Zero1: Seeking Silicon Valley

Having studied both computer information systems and art history, Jaime Austin has each side covered for her role as lead curator and director of programmes at Zero1. The non-profit organization focuses on the intersection of art and technology and holds a biennial dedicated to the cause. In previous years the event lasted less than one week, but the 2012 edition — which is themed Seeking Silicon Valley and intends to be a launch pad for a year-round programme — runs for almost three months. Domus took a trip to San Jose, California — the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley — to check out Zero1 Garage, the organization's new permanent home and the biennial's hub.

Tracey Ingram: This year's theme — Seeking Silicon Valley — addresses discovery. What are you hoping visitors will uncover?
Jaime Austin: Silicon Valley is as much an idea as it is a place. This became so apparent when a South American artist who's very involved with technology visited the Bay Area for the first time. He landed at San Jose airport and wanted to see Silicon Valley. I thought to myself: How do you do that? Even though I grew up here, I had no idea how to actually see it. His checklist included visiting eBay, Google and the venture capitalist firms. Nothing is visible to the public, so I could sense both his interest and disappointment. His preconception of Silicon Valley didn't match the reality. There's no cohesive architecture, nor a central gathering point. Contemporary art has the capacity to re-imagine Silicon Valley. That's where the "seeking" theme came from: the process is as important as what is found.

What drove the selection of curators?
Instead of making the biennial strictly about being in Silicon Valley, I focused on the area's relationship with the rest of the world. We've always had a global representation of artists, but never an international set of curators. I used the idea of a network to form an interlinked collaborative curatorial team — the five of us are from different countries.

And you're all female. Is that a coincidence?
I didn't set out to form an all-female team, and I spoke to men as well. It came down to whose ideas I was most interested in and which individuals could collaborate best. It's a challenge to work across time zones, distances and language barriers.

Since the tech industry is male-dominated, what approach did you take as females?
In a place where the workforce is generally evenly distributed, the reality is that men hold 95 per cent of tech-executive positions. Silicon Valley is known for innovation and forward thinking, so I question why that's still the case. There are, however, so many female curators who focus on digital and media art. Should our approach be any different because we're females? I'm not sure. It's definitely a statement, and something we wanted to point out.

Compared with other disciples, technology-related projects must experience exponential development from year to year. What changes have you noticed since the last biennial?
Consider Maurice Benayoun's work, Tunnels Around the World (2012), which he started in 1995. He hoped to connect cities with an interactive tunnel in which users could "dig" through cultural information and communicate with one another. Despite his best efforts, it wasn't feasible back then. This year he could realize the project as he'd always imagined it. Some artists hold on to their ideas until the technology is ready. There are also projects that use cutting-edge, experimental technology, such as MeatMedia's Brain Station 2 (2012), which detects brainwaves in the visual cortex and represents them with a light bulb turning on and off. Then there are works that reference technologies yet don't use them at all. Thomas Thwaites's The Toaster Project (2010) is about the comic fallacy of trying to make a toaster from scratch. The idea is that we've become divorced from the technology of something as simple as an appliance you can by for $5 at the local store, and questions how that impacts our society.

If some artists are waiting for the technology, do they also drive developments?
Definitely. Taking existing tools and using them in ways the inventors had never imagined is what artists do best. We connected Maurice Benayoun with a communication company that creates voice-recognition software for the iPhone. The way in which he wants to use the technology is something the engineers hadn't previously considered, and they're currently developing it further. Other artists are conducting research that fuels the future direction of tools. Whether it's the way Michael Najjar is digitally manipulating large numbers of photographs, or how Corinne Okada Takara's Seeking Shelter (2012) shows how kids can use iPads to design things on the spot.

What's Zero1's wider goal?
People need to consider the implications of how the technology that's invented in Silicon Valley is propagated. The two projects about e-waste are important since so many people upgrade their phones and laptops every few years without thinking about what happens to them. We also hope there'll be a greater awareness of space in Silicon Valley. We want to open up corporate campuses so there's a public interface. Mark Hansen and Jer Thorp worked with eBay on Before Us is the Salesman's House (2012), a site-specific installation that's accessible to visitors. It uses live data that would otherwise be unavailable to the public to visualise transactions by tying them to famous literary texts. Adding a cultural layer makes the data more tangible.

Through 8 December 2012
2012 Zero1 Biennial
Seeking Silicon Valley
San José, USA