this week's topic is Web Environments

Tate in Space (c) Susan Collins 2002

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Tate in Space was conceived as a site specific artwork for Tate Online. It was commissioned in 2002 as part of Tate Online's ongoing net art programme. The site is part fact, part fiction. It is intended as an agent provocateur: a catalyst, structure and location that invites debate and reflection on the nature of art in space, cultural ambition, and an examination of the role of the institution and the individuals within. Tate in Space also works as interactive or immersive fiction, where each visitor is encouraged to engage with their own extra-terrestrial cultural fantasies. Some aspects of the work - such as the satellite sightings data - rely on participants 'wishing' or 'believing' the narrative into existence, assuming a position of co-authorship; collaborating with both the artist and each other in a work of constantly expanding collective fiction. Further information about the work can be found in Paul Bonaventura's critical essay, Floating Worlds 2002, commissioned to accompany the launch of Tate in Space.

Discussion about Tate in Space with Susan Collins and Jemima Rellie 20 February 2004 - Tate Members Room, 6th floor Tate Modern

JR - Jemima Rellie

SC - Susan Collins

JR Why the interest in Space? What is the background? I mean, are you interested in art in space or in space art?

SC I'm not so interested in Space Art per se but I'm intrigued by why people were becoming so interested in space. I got interested in the idea when probably a lot of other people did, when the Mars Pathfinder was actually sending direct web cam images back to earth, and you could actually go and follow the Mars Pathfinder through these wonderful grainy webcam images. It was very exciting that you were actually able to see that happen in real time. And then I was also interested in the idea of, well how easy it would be to fictionalise that, like in the film Capricorn,

where they actually fabricate a whole space mission because basically, the mission's not going to work... so they manufacture the whole thing and create a stage set and, and pretend that they've actually landed. At the time of the Mars Pathfinder... a few years ago, in the late nineties... I was interested in possibly coming up with a spoof NASA site.

JR Was it going to be a website?

SC It was going to be a website, n a five a dot org [NA5A.org], I checked that that was available, and discussed the idea with some net art curators [e2]. I was really interested in creating artist residencies in space, and the concept that they would be actually sending back their work. But at the same time, suddenly - and probably because of the Mars PathFinder - Arts Catalyst and various other Space related Art initiatives were launched and it seemed to be a very zeitgeisty thing. For this particular project, I wasn't really interested in it being yet another Space art project. I wanted it to just come out of the blue. I didn't want it to be seen within the context of a general interest in Space Art as such, I was much more interested in...

JR The fiction of it all...

SC Yes

JR Which is really interesting and what separates you in a sense from those artists who are more concerned about the practicalities, the real what happens, the materiality of space... whereas you are more interested in the construct of 'space' and what it says about us...

SC And why we might be interested...in it...and what our motivation is, and what it says about earth, and what it says about the context for us viewing things and our understanding of how we see things. Because it suddenly became so fashionable, I wasn't so interested, so I dropped the idea. But when you gave me the opportunity to come up with an idea for the Tate website, as the kind of artist who has access to web space anyway, for me the question was, well what can I do on

the Tate site that I might not be able to do elsewhere - because obviously I can always do something of my own, and that's something that the web has made very possible for artists. So for me it was what is it about this institutional context that I could actually do something with? So I came to where we are now, Tate Modern...I spent the day just thinking about Tate Modern and all the different Tates. It took a while for me to work out what I wanted to do, it wasn't quite there... I got very interested in deconstructing the branding - how the whole thing, the whole organisation works - and then it came together...I think it was about the day before the deadline you'd given...

JR Really!?

SC Yes, the day before it all sort of came to me, it was really like marrying these two ideas together [space and the Tate]. I think I'd been thinking about all the different Tates, and the water and at one point I was thinking about submarines and ... about how I could link all the Tates, and I was very much wanting to do it within the context of Tate as an institution, I... for me I just didn't see the point... of having a website that was just a... website...

JR I think that's very interesting. As you say, the web has really allowed artists to bypass organisations like Tate. Actually, they, you don't need us.

SC So I wanted to take advantage of the situation....

JR To intervene? As an intervention...?

SC Yes, but also there was a little bit of it that was about how net art is so invisible within terrestrial institutions and how we might have an incredible visibility internationally, with a certain kind of audience reach, if we do things online

JR So when you conceived Tate in Space, was it intended to somehow address that issue?

SC It was intended to... No it was more a case of: I don't want to do some little website that no-one's going to look at!

