The web-site element of Ann Whitehurst's work posed 6 questions/challenges, and the audience could respond on paper in the gallery (leaving the papers in "pocket-nets"), on computers in the gallery, or on the Internet. The artist then responded to some of the audience responses. The questions included:
- "What is the price to pay? Who pays it? Email the bill."
- "Invent a series of dreams for an organisation or institution. Email or pocket-net the results."
- "We want to honour Disabled people who died because of extermination and segregation policies supported by many societies, recent and distant, but there are no memorials to visit. What would you do to remember and respect these people, so often the first group to die, the last to be remembered?"
Below are a selection of audience computer posts from the Laing Art Gallery installation, with responses from Ann in the personae of Mav, Bi, or Pat. The question/challenge was:
"Jean-net's revenge - body unstable, perfection's aim convoluted, genetics push and pull, form changes, she net's the universe. If you could, what shape would you take? Would it be constant and what would the change mean for you?"
>I would take the form of a Moebius Strip.
>Having only one side would save on clothes expenses.
where would your innards go, how would you know which was which or what side you got out of the bed that morning? - Bi
>I would like to see all people of all nations to unite
as a shape, all stuck together, it could take an age when we want to have a pee - m
>The shape of a butterfly, flying and changing all the time. Hassia Yerushalmi
well I suppose they do and change everything else too, we all do. - Bi
Nah, it's to change, wing shape, iridescent colour I think and balance - mav
>I would become as calm as an Octagon - Pac Man
but what if a crowd got inside and created a stir Octagon - Bi
>Pentagon, you can't tile a surface just with pentagons. With hexagons and pentagons, however, you can tile a sphere. Dave
so you're social, not wanting to be pentagon, hexagon and the sphere yourself but share the functions? Pat
>I would be the shape of a mouse- did you know they could fit through a hole the size of a 5p piece? Maybe we should sent mice down ISDN or telephone lines with little messages tied around their necks- would save on BT bills. Hi-Res
but, Hi-Res, if they'd been made luminous like those in research on mice in Japan, they'd cause flickers on the telephone wires and wed all panic - pity they cant get there own back Didn't know about 5p piece makes blocking up holes in house a bit redundant!
mav
>insect-kafka-go with it don't struggle- waking suprised but filled with awe, experiment move a leg or two or six, blink no eyelids, vision excitement- NO FEAR.
quite like this, a different life (but you would mav) suppose problems vunerability if accidentally or otherwise turned on one's back
>invisible, if that can be a shape
The invisible man when touched, had shape. Mav
>an inverse of a sphere
>the hollows of the web
not the tennis-ball-turned-inside-out-explanation-of-the-universe nor hollow tubes of web magnified but the gentle undulations bought to our screens by BBC2 Open University and moving graphical representations of a sound, our breathing, the history of the spread of populations,? m
>tits
green or blue - we've more of the green birds in our garden, less since the neighbour's cat, even the magpies didn't makes its difference Mav
>Straight and true, no longer bent and twisted by the pain of being me. Ead
But how tedious is straight, so straight-forward no unexpectedness of twist, no discovery of bend, no shock yes, but no suprise too, how boring. Mav
> i would (and do on a regular basis)assume the shape of the opposite sex and also the shapes of all the people i have ever seen or met. i do this not as a product of insanity, niether am i a homosexual rather someone who is desperate to get themselves noticed . I would be a human, i would be a devil, i would be both and feel better for it... S.Barber painter and explorer
And what shape is you - perhaps a territory worthy of exploration then to image, S. Barber? Bi
>hello i would be a dog with 567 eyes and 4567 9 arms
so you'd be pretty large and not know what to look at first? What would you do when your arms were full or if you knocked the funny bone in one and it started all the others off? Mav?
>There are no constants in an ever unfolding pattern. Your shape is irrelevant. Technocrats will rule but the shape of us all will be dictated by our eternal creator the supreme microsoft
have a little faith
m
>A square - quadrophonic personality, and not because I'm really boring....honest!!
I think to be really boring, triumphantly boring not just mediocre boring would require a lot of skill but I'll believe you if you're not that skillful Mav
>Thu Jan 23 15:56:31 1997
>I WOULD BE A QUESTION MARK.
>Thu Jan 23 15:56:33 1997
>I WOULD BE A QUESTION MARK.
>Thu Jan 23 15:56:34 1997
>I WOULD BE A QUESTION MARK.
3 question marks, denoting 3 questions? Might have been better than 3 wishes m
>a bird because i could watch football matches at stjames park
but would you want to then - all that hovering or would you fly wherever the ball went causing distraction to the players? Mav
>a kangeroo shape is the shape for me. it would not be constant > emily hajek
is a kangaroo, is any creature?
m
>samantha
>house
a home of your own? m
>I would like to be a 365 sided shape. Then I would have a side for each day of the year. On a leap year I would lay flat!
