In 2019, LIA was invited by a curatorial group including Casey Reas to participate in A2P (Artist to Peer), a seminal experiment exploring new models of digital ownership.
For this historic project, LIA chose to create a new work by reinterpreting one of her earliest pieces, the 1997 interactive artwork Cube_1997. She transformed the original, user-driven experience into a new, non-interactive, single-channel video. By performing the interactions herself, “in secret,” she created a definitive, cinematic version of the work, designed to be experienced passively.
This act of translation – from an open interactive system to a curated cinematic object – posed critical questions about authorship and the nature of a digital work, making it a conceptually fitting contribution to an experiment focused on provenance and ownership.
Cube_1997 (2019 Reinterpretation)
Single-channel video, based on the 1997 interactive work.
A Note on the Rediscovery of Cube_1997
Cube_1997 was never lost. Its creator, LIA, brought forth its existence in 1997 using the power of her mouse and her keyboard and her will (and some electricity, too); it had failed to sufficiently please her at the time and, after just a few years, she abandoned it, and it lay, forgotten, in a folder within a folder, at a dark corner in the furthest reaches of her realm of ancient backups.
But things that are only forgotten are not actually lost; things that are only hidden can be found once more. It has been 22 years since Cube_1997 was forged and, even if many things have changed meanwhile, many things are still the same: a pixel is still a pixel, black is still 0x000000, white is still 0xFFFFFF, and LIA still loves both black and white with all her heart. Like love letters to a former self, Cube_1997 was rediscovered and recovered, and brought into the 21st century with much care and love. Sadly, not all things can be preserved in such a transition, and what was once a fully living and breathing application, capable of generating an infinite number of images forever (albeit at a somewhat shabby resolution of 640×480), can, today, only manage 24 seconds in one sitting – but for that 24 seconds, Cube_1997 shines forth in glorious 1080p.
– Damian Stewart, September 2019
Project Details
Project: A2P (Artist to Peer) v1
Year: 2019
Curators: Casey Reas, Rick Silva, Addie Wagenknecht, exonemo
LIA’s Contribution: Cube_1997 (2019 Reinterpretation)