JR So let's be audacious! Lets stand up there and say that we're equal to Tate Modern!

SC Yeah...so its like I'm not just going to make a little piece of art, I'm gonna give you a whole new Tate. So it was kind of like 'oh well sod it'! And then I just had such fun, thinking it up and playing with all those funding constructs...or constraints... the things that both institutions and artists at the moment have to think about... the search for new audiences... innovation... accessibility... that kind of thing.

JR And it fits so well with precisely what Tate is about, that it has fooled a lot of people, and I love that. Sandy Nairne - who was instrumental in commissioning it... His foreword to the project... it sounds SO real, no wonder people fell for it. It speaks about Tate's 'history of innovation' and 'exploration' and you know we are about supposedly pushing boundaries and...

SC Well there are only two organisations that one could have done it for in the world that it would have been believable. One would be the Guggenheim, because that has satellites, and the other is Tate. And the idea of the satellite obviously has a very nice little sort of double entendre in relation to Tate in Space as well...

JR But do you think that Tate and the Guggenheim are the same?

SC No they're very different institutions but they're the only ones, I mean if a more local museum or say somewhere like the Ikon gallery in Birmingham had wanted to do a project online I wouldn't have proposed the same project...If even the Pompidou Centre in Paris had invited me to make a proposal for a net art piece then this would not have been it... it just wouldn't have been plausible...and so the only reason that I mention these two [the Guggenheim and Tate] is because these are the two that are really known particularly...

JR For being a network and interested in satellite sites and creating new spaces...within one brand.

SC And I am not sure but I think also for Tate the whole re-branding happened when Tate Modern came onstream? In terms of 'Tate' as opposed to 'the Tate'.

JR Absolutely.

SC Colour coding the institutions...and I think that it's largely the branding that made it plausible as well and whilst a project like this could, in some respects have existed as an offline project in an earlier age through leafleting or posters or something like that ...certainly that would have not been nearly as plausible or as economically possible - or worked in such a seamlessly integrated way as is possible now with 'Tate'... having such clear, graphically scripted parameters as well. So it was a very seamless thing for me to be able to borrow all your [web] templates. I have to say...that when I made the proposal, I really enjoyed just writing it as a proposal, for me the proposal was an art work in itself I was having such fun and really, really enjoying the idea of it landing on your desk.....

JR But this fun thing I think is very crucial. A very fundamental element is that it is playful - the whole piece is playful.

SC And people pick up on it, their own imagination suddenly runs with this idea of what this new Tate might be. What I thought was fantastic was that the Tate in having come up with a very serious kind of corporate brand, was willing to actually have this piece operate, and one of the things that I asked for, as you know, in the original proposal was that it should be integrated, absolutely within the Tate site and that there would be a link alongside the other Tates from the homepage of the Tate site for the first year...and the fact that you were all so willing to actually do that made it possible.

JR Well it was essential for the whole piece to work wasn't it?

SC Exactly.

JR I'm very interested in what you said before: that it wouldn't have been as successful or it wouldn't have worked in the same way pre-internet. And there is a tendency for some net artists to be slightly scornful of this type of work that is more conceptual and yet the piece is so successful because it's online. It's taking full advantage of the medium. It's about creating a fiction and a group of people combining to contribute to this fiction that has made it work, and the participatory elements... are I think critical.

SC Well it's very much about creating a space for people to occupy, so in some respects as the artist I chose to become as invisible as possible within this structure. Although I have a role, which is director of this new Tate. But it was very much about offering this up as a space very much as other kind of public spaces are: for people to come in and make of it what they will, and all I could do is imagine what might happen. So the piece in a way whilst clearly constructed only really begins when its launched. That's when you really find out what then may happen.

JR Which makes it quite tricky as an art work, I mean, as we discovered. How do you credit everyone involved at all times? And different people talking about the work will focus on certain elements that aren't necessarily the whole piece. They're part of the piece and a way into the piece but they don't constitute the whole piece and that's quite hard to manage. It does it takes on its own life, and in a sense, you have to let it do that.

SC Yes, you have to relinquish control... There were all the different sections and it might just be worth mentioning what they were. One element was obviously the history of Space Art, which makes the site quite useful too, so whilst the whole site is a complete blend of fact and fiction, I did do my homework...

JR Thoroughly!

