The dark, seedy world of online comments is an accumulation of largely anonymous discussions about the real world, upon which a cohort of anxiety, impulsivity, and paranoid hatred is typically grafted. By validating and legitimizing these narratives, which comprise our new ways of participating in mass media, these fragments join together, forming our relationship with information.Subjected to the whims of digital technology, information transforms itself. It’s this mutation that gave birth to Libération, Gregory Chatonsky’s interactive installation. Comments on anarchic debates are transformed into an incoherent dialogue played through a black 2.5 meter monolith speaker coupled with three LCD screens. The screens display a random series of words in red LEDs, floating past at a varying pace. The monolith itself is interactive, emitting a monotone and robotic voice as soon as someone approaches, meanwhile spewing forth a continuous stream of generative drony music. By placing your hand on the structure you can clearly hear comments from the readers of liberation.fr, the French daily newspaper’s website. The comments are cut, truncated, perked up, chained together without punctuation, like a stream of clinically pronounced narrative—opinions without emotion.Gregory Chatonsky explains the installation:By decontextualizing the internet users’ reactions, the background noise of Web 2.0 participation loses it’s points of reference, becoming a simplified rhetoric: tensions and insults, opinions and affirmations. The language remains the same regardless of the subject matter, with the same stylistic figures and the same tone, one that becomes gradually more paranoid in looking at the world. In each of these comments, in this ongoing flow of discussion, there remains a unique monologue questioning reality and attempting to determine the ways in which it could remain a tool for sharing.We met the artist alongside his work at the opening of PARANOÏA at Créteil’s MAC (a part of the EXIT festival near Paris). We asked him a couple of questions surrounding Web 2.0, chaos, monoliths and digital art in France.The Creators Project: Are online comments a good way to approach the possibilities of participation within Web 2.0?
Gregory Chatonsky: What interests me in Web 2.0 is the ways in which readers of online media participate in editorial and information development, and tend to create the information themselves, along with journalists.You wanted to broach a theme on the subject of chaos? Are these discussions a mere chaos of information?No, I wouldn’t say chaos. I see the online comments more as a flow, an uninterrupted flow irrigating information. It’s this permanent character and it’s immediacy that interest me.Libération deals with the interactive part of information, and the installation itself is interactive. Is this analogy between the message and the form deliberate? Yes the piece is interactive, it calls upon the visitor’s reaction. You can touch it, and marks left by fingers attest to the passing visitors and change the piece’s allure. But It was mostly the shape of the monolith that I really wanted to explore, this tomb shape, its morbid side…Monolithic shapes and other pure geometric forms are recurrent in contemporary art, particularly so in digital art.
Yes, but this is nothing new. The monolith has been a part of the artistic lexicon since minimalism emerged, with Robert Smithson, for example, among others. The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was already a tribute to contemporary art.Can you tell us about the accompanying music?It’s a piece of generative music that was composed by Olivier Alary, a French friend who also lives in Montreal. He’s a composer who’s worked with the likes of Bjork and Cat Power. He released an album on Rephlex a few years ago.You label yourself as a digital artist, what do you think of the digital art scene in France?
Yes, I’ve adopted the label, but it’s just that—a label like any other. All art scenes are actually full of crossover, whether you are painting, making macramé or digital installations, you remain an artist. In galleries as in the media, contemporary art and digital art are in fact mixed together, the distinction between the two is more formal than anything else.Could you tell us a little about the book you’re releasing, Capture?
It’s a monographic catalogue. I wrote a series of texts through which I presented and described my work. This sort of book is very useful for someone such as myself. I’m quite productive and it helps me to keep on top of and present all my work. There are also contributions from a few art critics.A short extract of the comments can be heard on Gregory Chatonsky’s site here .Visual courtesy of Gregory Chatonsky 2011
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Gregory Chatonsky: What interests me in Web 2.0 is the ways in which readers of online media participate in editorial and information development, and tend to create the information themselves, along with journalists.You wanted to broach a theme on the subject of chaos? Are these discussions a mere chaos of information?No, I wouldn’t say chaos. I see the online comments more as a flow, an uninterrupted flow irrigating information. It’s this permanent character and it’s immediacy that interest me.
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Yes, but this is nothing new. The monolith has been a part of the artistic lexicon since minimalism emerged, with Robert Smithson, for example, among others. The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was already a tribute to contemporary art.Can you tell us about the accompanying music?It’s a piece of generative music that was composed by Olivier Alary, a French friend who also lives in Montreal. He’s a composer who’s worked with the likes of Bjork and Cat Power. He released an album on Rephlex a few years ago.You label yourself as a digital artist, what do you think of the digital art scene in France?
Yes, I’ve adopted the label, but it’s just that—a label like any other. All art scenes are actually full of crossover, whether you are painting, making macramé or digital installations, you remain an artist. In galleries as in the media, contemporary art and digital art are in fact mixed together, the distinction between the two is more formal than anything else.Could you tell us a little about the book you’re releasing, Capture?
It’s a monographic catalogue. I wrote a series of texts through which I presented and described my work. This sort of book is very useful for someone such as myself. I’m quite productive and it helps me to keep on top of and present all my work. There are also contributions from a few art critics.A short extract of the comments can be heard on Gregory Chatonsky’s site here .Visual courtesy of Gregory Chatonsky 2011