In order to use the Zip Line suspended over a wetland that had appeared overnight I joined the Imaginary Airforce. After wetland education and a thrilling ride, I chatted with Angel Borrego Cubero, architectural design professor at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. We talked about bridges as metaphors for connection but in loco usually separating people, neighborhoods, ecosystems. His Mutant Bridges fit into the ecology of a place.
A few yards away I stopped to hear Ken Eklund, a San Jose-based game designer, and Annette Mees, a London-based Dutch artist, initiate some 20 ambassadors for ZOROP. These Zoropathians roamed the city for two days, introduced strangers to each other, mined the connections, photographed the pairs, then via phone sent photos and ratings to be digitally mapped on an Onomy Tilty Table—demonstrating the minute separation between people.
After using the community toolroom to laser-cut a complex design in thick cardboard, I meandered over to speak with Beth Schechter of Georgia Tech, envisioning the future of agriculture. We wondered if median strips in cities might grow food. I was already feeling nourished.
Last week all 80,000 square feet of San Jose Convention Center’s South Hall was transformed into a thrilling interactive laboratory where scores of artists, scientists, engineers and research teams engaged visitors in tackling some of the world’s impenetrable issues. It was part of ZERO1 (01SJ Biennial), an exhilarating festival centered in downtown San Jose “at the nexus of art, technology and digital culture.” A hefty curatorial committee brought 150 artists from 22 countries to Build Your Own World, the central theme of this, the third ZERO1 biennial. Drawing on the resources of Silicon Valley and maximizing the perfect conjunction of arts institutions and public facilities clustered within blocks of each other, it was the essence of San Jose.
There were nine art exhibitions—some continuing, 46 commissioned works, a street party, a parade, a “live” drive-in theater, an “underground” marketplace for homegrown food. Live performances filled streets, theaters, clubs, galleries, cinemas, cathedrals and the city’s space-age City Hall with the work of artist-programmers, ballerinas, Bharatanatyam dancers and robots, opera singers, taiko drummers and garage bands, street poets and music moaning from a 50-foot sculptural playback device. Public art, some permanent, sprouted everywhere. A two-day climate change symposium was followed by a groundbreaking digital art symposium.
For decades I have wryly remembered poet Richard Brautigan’s vision of future in a “cybernetic meadow” where humans, now returned to the land, are “watched over by machines of loving grace.” After 01SJ, inspired by untrammeled creativity, I again see technology as a friend. For more about ZERO1, visit my blog at KUSP.org/exhibitionist.
