Jaka Zeleznikar

'Pretipkovalec' (Retypescape)

It's not only what is written. It's also where it's written and who wrote it.

How do we construct meanings and relevance of the written text? From only it's content? How does the context influence our evaluation of written information? Are 'public' web pages truly public or is it that writing for those pages is a privilege of only few people? How would a message look if it were written by you on the web page of your choice? Check.

Retypescape ('Pretipkovalec' in the Slovene language) is semantically and culturally related to digital grafitti, hacker culture, 'net poetry, questioning of power, contextual semantics, rewriting of history, and questions of authenticity and reliability of digital archives.

Retypescape is an exploration of language which remembers poetry, also, if not primarily, concrete and visual, experience of conceptual art, ...

How to read the content of the (social as well as personal) written language, which is not expressing itself through its content or (visual) form. Language which is not talking about its speaker since its content is entirely up to its recipient while its shape it determined by the already existing, chosen also by the recipient?

In this work structures of the possible get their meanings in relation to what is already existing and are at the same time necessary upgraded by the action of the user. Interaction is not the goal, it is a way.

It's not only what is written. It's also where it's written and who wrote it.

Biography

Jaka Zeleznikar lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia and, since 1997, has participated in international festivals and exhibitions of contemporary and new media art, focusing primarily on internet-related works. Venues of festivals/exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia), National Museum of Slovenia (Ljubljana, Slovenia), ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany), Institute of Contemporary Arts - ICA (London, Great Britain), and other venues in Europe, North and South America, New Zealand, and Thailand.

“Powering Up/Powering Down” is sponsored in part by the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), and the UC San Diego Department of Music in connection with the departments of Visual Arts, Music, and Literature at UCSD along with the UC Riverside and Los Angeles campuses.