The physical ocean, as well as the digital sea of information, are still unconquered frontiers. Throughout history, uncharted territories have fueled human imagination, as explorers attempted to harness natural forces and probe the unknown. Today, this spirit of exploration has migrated to the digital landscape.
Spanning two historic sites in La Rochelle, the exhibition proposes complementary perspectives on humanity’s drive to explore and control: the physical dimension versus the power to shape history through the subjective selection and archiving of data.
At Tour de la Chaîne, a location-based installation features over a thousand drinking glasses collected by La Rochelle’s residents, half full with water. Positioned upside down, the glasses seal the water within. A magnetic mechanism generates waves and currents inside the glasses, producing a physical, ephemeral expression of actual vessel tracking data. The data-driven installation visualizes Geo-location information logs the positions of ships passing through La Rochelle in the months leading up to the exhibition.
Vessel Streaming is dedicated to Prof. Richard Feynman, who inspired this work.
“When I was a junior or senior I used to eat at a certain restaurant in Boston. I went there by myself, often on successive evenings. People got to know me, and I had the same waitress all the time. I noticed that they were always in a hurry, rushing around, so one day, just for fun, I left my tip, which was usually ten cents (normal for those days), in two nickels, under two glasses: I filled each glass to the very top, dropped a nickel in, and with a card over it, turned it over so it was upside down on the table. Then I slipped out the card (no water leaks out because no air can come in the rim is too close to the table for that). I put the tip under two glasses because I knew they were always in a hurry. If the tip was a dime in one glass, the waitress, in her haste to get the table ready for the next customer, would pick up the glass, the water would spill out, and that would be the end of it. But after she does that with the first glass, what the hell is she going to do with the second one? She can't just have the nerve to lift it up now!”
- "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman