NEoN Digital Arts Archive
A HOTSPOT SHACK
Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg
WEST WARD WORKS
Guthrie Street
Dundee
DD1 5BR
A shack is an image of a fictitious temporary accommodation and of a short stop on a journey. While this metaphor can be found in the narrations of many computer games, physically built shacks, huts and sheds can be found everywhere on the planet, implemented in local materials and shapes. Whether they are cobbled together with replacements or bought as a prefab module, they offer small spaces for all basic needs – still, there is always something improvised and ephemeral to them.
The surface of the plain wooden construction of the “Hotspot Shack” is entirely covered in printed wallpapers showing digital renderings of a patchwork of materials. These walls form the outside of small housing, which can be accessed through a narrow entrance on the back. Inside the dark space, visitors find an interactive projection, in which objects and photographs are floating around in an open space. The new and surprising spatial combinations, which the clusters of the gamelike elements form, are never repeated, they are constantly arranged at random by the tailor-made software.
For this level of the interactive projection, the artists have expanded the data pool of 3D objects with new elements which relate to the inside/outside theme of the installation: scaffolds, construction sites, curtains, and of course parts of the shack itself.
The installation “A Hotspot Shack” was first shown and commissioned by the Helvetia Art Foyer in Basel, Switzerland, in 2016.
More information at www.studervandenberg.ch
Join us for the opening on 10th November at 8 pm
More work by Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg can be seen at Mary Slessor Gardens as part of the Sharing not Hoarding project.