Congestion in the data flow:
I/O Interface Overbloated

Basak Senova

Origin: Static Issue 02

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A constant production of information is accumulating. The indexing protocols of information are getting more sophisticated each and every day. However, the channels to distribute information are no longer sufficient. “The information” itself is getting more condensed and compressed, shorter and faster. Through various media, our perception codes have been changing; we are trying to adapt to the pace of the information flow. We have been trained to perceive several moving images and multiplied messages at a time. We are actually in a constant process of following the information flow but even the enormous growth of new multimedia mobile and wireless networks is slow for the pace of its flow.

Among these various media, television is a piece of cult apparatus with a momentum which is equal to the consumption mechanism of our globalized world. The televisual flow is formatted for unconscious addiction, providing toxins of curiosity in 72 dpi tablets. On the overloaded data network, and forward and backward leaps of digital images and text codes, it offers virtual timelessness indexed to real time and the machine. It is a noisy piece of machinery which deciphers capitalism; a frantic mechanism which filters and melts the context and content of everything that it conveys through the ‘time’ reference which decodes itself.

By merging with other information technologies, its speed and intensity still continues to be pinned to the screen through prototypical interfaces. The data flow is mounting but the apparatus itself is transmitting data through the same machinery/operation logic by getting “supposedly” layered with interfaces.

Television, which is not deliberately designed for conveying plentiful and diverse information at a time, strives to adapt the contemporary digital milieu. Hence, televisual media wearily fails and mutates into something that is neither capable of carrying almost infinite digital data nor graspable in the conventional manner.

Conventional media resists new methods of gathering and sharing information. Yet it is well aware of the fact that it has to compete with the “new” media: a new media which challenges the gathering, possessing, distributing and sharing strategies of old media. Controlling mechanisms and powers unintentionally pressurizes television to bear a load which does not fit through the screen. Televisual flow can no longer hold the load and it is apparent. Dividing the timeline in its least possible time-slices does not help cramming in the massive data, as it has already reached beyond the limits of human perception.

Therefore, we need to reconsider the weird current condition of conventional media which is facing inevitable extinction. Fortunately, the operating system beyond the conventional media and the values created so far will no longer be part of a system which is fed by open source information generation.

Such a situation is also shaping the agenda of the digital art scene through various kinds of reactions and reflections such as Erhan Muratoglu’s video work “I/O Interface Overbloated” (2005). The work itself concentrates on a typical news bulletin on television which is humorously contaminated by digital data. Digital data encapsulates the regular broadcast with an anchorman presented news feed. “I/O Interface Overbloated” invites the viewer into an electronic zone that surrounds the solid physical world around us. We are living in a transitional period. Conventional media has mutated into something which strives to fit in the massive amount of digital data into its limited analogue space. “I/O Interface Overbloated” exposes the bottleneck condition in which new digital data try to flow through the television screen. The struggle between the narrated news and visual data feed creates bizarre conditions and undefined zones for the viewer/data receiver. The conventional TV screen is encapsulated by the new data struggling to find a way to flow.

(Both images accompanying the review are stills from Erhan Muratoglu’s video work “I/O Interface Overbloated”, 2005 ).

Contributor:

Basak Senova is a curator, writer and designer based in Istanbul. She holds an MFA in Graphic Design and a Ph.D. in Art, Design and Architecture from Bilkent University, and is very active internationally with art and technology related projects. She attended the 7th Curatorial Training Programme of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam in 2002. She has been publishing papers on art, technology and mass media since 1995, and frequently gives lectures. Senova initiated projects and curated exhibitions in Turkey and Europe since 1996. As a founding member of NOMAD she has been latelyinvolved in Upgrade!Istanbul. Her most recent curatorial projects include: "ctrl-alt-del" sound art project series (since 2003), "NOMAD-TV.network 01", " loosing.ctrl", "The 23rd International Contemporary Artists Istanbul and Diyarbakir Exhibitions". She is also involved with "Serial Cases_1 Acquaintance" as one of the curators of the project and also conducted some screening programmes in Turkey, Austria, Macedonia, and India.

Associated Links:

http://www.nomad-tv.net/