Art & Technology #25:
Åzone Futures Market

The name of the first digital exhibition of the Guggenheim, “Åzone Futures Market”, includes a rather unfamiliar word, “Azone.” This word was based on the ancient Greek word “azone”, which means “without nation”, and “Aland”, a unique autonomous region of Finland. The word sounds similar to “ozone.” The project aims to make people directly experience the fact that scientific technologies can control our lives. To achieve this, the project offers the viewers an opportunity to invest in the future technologies. This idea implicates that “Åzone Futures Market” is not simply an exhibition about technologies, but the exhibition corresponds to technologies. Creating an exhibition about the effects of technologies is different from displaying technologies. As the exhibition is online using the digital technologies, if viewers continue to participate in the exhibition, the exhibition will also continuously change, which is the unique characteristic of the exhibition.

Through the online network described above, participants can share information, create and maintain networks without having to meet each other. The network will expand beyond imaginations. Today, new technological means have great power over art in the creation process, as in the online-based art activities, which were made possible by the appearance of the Internet. Offline exhibitions can provide the sense of realism; they also have significant limitations in that time and space are restricted and exhibitions are held on a one-off basis. In this respect, online projects can induce continuous facilitation by using the Internet as a connection. Online exhibitions can always be a bridge that connects art and participants and provides experiences and contents that can overpower the liveliness of the physical exhibition place.
Also, this type of project enables permanent data preservation and frequent updates. Online platforms can be continuously used as a window and a channel through which people can interact with each other endlessly. “Åzone Futures Market” has opened the online space that can be figured out at a glance by the viewers, searching for a possibility to be a platform on which contents are freely used. Furthermore, it could be connected with other websites or exhibitions, or evolved to become a social network where the relationship between technologies and art is shared.

Replacing an actual exhibition space with a digital platform changed viewers into users. This experimental exhibition structure, in a somewhat unfamiliar form of an online market, will continue to promote the birth of various exhibition structures combined with technologies. The Guggenheim’s attempt helps preserve the visual arts through technologies, expand the spectrum of art combined with technologies, and change the way and fixed ideas regarding viewing of an art exhibition. In addition to this project, global art museums are joining in the recent trend to raise the accessibility and availability of art + technology, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology.” Such efforts of these art museums are in progress. ■ with ARTINPOST