Another Day in Paradise

Another Day in Paradise and Virtual Concrete: Installation and Telepresence Works
Victoria Vesna

ABSTRACT

Silicon shapes our realities through implants in our bodies, the chips that drive computer technologies, the concrete we walk and drive on, and the elements of nature we preserve. In this article, the author provides a narrative account of the research involved in building two large-scale installations created during the years 1992-1995. Another Day in Paradise addressed the artificiality of planned communities; Virtual Concrete modified the common perception that there is a dichotomy between the material and the immaterial.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

Most discussions surrounding virtual reality (VR) reproduce dichotomies between mind and body, with the virtual defaulting to a lesser status than the concrete. The extremes of virtual and real come together in materialized simulations of standardized housing developments and in public spaces based on computer-aided design (CAD) models. It is possible for those familiar with the development of CAD programs to identify the version of the software used to design particular neighborhoods. Less obvious than Hollywood's (and, more recently, Silicon Valley's) production of cultural imagery, housing development plans are modular and formulate and can easily be transported to any part of the world.

Humans have always had a love for the uniform production of dwelling spaces, as is evident in villages all over the world.

What is different about today's digital planning based on CAD visualizations is that visualizations were at one time either built or the drawings were put aside, while now they can be converted into three-dimensional (3D) multi-user communities on the World Wide Web (WWW). Many creative plans are never realized due to financial constraints or the bureaucratic problems associated with building codes; now, however, visualizations can be inhabited by on-line communities and assume lives of their own. Generic CAD plans, combined with networking technologies, are contributing to the shifting relationship of bodily presence and architectural space [1].

The city of Irvine, in Orange County, California, whose motto is "Another Day in Paradise," provides perfect examples of such environments planned entirely through CAD [2]. From a bird's eye view, such as from an aircraft, the city curiously resembles a motherboard. Frequently visited by admiring builders from around the globe, Irvine was developed on land that had once been the site of a large orange grove; it is one of the first cities to be planned from scratch. The city was incorporated in 1971 by the Irvine family, and in 1983 a large majority of shares (93%) were taken over and are owned by one man: Donald Bren [3]. The land, four times the size of Manhattan, is one-sixth of Orange County, California. Bren's Irvine Company owns 100 square miles of mostly raw land sitting squarely in the path of Los Angeles's sprawl. No one else in North America controls a single property of such a vast size. Bren calls Irvine his "raw canvas" and plans to spend the rest of his life dedicated to its development. The vice chairman of the Irvine Co. and former chairman of the Walt Disney board Raymond Watson refers to Irvine as the second-best planned community (Disneyland being the first).

Irvine is also home to John Wayne Airport, one of the biggest airports in the country. It is a pristine environment with vast white spaces bathed in light, graced in the center of the structure by a large bronze statue of "The Duke." Reminiscent of the Stalinist statues in Eastern Europe, Wayne's figure stands representative of the hero personified, the good guy, engaged in mor(t)al warfare. (Ironically, the synthetic warrior, now encased in bronze, never participated in a "real" war.) Standing in a large, beautifully lit atrium, he is surrounded by a circle of palm trees, perpetual signifiers of Hollywood.

In addition to allowing us to precisely visualize environments that can be reproduced identically in many places, technology enables us to control nature by a process of preservation using silicon. The resultant preserved trees are real, but not alive÷they are "nature" preserved. Flooded with beautiful light, they are forever disconnected from the process of living and dying, though paradoxically immortalized through a violent demise. We are part of an influential culture that carries with it perverse ideas of perfection embedded in youth, disconnected from the aging process. How many of us actually notice the plant life surrounding us in public spaces? Does it even matter whether it is real or preserved? Watering, pest control, auxiliary lighting, skylights, special planters and replacement due to out

growing of space are no longer necessary. Architects and designers can now plan the height, shape and type of palm tree in terminally projected environments. Once again, California÷with its brief history and, for many, acting as the production center of the simulated, where people become "plastic" and dwellings "generic"÷is the home of innovation in hyper-reality production.

Inspired by these ideas, I began to conceive of an installation piece using the technology of preserved trees. This meant that I needed to track down the builders of these trees and somehow work with them to build the interactive trees I had in mind.

