Script

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Curatorial Statement on 'Script'

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"All 'scripts' represent words to be something immobile or visually fixed signs. Even if it is fragmental, 'a script' has a central point, which drives it. It is not fixed......Not recognizing such a point, the scripter carries on writing possessed by fantasy. It may be an illusion to believe that s/he's got to the point. When a certain 'script' indicates something, it is supposed to imply the direction in which the point is moving towards."

hosted by
KIDP, Blindsound

organized by
Blindsound

In the era of the information society or digital culture, the Internet has been being highlighted as a crucial tool of communication, not only in the commercial or public sector, but also in art. However, in spite of its ability to go beyond geographical or linguistic limits, its accessibility to a wider audience and its unlimited resources, digital art seems to miss something that art or human activity is supposed to have. In other words, the better technique art is given as a tool, the more art becomes dependent on visual splendor or pleasure with less consideration for the inner aspects of art.

Visual art, literature and technology present similarities to script in broadcast systems Yet, script on the Net places emphasis on the intertextuality based on hyperlink, interaction, interface, software and operating systems etc. From the Oriental viewpoint in the North East Asian cultural block, literary elements such as text, letters, linguistics, poems and calligraphy etc. are perceived as objects, in which image and text coexist.

'Script', the net art exhibition on the Internet, focuses on narrative, narration and what exists deep in art underneath the visuality and the technology. As the title, 'Script', which is another word for 'programming' or 'coding' in internet terminology, indicates, this project will highlight the digital art work with an emphasis on narrative as its content, rather than on technique as a tool. Furthermore, 'Script', in this context, is suggested as a cognitive code with asemantic system of its own.

To be more specific on the title, the word, 'script', is a word wth double meanings. It can be compared to the word 'graphien' in Greek, which means 'to draw' and 'to write', and to the Mexican word, 'tlacuilo', which means 'a painter' and 'a scribe' at the same time. It also meant 'hand writing' in the Middle Ages. Like both sides of a coin, 'Script' in the Internet functions as a music score to a window image or as a play script to the desk top. Signification, as such, between image and literary narrative creates a new kind of combination in digital medium.

The window on the desktop and the scenes inside and outside it confront each other with the window between them. The scenes that you see are images. And, looking at its backside, there exist scripts, commands and innumerable files on call waiting for the command of the hyperlink. Script, in this project, is to be perceived as equivalent to the historical conditions which script has passed through, and that of the digital media and the internet. "Script written in script" is the key word to this project, though it may sound like a linguistic game.

Apart from the post-modern discussion on the return of narrative after modernism in visual art and in literature, 'Script', here, can be understood as a story telling, which is said to be the oldest form of art since ancient times. Moreover, it is the outcome of human imagination or will. The following words by an ascetic in the Middle Ages, on finishing his script work, demonstrates this well. "The characters created by myself represent what I am."

Things in the world are encoded through the brain process of the artist, and then become a part of the world. That is the case in the simulated signs on the computer monitor. However, it does not simply mean 'text-driven' work. For, in terms of hypermedia, narrative is the interface of literature and visual art, or text and visual images, which enriches the imagination and interactivity between the artist and the audience owing to the technology of hypertext etc..

'Script' is digital writing. And the digital scripter will encode all that has not been written or that is able to be written. The three Korean artists and twelve foreign artists introduced here were selected with this intention. As 'narrative' behind 'window' functions as a catalyst of art and technology, 'Script' will also contribute to filling the gap between existing art and net art, which is also the aim of 'Blindsound', the organizer of this project.

organizing curator :Lee sang-yoon
pcbd@blindsound.com

credits:

hosted by KIDP, Blindsound
organized by Blindsound
directed and curated by Lee sang-yoon
advised by Park kyung-il
transtated and coordinated by Lim keun-hye