“At
Towns' Surface” proposed by Pierre Ponant for the 1st Festival
de Diseño y communicacion BsAs/00,
Centro
cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, September 13-October 1st, 2000.
With the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Argentina
and the program génération/s 2001 initiated by the AFAA.
“At
Towns' Surface”,
exibition.
Ultracity [TM] :
version 01 (09-11 2000)
Site
Ultracity,
a pronouncement of Labomatic(U) and Ultralab(L).
Guests: Alban Barré, Nicolas Moulin and Erik Minkkinen.
Thanks
to Pierre Ponant (Paris), Marcela Gonzalez, Roberto et Victoria Garcia
Balza (Buenos-Aires) and Jean-Luc Lemaire for his precious help with this
project.
credits
Mythical and transparent city, scattered through the abstract flesh of the Network, Ultracity was imagined in the early 30's by a small eclectic group of electronic nomads, united by a shared conception of individual liberties. Their experience and their tenacious aversion, the most insidious and subtle among new technological alienations introduced at this time, incited the founders of the little V city to distance themselves continually from the imposed developmental models in order to set the foundation for that which would become the extreme point of the sub-V annexes, the elusive Ultracity, the ultimate ghost of the machine.On-line for the first time in 1933, the small town of beginnings, legally based in Anguilla in the West Indies, was conceived as a simple, semi-invisible, digital paradise, principally dedicated to the protection of private lives. After the first total ban in 1939 that broke the flow of connections for several long months, the founding group, augmented by newcomers linked to this first period, formed a free syndicate and decided to completely tip the town towards increased invisibility.
The first V city to achieve autonomy thanks to an audacious strategy of "structured chaotic coding", Ultracity, then the focal point of most of the digital dissidents of V world, quickly became a gigantic city-refuge, already that of which we know so little today. The present-day Ultracity, continually more powerful and active, continues to propagate itself along the Network's veins. Absolute, symbolic place, devoid of a center but not of a heart, truly humane community without the least precise geographical location, opaque and super-structural program totally devoted to the cult of anonymity and the protection of all our obscurities, this the most secret virtual city of the entire V world forms an essential composite enclave, immersed in the heart of the gigantic informative global flow that pierces this world in flames piece by piece.*
* For obvious security reasons, Ultracity is never entirely apparent. Any information provided by Ultracom can be modified at any moment.
Ultracom is a registered trademark of Ultralab Inc.
Ultralab(L), Department of Artistic Projects at Labomatic(U), is a registered trademark of the Groupe Labomatic(U), Paris.