SC And so the history of space art is written by Eduardo Kac, is a proper history, and then there are links to key sites so if anyone is genuinely interested in finding out more about Space Art they have somewhere to go with it. So it's actually serving an educational purpose as well. It was important to make it inclusive, so whilst it wasn't a real Tate in the sense that there aren't opportunities for artists to exhibit in it - although many did try - I created an online discussion group,. So if people did cold call me, which did happen quite a lot or they'd send me their CV's and things like that, I could say that whilst there weren't opportunities for them within the parameters of the Tate in Space website itself that it would be fantastic if they could contribute to the discussion. Everybody without exception said 'yes please' and jumped onto the discussion list. So actually there's this discussion list full of all the people, pretty much that are interested in Space Art in the world...

JR How many people were on that list at the end? Well roughly?

SC The list is still growing. I've added two more people this morning ...there are well over a hundred...I haven't checked the numbers for ages. They are from all over the world from Venezuela to Cuba to Russia..

JR And constitute an extraordinary cross-section of people and interests from scientists, space scientists, to academics to artists and architects

SC The full range.

JR Did they share a common language? I'm very interested in what happens when you bring that kind of group of people into a list. Did it work the way you anticipated it would?

SC I think some people were part of the list because they were very excited about the fiction and the satirical nature of the work, whereas others were seriously advocating Space Art as the new

frontier...and then there was quite a serious element which was that space so far has been really explored by governments and it's so far been quite militaristic in it's uses - like Star Wars etc - and that there was a very serious imperative for culture to be in there and colonise that space as well. So you know, it was really quite serious and what I did for the discussion list was that I had a list of questions that I thought was quite useful to put out as a series of provocative statements that were to do with the nature of cultural ambition and to question it. Like whether it could be seen as Space Art or space pollution? I think there are probably many camps, you know some people are very excited about putting this kind of stuff out there and other people who question whether we should be messing up beyond our own planet.

JR And do you think this could be used as a metaphor for Tate as an organisation as well? In terms of whether we should acknowledge and check our cultural, colonial ambitions?

SC No, but I think it's interesting in terms of audience. Everybody seemed to assume that we were really talking to ourselves - that we were talking back to earth. And without sounding too hippy trippy, how can we assume that? I mean that's quite an arrogant assumption. It immediately begged the question: what happens to a piece of work when it's put out there? Why would you be looking inwards to a gallery when you can be looking outwards to the stars. Perhaps the whole idea of what cultural intervention might be would be questioned by that. What was interesting is that one of the sets of architects - involved in writing an article recently - sent me some of their text. In it they asked would the need for art be negated by the views out of the window? I emailed them to say well actually I have a problem with that sentence because you are assuming that the need for art is decorative, or purely to do with visual rather than to do with a fundamental human imperative to create, so I think that depends very much on what one considers the role of art to be, and if the role of art is to mirror or question one's context and ones environment or...

JR But you're right, and the three architectural approaches do suggest that the architects involved have very different visions for what exactly it would mean and the role the gallery would play and the experience the audience would have in a Tate in Space.

SC Well, I was very clear that in creating Tate in Space it was really only going to work as another Tate. I was actually following the idea of what happened before Tate Modern was built, so the whole construct was around the development programme for the new Tate - Tate in Space

JR With pre-opening programmes to build up consensus and enthusiasm...

SC Absolutely, and you also invite proposals from architects to get a sense of what the space would or could be like. The website needed to make sense in terms of its architecture and with a very modest budget... what could I ask for? What is fair given that it was highly unlikely that a genuine commission would come out of it, (which is usually why architects pitch their work for no or low fees). So I kept it very simple and asked them for a visualisation and a very basic concept... I asked them all to produce a model, that could be downloaded as a PDF file that people could then make at home. I really like the idea of using Tate in Space as an opportunity to actually distribute these architectural models that could be made at home so that people could have their own little Tate in Space model. Sort of putting something back out into the real world...

JR Again a kind of blur between the fiction and the real...very interesting...

SC Something tangible, something intangible...

JR Yes.

SC Initially I invited three architects [ETALAB, Softroom and Sarah Wigglesworth Architects] for the launch of the website and then later on I launched the student competition, which was

fantastic because we had people contributing from all over the world and that was really exciting and we've included quite a few on the site even the ones that didn't win.

JR And most were of an extraordinarily high standard as well actually.

SC Yes.

JR And I was really amazed at the effort that people put in and the quality of the entries.

SC Yes... I think it was very exciting, that people responded and jumped in... To some extent the architecture really captured the imagination.

JR It's very visual. That's where the design and the visual aesthetics of the piece come in, isn't it?

