THE BAY AREA AWARD SHOW 2000

HAPPENINGText: Kanya Niijima

The Bay Area Award Show 2000, best known as an inspirational resource of the San Francisco local art scene, has launched its seventh annual event this summer. Curated by New Langton Arts, The Award Show focuses exclusively on creative local artists of many genres, including visual arts, video, literature, music and performing arts.

In addition, a new program “NetWork” started last year to present Net Art, dedicated to tracking the newest experimental works created on the Web. This year, NetWork showcases “Pinion” by Masako Odaka, who has developed an innovative art form exploring a field of multi-user participation on the Net and The Detritus Sound Concensus Bakery by Steev Hise.

The experience of Odaka’s project Pinion could be compared to the creative procedure of electronic music, a process of developing multiple layers of sound bits on a sampling machine, or of mixing several records simultaneously on a DJ mixer. In fact, Pinion itself features no musical interfaces nor sound effects at all.

Pinion, however, visually approaches this electronic music concept by the use of “cut & paste” method to deconstruct existing materials, and create a new form and perception by re-designing them. Pinion asks the user to take any URL of web pages as material, and modify the web design via the Pinion interface. By controlling the site’s HTML, the original design is destroyed, and its initially aimed form and function are generated as a remix version with a new vector.

The “damaged” design is then automatically sent to free web sites around the world by the Pinion’s server as anonymous records. The user can observe the metamorphosed works spread throughout the net, much like unknown mutated virus multiplied all over the world.

The word “Pinion” refers to the meaning of restraining a bird from flight, especially by cutting off the pinion of one wing. The Broken birds are still quietly leaving their marks on a corner of the net.



The project, The Detritus Sound Concensus Bakery created by Steev Hise, centers around a streaming audio server on the internet which broadcasts an algorithmically generated sound collage 24 hours a day. The collage may be influenced by listeners, who can use a web interface to answer a variety of questions about sound, music, and related topics. The combined input of several participants for a period of time is statistically analyzed to arrive at a “democratic” formula or recipe for “baking” a new sound, which is streamed out to the listeners. Participants will eventually be able to upload their own sound files, which will be added to the database of available source material.

The Bay Area Award Show 2000
Date: July 12th – September 9th, 2000
Place: New Langton Arts
Address: 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Tel: +1 415 626 5416
https://www.newlangtonarts.org

Text: Kanya Niijima

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