Uebersender Bernd Krauss/Bureau-K

ABSTRACT

UEBERSENDER consists of outdoor and indoor elements that are literally and conceptually linked through an “antenna” that receives and sends information, displaying a live feed on a monitor in the alcove window. Here at the alcove of Southern Alberta Gallery a variety of information will be on view. The inside environment suggests the existence of a workstation or lounge, which stand in for production and mediation. During the project’s period of five years, the station will be supplied with material on a regular basis via Internet/post/fax sending. Through remote computer techniques, the station can be directed and organized. With several site visits, the producers build an archive and keep up contact with the local community. They also allow for collaboration via programming contributions from the Gallery’s curatorial staff and local residents. The sender format will be both locally specific and worldwide, but connected. Like a bird’s nest, UBERSENDER will insert one location into another – this additional space will change constantly, seemingly, due to the activities of a person or people whose use the space, but whose physicality remains elusive to viewers.

EXTERIOR

The Sender is built from bricks similar to the ones used in the gallery’s facade. This makes the extension seem like a logical possibility. The steel tubes on top stretch out in all four directions. With their varying lengths they can even symbolize frequencies that are constantly moving back and forth.

As a site signal, the sender is installed at the corner between the alcove and the path. Through height and size, its visibility asks the garden’s visitor to spotlight a point of interest, but fits in without too much disturbance as functional structures attempt in sensible environments.

In the logic of its own means it stands for an antenna, receiving messages from the outside on the one hand, but might also send out frequencies to the world. By linking the sender to the nearby alcove, the window display becomes its monitor, a kind of TV-set for the public outside in a green living garden.

For example: the panorama camera set is installed on top of the tower and cabled to the alcove inside. The image material will be a direct feed from the tower to the monitor in the alcove. It sends to the window close by, but it will also be available on the Internet to a larger, virtual public. So the sender operates both on a symbolic and a functional level, but also sets the place on the map regarding its physical location and audience.

INTERIOR

The interior of the alcove of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery will be an adjacent interior environment. UEBERSENDER’s interior component will feature a multiple workstation with desktop, chair, sofa, plants, curtains, and lights on a partially-tiled/carpeted floor. The interior space, as such, will not be physically accessible to the viewer. Nevertheless, visitors and passersby will see both the back (if they are in the building) and the front (if they are passing the window from the exterior). Here, viewers will find a set of various interfaces inserted in what suggests a domestic or casual office environment: one monitor showing the panorama camera view, a screening area for a video projector, flat screen and television monitors, a mirror, loud speakers, and a shelf. Additionally, the window features a letterbox, which irregularly drops out printed notes sent from the artists via a fax machine.

PROGRAMMING

Although the interior space will essentially remain uninhabited, it will, over time, appear to be in use by someone who works intermittently or occasionally rests there. It may seem as though this person just left the place a few minutes ago or could return any minute. Yet, like a phantom, this person will never be witnessed.

This invisible “phantom” operates the computer devices. Mysteriously, it remotely administrates the terminal, publishes notes, broadcasts movie clips or plays music, switches the lights on and off, or prints out a paper via the fax machine. The UEBERSENDER is ON/OFF at all times, the program lives its internal logic, sends, shows and comments on subjects that are chosen by its directors. The only constant is the park view, that guarantees the being here and now, as its definition by the locality. During the day, the messages send out via sound/text/language need a close look. During evening/night hours the scene turns into a open air cinema widely seen in the gardens.

INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMMING ELEMENTS:

- Panorama camera with live feed (from top of tower)

- Video program curated and mailed to the Southern Alberta Art Gallery via post. - Websites, blog feeds curated or created by Bernd Krauss and Bureau-K

- Remote computer access and administration by from Krauss and Bureau-K

- Temporary short service maintenances, i.e. to water the plants, or exchange DVDs, fax paper or light bulbs (by a local staff/see budget)

GENERAL

By focusing on the site between galleries/gardens and proposing the function of being messenger and receiver at the same, the alcove and the sender become a single autonomous station that sublets - like a bird’s nest - a small bit of Southern Alberta Art Gallery. In an independent act of selecting diverse materials it becomes an artistic/curatorial practice that chooses from a wide range from realities. By embedding the materials in different formats or media it can suggest possible readings. Each commercial radio or TV station does so by calling their program: documentary, for kids, news, sports feature or entertainment. They define even the most random material through these types of contexts. The UEBERSENDER wants to send to Lethridge views/information/stuff that is assumed to be relevant because of the senders’ authority. The senders (Krauss and Bureau-K) have studied the area during the planned site visits, consequently have a knowledge base about the UBERSENDER’s audience and location. But an important aspect of the project is that those creating content will never be experts that target their customer with profitable intentions. The UBERSENDER can and must abstract and make assumptions in its messages and broadcasts.

CRITERIA

One of our main focuses is to guarantee a project with lasting input, that can also, during the period of five years, be updated and modified in the frame of the technical set up and adapted even as new technical developments might appear. For the period afterwards, we imagine the alcove installation as a possible platform for further developments in programming by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery or maybe third party interest groups, to use not only the equipment, but create their own interpretation and prolong it under their own auspices. The sculptural aspect of the project in the form of the sender should be stable enough to stand for at least two decades without further investment. With our participation in the research phase -- with at least two extensive site visits -- we hope to ensure the outreach aspects of the project as well as to find and create elements and details that can help locate the program in the community. A further aspect will be to create a material archive of the city, its surroundings, and communities that we can embed in our later broadcasted program. But also contact with diverse members of the community may allow us to found coalitions who will join us in working on the project. One hope is that aspects of the UEBERSENDER take on the processes and character of a grass roots project that expands on our ideas and, perhaps, continues them after our five-year participation.