Database Pøø: Mutating Informatic Tools

256 Leonardo Gallery Kevin Heisner, Database Pøø: Mutating Informatic Tools, found wooden animal crate, video projection, electronics, steel, voice pager and Internet, 60 × 20 × 36 in, 1999. (© Kevin Heisner) In this work a database is generated over the duration of the exhibition. The viewers/ participants interact with the piece by leaving a telephone response. The message is then forwarded to a voice pager installed inside a wooden animal transport cage, which is the shell of the sculpture. This message is then emitted in delayed real time from within the cage. There is a door at one end of the wooden box with an expanded metal opening through which the viewer can see inside and view a projected video. The messages end up recorded into a database on a web site. The site displays a short animation of the video, the phone number and the text sorted into a randomly ordered data structure. This artwork explores presence/absence in communication, pattern/ randomness in information, and the evolution of artificial senses and its biological ramifications. (Kevin Heisner, 439 N. Leavitt Street #2, Chicago, IL 60612, U.S.A. E-mail: .) KEVIN HEISNER: DATABASE PØØ: MUTATING INFORMATIC TOOLS ...