Anne-Marie Rigenbach
(spanish)
In spite of the fact that according to this many-sided artist’s own words of, ” any definition is an immolation “, he has been defined as a “netartist”, “data artisan”, ” digital artist”, ” playful objects manager “, ” interactive sound structurer ” - among other varied terms-. However, his work is remarkable mostly because of his interest in processes: communicative, self-generative, chaotic.
His first researches into chaotic and fractal algorithms, are very curious, not only in the sound area - from his first period as a ‘ free jazz ‘ musician -, but also in the field of the Net or in the subversive conception of interface metaphors of and its navigational design.
It is not easy to expose in a synthetic way such a conception , since it can only be understood as a dissemination of sense. Nevertheless, M. C. Wuilleumier has managed to overcome this tour de force by presenting a very clear and faithful version in two articles: ” Interfaces et production de sens “, at www. revue-net.com, and ” L ‘ Anti-géographie. Appear of l ‘ absence “, in Spam, 3, 2002. In these articles, Wuilleumier relates the concept of interface metaphor to the opposition between “flow” and “sense” formulated by R. Barthes. In this conception, the flow is defined as a fragment of navigation, a direction-Barthes is thinking about “web”-, whose surface is navigational. It is a computable flow, which can occupy a digital space. If the flow is supported by the navigation, the “sense” is supported by the interface, it is a methodological field, a production, a voyage. And when Mackern makes metaphors from these interfaces all navigation becomes subversive. Any production of sense is spread into a chaotic and constant flow.
His research in inversion processes focusing on what we call “a sign” gives way to a communication paradox peculiar to the net: the variability of interpretations is not causal yet but it depends on the flow that regulates the same message. This is the case of his project XTCS- TEMPORAL DE SANTA ROSA - the radio static interferences in several radio frequencies by the Santa Rosa Storm (a traditional storm which arrives to t River Plate, where Mackern was born-) or the “noise” generated by an algorithm “incrusted” into a timeline [ in real time or ‘ hard coded ‘ - ” Set Variable=Random (Art) “, among others], generating multiple probable readings in processes which can be defined as ‘informational virusing’.
His works in the field of “localizing / delocalizing” are equally interesting. This operation of translocalizing goes together with another relation due to the particular character of the net; C. Metz qualifies this relation as “flow-chaotic”. A chaotic flow is a flow used for guiding another flow, since a metacode is a code that serves to study another code. The chaotic flow is the only flow which can be translocalized, since it is necessary to use it to guide other flows. This is obvious in ” spam art “, which Mackern has been developing frequently, in a kind of interesting ” touch and go “, through varied discussion mailinglists (one of his mail-performances (”google_translate”) is widely known: he works with other probable senses of trivial texts made by means of several “passes” through Google’s translation engine.
The chaotic flow occupies a privileged position since it is the only one which can guide, though approximately, where the remaining flows want to come. It does much more than translocalizing the message, leading it to another space of the same range or ” sending it “. These flows show a relation of a very narrow interdependence which joins the perception of interactivity and the informational virusing: we can see that the opposition ” virused information ” - “information”, is a bit more relativized as the role of the the virus is made explicit in the perception of interactivity.
On the other hand, his participation in diversecollaborative projects in deinstitutionalized global productions (offline and online), adds another interesting point of view on the landscape of digital creation and netart.
A style based in creating interfaces which offer random and /or interactive musical devices, balancing complex programmings with minimalist designs.
Digital artist. Director/editor of one of the first latinamerican virtual spaces devoted to the investigation, development and implementation of webart projects (1996). His last works explore interfaces-design, random concatenation of random events, estocastics, soundtoy creations, generative/ reactive/interactive image_sound objects, real time video-data animations for electronic music groups/musicians, and soundart. He has also been developing a database of latinamerican netartists, among many other colaborative web projects. He writes articles about websites that explore ´the uncertain border between design and netart´ and other ´art in cyberspace´ related topics [browser-art, netart].
