SNS Challenger
Gary McLeod >

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This discussion between Window curator Sue-Li Tasker Yeo, Online artist Gary McLeod and Onsite artist Taarati Taiaroa is taking place over the course of the show's duration 'onboard' McLeod's SNS Challenger.

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STY: Greetings readers / crew,

I am co-curator for Window, an exhibition space which exists simultaneously online at www.window.auckland.ac.nz and in a physical location within The University of Auckland.

Between June 28th and July 7th 1875, the HMS Challenger was supposed to have docked at Auckland to carry out research, however, the ship fell behind schedule and had to skip Auckland - it went straight to Wellington instead.

So, we thought that the SNS Challenger could 'dock' at Auckland via a link to the Window Online space, during the 2010 anniversary of these dates. Gary has kindly created a video which enables Window visitors to tour the SNS Challenger - just as the public would have been allowed a look around the HMS Challenger as it docked at their locale.

Join myself, Gary McLeod and collaborating Auckland artist Taarati Taiaroa over the next few weeks in a discussion here on board the SNS Challenger.

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Metaphors online

The first thing that strikes me about this project, as a curator for Window, is a similarity between these two entities, SNS Challenger and Window Online.

Window Online exists in relation to a corresponding physical entity, whereas SNS Challenger is paying homage to a historical entity (could we say that a historical entity exists in 'physical space'? Or perhaps 'historical space' is a network of its own?).

One purports to be a ship and the other, an exhibition space, two quite different-sounding things - and yet, from an experiential point of view, both ship and gallery are made up of sets of boxes, links, images and writing, coded in such ways that any viewer understands which content has been made by who and why.

As a curator of an online gallery space, I can't help but notice that much of the content I'm helping to deliver is done in a way that is really very similar to other online modes - at this moment in time, the most obvious example would be the blog. Gallery publicity is certainly different from blog publicity - and blogs (unlike galleries) certainly don't throw parties every time new content is added - but sometimes I feel like Window Online is only a gallery because we say it is a gallery, and many different people have treated it like a gallery since its inception in 2002. (That said, defining/creating something simply by naming it such is no unfamiliar strategy if you are coming from an art context!)

Gary, I find that the naval metaphors you use when discussing your project - 'on board' the 'ship', for example - jump out at me a little when reading, because I'm not as used to them as I am 'page' or 'link'. But they serve as a reminder that the Internet is full of metaphors - in fact, it is made up of them.

What are your thoughts on the Social-Networking-Site-as-ship, and the Internet-as-ocean, and on Internet metaphors in general? I know that in previous discussions you and Taarati have come up with quite distinct ideas of what the Internet means for each of you ...

GM: Your comment about the Online gallery being a gallery in name only is interesting. The word 'gallery' is said to come from describing the chapel of a church and then later as a long roofed walk way along a building. How we commonly use the word today didn't come about until the late 16th century. On the Internet, there are many web galleries that essentially recreate (whether intentionally or not) the idea of walking along a wall looking at pictures. The word has changed little but the things it points to has. Defining an online space as a gallery, in my opinion comes down to applying the same work ethic to an online space as you would a physical space. In other words, the curation of the space now makes it what it is.

In a similar way, I could argue that the Social Networking Site can be defined as a ship because of the way that people perform certain roles within it. If the online space is used in a variety of ways towards a common goal or objective, the site can then essentially earn the definition of a ship, or in this case, a research ship. This is what I am currently researching with SNS Challenger.

As for the metaphor of the ocean, there are many metaphors that are used to describe the Internet and Professor Sue Thomas is one person who is researching that for her forthcoming book "The Wild Surmise". There is also research that has been carried out which suggested that certain metaphors to describe the Internet depended upon the individuals level of involvement and their subjective view of it. Viewed positively, it could be seen as a huge library which you could pull any document from. Viewed negatively, it could be seen as wave after wave of information that just floods you.

From my view, (aware of the negativity) I cannot see the world wide web as anything but an ocean type space. For me, links to different pages are just a means for pulling yourself along until you find something that is of use to you. I understand it as a space flooded with information and little sign of land. This is different from waves and waves of information crashing against me until I drown, which would suggest that I am the main protagonist and the centre of everyone's attentions. My view of the WWW as an ocean space is a place where there are dangers beneath the surface but also a horizon and therefore things to experience and learn. On the ocean, one person cannot achieve anything alone and the same applies to the WWW. Viewing the Internet as an ocean space is positive and encourages collective behaviour.

TT: I am the on-site artist for window gallery in the physical location within The University of Auckland.

I think of the Internet as an archive; ephemeral in nature, where information can pass through multiple channels, sink into oblivion or litter the surface. The Internet is indeed an ocean where information is lost, gained and altered constantly through the network of its users; consequently concepts of reality, place and truth are tested.

Michel Foucault in The Historical a priori and the Archive (1969) discusses the archive:

The archive cannot be described as a whole but as parts…
The result or discovery of information is unpredictable until the process is complete. (Foucault 29)

I often feel that exhibitions are presented as unequivocal fact.
The SNS Challenger, as a platform for open-ongoing research through the collective production of a re-configured archive suggests a strategy to overcome this.

What are your thoughts on platforms for on-going research?
Could the SNS Challenger’s mission be infinitely on-going, or will it be complete when every photo is re-photographed?


GM: I wonder if it might be important here to just remind everyone of the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). As John Naughton in the Observer notes,

"The Internet resembles the tracks and infrastructure of a railway, while the web is just one part of the traffic that runs on it."

(The Observer, June 20th 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everythin...; [Accessed July 1st 2010])

While being in itself a metaphorical way of trying to understand what these terms mean, the Internet is what it is, a system of cables. What exists on it is something else entirely. So to clarify, our metaphors are describing the WWW and not the Internet.

Taarati, it is interesting that you think of it is an "ocean of information" as that would mean that everything has had form put into it, suggesting that there aren't gaps. Information has to be stored on hard drives or servers somewhere so there must be space. Therefore, this ocean is not just an ocean of information but an ocean of known. It might be worth noting here too that the word "ocean" comes from the Greek "okeanos" meaning a river or sea of unknown origin. Therefore Taarati, might I suggest that your perception of an archive could be the equivalent of a ocean gyre, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and therefore integrated into an ocean metaphor of a vast unknown space?

Regarding your question about on-going research, SNS Challenger has an objective and when that objective is met, the voyage will come to an end. However, that isn't to say that the research ends.

Why do you feel that exhibitions are unequivocal facts? Because there is little, if any, of a feedback process?