Cyber Cafe is designed by Society of Explorers in collaboration with artists Antonio Roberts and Lucy Cheesman. Society of Explorers are a collective of young people aged 14 – 19 who meet weekly at the gallery to collaborate with artists, create their own artwork, and help to develop Site Gallery’s programme.
With Antonio Roberts, the group explored digital relics from the early years of the internet. SoE-Cities is inspired by the playful and fleeting nature of GeoCities web archives. The Explorers embraced the creative tone and DIY style of these early websites, offering an alternative to the sense of permanence expressed in their current social media profiles.
For Myspace GIFs, they experimented with the personality signifiers that people used to decorate their social media pages when these spaces had more potential for customisation.
Through creating a series of playful and spontaneous images with the Game Boy Camera, the group were able to be more creative and less self-conscious about appearing in photos due to the blocky pixelated nature of the images.
Working with Lucy Cheesman the group collected a range of sounds and samples across the city to generate their own sample pack. Over several workshops, the Explorers experimented with making these samples into beats using open-source software Strudel. This workshop is represented as a web cafe within the exhibition, allowing audiences to engage with and make their own algorithmic music. When the computers are not in use their screens will be animated with screen savers designed by members of the group using Hydra coding language.
Dial Up Dream is a new collaborative work by Lucy Cheesman and Antonio Roberts. The piece combines a live coding performance on TidalCycles with a live visual score using modular synthesizers, containing audio samples and analogue footage produced by the Explorers. As well as soundtracking the space, you can also experience the audio through vibrations in the viewing platform.
Resources
The following websites were used in the exhibition by the Society of Explorers to create their work. You can access them any time and they are free to use.
https://hydra.ojack.xyz/ – A free to use live codable video synth.
https://strudel.cc/workshop/getting-started/ – Make music with code in real time
https://mmm.page/ – Free to use website builder that looks similar aesthetically to GeoCities
Glossary
Game Boy Camera
Originally released in 1998, the Game Boy Camera is a grayscale digital camera accessory for the Nintendo Game Boy. It captures images at a resolution of 128 x 112 pixels.
Hydra
Hydra is a platform for live coding visuals, designed to allow users to create real-time visual effects and projections through code.
Open-source
Open-source software is designed to be publicly accessible and free to use, modify, and distribute.
Strudel
Strudel is an open-source platform that enables users to create music through code.
GeoCities
Founded in 1994, GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish their own websites for free. It was one of the first platforms to make web publishing accessible to the general public.
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking site that was launched in 2003. It allowed users to create personal profiles, connect with friends, share music, photos, and videos, and customise their page layouts.
TidalCycles
TidalCycles is a live coding environment designed for creating patterns of sound, allowing users to generate music in real-time using code.