Site, nonsite, website: Technologies for perception.

摘要

American artist Robert Smithson's site and nonsite dialectic (based on the relationship between his abstract artworks in the indoor gallery and their corresponding physical sites outdoors) utilizes the aerial perspective and other sensorial phenomena to both orient and disorient the viewer, relocating his or her focus back and forth between the normative corporeal perspective and more unfamiliar peripheral viewpoints. With the advent of Google Earth technology in the 2000s, users explore the surface of the terrestrial globe, including Smithson's earthworks, through the digital interfaces of the internet. With the addition of these networked virtual spheres, the site and nonsite dialectic, developed during the Apollo and Whole Earth years of 1968 to 1972, is reinterpreted as a site, nonsite, website "trialectic." While the mechanical is updated by the digital, the conceptual mechanisms persist, providing the tools to navigate these distinct, yet converging realms and find order amidst the disorder.