Project Director for The File Room
Maria Roussos
Hypertext Developer for The File Room
The File Room is an illustrated archive of cases of cultural censorship throughout history and around the world. Presented both as a public interactive installation at the Chicago Cultural Center from May to September of 1994 and as a continuous web server housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, The File Room was in development for over two and a half years. Our goal was to extend this project well beyond Chicago, drawing upon the participation of contributors world-wide and likewise providing global access to the compiled textual, visual, and sonic information. This project addressed the issues of public interactivity and the use of Mosaic as a tool for a kiosk-like presentation.
Conceived by Muntadas, an internationally renowned artist, The File Room is the latest project in a series of works that address power relations in society. The series has included his internationally-presented installations The Board Room and The Stadium. Born in Spain and based in New York since 1971, Antonio Muntadas' artworks take form in video, multi-media and installation. In the past three years his projects have been exhibited in many cities. He has recently completed a ten year video study of the art world entitled "Between the Frames".
Two and one-half years ago, Muntadas and Randolph Street Gallery, a nonprofit artist-run center that supports and generates activities at the intersection of art and society, began developing The File Room for public presentation in Chicago. As the archive is symbolic of the need for free and open communication, and because its format employs the latest in telecommunications technology, Muntadas created a collaborative forum for developing The File Room. Over a series of visits by Muntadas to Chicago, The File Room has developed as a collaboration drawing upon the resources and expertise of many organizations and individuals around the world. At an artist residency in September 1993 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Muntadas publicly introduced the project and began working with its School of Art and Design and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory to develop the technical elements of a hypertext, multi-media database which is now accessible through the Internet.
The File Room challenges existing definitions of what constitutes censorship, and creates a forum for discussion and exploration of the many issues surrounding acts of cultural censorship. Presented by the Department of Cultural Affairs at the Chicago Cultural Center, the physical design of The File Room installation symbolizes information control. The walls of the space are lined from floor to ceiling with metal filing cabinets. Seven computer terminals accessing the archive replaced file drawers in the cabinets. The archive opens with definitions of censorship gathered from a number of different sources. These divergent opinions establish a wide range of what constitutes an act of censorship and introduce the subjective nature of the concept.
The project includes cases of censorship in the areas of visual art, music, dance, theater, performance, literature etc. and has not been limited to cases of censorship of individual artworks. Included among the instances of cultural censorship are the suppression of artists' careers; bans on entire media or subject matters at various times in history; self-suppression by those in fear of reprisals; denied or limited access to information on cultural achievements by entire groups or non-inclusion of such information in "authoritative" sources compiled by majority representatives. The continually growing archive has begun as a prototype, to be shaped by ongoing research and by submissions from around the world.
NCSA Mosaic was chosen because it favors the long term existence of the project and allows it to grow continuously through submissions of censorship cases by users and researchers. It is also an excellent tool for creating documents, in particular collectively, as it provides an easy-to-learn language. Its unlimited multimedia capabilities on a variety of platforms allow easy integration of images and sound that enhances the internationality of this project and its collaborative nature.
As a result of Mosaic's extensive accessibility and approachability, it does not provide the flexibility required for public presentation purposes. The fact that Mosaic would be used by a large number of people at a walk-up kiosk type setting had to be considered. The audience of such a public venue ranged from children to elderly and the installation was visited by diverse groups of people, schools, and individuals. Based on our observations, the majority of individuals had no computer experience and had to be guided extensively on how to use the mouse and navigate through the archive. In addition, many Mosaic features designed for individual use -the personal annotations, the hotlist and the global history options- did not apply for a public installation and had to be omitted. Restricting the users from exploring other sites on the network was also significant in focusing use on the File Room project. Considering that the installation was open to the public for three and one half months from morning to evening emphasized the importance of system security. Many restrictions had to be applied in order to confine the users from accessing the system and to avoid constant maintenance.
These issues were addressed by creating a customized version of Mosaic, which left out many of its unique features at the installation site. Help screens specific to this documentation were created and provided feedback with illustrations and sound to facilitate user interaction. The menu options were disabled leaving only the ones necessary for navigating through the archive. Mosaic was sized to full screen and its window could not be closed or resized. That enabled additional system security and restricted the user from accessing the underlying operating system. A set of programs was developed that were activated every time the screen saver appeared. The screen saver caused the program to terminate and become reactivated in the background. This prepared Mosaic for the next user by clearing the global history and starting from the home page.
Customization of Mosaic was important to create a self standing system, suitable for this type of public installation and presented a challenge in combining the collaborative nature of the project and attracting the participation of a broad audience.
We would like to acknowledge Johnny Lawson, Dana Plepys and Dan Sandin for their constant help and support. A large number of institutions and individuals have contributed to the development and production of the File Room project. We would like to thank them all.
Maria Roussos, M.S and M.F.A student at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, is the Hypertext Developer and Programmer for The File Room. Her experience in developing multimedia projects has provided the expertise required to contribute in this collaborative project. Her current research interests include human computer interaction, virtual reality and interactive computer graphics/computer art.
contact: mroussos@eecs.uic.edu