[ISEA2006] Artists Statement: Kate Armstrong, Bobbi Kozinuk, M. Simon Levin, Laurie Long, Leonard J. Paul, Manuel Piña & Jean Routhier — in[]ex

Artists Statement

Theme: Pacific Rim. Venue: Container Culture: Vancouver Container. Venue: South Hall. Curator: Alice Ming Wai Jim

in[]ex is a distributed audio sculpture in which 10,000 wooden blocks embedded with radio tags are released into the city to engage the public as active agents. For the Container Culture exhibition, in[ ]ex explores the migration of capital, goods and people through the ports and public spaces of Vancouver, Canada, and San Jose, California. The tag in each block sends a signal that is picked up and mixed, forming an audio installation in the space of a shipping container. The piece is experienced in different ways by those who contribute dynamic data to the piece by carrying or interacting with the wooden object; by those who encounter the objects in the city, wherever they may have been taken, left or placed; and by those visiting the environment of the shipping container, where an engine picks up dynamic data, remixes it, and outputs an audio stream. In this way, in[]ex: Vancouver and in[]ex: San Jose relay the diversity of urban expressions of both cities.
The Vancouver data is collected from two main sites: Pigeon Park, historically known as Pioneer Place and located across from the former Electric Railway station in the Downtown Eastside, an area predominantly represented as Canada’s poorest postal code; and the Great Northern Way, a cultural venue of the 2006 World Urban Forum. Both sites speak to the Terminal City’s history as a major transportation hub. In San Jose, data is collected from the Plaza Cesar Chavez, the oldest continuously used public open space in this silicon cyberport city. Visitors to the in[]ex project experience a soundscape that maps the dynamism of different publics and to which they may have contributed their own data. This activity is ongoing throughout the duration of the exhibition.
The project was first exhibited by Centre A in connection with the 2006 World Urban Forum in Vancouver in June 2002 and then in Cesar Chavez Square in San Jose as part of the Container Culture exhibition at ISEA2006 in August.

  • Kate Armstrong focuses on the creation of experimental narrative forms, particularly works in which poetics are inserted within the functional framework of computer programs. She is a recipient of a 2004-2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts for Turbulence and is affiliated with bnode and the Locative Media Lab.
  • Bobbi Kozinuk uses radio, electronics, projections and performance to explore issues of gender, the environment and community involvement. He has taught over 150 people to build FM radio transmitters, empowering communities and individuals to access and work with electronic media, and helped numerous artists create installations and outdoor performances.
  • M. Simon Levin has been creating site-based systems that explore the aesthetics of engagement using a variety of designed forms and tools for the past 18 years. These relational projects investigate the often-blurred boundaries between the private and the public, resulting in poetic interventions into space and place.
  • Laurie Long is an independent filmmaker and artist who has been involved over the past 15 years in productions ranging from guerrilla-style performance poetry videos and independently produced documentaries, to gallery video installations and television series. Her work has been broadcast, screened and exhibited internationally and extensively in Canada.
  • Leonard J. Paul has a 10-year history in making music and coding for videogames working for companies such as Electronic Arts, Radical Entertainment and Rockstar Vancouver. He is the composer for the film The Corporation, which has become the highest-grossing Canadian documentary in history.
  • Manuel Piña is interested in the relationships between power, utopias and history, and in the city as both site and embodiment of these relationships. His photographs and video pieces often depict urban spaces as a departure point for narratives concerning social issues. He currently lives and works in Vancouver and Havana.
  • Jean Routhier is an audio wrapper. His approach is similar to that of a store clerk, bagging everything into its sonic essence: Interested in the gaps and gasps in sounds conducive to the transmission of stories he sometimes hears in the ether, he finds inspiration in everyday situations.
  • Alice Ming Wai Jim (curator) is an art historian, curator and critic. She has been Curator of the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A) since 2003. She has curated numerous exhibitions at Centre A and with Videotage (Hong Kong), as well as other independent projects. She obtained her Ph.D. in contemporary Asian art from McGill University in 2004, one of the first such degrees awarded in Canada. Her research interests include media art, theories of representation and spatial culture. In 2001-2002, Jim was Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies and the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong. Her writings on contemporary Asian art and diasporic art have been widely published. She teaches as sessional faculty in the Critical and Cultural Studies Department at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design + Media and in the Critical and Curatorial Studies Program of the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia. Jim is on the curatorial and programming committees of NFFO5 (Vancouver), LITMUS (New Zealand) and ISEA2006 (San Jose).