Dear Guest,
Thank you very much for being interested in this artistic project.
My name is Ioana Contu, I'm 18 years old, I'm a senior art-student at "Liceul de Arta Brasov", Romania and this is my project for the final exam in Graphics.
The idea was born in November 1999 and it was generated by my adhesion to the "Hole Lotta Love" Mailing List. Ten months after I had subscribed to this list I started to realize how the Internet is amazingly helpful in linking people from all over the world, opening their minds, improving their communication skills, introducing them with a great diversity of new different ideas and opinions, and most of all, in providing them a way to contact persons or groups with similar interests and likes, who they can relate to, talk to and sometimes later, who they can establish a more complex friendship with.
Practically, through communication we become able to find people that share our views and thoughts, that are able to understand and encourage us, people that at some point we can identify ourselves with. Unfortunately, we don't always find that in the closest surroundings, among the people we meet everyday at home, at school, at work. Through the Internet we get a larger range of choices.
So, that's how the main background of my project came to life, based on the fact that no matter where we live, who we are or what we do, we all have the possibility to get in touch with each-other by becoming an inherent part of this electronic network.
As any artistic project goes through some essential stages that compose a process which makes possible and defines its existence, I will try here to explain my own work and the way it is structured by dividing it in three parts: the idea, the graphic expression, and the development of the process itself.Hoping that they will help you better understand my message, I intend here to clarify the meaning and the purpose of my project.
The idea on which the entire series of actions is built is somehow introduced by its title, "Communication", which surely must give you a hint of what the work tries to transmit. However, it is still just a suggestion.
In a large meaning of the word, communication defines the social interaction through messages…the transmission of messages. The simplest theory of communication describes this term as a linear process which starts from a source - the one that decides which message to send. This selected message is then changed by the transmitter into certain signals, organized into codes that are sent to the receiver. Scientifically, that's how information runs; that's how we communicate.
If we want to measure information, we can use the unit "bit". The word "bit" is a compression of "binary digit" and means, in practice, a Yes/No choice. These binary choices or binary oppositions are the basis of computer language.
So, that's what the idea is about: communication through computer language, more precisely, 'inter-human' links through 'inter-net' communication.
The graphic expression represents the language in which the idea is transmitted. It stands as an artistic mean that makes possible the connection between the sender of the message and its receiver.
In this case, the painting itself is the transmitter - the one that changes the message into a certain language. The repeated object symbolizes the signal, and the black and white stripes are the binary digit codes. You can read them as: YesNoYesYesNoNoNo…etc., or in other words 1011000…and so on; they signify the presence and absence of the information. They represent the language and only the rhythmic recurrence of the signals (the information itself) makes possible the transmission, the actual interaction between the ones involved.
Every signal describes a source, but because of the presence of the dialogue, the roles between sender and receiver are changing all the time. At a moment, the sender becomes a receiver so, the receiver becomes a sender, but in the next moment, they change roles again and so on and on until you stop counting who was the initial sender and the original receiver and realize that beyond this there are 2 much more important things: the simple presence of a dialogue, the wonderful existence of a communication process, and the fact that the sender, as well as the receiver, they are both involved, as intrinsic parts, into a group, an intricate "whole".
The development of the process is especially intended to issue, to underline these two qualities of the connection we establish.
My work splits up into 6 parts. Four of them reach 4 different people from the list I am on as a symbol of a relationship already established. That's a starting point. The process then moves on to reach a larger extent: the other two parts of the work are cut into smaller divisions. Each one makes an artistic card.
Thus the process arrives at the point where the work is virtually divided; it still remains complete but only on the Internet site.
So, I intend to make and distribute cards, as many as possible, each one representing a signal and all of them composing this growing painting.
That's also the moment when I'm in need of your help.
It's simple: you send me your home mailing address through this message board and I send you an artistic card.
At that moment you become a part of the network. The card symbolizes a signal and as every signal describes a source, the fact that you will own it will signify that you are a source, you are a sender and a receiver, you are one of the inherent parts of this communication through internet process, you are a part of the "whole".
One of the most important aspects in the meaning of the project is that it emphasizes how the part and the whole are in need of each other. The whole is made of parts and the part exists because of the whole. Simply as it seems: the correspondence between the parts generates the dynamics of the whole and makes the communication process possible while the presence of the whole is essential to the communication necessity of the part.
So, the purpose of my project is that the cards will spread all over the world and that the ones who will own them will be those intrinsic parts of a global communication network. And when two or more people owning these cards will eventually meet, they will be a living proof that the connection between them strengthened, the communication improved and reached a higher level; and who knows…maybe someday all the parts will gather up so that the "whole" will be reformed.
It will mean then that the communication process has become perfect.
Sincerely,
Ioana Contu
