15_IN_AMuntadas_m&a:Maquetaci贸n 1
26/6/08
17:21
P谩gina 207
A
Antoni Muntadas_ On Translation: Social Networks
ntoni Muntadas is one of the most important names in Spanish art of the last four decades. His work investigates issues revolving around communication in the social and political arena and examines the way in which channels of information are used to promote or censure ideas. Over the course of his career, Muntadas has explored multiple media and languages, including the digital format. Projects such as The File Room were pioneering attempts at approaching the Net as a space for intervention. In 1995 he began his long-term project On Translation, which addresses the ways in which the processes of information transmission modify original meanings. On Translation: Social Networks is a project that deals with language, revealing how military terminology has a direct direction and influences vocabularies pertaining to other disciplines and fields such as economy, culture and technology. The work consists of a large-format mural installation containing a map of the world onto which a series of data taken from the web and analysed by a search programme are projected continuously. The geographic coordinates of each domain are also part of the system that contains a database of selected words taken primarily from military references and selected internet domains that represent areas of cultural production and contemporary technology of different economic levels. This piece uses language to analyse the complex network of economic, cultural, technological and military systems that operate via the current social sphere.
A CONFRONTATIONAL ESTHETICS* by Andrea Giunta The oeuvre of Antoni Muntadas appears as a wonderful laboratory for analyzing the changes produced in the ways of conceiving and creating artworks in an age characterized by technological innovations and new communication dynamics. These transformations are condensed in the term globalization and allude to contacts and forms of circulation that are preferentially staged in cities, establishing worldwide forms of economic and cultural exchange that extend beyond national borders.