PRESERVED TREESCAPES INTERNATIONAL

It took time, energy and considerable research to find the location of the company responsible for the palm tree installation surrounding John Wayne's statue, and even more effort to convince the

company to work with me. Preserved Treescapes International, Inc. (PTI, formerly known as Nature Preserved Inc.) is located in Southern California ("where the growing season never ends" [4] ) and boasts an endless supply of live plants to be preserved and shipped around the world. After countless attempts to get the company's staff to talk to me, I finally offered to produce a promotional video for PTI in exchange for the construction of three trees with monitors embedded in them. The cost would have been prohibitive if I had wanted to purchase the trees, with prices ranging from (U.S.) $20,000 to $50,000 each. By doing a promotional video for the company, I was able to see behind the scenes of the preservation process, gaining an understanding of it that was crucial to the development of my project. At the same time, this meant I was a willing accomplice, promoting their activity and facing the same kind of contradictions all artists face when working with computer technologies. No matter what kind of commentary we make in our computer work, we are utilizing machines, software and networks created and marketed by large corporations. Apple, Silicon Graphics and Wavefront are some of the corporations that have recognized artists' use of their products, acting as willing sponsors of digital artwork, regardless of content. I have found that it really does not matter what the content is÷critical commentary is swallowed in the flood of information about form. If a work successfully attracts audiences to its content, it also serves as a way to attract attention to the hardware and software used to create it [5].

I was overwhelmed at first sight of PTI's production facilities, which consist of enormous hangars separated into "bark rooms," "frond rooms" and a "reconstruction site." No artist's studio could compete with the nature factory established at this location. The method of preservation is one step removed from natural processes, capturing a moment of existence with no possibility of decay and death.

PTI manufactures two types of product: "replica" and "reconstructed" trees. The reconstructed type is built utilizing metal poles, extruded plastic and steel or round fiberglass, molded into a shape and height specified by the consumer/ architect; the tree then gets further shaped with hard foam and rebuilt using natural bark. Cut sheets of bark are reattached to the core, following the pattern of a living tree. For designers who prefer peeled, or smooth, trunks, however, the replica is available. Replica-molding technology reproduces the look achieved by gardeners' pruning techniques. (Smooth-trunk trees are quite popular in highly manicured environments. A live tree requires a tremendous amount of regular shaving; maintenance is very expensive.) The replica's peeled trunk is made from a mold created from a carefully chosen tree. Once reconstructed as described above, the replica is skillfully painted to mimic closely shaven, "authentic" tree trunks. Both types of trunks have preserved fronds÷real fronds dried in silicon÷attached on top.

I had an opportunity to videotape the process of a tree being embalmed to create a mold÷it was covered with a shiny black tar, with shoots of life still trying to break through. It was as if I were documenting a person being buried alive. The man in charge described their intensive and time-consuming search for the most beautiful, healthy tree they

could find. And, when they finally saw "her" standing there, they knew that she was the one. When I asked how it felt to cut her down, he said, "it was hard, really hard," but explained that this was a necessary step and that this tree, by becoming the sacrificial model for many replicas, would save the lives of countless others.

Silicon is the primary component used in the process of preserving fronds. The dehydration room is set up to resemble a scientific laboratory÷it is clean, white and orderly. Employees wearing white laboratory uniforms carefully monitor the cut fronds to seize the moment when they are at the edge of death. At this instant, plates filled with liquid dye (a proprietary formula), fire retarding material and silica are inserted at the bases of the fronds. The fronds, dying of thirst, absorb the liquid into their cell systems, retaining their original texture and fragrance for many years.

Once they are placed in malls, airports and restaurants, the preserved palms are not easily detected by an untrained eye, as they are cleverly surrounded by live foliage. The artificial merges with the natural, the living with the dead. Palm trees, although indigenous to other parts of the world; have become cultural symbols of Hollywood and are shipped all over the world to represent paradise. Some of the most elaborate examples can be found at the Mirage hotel/gambling casino in Las Vegas, the Regents Hotel in London and at the Lost City in Bophuthatswana, South Africa. The idea of exporting culture has been expanded into transporting whole environments÷ CAD renderings of urban developments packaged along with the preserved trees, resulting in a kind of neo-colonialism that produces and disseminates generic physical space.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE:

THE INSTALLATION

As I scanned public spaces in Orange County, I happened to discover a remarkable number of hidden surveillance cameras, both in- and outdoors. Control is the keyword in planned communities, which in most instances proudly boast having advanced security and surveillance systems. Inhabitants readily accept this for the sake of safety.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is often taken to be about the power of technology for social control and about the loss of privacy resulting from living in such a transparent society. So it is not surprising that [Orwell's] work has been so readily translatable into the language of microelectronics and information technology, and their supposed threats [6].

