Jan van Kessel

around 1666

historical Resource
scientific Resource (1)
scientific Resource (2)
developer kit (text)


DWTKS Dialogue with the Knowbotic South- strategies for a changing view on nature concepts A map of a dynamic information-landscape providing a form of interaction with multi-local/-present data-fields in electronic networks. Following the example of the manneristic representations of 4 Continents as 'Kunst- und Wunderkammern' by the Antwerp painter Jan van Kessel (1627-1679), Knowbotic Research (KR+cF) devises a knowledge space, a model of a Computer Aided Antarctica . In his series of four paintings, Jan van Kessel portrayed cultural knowledge representations of the four continents known in his day. KR+cF in its DWKTS installation, limits the material to the available computer-processed information on current antarctic research as it appears in public data networks. The immaterial character of these virtual antarctic 'substance' can only develop meaning and effectiveness (much as in the 17th century) if these items are developed in independent constructs, which never the less remain in distance but related to their antarctic reference subjects. As the given empirical facts are both real and fictitious, the data space give rise to phenomena which are difficult to conceptualize - a Computer Aided Reality. We still lack the denotative tools to describe the development process leading from the real-world extraction of data to the emancipated operationality of these virtual spacecapes. KR+cF designs knowbots, devices operating as spatially and temporally dynamic interfaces for the observer's interactive navigation through the information landscape. These data-bodies incorporate data sets of current antarctic research projects, which symbolize direct real-time links to the reference subjects occurring in scientific research and the underlying natural events at the South Pole.
(erschienen in Blast:1996)
Europa (Mittelpanel)