunrise/Sunset project consists of a series of commissioned internet based works that exist within the axis constraints of Earth’s orbit: New York City’s sunrise and sunset. Besides the entire website’s background transitioning from white to black each day representing this shift in time (white for day, black for night), each project is designated a net presence between ten to thirty seconds—that is, within this brief timeframe, each work gets to take over the entire Whitney site once only at sunrise and once at sunset; the exact times for each determined day to day by the weather among other environmental fluctuations.
Sunrise/Sunset is part of Whitney’s Artport—an online gallery space demonstrating the institution’s own internet awareness. First launched in 2002, Artport attempts to engage and archive internet and new media based practices through the commissioning of works specific to whitney.org as well as documenting all Whitney based net/new media exhibitions. Currently, Artport is featuring commissions from Ursula Endlicher and Scott Snibe.
Light and Dark Networks is a ten second piece from Endlicher that continues the artist’s interest in ‘data performances’. The morning encounter involves a spider web that is blown into multiple directions of the website based on current New York weather and CO2 levels. At sunset, an image of the mycelium of a mushroom grows or shrinks based on the temperature of the city while also responding to humidity levels which generates videos of the artist, costumed and reenacting the mushroom’s physical reactive changes. Endlicher draws attention to the way information and data inform and affect the physical, as well as how the physical can inform quantification itself.
Snibe’s, Tripolar was originally commissioned in 2002 by the Whitney but now has made its renewed debut as an iPhone and iPad application. The app involves the path of forms made from a user’s point of touch, reacting to the effect a pendulum makes while swinging over three magnets, resulting in a scribbled line drawing. Through the app a user can also add, remove and place magnets as to customize and experiment with formal variations of line. The work, first exhibited in online exhibition CODeDOC, demonstrates the way the input [code]—through random or subtle manipulation—drastically changes its visual output, creating chaotic and unpredictable outcomes.
