No Data Is An Island
Geographically-based group messaging performance by Ofri Cnaani
The project was presented in Cagliari, Sardinia (curator: Micaela Deiana) and as part of Fog x FLO Performances series at Emerald Necklace Conservancy (curator: Jen Mergel)
“Such ‘tiled rendering’ is a standard means of constructing digital imagery. It is a good metaphor for how the world is visualized today. We assemble a world from pieces, assuming that what we see is both coherent and equivalent to reality, Until we discover it is not.” — How to see the world: Nicholas Mirzoeff
Our city is changing fast and so is how we look at it. And not only us. Can one visit the city without ever being in it?
Artist Ofri Cnaani will lead a collaborative encounter that is informed by current reviewing and sharing tourist economies that allow us to ‘know better’ and to ‘go better’, as well as civilian imaging technologies, and local eye-witnesses. The multi-faced experience and display will exercise the meaning of visiting and knowing a place without ever being in it.
Intrigued by the possible conscious and/or unconscious collaborations between alternative information gathering systems and human participation research, Cnaani invites you to join a participatory performance that is taking the shape of geographically-based group messaging app that encourages self-guided wandering through call and response prompts and allows participants to re-experience familiar or unfamiliar sites. All you need to do is join a WhatsApp group (for an hour).
Followed the performance, an annotated map that includes images taken during the encounter will be installed in the gallery space and encourage visitors to draw connections and add comments on the visual findings. Slowly new image of the city will emerge, surfacing new connections between places and people. A mind-map of on an island in an age of hyper-connectivity.