Rafael Lozano-Hemmer — Vectorial Elevation

1999

Artists: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer · Year: 1999 · Medium: Public participatory installation — 18 robotic searchlights controlled by web-submitted designs · Substrate: 18 xenon searchlights placed around the Zócalo plaza; custom software processing web-submitted design patterns; each submission rendered as a searchlight pattern visible across Mexico City · Place: Mexico City, Mexico · Institution: Commissioned by Mexico's Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes for millennium celebrations Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Vectorial Elevation (1999-2000) was the millennium-celebration centerpiece for Mexico City: eighteen robotic searchlights arranged around the Zócalo plaza, each one controllable by web-submitted designs. Anyone anywhere in the world could log on, design a searchlight pattern, and submit it to be rendered over Mexico City for thirty seconds. Every valid submission was performed. The installation ran for two weeks and processed approximately 800,000 submissions from 89 countries. The piece is a founding work of participatory public interactive art at urban scale. Visitors to the physical plaza saw their web-submitted patterns projected into the sky in real time; web visitors anywhere could watch live video of their own submissions being performed. The combination — physical monumentality, web-native participation, immediate feedback — established a template that Lozano-Hemmer has continued to refine across dozens of subsequent large-scale installations. Lozano-Hemmer's Relational Architectures series (of which Vectorial Elevation is the second) has been his dominant body of work. Body Movies (2001), Under Scan (2005), Voice Array (2011), and many others have placed participatory interactive infrastructure at major public sites around the world. His 2007 Venice Biennale Mexican Pavilion commission and his 2015 installation at the UN Climate Conference in Paris are among the largest-scale participatory art works of the period. He is based in Montreal and continues to produce large-scale public work. Lore The 1999 Vectorial Elevation infrastructure was significant: eighteen Skytracker searchlights, each computer-controlled, each visible from up to 15 kilometers. The web submission system was unusual for 1999 and required custom infrastructure that Lozano-Hemmer's studio developed specifically for the piece. The installation has been restaged at Vancouver Olympics (2010), Lyon Biennale, and other venues. Lozano-Hemmer's studio — Antimodular Research — maintains much of its documentation publicly. Sources • Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael — lozano-hemmer.com • Antimodular Research — studio documentation • Manovich, Lev (ed.) — Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Scale (Antimodular, 2005)