Digital Beacons 32Ko — A project by Catherine Rannou (in collaboration with the Festival @rt Outsiders, European House of Photography, Paris, and the Contemporary Art Center La Passerelle, Brest).

Digital Beacons 32Ko consists of exchanges of “digital beacons” between Catherine Rannou and five addresses in France during her stay in Antarctica (October 2008 - March 2009). Rannou, a video artist and architect, is conducting a research in collaboration with the French Polar Institute (IPEV), a glaciology scientific laboratory (LGGE), the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) and a technical research office (T.E.S.S) in Antarctica, that she started during her artistic residency + art at the poles at the French Polar Base Dumont d’Urville in 2006.

During this Summer Campaign, Rannou proposes to five persons, close to her working field, to be associated to her research through a communication protocol and exchanges about the research conducted in situ and during her travels.

Antarctica scientific bases, if they are first and foremost working places, are also, due to their isolation and the forced confinement, living and intimate spaces. Data communication, constrained by the extreme isolation of the Antarctic continent from the rest of the world, is difficult and not in real time and exchanges through the usual means of dialogue (telephone, mail, email) is restricted to the utilitarian necessities, mostly technical. This specific difficulty for dialogue from the Antarctic continent with the rest of the world, which favors mediated exchanges of digital data against the expression of the body (voice, gestures, …) is taken into account in the protocol that has been defined.

Digital samples are simultaneously sent by Catherine Rannou to the five chosen addressees during her whole journey: from her departure from Paris to her arrival at the Franco-Italian base of Concordia, to her return from Concordia to Paris. Those + digital samples, no matter their content (digitalized drawings, digital photographs, videos, texts, …) are restricted to the authorized maximum size for emails from Antarctica, that is 32Ko.

Those exchanges are like beacons or signals which, in return can be interpreted, annotated, expanded and thrown back by the addressees to the sender as well as to the other addressees participating in the project. The distance, growing with the journey, disconnections and other transmission difficulties are distorting the exchange. A parallel space should appear, as an imprint, like a radar that registers the echo of the waves that are bouncing on obstacles.

Contents

The contents of the samples are free but related to the perspective of the artist doing them and to the datas sending format. It has to deal with territory planing, spatial appropriation, waste management, import-export, temporalities distortions and spatial reference points, logistic. Those datas measure, by their addition and chronology the space that has been travelled. Their measurement scale, as well as their topics, are variable, they constitute a transversal gaze, a kind of vision in a 3D cut of the + Antarctic system.

Periodicity

The time lag does not allow for specific days and time to issue the posts. One post per week minimum will be done by the artist depending on the conditions of communication and on means of transport, hence a minimum of 15 digital beacons will be sent. The frequencies of the posts by the addresses is free. The beacons will be sent to addresses located in France, working in a precise professional environment, but no immediate answers or questions are awaited.

Organisation of the digital beacons

The chronoligical order, in Universal Time (TU) has been chosen to order those exchanges. When the artist is back in France, other methodologies may be used, depending on the means of diffusion.

Diffusion (during the time of the journey)

Festival @rt Outsiders / European House of Photography, Paris: all the exchanges are available on the web site of the @rt Outsiders Festival. Contemporary Art Center La Passerelle, Brest: an installation presents the digital beacons sent by the artist as they arrive, in real time.

Addressees

Annick Bureaud (AB)
Art critic, theoretician and independent curator, director of Leonardo/Olats

Ulrike Kremeier (UK)
Director Contemporary Art Center La Passerelle

Rafael Magrou (RM)
Critic and curator (architecture design and arts)

Roger Perrin-Jaquet (RPJ)
Professor in sociology of habitat (ENSAB)

Jean-Luc Soret (JLS)
Artistic Director of the Festival @rt Outsiders / European House of Photography