For Immediate Release November 6, 1997 Contact: ssinsley@starnetinc.com ARTIST EDUARDO KAC IMPLANTS IDENTIFICATION MICROCHIP TIME CAPSULE, AN INTRACORPOREAL ART WORK BY KAC, RAISES ETHICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN DIGITAL CULTURE, LIVE ON TV AND ON THE WEB ARTIST'S ARM WILL BE SCANNED VIA THE INTERNET ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT, WHEN, WHERE: What: Event in which a microchip (identification transponder tag) will be implanted in the artist's left arm Artist: Eduardo Kac (ekac@artic.edu) When: Tuesday, November 11, 1997, at 9:30 PM S=E3o Paulo time (6:30 PM US EST) Where: Casa das Rosas Cultural Center, S=E3o Paulo, Brazil On the air: Live on national Brazilian television via TV Cultura, in the daily program "Metropolis," at 9:30 PM S=E3o Paulo time (via Intelsat) Online: Live Webcast (November 11) at http://www.dialdata.com.br/casadasrosas/net-art/kac Additional information and permanent site: http://www.ekac.org/timec.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AN ARTICLE ABOUT TIME CAPSULE BY EDUARDO KAC CAN BE READ AT: http://www.ekac.org/timec.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CAPSULE "Time Capsule" is a work-experience that lies somewhere between a local event-installation, a site-specific work in which the site itself is both the artist's body and a remote database, and a simulcast on TV and the Web. The object that gives the piece its title is a microchip with a programmed identification number which is integrated with a coil and a capacitor, all hermetically sealed in biocompatible glass. Scanning the implant generates a low energy radio signal (125 KHz) that energizes the microchip to transmit its unique and inalterable numerical code, which is shown on the scanner's 16-character Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). As we call "memory" the storage units of computers and robots, we antropomorphize our machines, making them look a little bit more like us. In the process, we mimic them as well. Memory today is on a chip. The body is traditionally seen as the sacred repository of human-only memories, acquired as the result of genetic inheritance or personal experiences. Memory chips are found inside computers and robots and not inside the human body yet. In "Time Capsule", the presence of the chip (with its recorded retrievable data) inside the body forces us to consider the co-presence of internal lived memories and external artificial memories within us. External memories become implants in the body, anticipating future instances in which events of this sort might become common practice and inquiring about the legitimacy and ethic implications of such procedures in the digital culture. Live transmissions on television and on the Web bring the issue closer to our living rooms. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eduardo Kac is an artist and writer who works with electronic and photonic media. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States, Europe, and South America. Kac's works belong to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Holography in Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, among others. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Leonardo, published by MIT Press. In 1995 he received the prestigious Shearwater Foundation Holography Award for his body of work in the medium, and in 1996 he received a grant from the same foundation to compile the first book on the aesthetic theory of holography (in progress). His anthology "New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New Technologies" was published in 1996 as a special issue of the journal Visible Language, of which he was a guest editor. His writings on electronic art have appeared in several books and journals in many countries, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, =46rance, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States. He is an Assistant Professor of Art and Technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has received numerous grants and awards for his work. Kac works with multiple media to create hybrids from the conventional operations of existing communications systems, engaging participants in situations involving elements such as light, language, distant places, time zones, telerobotics, interspecies interaction, video conferences, biological elements, and the exchange of digital information. Often relying on the indefinite suspension of closure and the intervention of the participant, his work encourages confrontation of complex issues concerning identity, agency, responsibility, and the very possibility of communication. Eduardo Kac can be contacted at: ekac@artic.edu. His work can be seen at: http://www.ekac.org. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------