The 10th CYFEST opened in Bogota, Colombia October 27, 2016. Its “Digital Revolution” Media Program had been accompanied by the new artwork from CYLAND founder and CYFEST curator Anna Frants. Entitled “No. 0”, it is a modular, 3D Public Art installation from the artist’s series “Explosion of a Can of Condensed Milk After Water Has Evaporated”. Conceptually referencing a computer grid and visually reflecting the infrastructure of a building sans walls – Frants builds up an open framework of hollow, polypropylene cubes. The exposed scaffolding houses objects, videos, and movements. The interior (unlived-in lived-in) space is empty for viewers to navigate the visuals, sounds, words, and virtual actions of the exterior matrix and formulate their own story. The installation is flexible, varying from site to site and country to country, with local materials utilized in each iteration.
At SOFA, the structural framework of “No. 0” had been built on site at Corferias prior to the event’s opening. Throughout the first two days of SOFA, the many visual components of the artwork had been placed, moved, and connected to the structural framework in a collaboration between representatives of CYLAND and visitors to SOFA. At SOFA, “No. 0” is equal parts new media art installation and social practice “intervention”.
A modern day ode to creative technology production, consumption, and omnipresent “ordering” structures in society – “No. 0” is a contemporary Tower of Babel. “No. 0” serves as a platform to reconnect peoples of the globe through a shared process of discovering juxtapositions of virtual :: physical, reliance on devices :: human interaction, and direct :: indirect communication.