SC Very much so and in some respects this was very difficult as when people ask for an image to represent the project some architects seemed to get more exposure than others. Just a picture of the website is not very sexy so the architecture tends to be the flagship for the website. What has been really exciting is that the architects' designs have generated so much publicity and interest around the whole Tate in Space project. The architecture to some extent has driven it into a utopian vision...or almost a desire to build a Tate in Space. The project isn't necessarily advocating that that is what we should be doing, but is asking why we might wish to do it and actually questioning that ambition. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing it either, I'm just mirroring back.

JR Well and to be kind of fictional and idealistic, it could happen one day, with all this talk in the press at the moment about space travel...

SC It's plausible/possible!

JR Yes. But it's interesting that you say that perhaps that isn't the right thing for us to be doing at this point and you're enticing Tate to question, and I guess the audience as well, why is it that we want to push all these boundaries...to extend?

SC Yes it's that human urge and competitive instinct - that bigger better, further, broader kind of thing - it's opening up a window on what it is that we can't almost help about ourselves. And it is meant to be a satirical site. I don't see the site as a spoof, I see it as a satire. A satire is more critical than a spoof, and as I said there's a lot of fact in it as well.

JR Well all your [satellite] sightings: they were properly mapped weren't they?

SC And what was quite interesting about that is that it became about using our low expectations of certain kinds of web technologies. So my web cam (the image was made up in fact of a bouncy ball on my table at home) was constructed through flash animation in such a way as to reflect our expectation that webcam images are jerky and unreliable (I even had to slow the whole thing down to make it more authentic and deliberately put in fuzz every so often so that people would really feel that it's having difficulty connecting). For people to believe it, it had to be authentically low res.....

JR I love the idea of people going outside and looking up to see the satellite passing when actually you could never see anything. You can't see satellites and yet for some reason they thought that because it's the Tate one maybe they would.

SC Well I deliberately put the sightings data [online tables showing the times of day where the satellite could be seen in various cities] on the site because I really wanted people to have this idea that at certain times of the day from which ever city they were in they could look up and see it. I commissioned a space scientist [Caitriona Jackman] to actually come up with very accurate figures so that if any space scientists were actually looking at that sightings data they would

surmise that this notional Tate Satellite was really out there...in the orbit that we said it was, and that it had been launched when we said it was, those figures are absolutely accurate...

JR Sufficiently convincing that the British space agency did actually phone up Tate Modern and enquire, whether we had permission to launch this satellite...

SC Yeah absolutely!

JR It worked!

SC And I also had emails that the European space agency had actually believed it as well. Though there were some amusing emails from people who had really tested it out..... they'd unplugged themselves from the internet and everything...and thought it funny that it still kind of worked....

JR How funny!

SC But there were also people like my brother-in-law who really should have known that it wasn't real who spent the first day after the launch looking up to the sky at regular intervals ....

JR Wanting to believe it...willing it to be there.

SC Well he was deluded and was very disappointed when he realised that it wasn't actually there. And there were all sorts of other things...like a writer for a big Canadian newspaper who had their editor holding the front page for this major scoop... who I had to tell because really you can't let somebody lose their job and reputation over something like that. The whole press interest has been very interesting. Nobody so far has really critiqued it as an artwork, but people have got so excited about it as a possibility, as a construct...

JR Weird...

SC That it's not actually really been reviewed as an artwork...

JR Very interesting point...

SC The architectural projects have been reviewed in architectural magazines, there have been a lot of excited articles about the possibilities. It's been in design and style magazines around the world...

JR Again I think that's a good point: people - art critics, the public, and other artists, net artists etc. - don't quite know how to handle it, how to talk about it, what language to use...

SC It doesn't fit...

JR It doesn't fit the kind of formalist, you know, technically advanced net art that is technically challenging for artistic purposes. Instead, it's fundamentally conceptual, fictionally conceptual...

SC It's very interesting, while I was working on it I suddenly realised that I'd always thought that, actually I think we'd all believed that interactive fiction would be this tedious thing of branching structures such as 'yes' or 'no' and 'this is the ending I want'. Then I suddenly realised that it was in fact a perfect example of how interactive or immersive fiction could be, with people actually fleshing this whole fiction out for themselves. People were coming at it from all different angles bringing their own desires to the project...

JR This is interesting in terms of the web experience and 'what is a satisfying web experience?' which is of interest now. What you are suggesting is that it isn't limited to the screen...

