Note: If you see this text you use a browser which does not support usual Web-standards. Therefore the design of Media Art Net will not display correctly. Contents are nevertheless provided. For greatest possible comfort and full functionality you should use one of the recommended browsers.
 
There is no image available for this work.
 


 Marko Peljhan
«UCOG-144: Urban Colonization and Orientation Gear-144»

Time: from Feb. 28, 1996 at 10 a.m. through September 1996
Territory: Ljubljana and its surroundings

Working as a sort of cyborg for urban survival project, «The Urban Colonisation and Orientation Gear (UCOG-144)» recovers the physical city by strategically employing the very tools of technology that have marked it obsolete. The brainchild of «Projekt Atol Communications Technologies (PACT)», an artist group located in Ljubljana, Slovenia, «UCOG-144» is a portable, mobile communications system that enables performers to individually reconnect with the urban environment. Donning a backpack which contains a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) transceiver, audio beacon and wireless modems, performers walk through the streets of Ljubljana carving out 'paths of colonization.' With their bodies functioning as satellite dishes that both transmit and receive information, performers are able to track their physical coordinates in real time and create a new awareness of their location within the urban environment. The sounds, images, and thoughts performers collect during their strolls are posted on Project Atol's World Wide Web site, intimately linking the physical space of the city to the new space of simualtion. Using both bodies and technology to actively re-register the city, «UCOG-144» executes a prosthetic aesthetic that both extends and regenerates the urban environment.

(source: Laura McGough, «Prosthetic Aesthetics: Performing the Cyborg Body», in: MESH film/video/multimedia/art #10, http://www.experimenta.org/mesh/mesh08/8mcg.html)