JCIT] i) O^BESJB^^^^^ BB^^KSi^^' ;:tti'tm BSB5S^i^^^^^^Wjii/;> 2 0 2 * Jl ^^ont em porary technologies trace a curve t H * L > ***ty6ugh time and space, a trajectory from \ " ,rs , the earth towards the heavens. Gathered i. {, ^ ^ i 1 ^ "^ beneath the Genitron clock \n Pans 1 / counting down the seconds unt\\ midnight Q*-2uu0, our eves turn upwards towards the sxy in the hope that the* twentieth century will hit escape velocity-the technotheology of the ejector seat. VMhat is r&jfe forgotten in this gesture, or perhaps ^*t denied, isthelfiaraboViccurve of gravity's ^?i ' J > rainbow*. \he trajectory back towards the ,y&uloB allows the participants and Internet u s e T g ^ a x ^ S a g condense and confront urban experier\cj^^ concrete and intuitive levels. ^ X . QOflffPD^^pBJ visitors with an experience of high intensity of .urban? processes, which they could influence without being a to control them. The frustration sparked by the-lack of\jf feedback on one's action highlighted the degree t Q ^ ^ S processes of subjectification rely on t h e : f ^ ^ ^ ^ t | ^ ^ S | receive on our actions. '^jPrJSS Contemporary cities are c o v e r g ^ ^ j g ^ ^ j g g s f i « and failed attempts at leaving such traces and creatingf| such feedback loops. The noise from roaring cars and N£ ghetto blasters, the ubiquity of graffiti and tags, stickers j | and other lasting marks, and e v 6 r i J t e ^ b o ^ r ^ g ^ g | permanent pieces of architecture are clear attempts at-1' creating a lasting visibility and presence in the u r j ^ r a | environment Viewed from a cultural, and polif^cajSj perspective, however, this kind of visibility is rat! powerless if it is not coupled with opportunities to actaV»J intervene in the public arena. The aim of the IO_Dencies projectjsftqfiTSal^l whether it is possible, to develop electronicJhteffg£^J which open up new forms of agency .in a situation, the city itself is being deprived of many public furic 9 R * J and whether network interfaces can become t ^ T u W u ^ S iocal as well as in global contexts. Yet,,ho1a|Bfi&ge«ro5 realized when taking into accoun|tr^nn^S ^A/ham^| 2 0 4 Beneath the ashes, beneath the dust, the nomadic tunnellers of COTIS map the bypertextual co-ordinates of a cartography whicb survey a global Bermuda triangle. now a more abstract form. \n exposing the Enlightenment logic underlying 'air-traffic controV. COTIS extends the iegacy or human inscription upon the earth - the physical graffiti of a transitory presence. From chalk drawings on hillsides and paths trodden in deserts through centuries of architecture we have \eft our marks on the surface of the pianet. Scars of other possibilities. The scattered corpo-reaiitv of impact zones produce a Viminai space in which it becomes possible to retrace what it means to be mortal in the miiienniaV moment. The body incorporates the crash, not the other way around. Thus we compei the gaze to turn from the sky to the ground, to the intraterrestrial Vvfe-torms which fertilize the soil of future auto-pilots. 'Shock* comes from the middle-Dutch word 'schokken' - to collide. Only now the screen-fatigue of over-exposure and empathy burn-out necessitates a different strategic relationship to the sacrificial victims of the symbolic economy. As our fragile mammal brains try to decode signals beamed at us with increasing speed and accuracy, we find we become projectiles ourselves in the scopophiiic logic of hyperreality. Thus in order to counter the rhetoric of extinction we must, push the f atavistic) curve of the thanatic asymptote across the axis of its own complicity with the death drive, in simpler terms, COTIS exposes the closed-circuit of mediated mourning, along with the silent satellite witnesses of cathode addiction. The medium may well be more swiftly when there is the scent of blood and smoke in the air. The narrative baton passes from the crash through the lens to the studio to the television to the biood-shot eye in one fluid pan-optical movement. There is precious little time to blink ^indeed the clockwork orange has been digitally upgraded for the information era, and we find we cannot blink). would it mean to say that acting is thelmjSgSfl the subject in the machine? What