SC No, it's directed at the imagination. It's not purely about me delivering content to viewers so that they can then choose which part of it they explore. It's about delivering another kind of architectural space if you like, the architecture of the web delivering a public space that people

can then occupy and inhabit and make happen or not as they desire. To choose to believe or not. I mean you asked earlier about the discussion and the range of people that participated. Some were very serious and some thought it was great fun and were actually being quite satirical in their discussions, so it was really a collision of those different things. I like the idea of it as forming almost a model of what an immersive or interactive fiction might look like. It's just one model of, of many. But that really occurred to me when I was working on it, and that really excited me, that it was playing with that idea... of constructing a collective fiction, constructed from a collective space...

JR Do you think this collective fiction can continue? I mean there are major elements that remain - for instance you can still download the models and create them - but several of the contributory, participatory elements have ceased. Maybe it's an impossible question to answer, but what do you anticipate will be the future of the project? My sense is that with distance people will find it much easier to talk about it and actually I'm really looking forward to that point, when critics feel that they are in a position to understand, discuss and critique it as a work of art. But can people still enjoy and experience it fully now that it's past its evolutionary phase?

SC Well, I've taken the time sensitive information off it, so, for instance...

JR It still has February sightings doesn't it though?

SC It does, but it was originally February '2003', specifically dated sightings...I did this for the first year. So I just took the year off the dates so the whole thing has lost it's time sensitivity. I didn't want the site to remain 'active' for more than a year because there's nothing more boring than a project that's tired and not updated regularly, so now it's in archive form in a sense. It always had two routes that people could get to it through, one was the fictional, the unknowing route, which was through the front page that really looked like you know...

JR It was real, it was the fifth gallery Liverpool, St Ives, Modern, Britain, Space.

SC But if people came to it via the other route, the net art route then it would be much clearer that it was a construct ...with the [Paul Bonaventura's] contextual essay and so forth, so there was always these two, the knowing and unknowing participants if you like. So now it's only the knowing route - although it's now linked to from so many sites worldwide that people can still get directly to it and within the Tate site structure tate.org.uk/space> so hopefully it's always going to be there. That's rather wonderful because every so often I do a search on Tate in Space to see where it's got to, and this week I found it as a part of educational lecture for people who are learning about galleries and things like that... it's down dead seriously as another Tate and people are encouraged to look at it, so it has actually gone out...

JR Which is precisely what we wanted it to do! I mean these commissions are largely intended to take Tate 'beyond the gallery walls' and somehow reach new audiences...and it's achieved exactly that!

SC And the Tate webcam for the Tate satellite is actually listed on webcam sites. As they have different categories for Europe, South America etc...now they have a category for space and there's only one webcam listed there - and it's ours! I think the fact that BT sponsors the Tate website makes it more plausible. You know there is a sort of plausibility and authenticity that one associates with the project, particularly at this moment in time in terms of web technology, webcam technology and also branding and interest in space. It's the right time for this Tate in Space to actually make sense...

JR And it is so in tune with Tate's ambitions - not only, on the kind of micro level in terms of these commissions and what Tate is trying to achieve in reaching new audiences, but also in terms of setting up new outposts...you know, potentially one in Space. I think there is something in that. That is why it's so plausible and people so wish it to be true. Because of that, to critique it is very difficult.

SC Well it's also operating on so many different levels and in so many different directions, from the kind of distribution access of the tangible Blue Peter-esque models to the whole architectural thing, which has taken on a whole life of it's own. It's been an incredibly popular project in architectural circles and it's really nice that the architects that have been involved have had a lot of positive publicity for their projects. It has been an umbrella structure for all these kind of sub commissions to emerge through that. So it's been quite a generous project in that sense. It's one that's meant to open up and create opportunities within it. The only opportunities we haven't created are new jobs...which...

JR I love - I love the fact that you had Tate staff asking for transfers...

SC This is true. I've also had people asking if there are possibilities for internships and various things like that. There are other things on the site that were also a kind of link between the fiction and the plausible...and the fact that [Tate in Space] is still far away enough for it to be this fantasy that people can get excited about, but its just near enough that it's becoming plausible that we could have put a satellite up there. Obviously people have satellites up there, for instance BT satellites...

JR And as you point out in the FAQ, that's not very expensive. It costs the same amount as it costs to buy a house in parts of London.

SC Just to get a little small one up there... and it was the generosity of the space scientist that I met with [Dr Andrew Coates], that gave me some fundamental information about this. This meant that the Tate in Space site, for anybody that even knew a little bit about the subject, kept its plausibility. Which is why, I think, some scientists, who probably ought to have known that it wasn't really real, were at a superficial level fooled by it.