Although I am in agreement with Lyon's view that surveillance is well established in all aspects of our lives, I do not subscribe to the paranoid overtone of most discourse on the subject of surveillance. My general feeling is that we like surveillance, we invite it and revel in it. I contacted Sony's division of surveillance cameras and found there are catalogs available that describe various hidden camera techniques. Many ready-made systems, such as clocks with hidden cameras, are offered.

The installation of my project, Another Day in Paradise (Fig. 1) [7], was composed of three preserved trees: surveillance, video and touchscreen trees. The complete installation was shown twice: at SIGGRAPH '95 in Anaheim, home of Disneyland, followed by an exhibit at the Irvine Fine Arts Center. When the city of Irvine published a promotional essay about the exhibit, I felt my belief that content does not concern industry was proven. I wondered if and when the exhibit's sponsors would take the time to inspect the work more closely. My guess is that unless the information presented in the artwork has a negative economic effect on the sponsor, it remains unimportant.

The equipment not contained in the trees themselves was hidden from view in fiberglass rocks built by a company that specializes in creating rocks and caves intended for use in artificial waterfalls at amusement parks and hotels. I embedded the monitors in the trees in an attempt to integrate the hardware into natural surroundings.

I placed a hidden camera with a l/4inch lens inside the trunk of the surveillance tree, invisible to the viewer (Fig. 2). Standing in front of the tree, a viewer would see him/herself on the monitor, surveyed, captured and preserved in the preserved tree. This surveillance camera was connected to a videocassette recorder that taped everyone who looked inside the tree. Thanks to advanced compression technology I was able to use a regular 1 20-minute videocassette to record 48 hours of video. The surveillance tree silently watched the observers/consumers fascinated with their own images. It faced the video and the interactive trees, taping the surrounding activities around the clock. The audience was not interested in the ongoing documentation: no one questioned it or asked about the plans for the taped material. Judging from the way people responded to the piece, I surmised that most of the audience willingly stood for long periods in front of the camera. Many were fascinated and spent a long time looking into this mirror, sometimes quietly, most of the time making faces or laughing.

The video palm tree (Fig. 3) housed a video monitor displaying images of the Irvine landscape and its generic architecture, images of freeways in Orange County, abandoned development sites and the story of a young Vietnamese man, Vi Vuong. A chair designed as a palm tree stump was placed next to the tree, inviting viewers to sit down and put earphones on. Otherwise, the tree was sir lent and unimposing. Those who decided to take the time and sit down to listen would hear the disturbing story of Vuong, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering at University of California at Irvine.

I met Vuong in a computer graphics workshop and was immediately taken by his perception of Irvine. In the videotape shown in the video tree, Vuong tells of running away from Vietnam with the "boat people" at his mother's urging and how he finally landed at John Wayne Airport. Palm trees are indigenous to Vietnam, where many were destroyed by napalm and Agent Orange. His story of displacement by war mirrors the displacement of the palm trees from their natural environment.

While I was developing this work, the civil war was starting to rage in former Yugoslavia. Faced with seemingly opposite worlds÷the safe, well-manicured and preserved landscapes of Orange County and the horrific imagery of Yugoslavia flashing from the television set÷I attempted to grasp the contradictions surrounding me. With my parents and some friends still residing in Yugoslavia while I was in plastic paradise, I found myself deeply interested in Vuang's experience.

I designed the touchscreen tree (Fig. 4) to be approached as a kiosk with a large monitor. I reduced the city of Irvine to seven computer icons representing paradise, housing, nature, freeways, mall, hero, business. Each icon, when activated by touch, activates three 1-minute video clips juxtaposing scenes from Orange County with Vietnam.

