prologue

Software does not sleep. Just as the exposure of a photographic plate in the first pinhole cameras created an inscription, the 1:1 "softbots" continuously scan servers on the Internet, generating a representation of an environment we seldom encounter face on, but rather from specific entry points, so called portals.

Contemplating this endless, rather grand and hubristic inscription, resulting in a database, encompassing all the IP addresses used by Web servers, it's tempting to look historically into the metaphoric and connotative possibilities of our key concepts just for a second. It is amusing to notice that the word for web (a weaving) both in Latin and Greek converge with the word for text ("textus" and "huphos"). We can also observe that the Greek word "griphos", related to the word "griphastai", which in Sparta meant "to write", also means net. But "griphos" also has another appropriate, but in the context, somewhat disturbing meaning: "griphos" also means riddle or enigma.

These early photographs, like all images, function as interfaces. The photographic filter that one looks through, allows us to understand and manipulate our surroundings. After looking at a photograph of something, the subject looks different - it is different.

The Internet is clearly an environment, a public space, but can hardly be seen, or experienced as such, in itself. The Internet requires an interface to be experienced.

The title of this project: 1:1, as in scale 1:1 suggests that a map, or a model, has the same size as that which it refers to. When this occurs, the distinction between the abstract "Geography" and the tangible "Empire" becomes vague . Several variations on this theme have been exercised, most notably by Borges and Baudrillard, but before them Lewis Carroll brought up the idea in a short passage in his book "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded", in 1893.
"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.
"That's another thing we've learned from your nation." said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
"About a six inches to a mile."
"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
"Have you used it much?" I inquired.
"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mien Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."

First we encounter a collapse between the map and the interface. But the postphotographic practice of the 1:1 project makes the implosion even more severe. The interface becomes not only the map, but the environment itself. Let's hope the farmers don't object.



- Jan Ekenberg

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