are thJSjffl friction at which the subject and agency majSig themselves? Sll Acting is the production of friction, or fractjojjl in machinic processes. If the interface is the pointlM and the moment of action and experience, it is.aiscn? the medium that brings forth the subject and shapejjj! its world. An interesting aspect of the connectiveS|| interface would be that, through its coupling of 4 ^ ^ S different single-subject action-universes, it makes1j|| possible to experience the tendential that is realized^ through the movement in the interface. The model of^ agency we are trying to realize would then be the ^ building of connective interfaces that are sensitive ^ and reactive to both the actions and the presence SJ^ others, as well as to the surrounding p r o c e s s e s j ^ j l There wouldn't have to be a 'collective y*<}. consciousness' but only the possibility of active &ndK responsible cooperation between different p e o p l e . ^ http://www. khm. de/people/krcf/IO/ COTIS both \n\t\ate and interrupt this news media circuit, playing with the Olympic torch of disaster footage which the spectacie attempts to keep alight, \est there be no disasters lett to luhfcover. The space shuttie explosion marks the high-tire mark of thisfotishistichistory, indeed, the tact that the sociai psyche can toierate - even crave - the existentiai violence of the biack box is both an ab\ect \esson, and one ot the most important moments of post-a\ienated estrangement. The biack box contains the sacred Scripture of a terminai identity which becomes encoded onto the recording technologies of the day. Here are etched the famous Vast words which can be \ooped and re-piayed for aesthetic and forensic purposes. The ghost in the machine is nothing supernatural, and yet it haunts the rigorous mortis of our post-mortem era. These are missives from the missile: the ultimate articulation before the moment of impact. COTIS recognizes the symbolic charge of such statements in the context of crash-culture. The black box sound-byte circulates in the media as an accursed share; the devil's part of a system which thrives on its sacrificial inclusion into the logic of late capitalism - like the terminal portraits of a lacerated Princess. Indeed, in the postDiana mediascape it is impossible to recover the obsolescent innocence before the fall. IO_dencies - Questioning Urbanity, Tokio 1997 Co-produced with Canon ARTLAB. Realization with Detlev Schwabed4pl Special support by Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Ministery f o « f l | Research and Higher Education NRW. Wjt JaBk IO-dencies - Sao Paulo 1998 J11HI Co-produced with ZKM/lnstitute for Visual Media, in the context oUJIj eSCAPE/ESPRIT long term research project 25377. Spetial suppprffiS Goethe Institut Sao Paulo, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, V 2 j j | j f i l » Eiectronica Center, Linz (A), Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, DuisburflSpSB Academy of Media Arts Cologne (D). Technical concept & application software development: Andreas1i|a2|| and Detlev Schwabe, ZKM. CGI Interface: Andreas Weymer. AudioJa application development: KR+cF. ^ H H Urban editors: Fabio Duarte, Artur Lara, Sandro Canavezzi, PolisexMgS Marchi, Renato Cymbaiista, Keila Costa, Maria Elvira, Marcos GodopH Mauricio Ribeiro da Silva, Reinaldo de Jesus Consoli. S i B 2 0 6 COTIS is anti-apocalypse ^although not necessarily anti-apocalypticV Rejecting the neo-Cartesian discourse of technologies such as Virtual Reality and the neoimperialism of space exploration, COTIS burrows into the earth to bury its containers and members in a step towards reversing the cosmology of teleological narratives. MMe rejoice in the memetic panic behind the Y.2K problem: the millennial bug which threatens to freeze the entire system. This meta-crash coded into the main-frame all those years ago is a premise and a limithorizon for the current installation. Whether the V2K bug is the result of poetic myopia or a subconscious faith in the new millennium, the collision counters contemporary technocultural hubris in the libidinal economy. COTIS speak in tongues in order to distract those who would rewire the Tower of Babylon.