The clips consist of collages of the city of Irvine and other areas in Orange County such as Little Saigon, the Nixon Library and Fashion Island Mall. Through my friendship with Vuong, I became acquainted with Little Saigon. Situated in the middle of right-wing Orange County, its population consists almost entirely of Vietnamese who escaped from the war at some point. Nearby is the Nixon Library, where history has been virtually rewritten with exPresident Nixon as a hero. On exhibit in the museum, among other memorabilia, are bronze statues of key political leaders during the Vietnam war, reminiscent of John Wayne's statue. Other elements in the video collages include shots of Vietnam today and during the war, oil spills, and Vuong walking in desolate construction sites and business districts.

I incorporated documentary footage of Vietnam during the war in the 1960s along with the video work of Sean Kilcoyne and Kathy Brew [8] on tape, mastered it onto laser disc and programmed it as an interactive touchscreen program. The touchscreen tree allowed viewers/participants to see images of daily life in Vietnam, former soldiers talking about how they felt when they "kicked the body just killed" and the "exhilarating feeling of taking someone's life," confessions of widows, scenes from a hospital full of Agent Orange victims. Also accessible on the program were scenes of the Nixon Library, an amusement park in Little Saigon, Irvine malls, developments and corporate parks.

The programming for the project was sponsored by an Irvine-based corporation, which meant that someone from the corporation might take the time to look at what was housed in the palm trees. I was worried that the sponsor would pull out at the last minute [9]. As it turned out, the programmer who was assigned to help me, Dung Bui, was a Vietnamese ax-general from North Vietnam, who, to my relief, became more invested in the work than I could ever have hoped for. Bui was intrigued by the piece, and we would talk about his experiences of the war and his relationship to his new home, which was ironically next to a military base. The military helicopters passing by still spark flashbacks for him.

Looking back at the way the installation functioned in the spaces it reflected and critiqued, I am amused that the sponsors of the project never took the time to look into the project's content. The artificial trees fit into the surrounding environments quite naturally; they would not have stood out at all if not for the embedded monitors. It is quite possible that even if the sponsors had paid attention to the project's content, it would not have made a difference to them.

After 3 years of work on this project, I felt that I had satiated my curiosity about this very strange and complex environment, and my attention shifted from the role of silicon in the creation of a hyperreality of preserved trees and housing developments to the virtual vs. the concrete. I conceived of my next project almost entirely behind the steering wheel of a car, in a cubicle in motion: I was commuting 300 miles a week. I spent many of those hours thinking about the element silicon (Si): its role in shaping Hollywood bodies, preserving nature, shaping our realities. Then it struck me that even the concrete I was speeding on÷the antithesis of the virtual÷was composed of the same element [10].

VIRTUAL CONCRETE

÷D. Bohm [11]

A large earthquake, more destructive than any other in the modern history of Los Angeles, struck on 17 January 1994 at 4:31 a.m. Officially, the earthquake lasted only 10 seconds. Eleven highway structures at eight locations in Southern California were destroyed, closing 14 roads. Residents and remote television audiences alike were horrified as freeways collapsed into large pieces of concrete within seconds. Communication moved into the virtual realm with analog lines down, as the Internet and cell phones became the established connections to the world.

Around this time, much talk in the media was circulating around censorship on the Internet and how related technologies may affect communication

and relationships between people. Virtual communication technologies, as planned by the military, were built to withstand both natural and manufactured disasters, providing an unparalleled opportunity to leave traces of ourselves. The concrete object, which was perceived to survive the test of time, returns to dust in the face of major destruction, while the intangible remains. If we are represented by the information uploaded on the Internet, what happens to our data bodies written into such space? Do the personalities and the relationships that develop out of these extensions of ourselves survive us as well?

I started visualizing how I might create a piece that connects the virtual and the concrete, and I searched for a definition of habeas corpus that to me held the philosophical key to the debate about cyberspace and censorship. Habeas corpus signifies the need for physical evidence in order to have a case; when activities are transferred into an intangible realm, the ground becomes shaky.

The resulting piece, Virtual Concrete, consists of six 3-ft slabs of concrete covered with large electrostatic (digital output) prints, along with light sensors and a computer connected to the Internet via a CU-SeeMe camera (Fig. 5) [12]. On the Internet, I established a Virtual Concrete WWW site (http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/ concrete) to allow viewers to see the visitors/participants who walked on the concrete.