Thanks, now I know why leap years are so difficult, I never know which facet of my personality to be on the 29th
Bi
>It would be nice not to be confined to one shape, the sort of freedom one has with prose. I write fiction and thats the main way I make art, but music and images matter too, and shape. Stephen
What kind of fiction, I write but fragments as I'm also phobic about writing Mav
>I would like to be a perfectly round shape and bounce and roll and move effortlessly around. I would be made a soft rubber that changed colour in different lights. I would be.
you had me entranced until the last sentence as I find thought of perfect and beautiful difficult to place
Pat
>fat and round because i coud scwoush people
yes I can just hear that
Mav
>I would be a physical thought
just one thought or would you change?
Mav
>good afternoon to you from C and her man Wayne (she wants to remain anonymous). There is a silly old man opposite who thinks what you say is gobbledegook. That apart, the shape that C wants is of Rubberwoman, who could program her video and tickle me without moving from the comfort of her/my sofa. Me? ....a dancer or a gymnast, who would have power, grace and strength. Is that part of the cult of the body beautiful?
Hello C & Wayne
GOBBLEDEGOOK, good, I've always wanted a second language. The problem with the idea of body beautiful is its so limiting - I watched some programs on choreography recently and thought just because arms, legs, body can be extended in such ways it doesn't mean need to constantly extend them so or throw the body about to the capacity of its strength - it seemed so restricted in its abandonment Mav
>SPHERICAL
>BALLS
why not triangular ones?
Mav
>water, no nets would catch me
but what about buckets and dams?
m
>the future is out there waiting to be created. >join us in utopia! >dave@animha.demon.co.uk >www.awn.com/animha
>The exterior qualities of the human shape aren't relevant to our true beings.
If you became formed somewhat differently from that conventionally accepted you'd find it was quite relevant to your life, to the person you become. I dont accept the notion of true being, some essential self not affected by the circumstances of ones life. I dont think I'd wish it that way either, I'd just like us to acknowledge the forces which affect our lives and see if we can change the forms our attitudes take
Mav
>I'd be Kirsty, cos shes lovely. >SIMMA.
I wonder is she there as you write this - does she know if not? Mav How would you feel about her if you were her though? Pat
>I should become a painting of a stiff victorian horse. The more so as to gallup away from the Laing leaving valuable hanging space for more modern stuff.
I'd like to see you, so perhaps you'd tour Britain with elements, turned to movement, from other paintings?
Mav
>Thanks for introducing these thoughts to us. Take Care, Kate M and Sam B (4th year Medics)
I wondered what your thoughts might be on the other trail questions? Mav
>Would it be possible to be an ether? Or is the physical necessary to conciousness? Doris
mmm, very interesting question - part of me must believe the physical necessary yet other mes dont want to
>i would be a worm, channelled like those of all times. diamond
thought it was worn channel and wondered do the time worms leave a cast? Mav
>The shape of a starfish, then falling down the stairs would be like doing a very impressive cartwheel - Derek:)
would you still be intact at the bottom though or wouldnt it matter in he glory of the cartwheel? Mav
>i would take the shape of a whippet.
I'd like the shape of the curve and a set of 10 whippets Bi
>The shape I would take would have to be a fluid, where shape is in a constant flux. This would physically reflect the many mental attitudes we all have. It would be an ideal flexible form. rktld@wmin.ac.uk
would it have been better if we all did change shape reflecting psychological/emotional states? Mav
>I would be cow-shaped, big and proud, or maybe cows are not naturally that shape, but genetically engineered to be unwieldy. I would be mad-cow shaped- wiry, deliberately withholding my milk, jumping over the moon! yours, Hi-Res
and a/m would find where to get a pair of stretchy friesan-pattern leggings from a friend of a friend and with her walk whilst wearing them, would empty the supermarkets - Bi. About milk, avoid the AI or bull or keep it for the calves, whatever, I know we'd never be the advert cows singing joyously about giving away our calves milk for butter whilst our young are taken away from us - how they demean the cow and reveal themselves - Pat. Where are the cow sanctuaries and protests against the cull? Why do other animals matter more with donkey sanctuaries and protests against the culling of seals? Is it because we think of them as product not animal? - Mav
>I would like to take the shape of a tape. >Signed: Arthur.
You could have your life history on tape then Arthur Mav
>I would like to be a triangle because if anyone tries to sit on me theyll hurt themselves. By Barry Stephens 10R.
that's true unless you were a soft triangle, a drawing or a jelly triangle. Suppose you thought you were hard so didn't move out of the way but you find you're a written triangle just as they squash you Mav
>A cat, cats can't type and so don't have to work in offices. Class.
Perhaps they can but are clever enough not to Mav
>Spiral Jennie
a spiral Jennie, nicer than the history lesson spinning jenny, would it have worked has well though Mav
>For the body to be unstable, one must assume that there is a physical body. I.e. limitations. I would prefer to have no physical limitations. >jae
I'd like no political ones Jae
Mav
>big and round with a cherry on top
>signed Alec Foster
>Hello, my name is Christopher. I am 10. I would be a hexagon because I could fit on to other hexagons and we would feel safe.
Would you live in an hexagon world Christopher or just be free floating in space? Pat Hope you wouldn't mind mixing with a few tetragons, octagons, heptagons and triangles, particularly triangles as they'd be kind of like your cousins Mav
>I'd neaten the edge
>Franc
I'd be the edge
Bi
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