artport gatepage Nov 04: Peoples' Portrait by Zhang Ga

Nov. 2, 2004

Type: discussion

artport gatepage Nov 04

Peoples' Portrait

by Zhang Ga

http://artport.whitney.org

This month the artport gatepage serves as one of the Web portals to "People=
s' Portrait," a global networked public art project conceived by media arti=
st Zhang Ga. "Peoples' Portrait" utilizes the Internet as the underlying me=
chanism to create a global portrait of people, rendered in real time and di=
splayed instantly and simultaneously on various museum websites and video w=
alls / displays in cosmopolitan urban centers.

Five photo capturing kiosks have been set up around the world at Reuters No=
rth American Headquarters in Times Square, New York City; the Central Busin=
ess District of Singapore City, Singapore; in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; B=
risbane, Australia; and Linz, Austria. The kiosk consists of a camera that =
allows passersby to take snapshots, which are then transmitted via the Inte=
rnet to an image database on a central server. Every few seconds, the video=
walls in different locations – Reuters' Times Square display screen, NYC;=
Multimedia Art Asia Pacific (MAAP ) Festival (October 27 - November 28), S=
ingapore; the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF) 2004 (November 9 - 21),=
Rotterdam; Creative Industries, Brisbane; Ars Electronica Center, Linz – =
will retrieve the peoples' portraits from the same server and display them =
first in time stamped order, then randomly from the archive.

The project investigates the aesthetics of portraiture in the context of sp=
eed and scale. How would a public, fluctuating environment dramatically alt=
er our notion of portraiture as a fixed moment in a private arena?