My starting point in the project was to invite Sky Bergman to photograph images of a male body and a female body covered with silicon implants and computer chip boards [13]. Working in Photoshop, I placed names of sex chat rooms from the Internet on top of the images of the bodies. My original intent was to act as a lurker/voyeur, randomly capturing snippets of conversations in the chat rooms as they occurred to use in the installation, but I soon realized that the names of the rooms themselves were far more seductive than the rather mundane and predictable conversations occurring within them. I was shocked to find some 9,000 rooms at one site dedicated to sex chat [14].

The photographs were printed larger than life÷8 ft long [15]. Assisted by Les Fox, who had worked with concrete in the past, I experimented a long time to figure out how to transfer the images to the concrete without the use of paper [16]. We succeeded, seamlessly retaining the photographic quality of the originals; the resultant images, after bonding to the concrete, unintentionally resembled a sacred fresco (Fig. 6).

The text I placed on top of the images, almost unnoticeable, is erotically charged (Fig. 7)÷gallery visitors had to bend over or crawl on the concrete to read it (Fig. 8). These "destinations" (sex chat rooms) were also announced during the installation in a matter-of-fact voice that was triggered by light sensors picking up the shadows of visitors moving over the installation, which also activated compositions of randomly cycling sound [17]. Occasional mentions of habeas corpus to provide proof of corporeal presence were included.

The CU-SeeMe camera was a constant source of technical problems, many of which had to do with the use of public reflector sites on the Web [18]. People who use reflectors normally like to log on and continue working while the camera silently watches and projects them over the Internet. Viewers may stumble onto some mundane conversations that are colored by the excitement of communicating in this way but that do not really say much. Many sites are simply rooms or images that for some reason someone feels compelled to project to the outside world. Therefore, it came as a surprise to us that our using the reflector site as a window to an art project was actually considered an interruption and misuse of space. For example, one of our favorite sites was at the University of Hawaii, because it was never too crowded and we were able to keep an uninterrupted signal for long periods of time. We would log on and "park" Virtual Concrete, much to the dismay of the local systems administrator who was utterly perplexed by the repeated appearance of concrete in space. He took it upon himself to police not only his site, but every other site that we tried to log onto. As soon as he would notice Virtual Concrete appearing on a public reflector site, he would quickly notify its system administrator to warn them about the ubiquitous concrete "living up to its name," becoming, as he put it, "dead weight" [19].

The WWW site had a small window that streamed video from the gallery showing the installation and the people interacting with it. I was pleased with the audience reaction at the gallery, but felt that the web site could more thoroughly engage a greater audience. In an attempt to create a more dynamic situation, we decided to put up a simple questionnaire on the same web page as the video of the installation. The questionnaire asked the users their names, gender and what the body meant to them. To my surprise, we had more than 1,000 responses in less than 2 weeks [20].

Although the piece was digital in basis, once concretized and granted a physicality, it could be accepted by the art world and enter into a gallery or museum space, a space where the object is usually considered sacred and untouchable.1 wanted the audience to be able to walk on the concrete bodies in pure irreverence, to trespass as they moved on the piece. I must confess that the concrete was also a tongue-in-cheek statement about the digital artist working within the confines

of the museum. The relationship of the artist and curator has significantly changed, although we still have to adhere to certain traditions endemic to the institutionalized spaces of the established art world. I enjoyed the fact that in the group show where I was the only artist working with the Internet, my work was by far the heaviest.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Robert Nideffer and Alan Liu.

References and Notes

1. For example, Robert Nideffer, editor and designer of the on-line journal Speed: Technology, Media Society (http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~speed) has used a 3D model of an airport terminal generated frown a CAD program to create a multiuser space for a special issue on airports and malls. - - Back

2. R. Scheer, 'withering Ott the Irvine," Lears (rune 1991).- - Back

3. C. Hector, "America's Richest Baron," Fortune (August 1990) p. 39.- - Back

4. "Where the growing season never ends" is a line from the promotional video I produced for PTI.- - Back

5. Artists exhibiting at SIGGRAPH conference and art shows commonly experience this. Indeed, when I showed this work at the conference, I could see that only a handful of visitors took the time to look at the piece beyond the novelty of palm trees with embedded monitors.- - Back

