A virtual Street of Sculptures

One of the main questions I asked myself when writing the development plan for the Street of Sculptures last year was ‘how do we keep the works in the collection crisp and dynamic?’ Works in the public space stay in the same place for years, within the same physical context. In my plan, I try to recontextualise the works using two different methods. The first is the recurrence of temporary art events, with different concepts and themes, curated by different curators. That means that a work of art originally created for Open Source Amsterdam in 2009, may be incorporated in an art event in 2013 under a complete different topic. Hopefully, that will bring out new aspects of the work, giving the public a chance to sense new meanings.

The second method is the use of new technologies. My dream is to create a world, where physical works are provided with a virtual context and virtual works with a physical context. Creating two, intertwining Streets of Sculptures, one physical and one virtual.

Let me explain how I see this: suppose there is a small tag located near a work of art in the public space. For instance a QR code (see picture above). You swipe you mobile phone over the code and voila, suddenly you see or hear something, something that has a relation with the work you are standing right in front of. Or you walk along the art route and suddenly you see a tag on a tree, or on a street lantern. You swipe you phone and you see or hear a work of art, created in the digital world, but made specifically for that physical site specific. That sort of thing.

I would like to have the technical infrastructure first, and start curating the Virtual Street after that. I would like to meet somebody, who tells me ‘Aha! Is that what you want? Well, then you need that system.’ But alas, no such person has come to my attention as of yet, despite letters, emails and telephone calls to all the Dutch new media organisations I know of. I will have to start 2008 with a renewed effort to make this virtual street happen. It is too important to let it slide.