B.L.O.O.D. F.O.R. S.A.L.E.

Christophe Bruno Wi-Fi performance at the ReJoyce Festival celebrating Bloomsday 100 Dublin - June 12-17, 2004

http://www.iterature.com exhibition by http://www.wrrd.org

As James Joyce did 100 years ago, I walk through Dublin, but with a Wi-Fi handheld and a digital camera. On my way, I record everything I see, mainly company logos or brands, as if my eyes were "spammed". Then, through the wireless network, I send all this visual spam to a program on my server that fetches related "sponsored epiphanies" from the whole Web. These epiphanies are incorporated into the text by Joyce in real-time.   Online version You can see the full version if you have a high-end PC with IE6 and a fast connection. On PC/Mozilla or Mac/Safari, you won't see the full text style-effects. NB: does NOT work on Mac/IE. Visit the online version   Video of the projection in Dublin  watch the video  (Quicktime)

Concept

Since its origins, the Web has known a tremendous development around libertarian ideas such as freedom of speech, sharing media, breaking barriers between producer / consumer or between artist / audience. On the other hand the core trend that is transforming the Web into one of the spearheads of new capitalism in the “age of access” has brought a new situation of conflict: words, the very roots of what we are as speaking beings, have become a commodity, as described in one of my former pieces, the Google Adwords Happening. "Blood for Sale" is a wireless adaptation of my very first net.art piece, "epiphanies" (inspired by James Joyce's definition of the epiphany). It features the pervasive invasion of language by financial globalization. As James Joyce did 100 years ago, I walk through the city of Dublin, but with a Wi-Fi PDA, recording encountered advertisements of company logos or brands into an administration interface via the wireless network. These inputs are sent to a program on a server that uses search engines (Google etc.) to fetch sentences related to the input from the web. These sentences are known as "sponsored epiphanies".

The program then allows these "sponsored epiphanies" to disturb and transform the episode 10 of Ulysses, "Wandering Rocks", by incorporating themselves into the text. The real-time evolution of the text is displayed and graphically animated, sentence by sentence, projected in different places in Dublin, as well as the present website. By the end of the performance, carried out over several days, the original text by Joyce (already partially encrypted for copyright reasons) is almost entirely replaced by the "sponsored epiphanies".   Go to the map

Press Libération: Si Joyce déambulait avec un PDA Coin-operated.com: James Joyce goes Wi-Fi Turbulence.org: A PDA walkabout in Joyce's Dublin Fluctuat.net: Mapping wireless in Dublin Noema: Wi-Fi performance at the ReJoyce festival

Exhibition The projection took place in Dublin from June 12 to June 17, 2004, at The Globe and the Market Bar, as part of the "Wandering Rocks" project. In abbreviated form, the Wandering Rocks, Revolving Doors project, based on the 10th episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses, involves the installation of 19 separate pieces by 22 internationally based artists in public spaces throughout Dublin. Together these pieces create a unique portraiture of Dublin through mirrored glimpses into other cities. These pieces are parallel urban vignettes, inspired by the 19 sections of “Wandering Rocks”, based in the artists' experience in their own resident city, and intended to both update and expand on the perspectives offered by the Joyce's Dublin of 1904. The project's hope is to truly represent the diversity of urban experiences in today's random echoing world by including collaborators from places as dispersed as Helsinki, San Francisco, and Mexico City. Wandering Rocks, Revolving Doors The 10th "chapter" (aka Wandering Rocks) of James Joyce's Ulysses, is a snapshot of the streets and people of Dublin at 3pm on June 16, 1904. Each chapter of the book is associated with a different body organ, art, technique and symbology. That of Wandering Rocks is as follows Organ: blood; Art: mechanics; Symbol: citizens; Technique: labyrinth; The chapter is divided into 19 sections, some of which follow individuals as they move throughout the streets of the city, while other fragments are more static, human still-lives, if you will. The people of these fragments bump into, evade, actively seek one another, while in general accomplishing very little else.

Supported by

Acknowledgments Clinton Nalder, Deidre Treacy, Killian, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Ken Greene, Linda Doyle Martine Moreau, Patrick Thomas, Juliet O'Reilly, Patrick Marsh, Jacques Aubert Digital Hub, Market Bar, The Globe