6. D. Lyon, The electronic Eye: 7he Rise of Surveillance Society (Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994) p.59.- - Back

7. Another Day in Paradise was exhibited at the Machine Culture show at SIGGRAPH '93, Anaheim, California (curated by Simon Penny) and at the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Irvine, California (curated by Dorrit Fitzgerald).- - Back

8. Sean Kilcoyne is an artist and Vietnam War veteran who does extensive research on the "re-humanization process of veterans. Kathy Brew is a videomaker who spent time in Vietnam shooting scenes of daily life and interviewing widowed American and Vietnamese women. The music for this piece was composed by Zoran Zagorcic, who lives and works in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.- - Back

9. This piece's programming, interactive touchscreen, laser disc and computer were sponsored by Multimedia, Inc.; the fiberglass rock was manufactured by Rock & Waterscapes Systems, Inc.; editing access provided by Graphix Zone, Irvine; surveillance camera and video equipment provided by Sony's Irvine corporate of rice.- - Back

10. Silicon at about 98% purity can be obtained by heating silica and coke at 3,000¡C in an electric arc furnace. One outstanding quality of silicon in a high state of purity is its electrical conductivity. Unlike metal, which easily conducts electricity, and unlike a non-metal, which fails to conduct electricity, silicon is a semi-conductor. That is, it fails to conduct until a certain electrical voltage is applied, but beyond that, it conducts moderately.
Concrete contains calcium, iron, aluminum, silicon and oxygen in varying proportions. It has a structure similar to glass, except that some of the silicon atoms have been replaced by aluminum atoms. Concrete, like many other materials containing Si-O bonds, is highly noncompressible but lacks tensile strength. If concrete is to be used where it will be subject to tension, it must be reinforced with steel.- - Back

11. D. Bohm, Quantum Theory (London: Constable, 1951) p. 415.- - Back

12. CU-SeeMe was developed at Cornell University. It allows live video to be received in a small-screen format at 24 frames per second on a Macintosh or PC with a standard modem and telephone line.- - Back

13. Sky Bergman, a photographer and assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, photographed the bodies. Tom Sepe, a performance artist, was the male body we photographed.- - Back

14. 1 encountered some 9,000 rooms on one site dedicated to sex chats: rooms included Sherrv arid Bliss; Rods Annex; The Kinky Friends of Latex-Loving Laura; Wife-Watchers Special; Trial-Fuck (for Beginners); Rick's American Bar÷As Time Goes By; sweet sweet bedroom of sex; The Dark Side Desert Lounge; Aimee's÷Ladies Only÷But guys welcome to lurk!!!; Mark's area to chat to Invicta; Puddles Playpen; I'm wet and need my mommy, etc.- - Back

15. Harry Bowers, photographer, teacher and director of Cactus Research and Development in New York, sponsored and printed the large electrostatic prints.- - Back

16. Les Fox, who recently finished his studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, had experience with concrete and helped me figure out the method of bonding the prints to the concrete. The material was funded by the David Bermant Foundation.- - Back

17. Kenneth Fields, also known as GustavJava and kf.0e, composed the audio that was triggered by the sensors. The Audio File Format (AIFF) File was programmed in Macromedia Director by Jan Plass.- - Back

18. Reflectors is a UNIX- or Windows-based application that allows multi-user party conferencing and sharing of audio, text and graphic data. Reflector sites are servers dedicated to public reception and transmission off these activities.- - Back

19. Quotes are from email sent from the disapproving system administrator to other system operators.- - Back

20. The event prompted another work, Bodies INCorporated (http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/bodiesinc ).- - Back

Manuscript received 27 February 1996.

Victoria Vesna, Virtual Concrete, installation at the Veered Science exhibition, Huntington Beach Art Center, California, electrostatic photographic prints bonded to concrete, motion sensors, audio, Macintosh computer, QuickCam connected to the Internet, 1995. (Photo: Sky Bergman) Electrostatic photographic prints of bodies covered with silicon implants and computer chip boards were bonded to concrete by the artist, along with names of sex chat rooms found on the Internet. The resultant pieces uncannily resemble sacred frescos. To read the texts, visitors to the exhibit had to get close to the concrete by bending or crawling over it. The activity in the gallery was recorded by a CU-SeeMe camera and transmitted via the Internet.