9 essay by josephine bosma, the people below the surface

from 9, a new tool developed by mongrel –
http://9.waag.org/Info/people_en.html


THE PEOPLE BELOW THE SURFACE

Josephine Bosma

How to reflect upon the world? The artist collective Mongrel has developed a
new tool for doing just that, a program called Nine(9). Instead of
reflecting upon the world, this relatively easy to use program reflects the
world quite literally in some ways. It was created for you and me, for the
wo/man on the street so to speak. It was made to tell stories, personal
stories or self invented histories. It could be called a virtual scrapbook,
collective sketchbook or living photo album. The difference with many other
on line diaries or meeting places is that the space of Nine(9) has no
beginning or end, no top and no bottom, no fixed entry. We roam through the
contents of Nine(9) like we roam our cities or our thoughts: a different
starting point, a slight variety of trajectory and the possibility of new
views almost every time. This is the world without a grand narrative, this
is the world from multiple points of view.

When you enter Nine(9) and start to feel your way around you will feel a
bit lost the first couple of times you visit. All these pictures, clustered
in groups of nines. Odd voids in the map. The slowness of your movements.
Not knowing what lies ahead, or whether anything lies ahead at all. Yet
there are people here, you discover. Voices, faces, views appear. You might
stumble upon familiar faces even, like I did. The faces and stories of
children, friends or neighbors start to form a personal trajectory, a
storyline based upon your personal curiosity or interests. I entered Lani's
world, the world of a three year old boy who came from London to live in the
Bijlmer, one of Amsterdam's most unpopular neighborhoods. Through Lani's
experiences I discovered that this unpopularity is, even to my surprise,
largely based on prejudices and racism. I saw Lani's friends and learned
about the occupation of their parents, the social structures in the Bijlmer
and the state of environment there (often pleasantly small townish and
green). Lani's mother Matsuko reveals it all for you in pictures and short
texts. Her space in Nine(9) is only one example though, one of many. Some
stories are personal, other people prefer to enter obscure underground art,
and again others play with a combination of images, words, short films or
sounds themselves. One can imagine Nine(9) to harbor reflections on politics
or philosophy as well, which one can enter and perceive (by way of your
storyline, that is) at wish. Walking or flying across the various maps of
Nine(9) one is at the same time close to and distanced from their content.
Mongrel has tried to create a structure without hierarchies, but not without
power of the individual.

Nine(9) is kaleidoscopic and endless. The repeated maps of nine stories
within nine images form a rhythmic visual metamap in which all borders meet
like on a globe. Or like on a giant Rubik's cube, if you will. Even if this
creates a sense of space, it can also create a feeling of claustrophobia.
This is enhanced by the apparent slowness in the navigation of the space.
Yet after a while you get familiar with some of the maps and you develop a
sense of where you are and how to get somewhere else. You keep strolling
past the same pictures, bumping into the same maps here and there and you
discover there is a way to make big leaps over them. Experiencing Nine(9)
feels a bit contradictive at times, more even so then you already might have
experienced browsing the web. It is a strange mixture of traveling places
and meeting different people in one space. Yet where on the web the variety
of form and design of the different web pages can create huge differences in
(however subconscious) valuation of individual sites, redeeming their
content more or less important depending on their either professional or
clumsy appearance, Nine(9) almost entirely eradicates these differences.
Entering one's story into Nine(9) means submitting to the wish of the
Nine(9) designers to present everyone as equal, or to give everyone equal
chances, in the battle for representation in a stressed attention economy.
Picture after picture, map after map, glowing like stars in a dark sky, all
information in this space is presented within the same modest frame.

Even if the visual interface, the surface, is not the most important aspect
in the end, it certainly is the most dominant in how you navigate and
perceive everybody's stories in Nine(9). The first impression of Nine(9) is
a visual one: that of many, many pictures, together yet distinct. Nine(9) is
in some ways like a slow movie. A film played one image at the time, and you
are the final editor.

In a documentary for Dutch broadcaster VPRO called 'the end of television as
we know it' someone working for the Disney corporation claimed that future
communication would be image based, not text based. Even if this remark was
mostly wishful thinking concerning Disney's market position in the future it
probably contains more truth then some of us might care to admit. Yet
already in the early 20th century people thought film, the wide distribution
of moving images, would help us return to a "pre-Babel 'great human family",
that film would bring people together. It only did so in an indirect, still
faulty way. Even if Nine(9) can never be called a solution for the language
problem between peoples (since solving that seems a utopian dream), it is a
step in the right direction. There is an extra dimension to Nine(9) though,
something film does not have, which is its relatively easy interface and its
connection to the 'street' via the Mongrel workshops and events, in other
words, it's accessability. Nine(9) was developed to demystify and unravel
the world of electronic media. Nine(9)'s sober and anti hierarchic design
can create very strong and interesting social spaces indeed.