The hypermedia project 0rhizone: UNIDEE meet the authors

Interdisciplinary artists and researchers Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson came to talk to UNIDEE residents about their ongoing hypermedia project 0rhizone which takes as its starting point the thirty books selected for the Letterature di svolta/Living library exhibition initially held at Cittadellarte in 2004 and currently on show again at the foundation.

A lively discussion touched on such matters as Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome in relation to web and hypertext practice, the question of the multiple, Pierre Lèvy’s idea of ‘virtualization’ (going from a ‘solution’ to mapping the  problematic field which constitutes it at all levels) as well as Guy Debord’s analysis of spectacular alienation and the need to rethink it – in light of the web’s ‘call’ to interactivity – beyond the absolute separation between self and commodified image.

Following on from this was a reflection on attempts, such as those of new media theorist Gregory Ulmer (who coined the term ‘electracy’ to describe the cognitive attitudes and approaches that are currently emerging) to create alternative discursive and rhetorical models that can simultaneously bring into play the different aspects of the subject which are involved in web practice and interaction (their rational and fantasy investments in the information grids – from home to school to entertainment discourse – across which their singularities are distributed).

Questions raised by the residents included the dangers of adaptation (however subversive the intent) to dominant corporate information channels and flows and software tools and rethinking the meaning of ‘resistance’ and ‘communication’ in light of the technological advances of new media. The discussion widened to issues related to alternative forms of education, the need for irony in art and philosophy, performativity,  the ideology of privatization and ‘universalised’ intellectual property, capitalism’s reterritorialization of past strategies of emancipation, the influence of theory (positive and negative) on contemporary art practices and the role of information grids in identity construction.   

The day concluded with a look at a part of the 0rhizone hypertext, based around Mike Davis’s book City of Quartz, and an invitation to the residents to develop their own projects, of whatever type, beginning from a book selected from the Living library.  

A symbolic image of the theoric process of 0rhizone project

Graeme Thomson

Silvia Maglioni